Funky patterns

Good morning all. I just wanted to let you know about a small pattern company, paradisodesigns.com. If you like cool handmade bags, then check it out. Myself, I really liked a skirt pattern called the Lolita. It was very funky. If you go to the blog "Adventures in Dressmaking" you can enter a contest to receive one of the patterns for free.

On another note I FINALLY finished my wrap dress from the sewing book "Chic and Simple Sewing". I wouldn't recommend this pattern for a beginner sewer, as I had to make several changes to the pattern because it just wouldn't work out. I'll try to post a photo later. Since I altered the pattern from a size 10 to a size 16 it now fits, although it was a bit of a pain to grade all the pattern pieces.

Great New Contest for Those who Love to Sew!

Check out Burdastyle for a brand new, and very top secret, contest. In today's newsletter I found out they are going to send out patterns to a variety of sewers to be altered, and those who do the best job will have their work featured! Sounds pretty exciting to me! I entered my name and now I will cross my fingers in the hopes that I get picked. The lucky entrants will also be sent the fabric they will use. Go to Burdastyle.com for more information, and good luck!

It's a Good Day

Ok, so today is turning out to be a pretty good day. The best news is that I scored awesome seats for the Simon and Garfunkel concert in halifax in May. I am on the floor right in front of the stage, 3 rows back! I can't WAIT!!!!! I know I am showing my age, because when I told my students about my great news their answer was "who"? I supposed there will be very few people there under the age of 35. I'm just really glad I got these tickets, because Simon and Garfunkel aren't getting any younger, and neither am I!

On to more good news, I am almost done sewing my swing skirt done in reverse applique and completely hand sewn. It's from one of my favourite sewing books, "Alabama Stitch Book." Now I am no country girl, but I can't help but love the designs and the fact that you can make everything from recycled t-shirts! You don't get much greener than that. The only draw back is that all this sewing by hand takes a really long time, but maybe it's good to have something that forces you to slow down in this age of everything done at the speed of light. It even gives me something to focus on while all the guys in my family watch sports. I hope to have a picture up in a couple of days. While the picture in the book is made with burgundy and grey t-shirts, I was forced to use grey and white because that was all I could find at the second hand store that day. It still looks great.

Check twice, cut once

Recently I bought a really nice sewing book at Chapters called "Chic and Simple Sewing" by Christine Haynes. After browsing the sewing section for over an hour I finally settled on this book because it seemed to have the best selection of patterns that wouldn't go out of date in a hurry. I was really excited to try the Classic Wrap Dress, and even more excited when I found 4 metres of really nice cotton pink fabric in the clearance section for $1.00 a metre on sale! Wow! A dress for under 5 bucks. I decided to make the largest size, which was a large, and busily cut out my pattern and began sewing for several hours. I immediately knew something was amiss when I went to try it on and couldn't even begin to get it to wrap around! My mother arrived at just that moment and was as perplexed as me. Then she asked me what size I had made. Well duh, of course I made the large. Then she said, "well what size is the large?". uh oh. had I really neglected to check that before I cut and sewed? Apparently yes I had forgotten. Upon closer inspection of the book I saw that large was actually an 8-10. Are you serious? I wear a size 16. So now I will have to grade the patterns, which I am NOT looking forward to. I downloaded some good instruction on how to do that from Threads magazine. I'll let you know how it goes. The moral of the story? ALWAYS check sizing not once, but twice.