Showing posts with label dress. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dress. Show all posts

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!!