Calling all Mad Scientists


Hello sewing friends, I thought some of you might like to know that there's a new PR contest starting next month and I'm the appointed Evil League of Evil PR contest manager.  The contest theme is.....wait for it.... Franken Patterns. Muhaaa haaa!  The contest runs from September 16 - October 15, but the discussion thread is open right now.

Since this is an official joint there are rules and prizes.  You can read the whole kit and caboodle on the thread, but here are the main points so you can get an idea of what the sewing gurus are looking for.

1. Participants must use TWO or MORE commercially drafted patterns.

2. No self-drafted pattern pieces may be incorporated; however, typical alterations for size / fit are allowed. The pattern pieces may be altered to allow the patterns to be merged together. (i.e. if using sleeves from one pattern into a blouse pattern, the sleeve and / or armscye pattern pieces may be altered to fit together properly.

3. Resulting garment must clearly reflect the use of each and every pattern utilized. The design of the finished garment must reflect elements of each pattern. (i.e. simply changing the collar or adding a patch pocket from one pattern to another pattern would not be considered a FrankenPattern.) 

4. Each entry must include explanation of which pattern pieces from each pattern was used. 

5. Actual pattern pieces must be used. (i.e. may NOT just use the concept from one of the patterns.)

6. Elements from each pattern have to be combined into one garment. (i.e. Cannot use a top from one pattern & pants from another pattern and call it an franken-outfit.)

7. Adult garments only; women's or men's designs are allowed. 

The prizes are yet to be determined, but should be revealed before the actual contest gets underway.  So brush off your "How to make a monster" book and get your evil henchmen to collect the appropriate parts. It's time to make the best damn franken pattern garment you have in you.  Then teach it to tap dance. "PUTTING ON THE RITZ!"

My Dark Writing Secrets in Blog Hop Form


Do you hear that sound? It's kind of like the "Jaw's" theme. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, dum, daaaaaa! Oh no, hide the children because the writing process blog hop has landed. That's right, My faux wife Leila of nominated me to carry the blog hop torch.

Lelia and I have been fast friends since we bonded over not being at Comic Con to see the Firefly reunion. Sniff, no touching Caption Mal for us. At least we have our Jayne hats to keep us warm at night. You know you've met a kindred soul when all you have to do is look at them and suddenly find yourself laughing. Also she didn't even blink when I said, "Let's take some pictures with this stuffed lobster." It's a perfectly normal thing to do.
So let's get down to answering those questions in the style we've all become accustomed to.

Why do I write?
I write because deep down I must secretly like torturing myself.   To paraphrase Homer Simpson, "OK brain, I don't like you and you don't like me but let's work together to hammer out some blog posts." Sometimes my brain says, "Screw you, I'm going to catalog song lyrics and shop for shoes instead." Oh man shopping for shoes sounds good. I was just thinking about a pair of...... crap you distracted me again!
I'm not a chatty person by nature, which is probably why there are few things harder than writing. Sitting quietly, ignoring people while doing something crafty?  I'm can do that at pro levels.  Avoiding human contact for days? No problem.  Ahhh the sweet sound of silence only broken by my serger.  If you boiled it down, I'd say that 80% of my personality is "Miss Havisham only with fresh cake." That leaves the other 20% that wants to show stuff off and crack jokes.  So I write to appease that part. My brain gets battered into spiting out semi-coherent sentences and maybe something amusing if the stars align. I'm making this process sound awful and sometimes it is like pulling teeth. However if something is actually funny/informative/helpful to another person, then it was worth the effort it took to write about it. 

P.S. Once in a while writing is really easy and I sit at my computer gigging until my husband wants to know what's wrong me. I tell him I'm drunk.

What am I working on?
I'm working on accepting that I'll never be "top blog", but that I can work on making some parts of my blogging better. Sadly not the writing part cause I think being a mom has permanently damaged it. Good bye collage writing style that got me complements, hello disjointed ramblings. But hey we got Froggie and other assorted goofiness. Those things make me happy, cause I'm a big kid at heart.
I'm also working on planning my fall wardrobe...unsuccessfully.  My personal style seems to be in a state of flux, leaving me starting at patterns in a confused manner. I haven't the slightest idea what to make. Don't you hate when that happens? No matter what, I should stop procrastinating on making a new coat.  Hopefully my coat mojo returns from Canada with maple sugar candy and a handsome Mountie soon.

