Full Circle

Once upon a time, long ago, I started sewing curtains for our master bathroom. There used to be curtains hanging made from this fabric:

Joel Dewberry || Aviary-Sparrows (Almond)**

I love this fabric in the fall (Joel Dewberry is one of my all time favorite fabric designers!!), but come spring it was a little too, um.... fallish? Great description, huh? I thought so too. So, thus began the search for new fabric(s).

**Note Bird is not as creepy in person

I ordered several yards of fabric in an array of blues and greens, with the intent of creating something like this:

Turns out I was not patient enough to sew these strips into a cheveron pattern, and they became this instead:

Then I found this great cheveron patterned home dec. fabric (from here), and decided I would sew that into curtains:

Premier Prints || ZigZag (Village Blue/Natural)

I have one panel half way finished and hanging in the bathroom. I'm thinking that maybe I haven't finished sewing them because I've lost interest in this pattern and want something different (yet again).

So today, while browsing through fabric online, I discovered that this store carries fabric by designer Thomas Paul. *Cue a chorus of angels*

I am seriously smitten with all of the furniture I've seen upholstered in this fabric. And today, I came across this bird yardage:

Thomas Paul || Perch (lilac)

Five minutes later, four yards of this fabric were in my shopping cart ready to checked out. Hopefully it will be on it's way to me soon!! Maybe some curtains will be hanging in the bathroom by next month :)


ETA: Oooh and I found a pic of what it looks like in action:

Lonny || via Dana on Pinterest

Full Circle

Trying to make this happen:

Applique + flower pattern:

Orimono Pillow via Anthro

...in quilt form. I'm thinking pinks, oranges, and yellows (for a little girl that will be joining the world very, very soon).  I love the colors in this fabric and I may use it as my inspiration.

Dear Stella/Play Date/Dotty Stripe- pink via Hawthorne Threads

Let the brainstorming & fabric selection commence!

Trying to make this happen:

Liberty of London Dress

So, as many of you know, Liberty of London created a line for Target a while back (and it seems to have spurred new trend (or, more likely, I'm just late on catching this) in designers for Target: Tucker for Target, anyone?).

Anyway, I posted about my excitement for Target's designer line when it first debuted and managed to get my hands on a few items before they were all snatched up. A few months later, I was browsing the women's clearance section in Target and noticed that several of the LOL items had been marked down. Even though I didn't necessarily like the style of this particular dress and it wasn't available in my size, I loved the fabric. I really loved the tank dresses I had been seeing pretty much everywhere and thought it would be fairly easy to convert this dress into one. Somehow, I also managed to find a jersey tank top (at Target), in my size that matched the color of pink in the dress.

you can still find a limited # of items here

(On a completely different note, does anyone else wish Target would do a better job of displaying their items online? I think their clothing pictures are horrible).

Finally, about a week ago, I sat down to finish this project and I'm really pleased with the result. (Unfortunately I have no pictures of the dress reconstruction process- boo, bad blogger).

Shortly after I bought the dress, I detatched the top from the skirt with a seam ripper. The skirt had two parts, the top floral fabric and a thinner under skirt to prevent see-throughness. It also had elastic sewn into top area. When I took apart the dress, I also had to remove the elastic and gathering, which left me with a box-y, square skirt. I knew I wanted the skirt to sit more at my waist, so I pinned it to my dress form to figure out what I could do to adjust the size. I really didn't want to cut into the fabric or remove the top part of the skirt from the bottom, so I decided to apply the gathering technique to create the waist size I needed.

I sewed a stitch on the front and back waist of the skirt with a loose, wide stitch length and kept the ends long. I then held the top thread and gathered the fabric to get the waist length I needed. Once I got the gathering where I wanted it, I pinned it and resewed the gathering in place with a shorter, tauter stitch. The waist area ended up being a little looser than I wanted. To fix this, I added two pleats to the front and one pleat to the back so that it sat better on my waist. I then sewed in a strip of elastic to allow some give in the waist area, since I wasn't sewing in a zipper. For the top part of the dress, I tried on the skirt and the tank and pinned the tank where the two met. I cut off the bottom part of the tank, about an inch below my pin mark. I then pinned the tank to the skirt, matching side seam lines, and sewed the two together.  The top ended up being a little lose (it looks really lose on my dress form, more so than it does when I'm wearing it), but it fits really comfortably and I like how it looks more like a shirt + skirt, rather than a dress.

I still have some left over jersey fabric from the original top and the bottom of the new top that I may fashion into some sort of accessory or embellishment, but I'm not sure if that will happen or not.  I'm so glad I finally got a chance to finish one of the many projects on my sewing to-do list.  I hope I can find an occasion to wear it out during the last few remaining weeks of summer :)

Liberty of London Dress

Fabric and Sewing Withdrawl

The good news?  We've finally put the house on the market.. as of yesterday!  I seriously had no idea that doing so would be so. incredibly. time consuming.  And stressful.

The bad news?  I've had to declutter my craft room so that it looks appealing to buyers.  Thus, my entire stash of fabric.. er, this one-

has gone into temporary storage (insert sad face here).   I'm also in the process of disassembling my sewing table and packing my machine away for the time being, *sigh*.

I have also promised myself that I will not buy invest in any more fabric until I make good use of the quantity I already have.  Although, this could also do with the fact that I'm actually running out of room to store the fabric, but whatever :)..... 

So in the mean time, with one quilt completed and in the hands of it's owner (Baby Hailey who arrived Monday!!!), I'm going to spend the next few weeks brainstorming and organizing some ideas for future sewing projects (including quilts). Oh, and I promise I will try my best to post pictures of the completed baby quilt some time within the next week.

One of the first (of many) projects that has been swimming around in my head is the Wedding Wheel Quilt that I'm planning to make from the left over fabric napkins I made for our wedding:

source

While browsing through flickr, I also came across these quilts I'd like to try:

Film in the Fridge

Badskirt

Hyena in Petticoats

I'm also scrambling to finish up this dress before my sewing machine gets packed away.  I just need to finish the neck line (with a bit of tweeking) and hem!

source

Depending on how much I like the style once I'm finished, I may want to make a few more of these.  Have I mentioned how much I love dresses with pockets?

I also picked up these patterns (also Simplicity) when JoAnns had there 5 for $5 sale a couple of weeks ago.  I'm on the look out for the fabric that I want to use for these patterns (so I guess my fabric ban will only pertain to non-clothing related purchases, hehe).

I'm hoping the next month will be filled with lovely, fair-weathered, spring days that can be spent enjoying the outdoors so that my sewing withdrawl doesn't become too overwhelming!

Fabric and Sewing Withdrawl