Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Every Little Girl Wants A Twirly Dress

Hello All,
Recently I made my first little girl's dress. I made it free-hand style, using most of the same techniques I'd use to make a dress for myself. Girl's dresses are so much easier to make than women's clothing!


I didn't have a pattern to reference for girl's size 7-8, which was the size of the recipient, so I mostly went off of some measurements we found on the back of a pattern catalog. I only used a few, making this one of the most "free-handed" dresses ever. 
It turns out, you don't need every pattern made to make the style of dress you want. Have confidence in your abilities. You can design anything you like, and you can sew anything you can design, with practice.


A sweetheart neckline for a sweet little girl...
A short slit in the back for ease of putting on closes with a button and elastic loop. Another dress that I didn't have to put a zipper in = happiness and fond memories.

Little girls aren't the only ones who like circle dresses. I confess to having 3 in my collection right now with plans for another at some point. I did outgrow one of them, made of a lightweight pink fabric, but I couldn't stand to repurpose it. It holds too many happy, summery, running-through-the desert-grass-and-breeze feelings that are worth feeling again.


to God be the glory,
Miss Humphrey

Monday, February 5, 2024

My First Western Blouse

 Hello all,

Well, the Year of the Blouse is off to a good start. I received this pattern for Christmas and it was the first sewing project I plunged into after the holiday. I really like the results!! The pattern...plus a little bit of connecting loose ends...will produce a professional-level Western shirt. What do I mean by connecting loose ends? Well, there's a little guesswork in this pattern. Nowhere in the pattern does it instruct you to connect the back of the shirt to the front at the shoulders, though it clearly shows them connected in a later step. There's also no specifics for what size fastening snaps to use; so we ranked this pattern as "not the best quality." In addition, the sizes also seemed to run a bit small. However, I am still happy with my results!

(Side note: I don't usually sew with patterns, anyway. I'm used to connecting 110 more loose ends than this pattern gave me ;) )

Let's see what it made!

I used view C of the pattern - the simplest view.


For this shirt's material, I re-used the skirt of a dress I had made that fell out of favor with me.
This pattern included a lot of shaping that is quite nice. 


I don't think I've ever done so much topstitching on one project in my life. This shirt was full of it! I love the resulting "store-bought" look it gives.
I also learned to set snaps during this project. I like the western look of the "pearl" snaps. 


The "sleeve-strap" (or whatever this is called) can keep my long sleeve snapped out of the way of whatever I'm doing. I dislike that you can see the raw edges of the sleeve seams when you roll the sleeve back (though this defect is hidden in the pic above.) If I were making this shirt for someone else, I would finish the sleeve seams so that you didn't have threads dangling down and looking messy.

My apologies for missing a week in posting - I hope, as all good bloggers do, and always say - to be more consistent in posting ;)
I have lots of content for the blog now, so perhaps that will motivate a more rigorous posting schedule. 

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Monday, January 22, 2024

Crafty Projects

 Hello all,

I've made some crafty projects in the past few months that I thought I'd show you; some of them sewing-related, and some not!

I used a pattern to embroider classic cars on T-shirts for Christmas for my younger brothers. 
The older one got a '67 Mustang and the younger one got a '57 Bel Air. 
I did not realize how long it takes to embroider images like these! But I got them done in time for Christmas, which is what matters :)
A note to those who might try this: I had difficulty seeing the embroidery pattern after I had ironed it onto the dark grey shirt, because the color of ink and the shirt were so similar! Our patterns, at least, applied more vividly to a lighter colored shirt. I would recommend using a light-colored shirt if you're not confident in your free-hand embroidery skills!

I've been doing quite a bit of water-coloring recently. 


Not all of my family thinks that the blue-and-white humps in the background have a striking resemblance to mountains. I hope you can tell what they are...

I painted this picture using an old Country magazine picture for reference.


This is a birthday cake I love to make every year. It uses about every form of chocolate you could crave, I suppose. It all starts with three layers of moist chocolate cake. Between the layers is a rich dark fudge frosting. Covering all of this is a smooth Chocolate Swiss Meringue Buttercream. A crown of homemade cakey brownies is placed on top and drizzled with glaze. It's homemade...with organic ingredients...so it's good for you, right? Haha.


I made a book for a Christmas gift - an edited version of the public-domain The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Perhaps in future days I will be able to bind my signatures more closely together.



