The Butterick Retro B6318

This was another project from the lovely people at Sew Crafty Online the fabric is absolutely beautiful and all my scraps have been carefully saved for future quilting and small projects as I couldn't bare to throw them out!

My Butterick Retro pattern has caused me a few headaches. Mostly in the boobage area! My first issue was my measurement didn't really fit the sizing. So I just made the on the was going to fit my top half with the hope the skirt would be floaty enough to survive.

As you can see even on the mannequin this appeared to be a strange shape but my hope was the waist band would pull it in a bit. Which it did beautifully on a real person, the mannequin doesn't do it justice.

I think if I were to make this again, I would take the top in slightly across the boobs as it doesn't have any dates to give the top any shape. I think they shape would be perfect for a the larger breasted lady though i'm afraid mine were a little lost!

Once the tie is around the middle you really can see the shape it is aiming for which is beautiful, though I think I have learnt to stay away from Kimono tops as they don't fit me properly. I found the tie quite hard to attache and the instructions weren't great but after some perseverance I think I cracked it.

But seriously whilst the fit isn't perfect on this dress it is absolutely beautiful because of the fabric. The flowers are so cheerful and wonderful it brightens up any day in the office! So all in all a successful escapade.

My Project for the Refashioners 2016 challenge

What a great idea to reuse jeans in this way! I don't know about you but I had load's of jeans in my house desperate for re-use! I flitted around my ideas but finally decided on a bardot style off the shoulder top.

I looked around on pintrest and found Fabric Godmothers tutorial and thought this was a great starting point.

I started by making the darker jeans one big piece of fabric, mostly because at the beginning I was going to make a dress but I didn't have a big enough piece. This piece then became the top frill of my bardot top.

I then made sure I had enough of the lighter jeans. Now this pair of jeans were bought with 'designer' fraying already put in, which just got bigger and bigger of a hole! So I had to repair these holes before I could use it as the main bodice to my top and not expose myself too much! Once that was done I cut two rectangles one 40cm deep and one 20cm deep.

I used the jeans hem for the bottom of the bodice and I zigzagged in contracting cream thread for the frill which I think gives it a nice finish. One I had made two tubes of fabric, I attached them using the wonderful tutorial above.
I only had thick elastic in, and I'm impatient to wait to go to a shop, so I pushed that through the frill's tube opening I had made. Whilst we are on the subject of threading elastic through.. there HAS to be an easier way to do this?! this is what took me most of the time!tip and tricks most welcome please!

When I first put this top on my husband laughed at my soo much as I had tried it on over my t-shirt and put the frills on top of my shoulders like a vest top, once I rearranged it looked much better (shame about my tan lines though!)

There are so many great adaptations of using jeans to make something else so please check out the hashtag #therefashioners2016 and #jeanius and see what everyone has been making. I love how everyone has used it so different and I especially love the negative space removing the pocket gives you like on my shoulder details.

Girls party dress, more scrap busting!

This is another free pattern from The Cottage Mama. You get the pattern when you sign up to her newsletter, and all the details are here.

I used the alternative bodice construction which has really good instructions the pattern download.

I used leftover fabric from my walkaway dress and the floral from the quilt I made. Luckily the two pinks matched perfectly.
The bit I struggled with for this dress was getting even gathers on the skirt. I tried I few times putting a long stitch and pulling the thread but each time the thread snapped.

In the end I used a method I found on pintrest. I cut a length of dental floss the width of the dress top. I then did a wide zig zag over the top of the floss. I tied one end of the floss to the skirt and pulled it through. It was so much easier this way!! One to remember indeed.

The end result is beautiful and perfectly twirly for the little girl to wear!

Simplicity 8065 another duvet cover dress!

 

I love a good 50's style dress. The tea dress style really suits my shape as it flares out at my waistline and hiding any lumps and bumps.

When I saw this pattern on the simplicity instagram I had to try it! It uses so much fabric though so I had to did out the other duvet cover I  bought from dunelm on the sale. It was a perfect colour for the summer wedding I was making this for.

