Discover Top Posts Tagged with #unselfishsewing

My very handsome model husband in his new shirt that I made. I bought a craftsy class on sewing shirts and it is amazing! They do the class on mans shirt so my darling got a new shirt thanks to the class. Seeing how easy it is to make and how nicely it fits I will probably be making more shirts for him as well. But probably after I make him a custom pattern so that it fits really well. #unselfishsewing #sewersofinstagram #sewing #shirt #craftsy

#unselfishsewing #sewing #sewersofinstagram #craftsy #shirt

When you try to make a happy dino but it looks more like a weird fat testral without wings... But it makes noise and has a lot of places to chew on and a skinny neck to hold by, is there something more you would want from a toy? #sewing #sewersofinstagram #unselfishsewing #sewingtoys #dino #plushie

#sewingtoys #sewing #sewersofinstagram #plushie #unselfishsewing #dino

Did some unintentional unselfish sewing, but discovered I can fit a tiny size 62 on a scrap of fabric. Also found this cute pattern for a little dashund in one of the old @burdastyle_cz magazines so had to make it as well. The pants are from Burda as well. They are the cutest thing in the world, waiting for my little darling who still has three more weeks to come until I see him 😊 #sewersofinstagram #sewing #unselfishsewing #memade

#sewing #memade #unselfishsewing #sewersofinstagram

Moms dress. #Newlook6301 I think she will be happy with this one. #unselfishsewing #sewingforfamily #lovemom #

#newlook6301 #lovemom #unselfishsewing #sewingforfamily

A (very) belated Christmas blouse for The Diva

So this blouse has been in the planning since early October and I still did not get it made before Christmas! It'll probably go in the mail tomorrow. Yeah, I'm that much of a procrastinator. During our last East Coast trip, I happened to take a little trip to Joanns with my mother-in-law (a.k.a. The Diva - in the best possible way) We were getting some supplies for me to make a little stuffed toy for our niece whilst I was there. I've made a couple of presents for the Diva for Christmas in past years and so I thought it might be a good idea to get her to pick out a pattern herself then I could "surprise" her with the fabrication. She chose Butterick 5967 pretty quickly. Lovely and swishy with a neckline and sleeve length just meant for showing off a little blingy jewellry - just up her alley. Luckily the style looked pretty unfitted so I just took some fast measurements in the store and chose the size accordingly. I'll try to get her to take some pictures when she gets it (actually I'll have to try to get brother in law to take the pictures as the Diva does not do digital:) But here it is on a hanger -

She requested black lace and I had the devil of a time finding one that I liked and thought she would like as well. Of course, that didn't help my natural procrastination tendencies. Finally, in early December, I found this great scallopy lace and the olive gold charmeuse from Texstyles here in town. They didn't have much of the charmeuse which led to my decision to leave the sleeves unlined but I stlll had to pull out the mad ninja cutting skills to get all the pieces cut out. We may have one or two pieces not strictly on grain but we don't really need to talk about that;) Modifications: - The sleeve pattern piece has an angled hem end which I changed to straight because I wanted to use the scallop of the lace as the edge. The best thing about this lace is the fact that each row is a scallop. - I also wanted to have the bottom edge of the flounce be scalloped which meant I had to change up the pattern piece. This was total guess work on my part. Here is a picture of the original pattern piece (which I cut the charmeuse out of) and the altered piece (which I cut the lace out of)

The top edge of the lace was then pleated to match the length of the top edge of the charmeuse. A cheater's remedy but one which actually worked out pretty well imo. I did the same for the back flounce piece which was a little easier as the flounce was the same depth throughout. - Lined the upper bodice. I am just not a fan of facings and I wanted this one to have really pretty insides. Nothing less would be worthy of the Diva! I used some black china silk from the stash. I used the facing pattern pieces to cut out some lightweight interfacing which I fused to the wrong side of the charmeuse (just the upper bodice) The lining covers this all up and hopefully the interfacing will help to keep the shape of the neckline intact.

I decided to use the charmeuse as an underlining, not a lining, because you'd be able to see the seam allowance right through the open weave of te lace otherwise. I took all the pieces to our local monthly hand sewing party and the girls were soooo nice they helped me baste all the lace and charmeuse pieces together. Yay for sewing friends! So all this got done by Mid-December but then preparations for my pre-Christmas brunch got under way and sewing got put on hold. I managed to put in a few hours here and there but still hadn't managed to get it all put together until this weekend. What is it about sewing for someone else that brings out the inner perfectionist? I used black Seams Great on all of the exposed seams (not that many really after lining; just the side seams at the flounce and the armscye seams)

The last little problem that I needed to overcome was buttonholes. I didn't think that the lace would be able to handle machine buttonholes. Not only is the lace very open in places but I was afraid my presser foot would catch and snag the process - sewing in the sleeves was the one area where I was sewing with the lace on top and it showed me that this lace was prone to doing that. So I experimented with stabilizing the buttonholes with interfacing (not ironed on, just laid on top) but I didn't like the way this trimmed out so in the end I used little squares of the black china silk. Made the buttonhole right through all the layers then trimmed the china silk away from the edges. This worked really well though was a bit nerve wracking when trimming:)