The Imaginative Seamstress

My mother-in-love asked me to make this project for some friends of her's who've been waiting for their first baby for a very long time. They've just had a baby boy this past month, God be praised! Here are pictures of how the swim cover turned out. 

Here's an inexpensive and easy idea for Play Yard sheets. I do know how to make fitted sheets but I don't currently have a regular crib, we just use a Graco Play Yard. So here goes.   Buy a used top sheet from a thrift store or a garage sale. They'll be broken in and soft. Its easy to find just a top sheet really cheap because you may not find a whole set. I bought a tan top sheet for $4. I took them home and pulled out the mat that sits in the bottom of the play yard. I folded the sheet so there would be a fold for me to place the mat on. I laid down the mat and cut around it, giving myself seam allowances. Be sure to place the mat so that the already hemmed and nice top edge of the sheet is at one end of your mat. Then sew the bottom closed and the side. Very simple, it basically looks like a large pillow case. And the great thing about it is that you don't have to hem it! I am sorry that I didn't take pictures of the process, but I didn't think of postin...

Its been a long day, with lots of work. First the housework...laundry, dishes, floors, baby too. Yesterday I made two batches of salsa, which turned out 12 pints. I started late in the afternoon, around 3pm and didn't finish until nearly midnight! What's on my mind this evening is my sister's wedding and the sewing she and I are doing for it. She was here today for several hours sewing up a storm. Thankfully, Jubilee was a little angel today! Yay! We're making two bridesmaids dresses and her wedding gown. I'm going through some of the same worries I had when I made my own wedding dress. First there were so many choices and so many ways you could go that it was overwhelming! We've gotten past that part. We have the pattern and fabric and a plan! This is good! But I'm a perfectionist and that makes things so hard, on me especially. ***I cannot give too many details about the dresses lest the Groom to be sees something he's not supposed to and the ...

  My Grandparents came up to TN to visit this past spring. They came for our bi-annual barn dance that my parents have put on since '04. And of course we spent some time at the lake while they were here. Grandma asked if I had a pre-made suit that might fit her. I didn't have one at the time... she had a top that fit her to a tee. We decided to draw a pattern from it and make her a top. For the bottoms I had a pair of maternity pants that she tried on. She loved the way the band around the belly felt. Rather than having a 1" band of elastic to hold the bottoms snug around the waist, she liked the band. I did end up cutting the band not so steep of a swoop like it would have been for a maternity pair.    The neckline she requested be square. Now this was the first time I've made a square neckline on a swimsuit. It worked out okay but when she tried it on it seemed to droop a bit. I suppose it was a little too wide. So I wasn...

The first one of these was done when someone saw my Rouched Maternity Top and asked if I could make this for her, but not in maternity. So I drew a pattern for her and put it together. My sisters Isabel and Anna help me model it in the pictures below...    Isabel models the purple suit that was ordered. It fit so I had to get pictures!!  Back of Isabel's suit and the front of mine. (mine has the nursing panel)  The bow tie...the bottoms were so wrinkled in this pic :-P   The next Suit made in this style was for my sister Anna. She wanted a suit totally out of a print. As you can see, Anna likes bright colors :-)   Anna also liked the fact that the top was adjustable, so she could make it as long as she liked!     A shot of the bottoms from the front  Back  Side Ties My sister Isabel is an independent kind of girl. She came over to get a lesson in how t...

This has been a dream of my mom's for quite some time. Babies life vests are so bulky and difficult to work with. The neck is so tight they can't even move. They can't sit in them because they're not short enough in the body. The only thing they can do is lay flat on their back, and they hate that. My mom has wanted to design and make a baby life vest for over a year now. She recently had an adult's life vest that the padding was all messed up inside, so she decided to cut it down to size and re-make it into a size that would fit a baby. She cut it apart and it sat on the counter for about a week. She was so funny, she was like "I know what I want to do but I need someone to get me started and help me cut it out" lol :-) So I brought Jubilee over and used one of her onsies to compare size and use as sort of a guide. Once it was cut out, mom started sewing it together. We got her going in the right direction and she took it as far as putting in the zippe...