Old School Rickrack

So wikipedia just informed me that rickrack's popularity peaked in the 1970's. I'm sure my mom stitched it onto the clothes that she sewed me, although I have no physical evidence of this. Our living room at the time was on trend (avocado and vitamin pee yellow dominated the color scheme) so I'm sure she was hip to rickrack.

Hi! Yes, it's me! I started a new job at the beginning of March that messed with my blogging schedule and just generally turned my life upside down for a while. I had to choose between sewing and writing/reading about sewing, and I went with the former. I'm probably only writing this post because I'm on vacation this week (kids are with grandma, D and I are home alone . . .). But if feels good to write something more substantial about sewing instead of sporadically posting photos on Instagram.

If I do manage to blog about sewing again I have some fun projects to show. I made jeans for starters! And another Style Arc Marni jacket and some tops and other random things. But this post is about a skirt.

I've had a version of this skirt in my head for about three years. I wanted a flared skirt to replace a simple flared skirt that was damaged by some zinc oxide and never really recovered. I found an Alexander Henry quilting cotton that was a good reverse of the original skirt (that one was black with beige/white embroidery). But I felt like something was missing so it never got made up. This spring I worked on a skirt for a client and I found the inspiration I needed: rickrack! The skirt needed rickrack!

I drafted this skirt using the By Hand London quarter circle skirt tutorial (genius! circle skirts math simplified, with an app no less). I used the waistband from my skirt sloper, then measured the bottom edge of the waistband and used that as my waist circumference for the circle skirt. Well, this is what I did after I cut it out too small the first time. For the hem band, I rather haphazardly cut out and edge using the bottom edge of my circle skirt as a guide. I inserted black rickrack between the waistband and skirt, and skirt and hem band:

And I made the extra effort of using a hem facing, and I really like how this turned out (and it made hemming the circle skirt edge easier to do):

I lined the skirt with cotton poplin and inserted an invisible zipper through the center back seam (the only seam in the circle skirt!) and I was done. I'm glad I waited, because this is exactly what I wanted. I like how the skirt bells away from my body due to the crispness of the cotton, and I like that the embellishment makes it look just that bit fancier (if rickrack counts as fancy).

I hope all of you are having a fabulous summer with lots of fun sewing projects and plenty of summer cocktails!

More Birthday Twirls

In my last post I mentioned that the non-birthday girl always gets a skirt from the leftovers of the birthday girl's dress.  Mooper wanted to play around while I made help make her skirt this year, so I needed something quick and simple.  I went to my go-to circle skirt tutorial from Dana Made It.  This skirt is fast to make because there's no casing for the elastic - you simply sew the elastic straight onto the skirt.

The only time consuming part of this tutorial is the hem.  Even with a teeny-tiny skirt for a 3-year-old, the hem on a circle skirt can take some time, and I knew Moops wouldn't have the patience to wait.

So I decided to line the skirt, attaching the lining at the hem first.

I cut the lining out just as I did the main fabric and then laid them right sides together and pinned at the hem:

I sewed around the hem  with a 3/8" seam allowance and then trimmed that back to about 1/8" while Moopser did some of her own work.

Next you need to turn the skirt right side out and press:

Then baste the layers together at the waistband:

And finish the skirt as per Dana's instructions in her tutorial.

See the nice crisp hem with no measuring, handstitching, double turns or rolled hems??

The skirt was ready in less than an hour and then Moopsy got her turn in front of the camera!

Birthday Twirls

If you've been following this blog for a while you know that I do very little sewing for my own girls.  They have tons of clothes (handmedowns and grandma gifts) so they don't really need anything, and I prefer to build up my own wardrobe during my personal sewing time.  But I do make a birthday dress for each of them and the non-birthday girl gets a skirt from the leftover fabric.

Belly's birthday is today but I had to get her dress ready for the family birthday party that took place over the weekend.  Belly has a light yellow eyelet dress that was a hand-me-down from someone.  She decided she wanted a pink version of the dress for her birthday this year.  The original dress has princess seams, empire waist, ribbon sash and full gathered skirt. 

Inspiration dress

In drafting the pattern using the pin through method, I skipped the princess seams since their only role was to hold the ribbon sash and Belly didn't want to have to tie anything.  I also decided to make the skirt a circle skirt because my girls are currently in love with twirling.  And there's nothing like twirling in a circle skirt, right?

We couldn't find any suitable pink eyelet fabric, so Belly helped me dye the fabric early last week.  I used RIT fuchsia dye because I hadn't gotten around to ordering fiber reactive dye in time.  She had a lot of fun watching the fabric turn from white to pink.

Sorry for the blurriness - I took the photo while it was still steaming

From this point onwards I wanted to use what was in my stash which led to a bit of a hodge podge construction process.  We decided to line the dress in dark gray cotton lawn except that I didn't have enough of the dark gray so we used light gray for the skirt lining.  I wanted to add piping at the neck, arms, and waist, but I didn't have enough 1/8" cording so I used 1/4" cording for the waist.  Belly had chosen decorative purple flower buttons but I misplaced those in my sewing room (ack!) but she settled for these slightly different purple flower buttons.  And, Watch out! Here she comes!

Check out the twirl!

I did a variety of rolled hems for the skirt: a serged rolled hem on the lining (since it was short enough already) and a regular rolled hem on the eyelet.  It was a little tough sewing the thin hem on the embroidered bits, but no one will notice the bumps on this.  Cora wanted to help with this but she got fed up about half-way through the first pass on the hem ("This is hard, Mama." Sigh.)!

I also made fancy cupcakes for the party and Cora chose popstar microphone cupcakes from the crazy cupcake book:

And today my big girl is 6! 

