April 2012 Sewing Social Dates

Here's the April dates for Monday night sewing socials. I'm going to put down some potential projects but I'm always open to a change in plans based on who can attend.

Monday Nights, 7:30pm - whenever:

Apr 2: Knit shorts for girls or pj bottoms for yourself.

Apr 9: Fabric coasters. OR work on incomplete projects.

Apr 16: Skirt refashion (drawstring waist skirt from a men's polo style shirt). If your husband doesn't have a polo he is willing to part with, don't worry, I've hoarded a few.

Apr 23: Scrappy Bathmats. Bring a towel to use as a bathmat. We will dress it up with scrap fabric.

Apr 30: Sewing accessories - Pin cushion or sewing machine dust cover.


The Details..
Come as you are, beginners and experts alike.
You can pitch a few bucks in the tip jar to cover the cost of any of my fabric you use or you can bring your own.
Feel free to invite a friend.
Bring your own machine or use my guest machine.
Please RSVP.
Please enter through my side/basement door so as not to ring the doorbell and wake up sleeping kids.

Home Ec. Meet High Tech - Quilted iPad Cozy

iPad is now happily snuggled against Anna Maria Horner's velveeteen on the inside and sporting a randomly quilted cushy exterior of my favorite print from LouLouThi (also AMH). Closes up soundly with a silver metal sipper and custom pull.

My Endless Love - Infinity Scarf

 I thought that with spring here, my love of scarves would take a brief respite. Wrong. I picked up a bargain fabric at JoAnns last night and found its perfect soul mate in an Anna Maria Horner voile that was already in my stash.

 The JoAnn fabric is a striped Ikat design. The AMH is the Triflora from her LouLouThi collection. The color name is Perfume. Just right for adding a bit of romance to my spring wardrobe.

March 2012 Sewing Social Dates

 Here's the March dates for Monday night sewing socials. I'm going to put down some potential projects but I'm always open to a change in plans based on who can attend.

Monday Nights, 7:30pm - whenever:

Mar 5: Fabric coasters. OR work on incomplete projects.


Mar 12: Hot Tub Night. We'll still sew, but also bring your swimsuit and a robe / towel for a dip in the hot tub. Project: grocery shopping bag / tote bag.

Mar 19: Scoop neck shirt. Choose a voile, lawn or silky but light weight fabric for this. I have a limited selection of print fabrics that you can use or bring your own.

Mar 26: NO SEWING TONIGHT!!


The Details..
Come as you are, beginners and experts alike.
You can pitch a few bucks in the tip jar to cover the cost of any of my fabric you use or you can bring your own.
Feel free to invite a friend.
Bring your own machine or use my guest machine.
Please RSVP.
Please enter through my side/basement door so as not to ring the doorbell and wake up sleeping kids.

New Dresses for Africa Out the Door

This past month, a handful of women from my church worked again on sewing dresses for little girls in Africa. We met on 2 separate occasions, in my sewing studio to construct dresses. We used the basic pillowcase dress design. Our fabric included actual pillowcases as well as raw yardage. We used bias tape and grosgrain ribbon for straps that knot in bows on each shoulder. These dresses work so well for all sizes of girls and can be worn a lot. I love the variety of fabric as well as the cute embellishments added to each dress to make them special. I hope the girls who receive these dresses really feed loved.

Here's all 30 dresses packed and ready to send with our team over to Nairobi Baptist Church! To find out how you can get involved with sewing dresses for Africa, email me at liz@mommysaidsew.com.

Patty Young Pattern Test

I greatly enjoyed being a pattern tester recently. A few hours away from Chicago, Patty Young designs fabric collections for Michael Miller and her own patterns at Mod Kid Headquarters. I met her this past summer and picked up a few goodies at her sample sale.

 Being a pattern tester was challenging and exciting. The challenge for me was to follow the pattern exactly (no renegade sewing on this this one). And to work with only the fabrics Patty sent me from her Lush collection. The second challenge wasn't really that hard (despite my love of mixing and matching from different designers) because the Lush collection has some really great and diverse choices of prints and colors. Both Lauren and Grace got a Chloe Dress and Grace got a Paige Jacket. I really love that jacket, especially because one side (yes it's fully reversible) is sewn with laminates. Grace now owns the cutest rain coat I've ever seen in my life. I learned a great deal from following the patterns and emerged with some new tricks. I've already used the pocket design from the Chloe dress as cargo pockets on a pair of ruffle pants.