The pattern was easy again because it is a wrap around dress. It is a full circle skirt so I didn't have enough table to cut it out so I had to cut it out the floor and so the dogs were desperate to help me... they aren't very good at helping!

Once I managed to cut it all out sewing it together was so quick! I was being a bit optimistic starting only the week before the wedding but I managed to finish it!

I got my beautiful flowery bias binding out again and it goes all the way around the back and the neck giving it a lovely finish. The back is a lovely crossover which is very low so I needed to get some kind of bra that wasn't so revealing.


Once I was wearing the dress it kept popping un done when I sat down. This is not ideal as its a wrap over I exposed my bum! I think I will upgrade the poppers I used to some cam snaps I have bought this week or some hook and eyes to help secure it a bit more.

I wore it with my fluffy underskirt and I felt fabulous! Perfect for dancing and making an entrance! It was lovely and plain but still made a statement, and it was talked about by the whole wedding party!

The wedding gift.. the final touches!

I then just had to bias bind the edges! I went with blue on Grandmas recommendation (check out the first post about the quilt about having boys under it!). I bought 9 meters of this extra wide binding as I though wide gave me more error space and a meter for mess up!

I sewed the back edge all the way done about 1/4" from the edge of the quilt making sure the rest of the binding was pointing towards the rest of the quilt. You can sort of see at the bottom of this picture how it is sticking out at the bottom, this is because I then brought the binding over my first stitch and clipped it on the front. This way you can only see one set of top stitched (in theory).

These clips were a god send, free with Simply Sewing mag! It saved it faffing around with pins and I could just slide the clip down! I then sewed all the way down and folder the corners over keeping the binding all one piece.


I made this panel for the back of the quilt with same ribbon from our wedding and some bits I bought which I thought gave it a great gift tag!





There we have it one finished quilt! Which she loved by the way :) Boy am I glad of that!!

The beginning of the masterpiece wedding gift... The block

It's at this point I thought I rally ought to get on with making the wedding gift for my cousin I had planned... with 8 weeks to go...!

My cousin has recently bought a little cottage with her soon to be husband and they were renovating it ready to move in after they were married. She loves all things 'country kitchen' and vintage etc so I thought the perfect thoughtful gift from me would be something hand made, so I thought I'd make her a quilt!

I didn't really think this through, but hey I was going to try my hardest to finish it! I didn't know what size bed she was going to have either but I would be damned if I was going to try anything bigger than a double for my FIRST quilt, so I decided not to ask...!

I sourced my fabric, 4 different colours of the same rose fabric, 4 solids in similar colours and 4 other random ones I liked the look of. I bought a meter of each and I have plenty spare! I took my Grandma with me to buy some of the fabric and as I was picking out lovely pastels (the theme of the wedding!) she said to me 'You do know there will be a boy under this blanket Rudy you'll need some manly colours...!' Cheers for that image Grandma.. Queue blues being added! Most of my Fabric is from a facebook seller or ebay, though some is from Bobb in and Sew near where I live and some from Boyes again in Goole.

I found this blocks idea on Pintrest and it is now that I look back on it and see how the colour run through in lines, I didn't see that before! So mine really was a rough copy of this in rather large form.

I cut 9 15cm squares of each of the fabrics I was going to use as squares, and 9 of each double size squares 15cm wide and 30cm tall. This was the most boring bit!! I then decided that my squares would look a bit like this..

So I set about sewing all the squares together, trying to put similar colours at opposites. Then I sewed a pair of squares to a long panel giving me 4 corners of a square. I pinned two bottom sets together on the shortest sides and sewed down then in a straight line (please bare in mind you will have extra on the long panel as there inst an additional seam). I did the same with the top the sewed all the way down the middle. Be careful at this point with you seams, it may be useful to iron them to where you want them to stay though I have aversion to the iron so do as little of that as possible!

Ta daa one square.. only 8 more to go...! As you can see it didn't quite stick to my plan but random is good sometimes :)