Fabric Tourists!!!

First off my wife is wicked awesome.  A week ago we went out to do some local exploration coupled with some fabric tourism.  We hit a few spots we knew and a few we didn't.  Our specific intent was to find new fabrics for our fall wardrobe.

I have made my lovely wife many skirts in the past, but this year she has endeavored into wearing dresses and so I have decided to try my hand and making her some dresses.  She had a lot of fun picking out her fabrics and me personally I cannot resist new fabrics no matter what they are intended for.

Well we found an amazing collection of fabrics for the both of us.  I am so pumped for the season of sewing. Here are our new fabrics for fall:

We are going with a great collection of jewel tones and primary colors.  I want to keep my colors bright and expressive.  As for the projects themselves I do have some of them planned.

Deb saw this Rocky and Bullwinkle fabric and wanted some PJ shorts.  My lovely wife loves cartoons and so I was not at all surprised to see her come at me with this fabric in her mitts.

Our next gem is this cotton lycra blend.  Deb is going to look great in the gem I have planned. It's a princess seamed dress with a skirt at the natural waist and raglan sleeves.

This next one is for me.  I am planning to make Colette Patterns Rooibos with pink piping.  I love the colors and it is totally for me!

Deb has this really great dress that has these great diagonal seams and a peter pan collar.  She looks so cute in it.  So my plan is to make a pattern from her dress and to replicate it, perhaps with some alterations.  I might need something similar for myself.

This next piece was a remnant and I have just about a yard of it.  I am not sure what to do with it, if I had a little more of it I would make a skirt, but as it is it may have to be a bag lining or something.

This is going to be another for my dear sweet Deb.  I'm thinking up a shirt dress perhaps or a simple bodice with an A-line skirt, or maybe a dirndl.

This sweet and simple print I think would make a great blouse.  I think for me.  I really like it, but then who knows, maybe it's destined to be a camisole.

This is going to be another of mine.  The fabric on the left is a cotton flannel herringbone and the fabric on the right is a silky poly fabric that I'm going to be using for a lining.  It's going to be my fall coat, and I will be making the Colette Patterns Anise! 

This is another fabric of mysterious intent.  Deb liked it and so did I.  It looks like we're going to need to see who comes up with the more brilliant plan for it first.  I was surprised when I picked it up and realized that it was 100% cotton.  I think it's awesome, but what will it be? Who knows.

This fabric is going to be a version of the wiggle dress by Gertie from her book Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing.  I want to make the version that is short sleeved with dropped waist dirndl skirt.

Then there is the camper fabric.  I started talking about my "camper dress" and Deb thought it was a style of dress.  She did not happen to recognize that the images on the fabric were campers, as in to go camping in, she thought they were turtles. Isn't she cute!!!  It is going to be a shirtwaist dress with a gathered skirt and the  button placket and collar will be in this awesome teal

Some of you may have seen this fabulous dress made up.  It is the new baby I have to love in my life.  It looks great with colored opaque tights and my new oxfords.  What's not to love?

I'm not yet landed on the destiny for this gem in particular but what ever I do will certainly have details done on the bias.  In my mind there is nothing better to do with a plaid or a check than to contrast its awesomeness with details done on the bias!  What ever it becomes it will be something for Deb whose favorite color is red.  I had originally thought button up shirt kind of camping style but she saw a dress, so who knows?

Now this one on the other hand there was no debate about.  It screamed Deb Cook as soon as I saw it.  Plus it was 50% off and it was already on clearance.  And for those of us who know anything about her, you gotta know that Deb Cook loves a deal.  For details check out the blog post about her pants, in her words "These are $7 Pants but they're not really $7 pants".  This fabric just simply has to be a dress for my amazing wife!

This last one is really fun.  LOBSTERS! My stepdad is avid boater and griller, so this is going to be a grilling apron for him.  Maybe with a tong holster, a space for a spatula?  The sky is the limit!

As you can see I am going to be a very busy girl over the next few months.  I am super inspired and I am pumped to get started!

Favorite Sewing Trend: The Peter Pan Collar

Many of you who know me know that I love a good peter pan collar!  I love them so much that I have got my wife wearing them too!  In any case they are my latest obsession when it comes to sewing.  I look at all the fabric I've purchased and think to myself, "It would look great with a Peter Pan Collar." Usually, I'm right!

