Category: sewing

Polka dot Ice Cream Dress

I finally sewed an Oliver + S pattern! I feel like I’ve gained entrance to some secret society. 🙂 The fabrics were a pair of polka dots from our Vashon Island trek. (The photos aren’t quite true, the teal dots are brighter in real life than in these evening photos.) It’s been quite a project, spread over many, many naptimes in the last three weeks. Natasha was here to babysit tonight, and I finally finished it off. The pattern is wildly detailed – all sorts of overstitching and understitching and hem finishing and interfacing and ironing seams in different directions. I learned so much and I’m so happy with the way it turned out.
This is the ice cream dress, view A, in the 12-18 month size.

I still need to find a button for the back at the neck.

Isn’t it bright and sweet and cheerful? 🙂 It’s nicer in person, where you can appreciate all of the details. Shown here: gathers, neck hole notch, button loop, overstitching on the lined yoke.

The pockets have a band of accent trim with notches, and overstitching. The pattern has you stitch a seam to use as your fold line, it makes pressing the curve so much easier. I will do this more. There’s also overstitching on the yellow hem.

A detail of the sleeve. There are only two exposed hems in the dress (on the sides of the teal portion), and those are finished so they won’t fray. All of the remaining edges are trapped in the lining. It took ages to sew but it looks so pretty. That little teal hem at the underarm side of the sleeve is only an inch and a half long, and it looks so tiny and precise. Satisfying.

The bottom panel was worked in four pieces (front and back lining, front and back exterior), and again it trapped the unfinished teal edge so that everything looked pretty and finished. The hem used understitching – the first time I’ve heard the term but it’s supposed to make the hem lie flatter and have better structure. It looks SO pretty.

The sizing seems pretty true to the numbers, she is almost 10 months and this is still roomy. I can’t wait to find a good button. Right now it’s hanging on her wall – it’s such a cheerful, lovely finished thing.

Finish it up Friday

The fronts (tops?) of these little coasters were done in an evening, but they languished while I bought grey fabric, and washed and ironed it, and pondered what to do with the backs.

I finally just went for a simple strip of squares, and quilted a box around the edge and around that strip.

I’m really pleased with the way these turned out, all sea glass and appealing, and I’m very excited to be past the 2004 mismatched felted coasters – wonderful, but a change was overdue.

I also got our paint samples up on the wall in the fish room where the coasters will go. So exciting. It’s the first time we’ve ever bought samples, usually we wing it based on the tiny color chips with mixed results, and I’m feeling very adult and polished about this extra step.

This might be my project next week, depending how much Halloween costume progress I make over the weekend. The ceiling needs to be painted too (in this room and in the hallway), so I’m gearing up for that, never fun but complicated by all of our can lights and the fish tank. Nuisance aside, I’m excited about how much nicer it will look when I’m done. This month marks our five year anniversary of being in the house, and I’m excited that this room is getting close to “done” after so many temporary stages. 🙂 And I’m amused that my small little coaster project has progressed into painting.

I’m linking to the “finish it up Friday” series on Crazy Mom Quilts. Fun to join in for the first time after reading her blog for years. 🙂

PS. Orange entry hallway? Cheerful possibility.

Kevin’s coaster

My coaster project from the other night hit a small pause as I need to buy grey linen for the back, but a new project sprung up in its place. I was trimming the quilted fronts after dinner while we waited for the kiddo to finish eating, and Kevin said he wouldn’t mind a coaster for his desk from some of the remnants. I said he could choose his own colors if he wanted instead of just taking scraps, so he pulled an eye-bending combination of red, green, pale yellow and orange sherbet from the stack. We laughed – our ideas of what goes with what never line up. But I took it under advisement, and subbed out the orange and yellow solids with more saturated prints.


The back is from a very loud print that I’d meant to make into an organizer/caddy for his flash umbrellas back before we bought the drawers which rendered that project unnecessary. I’m glad to finally get to make him something with it.


The coaster in its new home, on his desk:


Kevin seemed really pleased with the gift, bright, cheery, autumnal little thing. He said it makes him want to clean up the desk clutter so that you can see it better. Best kind of sewing – quick and highly appreciated. The longest/hardest part was hiding the seam in the binding (I put it in one of the corners). Even hand-stitching the binding only takes a few minutes in something this size.

Pajama parade: City pants

I loved this building print, and there was a coordinating taxi cab check that was the same soft, high quality fabric, so I got it even though it’s a bit seizure-inducing. These are a small nod to my brother David, who’s lived in New York City for five years now. 🙂

I forgot to take a picture, but the tag is a scrap of tractor ribbon – a small joke.

For the shirt, I sewed a 3/8″ bit of the yellow checkers along the bottom of a strip of buildings, then cut the tops and appliqued them as a city skyline.

Fiddly but fun, and I like the way it turned out against the red shirt.