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

Time for a Christmas Dress!

 Hello all,

I'm finally back with a project that I'm excited to show you: a Christmas dress! 

This dress took portions of two days to make, and the sewing process was very smooth compared to many dresses I've wrestled with! 

I apologize for the lesser quality of some of my photos. I think I'll switch over to a new camera soon.

The dress features a long, full pleated skirt. 

I top-stitched ~4-5 inches down the front pleats so the pleats would not flare out in places they were not wanted :)

The sleeves turned out VERY puffy, so I put a tuck in each one to gather in some of the excess and shape the sleeve. I remember first noticing this style on a dress that my grandmother had made, and was inspired by it. 

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. 

For the collar on this dress I was inspired by this blouse. I like the idea of a collar that is sewn into the shoulder seams instead of wrapping all the way around the back of the dress. Instead of the collar ending in a charming tie however, I pulled the ends down into the waistline.

To God be the glory, 

Miss Humphrey

Teal, Purple and Pink

 Hello all,

Thanks for stopping by the blog again! I have another dress for you that was made during my time at The Manse. 

This dress features a pieced skirt with triangles inserted into each third of the skirt. Here's another dress I made with a pieced skirt.

My grandmother offered to hem the skirt. It is luxurious to have someone else finish a flared skirt for you!

I tried something a little different on the sleeves this time: making a pleat at the bottom of the sleeve instead of gathering it with elastic to make it a puffed sleeve. I think the pleats worked out pretty well.

There is a yoke in the back which I quite like.

Are y'all staying cool this summer? We've been watching the weather and smoke reports and having apprehensive feelings about the next few days since our house is void of air-conditioning. Oh, well. At least we don't live in Arizona right now.

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

How I Made This Dress, Part 3...Finishing Up

When I have the bodice completely done on a dress, I have usually passed all the hard work. Just have to attach a simple skirt, and I'll be done! 

Not so with circle dresses. Those can be finicky to the very end. 

And not so with the tiered skirt to this dress, because I had a lot of work ahead of me to make all those gathers!

My mother told me how to do a tiered skirt. Here's the "formula" I used for how long each of my panels needed to be.

Here's how I did my panels...

I cut a panel and sewed the ends together (right sides together) to make a round. On one of the panels, I had to add extra yardage to make it the right length. This dress fit easily into 4 yards of fabric, using the excess from one panel to complete another.

I sewed 2 rows of gathers on one edge.

It would have been cute to just hem the bottom of this panel and have a blouse!

I gathered the second panel until it fit pretty well with my last panel, then sewed it up!

To this I added a short panel to complete the skirt.

I made a sash out of the dress material, and I was...done!!

Here's some more dress pictures.

Hope you enjoyed this dress-making process!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey

How I Made This Dress, Part 2...SLEEVES

 Hello all,

Here's another installment of photos and explanations from my recent dress project! Enjoy!

The inspiration for this dress was this 1940's tiered dress, and the fabric came from Joanns.

We left off in the last post with a sleeveless bodice. This post is about how I made the puffed sleeves!

To start off with, I laid my bodice by the section of fabric I had cut my bodice from. In the photo above, the armhole of the bodice is mirrored against the place where it was cut from. Note: the fold is at the top here. 

Cutting straight down from the top gives me this shape. FYI: The sleeve is facing the other direction than from the last photo.

I rolled the straight edge of the sleeve over twice and hemmed it.

In this picture I'm making a small cut into the folded sleeve to tell me how far to sew gathering stitches.

Here's my first row of gathering stitches: not back-stitched at the end, stitch length 5 on my machine.

I sewed another row next to it.

Then comes the fun part...making the gathers! I gathered until the left side of the sleeve was about the same size as the armhole.

I sewed the ends of the sleeve together. I didn't sew over the hem, though, because I'd need access the hem to string my elastic through.

It was time to attach the sleeve to the bodice. I put the sleeve around the armhole backwards, with right sides of the fabric together, and sewed around the armhole. I don't remember pinning it, but I might have.

Aligning the bottom of the sleeve and the top of the armhole.

Ta-da!! 

It would have been cute to leave it as a sort of butterfly sleeve, but its destiny was to be a puffed sleeve...

I cut 2 pieces of 1/4" elastic a little larger than the circumference of my upper arm. 

I attached a safety pin to one end, and threaded it through my hem/casing, When the end of the elastic was about to disappear into the casing, (it's a good thing to watch for) I stopped and sewed it down. 

When it was about to come out the other end, I sewed it down on that side too. Be careful not to sew over your safety pin when you secure that end of the elastic, by the way!

Then I stitched the rest of the under-arm seam shut, right over my elastic and hem.

I distributed the gathers around the sleeve opening.

Then...I made another sleeve ;).

I hope you enjoyed this sort-of-tutorial!

to God be the glory,

Miss Humphrey