Ottobre 03/2014-35 dress

After I finished cutting out my last dress, I had about a yard of fabric left over. I don't really use ITY much in small pieces, but I thought Myra might like a dress to match mine, so I went hunting for a pattern with similar features, particularly the gathering in the bodice and skirt.

After a perusal of my Ottobre collection, I found this dress from the 03/2014 issue. I love the style lines. It's a really nice echo of my dress, with the bodice gathers and waistband, but with a more youthful feel.

Ottobre suggested woven fabrics for it, but it works well in this lightweight knit with very few changes. I omitted the zipper, and rather than gathering the neckline with traditional gathering stitches, I used clear elastic so that the neckline would have sufficient stretch and recovery for the dress to go over Myra's head.

And of course, I added pockets. Dresses need pockets.

The design of the dress is fairly straightforward. The bodice gathers into the neckline binding and into the waistband at center front and center back.The skirt is full and gathered evenly around the waistband. Since the design is intended for wovens, the waistband has some ease in a knit.

I used my coverstitch binder to do the neckline and armholes. The pattern includes a pattern piece for bias binding, which I used to measure the elastic for the neckline. Myra loves her new dress and says she understands now why I like to wear dresses every day. They're so comfortable! Now to go hide my ITY stash before she claims it all...

Avengers Assemble! Phase 1

A few months ago I came across some Marvel Avengers themed jersey at fabric.com. Although we are generally a DC family, we'll admit that the Avengers can be pretty awesome as well. Shirts were needed.

I started with Logan. His shirt is from the 03/2010 issue of Ottobre. It's a short sleeved raglan tee with a neckband and sleeve cuffs. I elected to do the sleeves only in the Avengers print. The remainder of the shirt is Laguna knit from fabric.com.

I could pretend I mixed the fabrics to make my Avengers print stretch farther, but the truth is, I wanted to add an HTV decal with my Cricut. I love that thing. Black makes a nice dramatic background for red!

When I was selecting patterns, I almost passed this one by. I wasn't sold on the sleeve cuffs. I'm really glad I went ahead and did them though. I like the ringer effect of the band.

The fit of the tee is long and slim, which has a nice modern look, despite the fact that the pattern was published 6 years ago. Ottobre is always ahead of the game! Duncan's tee is from the same 03/2010 issue, but his is number 18. It's the same style, but in a different size range.

The two fabrics are well matched in weight and both are nice quality, which means the boys are happy and comfortable in their new shirts.

In order to keep things extra comfortable for my sensitive guys, I made size tags out of scraps of HTV to iron onto the inside of the shirts. I had been using woven tags to keep track of sizes, but I like this so much better! No more itchy tags!

Duncan approves. And there's lots more Avengers fabric left to use! Stay tuned for more Super Sewing!

Ottobre 06/2011-21 & 04/2004-35

Myra starts preschool in 2 weeks, and despite the several dresses I made her last month (one of which she has already ruined), I suddenly freaked out and decided she needs a new school dress.

My mother sent me this adorable fabric and as soon as I saw it, I knew it had to be the jumper on the cover of the 06/2011 issue of Ottobre. It's even intended for bias cut plaids, so I thought I was in the clear with regards to pattern matching.

I did manage to chevron the dominant pink and orange stripes at the zipper, which was no mean feat and involved a lot of basting and wonder tape.

I also managed to chevron one side seam, again matching the pink and orange stripes. Unfortunately, since the dominant stripes are only in one direction, this works out like an uneven plaid, so there was no way to match all three seams. I decided the CB matching was more important, so I had to sacrifice the left side. I'm not even going to show you. It's too embarrassing. I almost decided to just cut this on the straight grain, but I just couldn't talk the fabric into it. It really wanted to be a bias cut jumper. Don't you hate it when your fabric gives you sass??

The pattern is designed for wool, and is lined, but for this fabric, I decided a facing was a better option, so I drafted an all in one facing from the main pattern pieces and used Trena's all machine, clean finish lining method. It was a little tricky getting the dress through those little straps, but it worked out. I also finished the facings with the interfacing, using the Sunny Gal method. I really need to take the time to finish more of my facings this way. It really looks fabulous. I made a narrow, serged and topstitched hem instead of the 1 inch hand sewn hem the pattern calls for. I'm glad I did, as it turned out a bit on the short side. I'll lengthen it an inch or so when I make it again.

I made a quick long sleeve tee to go under the jumper. Can you believe that child doesn't already have a long sleeve hot pink tee? I used Ottobre 04/2004-35, which I have used before for Logan. It is the same as the Creative Workshop 301 tee pattern, which is what the jumper is paired with in the Ottobre magazine. I keep thinking it needs an embellishment on the jumper, but I'm going to leave it be for now. Looking at that print for long is a little dizzying! Myra loves it. She's a bit dizzying at times herself.

Ottobre 04/2004-35

Poor Logan hasn't had much representation in the sewing room of late, but he really needs some warm weather gear, so I started off with a couple of quick long sleeve tees to get his winter wardrobe going.

Pardon the yoghurt stains on the black tee.  He wore it before I could get a picture - before I even hemmed it,  in fact.

I think he likes it.  The applique design is based on an illustration from one of his favorite books, I Love Trucks.  I let him pick which truck to put on his shirt.  I think that this one will get a lot of wear.  I managed to stretch out the neckline while sewing it.  I've been having a lot of trouble with binding knits lately!  It recovered well during the day, though, so I think it will be fine.  I did think the neckline was a bit large, so I raised it on the green stripe shirt.

While I was working on these shirts, tragedy struck in my sewing room.  I hauled out all of my tracing materials to get this pattern ready.  As I unrolled my soil separator paper (which is what I use to trace patterns), I came to the end of the roll!  I knew it was coming soon, but I thought I had a few yards left.  Oh well - off to Lowe's to get some more - only to discover that Lowe's no longer carries it!!!  In fact, the isn't any available in this whole freaking town!!  Oh no!!  So, I'm going to have to order some off the internet, which means waiting for shipping during the Christmas season.  Which means I won't be able to trace off any patterns in the interim.  So, if there isn't much going on here, you know why...