Unintended Leave of Absence from the sewing room!

Im back into my sewing room with renewed vigor and tons of great ideas! 

Every once in a while it is nice to take a break and let the creative juices renew themselves. However, this time it was an unplanned break! The month of May was just a busy one, both with work and personal life and it was nice to just enjoy it :) besides Mother Nature finally decided to let Chicagoland have spring!!! (We did have snow flurries one day this may!)

I did do a couple of things. Embroidery projects on my Brother, other than that I did not do too much in the sewing room! In fact, I believe I went 10 straight days without even going in there. Crazy, crazy, crazy!! But the call of the deck and sunshine and planting flowers and most of all, relaxing with my family was just too strong to pass up!

So here are a couple things that I did do this past month:

Embroidered a 'Rockin Skull' on my hubby's black apron.

Embroidered a set of 4 placemats as a Thank You gift.

Want to my Nephews college graduation in NJ

I wore my 'skully' dress to said graduation!

Enjoyed a weekend with my parents in Deleware and enjoyed my dad's grilling!

Went thrift shopping with my mom in Delaware! Awesome deals!!

Tried on silly hats and sunglasses!

Sat with my daughter as she had the baby monitor on and got to listen to my granddaughters heartbeat for 20 mins =D I smiled like a silly fool all day after that one!

Enjoyed my Iris patch blooming in my garden!

Spent time with family and friends BBQ'ing at my home!

Happiness is a grill full of ribs slow cooked to perfection! YUMMY!!!! I had fun with that. :)

Happy babies making me smile!

We attended a wedding over Memorial Day weekend! Sarah is such a beautiful young woman :) 

I found a dinosaur ravaging Vermont!

Coworker and I took a selfie over the Qhechee gorge (also in Vermont!)

A stop in the Simon Pierce glass blowing studio. Hard to believe this was underwater during hurricane Irene floods!

And ate dinner over a waterfall in front of a covered bridge. So peaceful. 

And on top of that I spent numerous hours just hanging out with my little family! We planted flowers, sat on the deck and chatted, drank some beer, ate yummy food and played lots of games.

Life is good! And now I have my sewing mojo back!! Have a couple projects in the works, stay tuned :)

Simplicity 1653 Skull and Roses mock wrap dress

This is one of my TNT knit dress patterns! This is now the third time I have made this dress and it never gets old!!  

My friend Krystal and I dressed for a lunch outing and a play.

I wanted a new dress for spring and I had the PERFECT fabric for it :) a skull and roses print on a baby blue background cotton interlock knit. I saw this fabric used on another blog for a top and fell in love!  I just HAD to have 3 yards from Girl Charlie Fabrics (http://www.girlcharlee.com) I don't see it on the website anymore so they may have sold it out. But, they have many other very cool knit prints. 

Close up of the fabric.

The pattern is one that I like very much. It fits great and easy to make changes in style as well.

This time I used View B sleeve length, the shorter length (on my previous 2 makes I used a midi length) and I widened the skirt for a fuller silhouette. 

Make # 1 http://10sewingmachines.blogspot.com/2013/11/completed-simplicity-1653.html

Make # 2 I never did a full review, guess I was busy during the past winter holidays!! So here is a picture.  

Dress make #1 on the right in purple and dress make #2 on the left in black white and red.

For the skirt I widened the bottom hem 5 inches on the front and back at both side seams, effectively adding 20 inches to the bottom width and tapered to nothing at the waist area. I LOVE the look it gives this dress at the shorter length!!  

As far as pattern matching goes... I couldn't do any at all :( I only had just enough fabric at 3 yards to make the dress with less than quarter yard and little scraps left. Luckily, I don't think the non-pattern matching is not such a big deal with this print. It is nice since it is more of a random all over print placement. 

I think I will need to retire this pattern for a little while and try some of my new ones :) although, I love having a great TNT pattern in my pattern stash to reach for when I need a quick successful make.

I have one more finished garment to blog about. Next up on my work table is some work appropriate clothes.... Specifically moving back to pants again!

Happy Sewing!!

Simplicity 3956 'sexy' top

I had to call this a 'sexy' top because for me the neckline is a daring one. It is at about the limit of low and wide that I will go!! I actually had to audition different bra's to go with this one because several of my bras had cups and bridges that just peeked out way too much. The final bra I decided upon was one that had a cut low enough to work. However, I still used some of that double sided body tape to adhere my bra to the top and at the shoulders to adhere the bra strap to the shoulder. 

I was really glad I did this for the evening event I wore this to because I didn't once worry about things slipping out of place and just gave me that little extra confidence :) I wore this top along with my Stockbridge skirt to an international professional ballroom dance competition. It was a long evening with a plated dinner starting at 6:30 followed by the competition from 8- midnight in a different ballroom and then an after party that went to almost 2 am! It was great fun to be all dressed up and those dancers were just AMAZING!!!

So let's talk specifics. The fabric is a beautiful poly charmeuse by Robert Kaufman that I purchased from Linda Z's in Arlington Heights, IL. The fabric was a dream to work with! (Normally I very much dislike poly's but this was quite nice) I lined the bodice with a light grey china silk. Yummy against my skin.

I used a single layer layout and took my time to pattern match the upper bodice portion on the front and back. The skirt peplum portion is on the bias so I did my best to match at the front so that the design looked symmetrical. I think it came out quite nice. The only part that I had the hardest time in matching was the top on grain portions to the bottom bias sections. I did my best at the front center to get someone that at least looked OK, I think it looks off a smidge left to right. But I'm also being picky with myself!!  The hems were done on the serger as a rolled hem with wooly nylon and with 2 passes for nice coverage and some added weight to hang pretty.

Pattern is Simplicity 3956 6 tops with different variations. I basically made view A with the longer length of view C as the bottom. 

I made some changes to the pattern in the bodice. After doing a quick pin fitting I needed to change the depth a little bit. I actually made 2 different variations for the new top pattern. One for evening wear and then I also drafted one for day wear with more modest coverage.

On this picture above you can see how I changed the center front height of the wrap portion. Also my marks wear I drew the fabric design on the center front line so that when I flipped it over I could match up the exact same design for the other side. Worked like a charm! Not the most economical use of fabric but for a special top I think it is worth it :)

This photo above shows the difference between what I did for the day to evening looks, added much more coverage from the shoulder on down and also redrew the shoulder slope to fit me better. The photo below shows what I did for the final changes. I still had too much fabric to ease across the chest. So I drew and cut a line from the upper third of neckline to but not through the armhole and the overlapped 3/4 of an inch. I also took off a half inch from the side seams front and back.

The pattern directions were just fine, I took a look at them before I began the project just to see if there was anything funny in them. I also eliminated the zipper. I was going to put the zipper in the side but when I had basted everything together to make any fitting adjustments I found that I didn't need one. I believe this is because the fitted portion of the bodice is just in the bust area, if it had been fitted any lower I would have needed one or possibly if I was shaped differently. 

All in all a very successful lovely evening top! I have several weddings this summer and one is themed black and white so this will fit the bill nicely. :)

Happy Sewing!