Pictures of Lauren and Grace in Patty Young's ModKid designs:
Making it Fun
ModKid Boutique
QuiltHome 1
QuiltHome 2
Hawthorne Threads (click to enlarge small image)

Library Tote Bag

This Anna Maria Horner Home Dec weight cotton sateen fabric from her Drawing Room collection was just dying to be turned into a library book tote bag. Whips up in a snap and makes a great birthday gift for a kiddo.

 

Cargo Pocket Pants

A new addition to a favorite old style. I have been making ruffle pants since I made my first pair of pants. Boy, that seems like ages ago. But it's still my favorite kind of pants to make. This pair for my older daughter features a lovely Sandi Henderson fabric from her Meadowsweet collection. This print has very unique colors. I decided to play up the orange and fushia combo by adding cargo pockets.

I used a pocket pattern designed by Patty Young for her Chloe Dress. I added the ribbon ruffle to the top edges to give a cargo pocket the girly treatment. This pockets look really cute on because of Patty's round design... they have their own volume and sit out just enough to draw the eye and give an otherwise straight leg some personality. Not that the fabric I chose needed any help in the personality department. My daughter (who also needs no help in the personality department) wore them today with a grey long sleeve tee and she got compliments right away.

Ruffled Nursing Cover

 A friend of mine ordered some gift items for a new mom including this nursing cover. Per her request, I updated the classic look with a ruffle at the bottom. As if the bright pink and orange fabric wasn't lovely enough! This fabric is from Patty Young's new Lush collection from Michael Miller.

Below is another ruffled nursing cover. This one features Heather Bailey fabric.

Fabric Scraps

Today the little girls helped me "sort" the fabric scraps.

Jumbo Crocheted Circle Scarves

 I'm not sure how many people are like me out there in the crafting community, but often it just takes one look at something and I'm struck with the "I can make that!" realization... and then I'm down in my sewing studio the first chance I can get and I'm making it. There might be a quick run to JoAnns first, but then I'm on it. Pinterest makes me giddy.

At the last Monday night sewing social, a friend pulls out a crochet project and we all came to a complete stop to admire a big chunky scarf in the prettiest grey yarn. How do you make that, we all had to know. She had been out to lunch with her mom and she saw another woman wearing a big chunky scarf in pretty yarn and her chatty mom found out from this stylish random stranger that the scarf had been purchased from Etsy, so said friend hunted up the Etsy store, looked closely at the pictures and decided she could manage it herself. Which she did beautifully.

 So I fondled her scarf for an appropriate period of time and inspected the size of the crochet hook she used and the next morning I was off to buy my own giant crochet hook and super bulky yarn. The results are 2 scarves in 2 days. The first one pictured is with Lion Brand Yarn in Cape Cod Tweed and a random mustard colored yarn I got at Big Lots last year. The second one pictured is Sensations Sumptuous Yarn in Teal. As a side note, when you can't decide what color yarn to buy, it helps to have a 2 year old in your shopping cart because they just want to hold them all like the skeins are stuffed animals and the result is that you simply must buy all the colors because there's no crying in baseball JoAnns. If there is crying you simply give out candy loving discipline.

The adventure of these crochet projects for me was the new hook sizes (also at JoAnns). This teal one was done with a jumbo plastic crochet hook (comically large, maybe an S size?) It only took 2 hours to make a circle scarf with 4 rows of double crochet (and I'm slow people). I simply wove the two ends together to make the circle when I was done. The gray and yellow one was done on a smaller but still large hook (I'm gonna guess it's about a P in size). I made it longer for a triple wrap. I've been wearing these around non-stop, inside the house and out. This is Chicago and it's winter people.

If you see something you love, go make it!

Sewing Dresses for Africa Event on January 21, 2012

Another Sewing Dresses for Africa event is coming up.

Saturday, January 21 from 9am - 3pm

We'll squeeze as many volunteers as we can fit into my sewing studio in Chicago, IL.

Join in on the fun as we cut and sew dresses for our partner church in Nairobi to distribute to little girls in the Kibera slum as well as in schools with which they partner. Help bring a sweet smile to a young girl’s face and enhance the ministry of Nairobi Baptist Church at the same time. No sewing experience? There’s still plenty you can do!Donations of various sorts are welcome and the list of needs can be found online. Grab some supplies, a friend. You can come for all or just part of the time.

Click Here to Register