Free-Hand Sewing ~ Aqua Blooms & Sprigs Dress ~ Retro 1930's

Hello again!

Here's the next edition of Spring Sewing '25! 

I was inspired by a beautiful dress made by Kristen at Verity Vintage Studio, and after finishing my no-pattern variation of it I can say it's one of my new favorite dresses. It had its share of complexity, but nothing too frustrating. Darts made up most of the time-consuming work since they must be very carefully placed to give the right shaping to the dress, but they are worth it once they are finished!

I like the way the darts smoothly shape the bodice.

The collar "peeks" out of the shoulder area instead of going all the way around the neckline. This design was a very easy way to achieve the collar look! I tacked the points down and it lies nice and flat :)

For the sleeves, I made a sort of knife pleat at the shoulder and then sewed it into a tuck. I added a band of contrasting fabric and some rickrack to make it pretty! 

 Here is my new favorite way to make skirts! Sometimes I like gathered/pleated skirts on a dress, but this time I wanted a smooth one, so I took this skirt concept (with added pockets) attached it to my bodice, and voila! I really like how it went together.

That's all for today! If you'd like to see more retro/vintage fashion, be sure to check out Verity Vintage Studio.

Have a blessed spring!

Miss Humphrey

Spring Sewing

...You make the going out of the morning and the evening to shout for joy.

You visit the earth and water it;

you greatly enrich it;

the river of God is full of water;

you provide their grain,

for so you have prepared it.

You water its furrows abundantly,

settling its ridges,

softening it with showers,

and blessing its growth.

You crown the year with your bounty;

your wagon tracks overflow with abundance.

The pastures of the wilderness overflow,

the hills gird themselves with joy,

the meadows clothe themselves with flocks,

the valleys deck themselves with grain,

they shout and sing together for joy...

~from Psalm 65~

Winter's last moments - through the years.

March is a stormy month, a wrestle between winter and warmth here in the High Desert. Last year we had 70 degree weather for a bit, and the year before that we had snow. It's unpredictable!

We're still lookin' dry over here, but it's been raining and snowing quite a bit. In another month or two, it will look more like this!

I have done a rather small amount of clothes-making this year, hence my long absence on the blog. Handwork has made up the majority of my sewing, as I finish a quilt top I've been making for...two years? now. But with Spring coming, certain fabrics in my collection have called to me to be played with. 

Introducing my first Spring '25 project!

This simple paneled skirt was a lovely way to ease into spring sewing. It was finished in an evening and was delightfully uncomplicated!

Isn't that interesting fabric? My favorite thing about it is that it lends itself to so many blouses! Red, white, two shades of green, that lovely baby pink, yellow, orange...And yet it does not make you look like a walking rainbow.

My skirt has 8 panels, a simple waistband, and a short zipper in the back. I used my pinking shears to cut most of my panel-bottoms, so I only turned the hem over once when I hemmed the skirt. 

This is the first skirt I've made with pockets!! Definitely one of my favorite features of this skirt!

I have drawn some diagrams for the basics of a pieced skirt. Hopefully they will be useful!

Below are close-ups of a few of the sketches:

To make a fitted skirt like this, it's important to take a waist measurement. You then divide that number by how many sections you wish to have in your skirt. If you have a waist measurement of 30" and you plan to use 10 sections in your skirt, each should be 3" at the top - but don't forget the seam allowance! I like to allow myself 1/2" seam allowance, so I would add a whole 1" to the measurement and make each panel 4" wide. The bottom of your triangle-like shape can be as wide as you want! The wider it is, the more flared and swirly your skirt will be - fun, huh?

Sew your panels together into a skirt, right sides together of course. You can leave ~6" (or however long your zipper is) unsewn at the top of one of your seams to insert your zipper into. 

When you've finished sewing the seams, (but before you put your zipper in!) and are ready to make your waistband, measure it to your completed skirt top (+ seam allowance) and sew a "tube" of fabric that length - and however wide you want it. Mine is about 3/4" wide. 

