Colette's Sorbetto and Hazel

More Colette Patterns prep work. I cut out this light green and white floral fabric for the Sorbetto top a few weeks ago. My mom is borrowing my sewing machine right now so I have been doing just prep work for projects. Today I cut out pieces for the Hazel dress also by Colette. It's black and white gingham. The fabric is pretty lightweight, so I may need to line it or find the right slip. I know gingham is good when you need to find the grain of the fabric weave. This pattern has some pieces of the bodice that are sewn on the bias so I'm excited to see what difference it makes with the checks on the bias. I have never really sewn with stripes, but someday I plan to. I also downloaded the Sencha pattern to hopefully make it some day. I guess I figure if I can make several patterns by Colette Patterns sucessfully I will learn a lot and it will help me with other pattern brands later that I feel are generally too big when I sew my size.

An update: working on the jean quilt and I am inches away from finishing the hand stitched blanket-stitch binding. I am really excited to finish, photograph it, and give it to our friend.  Then I can move on to other projects!! Baby blanket, other quilts in the works, and actually sewing the above patterns. I feel like this is going to be a productive summer!

Feather Day Dress

My friend bought a Craftsy class for the Tia Dress pattern and asked for some help with it. She has done some home sewing, and alterations of her clothes. The pattern was a little more complicated than I had ever done, with piecing the bodice and lining it.

We got together a few times to buy the fabric, cut out the pattern and started construction. There were a few confusing spots, perhaps because we didn't watch the video more times. She decided to not put on the sleeves, and I think it looks good without them. She also didn't put on the pockets because we weren't sure the pocket shape would show up well due to the bold pattern.

Anyway, the dress is almost done besides the hem. She wants to shorten it perhaps to knee-length. 

We both learned a lot from making the dress, and I may look for my own craftsy class sometime after I finish up some projects. 

With learning a lot, I'm sure if we did it a second time we would do several things differently. (We got the zipper in but it could have been put in better with the right zipper foot). I'm also pretty sure we did the lining incorrectly, but what we did worked okay and still fits. 

Anyway, we are both grateful it fits her and that she likes it and that it was all worth it in the end!!! The patterened fabric is very forgiving and hides a few mistakes. 

 We worked well together, so I look forward to our next project whatever it may be. It did speed up time, like cutting out the pattern quicker and being able to have one person sewing and the other one ironing at the same time. Plus (the best part), it gave us several excuses to hang out and chat more often than normally.

One thing we wished we'd had when making the dress was a sewer's ham. Today I found a tutorial online so I printed the pattern and will make one sometime. I'm not sure about filling it with sawdust and will probably try using wool scraps.

Today I am embroidering pillowcases and working on binding the denim quilt. (Photos to follow when I can share them, they are both gifts).

Watching: North & South
Listening: Knitting Pipeline podcast