How does it differ from others of its genre?
Hacking and Fitting and Froggie, Oh My!  I have a small amount of guilt about my parents paying for a college education, only to have me stay home and bake copious amounts of cookies. Sorry Mom and Dad. Here have a plate of cookies.  At least I can share some of my knowledge with others through the blog.
Those parents also happen to both be teachers, so maybe some teaching germs infected me.  Ahhhh get it off, get it off! I swore I never teach anything!!!! ( I did swear this as a teenager. I also swore I'd never wear animal prints. Yeeeeeah.)

I didn't set out to make my blog different in these ways. It just sort of happened since I like hacking patterns, am super anal about fitting, and might be too crazy not to invent stories about Froggie.  Guess I'm "writing what I know." If that's the case then we really should discuss cake at some point of time. Froggie agrees to bake samples.

How does my writing process work?
Buckle up cause it's a multi-step process....

Step one - Get hopped up on chocolate.

Step two - Stare at blank screen for 45 minutes. Type and delete two sentences over and over again during that time.

Step three - Blank out and come back to find that there is a small usable paragraph written by some part of my brain that hasn't been damaged by mommy hormones. Or maybe written by Froggie, he tends to lurk around the keyboard.
Step four - Talk about fitting cause people like that and it usually produces a few more paragraphs.

Step five - Eat more chocolate, think "Be funny, be funny."  Wish I had cake.

Step Six - Stare at screen writing nothing for another hour. Then start padding with pictures.
Step Seven - Further pad with pop culture reference, stories about frog or weird things my husband says "Haa haa haa he said my dress was a T-shirt with a belt. That's gold Jerry, gold!"

Step Eight - Yell at Desmond to keep it down. God, is it too much to ask you to be completely silent for hours? (snort!)

Step Nine - Put comas everywhere.

Step Ten - Check for errors, miss half of them and hit publish. Celebrate by surfing the internet for pictures of Idris Elba
No Idris, don't hurt that beautiful sweater. Wait, maybe you should. Oh lord I'm so confused.

Anyway, time to rip my eyes away long enough to nominate two other bloggers to take part in the blog hop. I'll be tagging two ladies that I met because of the blog and then got to know through instagram and sew-a-longs.  

First up, Heather who blogs at "Where Heather grows."  Heather has been whipping out garments left and right this summer with out a frog assistant.  Maybe she has the pugs trained to hem.....if so I want some video.  I love her pink hair and seeing the same pattern remade in several different ways.

Secondly - Lisa G who blogs at "Notes from a Mad House Wife." Lisa is also a sewing maven and I love seeing what's she's working on in her instagram feed. Our fabric taste is somewhat similar, so I'm often drooling over a make before it's even finished.  If we were a similar size and build I'd be copying everything she sews.

The Lovely Lea Dress


I think patterns themselves have started seeking me out. "Psssst, have you heard about that girl who's always sewing things? The crazy one with the frog. Yeah? Let's go dance around on her instagram feed. I hear she has zero pattern resistance."
I stumbled upon the Lea dress pattern on instagram's explore function. This was highly out of the ordinary because the explore function makes me feel like an old fogey. The concept of searching for users and hashtags is understandable, it's not like google + were I still don't understand what the hell is going on. Circles? Connections? What?  Please take me back to my email now. The main problem with explore is that I'm old enough that the whole adding hashtags thing is not second nature. I have to constantly remind myself to add them to my pictures and I rarely think of them as a tool to find things. But enough about that, I think the Lea Dress auto popped into my explore feed anyway.
BAM! What is this vision I see before me? The technical sketch and I immediately started making bedroom eyes at each other. "So into you," might have been playing. I sidled my curser over to it and said, "Hey beautiful, you want to come home with me and let me glue your pages together?  Pretty sure it winked and did a little shimmy. That was all it took, it was in my cart and purchased about a minute later.
This was one of those projects were the fabric to use immediately popped into my head.  I was in love with all the seam lines and wanted to highlight them. I'd just unearthed a dress weight black stretch denim from the stash which would be perfect. All the dress needed was some red top-stitching to make the seam lines pop. I say that like doing contrast top-stitching is a piece of cake.  In reality many yards of red thread were massacred in the making of this dress by "Rambo" my seam ripper.  Froggie is in talks to build a memorial wall at the base of my chair to remember their thready sacrifice. Some red thread survived to grace all the princess line seams, pocket/neckline edges and of course the button holes.
I'd agree with the designer that the pattern is intermediate, only because there are a lot of pattern pieces to work with.  The instructions are nicely formatted, easy to understand and everything goes together logically. There are even diagrams for lengthening/shortening the bodice, preforming an FBA and a wide shoulder fitting adjustment included in the directions. The seam allowances are 3/8" on this pattern, which is nice for sewing all those princess line seams. It does mean you have less fabric to fiddle around with should something not fit. So make a muslin....seriously just do it.  (I know some of you are yelling "NEVER!" and laughing evilly right now.)  Another thing that should be mentioned is that I was on the lower end of the size range on this pattern. Right now I'm usually wearing a Big 4 size 14/16 and a independent pattern 10/12. On the Lea dress scale I was a 4/6 combo. The size range is 0-14 so the smaller ladies might find themselves out of the size range before the larger ladies do.
I loved sewing up this pattern, so much so that it got pounded out in a couple of days. Why do you people keep asking me for food?!!! It's like they couldn't see that the dress and I were having an intimate moment. Our torrid love affair was over almost too quick, expect for the ripping out of top-stitching part. I'll be finding red fluff in Froggie's fur for days.

Lea Dress from Jolie Marie Louise

Fabrics used
Dress weight black stretch denim - probably from EOS from some point
A bit of red polyester lining for the pockets

Pattern changes/alterations
You'll that the list of adjustments is rather long and I was surprised at the number after writing them down. Feel like I should note that fitting this dress was very easy due to the amount of seams. Just tweak a bit out here and put a bit more back there.
Fitting changes
1. Standard 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment.

2. 1/2" nipped out of the princess line seams at the back waist.

3. 1/2" was also removed from the top of the back princess line seam to decrease the size of the armhole.

4. Sway back adjustment of 1/2" to the back bodice.

5. 3/4" of ease added to the side seams at the hip area.  I went back and took some of this out because there the stretch denim gave me some extra wiggle room.

Style changes 
1. Neckline curve dropped 3/4". You know I like my lower necklines.

2. Increased the length of skirt 1 5/8".

3. Added a vent to the CB skirt slit because I prefer that finish.

- The armhole is low enough to show the bra band on some of the styles I wear.  Will go back and raise it about 1/2" for any future versions.
- I still have a bit of gaping at the bust line. Might need to go back and do a very small FBA adjustment to the bodice.

- With the deep 2" hem, the finished back slit is too short for my taste. Since I added a vent intake I couldn't go back and make the slit higher.  For the future I will add another 1" to the top of my vent.
- The self piece of fabric for the pocket back is overlaid on the lining and top-stitched into place. I may go back and make that an actual seam. Was feeling too lazy to do so on this version.

Husband Comment
"Seven buttons, that's a lucky number."  You know it baby, cause I only had 7 of those vintage red buttons.

My Final Thoughts
More Patterns, MOAAAAAAAR! *Ahem* That is to say I will be interested to see future offerings from this designer. I like the chic style of this first pattern, as well as the more advanced sewing skill level needed. With all the beginner patterns being offered lately, it was a delight to have something interesting to sew that was also more of an "every day" sort of garment. There's only room in the closet for so many cocktail dresses sewn for kicks. At least I'll be prepared when Froggie lands that CEO job.
So in short I'd recommend this pattern and will be trying to get as much use out if it until the weather turns. Now I'm off to be effortless chic until I trip over a door frame while stuffing Froggie into my pocket. Look out below!

