Ishi Dress

The lovely An from Straight Grain just came out with her newest pattern, the Ishi dress. Because it is a great design and because she is having a contest with some amazing prizes, I decided to make my own Ishi.

I wanted to model it after this crazy stripe dress I drafted for Drew a couple years ago, which still gets worn all the time.

All I needed to do was make a few extra cuts in the Ishi pattern and cut out my stripes in the different directions. These seersucker stripes are a lot more subtle then the neon orange I used in Drew's dress, but if you look closely you can see all the different stripey directions.

I love the color green on my little redhead.

Straight Grain patterns are meticulous and so nice to sew up. Thanks for checking out my stripey Ishi!

Bye!

Fringe and Swans...with Willow and Co

The new collection of patterns from Willow and Co have been making the internet rounds for a while now. These patterns are good, guys. Not only do the ladies of Willow and Co put out top notch patterns and directions, but they've got a unique modern aesthetic to their designs that stands out above most of the PDF pattern world (in my opinion :). Today I am sharing how I used fringe and swans to make the Antalya Dress (mines actually a tunic) and the London Backpack from their newest collection.

First up is the Antalya Dress pattern. I paired a very lightweight tencel denim chambray with some fringe trim to make this adorable top. It is airy and perfect for summer. I ended up cutting open the back and installing an invisible zip instead of the normal closure options.

Drew's shorts are these from Old Navy.

And now... the London Backpack! And swans!

I don't make many bags. In fact the only other bag I've made was Drew's first backpack for Kindergarten (see here). Making this backpack was such a fun challenge for me. It was challenging because I was using techniques I don't normally use, but it was not frustrating because the illustrations and directions are very clear and understandable. It was like, "I'm going to follow these directions exactly and hope it all turns out but I have no idea if it will." And of course it did!

So I couldn't just pick from the thousands of adorable fabric options out there already. I had to go and design what I was visioning in my head and get it printed out from Spoonflower. I bought some high-res swan images and created the black swans in a row print and paired it with the larger swan image. The back pack is lined with light blue with pops of neon yellow zippers.

I should also mention that I enlarged this bag from the original size. It is meant to be a medium sized bag, but I wanted her to be able to use it for school and be able to fit all her junk in it. so I added 3 inches of height and 1 inch to the width and just adjusted all the pieces accordingly.

And that's it!

Is it bad that summer has just begun and I am ready to load up that backpack already with fresh new school supplies and send her along to second grade? Kidding... sort of.

Thanks so much for having me as part of the tour, Willow and Co!

Dress Recap

Over a year ago I stood in front of the pantry cupboards of my old house and took some super awkward photos of me while trying to figure out my camera remote. I had made several dresses that I wanted to share here on the blog but didn't want to make a big deal out of taking pictures and ask my husband to do it. So now over a year has passed and I share the frustrating and not impressive photos of me, some hand-sewn dresses, and a very visible camera remote!

This first dress is from the Ladies Caroline Dress pattern by Mouse House Creations. The pattern and fit was great and I just added some easy design details with the white bias trim, the piece around the neck, and the sleeve trim. The owl fabric is a rayon challis from Fabric.com that they don't have available anymore.

This dress was completely self-drafted and I just wasn't at all bothered last year with ironing it before taking pictures, I guess. And below, I just stopped trying to hide the fact that I was taking pics with a remote and owned up to it.

I wear this dress once, sometimes twice, a week in the summer. It's just a self-drafted basic t-shirt type dress that feels like a soft nightgown. A great button placket tutorial I used is here.

This brown triangle and the next green polka dot midi dresses I made when I was about 7 months pregnant, but they were great last year post-pregnancy and I still wear them now too. (You can see my original midi dress I made here worn while 7 months prego!)

And that's a wrap. Nothing wrong with posting year old photos. There may be something wrong with my pathetic attempt at remote control shooting. But ah well.