The makings of a green dress

I bought this fabric and didn't have a CLUE what to do with it. After looking at it for a million years I decided on a box pleat skirt. I was going to do a copy-cat of a dress I saw on Zooey Deschanel but I ended up making to many changes to it that it turned into more of a Dear Creatures type dress. So much for that lol! I kind of eyeballed the strips of white and then used a ruler to even it out. The collar was a last minute decision but I'm glad I included it. Collars are so great!

Candy Striper // Simplicity 4402

Woo! This dress was fun to make and even more fun to wear! Remember those packs of zebra stripe gun? The flavor would last all of 15 seconds and your left with nothing but stale gum and a lil tattoo. That's what this dress makes me think of. I didn't do the gathered bell sleeve because it just looked awkward, so instead I put a band on it. I absolutely love this pattern! I find myself using the bodice over and over again because it fits me like a glove while still allowing me some breathing room.

A customer told me I reminded her of the Candy Stripers that used to work in hospitals! Ha!

Twistin' the night away - Vintage Inspired Pants - Butterick B5895

I AM OBSESSED WITH THESE PANTS! 

I plan on making many many more of these babies :) 

Now, you know I don't like to really wear pants. But the exceptions are high waist, tailored dress pants, and anything that makes my butt look big+my legs long (don't laugh!) Last month while hangin around the fabric store I came across another gem by Gertie. Patterns by Gertie Butterick B5895. So I ran over to the cabinet where the patterns are kept and I found em! They only had two left so I'm glad I didn't wait or there would be one unhappy Ebone in the world.

This was actually intended to be a practice-run but they turned out so great! I feel very 60's today. Which is probably because I've been listening to Sam Cooke's albums all day while sewing. But I digress, the fit is perfect and my waist looks ridiculous. Win! The only thing that sucks is that I didn't use something with stretch, otherwise I know they'd fit even better without any of that bagginess in the legs of the pants. This is just a yellow cotton with vertical white pinstripes. I can hardly wait to get my hands on some stretch denim! I didn't make the button down crop top that is also in the pattern. I just wore a black top I already had, funny though because it's pretty close! You'll definitely be seeing variations of these in the future :) 5 stars!

I get all tongue-tied and twisted - NEW DRESS

Relevant music for this post:

Today I was JAMMIN' to Ariana Grande's album, can we all just take a moment to appreciate this girl's talent?! I just have to do an appreciation post about her someday soon, she's definitely one of my role models and I'm completely obsessed with her! She's my twin. We're besties. She just doesn't know it yet.

No pattern for this dress, just a simple strapless top and short circle skirt. Simple, like 2 hours tops. Give or take half an hour for spontaneous dance breaks haha!!

***you can find this song in my lil playlist on the left- but GO BUY HER ALBUM!!!***

***Yours Truly Ariana Grande ***

Halfway through a dress & decided to jump ship

A lot of girlies in the sewing world I'm sure are familiar with Gertie from Gertie's New Blog for Better Sewing. 

If not, this little lady is a blogger and fellow sewing enthusiast from New York. She with her amaaaazing sewing skillz has a pattern line "Patterns by Gertie" from Butterick, you know, the one that's been around since forever. Anyway, I bought a couple of her patterns in July that I was really excited about. When I first heard about her patterns finally being available for purchase I hurried my lil butt down to Hancock's only to be heartbroken that they weren't there at all. Last month I walked into that fabric store with absolutely no plan (as usual), came across it again it in the pattern book, searched for it again and was shocked that it was available in my size! Girl, I don't know what I was thinking... there were about 432525 end-of-season sales going on and I must've grabbed the first two fabric bolts I could get my hands on! One was a red-white-and-blue floral pattern (kinds cow-girlish but cute) and the other was a thin burnt orange/sienna sort of color. Very fall appropriate. I made a shirt dress with that, which I'll talk about later. (you can see the fabric I bought HERE)

I started out with B5814, a very Joan Holloway sort of dress. I never used a muslin before OR boning of any kind. (GASP) Actually I've never had to drape anything either... So this pattern was a new challenge for me. Surprisingly though, the instructions were sooo simple to follow and easy to understand! As with pretty much all Butterick patterns, so I should have expected that. Gertie also has blog posts for each of her patterns that you can kinda follow along with and I highly recommend you check that out before you do ANYTHING! Nothing suck worse than ruining a potentially beautiful garment #amirightladies?

I knew what adjustment I needed to make before I even opened the package lol. Being a member of the flat-chest tribe the super-low cut neckline was gonna have to be raised up quite a bit and the shoulders would have to be more.... on my shoulders lol. But I was determined to make it work.

Tim Gunn, can we please have a lunch date that ends with you editing my wardrobe?

So after about two days of putting it together, adjusting, and re-adjusting I got it to fit exactly as I wanted it to. Only problem was the skirt... There's nothing wrong with it, but paired with the bodice it's entirely too sexy for me. I can be cute... I have that down. But I cannot pull off 'sexy.' SO I plan on doing some kind of pleated skirt. 

Maybe a full box pleated skirt? I'm thinking mid-thigh? Knee-length? Or should I just make a peplum top out of it instead? What do you think?

Oh, one more problem... because I jumped ship and decided to go ahead and make a completely different dress from the remaining fabric...  I now have to look for some matching fabric to go with it.

But the other dress is cute though! I had just enough uncut fabric remaining to make a lovely little dress that took hardly any time at all :) I'm pretty pleased with it. I did a post on it Monday in case you missed it...

Doin my thang in my cowgirl dress!

Relevant music for this post:

I just like anyone else LOVE a good dance song, especially while I'm working on something. If I can't have something to groove to and me excited, any kind of work just isn't as fun! Today while I finished up this dress 'Do My Thang" by Janelle Monae ft. Estelle was that song. I started out trying to take the usual boring front and back poses... But I couldn't do it anymore! I think from now on I'll just post all my project + outfit posts with my dance montages. 

I know I'm not the only one who can't help but break out in song and dance while attempting to snap some pictures, am I right ladies?!

Anyway, this dress made more as an accident. I started out making one dress (you'll hear about that tomorrow). Halfway through I didn't like how it was turning out so I started over with what fabric I could salvage.

I used McCalls M6754 for the bodice. As you can see it's a scoop neck in front and back but instead I cut a square neck in front and a narrow V in back. I didn't use the skirt in the McCall's pattern because I didn't have enough fabric. So instead I used one of my old skirts as the template and it worked out just fine.

One thing I thought was funny- I was looking through the Hancock website (I bought this fabric from the store in-person about two months ago) just to see if it was still on sale and it was described as: Americana Cowgirl Floral. Well yeeeehawww!!!

Baby scratch mittens - TUTORIAL

My sister called me up about a week ago and asked me to make some mittens for her. At first I was confused, it's still summer (sort of) and when the baby gets here she won't need mittens for at LEAST 4 more months. But she told me that babies scratch their faces a lot while they sleep. So mommies put mittens on them to protect them from that. the more you know... Many baby items turn out to be really expensive when they really don't have to be. So we hopped over to the fabric store and got 4 colors of thin soft fleece. About 1/4 of a yard each. There's quite a lot of fleece still left over when I was done so you'll be seeing more of this soon ;)

You will need:

1/4 yd. fleece or any baby soft fabric

10" elastic or opt for elastic thread

scissors

matching thread

matching ribbon

 1. Cut out four gumdrop shapes (or pac-man ghosts) 3 1/2" long and 4 1/2" tall tapering ever so slightly towards the top. You can also cut this on the fold, that way you're only cutting out two.

2. Right sides together, sew up 3/4 of one side. This is so it lays flat the entire time. It's easier that way.

3.  Woops! I had to change colors because I forgot I was making a tutorial and just finished the yellow ones without photos lol. Anyway, open up the lil gumdrops, you can press the side seam open here if you'd like. I didn't because it wasn't necessary.  

4.  Fold the bottom edge up about 2cm, press, and sew straight across.

5. If your using a strip of elastic cut the length of each mitten minus an inch and a half. If using elastic thread, just go ahead and thread your machine.

6. Straight stitch for the first few stitches with the elastic an inch from the bottom. You wanna straight stitch here making sure not to have any gathers at the side edge so that the next step (9 & 10) doesn't turn into a headache. Pull the elastic towards the other end and sew straight across to create a gather on the opposite side.

 7 & 8. It should look something like an octopus without any legs. You could have used a zig-zag stitch on step 6, but I think the straight stitch looks just as good.

 9. So now you'll see why I had you leave the side edge un-gathered (is that a word?). With right sides together, line the sides up so that the elastic meets up (this is why I left my elastic so long, so you could see that they match up on both sides). Also be super sure that the bottom hem matches up as well!

10. Pin and continue to sew all the way around starting from that first stitch (black thread).

 11. Almost finished! Time for the finishing touches. Before turning your kitten mittens right side out, make sure to trim off excess thread and cut down the fabric as close to the thread without cutting it as you can. Take your time! Nothing sucks worse than nearly finishing and having to go back an re-sew. Go ahead and turn it right side out. Take a matching ribbon and make a bow as big or small as you'd like. I cut mine about 7" long to make each of my bows. Grab your hand needle and sew it in place. I recommend sewing through the center knot of the bow at least twice to ensure that the bow never comes undone!

 AND VOILA!

 

So I wrapped 'em up in some scrap fabric for my sister to pick up and I went a little bananas with the ribbon, can you blame me though? They're so pretty! The pink one has rainbow thread :D<333 Little bundles for the little bundle. (totes came up with that on my own.)

If you end up making some of these please do let me know! I'd love to see them!

Take care <3

XOXOXO

Bow purse tutorial!

How cool, right? So I've been pretty much obsessed with KL from SecretLifeOfABioNerd since her days with ThreadBanger. She's a fashion school grad who has a YouTube channel all about her DIY's, fashion tutorials, skincare, and a bunch more. She's extremely sweet and bubbly- my kinda girl :)

Anyway, a while ago she posted a tutorial for a cute bow purse and I had an old skirt I needed to get rid of so I got to work... It features a couple of handy-dandy pockets on the bow strap, button and zipper closures, and surprisingly has a lot of space inside!

Mine is a little on the flimsy side because I didn't have interfacing at the time, but it's not a big deal. Once I put my things inside it didn't even matter. Did I mention how quick it is to put together? I'm talking less than an hour people! 

I'm not the best at making tutorials so I'll let the master take it away! Be sure to check out her other videos as well! :)

Current DIY project

Anyone who truly knows me would know that I have always been obsessed fashion and lifestyles from way back when. *Think 40's-70's*  And while I mostly favor dresses over any article of clothing I have to say that I've been particularly obsessed with crop-top and skirt/shorts sets.

I made a full tea-length circle skirt some months ago and had a bunch of leftover fabric that I didn't know what to do with. So I made some bows... which of course didn't use up much fabric so I decided rather than waste it I'll just let it sit until I can find something to do with it all. Months went by and the sun came out making it feel just like summer! The idea came and hit me like a ton of bricks- I'll make a matching crop top! At the moment the skirt is just waaay too long for this weather so I'll have to hem it about 5-10 inches. Shouldn't take long, and I won't cut it so that when it gets cold again I can just take the hem out and voila! Perfect tea length circle skirt!

So that's it! There's my little preview. I won't spoil the whole thing, so I'll make it a separate post when everything is finished to show you the whole outfit! I'm so excited to get this project completed!

One more thing...

So I just posted and ended with "until tomorrow..."

Well, actually now that I think about it I should probably start saying something else because I always have one or two (or five) more things to add. I won't edit them in because I feel they deserve their own separate post LOL.

SO here's a sneak peak for manana's PPS (pretend photo shoot):

I have a few more skirts and accessories that I need to shoot so that I can put them up for sale. A lot of people take the easy way out and just use basic photos of their clothes/items on a hanger, mannequin, or laid out over a nice table or something. But I personally need to see it on someone. I need to see it put together nicely, nothing too fancy. Like I said before- catalog style.

Also, if everything goes right with my camera expect a vlog tomorrow :)