Fredrick invites Edith and Betsy on a lunch date


Hmmm sounds like an alternate reality "Archie" comic involving lobsters. But why lobsters Heather? Well because anthropomorphic lobsters are adorable and this outfit wouldn't have come about without one. I'm speaking of Fredrick my Luxulite brooch of course.
"Hello beautiful ladies. Yes, my body is red like I have been cooked and yet I still cling to life. Let us talk no more of this complicated set of circumstances."
I was smitten with Fredrick's googly eyes and possible tragic back story. How can I fix you and make you smile again gentle lobster? Regular outings to the grocery store to look at the lobster tank? Nautical themed shoes? I'm sure Dolly Clackett has some to spare.  A warm butter bath? Name it and it will be yours. Fredrick thought a moment and said, "The frog has informed me that you have lobster fabric in your stash. I would like to frolic on it and relive my carefree youth." Why dear Fred, I can do one better than that, I can make a lobster shirt. *Queue 80's sewing montage ending with me in front of a fence shouting TA DA!*
Wooo look at that, I "almost" make a googly eyed lobster shirt look classy.  The secret is the toe point.
It came to my attention that my wardrobe was lacking any sort of button down shirt in my current size. What? How could this have happened? Am I not the the self crowned "Queen of Archers"? This state of affairs had to rectified and fast least my button hole attachment decide to runway from home.

A couple patterns were considered, but I found myself in a retro mood and pulled out Maria Denmark's Edith pattern. The more fitted body seemed a better match to go with the stretch denim Betsy skirt I'd just finished. What's better than lobsters and denim? Pie and chiffon?  Cake and Corduroy? Wait let's not go down that road. It's making me hungry.
Some of you might remember that I made Edith last year around this time. Having to retrace the pattern was a bummer, but at least most of the fitting work could be transferred to the B 40 size.

Like last year I needed to....
1. Drop the bust dart an inch".
2. Shorten the tip of the front fish eye dart 3".
3. Take 1/2" off the top of the shoulder seams which was graded out to nothing at the collar. Then I dropped the bottom of the armholes 1".
4. Made standard 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment.
5. Curved the hem line up at the side seams for personal preferences.
6. Widened the facing about 5/8" after rereading my previous review about it being a bit narrow.

*I did not need to add ease to the hips on this size.  The top was short enough that it does not reach my wider 40" circumference area.

Once again I bias bound the armhole edges instead of turning and hemming.  As much as I hate sewing bias bindings, they do look nice once they are finished.
Some lobsters were traumatized by the sewing of this blouse.
Last year I wore Edith with Clover capris, but decided it looks equally well tucked into a Betsy pencil skirt. And I might not have sewn any Clover capris. Yes I am avoiding pants at all costs for as long as possible.
Someone tell past Heather to tuck in her shirt.
This Betsy is a combo of view's A and C.  Instead of tracing the regular vent on view A, I moved the paper over to view C and traced the pleated vent. Easy Peasy. Now a girl can have a pleated vent and a waistband. Natch. Don't know why it took me a couple of months to sew another denim pencil skirt. They go with about half of my wardrobe and I find them very comfortable in stretch denim.
Show us the money shot!
Fredrick was delighted with the blouse made in his honor.  I think a tiny tear of joy welled up in his googly eye.  Then he said, "Hey baby, let's go paint the town red like my skin." We hit all the hot spots, the grocery store, JoAnn's and of course Target.  People started at us with delight...or confusion/horror. I like to think that they were just jealous of our love and our sweet dance moves to Rock Lobster out in the parking lot. My Fred Schneider impression is tight.

P.S. You know Gillian, our favorite sewicalist of rainbow knits. She's moved her blog to wordpress and wanted to get the word out since no one using blogloving would know. So go refollow Gillian cause she knows how to wrap up a blog post unlike some people. *cough, me, cough*

Thank you and Good Night


The Summer Sundress Sew-a-long officially wrapped up on Monday and I wanted to give a big "Thank You!" to everyone who participated. Frog and I'd love to give you a hug and some cookies too, but there's the whole problem of geography to deal with. Also Frog ate all the cookies. How he gets into the tin with no opposable thumbs is a mystery for the ages.

The number of people who did hop on the sewing band wagon far surpassed my expectations. Sixty nine group members in total and wow, so many beautiful garments! Some of you are lucky that we aren't the same size, cause you might find an empty hanger in the closet one morning. The dress napper strikes again!

All jokes aside, I looked forward to checking the group for new photos every day. All of you so inspiring with your makes and the stories that went with them. Some people dusted off some old FO's and finished them up. Other's tried new techniques that were a little scary. And a lot of us grabbed a favorite pattern and made another dress that we absolutely love. Ahhh it made my tiny Grinch heart grow two sizes.

Heather and Frog

P.S. If life got in the way and you didn't get your sundress project done in time, no worries. Feel free to upload it to the group when ever you do.

