More Fabric Scraps

I sorted, folded, and organized another basket of fabric scraps.  I still have a giant bag with more, but I’m making progress.  After checking various resale and dollar stores, I found the perfect containers for organizing the scrap fabrics.  Here’s a picture of what I have organized so far.  I tried to put similar colors [...]

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Evolution of a Dress, Part 5

This week, I’ve been detailing how to alter a pattern if you’re petite, need extra skirt length, or want to try different sleeves.  I showed how you can take a multi-pattern dress and turn it into two dress pieces.
Of course, you might end up with my problem…  The dress looked like a hospital gown!!!
I tried [...]

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Evolution of a Dress, Part 4

Yesterday, I finished explaining how to lengthen a dress pattern, adjust the bodice for a petite figure, and change the sleeves to those of a different dress pattern.
Here’s a picture of me cutting out the dress.  You can see that it was just two pieces.  I also cut out a 2-1/2 yard by 2 inch [...]

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Evolution of a Dress, Part 3

In the past few posts, I’ve been showing how I tried to alter the sleeves of a dress to be more comfortable.  I succeeded in that, but the dress didn’t look too fashionable.  Don’t worry, it all turned out well in the end.  Follow me as I show you the evolution of a dress.
Yesterday, we [...]

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Evolution of a Dress, Part 2

In this post, I’m going to show you how I altered sleeves on a dress pattern.

I took the sleeves on the dress pattern above…
and put them on the dress pattern below…
Step one:
I put one dress pattern on top of the other, lining up the neckline as best as I could.
Step two:

I put tissue paper (confiscated [...]

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Evolution of a Dress, Part 1

Let’s start with a pattern.  This is a pattern for the lovely blue dress you saw in a previous post as well as this other blue dress you see below.

Here is the problem I faced with the pattern.  The sleeves were too tight.  I tried cutting out the sleeve a larger size, but that didn’t [...]

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Here’s one lovely dress

Here is a dress I made.  I originally bought the fabric for a different pattern, and then discovered that the pattern required stretchy fabric.  I lengthened the skirt so that it would be more modest.  The sleeves are a bit too tight when I lift my arms.

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When you’re planning to make several dresses…

The weather here has been about 106 every day.  My work clothes are too hot.  My knee-length jersey dresses are too hot.  I went ahead and bought material to make some dresses.  Here it is drying outside.  With the heat we have, these dried in no time at all.

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The Completed Blouse

Remember that blouse I was cutting out a few posts back?  Here it is.  I’ve used this pattern several times, both for short and long-sleeved blouses.  It’s great with jersey-knits and silky fabrics.  It’s Simplicity 3887.

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Sewing Patterns

Ever wondered how much stuff you need to cut out and prep pattern pieces?  Recently, I made two ankle skirts and a blouse.  I planned to cut out the pieces, mark the hem lines, and then press the hem lines before assembling the pattern pieces.  It’s much easier to iron hem lines on flat pieces [...]

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