Tag Archives: sewing

I made a dress!

March 20, 2012 Peneloping

It occurred to me today that I rarely, if ever, sew things correctly. Like hems and whatnot. If you look inside most things I make, it’s like small animals have been nesting inside, what with all the loose threads and bare edges.

Today I decided to learn some proper techniques. And below is the result (minus a zipper and a bottom hem)! The neckline and arm holes are understitched (minus the part where I decided to do the bib at the end so it didn’t get sewn into the rest of the neckline). The waist and sides are french seamed and the skirt is pieced together and then reinforced with a zigzag stitch.

This probably sounds mundane and most of you are probably going, “Well duh,” but I swear this is the first time I’ve actually done this on a garment I’ve sewn. Though, to be fair, most of what I’ve sewn has at least seen my mom’s serger.

I’m rambly because I’m tired. Next up, zipper and hem!

Whoops

February 16, 2012 Peneloping

A few weeks ago I decided that my yarn stash was getting ridiculous.

Well, respectively ridiculous, considering I’ve only been knitting for a year and I’m knitting on a student budget.

Anyway, I made a list of unfinished projects and projects I already have yarn for but haven’t started and projects I wanted to frog and make into better projects. And I decided I’m not allowed to buy yarn until that list is complete.

And I’ve been doing really well. The last time I bought yarn was nearly a month ago. (Is that true? I might be lying. I can’t remember.)

The problem is that apparently I’ve decided to compensate by picking up sewing again.

Last week I bought these. (Yes, that is a Janet Arnold book they are sitting on. Two actually. I love Janet Arnold. To bits. Lots of bits.)

And I just walked out of a fabric store with these.

And these.

No, I have no idea where this desire to make a quilt came from.

And no, I’m not entirely sure I love the combination of darker colors. Although I’m absolutely in love with the lighter ones.

So uh, yeah. Frugality fail.

Another zippered pouch

February 13, 2012 Peneloping

I made a new zippered pouch! I also made half of a skirt but it’s not done yet and therefore not interesting yet.

The last one I made only had two layers of cotton (the outside fabric and the lining) and felt really thin. I may have gone overboard on this one. It has eyelet lace fabric, lining for the lace, a layer of thick interfacing, and then the pouch lining fabric.

Does it count as using “leftover” fabric if you haven’t in fact made the thing you actually bought the fabric for?

(The black fabric on the left is going to be the collar detailing for my Violet Baudelaire coat. The black and white fabric is going to be a skirt. The blue dark blue is legitimately left over. And the interfacing is just interfacing.)

This one’s going to live in my purse and store little things that keep getting lost at the bottom of my purse, like bandaids and chapsticks.

When Big Kids Wear Warm Knitted Things

November 2, 2011 Peneloping

It occurred to me yesterday that the title of my blog is “When Big Kids Play Dress-up” and yet there’s hardly anything costume-related in here.

I’ve been sewing since I was about fourteen. I had gone to see Lord of the Rings with a friend and came home having decided to be Arwen when I grew up. Since then it’s grown increasingly dangerous for me to watch any sort of sci-fi/fantasy movies/tv shows because I will inevitably end up at the nearest fabric store picking out fabrics and notions so I can run home and recreate my favorite costumes whilst my bank account shrieks in pain.

In fact, I started this blog as a place to showcase and write about costuming adventures. Except then I learned to knit and since then pretty much everything has been about knitting projects. Whoops.

The point of all this rambling is, I’m going to have to remedy this. So expect some costumey-related posts in the near future.

Tutorial: Zippered Pouch

October 24, 2011 Peneloping

I really wish I’d thought to buy more than one zipper because I have enough fabric to make at least three and it’d be so cute to have matching ones in different sizes.

These are really easy to make, too!

You can make these in pretty much any size, as long as your zipper is long enough. If it’s too long, that’s ok, you can just trim it and the side seam will act as the zipper end. I measured my fabric to 6″ x 9″ and out of sheer laziness, I pinned all four layers together and cut them all at once.

This might be difficult to see in the photo, but next I took one of each type of fabric and put them together, wrong sides facing out, and then put the zipper between them, pinned it, and sewed them together. The front side of the zipper should be facing the right side of the outer fabric so the zipper won’t be stuck inside the bag once you’ve turned everything right side out.

If you don’t have a zipper foot or can’t be bothered to learn how one works (*guilty*) it helps to unzip the zipper about halfway, sew that half, and then re-zip it to sew the bottom half.

Once that’s done, you should be able to flip the wrong sides over so the right sides are visible and it should look like this.

Now with these sides flipped down like this, do the same thing to the other side of the zipper. Make sure you have the fabrics facing the right sides (lining fabrics should be facing right sides together and ditto outer fabrics).

When you’ve sewn that seam, you should be able to flip those over as well and it should look like this.

Next, flip the pieces so the lining is all on one side and the outer fabric is all on one side. Make sure you unzip it at this point.

Pin around the entire thing and sew 1/4″ from the edge around it, leaving about a 2″ gap at the bottom of the lining part. The zippy bits of the zipper should be facing the lining side so they’ll tuck properly when you turn it right side out.

Turn the entire thing inside out.

Pin and sew the bottom edge to close the gap.

Tuck the lining into the outer fabric.

And voila!