Bettie Drapering It Up - McCall's 6696


Being Don's wife is hard work. All those cigarettes to smoke, wine to drink, all while actively ignoring the children.  "Shut up Sally and stop shoving food in your face." God knows how I find the time to make bitchy comments with Francine. Just the other day I got so fed up with everything that I shot a few of the neighbor's pigeons. At least Sally and Bobby made sure to keep my wine glass topped up that night. Don finally came home and said I look pretty in my new dress. Guess I'll grace him with a smile tonight.
This post could be alternately titled, "Clare made me do it." McCall's 6696 wasn't a pattern I'd noticed when it came out.  I only skim big 4 offerings when they release. If something doesn't grab me then right then it gets forgotten. Well Clare went and remade this pattern, reminding me that I wanted this dress as well as her legs and her Don robot. I contented myself with only purchasing the pattern.
My plans for a straight skirt version where quickly abandoned after realizing that the full skirt view would go great with the Carline Liberty Lawn in the stash.  That fabric was supposed to be a shirt dress anyway, the one from Gertie's first book.  Long story short, fitting that particular pattern was a nightmare. "What Is Wrong With This Bodice?!  Do my arms come out at weird angles or something. AHHHHHHH!" The Gertie shirt dress ended up sewn in lobster quilting cotton and the Liberty went back into the stash cave.

As much as I'd love to hoard Liberty lawn forever, it stuck me that McCalls 6696 had the right details for my taste.  I took the plunge and put scissors to those luscious red roses. Eck! Even having a well fitting muslin doesn't take the sting out of cutting into Liberty. "What if I screw this up? The sewing goddess will surely curse me forever." However once you get over that hump, sewing with Liberty is such a joy. I start wondering why can't I be filthy rich and have bolts of it? Who wants to plan a Liberty lawn heist with me? Hashtag #LLheist. I'm sure there's no way they can trace it back to this blog.
Anyway let's put my criminal plans aside and get back to sewing.  Great things about this pattern include, a two piece collar, pretty gathers in the back, pockets and an inset waist band that make sewing belt loops on a snap.  With the different views it's easy to get shirt dress with either a retro or modern feel.  Props to the design department for giving you options like that. I'll probably sew the straight skirt version with sleeves in denim for fall. (Seems everything is denim this fall.)
Bad thing about this pattern, or maybe just view A, is that it takes a shit ton of hand sewing. So Much Hand Sewing....what have I done? Save me from the needle's wrath! Finishing the dress was a slog and the only thing keeping me going was staring at red roses and Stephen King's Dark Tower series on audio book. Ahhh yeah, scratch my science fiction/western itch.

McCall's 6696 - View A. Henceforth referred to the view of copious hand sewing.

Fabrics used
Liberty Tana Lawn in the discontinued Carline print. Dear Liberty, how can I convince to start reprinting this design again? Cookies? Buying more lawn? Not planning to rob your store? Let me know. Smooches

Pattern changes/alterations
1. I excitedly bought the larger size nest without looking at the measurements on the envelope.  Turns out that the 36" bust size 14 is in the smaller size nest. Doh! Since I needed the size 16 for my lower body I decided to do a little fast and loose grading on the top half of the pattern rather than exchange the pattern.  I used the method of grading using the existing sizes explained in this post. But instead of grading up, I did the opposite and graded down.

2. This was my first time using a McCall's pattern that had the different cup size options. Since I wear a DD US/E European bra size I traced the D cup bodice.  When I mocked up the dress I found a fitting problem that I'd never encountered before.  The neck/shoulders, which had been graded down, fit perfectly. The hip area also fit perfectly. But in the bust/waist area I literally had inches of extra ease. I'm going to guess that the different cup sizes have FBA adjustments already made to them.  Since I rarely need one of those, using the D sized bodice might not be the best fitting option for me.  To fix the ease problem I took 3/4" out of the side seam of the entire bodice and waistband. The top of the skirt was nipped in 3/4" to match the waistband and then graded out to zero at the hip.

3. The bodice was shortened 1/2" and the waist dart shortened 1".

4. Standard dropping of the side seam dart an 1".

5. Standard 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment made.

In retrospect, it would have been a lot less work to start with the size 14 and just grade out the hip a bit.  Oh well, I couldn't have foreseen this unless someone explicitly mentioned it in a PR review. (I didn't bother to check before plunging into the project.)