If you want the inside of your skirt to look finished, you can follow this tutorial for a few different waistband options. I was not very particular about the inside of this skirt, especially since I used pinking shears to cut most of my pieces, so I attached my ironed "tube" as seen in the diagram above. I put right sides together and sewed it on, then folded it back to show a beautiful smooth waistband! Then I attached my zipper. 

There are many tutorials online for attaching zippers, so I will not kink up my brain trying to write on the subject. You know how zippers are.

That's all for today. Thanks for reading! 

I hope to be back soon with more spring sewing.

Miss Humphrey

Merry Christmas

 Merry Christmas, Dear Readers!

I modeled my Christmas dress this year off of a design I saw on Pinterest as well as my own imagination. 

It is a fairly simple design. 

I love sweetheart necklines! 

The sleeves are just little cap sleeves. I was messing around with a more elaborate design originally, but it drove me slightly nuts. So, back to ol' faithful!

This dress has side tabs and a corset-like "cinch" in the back for shaping (more on that later.) I made the dress loose enough to slip into so I didn't have to put a zipper in, and the cinch in the back gathers in the extra width of the dress nicely. 

Just for the record, I don't hate zippers that much. In fact, I have installed them many times with relative success. But I do find that not going with a zipper cuts a lot of time off of my dress projects. 

In case you are curious about the pattern of this dress, it is very simple. Here's a diagram of the shapes:

The front of each tab is sewn on directly in front of each dart, as you can see if you look carefully at the image below.

I began the skirt gathers underneath the tabs, and added (non-functional) buttons to the front end of the tab just for fun.

I added grommets to the other end of the tabs and laced my ribbon through, and Voila! My dress is shaped and has a lovely accent to make the back more interesting.

It's a great way to take a very simple dress design and elevate it to something special. I love this effect! 

Thank you so much for reading today!

Have a blessed Christmas!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Autumn Dresses

Happy Fall, everyone!! 

I'm loving the change in the air from summer to autumn!

 In the high desert there isn't much foliage that changes color in the autumn, but the light takes on a gentler hue and the air sweeping down the mountain is crisp and clean; something welcome after the smoke season.

Here was our view in early September:

No, this is not a volcano, much as it looked like one.

It's a thunderstorm perched above an active fire. Can you tell where one ends and the other begins? 

It's hard to see, but the location of the fire is right behind that pointy butte there.

Thankfully we escaped during some of the worst smoke and went north where it wasn't so bad.

But take a look now, in mid-September. I'm back home and lovin' the vivid colors, though it's a little hazy in the distance this morning. 

Alright, I will move onto something other than scenery. I know this is a sewing blog, but I enjoy sharing pictures of God's amazing world with you. I hope you enjoy looking at them.

I've sewn a couple of dresses for the start of the beautiful season.

The main fabric of the first is a beautiful, burgundy-brownish red. In more poetic words, it reminds me of an old-fashioned, faded, currant-wine colored print you'd see a woman wearing in the pioneer or Wild West days of the 1800s.

This fabric is pared with a floral-on-white fabric that narrowly misses coordinating, but works nicely in a dress in my opinion.

The other dress is just the opposite! I used the burgundy fabric as an accent for the flowers-on-white print.

Rather than fuss with darts for bodice shaping, I took in a little (tuck? knife pleat?) at the bottom of the bodice. It was a lot easier than figuring out darts, let me tell you!

I even managed to line it up with the pleat in the skirt.

This is the hem. I'm not used to embellishing my hems a lot, but I do like the effect of the lace trim above the ruffle. It makes it look more old-fashioned, in my opinion.

On to the white dress:

~Front~

~Back~

I did a yoked design for this dress. This is another instance where I didn't have to engineer darts, instead shaping the dress by gathering the bodice above the bust and attaching it to the front yoke.

