The Imaginative Seamstress

Yep, today has been my Birthday. My sweet sissy came by to watch my girlies while I did some errands. I'm totally tired because I stayed up too late last night. Hoping to get all the laundry and dishes in hand before the hubby comes home. Probably gonna play Ticket to Ride or Catan tonight. We had celebrated early and had dinner just the 2 of us, about a week ago, so no big date night tonight. Its been a good day. I caught a short nap with my youngest and wish I could still be sleeping :-)  And for my birthday I'll share a photo of me at a very young age. In this photo I'm wearing a dress-up 'bride' outfit that my Grandmother made from the leftovers of my Aunt's wedding gown. My Grandmother had also made my Aunt's wedding gown. You see folks, it was destiny that I be a seamstress. My Grandmother, my Mother, and now me. Love it!!! :-)  So this is me, as a little princess. Spoiled by my sewing Grandma, and my sewing Mother. Its so much fun ...

This was an order for Mother and Daughter suits.   In this photo, the black skirt is not actually the bottoms that were ordered with the suit...its just a skirt that makes a perfect photo prop, no matter which top I put with it :-)  And the top, just like the little girl's scrunch top, without ties... I've done it with a woman's size too...  The reason I came up with not having ties on a girl's suit was my imagining that children would play with the strings. That they might easily become untied, or pulled on, even become a hazard in the water. You never know with kids! Anyway, I've taken that same idea and applied it to an adult's top. Not for the same reasons though. The reasons I tried an adult's top is in theory it was going to be easier to construct than the original scrunch top, and in theory it would take less fabric, because I knew it took some less to do it this way. Well, the using less fabric thing didn't pan out like I thought ...

Each Christmas we draw names with my husband's family for Christmas. This year I got my Sister in love, Amy. She's the only girl in the family, and being a girl myself, I like it when I can draw either her, or my Mother in love. Its just more fun for me to get to think of something girly to give! I decided to make her a new swimsuit. I knew she had grown a lot (mostly in height) and would need a new suit for the coming Summer. Her mom made her last  suit and did a really good job! I knew a suit was going to be a good deal of work, but it would also make a great gift! I had 2 pieces of scrap fabric, where there was just enough to squeeze this out. And the best part was, that they went together pretty good!! I know it doesn't look quite right on my size 8 dress form. And there's a reason for that. Though Amy measured a perfect size 8, she was a perfect size 8 in everything but height. At a 60" tall, she hits the height for a size 14. I had to bunch the t...

Inspired again by questions from my customers :-) I love you guys! You keep me writing!!! A customer wrote today asking about what I could do for her as she's going to be having a water birth with her soon expected child. She asked about a skirt with panties that snapped at the crotch. I wondered how comfortable that would be. I gave her some pictures of what I'd done for my most recent birth, which was a water birth. I simply bought a maternity tank and panty off of ebay, for like $15. Yeah, lets do this as smart as possible! Am I right?    I knew I wanted a pair of panties and a skirt, but I wanted them separate, not together. So when it came time to push a baby out, I could still be wearing a skirt and not feel like I was naked. Brilliant right? I thought so! I got this cute brown suit off of ebay and paired some solid brown fabric with it, making a skirt with a comfortable belly band.    I didn't finish the top edge on ...

In my fabric choices you'll find some that are labeled "Heavy Weight" Well, what does that mean? Today I'm going to talk about heavy weight swim fabrics. These are different than the standard 6oz fabrics that I grew up with, these are 8oz fabrics. What are the differences? I'm about to tell you.  In 2012, after 20+ years of being around swim fabrics, I thought I knew something about them... Something, maybe, but everything? No. My first encounter with heavy weight fabric was when the supplier sent me what I thought was the wrong fabric. In truth, I may not have read through all the details before purchasing. What happened was I had bought a small piece of yardage, in a print that I liked. I did this to get a feel for what kind of fabric it was before buying more. Because, as I've said before, its difficult to tell the type/quality of a fabric when you're just looking at a picture online. When I received the fabric in the mail, I was really happy with ...