1. Confession - I hated sewing this dress because it was about 50% hand stitching. The first half of assembly is fine and then suddenly you find yourself doing yards and yards of hand stitching with one machine seam in between.  If you make view A you will have to hand stitch, the waist band facing, the giant hem, both button band facings, both armhole bias bindings, and finish with sewing on 12 buttons.  I did most of this with a head cold, which did not improve the process.

2. The shoulder strap piece for the included slip does a fine job doubling as bias binding piece for the armholes. You know if you had a brain fart and thought it actually was a bias binding pattern piece and already cut the fabric.  I did use a 1/4" seam allowance to sew the strip on due to the width of the piece.

4. There was some sort of nonsense in the directions about turning the hem up 2 + inches and then trimming it down. I guess a wider hem would be a nice design element in a semi-see through fabric like the eyelet they used in there pattern sample. I wanted the hem a little longer anyway so my dress has a 1 1/4" hem that did not need to be eased in. The button band was plenty long enough to accommodate this with out any adjustment.

5. I heard, through the grapevine, about some people feeling there was too much ease in the back.  For me this wasn't an issue, probably because my upper back is wide. I was able to skip my standard width adjustment since there was already plenty of ease to move my arms around.

Husband Comment
"It's got a collar and buttons. Do those buttons open up? Does it have pockets? Well that's convenient. Are you wearing a belt with that? Does the collar chafe your neck? No? OK that's good. It looks stylin'." *Then the spelling of styling was specified.*

My Final Thoughts
Even though I was cursing my lot during the hand sewing, I knew it was going to be fine in the end.  I could tell from the muslin that this would be a comfortable dress and easy to accessorize. The style of pattern is "me" or at least me at this current moment. (Damn changeable whims.) The Carline print was a perfect match and I admit enjoying the flurry of instagram liking while making this dress. None of you can resit the fabric's charms....and I don't blame you.  Roses goooood.

Coincidentally Mary just made this pattern too. Linking over so you can get a look at another lovely version. That's 3 shirt dresses for the price of one, cause I'm not trying to brain wash you into buying the pattern or anything. (Buuuuuuy Ittttt.)

Dusting off the Pattern Stash with Beignet


OK dish, how many patterns do you have in your stash that you've never sewn up?  10's, 20's, enough that you're getting a bit shifty eyed right now? What you want me to answer my own question?  Well I'm gonna have to plead the fifth on that and ask that you direct any further questions to my lawyer Esquire Froggie. Meanwhile I'll be throwing patterns in the air and cackling. Mine all Mine!!!

I was "making it rain" with patterns the other week when the Beignet pattern landed on my head and I though, "Skirt pattern gooood, must sew."  Now this baby has been in the stash for at least 2 years, maybe more.  I probably bought it because some other blogger made up a cute you do. Then realized I'd never tuck my shirt in to wear it and threw it in the back of the pile.  But segue way to 2014 Heather who is all about Nettie bodysuits and tucking things in willy nilly. Short-waistness be damned, I'm making a Beignet skirt.
Recently there was a twitter conversation about buying fabric with plans and how those plans get changed. Now I'm not a planner. My buying technique is "OMG I must have this to hoard and occasionally pet. It can not belong to someone else!" This works great with fun prints, but when it comes down to buying basics I "usually" have a plan. (Have been known to go bat shit crazy over wool.)
The plan for this stretch cotton was a Springy pair of Thurlow trousers. Mmm yeah, I can still picture it in my brain and it looks good. If only pants fitting is wasn't still my Achilles heel.  I spent a solid month trying to get Thurlows to fit and ended up with nothing but 5 muslins too tight in the backside. Curse you ginormous butt!!! Two Spring seasons later this fabric was still in the stash and I had to sit down and seriously reconsider my plans. Did I want to go through the cycle of pants fitting hate right now?  No.  How much wear would a pair of spring pants get anyway?  Maybe 2-3 weeks max? Now a skirt, that could get a whole lot of wear during hot weather.  I waffled a bit until Froggie pulled out the pair of matching wedges and whispered, "Dooo Itttt." One must always follow the advice of their spirit animal/sewing helper.
Wow, can I say this pattern is time consuming?  Totally worth it, but for some reason I had the thought that this was going to be a "quick skirt project" in my head. Days later I was bemusedly wondering why this sucker wasn't done yet. Crap, I need a, sew, sew.  Belt carriers...where's the stupid quick turn? Wait I have to sew 12 buttonholes? Burn a sacrifice to the sewing goddess!!