Do you recognize the fabric covering the book? I used the same combo on my Christmas dress.
to God be the glory,
Miss Humphrey


Monday, January 15, 2024

What Do I Do With My Scraps? Make This, Of Course!

Hello all,
I discovered a fun sewing project recently. It consumes scraps and turns them into useful items for yourself or great gifts for others! 
Enter the Zipper Pouch. 
I made a few of these for Christmas and let me tell you, it was good practice working with zippers, which are a sore spot for me ;) 

These pouches are a relatively fast sewing project that you can accomplish without taking too much upon yourself.
If you are a very detail-observant reader of this blog, you might recognize this dark blue fabric from my 1830's dress. 

This one was made with fabric pieces and lace given to me by a friend. I like the look of a bead string attached to the zipper pull.

You can develop or practice quilting/patchwork skills in a small project like this.

I monogrammed the back of this one...can you spot the letter?



Well, that's all for today...Enjoy your January!

to God be the glory,
Miss Humphrey


Monday, January 8, 2024

It's A New Year!

 Welcome 2024! 

Here's a look back at the dressmaking I did in 2023, and some sewing ideas for 2024.

My mother and I made matching denim skirts. This is the most useful thing I sewed all year. Every girl needs a jeans skirt!

We also made matching jumpers together.

This was a circle skirt that was made out of a tablecloth. 

A simple circle dress with a sash I had in my collection.

a tiered and yoked springtime dress

I made this dress, except for the ruffle that my grandmother added, and wore it to watch a fiddle contest. It pairs well with Western attire.

I dislike this dress. The skirt was gored, which was fun, but some things up top didn't work out. Perhaps I will renovate it in 2024.

This dress was made by altering a pattern. 
You'll recognize my Christmas dress if you've been reading the blog recently! 

Plans for 2024
I was informed by my mother that 2024 is the Year of the Blouse, and during the holiday I was given blouse patterns and a Hobby Lobby gift card. So with all the hints, I think this year's sewing will include some tops! I also have a goal to finish my hexagon quilt. We shall see how that goes.
Here's the first blouse I'm making.
This dress is inspiring. Notice the sleeve detail!
I also got this blouse pattern for Christmas. 
I would like to recreate something like the first dress in this post.

to God be the glory,
Miss Humphrey




Sunday, December 31, 2023

How I Made My Christmas Dress



Hello all!
I thought I'd show you how I made my Christmas dress I posted recently. I'm not calling this a tutorial because it lacks the detail you'd find in a pattern tutorial, for instance. But you might enjoy following this "how I did this" post if you have some experience sewing and aren't afraid to trust your instincts!

This is how most every dress of mine starts out: my fabric is folded in 1/2 the long way, and the end is folded over to make 4 layers of fabric. This section is where I cut my bodice from.

This is basically my bodice shape, without the front neckline marked. I made the bodice fairly wide so that I wouldn't have to put a zipper in this dress. (YAY!) 
Here's that shape on my folded fabric.


And when unfolded:


 I wanted to mention that I'm not just cutting out this bodice where it seems right...exactly. Some areas I've got the hang of through sewing tons of these kinds of bodices, and I can eyeball my measurements. But often when I'm making a dress I will hold the fabric up to myself and make more precise measurements in certain areas. This time I noted where the edge of the neckline should fall and where to place the shoulder as well.
It's important to add in seam allowance in these measurements. If you want your neckline to fall in a certain place, mark it ~1/2" closer to your neck. You will take in the extra material when you sew. This way you won't end up with a wider neckline than you want. 
It's especially important when you're measuring the depth of the neckline. Always err on the smaller side of things - you can always cut a larger neckline but it's not so fun to deal with a deeper neckline than you planned. Ask me how I know. 


Now it was time for me to cut my front neckline. In this picture I've unfolded my bodice, folded it in 1/2 the long way, and cut my front neckline.
 If you omit the folding in this step, your back neckline will be just as deep as your front neckline. That may be common sense to you, but for some reason, I have made this mistake multiple times, which is why I feel the urgency to warn you :)
Personally I dislike the feeling of wearing a dress with equal necklines in front and back. I once knew someone who tried to stitch the missing piece back into the back neckline. Hey, it was in a lining, so the treatment worked enough for my - I mean, *her* - purposes without being noticeable. Honestly, it shouldn't have, and I certainly can't recommend it. I dislike such sewing shamblery.



Here I did something that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable: cutting my shoulder seams. I usually would not do this, but because I wanted to insert a collar into the shoulder seams I took the plunge.



