The Imaginative Seamstress

I think this was the first Maternity top that I'd made from cotton fabric. I made this one for me out of recycled fabric from the first dress I ever made for me. I LOVE this fabric. So darling! I used a non-maternity pattern.   I used option C, the Green Dress. And basically what I did was take the piece of fabric that was supposed to stop at the underbust and cut it really long, keeping the line where the under bust was and gathered it there to the lining that only went to the underbust and had darts and such in it.    So like I said in the first post I had on another maternity top from this pattern... This top looks great with jeans, but not as great with a skirt. Maybe if the skirt was long and thin it would look alright??  7 months     Back. I loved the way this top was cut, it just had a really neat look to it. On the down side, it was nearly impossible to hide bra straps with this top. And I ha...

This Summer a friend of mine had given me a skirt to turn into maternity for her.. I took it a bit further than she asked. Noticing that the hem of this denim skirt was rather ragged I suggested cutting off the hem and putting a ruffle of a different kind of fabric on the bottom. And then I went even further (that's me, not knowing when to stop..) and decided it would be fun to make her a maternity top to match. All was well intended and it looked pretty good together but in the end I found that I liked the skirt just with a t-shirt and the top that I'd made looked better with a pair of jeans.   I also wanted to attempt a tutorial with this project so I took pictures that I'll post and I'll try to describe how I made this outfit. Enjoy!!!  Here is the pattern I used. Since it was an empire waist it made it easy to convert to maternity. I used option A...the pink dress.   First i copied the pattern, brought up the front neckline and cut out the lining...

This is practically the same thing as the Scrunchy Maternity Top , but it also has a front panel for nursing added in. The pictures are from a customer. This is the 3rd Maternity + Nursing Suit I've made, none of which have been for me... The ladies seem to love them!      This picture shows the maternity belly band really well!  There's an over panel with elastic in it that covers over the under portion of the Swim Top. The under portion can be pulled down and the over portion can be pulled up to easy access your nursing bra. Outdoor picture; Yay! :-)

A friend from FL was here in July with her lovely little family, they joined us at the lake where we enjoyed the lake and my parent's houseboat. My friends were going to be adding another little person to their family not long down the road...she was 5mo pregnant. Her swim pants were board shorts with a panty liner in them. They weren't maternity, just a couple sizes large so they'd fit nicely under her belly. I offered to switch them to maternity for her and she was thrilled! So, I set to work, letting her watch (she's a seamstress too) me cut them apart and redesign them :-) The first thing I do is cut off the waist band and cut out the zipper, then I sew the flap closed. I always cut the front in a nice swoop for the baby belly. The belly band is made from swimwear fabric. From the fold I measure about 13.5" and cut a slanted line...less full toward the top, where your back sort of dips in, and a little more full toward the waistline at center back. I do give a ...

 Someone asked me to write a post on my wedding dress. First off I will say that the thought of making my own wedding dress seemed way over my head. I had no idea where to start with designing it. There were so many things you could do...lace overlay, sequins, plain white satin, colors on the dress...no that was pretty much never an option for me, but still it wasn't easy trying to pick a design, pattern, fabric... Josh had proposed 3 days before my family went on vacation to FL so mom and I planned to go looking at the mall and a dress shop to get some ideas. So one of the days out of our week there, mom and I went dress shopping. Here are some of the dresses we tried out...     Very Pretty, too big and the lace stuff was terribly stiff and annoying     This one was awesome but I didn't think I could dance in it since it wouldn't let me lift my arms  Cute, too short. See the lace overlay and the pretty ...