Crafty: Pillowcase Dress

I'd been reading about the pillowcase dress for a couple weeks and I decided to find out what it was all about. A quick Google search and a few pins on Pinterest later, and I had my first pillowcase dress for Muffin complete.

I used the tutorial from Naptime Crafts. For this first one I did not use an actual pillowcase, but I might for the next one. Rather than do side seams, I kept the fabric folded in half from the first cut and made the one seam a center back seam. I like to be able to tell the back from the front easily. I used grosgrain ribbon to finish the armhole edges rather than folding the edges. You could also use bias tape. Since the fabric had a finished border edge, there was no hemming involved!

Center back seam

Eyelet border

I love this quick, easy dress. Since the shoulder ties are adjustable, this will grow with Muffin into a top as she gets taller.

I could easily sew up all my scrap fabric into a whole collection of them. But I'm going to restrain myself. I'll make a few, to experiment with different lengths and trims. There are plenty of different patterns to make with my scraps. (I received more patterns in the mail Friday and already started cutting out a few things!)

Crafty: Christmas Dress

I've got my sew on again, after months (years?) of laying dormant. I made Christmas dresses for Muffin and myself.

I had several parameters for these dresses. I wanted them to match, but not be exactly the same. I wanted to sew with fabrics I already had, so that limited my colors away from red and green. (Too literal for Christmas dresses, anyway.) My inspiration became "Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes," from The Sound of Music song, "My Favorite Things."

Muffin's is McCall's 6015. It's made from white and blue cotton shirtings and lined with the white cotton shirting. Mine is an older McCall's that I think is OOP now, 4581. It's white linen lined with white rayon.

Crafty: Simple Blouses

Several years ago I bought this pattern, Simplicity 3887, for easy, breezy lightweight shirts to bring to Africa with me. I made a muslin of that white shirt, the middle one on the left-hand side. I really liked it, but for some reason never got around to making wearable versions of it.

Fast forward to now, when I'm busting out of my largest shirts. I dug into my sewing stash, found the muslin, tried it on, moved the tie up so the shirt has an empire waist, and voila! -- the perfect shirt not only for my growing tummy but the tropical heat as well.

Because these shirts are not fitted and don't have careful tailoring, they are quick and easy to make. You just have to make sure it fits around the shoulders so that it doesn't slide off (if you have small shoulders like I do). The puffiness around the neckline and sleeves cover up a lot of mistakes!

I have lots of cottons and linens in my fabric stash and I even had some elastic for the sleeves so I didn't have to worry about shopping (and shipping). I cut out three shirts in different fabrics, so that it's not quite as obvious that they are exactly the same. But by using the same color thread for all three, I could sew them all up at the same time, speeding up the sewing time. I went from zero shirts to three in a few days. I want to make more, with some of the locally printed fabrics from here, as reminder of my Africa pregnancy. One of the most time-consuming parts of making the shirt for me is making the tie, because I hate turning such a narrow strip right-side-out. I've got some extra wide ribbon that I've been using, and you could use any ribbons, narrow scarves, or anything else appropriate that you've got laying around (saving time and using something you've already got).

And when I'm no longer pregnant and have back something resembling my original waist, I can move the tie back down to my middle, making this a cost-effective, versatile shirt.

The finished product (one of them, at least), covering up my 24 weeks' pregnant stomach:

Pattern envelope image from Simplicity.com.