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

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