Friday, December 13, 2013

Flour Sack Dress Fitting #1

Sewing with a 1 yr old helper is quite the adventure. I remember how frustrated I would be when my cat would choose my fabric as his latest bed, or decide to pull the pins out of my pin cushion, or roll in my pattern while chewing on it.... Well here is how helpful little Miss Megan is when it comes to my sewing.



Ooh... Trim... Hours of fun here if you can stay quiet long enough. Poor Mommy thinks I'm playing with my ponies....

Fittings for a toddler are also fun.


 Back view, quickly tied because she was crawling away.


Front view, obviously my phone camera is not fast enough to catch a good image without blurs when she is constantly in motion. Sorry about the cruddy background, we just moved into a new house and I'm working on unpacking and organizing my sewing area in general.


And off it comes...


We're done here..

So the dress fits better than I thought it would. It is a little big, but with babies that's okay because she can grow into it. 
I'll do a post with more of the process, then a photo shoot with the final dress. This is a fun little project to get the creative juices flowing again. 

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Progress on the Flour Sack Dress

The little dress is coming along nicely. The pattern is fairly easy to follow and the cotton is really nice to work with. It's rougher than the cotton that I am used to, being of a courser weave but that just makes it less slippery.
I have to work in 15-20 minute time slots and that's if I'm lucky. Megan has not eaten my pattern as of yet as my old cat would have done, but she is fascinated by my sewing machine and once she notices that I am sewing she is quick to make it over and want into my lap which leads to her wanting to push all of the cool buttons...
Being only one year old she does not have an appreciation for the dress being made for her, just that it is one more thing that is keeping mommy from holding her. That being said, we are making due and it's coming together. 

I did manage to place the wrong pieces of the pattern on the fold so I had to sew the center and now it has a seam instead of a nice smooth front line. I think it will look okay though. I just have to pay much closure attention to what I'm doing. 



I got a chance to go through my vintage lace collection to find lace for the trim. Decided on a slightly understated lace trim. 
So I'm about half way done and have spent probably 1 1/2 - 2 hours so far. Now that I have figured out how to spend my sewing time in small chunks while Megan is playing near by, I am getting much more accomplished. I used to throw myself into projects and spend a whole weekend or night on it, but this is allowing me to set a slow and steady pace. I took more pictures of the process with my actual camera, now to find the cord to upload them....