What's Up: Bits 'n Bobs

Please remember that you can vote for my PoldaPop Flower Button Coat in the VintageModern Design Challenge through Thursday, March 22!  Click here to vote.


This week was a bit of a downer after last's week high level of productivity.  I had some small things to finish up but nothing all that exciting or showy.  And my energy level took a dive after all the late nights of the week before.  I love losing myself in intensity, but I generally have to pay for it at some point!

But I do have a few things to show.  I helped out the Maiden Street School of Irish Dance by finishing off six skirts for their St Patrick's Day show. 

Can't you just imagine a whole army of little girls marching in a St Patrick's Day parade with these?  They were going to pair them with black turtlenecks but I'm guessing they had to go for something lighter with our unseasonably warm weather.  I earned myself some free classes for Cora and the owner is now going to refer new students to me so that they can get a matching skirt made for performances, so my good deed has certainly been rewarded. In the middle of the project I had to run to Hancock's to get more of the binding they had chosen for the waistband.  This trip highlighted why I get so irritated with Hancock's.  They were all out of the item I needed (black blanket binding), and when I asked one of the clerks (one that I like - I certainly know who to go to and who to avoid) if they had more squirreled away somewhere.  She looked for me, and when she came up empty-handed explained, "We're always running out of the black."  SO WHY DON'T YOU UP YOUR ORDER??????????  I know their trick of not having much of something the moment there's a 50% off sale (see if you can find any neutral colored invisible zippers when zippers are on sale), but this was full price.  Humpf.

I got to re-visit Eileen's skirt from last summer as I needed to take it in a bit.  This is one of my favorite skirts:

I made this skirt with a combination of Valori Wells fabrics from her Wrenly collection.  And it came out the way it did as a happy accident.  Eileen wanted the vertical stripe fabric for the background ruffle. This was my first peplum style ruffle, and I didn't think about the fact that the stripe would become diagonal and then horizontal because of how the peplum is cut.  Luckily Eileen liked it this way!  One of the things that I love about sewing is how often a problem becomes a opportunity to be more creative. 


And now for my first experiment with knits.  I decided that I didn't have the right fabric for the dolman banded top and I was worried that the wrap top would ride up too much (Thursday's post) so I decided to make up my own style.  I used one of my existing jersey tops as a guide, shortened the length, lengthened the sleeves, added a looonnng tie, and ta-da:

I wore it to Devon's reading and got a lot of compliments (even before people knew that I had made it!) so I think it was a success.  I used a cotton interlock that I bought on clearance at fabric.com ages ago, so I wasn't worried if it didn't work out (I've got some jersey I paid $12/yard for but I'm saving that until I feel more confidenct).  I used interfacing on the shoulders and faced the neckline to give it a nice edge.  I used a rolled hem for the sleeves and hemline and while I kind of like the scallop-y edges, I need to figure out how NOT to do that, too.  I think I'll tweak it a bit more then put up a tutorial for it, for those of you who want to D-I-Y.

This week will be a little light project-wise.  I'm attending the Original Quilting and Sewing Expo in Schaumburg from Thursday through Saturday (thank goodness the girls have willing and doting grandparents) so I plan to finish up a few more leftovers then get my learnin' cap on.  I so hope I can bring home a batch of new skills and ideas!

Circle Skirt & Ruffle Top: Do you believe in magic?

UPDATE 2/7/2012: I entered this in a competition at Craftsy.com, so if you have an account there, feel free to "heart" this project over there.

I sent my husband and four-year-old daughter out tonight for their first ever Valentine’s daddy-daughter dance.  Did you do this as a child??  I remember going to at least one daddy-daughter dance with my dad at The Barn, a converted barn that was owned by our Park District.  I remember dancing with my dad, standing on his feet so that he could help me keep time.  My mom made me a twirl skirt from a pink and white heart fabric.  I loved that skirt.  I wore it to a every ice-skating party I went to that year, too.

Well, for such a momentous event I thought I really needed to make Cora an outfit.  I love sewing clothes but I don’t really sew that much for my daughters.  This is partly because I’m really busy sewing things for clients, but also because I don’t have that much interest in sewing kids’ clothes.  I like sewing for adults and for myself because I know the garment will be worn for years.  But with kids?  I’m lucky if it still fits a year later.

Here it is:

I started with the skirt, following Gretchen Hirsch’s circle skirt tutorial from Quick Stuff to Sew magazine, Winter 2011.  (If you don't know her, you MUST check out her blog).  The only change I made was to put in an elastic waistband instead of a zipper and waistband – hopefully this will allow Cora to wear it a bit longer!

The top was a bit of a hodge-podge.  I used the Peasant Shirt bodice from my Little Girls, Big Style book by Mary Abreu.  I wanted something with short sleeves that Cora could put on herself (no zippers or buttons to worry about) and this fit the bill.  For the bottom half of the top I generally followed the Shwin & Shwin Sand & Sea Top tutorial (another great sewing blog).

For the flowers, I followed a tutorial from Andie Johnson's blog.  I love making these flowers because they are super easy and resemble dahlias, which are my favorite flowers (Devon plants them in the garden for me every summer).

The main fabric is a purple velveteen that I found at the Economy Shop (great local thrift store).  I bought the hot pink fabric there as well – it feels like some kind of jersey but it doesn’t have much stretch.  The fuchsia skirt lining was leftover from a skirt I made for a client – I left it a bit long so that it could peek out.  The thread, buttons, and elastic were already in my stash, so all told this skirt and top probably cost less than $5.  It did take a long time to make, mostly because I decided to do a blind hem on the skirt and circle skirt hems seem to go on forever!  Apart from the hem I probably spent about 5 hours on this.

I’m waiting for Cora and Devon to come home now so that I can hear all about it.  I hope it was magical!