Friday, June 4, 2010

Finally some sewing!

We were planning on attending a birthday party for the daughter of a friend today but woke up to the little one coughing and vommiting at 2am this morning (throat infection not gastro) so decided we should skip the party and take him to the doctors instead. Poor little mite has spent most of the day on my bed with countless dvds and lemonade iceblocks.
However, I have this little dress finished and ready to gift so it will be going in the mail instead.
I used a pattern found here http://www.ikatbag.com/2010/01/dress-for-winter-iii-very-simple-jumper.html and made it reversible, and made it totally from the stash.
One side is blue pinwale cord, trimmed with cotton lace and white flower-shaped buttons that compliment the lace.
The other is a bright quilters cotton in blue with iredescent butterflies and flowers, picked out with gold foil. I decided not to put buttons on this side because I like the way the butterflies sit on the shoulders.



This really should have taken only 1-2 hours from start to finish, but i forgot to check the overlocking thread before I started (unpicking...), broke a needle (unpicking, rethreading), had several goes at the rounded shouldertabs (more unpicking - next time I'll draw on a stitching line) and several goes at the hem (more unpicking, pressing and pinning which I should have done first time round).
Gee I'm out of practice!

I also spent ages going through the fabric stash and choosing fabrics, then going through the ribbon stash to choose trime, then going through the button stash to choose buttons. It made for a pleasant evening but dragged out the construction time.

I was planning a layered yellow ribbon/purple ribbon/green rickrack trim on the patterned side but after I had it pinned to the dress I decided it looked more like gift wrap than clothing, and I'm glad I left it off.