 
Next I cut out neckline facings. I usually would do a once-piece facing, but since I had already cut my shoulder seams, I did one for the front neckline and one for the back. If you'd like a visual tutorial for this, scroll down to the bottom of this post.
 
In this picture, I've sewn the facing to the front neckline, turned it over and ironed it. When you do a squarish-neckline like this, snip the corners of your seam allowance. It will help the fabric flex around your neckline easier. 
It's great to do this on curves, too, like the one on my back neckline.

Next I had darts. Oh, the dreaded darts. (The darts are ironed flat-ish in this picture.) 
Bodice shaping has caused me so much trouble in the past! Sometimes darts work nicely and sometimes they are a pain in the neck. I haven't gotten this part completely down yet, folks, so I can't give you a recipe for success! But I have figured out how to make them equal distances from the sides and middle of the front bodice, which is pretty important.
Once you've got one dart sewn in or marked, fold the bodice in half and copy your measurements onto the other side of the bodice. You can do this by snipping wherever you've snipped on the top layer or drawing the dart as best you can.

Now, on to the collar.
First I unfolded my piece of fabric vertically. Then I folded the end over, just like I did when I cut the bodice out. 

This is the shape I cut out of my fabric. It follows the neckline from the shoulder and then curves off after that.

This picture skips ahead quite a bit! Basically what I did here is cut 4 of the shape in the last picture (If you remember, my fabric was folded in half, so I just had to cut 2 of the shape pairs of collar pieces.) Then I sewed the corresponding pairs together, right sides together, leaving the tops open since they're going to sewn into the shoulder seams anyway. This way I had a lined collar. I pressed the two collar pieces flat (I think I starched them as well), and sewed them onto the front bodice shoulders. I think I sewed the back bodice onto the front at the shoulders after that, and then stitched the collar down to the center bottom of my bodice. I used a decorative stitch to stitch over the two edges of the collar as they came together below the neckline and continued down the bodice. I also sewed the bodice side seams together around this time.
Whew, that was a long description! I should have taken more pictures. 

After this, I wrestled with the collar a bit, trying to smooth out a wrinkle that had happened in one side more than the other. I will skip those details and go on to the sleeves!




My sleeve and my sleeveband, both folded. 
I just so happened to have coordinating fabric for the main print of this dress, and it was fun to put both the wine/burgandy colors together.
Here's a sleeve graphic if you are curious or confused about sleeve measurements.



From here, I puffed the top of the sleeve by gathering two rows of stitches around the curve at the top. I also gathered the bottom of the sleeve. I sewed the sleeve to the bodice and then added the sleeve band.
For the sleeve band, I sewed the ends of the fabric strip in the pic above, right sides together, to make a band. I proceeded to fold this in 1/2 the long way and starch it. This I added to the bottom of the sleeve I had gathered. I had to add a few pleats to it as well to fit it into the sleeveband, since I had extra material. I also placed a tuck in each sleeve as I showed you in the last post. I'll show you how again:

Making a tuck like this is very easy - turn the sleeve inside out and sew the two layers (front and back) together, vertically, near the edge of the sleeve. 


When you turn the sleeve back right-side-out, you'll have a cute sleeve tuck. 


Now, on to the skirt! 
I measured out a length of material that I wanted for my skirt; I used about as much fabric as I had left over from 5 yards of fabric after I had cut all of the above out :)
I use the 45" dimension of my yardage for the length of my skirt and put ~6" of material into my hem since the skirt was going to be too long for practicality. It did add to the dress weight, but I didn't want to cut it off in case I wanted to lengthen the hem someday. I sewed the ends of my skirt right sides together, and then pinned it to my bodice and took in a passel of pleats. I had soo much material to fit into the circumference of that little bodice!
Once I had sewn my pleats in, I topstitched them. After experimenting with different tactics to keep my front pleats lying smoothly down, I topstitched them all down ~5" so that they wouldn't stick out where they weren't wanted. 


I sewed two ties from my coordinating fabric (how to: cut a length of fabric a little more than twice as wide as your finished tie will be, sew the edges and one end, right sides together, turn it inside out and press it) and attached them near the side seams of my bodice. 

And that is a summary of how I made this dress! I hope it inspires you or gives you some pointers about your own sewing. 




to God be the glory,
Miss Humphrey











Every Little Girl Wants A Twirly Dress

Hello All, Recently I made my first little girl's dress. I made it free-hand style, using most of the same techniques I'd use to mak...