Off the Clock

Just a short post to share a pic from the 1950's Garden Party Bridal Shower that I attended this past weekend.  I am wearing  Simplicity 4560 , my daughter is wearing  Butterick 6049 , and my granddaughter is wearing McCall's 6303 (both the dress and the hat, which I never blogged about but here is the pattern pic ). The baby clothing patterns are terrible, in my experience, at giving you any idea of what size to make.  I made the size medium which was much too big on her last summer as a six month old but fits her well this summer as an 18 month old.  Good to know for future projects.

Simplicity 4560 Mom circa 1959 I am attending a bridal shower this weekend that has a 1950's garden party theme.  I love the idea of a vintage clothing theme and set out to find a dress to make.  I was inspired by this pic of my Mom from 1959.  My mom has a stash of original patterns from various eras and I chose the above Simplicity 4560 pattern to make.  It was even in my size!  This pattern only makes the one style dress but it is sized with separate pattern pieces for short, medium and tall. If you are here about the crinoline you can skip all the learning curve and head straight to the Crinoline Directions. Simplicity 4560 with a crinoline This was a simple dress to make, but there are some changes I would do if I were to make it again. I made the tall version (rated for 5'7" and up) but I wish I would still have added one more inch to the length of the bodice (I am 5'7").  Rather than using the arm and neck facings, I lined the bodice usin...

I was in the mood to make a new shopping bag, so I started off with the google.  There are lots of options out there.  The one that I liked the best was the Market Tote from Bijou Lovely , and there is a great tutorial at her blog.  I found some quilting weight fabrics in my stash that I had bought to make aprons, but I didn't have quite enough and was looking for something else to use for the lining when I ran across project leftovers from a flowered denim skirt , a pair of disaster pants  and a cover for Sergio .  I thought because these were heavier fabrics they may be better for this project, and I thought the colours went together well. Once I got the outer shell done I decided I liked it so much that I would add pockets inside to make it more like a purse, hence the "shopping purse".  I used my large Michael Kors bag as inspiration because it is about the same size.  I checked out how they did things on the inside and used their idea...

Well hello out there!  I've been spending quite a bit of time in my sewing room since retiring but clearly not spending any time blogging about it.  I need to remedy that.  So I'll jump right in with the project I finished yesterday - Simplicity 1696 . This is one of Simplicity's "Perfect Fit" patterns.  They give you 1" side seams in order to make appropriate adjustments.  I feel that this pattern fit me straight out of the gate and other than the length I made no alterations.  As with all big 4 patterns I sew one size down from what my measurements call for.  They have you take a back crotch length measurement to determine if you are a regular or curvy fit.  That doesn't take into account how tall you are, so even though mine showed me as a curvy fit I made the regular.  I think that was the right choice. The instructions were straight forward and easy enough to follow.  I wasn't sure which side of the waistband was to be interfa...

UPDATE:  My daughter has been using these diapers on my granddaughter for a year now and it is time for an update.  These diapers are not sufficient on their own, even when granddaughter was very small.  The pads can't soak up fast enough and leaks abound.  So instead daughter bought flour sack toweling to use as diapers.  Yes, they need to be folded, but she felt they worked really well and were easily adjustable as granddaughter grows.  She decided against having me make them out of flannel because she didn't want to use diaper pins and the plastic clasp hooky thing she uses doesn't grab the flannel as well because the flannel is too tightly woven.  She does use these shells along with the flour sack diapers, and they have worked out really well for her.  As far as the inserts go she uses them to supplement the flour sack diapers for overnight. A diaper with one main soaker snapped in at the top. The bottom snap is to add a booster. ...

Now that I've made the prototype diaper and got my daughter's approval (she loves it), I can now go ahead and make a stash of these for her.  Once I was partway through the first batch I thought I should make a tutorial post so that if I don't get to them all right away I will remember how I made them lol.  I'm not including the actual pattern because there are already lots of free patterns out there - Google is your friend.  The one shown here was done with a commercial single size pattern that I converted to a one size pattern, but for the next batch I am going to try this pattern  from this site  (which has a ton of great resources and tutorials).  The reason for this is that I have read complaints that many of the commercial diapers aren't quite long enough for older babies/toddlers and the linked pattern is a little longer than what I am currently using.  I bought a meter of PUL in each of three colours.  By staggering the pattern back and f...

So it's been since April that I've posted.  I guess it's true what they say about retirement being so busy! lol  I have worked on a number of projects from the garden to the garage to the sewing room that I really should have posted about.  Maybe I will do a catch up post one day. In the mean time, today has been spent in the sewing room working on cloth diapers for my daughter's first child due early in the new year.  She was given some hand-me-downs from a family member and they are a whole lot more complex than what I made when she was a baby.  I spent the first part of the afternoon replacing worn out elastic and velcro on the hand-me-downs which was a good opportunity to see how commercial cloth diapers are put together.  Then I spent a crazy amount of time making my first prototype - the million dollar diaper based on how long it took me to put this together! lol  The pattern I had bought was for a pocket diaper but it turns out she prefers the...