Stop the Presses..

Grosgrain Fabulous

featured my flapper dress for Isabelle..!!

Off to bask in my happiness..

And give ALL credit to my darling Isabelle!

Isa in the Valentine Dress

Toddler Dress In A Nap.. I Mean Snap..

While searching for even more crafty challenges online,

I came across Project Run & Play

Very similar to Project Runway,

designers are given challenges and voted off each week.

However, they have decided to let readers submit as well.

Granted the readers are not in the running for prizes,

it is still an awesome creativity generator.

And I'm a glutton for punishment.

And Isabelle told me yesterday that I am to make

her a Valentine dress.. with hearts.

(She tried to throw in a Halloween motif as well

but luckily I was able to veto that without a tantrum)

This week we were tasked to reinterpert

Leila and Ben's "Sweet Dress"

I love this dress!

Now.. the sleeves were done in a way

I have never done before, so I just had to trust them..

and it's fab!

Totally do-able in an hour

(if you don't have a gassy baby waking every 10 minutes

grumble grumble grumble)

Now since this was my first time working with the dress

and I am by no means a pattern designer,

I only made a few changes.

I made it with 2 fabrics,

I added the pockets,

and the ruffle on the bottom.

The pockets are simply a 5x5 square,

each sided ironed in 1/2".

I free motion embroidered the heart

(After spending a TON of money on a machine

that will do computer generated embroidery..

I favor my own free motion..go figure!)

The ruffle was just a long stretch of 4" fabric,

folded in half and run through

the ruffler at 12:1.

Looking back I wish I had serged the top of the ribbon

before sewing to the hem..

I did it after, and the serger caught a small

bit of the dress.

Not super noticeable, but it annoys me that I

could have *easily* avoided that..

Hope you like it!

Hope Isa likes it..

I will get pics of her in it after her nap..

**And not to be outdone by her big Sis,

I'll make a itty bitty one for Jules this weekend**

Chocolate Damask Taffeta For Isabelle

Isabelle has 2 meetings with Santa this week and I'm hoping to get "THE" Christmas card photo from one of them. Tomorrow is the Tree Festival and on Thursday she'll be in her jammies heading up to the North Pole on "Polar Express". I sewed Isabelle a holiday dress with some gorgeous chocolate brown damask taffeta (I will be creating a bubble skirt for myself later so that we match this holiday season!)

This was supposed to be an "Easy" pattern. It took me about 3 hours, and I still have to hem it. It's close to midnight, and I'm not waking the

baby to see where it falls. Also the pattern included hand slip stitching as well as a zipper. Not the hardest things in the book,but I think for a new seamstress it would have been aggravating. I did make some changes to how I

placed the yoke on the skirt,but that can be a tad dry reading.. so if you make it and want to know what I did, feel free to drop me a line.

All in all,I'm pretty happy with it.

I will probably add a hook & eye

above the zipper later. Just a thing that is bugging me, but no biggie. And if I made it again, I

would definitely use my serger.. for first time

around projects I only use my sewing machine (don't want unwanted cuts to the fabric!)

My Little Turkey

As my business has grown over the last year, I've felt myself putting projects for family & friends on the back burner so I can get a little more work done. This was heartbreaking for me. The point of running my own business was so that I would be at home with Isabelle (and future kids), and give more to those I love. So each weekend I "try" to set aside all work, and only do projects for those I love. It's not a perfect system, and this weekend I slipped. A lot of the photographers I had orders from HAD to have items this coming week, that meant I HAD to work overtime and then some. With all that said, I was bound and determined to create a dress for Isabelle for Thanksgiving. My original hope had been to sew 2 ties that matched for her cousins; had great visions of the family photos. Sorry Brycen and Bailey, the ties are probably not going to get done in the next 48 hours. I'm sure they'll forgive me.. Well after some Wii and pumpkin pie..

The pattern I used was Olive Ann Designs : Jump-N . Purchased it at one of my favorite local fabric stores, Material Girls over in South Jordan.

And I'm still on my corduroy kick; using a heavy wide wale green cord and small wale chocolate brown w/ matching green polka dot .

I made some changes, and honestly now that I'm done I will make more changes to the next one. I am not a flamingo fan, so that appliqué got axed. Also..

* Isa is skin & bones, so her body measurements put her at size 1. However, I didn't take into consideration that she has my head. Big heads means big ideas! It is super hard to get it over her head and tears usually erupt. For the next dress I will either push the sleeves out more or increase the width of the neck.

* It is supposed to be reversible, but honestly with 2 cords it makes it very bulky. With the next one I'd either use only 1 heavy fabric or not intend to make it reversible.

* Your bobbin thread color is important!! For this reason I will probably not use the polka dot side as wearable option. The bobbin thread color is distracting to me though I'm sure Isa is unaware :o)

* I added a machine embroidered turkey on the bottom for a little added holiday decoration. The original had that flamingo.. I bought the embroidery pattern at SWAK Embroidery

If I had more time to spend on the dress I think I'd be slightly happier with it. It really only should have took around 2 hours to sew, but with a toddler yelling "Go Diego, Go!" and deadlines looming over my shoulder.. I said this Turkey is done, stick a fork in it!