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

 

Spring!

Hello all!

I made my first Summer dress earlier this month, when the warm weather was getting into my bones. Not quite practical for the sun-then-snow nature of March in the High Desert, but I'm sure it will become quite useful when it is scorching in a couple of months. For now, it can be transformed into a warmer jumper with the addition of a cute blouse.

I made it using this Simplicity pattern. It was a good pattern and after I found the particular pieces for my size and cut them out, whipped up quickly. It did have an invisible zipper in it, which always complicates things, but I was satisfied with how it turned out. 

I came up with an idea for a "one piece wrap blouse" earlier this year. 

Well, alright -- it isn't quite one-piece, but it's pretty close. Here's a diagram I've drawn up:

The basic idea is a bodice that is completely one piece like the one in the picture above (minus the attached ties you see.) Technically, all that you'd have to do is hem the entire shape, attach ties and sew the shoulder fronts to their backs, and voila, you have a blouse. 

 I did add sleeves to mine, as well as Velcro at the lower neckline to keep it shut for modesty's sake. Oh yes, I added a bit of blue eyelet trim as well, for modesty's sake to say nothing of pretty accents. The blouse pictured above was my first try at this concept and holds lots of room for improvement, but it was as good start. I like the idea of making sewing simple, and especially with blouses since they tend to daunt some of us. This idea uses ties as a closure instead of buttons, clasps, or a zipper, which greatly simplifies things. 

The blouse could definitely benefit from shaping, for wearing comfort as well as for not looking like this:

Flattering, eh?

(It looks much better worn on a person than on a dressform, by the way.)

So that's a work in progress that I may return to sometime to perfect.

Aside from sewing, I made a birthday card today with the theme of wildflowers.

It was rather busy - or shall we say elaborate instead?

I had fun with all those decorative borders!

Spring is crowding out the brown around here. I LOVE it when the valley turns green. It makes me so happy!

In a few months, it will look like this. Can't chase away all the brown!

It's funny how this scenery, with its small amount of spring growth compared to many places, has grown on me over the years. Coming from a wet Oregon valley as a little girl, I sure disliked the dryness of this country, but now I love it. (With a sort of love that still appreciates it when the farmers below irrigate their pastures! Relative dryness, not Sahara please.)

Brave little souls!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection:

Romans 6:3-5

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

Turning a Regency Pattern Into A 1830's Dress

 Hello all!

Before we begin this post, I feel I should make my customary apology for being late in posting. It took me awhile to finish the project I wanted to share with you. And then it took me a far greater while to get around to blogging about it. But here I am again - I hope you enjoy this post!

To introduce this dress, I'd like to tell you about one of my favorite fashion time periods: the 1820's-30's. I particularly like this era because of the waistlines.  After the high regency waists, but before the introduction of the long waists of the 1840's, there's a certain in-between sweet spot that I tend to gravitate towards when I sew dresses. Here's a great example of the waistline I'm talking about, modeled by actors from one of my favorite movies, Wives and Daughters:

https://gaskellblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/wives-and-daughters-1999-production-stills-gallery/#jp-carousel-5375

If you'd like to see dresses I've made with this waistline, scroll back through my blog. I discovered that, with minimal exceptions, every dress I've blogged sported it; today's dress included. Either I'm in a rut or I've found my "forever style."

I decided to take a regency pattern that my mother and I had made into regency jumpers, and simply lower the waistline to the desired length, shorten the dress for everyday use, and voila! I'd have the dress I wanted. 

You'd think, right? I'm familiar with this pattern. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? I thought so. 

I started out making a sort-of toile, per my mother's advice. I didn't make a toile for the whole dress, but I did get a good idea of how much I wanted to lengthen the waist to make it 1820/30's length instead of regency length. I then unpicked my toile and used the pieces as my new pattern as I cut into my beautiful, midnight blue yardage.

The initial construction of the bodice (before I got to the sleeves, the darts, the shaping, and the zipper :) went quite well. I was pretty proud of myself for making a smooth, lined bodice with no seams showing on the inside. 

