Pattern hack of the Sew Crafty Shift dress

Well ladies and gentlemen please be upstanding for my first ever pattern hack! Introducing my Sew Crafty Online Shift Dress in exquisite Dashwood Distant dreams.

I said in a previous blog i'm not very au fait with how patterns are made, or when I should be making adjustments so I played it safe with this hack. I added a button panel all down the front as I saw a fabulous 90's revival dress on pintrest with the same idea (Link).

At first I made the size up from what I thought I needed so that I could have a baggy shape as I could imagine it being lovely and baggy with the buttons being a delicate detail. I ended up with a potatoe sack as I over estimated my sizes! As you can see by my face, it's not what I envisaged! I ended up taking some out the shoulders and some out the sides, making it back to the size I should have cut out in the first place! Lesson learned. In doing this though I've made a little cap sleeve almost which I love!

I also added a 2" panel on either side to use as my buttons basis. I layered that up with fabric to make it a little stiffer but I didn't want to use interfacing and may it too stiff so just doubled up on fabric. I then had the fun task of buttons all down the front. I put the 4cm apart as I guessed that seemed a good distance but actually that left me with A LOT of buttons to sew on. I used big buttons so they became the center piece and the colours match perfectly with this Dashwood Studio Distant Dreams. I love the peacocks and the colours as it is so very springy at the moment and perfect!

I may have finished my hem last night and be wearing it at work already! Typing this blog whilst scoffing my lunch, and I have had so many compliments as to how nice I look today. As usual I love it! My new favourite dress, perfect for Easter Sunday!

Then it was easter...

As you have probably guessed at the moment I'm mainly catching up on previously completed projects, so I made us a table runner for our easter table as we had all the family round (and some more pretend family that we love too)

I searched around for some Easter fabric but didn't have too much luck, so I went to Fabritaastic in Peterborough who were very helpful and were having a sale on fat quarters... I mean who can resist fat quarters!!

So what I did was I purchased 4 FQ's and 1m of cream fabric that I was going to use for the backing, along with 1m of wadding.

I cut the FQ's into 15cm Squares using my rotary cutter and cutting board so they were all the same and patch worked them all together into a random long pattern. Our table is very large as you can see so I just kept bringing it back to the table to see if it was long enough and added a few more rows on.

I then cut two strips of the cream and attached it to the blocks and the wadding by sewing round three sides. Leaving the middle to turn it right side in. I did this on both end and was left with a flap in the middle that I was hoping would be like a pillow case flap, though it looked weird!

So I ended up sewing all the way across the middle to join the two flaps together, It didn't matter so much to me as it was only for my and my table, but if I were to do it again I would make sure that the two piece of fabric match up and a square join so I can 'stich in the ditch' and make it look neater.