Poodle Skirt

For my second project, I knew I wanted to make my own Halloween costume.  I'd never gone as a 50s girl, and a poodle skirt seemed simple enough.  I settled on pink acrylic felt and McCall's 5681.

I really enjoyed the process of making the skirt, but was not at all pleased with the result.  Two layers of thick felt gathered at the waist does nothing for an apple girl's figure, especially one with such a short torso.

My biggest problem was the petticoat.  The pattern back calls for netting or tulle for the petticoat fabric.  In my naivete, I assumed they were realitvely the same thing and bought tulle.  Needless to say, tulle did not give any boost to the heavy felt at all.  So, I got petticoat net and tried again, this time with a stiff lining fabric underneath.  That had some structure to it, but still didn't give the skirt much shape.  I wanted to add a ruffle to the bottom of the petticoat but ran out of time.  I ended up wearing both, as seen in the photo below.

After my unenthusiastic wearing of the ensemble on Halloween, I decided to move on to bigger and better things.

Colorado Quilt: Introduction

Part of the inspiration for my recent decision to take up sewing was my second wedding anniversary.  I enjoy traditions and creativity against constraints.  More than six months in advance of the date in question, I decided a cotton quilt would be the perfect second anniversary present.  I wanted something that would be relatively easy and hard to mess up.  When I came across "Splashes of Color" on AllPeopleQuilt.com, I instantly knew I wanted to make it.

Rotary cutter, sewing machine, and a substantial pile of new batik fabrics later, I got to work.  Come February 2009, I wasn't even half-way through sewing the blocks.  I still surprised my husband with the idea, and finished the first pass at the blocks a few months later.

Once I had it all up on the wall, I realized the pinks didn't match the tone of the other fabrics.  (Ah, the value of the quilt wall!)  There were two light pink fabrics that looked almost white compared to the others.

My new pink fabrics came in today.  So now I get the arduous task of ripping up the blocks that I have created and sewing all new ones.  Luckily, I only have 14 to make this time.

MC Hammer Pajama Pants

For my first project, I wanted to tackle something easy and usable.  I decided on pajama pants as the ideal.  No sleeves or zippers to mess with.  And if they came out really terrible, I could still wear them without being embarrassed!

I stumbled on "It's so Easy" 3548 from Simplicity, so I picked out some nice flannel fabric from JoAnn's (in the middle of the summer in Denver) and got to work.

In the end, I was very pleased.  Not only did the pants actually look reasonably like pajamas one might buy in a store, but they were actually long enough! I have long legs, and while I can typically find ready-to-wear pants that are long, I have yet to come across long-length pajamas.  I didn't think ahead and cut the legs any longer, but I used a large size to start with and hemmed as little as possible.  Having pajamas that come down to the tops of my feet made such a difference in the cold winter months!

I call them my MC Hammer pants because the legs are VERY wide.  It's kind of like walking around wearing a blanket.

Welcome!

After over a year of obsessively following accomplished sewists in the blogosphere (see "Inspirations" on the right) and salivating over their skills and creativity, I have decided to create my own sewing story, one stitch at a time.

A little background: I have always been very interested in fabrics and textile arts.  One of my grandmothers was an extremely talented quilter who hand-quilted every quilt she made. The other was an amazing knitter who sewed only when she had to but could make anything you could imagine with yarn.  I was always interested in sewing and had each of them show me tidbits here and there.  My family moved thousands of miles away when I was six, however, and summer projects weren't enough to get me going on my own.

This is what I have to live up to: a quilt made for me by my grandmother when I was just a baby.

Jump ahead 20 years to the summer of 2008.  Both of those wonderful women have passed on to the next phase of life, and I find myself in a new community, far from family and friends, feeling empowered after moving 1,000 miles with my husband and two cats because we wanted to.  I suddenly decided to no longer feel as though I could not sew because I had never been taught.  I wasn't going to wake up one day and suddenly have the skills I felt I would need to be able to enjoy sewing.  Why not enjoy the process of sewing, even if the results are less-than desirable for a long time?  So I went out and bought myself a sewing machine and started sewing...