Since we've been on the topic of autumn I might as well throw in another subject related to it. Decorating! My grandma took me to Hobby Lobby last month and I feasted my eyes on their aisles of autumn decor. Ooh, so beautiful...and some of it was quite irresistible...

...like these sweet light-up pumpkins. It's amazing how a little LED light or string of fairy lights in your décor piece transforms it to be something interesting, something you want to look at every time you enter the room. It also ups the cozy factor 100%!

I learned how to make the fabric pumpkins from my grandmother at Homeliving. Here's another of her pumpkin tutorials.

 

Hope you've enjoyed reading - if anyone out there is still following this sporadic blog. I hope, as always, to keep to a blogging schedule that is more sensible, but isn't that what I was hoping last post?

Until next time, onwards and upwards!

-Lillian

In Other News...

Hello All,

My mother and I went to the Sisters Quilt Show in Mid July. There were some gorgeous quilts there, and we walked in the beating sun or the baking shade and looked at the amazing work of these quilters for hours that morning. I, for one, would be willing to sign Mother's petition to move the event to early May instead of mid July, but still it was an inspiring event and made me want to quilt when I was home lying on the couch recovering.

                                         on my bucket list to make!!!

In other news, Fiddle Camp is upon us, and I'm choosing my "wardrobe" for the 4-day event. By the time this post is published I will be at camp already, but here's my ideas right now!

 Wardrobe sounds like such a fancy word, but really I just needed to pack clothes that would be comfortable in the heat and it doesn't hurt if they're pretty, too :)

 

Day 1: Blue & White Paisley dress

light and airy

We found this dress at Ross last year and with a slight modification it was perfectly wearable.

 

 

 

Day 2: Pink A-line Dress

comfortable and stylish

 

Day 3: Blue Prairie Embroidered Dress

made of a thin chambray or other light fabric. Vying for being worn during the camp performance instead of the dress below.

We found this dress at Ross, and let me tell you, it was a find. SO pretty!!

Note: The dress does not reach the floor when I wear it. My dress form was just on a "short" setting! 

Day 4: White Eyelet dress

light and airy, with a fun shawl collar. Formal enough for an end-of-camp performance.

We found this dress at Ross last year. Is it just me or do we find a lot of fun dresses at Ross!?!

Have a beautiful Late July...

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Wild Strawberries and the Old West

 Hello all, and thanks for reading today!

This was my most recent sewing project, completed in 11 days of inconsistent work on it. 

 

 The shirt was a gift for my mother's birthday and I went to town a bit with extra details. The most fun part was seeing it done, of course, but the construction went fairly smoothly, which is not always the case for me :) Collared shirts used to seem daunting, but with the pattern I have they are actually not scary at all. Unless you are afraid of interfacing and pattern instructions, you should be able to make one of these :)

I should mention, like I did in the first post where I reviewed this pattern, that the instruction to attach the front of the shoulders to the back of the shoulders is MISSING. So if you are considering purchasing this pattern be aware of that!

Also, my collars (I will not say the pattern collars) turn out so thick in their construction that I don't like to use the snap at the very top of the collar. I left it off of this shirt because I was low on snaps and I knew my mother felt the same way about tight collars that I do. My little brother calls the top button the "choker button." 

I made my own twist on this pattern by curving the collar, making short sleeves, adding my own sleeve cuff details, and curving the bottom of the pockets inwards a bit more among other things.

 

 

I would have added more of those fun pearl snaps to the sleeves and pocket flaps except I only had enough to do the main shirt closure. So I did a little cross-stitch to ornament the non-functional sleeve tabs while keeping them attached to the sleeve. 

This is the second time I've made this pattern, (here's the first time) and both times I used "upcycled" fabric, aka, fabric from the skirts of dresses I had made a few years ago that I hadn't worn much and didn't like. I like re-purposing fabric in this way, and since most of my skirts from this era had ~2 or more yards of fabric in them, they are easily turned into something else :)

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey