Getting Trendy

I'd like to think that I'm not super trendy...but I'm sure that's not actually the case all the time. Well, when colored skinny jeans came out, I vowed I wouldn't purchase any. They were just TOO trendy for me and I totally remember owning colored jeans in sixth grade and people thought I was weird. At least I perceived that people thought I was weird. Anyways, the more colored jeans I saw on campus, the more I wanted my own pair. I tried talking myself out of it, I really did, but it didn't work. Any time I would go to a store, I would find a pair to try on. Every pair looked awful. All the cute colors are made in junior sizes and basically nothing in the juniors department fits me right. And all the adorable light colors made my thighs look ginormous.

Well, one day I went on a fabric shopping spree with my mom and sis-in-law and was inspired to make my own colored jeans. That way they *hypothetically* would fit me perfectly. I bought myself some denim, a pattern and fabric for a shirt to match and once we moved to Utah I got to work on those jeans! I made a practice pair out of lovely gingham and discovered that the pattern was terribly ill-fitting. I tried my best to fix them but I got a little tired of it and just kind of gave up. I decided to just go with the pattern and hope they looked slightly decent. Here's what I came up with!

This is one of those projects that I just get sad about. Nothing worked right and I felt awkward all day in this outfit but I was determined to wear it after all the work I put into it! I think with some more tweaking I would definitely make more jeans but this pair was a flop...and I picked terrible fabric for that top, definitely looked better on the fabric bolt. Oh well...some projects work and some don't. Better luck next time I guess!

Tuesday Tip-Selecting the Right Pattern Size

I just now decided to make every Tuesday a tip day. A lot of them will probably be going back to the basics of sewing and they may be things you have been told 100 times, but they will be things that I find useful that I'm hoping will be beneficial to at least one person.

The first tip deals with selecting pattern sizes. Have you ever purchased a pattern and made something up that just fits terribly? I have...many times. You've probably even used your measurements and felt pretty confident that you did choose correctly. I learned very early on to never fully trust the pattern sizes. Every pattern incorporates what's called design and wearing ease into the garment. The patterns I have made usually have way more ease than I'm comfortable with. I don't really like my clothes to be a "second skin" as some may say, but I definitely don't want them baggy.

To remedy this issue, look at the finished garment measurements. Sometimes it can be found on the back of the pattern envelope at the bottom, but it seems like newer patterns are just having it on the actual pattern piece. If that's the case, don't be afraid to pull out the tissue paper and carefully unfold until you find the finished measurements. I do it all the time in the middle of the store.

Depending on the type of pattern (skirt, dress, top), you will focus on different measurements. For example, for a top, typically the most important measurement is the bust size. For a full skirt, the most important is the waist, since it wouldn't be form fitting around your hips. For a dress, it's easiest to get the pattern that fits your largest measurement then you can tailor in from that. My mom always taught me that you can always take away fabric but you can't add it back.

Anyways, back to the ease issue. So let's say you are making a pencil skirt, like the one in my last post. Let's say you have a 30" waist and 41" hip. The pattern would suggest you make a size 18 because of your hips. However, the size 16 has finished measurements of 34" waist and 45.5" hips. That's a LOT of ease for a pencil skirt. That would give you an extra 2" around your waist and 4.5" around your hips. For a pencil skirt, I only like about 1" of ease. The finished measurements for the 16 are waist 32" and hips 43.5" which would even still be a little large but way easier to tailor down. I made this skirt and was shocked at how huge it was in the hips. I had to put it on and pin it down to exactly how snug I wanted it. Another clue that you might want to go down a size is that in the description on the back of the envelope, it says the skirt is semi-fitted. Right away you can tell that it's not actually a snug pencil skirt style.

Some patterns aren't lying to you on your size though. For example, I just made a pair of jeans and made the size down that I usually do and luckily I made a practice pair first because they were SO tight! I could barely get them on. For that pattern, I would have been smarter to trust the measurements. I have just been in such a groove and going down a size that I didn't even pay attention.

Take time to take your measurements and see how the suggested size compares to the finished measurements size. You may be surprised at how much ease the pattern companies are suggesting.

8 Years in the Making

I have finally completed a project that I started eight years ago. When my brother and his wife announced that they would be having a baby boy, I wanted to embark on my first quilt. I made one quilt then decided I wanted to make a second one (Don't worry, the first one just barely got the binding put on but it's not as exciting). At the time, I was obsessed with cross-stitching. I have this book called 101 Bears with Personality and I had run out of reasons to make them so I used a baby as an excuse to make a bunch! I spent hours cross-stitching all of the bears and then did my best to piece them all together and that was the end of it. I didn't know much about quilting at the time and didn't know how I wanted to quilt it. I knew I didn't want to tie it because I didn't want all of the yarn to take away from the bears so I just gave up. It sat in my closet for years, just staring at me and waiting to be finished. I took a home decor class last spring and learned how to free-motion quilt so I figured I would try that...but the semester ended and I still never finished. Then I thought I would just stitch in the ditch with my own machine since I couldn't free motion it. I safety-pinned together all of the layers and then never did anything with it of course. Then I planned to free motion it when I started school again in January. Never happened. Well as my final semester began I knew it was now or never. Thankfully I was working in the sewing lab as an aid and had plenty of time with the machines. One Saturday I had to work the entire day and I free-motioned the whole thing that day! That's about 10 hours of time it took to quilt the whole thing! It was a miracle. It took me until a couple weeks ago to finally finish hand-stitching the binding on, but it is finally completed. I never have to worry about this darn quilt again! Obviously, Ethan is now about to be baptized so I will just have to keep it for my own someday!

 (I fully intended to crop my awkward self out but I forgot and I'm too lazy to re-upload)

You have no idea how happy I am to have this finished. So many hours of work have finally come to a close.

Denim Trousers

I have tried for months to get a good picture of these pants. I made them back in February...March maybe? Something like that. They were for one of my sewing classes. When I took that class, I had heard we would get to make jeans and I was so excited. I had always wanted to learn how and thought it would be so fun to get to embellish them however I wanted. Much to my dismay, on the first day of class, I found out we were making dress pants instead of jeans. But I was determined to get my jeans and my sister had always talked about how much she loved trouser jeans so I decided to make the dress pants out of denim!

The following photos are proof that I am terrible at photography. :)

 I tried to make them a little more casual by adding the white topstitching on the edge of the pockets.

I was so happy with how they turned out. I tried really hard to take my time and pay attention to my teacher, who is amaaaaazing. Miss her tons. Best part about these pants? Well, you can't see it, but the lining is purple! That's another fun part about making your own pants, you can do the lining in any color you want. Mine was actually by accident kind of, I forgot to buy my lining but thankfully my mom had some buried in her fabric box.

If you are interested in making these, you can find the pattern here. This pattern is really great because it has different types of fits (curvy, average, and slim), so you can really make them to fit you well. It also walks you through step-by-step of how to measure and make sure you make the right size. They are supposed to sit just below the natural waist, which is way too high for some people, but I wanted to try it, especially because I get really sick of super low rise pants. If you aren't a fan of the high waist though, you can shorten the rise a little bit. It would be really boring to explain how to here, so if you need help, I'm here! :)

Well, what do you think? Any suggestions on a project to do? I really would love to do a sew-along or something but I want to make sure it's something people want to make. I hope people are enjoying the blog so far! I'm still learning!

Tutorial: Make Your Own Shirt Stencil

I learned this really awesome trick in my textiles class last semester. Maybe it's something that lots of people know how to do, but I was really excited to learn about it! Basically you can design your own T-shirts and make a stencil for it out of freezer paper. It's so easy and fun to do! I have seen so many tees that I love but they are always so expensive so I like having this new way to recreate them.

This is the first one I did in class. I took the idea from a delias tee that I loved!

Let's do a step-by-step on how to do this:

What You Need

Freezer Paper

Pencil

Scissors or X-ACTO knife

T-shirt

Iron

Newspaper or plastic bags

Paint (I just used the $.50 acrylic paint)

Round flat paint brush

Alright let's get going!

On the NON-waxy side of the freezer paper, draw what you want on the shirt. Make sure that you "bubble" it or whatever, so that you will have a thick line for your letters.

Take your knife or scissors and carefully cut out the design. You want your cuts to be as smooth as possible to help your painting look better. I highly recommend an X-ACTO knife. They are only like $3 and make the cutting so much easier. For letters like that J, keep the cut-out piece from the middle.  

Lay out the freezer paper on your shirt with the WAXY side against the fabric.

Then just press it with a fairly hot iron. Mine was almost all the way up. Don't be afraid of high heat. As you're pressing, be sure you don't get any bubbles or creases, keep it flat and smooth.

Then place the little cutouts where they belong and press them.

Get yourself a little paint...we don't own paper plates so this is what I came up with :)

Dip your brush in the paint and dab the excess off. You don't want the brush to be caked with paint. Also, stick some newspaper or plastic bags in between the shirt layers so it doesn't seep through.

Lightly dab in your stencil...seriously don't get too much paint on your brush or the shirt. It will take forever to dry and it's just not necessary. You just want a thin layer of paint

Here's what it will look like after all the paint is on. Let it dry completely.

When it's dry, just peel off the stencil carefully.

Then you will have a fun new shirt! I have regretted not getting an I Love Paris shirt when I was there, so I tried to make up for it. It's definitely not perfect but it's still fun.

This is seriously addicting! I already have a whole list of shirts I want to make. It's so much easier than trying to sketch your design on the shirt and painting with a tiny little paintbrush. If you make one, send me a picture! I would love to see what you come up with.

Tutorial: Anthropologie Inspired Ruffled Skirt

First off, I'm going to apologize for the poor photography. I don't know a lot about taking good pictures so I'll try to keep learning but until then, the pictures will be less than ideal.

Here it is! My first finished project for this blog. I saw a tutorial here for a play on this Anthropologie skirt:

(I don't know where to give credit for this since the skirt doesn't exist on Anthropologie's site anymore)

I liked her version of this skirt but I wanted to try making one even closer to the original. I bought this brown polka dot fabric for a vintage dress pattern I found but as I made a practice version of the dress I learned pretty quickly how awful the dress would turn out. So I was left with like 4 or 5 yards of polka dot fabric. As soon as I saw this skirt I was so excited to have a purpose for all of that fabric. I still have a few yards left so I get to make something else all polka dot-y. 

So anyways, here is my finished product! I am actually really happy with how it turned out. 

If you'd like to make your own ruffly skirt, here are a few tips to get you started. I started the pattern from scratch with my slopers* but you could easily make this pattern from a simple skirt pattern. I would suggest this pattern, because of its simplicity, and I would use view A. The reason I would choose view A is because there is no waistband or yoke; you will be creating one when making the ruffles so you don't want two waistbands/yoke lines. 

Here we go on a tutorial of how to do this. I'm a little nervous, so I hope it make sense. If you have any questions, ask away!

What You Will Need

Skirt Pattern

Extra tissue paper

Pencil

Ruler

Paper Scissors

Tape (preferably removable so you don't ruin your original skirt pattern)

Fabric

Thread

Sewing Machine

Sewing Scissors

Pins

Zipper

Interfacing

When you open up your skirt pattern, you will have a skirt front, a skirt, back, and a skirt facing (2 pieces). Ignore the facing and the skirt back for now. Both of those pieces will remain the same. You are only altering the front (unless you want ruffles on the back but I didn't think I need anymore attention in that area).

Since the skirt front is asymmetrical, you will need to trace off a second skirt front onto some tissue paper and then tape the two together at the center front. Now, you will start making your placement lines for the ruffles. First, decide where you'd like your ruffles, I wanted my straight one right at my hipline (just make sure it's below the darts if there are darts on the pattern). The diagonal one is a little tricky. You'll need to decide how wide you want the ruffle, my finished width is about 4". So, the top of the diagonal ruffle was positioned about 2" below my line for the straight one so the straight ruffled covered a little bit. Then, the bottom of the diagonal ruffle was positioned about 4" from the bottom so it ended where the hem did. Here's another confusing part. My sloper doesn't have a hem in place already because it's an unfinished pattern, but yours is a finished pattern and therefore has a hem allowance. View A for pattern B5466 has a 2" hem, so if you have a 4" wide ruffle, the placement line will be 6" up from the bottom. 

After all of that crazy explanation, here is what the pattern should look like after placing two skirt fronts together, figuring out your placement lines, then drawing them on the pattern.

If you are happy with where you've placed the lines, you can go ahead and cut along them! Then you will have three separate pieces, the new "yoke" (#1), the top diagonal that connects to the yoke (#2), and the bottom diagonal that has the hem (#3). 

I could not figure out how to cut diagonally on my computer...so you get to use your imagination :)

The next step is to add seam allowances. First, tape some tissue paper in each place that you cut. So you will be taping in 4 places, one at the bottom of the yoke (piece 1), two on piece 2: where it meets with the yoke, and where it meets with piece 3, and one on piece 3, where it connects to piece 2. All of these 4 placements need 5/8" added from where you cut. Once you add your seam allowances, you can set the pieces aside.

Now to create your ruffle. There are a couple ways to do this, you could measure how long your line was, then figure out the fullness ratio you want (2:1, 3:1), then multiply a bunch of numbers and hope you got it right. OR, I just created a super long strip of fabric that was 5.25" wide (4" plus 5/8" for seam allowance on top and 5/8" on bottom for a hem allowance). You don't have to be too technical about how long to make it, because you can always sew on an extra strip if you need more. A rotary board and cutter comes in SUPER handy for this part if you have access to one. After you finish cutting your ruffle pieces, you are ready to sew!

Again, just worry about the front for now. Start by sewing the darts on your piece number 1. Then sew together your ruffle strips and then gather up your ruffles. Sew two rows of basting stitches, one at 5/8" and one at 1/2", then pull the threads until it's as ruffly as you want it. Then do the hem: fold up 1/4" then fold that up 3/8" and sew. Your diagonal ruffle will get sewn on to piece number 3. You will put the wrong side of your ruffle against the right side of the skirt piece. Then the straight ruffle will get sewn to piece number 2 again with the wrong side of ruffle to right side of skirt. Then sew the diagonal side of piece 2 to piece 3 where the ruffle is sewn with right sides together. So you are sandwiching the ruffle between the two pieces. Then do the same with sewing piece 1 to piece 2, like a sandwich. Also, you will probably need to trim the sides of your ruffle where they meet up with the skirt side fronts. Just trim them so they are straight and line up nicely with the sides of the skirt. Now you should have a completed skirt front and you can continue on like normal. So, you'll go back to step 2 and go to the end. 

I know there weren't any pictures of the sewing part because I sewed this skirt just intending to keep it for me and not do a tutorial. So if I get a good response a.k.a. lots of comments wanting it, I will remake another one with lots of pictures. :) Hint: please comment! I worked really hard on this and would love some feedback.

*Slopers are the basic foundation for any pattern. With a basic sloper, you can make any pattern you want from it. It's all about moving darts, converting darts to different things, and all kinds of stuff. However, that's a whole semester of a class so I won't go into any more detail for now. But here is what a basic skirt sloper looks like:

Intro to Ruffles and Polka Dots

After many months of watching my personal blog go to waste, I realized I needed something new to blog about. I was getting tired of just talking about our boring lives and trying desperately to come up with something creative to write about. I was a little worried about doing another craft blog, since there are so many already, but I knew it was something I would be motivated to post on.

The purpose of this blog is to document my recent projects. The projects will be mostly sewing/pattern making and crocheting, but maybe Pinterest will inspire me to post about something new! I would love to do tutorials and sew-alongs, so hopefully you all are willing to get involved!

What's with the name you might be thinking? Well, I am absolutely terrible with coming up with creative names and titles. Just look at my personal blog and you will soon enough know what I mean. I was working on making a pattern inspired by an Anthropologie skirt out of polka dot fabric. It has a couple ruffles and I realized how much I completely love those two things! I love ruffles and polka dots so I knew that's what my blog name had to be. Hopefully I can finish the skirt soon so you can see where the inspiration came from.

I hope you enjoy this blog. I am really excited to work on a blog about something new and specific. If you have any suggestions on what you would like to see on here, don't hesitate to let me know!