Press, cut, sew, press, sew {repeat}

I've been busy, busy, busy following the steps above, but wanted to pop in here for just a moment.  I'm stitching up as much as possible for an art fair that I'm participating in this weekend.  And crossing my fingers for lovely weather (the forecast says possible rain) and lots of sales (pretty please?).

This shoulder bag is one of the things I've been making.  (Forgive the cluttered background and bad lighting -- I don't have time to stage a proper photo right now!!)  I designed the bag around this amazing architecturally graphic fabric I found at IKEA recently.  It's called Bjornloka Figur.  Cool, huh?

{image from ikea.com}

It was screaming out to me, "I want to be a bag!!"  Don't you see it?!  The colored "Y"s on one side, and the white "Y" on the other?  Plus the fabric has just enough of the black field in the middle to cut the shoulder straps from.  I managed to find solids fabrics from my local Joann's to match the mustard and blue for lining the bags and straps.  Here are some bags with the blue lining on my cutting table (aka dining room table).

I'm fortunate to have my sewing machine in our sunny back room and so have been enjoying the sun and warm breezes of this beautiful almost-summer while I work.  Speaking of my sewing desk, I'd better get back to the process of pressing, cutting, sewing, etc. before I run out of time, but I wanted to share this last image, because I love it for so many reasons.

This was taken last weekend.  My 9 year old son is in our backyard fort with the laptop, working on a research project for school.  I like the view of him, concentrating, through the "window" of the missing board.  It's a cool-ish, but sunny, spring day, and our Prairiefire Crabapple is in full bloom.

We have a winner!

Thank you so much to all of you who read and commented on my giveaway post, as part of Sew, Mama, Sew's Giveaway Day.  I loved having so many new visitors to my blog, and am also flattered that many of you decided to become new followers.  I hope you'll enjoy following along with me and my sewing and design adventures!

By way of a back-to-basics actual drawing out of a bag... the lucky winner of the two patterns from Such Designs and the Handmade Home book by Amanda Soule is... SIMPLESEW, comment #72.  Congratulations!!  I've emailed you for your address, and will be sending the book and patterns to you shortly!

And to all you moms out there, happy Mother's Day!  I've had time to garden and sew today, and received some wonderful handmade gifts from my kids, so a lovely day for me so far!

Itty bitty baby clothes

My new baby niece is scheduled to arrive in this world tomorrow!!  I'm so excited to have a teeny tiny baby in the family again for many reasons, but top among them is the excuse to sew adorable little clothes.  Of course I'm also completely excited for my sister's expanding family and all that other awesome stuff, including the idea of getting to know a brand new person, and smelling the sweet baby smell on the top of her little head.  But, well, sewing tiny clothes is pretty fun, too, right?!

My daughter and I found this cute infant-sized embroidered and smocked top on sale, but we couldn't find any bottoms to go with it.  So I made these little bitty blue jeans.  Okay, they're not really technically jeans.  I used denim-colored linen/cotton (not actual denim) and I didn't add pockets or any type of "jean" detailing.  They kind of look like jeans, though, because of the color and texture, so that's what I'm calling them.  I designed the appliqued knee patches to go with the embroidery motif of the top, but I also wanted it to be simple and graphic, 'cause that's kind of my sewing style.  Hopefully the knee patches are where her actual knees will be -- hard to tell without her here to try them on!

Fabric:  Essex yarn dyed linen/cotton in Denim
Pattern:  Basic newborn pant pattern and tutorial from Made by Rae.

And I made this dress.  I had been toying with different fabrics from my stash for the dress, then I found this orange print from Denyse Schmidt's DS Quilts collection at Joann's.  I like the retro feel and the soft orange color of the print.  It just blows me away that there will soon be this tiny, fragile and amazing person who will (hopefully) be able to fit into this dress.  (I can't quite seem to remember when my kids where that small anymore!)  It has an applique of an asterisk because I like that symbol... and it's part of my business name... and, well, I couldn't really think of anything else except a bird or a butterfly, and those just didn't seem quite right to me.

Fabric:  an orange print from the DS Quilts collection (There's no specific print name on the selvage and I couldn't even find an image on Google in order to identify it.)
Pattern:  Infant peasant dress pattern and tutorial from Sew Much Ado.

I'll be sending these off later this week.  Welcome to the world, little girl!  I can't wait to meet you.

Sew,Mama,Sew! Giveaway

It's that day (week, really) again!  Today and all week long, you'll find links to many, many amazing giveaways on the Sew, Mama, Sew! blog.  You may want to grab a cup of coffee and spend a bit of time checking out all the links.  If you're lucky, you'll find a few great new blogs to follow.  Plus you might win something awesome!  Details on how to enter this giveaway are at the bottom of the post.

I'm giving away these two great patterns by Such Designs.  The three little pigs finger puppets pattern includes instructions for a carrying bag to hold the puppets and keep things organized.  The Good Karma quilt can be used as a yoga mat cover, wall hanging, or table runner.