Shaping in the back of the bodice

If I had left the bodice at this point, it definitely would have been simpler. But I had decided that I wanted a long-sleeved dress instead of a jumper...so...

The downhill slide began when I was working on my first sleeve one evening. I inserted it inside-out - and then tore it down the side while I was unpicking *enthusiastically*. I cut out a new sleeve, which I decided to sew inside-out again for the sheer fun of it. 

Around this point I turned the sewing machine off and abandoned the room to my two younger brothers, who were listening to my dressmaking catastrophes while building precarious structures out of Jenga blocks on the tile floor. Putting down the project at this point was a good choice ;)

I did get through the sleeves - finally! Except for an alteration I had to do towards the end of the whole project because one sleeve was puffing differently than the other. But the point is that I DID get them done. 

Now on to the shaping of the bodice. I put darts in (multiple times) that were ultimately taken out a day or two later. They were replaced by double tucks, secured by top-stitching. 

The next difficulty was that the bodice "stuck out," when it was supposed to lie flat; a side effect of the double tucks pointing down to the center bottom of the bodice. This has happened to me before with angled tucks. Last time, I "solved" the problem by adding a sash to the dress to keep the front of the bodice where it belonged. This time though, my standards were rising, and I did not want to "fix" things on this dress by covering them up or adding a sash. I wanted this dress to be perfect without any cover-ups. So, after consulting my mother, (which I was doing quite a bit in this shaping process) I pulled in some excess fabric on the sides into these cute angled tucks.

I also added an inverted pleat down the center, as seen in the photo above this one. This was our final attempt to make the bodice lie flat, and I'm happy to say that it worked!

I also made corresponding tucks in the bodice lining; however, I didn't add a pleat in the center.

Next was the skirt, which was straight in front and pleated in the back. I did not make a toile for the skirt and it turned out shorter than I would have liked; but I found that a white eyelet-trimmed petticoat makes up for the missing length and looks striking against the blue, so I don't consider this a fatal error :)

the back of the dress

My second-ever invisible zipper. I trust that they will become more invisible with practice!

Here is a peek into the inside of my dress. The lining was secured by hand.

the hidden zipper tape

While altering a pattern was not as easy for me as I expected, this dress was a good opportunity for learning and problem-solving. 

If you enjoyed this post or liked this style of dress, please do drop me a comment...I appreciate your messages!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

An exciting end to my project...

 Hello all,

I have another circle dress to show you! If you remember, I showed a sneak peak of the fabric in this post, and I finally got around to sewing it up recently. 

It was a project I worked on for awhile, and I would say it's definitely success from a failure...this free-hand/homemade pattern dress was NOT working out for awhile! A change in design and some prayers later I am really happy with it :) 

I used the sash and sailor's collar in this photo from this dress.

The bodice is lined.

I do apologize for the finger-printed mirror;) 

My grandma says that ruffles are my signature. Maybe they are! I love a good bit of eyelet lace!

This is another no-zipper dress. Unlike the earlier version of this dress that I was working on, it is very comfortable and easy to get on!

The 2/3 circle skirt was cut too big for this particular bodice, but a few carefully placed pleats worked well to fix that problem. Free-hand sewing can be very frustrating...and very rewarding!

I did a simple puffed sleeve, gathered at the bottom by elastic.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

Regency Easter Dress

 Hello all,

My mother and I went to Joanns last month. I think I was looking for quilt fabric, and she was going to make herself a formal skirt. We weren't looking for anything too expensive. 

But all because of Budding Romance, we ended up walking out with quite a bit of fabric. It was none of my fault, I assure you!! ;)

This regency-style jumper is made from another adapted E-pattern. My mother had used the pattern before and altered it to be a jumper, but this was my first time sewing it.

The fabric...Oh, it is sweet! So sweet, in fact, we had to have the whole bolt to make matching Easter dresses.

With another blouse

What did you all do for Easter? 

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey