A quick zebra dress for a book week parade

A asked to go to her school book week parade as Savannah the Zebra Fairy (from the Rainbow Magic Fairy book series).  A quick visit to Spotlight and A selected the fabric - a stretch zebra velour!  Thankfully we agreed on a simple shift dress.

The cut-out

I will say now that I really did not enjoy making this dress, even though it only took a few hours.  The material was difficult to work with and I am not confident with stretch fabrics, so I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out.  But A was delighted with it and I was happy with that.

Front

Back

The finished product, complete with boots and necklace.  But A decided to ditch the fairy wings at the last hour.

A happy camper!

Party dress for a daughter

One of my daughters, S, wanted to dress as Honey Wheeler from the Trixie Beldon mystery book series for this year's book week parade at school, and all the pictures that she had seen had Honey wearing lovely summer dresses. There wasn't any similar dresses in the shops that were affordable, so I decided to make a dress for her.  S picked out the fabric from Spotlight (a printed cotton stretch sateen) and we chose a pattern that she liked.

Simplicity pattern 1382

Dress C was selected

Due to her height, I cut a size 10 pattern but with the length of a size 12 skirt. The dress turned out well, but the sewing instructions were woeful for installing the the zipper.  I managed to get it in, but it wasn't as easy as other zippers I have put into outfits (I ended having to do my own thing to get it to work).

Most importantly, S loved it and it's now her favourite dress!  What a winner!  It will do very nicely as her "party dress" for this summer.

Front

Back detail (S loves this!)

First shaped dress!

Front pleats

And finally - at the book week parade!

A happy customer :)

Monkey and Elephant Quilt

I decided to whip up a quick quilt for a friend's new baby boy.  Given my limited quilting experience, I decided a variation on a coin design would be good.  I bought the fabric from Spotlight and was quite pleased with how it all came together in the end.

The main fabric was light grey with multicoloured dots, while the animal print fabric featured monkeys, giraffes, elephants and lions. I used the green fabric to do the binding, I thought it looked good.

One side was quite plain, with just three narrow strips of the animal print.

Grey with feature strips

Lots of animals!

The other side of the quilt had a variation of the coins design.  It was reasonably easy to put together.

The other side, with less grey and more of the feature fabrics

I actually finished this quilt a few months ago, but it took me a while before everything aligned so that I could give over the quilt.  Apparently baby is very happy with it, yay!

School library bag

Daughter #2 started school this year and this time around, the kinder children missed out on a school library bag.  So, with puppy dog eyes and a pleading face, I was asked to make an owl library bag, instead of just using a supermarket recycling bag. As luck would have it, I did have some left-over owl border fabric that I had used for a previous dress.  Seems like it was destined to happen as requested.  :-)

All made from my fabric stash, awesome!!  Bag is lined with blue drill, outer is quilting cotton. Extras were a few ow motifs I had in my sewing box and some blue 1" strapping.

Ta dah! The finished product!

On the overhanging flap, I placed three owl motifs.

Front of bag

Front of bag, flap opened

Back of bag

Baby feet applique

Nearly seven months ago, a friend gave birth to adorable twins, just gorgeous. My friend is a bit of a crafter herself and she makes beautiful quilts.  Between that and her numerous quilting friends, so I thought my friend is probably covered for baby quilts and the like.  I know my friend had made some bunting for the babies' arrival, so that ruled out my back-up plan of personalised bunting flags (damn you!!)
So, what was I going to do?  After a little while, a thought struck me - something appliqued!  I was a little nervous about this as my friend does beautiful applique but I figured I would give it a go and if it went pear-shaped, I'd just try something else.

The fabric used for the applique was some Saffron Craig fabric that I had purchased a few years ago but hadn't used yet.

Red Beetle Bugs fabric by Saffron Craig

I decided to do a baby feet applique on soft bath towels, a different colour towel for each baby.  I was pretty pleased with the end result, although doing the little toes was quite difficult.  I thought I was being fancy by using a variegated silky embroidery thread for the stitching, but if I could do a do-over, I would use a straight colour next time.

I think my friend was happily surprised when I finally caught up with her this week and gave her the towels.  And I got to cuddle her babies, win win!!!

Blue towel

Green towel

Blue towel, hanging

Green towel, hanging

Bunting flags (yes, again)

In October 2014 ....
No further explanation required. The brief for this little project - bright and cheerful, but not predominantly pink. I think I managed that.

Personalised bunting, seems to always go down a treat.  All good!

Makenna

Makenna

First school concert costume

In September 2014 ....
Daughter #1 had a school concert, the theme for her class performance was 'Colonial Australia'.  The kids were singing and doing some heel-and-toe polka as part of their act.  The costume brief was for the girls to wear an apron of some description with a peasant-style dress.  However, the school didn't want student to have a costume that they would never wear again, so my plan was to make a dress that would be worn again after the concert.

The final costume -

Apron and dress

Dress

pocket detail

Apron detail

I added a ruffle to the dress to make it longer -
I should have made it wider than this!

Happy singing heel-and-toe dancer!
(And she's worn the dress heaps since then, yay!)

Anna's Birthday Bag

In August 2014 ....
To celebrate my friend's 50th birthday, I wanted to make her something personal, as I thought she would get a kick out of that.  I decided on a bag for two reasons (1) I already had the pattern and had been looking for a reason to use it and (2) who can have enough bags?!

I decided to use Anna Marie Horner's Sidewalk Satchel, which looked a little more glam than your average tote bag.

For some insane reason, I decided to go with the pleated/gathered bag version, rather than the flat bag version.  I should have realised what that would mean - more sewing, more fluffing around!  But I think it was worth it. (Well, I hoped it was going to be worth it).

The instructions were pretty good to follow, nothing too bad.  I decided to make pockets on both sides of the lining, as it was a large bag and I figure it's better to have too many internal pockets than not enough.

Internal pocket - big enough for sunglasses, phone, keys!

Stitching on internal pocket

Pinning the pieces (lining)

Overall, I was pretty happy with how it turned out.  It was a bigger bag than I expected, but I don't think it's too large (I hope not!)  I think the outside fabric looked great and it's definitely in the colours that my friend likes.

I think Anna liked it, and that's the main thing.

Finished the Scrappy Lone Star Quilt for Gran!

So, I finished the quilt for Gran, yay!  Here it is ...

Final measurements - 42" x 60".

The piercing didn't take long.  The quilting took me a while and I made a couple of mistakes but they aren't majorly noticeable.  I am pretty happy with how it turned out.

And Gran thought it was lovely, so that made me super happy. :)

Progress during process is blogged here and I used this tutorial to make the star.