and the winners are...

We used random.org as opposed to a cute little slip of papers in a bowl, so here is our virtual drawing...



Dress: Sew Ducky!


And then we "drew" again and came up with #2 once more, so...

Bathing Suit: Elizabeth!

Send me your address at my first name at "wendyk.org" and I'll mail them off!

I'm very excited that these patterns are getting a new home instead of the recycling bin. Enjoy sewing them up!




To make this a non-picture-free post, here's an old picture of some peonies that I took many years ago. I need to stop by the farm soon and see what flowers are blooming- I'm sure the hill down the road is covered with daffodils all set for picking. I haven't been over there (even though it's all of 2 miles from my train station) for over a month and I miss running around up there with all the flowers blooming for the sping. My grandparents aren't big fans of flowers, since they'd rather grow food, but plenty of flowers grow in the corners and the hilly areas anyway.

A pattern giveaway - closed

The move is almost here! Just two more weekends to pack up my sewing room and squeeeeeeeeze all my sewing stuff into an extra bedroom that I'll have to share with my sailors huge computer setup. Little does he know that i'll be eyeing the extra space behind his computer monitors to store thread. ;) Since I'm downsizing quite a bit in space I've been going through all my fabric and patterns & I wanted to share some of that with my blog readers. So, here's a small pattern giveaway.

Pattern 1 - Vogue 7234

I bought this dress pattern a long time ago because I loved the style lines. It's size Bust 42 and in great shape. It has a cute rolled collar and a slightly off center button front.




Pattern 2 - McCall 4301

This one came in a batch from a garage sale that my aunt gave me. It's Palmer/Pleitsch, so it has great directions. Bust size 36. It has a bunch of options for sewing one piece bathing suits.




Leave a comment before Tuesday evening with your choice of pattern #1 or pattern #2 and I'll get Kate to help me pull the winners from a bowl or something. :-)

a tea party dress

What's this? Two buttons Kate found in my button tin! We made her a new dress from the Oliver & S Ice Cream Dress pattern this weekend. When she was about 4, I had made her a dress with a tea party print on it, which she LOVED. Like, wore constantly until it didn't fit LOVED. (Flickr says I even have photos of it here). So we thought perhaps she should have a new one, and tracked down this adorable print of little teapots.

I wanted to try out the new Oliver + S ice cream dress, which seemed like a good pattern to show off a nice fabric print. The pattern was very quick to sew, and the bodice goes together easily in a cute little way that takes advantage of the lining.



I added a little strip of khaki colored cotton as a flat piping between the skirt pieces to add a bit of interest to it.

Here is Kate trying it on so it could be hemmed. We made a BIG mess in the sewing room that I'm still working on cleaning up.

Nicey Jane dresses

Finally, here are the Nicey Jane dresses (so far) for my nieces.

The pink one, made from the "swing toss" print is another Simplicity 2989, but a sleeveless version lined in a gray cotton batiste so it will be cool for summer.




Kate was very interested in why the skirt from this dress swirls out when she spins. We ended up sitting on the floor sketching pencil skirt shapes, gathered skirt shapes, and A-line skirt shapes.




Then she wanted to know how a dress went together. So we looked at the dress that I'm making for her sister, which is still in the flat stage:



(This is also nicey jane fabric, but a different print)

That was really interesting to her. We discussed how you sew up the side seams and ZIP! you have a dress. So perhaps tomorrow we'll make a dress this way for her doll. It's so cute to see her try to figure out dress construction, you can almost hear the wheels in her little head turning. ;)


Here's the pink dress on more time: the collar -with light green ric rac- and the skirt binding.

a birdie dress

This is a small raglan sleeved peasant style dress for Kate, who needed a few "not fancy" dresses:





And I made her a fantastic little pink dress from my still-favorite simplicity girls dress pattern, using pink Swing Toss from Nicey Jane (OMG, gorgous- I wish I was young enough to wear a whole dress made out of this print!!) ... but I forgot to take the picture of it off my camera. It will show up here soonish.

In the meantime, I'm still trying to pack up my sewing room. Yikes... I had NO IDEA how much fabric I owned. I need to do a bit of serious winnowing down, or we will never fit into the new apartment. ;)

a L2 bag

The L2 Bag by Sewing Workshop has been on my to-make list for FOREVER. OK, only for like 2 years or something, but it seems like forever! Last week we signed our new lease, toured my sailor's new ship and had lunch with the current captain, figured out our move dates, and scoped out where the grocery stores, Dunkin Donuts (priorities!! (; ), drugstore, and everything are in our new neighborhood. It felt like we had a checklist a mile long to go through, but we finished it up by Friday. Now we have "the calm before the storm" as we don't actually move for another month, and then he is away for several weeks of training. So distract myself from packing, I purchased the L2 pattern and sewed it up in an Anna Maria Horner home dec weight fabric from the Drawing Room Line.



I really love how it came out! It wasn't too difficult to put together, although I did skip the plastic canvas in the bottom and used magnetic snaps inserted directly into the lining instead of in tabs. I lined the godets in the outer fabric after reading some reviews that mentioned that the lining was rather visible there. The lining is a solid purple cotton which I interfaced with some fusible fleece that I had lying around. I'm dying to make up another one now- it's the perfect size to hold my laptop and lunch for work.

The panel apron

A quick picture of my sister cooking Easter brunch in her apron from the Leanika fabric panel. I swapped the pocket that was on the panel with one cut from a scrap of the Lovebirds fabric.

happy easter

Our table early in the morning, waiting for breakfast:



Don't let the quiet fool you. There will soon be 3 screaming munchkins racing around! At least we don't let them eat candy, so there will be only crazy "it's a holiday and I got new toys" screaming. In their baskets are little stuffed animals, teensy frilly gloves from the Target dollar bin, books, and egg shaped sidewalk chalk. For my sister, I made an apron from a Leanika cut-out-and-sew-apron panel. (This is the same fabric line from Free Spririt as the Lovebirds fabric I used at Valentine's Day) I've never used a "cut out and sew" fabric panel like that before, and it was actually lots of fun!

Here are our semi-DIY easter napkins:



I bought plain cloth napkins at Target, and then downloaded some easter shapes from the martha stewart website's templates section. I used those as patterns to cut out little bunny & fruit shapes, then zig zagged them onto the napkins. The applique is the fun part, not hemming napkins, so this was an easy way to get some cute easter napkins without going nuts hemming so many napkins!!

A spring dress

A very short post to show a little dress I made for Kate...



I found this fabric at JoAnns a few weeks ago. It has bias strips, ribbons, and ric rac sewn onto some cotton lawn. The pattern is McCall 5793, and I used a blue floral for contrast upper yoke.

Here's a not so great photo of it hanging from the door handle, where you can see that I didn't quite get the neckline lined up in the back. Oh well! Her hair is long enough to cover it, so let's pretend I got it even.



The pattern was very simple and straightforward to put together. I don't know about sizing yet, since my niece hasn't tried on the dress yet, but I made a size 6 which looks to be about her size. I didn't use the skirt pattern pieces, since I wanted to just use up the rest of the material - which made me end up with a VERY full skirt. That was fun to hem- I took the lazy route and did a very simple double fold machine sewn hem. ;)

Happy Easter to all!