The sewing goddess must have been pleased because only 2 buttonholes had to be ripped out and resewn. Then she reminded me that there were two packs of self covered buttons in the stash.  Sweet! Froggie approves the self covered button.  One more pack of buttons had to be purchased to complete the skirt. Other than that all the materials were in the stash, including thread/interfacing/needles and such.  I like to think of this as a 4 dollar skirt and giggle like I'm clever.

Colette Beignet

Fabrics used
Light weight stretch cotton sateen for shell - purchased from Emmaonesock last year.
Polyester silk like blouse weight for lining - inherited from my grandmother's stash.

Pattern changes/alterations
I sewed a straight size 10 straight out of the envelope. No Fitting Changes at all. I have never typed that sentence and fully expect a catastrophic event to occur.  Watch out for raining frogs unless they look slightly furry and prepared to hem clothing.

- I did move the buttons away from CF about 1/2" more than the suggested placement.
- Was going to skip the lining but decided with all the facings it was a better idea to have one to keep everything in place.

Husband Comment
"I like it. It's the color of the Florida Marlins uniforms.....well until they changed them."

My Final Thoughts
Confession - Wasn't sure that I'd like this pattern on me until it was completely done. When I put it on the first thought that popped into my head was that I needed to make another.  The second thought was, "Sure thing, but not back to back. Go sew a quick project first."  Ahhh good advice. I'm still 100% sure there's a denim version in my future. Won't that look cute with fall tights and boots? In the meantime I'm going to wear the crap of out this one with my Nettie bodysuits. Just give me a hand when I fall over next to you in these wedges.  Maybe I should invest in a pimp cane.

Pattern Mix and Match - The Penny Skater


How many of you guys are addicted to ModCloth like I am? That site is like crack and I'm lurking there at noon every day for my new hit.  "Inspiration, give me inspiration....and shoes."  Good thing for my wallet that I pin all the dresses to my board and only occasionally buy shoes. Occasionally I swear!

Last summer I pinned this dress.  Not too exciting, but I liked that it was made in a knit fabric and the use of stripes. Thumbs up for stripes!
I never got around to converting some random woven princess line bodice before warm weather ended.  As luck would have it Amanda drafted up her own princess line dress, the Penny Pinafore, during the winter. Hooray, now mocking up this dress would be as easy as pie.
As you can see my version doesn't bother mimicking the neckline and sleeves of the source dress. Instead I embraced the casualness of neck/sleeve bands and made no changes to those areas.  Part of this was laziness, but I also think the dark bands provide a resting place for the eyes after starting at all those stripes. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I didn't have any stashed striped fabric with enough yardage, so I bought some Lillestoff blue/white striped jersey from my twitter pal Melanie. Her Etsy store is here if you're interested and she does still have this fabric in stock. It's virtually impossible to stripe match across the princess line seams so we're calling it a "design element." Otherwise you wouldn't know the seam lines were there....yeah that's it. (My lobster Fredrick agrees.)
The Penny bodice is then paired with the Lady Skater skirt.  I put a seam allowance on the CF/CB line so that a pretty chevron effect can be achieved. Now there's some decent strip matching.
The silhouette is pretty much the same as the Lady Skater, but the stripes make it interesting.  And who doesn't want a few striped knit dresses to add to the wardrobe? If you do than here's how..... (Spoiler - its super simple.)

Quick How To
1. The match point notches are a great guide line for turning the Penny Skater into a bodice.  I laid the CF pattern piece against my body to get an estimate on where my waist falls on the dress.  I found it was 2" below the match point line.  I then traced each pattern piece down to 2" below the match point lines and squared off the bottom of the pattern.
 2. The Lady Skater skirt gets a seam allowance added to the CF/CB line. Then you cut the skirt in 4 pieces and seam the CF/CB at a chevron.

3. I sewed the Penny skater bodice together normally, except that top stitching was added to the princess line seams. The Penny bodice and Skater skirt are then attached as directed in the Skater directions.
Add Luxulite Lobster brooch and make kissy faces at it while pretending to be on a boat. OK, that's just me.  Novelty brooches forevera!
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