Tag Archives: bridesmaid dress

Retro Dress for a Wee One

Posted in Kiddos, sewing by

A while back (a long while) I had a friend ask if I could make a custom dress for her daughter for a wedding.  I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do it time-wise, but when she said she didn’t need it for 9 months, I hopped on board.

She wanted me to create a dress similar to the one that she would be wearing in the wedding, and didn’t want to shop around for a kids version.

This was the inspiration for the dress:

1198-Skelapparel-Vintage-Design-Polka-Dot-High-Collar-Swing-Dress-for-Women-2

I promptly headed to JoAnn fabrics to see if I could find a pattern with something similar to it so that I didn’t have to start completely from scratch.  I found a Butterick pattern that had the nuts and bolts of what I was looking for, Butterick 5980:

The black and white polka dot was from fabric.com.  Michael Miller’s Dumb Dot in Black/white.  I believe the lining was from JoAnn’s, a basic black, as was the tulle for the petticoat.

Getting back to designing the dress, the challenge was to create a collar and a full back, while still keeping the front fairly similar.  The butterick pattern had an option for a bodice, so I used that for the back of the dress.  I created a front bodice piece similar to the inspiration piece, and a collar modified from a shirt pattern.  I moved the back zipper to the side for ease of construction with the collar.

Here is the finished dress:IMG_0639

I like to finish seams with my serger so that it will wash and wear well.  I pre washed all of the cotton prior to assembling to make sure the black and white wouldn’t run or fade easily.

IMG_0640

Close-up of the collar:IMG_0642

The black bow was made out of excess material from the lining and hand-stitched in place.

It turned out well, and I even got it to the recipient with a few months to spare 🙂

Here it is in action with it’s cute model 🙂

11174687_10205526004702960_5022871399859202967_o

That’s all for now!

Happy crafting 🙂

Ingrid

Baptism Bear

Posted in Crafting, Kiddos, sewing by

Super-sweet bear that I made for our godson’s baptism.  I hadn’t made a stuffed animal since I was a kid, so it was kind of a new project for me.  I scoured Pinterest for stuffed animal patterns, but came up empty-handed.  I went to the quilting store, and didn’t see anything I liked there.  Finally settled on this pattern (5461) from Simplicity to make the bear:

Screen Shot 2014-10-19 at 3.21.08 PM

Of course I had specific fabric that I had in mind to use.  Remember the baby quilt I made a while back?  Well, turns out I had enough of the gray minky material from the back of the quilt for the bear,

image

and enough of my leftover bridesmaid dress for the ears and soles of the feet!

It turned out to be a much simpler project than I imagined.  In fact, it was down-right quick and easy to sew this bear together.  And I LOVE (LOVE!) the way it turned out.  So sweet.  IMG_0583

I think the hardest parts were hand-embroidering the nose and the extra embroidery I did on the soles of the feet.  But I love it.  And I should probably make my own boys a teddy bear, but they already have their stuffies!

IMG_0584

Cheers to Sammy!

~Ingrid

Sweet Baby Boy

Posted in Kiddos, sewing by

I have been waiting and waiting to make a post about this next project.  It’s been done for awhile, I just had to give the gift to its recipient before I posted about it!

One of my good friends from college is  expecting a baby boy in May.  She was in my wedding and I was in hers.  I have always wondered what people do with their bridesmaid dresses after the fact.  You have every intention of picking a cute dress that you will wear again, but for some reason, said dress just hangs in the back of the closet and collects dust.  Enter Pinterest.  That place is great for ideas.  I am hooked. I look at pins every couple of days. I kill time with Pinterest.  I am not sure if I even pinned what I ended up doing, but mental notes were taken.  Great pin:  up-cycling your bridesmaid dress into a baby quilt.  I was all over it.

I hadn’t really gotten into quilting too much before kiddos.  I really didn’t have patience for it.  Now, however, I am loving the fact that I can start a project and literally stop at any time.  It’s so nice.  Start nap, go sew.  Nap ends, quit project for today.  Yes, I’ve been a little selfish with the office/ sewing room.  It’s a disaster most days because of my half-completed projects and general sewing clutter.  But, and it’s a big BUT, I don’t have to set up and clean up mid-project.  It is such a huge timesaver and keeps my “me time” creative,  when I want it to be.

Back to the project.  Bridesmaid dress turned baby quilt.

Marisa's wedding

I had to steal that pic from Facebook.  It really was a great dress.  Every time I tried it on to wear it again potentially, I still felt like a bridesmaid.  Hence the upcycle.

I decided on a simple log cabin quilt design, that eventually got a bit more elaborate as I went.  It turned out so nicely.  A bit too nice for a baby quilt….

Baby H log cabin

The dark blue centers in the log cabin are 5″ squares of my dress.  The small 2.5″ squares are also from the dress as well.  The turquoise, green, and gray are from a jelly roll from JoAnns.

From/back baby H

The dark gray minky is from the Sewing Palace in Helena.  I free-motion quilted the design of the quilt.  It’s mostly just a series of freehand loops, but I did take the liberty to quilt in “Love” on occasion.

Love

Of course, I added a small Seweet Tooth label in the binding!  I machine sewed the binding on the front, but ended up hand sewing it on the back to give it a bit more of a polished look.  The binding itself was made from extras from the jelly roll.

STC logo

Another project done!  I am looking forward to making the quilt for Garrett that I didn’t get to before he was born!

~Ingrid