It is a very versatile detail that can be taken into so many different directions.  It has it's roots in vintage fashion and you can absolutely take it there.  It's classy and sweet, just the thing to make everyone think you're darling and non threatening, then it's your time to pounce! Ok that went a little far, but you get the idea.

This classic look is perfect in contrasting fabrics like the illustration above.  It is a wonderful way to really pop the detail.

Then of course as I am sure many of you have seen, Peter Pan collars are all over popular fashion.  I mean just pop over to Modcloth, every other item has a Peter Pan collar.  You can even get them as a jewelry piece, it's a crazy amount of awesome!

What are your thoughts on the Peter Pan collar?  Do you have a project in mind?  I will be dropping a few projects of my own.  Pumped to see what you all will come up with.

Fall For Cotton Sew A Long Dress Finished!

It has been a long time since I've blogged.  Twelve days in fact.  I will tell you that I have been very busy and I think that you will not be disappointed.

I have been putting a great deal of effort into making sure my dress for the Fall for Cotton sew a long was a smash.  I didn't cut any corners, even though I have been devilishly tempted, I followed through with hand stitched details, and took the advice I give to my students: "If you don't have time to do it right now how are you going to have time to re do it later?"

In my first post about this fantastic sew along I showed off some of my inspiration and the fabrics I was thinking of.  I went back and forth over what I wanted to do and wether I wanted to use a pattern or make my own.  My favorite inspirational image was this one:

The dress I really love is the blue one.  I just think it is so flattering, I love the neckline and midriff details.  That said I am not the hugest fan of bows and in order to put my own stamp on things I knew I was going to change a few things up.

Next I chose my fabric.  I went with a D.S. Quilts fabric from her Daisy Mae series.  The color of the fabric really popped and I do love a great graphic print:

I looked for some patterns lack-lustily, but in my hear of hearts I think I knew that I really wanted to make my own pattern.  I usually like to flat pattern my new inspirations but for some reason with this project I was just so drawn to draping.  So I wheeled Dressmerelda (what my wife named my dress form) to the center of the room and got going.

After draping and marking the pattern on the form I took it off and the n using a pounce/trace wheel I transferred the pattern to brown paper.  Once I corrected the patterned and trued up my lines it was time to go into a muslin.

I should say that I do not love making muslins so I try to make wearable muslins out of fabric I have had in my stash for a while.  This allows me to get rid of some of the things I keep in my dragon hoard and on the off chance it turns out great I have a new outfit.  As luck would have it my muslin fit like a dream! The only thing I wanted to change was to alter the shape of the contrast piece at the neckline.

After making all my corrections I dove into my fashion fabric.  Since it had this amazing print and pattern I decided that I wanted to make covered buttons from it to add an extra touch to the finished look.  All I did was to take some left over fabric covered buttons I had from my wedding dress and lightly glued them to the fabric, being mindful of the pattern, of course. Then I trimmed the fabric down to within 3/8" of the button and ran a gathering stitch.  Then I pulled the strings and secured my end, then they were ready to be sewn on.

The dress came together quite nicely and I actually even enjoyed taking stuff out and re-doing it so that it would be right.  Ok I think that "enjoyed" was an over statement, but I definitely took pride in it.  I didn't even mind and sewing the facings and hem for a clean finish.  I am so proud, and so without further adieu here is the veritable avalanche of photos of me in this dress:

One of the areas I altered was to take away the bow at the neck line and I changed it for covered buttons and loops.

I love pockets.  Sometimes in what I can only call a fit of stupidity I don't put pockets in the things that I make.  This is always a mistake that I look back on and kick myself for.  So I made sure that in the vein of not wanting feel like an idiot later, I made sure to add the pockets.

This was such a blast and I am really grateful to Rochelle from Lucky Lucille for putting this whole thing together.  I was inspired by the sew a long itself, as well as seeing all of the other amazing entries.  Everyone should be so proud!

It took a while but I finished my embroidered skirt!

It has been a long time in the works but my embroidered A-line skirt for the Super Online Sewing Community Match is finally finished! I am in love and it and wicked proud! Here is a shameless display of the many photos I took of my skirt and all of it's fine details.

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 I think I'm in love.  Although I must say while it looks lovely, I don't think I will be doing a great amount of bound seam finishing, I think I'll stick to my serger.