Saturday, July 7, 2012

Learning to sew...

There's nothing like realizing the summer is almost over to motivate you to finish some craft projects.  I have been working on a dress for little miss for months now and I finally finished it! (pause for applause)  Let me tell you, it was no easy feat and my sewing machine and I are not on friendly terms.  In fact, most of my sewing on this project was done by hand. 

The tutorial for my project can be found here.  It's something I found on Pinterest.  First thing I had to do was find a shirt to turn into a dress for Zoe.  Zach was gone on a trip so naturally I chose one of his that he had been unwilling to get rid of but also unwilling to actually wear.

I don't think he'll miss it.

The first part of the project was easy enough.  It wasn't until I attempted gathering the skirt that I had problems.  I followed the advice of my friend Brittney ( you can follow her blog here) and did the gathering by hand.  I tried to do it by machine, setting the tension on high and all that, but it wasn't very pretty.  However, the hand sewing worked good enough.

The next problem I encountered was the straps.  The original tutorial didn't have any way to buckle the straps so that they could be removed to put the dress on.  When I tried to put the dress on Zoe with the straps attached it turned into an acrobatic exercise that she did not appreciate.  On my last entry I reached out for suggestions and got one that was great.  I attached hook and eye fasteners (or trouser hooks) to the straps.  Then I sewed buttons on the straps to give the allusion of button holes without trying to attempt them.

The finished product:





I didn't attempt the pockets from the tutorial because, well, I think that pockets are far beyond my skill level, or at least the skill level of my machine (let's blame it on the machine). 

Anyway, sewing project number 3 is in the books.  Now all I need is some fabric to crank out one of the other ones I have pinned on my Pinterest wall...

Happy crafting my friends!!