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Hazel Dress - or fun with Small Bust Adjustments

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The second dress I tackled turned out to be much more complicated than I realized it would be. I had found some lovely purple eyelet in the remnants bin at Finch Knitting and Sewing Studio  and knew it would make a lovely sundress, and so I decided to make the Hazel by Colette (now Seamwork).  There were two things I knew that would have to be modified on the dress for both the fabric, and my body time. First, I knew going into the make that I would need to do a small bust adjustment or SBA. I've realized that I will always need to do one as an A cup sewing in a C cup world - but there are worse problems to have. It just means more mockups. Second, the eyelet has large holes. I would have to line the dress. I decided to just line it with muslin, and as I was using muslin to do my mockup, I'd just repurpose it as lining. Instead of doing a separate lining, I decided to sew the muslin to the eyelet and treat the two pieces of fabric as one. When I made the Hazel, I'd only ev...

Newcastle Cardigan for my Brother In Law

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My brother in law is very hard to shop for. He loves coffee, but we've gotten him too many coffee themed gifts in the past (it honestly also feels like a cop-out at this point). He loves being outdoors, kayaking, camping, and birdwatching, but there's not much I can get him that he and my sister don't already have - or might not want anyway. He's not really a things person - functional things yes, knicknacks no. He reads a lot, but with my luck I'd buy a book he already has. While at Stitch Sew Shop in Alexandria, I happened upon the Newcastle Cardigan pattern by Thread Theory . It's a lovely men's sweater and feels very sophisticated and professorial - and seemed very much like my brother in law. I decided to make him a sweater.  The newcastle has many options for construction - I decided to go with a contrasting yoke and back piece with the shawl collar.  I happened to be buying fabric to make the Toaster Sweater for my mother and sister (more on that in ...

Simone Wide-Leg Emoji Pants

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  One of my very best friends stated she wasn't wearing pants while working from home. She said it enough that it became sort of a meme in our friend group. She also doesn't really wear pants in the summer anyway - she's like me, and wears skirts or dresses. It's hot and air circulation around your legs is lovely. Anyway, it became a running joke. Enough that I decided to make her a pair of pants for Christmas. Said friend group has a private discord channel to talk and another one of our friends made custom emojis for, which I then turned into a poly crepe de chine on Spoonflower . I really like the drape of the fabric - I only wish that spoonflower had a non-polyester option. I chose the Jalie Simone Wide Leg pants  because they're a very loose and casual fitting pattern - which is great when you're making pants for someone as a gift and you can't put them on said person to fit them. The back waist is elasticized and it has a lovely tie detail in the front...

The Child Chai Tee for Christmas

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 I have a friend who loves Baby Yoda. I mean, I do too, he's adorable, but she really loves him. Enough that when a mutual friend of ours was at Joann's and discovered this sweet baby yoda knit fabric (he's napping and it says "power nap" I cannot with this), she called me thinking of this friend. We then conspired to make her this shirt with the fabric. We bought the fabric first, (or rather, the friend did, then gave it to me) and then stumbled upon the Chai Tee (the pattern name still makes me giggle) from Liesl + Co.  I then sent a "how to measure yourself" guide and asked for measurements "for no reason whatsoever" to my friend. I know, I'm sneaky. And subtle.  Then I waited. And waited some more. And then wound up sending her a tape measure because she'd lost hers and I wanted to make the pattern before new years. Patience is not my strong suit when I'm excited about something. Measurements in hand, I cut out the correspondin...

Gabrielle Dress by Seamwork, or my first dress

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 The first dress I ever sewed was a knit fabric back in December of 2019. Though I'd made multiple quilts at that point, and even quilted a full size quilt on my tiny little Singer Fashion mate, I felt supremely confident in my ability to tackle the Gabrielle  Dress by Seamwork .  The pattern is listed as a beginner pattern, which also helped my confidence. I loved the princess seams, cap sleeves, and back detailing. It turned out surprisingly okay, considering I had never worked with knits, didn't know how to adjust patterns, how to do a bust adjustment, and I'm still not sure how to fix the fact that the back of the dress slightly gaps. I used an unfamiliar machine for this dress, as I sewed it mostly at my parents house, and borrowed my mom's machine.  My mother helped me view the fit issues on the back. The dress is intended to be made either with or without a serger. I assembled this dress with zig zag stitches and lots of seam tape for the top stitching. I had ...