I'm also including this lovely book, Handmade Home, by Amanda Blake Soule of SouleMama.  It's full of sewing projects (more than 30 in all) that celebrate family.  All of the projects can be made using repurposed materials, and many incorporate children's artwork.

One winner will receive all three items:  both patterns and the book.  Simply leave a comment below for a chance to win.  For an extra chance, Follow my blog with Bloglovin or some other way, and let me know that you're following me with a second comment.

Please be sure I have a way to contact you if you're a winner!  If your email is not connected to your blogger profile, please include it in your comment.

The giveaway ends Friday, May 10 at 5 pm EST.  I'll use a completely random (but hands on) method to chose the winner -- this time I'm planning to put every comment in a hat and one of my children will draw a name.   Simple, but effective... and a bit more satisfying than using Random.org.

Good luck!

Upcycled summer top

For my daughter, who loves bright colors and patterns, although she recently claimed her favorite color is black.  This top incorporates both!!  I found a brightly colored t-shirt at Goodwill, then two solid t-shirts (the green and black) to match.  The new cross-over style top is made entirely from the original three tees.  At $2.99 per shirt, the total cost was about $9.00.  Not bad, right?!

I had an idea in my head of what I wanted the top to look like and, using a t-shirt with a similar silhouette, I made a pattern and figured out the details as I went along.  Luckily, knit fabric is pretty forgiving!  I read a bit about sewing on a knit binding, including this tutorial, then cut strips from the black t-shirt to bind the neckline and arms.  The horizontal black band is simply a folded strip of fabric sewn into the seam between the bodice and bottom part of the shirt.  And I cut the original shirts carefully so as to re-use the bottom hems, since I knew my stitches wouldn't look quite as neat and tidy as the original ones.

I made this to enter in Goodwill's Ultimate Upcycling Contest, but then found it so difficult to navigate their contest page -- I had difficulty even finding my own project at first -- that I didn't have the heart to ask others to try to find my project and vote for me.  Anyway, it inspired me to make Ellie a new summer top, and to grow my confidence in sewing knits.  So, definitely worth the effort, I'd say.  It looks comfy doesn't it?  Wonder if I could manage to make one for myself...

Covert Robin: what I made

Anna Graham (Noodlehead) has a lot of really great bag patterns in her shop, and I've been wanting to try out the 241 tote pattern for a while. So, for me, the Covert Robin mystery swap was the perfect excuse to do so.

I've been seeing versions of this bag around the web, and remember seeing at least a couple (or maybe a dozen?!) at Sewing Summit last fall that I coveted.  I especially like this version, and this one.  Oh, and this.  Really, I could easily link to a handful more, but I think you get the idea.  I love this tote design for the opportunity to play around with color and pattern.  Plus, the pattern itself has a bunch of options included for different types of pockets, etc., so the varieties and possibilities for this bag are pretty much endless.  And did I mention that it's the perfect size for an everyday bag?

I used fabric from Ellen Luckett Baker's Stamped line for Kokka, a red text print my mother-in-law brought me from QuiltCon (bless her!), and some of my favorite Robert Kaufman yard-dyed linen/cotton.

I snapped these quick photos then shipped the bag off across the world to my swap recipient at the end of March.  I can't reveal who she is... because I'm not sure if she's received it yet!  If not, I really hope she does soon.  Needless to say, I have plans to make one of these for myself in the very near future.

Sewing for Easter

Our family doesn't really need Easter outfits.  Our Easter celebrations aren't typically more formal that a slightly-more-fancy-than-usual brunch.  But my childhood memories of Easter involve new, either store-bought or hand sewn, outfits for church.  And I just can't help but want to sew dresses at this time of year.  So, I made this dress for Ellie, inspired by Sew-vivor's emerald challenge and this dress from Garnet Hill Kids.

The dress isn't perfect, but I'm really proud of it for several reasons.  First, I drafted the pattern myself, from scratch.  I made two muslins of the bodice before I finally got it right.  Second, it has an invisible zipper.  I've sewn them in before, but always from a pattern.  The thing about invisible zippers is you have to sew them in last, when you're sewing the seam, and that makes me nervous.  Fortunately, after reading this tutorial and this one for encouragement, I did it... and it worked!  Finally, my daughter adores it, and  I love that it fits her personality.  It's bold, yet elegant; pretty without being too girly; and a bit unexpected.

Of course I had to make a matching tie for Henry, which he pretended not to like, but I think he actually did. I used this tutorial from Very Homemade for the tie, but lengthened it to fit a nine year old.

If I make this dress again, I'll definitely buy more fabric for the skirt so I can add more gathers and make it even fuller.  Also, I had planned to add some appliqued embelishment to the skirt, but ran out of time.  I'd like to do that next time.  But my goofball daughter likes this version, and enjoyed modeling it for you.  Can you tell?