April 28, 2014

Blushing Izzy Dress Tutorial

April 28, 2014/ Lindsay

Vintage inspired girls dress tutorial with a gathered, cross-front bodice, V back, zipper, and full, gathered skirt with a built in petticoat lining. It is made from vintage sheets.

April 23, 2014

Vintage Easter Dresses

April 23, 2014/ Lindsay

Oooh- the word "vintage" has become oh, so trendy.

Yes, I am jumping on the bandwagon.

It started out with this...

...two flat vintage sheets that my nana bought maybe in the 1970s and vintage trims, notions, and buttons given to me by some friends. The colors matched perfectly. There are 5 colors in the sheets (other than white) and I have 5 girls, so they each got their own accent color.

So, after 6 days of wild sewing, early Easter morning my girls were wearing new dresses from the vintage sheets that belonged to their great-great-grandmother.

I am so blessed to be able to do something special like this for my girls.

Tutorials coming soon(ish)...

***UPDATE*** Here are the tutorials and full posts for each dress!

Sunrise Dress Tutorial

Blushing Izzy Dress Tutorial

Lydia’s Sweetheart Dress Tutorial

Gracie Dress Tutorial

Vintage Baby Collar Tutorial

March 19, 2014

Grace's Quiet Book ~ Purse Page

March 19, 2014/ Lindsay

Last one! I think this might be Grace's favorite page. She likes little purses and apparently she likes makeup a whole lot, too. I thought she just loved eating chapstick, but this isn't edible, so that is not the case.

Again, purse quiet book pages are pretty common. I bet you can find a bunch of them on Pinterest. I kept mine simple and in line with the "shabby chic" theme of this book with the fabrics.

The handle is just fused on the background with heat'n'bond and a satin stitch holds it down.

The purse bottom was made out of three pieces. The front was cut and sewn onto the zipper, then the front and back were sewn right sides together and flipped through the handy zipper opening. I stitched the whole thing to the background very carefully about 1/8" from the edge.

Hmmm... I am having problems getting that pic to load on here, but hopefully you can see what I mean. In hindsight, I wish I had sewn the back with the right side facing in. Lots of "I should have done it that way" moments in this book. If you make one you can fix it, OK?

I didn't know what else to put inside the purse besides makeup. The extra flower from the flower page gets tucked inside and I have found a few small items laying around to toss in there, too. But she LOVES the pretend makeup!

The lipstick and compact are made from scraps of fabric and the little pad thingy is made of felt. Velcro on the compact would have been a nice touch. I may try to make eye shadow one day, but she insists on putting her pretend makeup on me during church and I don't want her to poke me in the eye.

So, that is it! I hope you enjoyed this series and maybe found a little inspiration. If you would like to see the rest of them you can click HERE. I put them all on one handy page.

Now, back to the Easter baskets!

March 10, 2014

Grace's Quiet Book- Button Flower Page

March 10, 2014/ Lindsay

OK. So the button flower page idea is pretty common. I have seen many examples on Pinterest so I am not gonna' cite just one. I did change it up just a bit for mine, though. Look closely...

See? The flowers are reversible! All I did was fuse two scraps of fabric together (some of them are truly vintage fabrics!) Then, I traced a flower and sewed along the line I traced. Very carefully, I trimmed about 1/8" away from the seam all around the flower shape. A quick buttonhole in the center and - TADA! - reversible flowers.

The stems are just green ric-rac and the leaves are made of felt. I used a contrasting fabric for the bottom to represent grass. I stitched some bright yellow buttons at the top of the "stems" to hold the flowers. Now I wish I would have used something a little more "vintage" or even plain white. This was one of the first pages I made, so I hadn't gotten carried away with the "shabby-chic-vintagey" look yet.

reversible fabric button flowers quiet book page

Grace hasn't quite mastered the whole button skill thing yet, but this is good practice. She can make patterns with the flowers and work on her colors, too. So, it is educational and cute. :)

I keep updating THIS page with links and pics of all of the quiet book pages in this little series so click HERE if you would like to see more.

If I get a moment or two, I will try to link up at these parties:

Sew Can Do, Motivate Me Monday, Take a Look Tuesday, Naptime Creations, Carolyn's Homework, Handmade Tuesdays, Inspire Me Wednesday, We Did It Wednesday, Adorned From Above, Your Whims Wednesday, Not Just a Housewife, Weekly Homemaking Party, Create It Thursday, The 36th Party, Friday Favs Party, Think Pink Sunday, and Threading Your Way.

March 03, 2014

Grace's Quiet Book- Baby & Bassinet Page

March 03, 2014/ Lindsay

I think every little girl this age LOVES baby dolls. With 5 girls we have so many dolls in this house it is not even funny! The baby idea was an obvious choice for a quiet book page, but I still wanted to keep it simple. (Some of the other pages were wearing me out!)

I ended up making a bassinet to hold the baby. It is made pretty much like a pocket with a piece of gathered eyelet trim sewn along the bottom.

The baby is a miniature version of a swaddle baby. (I made one of those a long time ago and blogged about it HERE.) The concept of the swaddle baby is that the blanket is already attached, making it easier for a little one to wrap the baby up (saving me from rewrapping it every 20 seconds.)

This time I hand embroidered the face on it and used a smaller piece of gathered eyelet lace and ribbon to make a faux bonnet, which I like so much better than the original swaddle baby I had made.

Grace often wants to drag a baby doll along to church or tells me she has to go potty so that she can sneak down and swipe one out of the nursery to bring back upstairs. I thought this might help with that, but we usually end up in the nursery when I have to go feed Hannah anyway. That is just the season of life we are in, I suppose.

If you want to see all of the pages in Grace's Quiet Book you can click HERE.

If I get a moment or two, I will try to link up at these parties:

February 24, 2014

Grace's Quiet Book- Tea Party Page

February 24, 2014/ Lindsay

This quiet book page was another really big hit with Grace. It does eliminate some of the quiet aspect of the book, though, because a tea party is not as fun by yourself and she is always offering me tea and sweets. How can I refuse? :)

When you open the page it is just a table with attached plates (less to clean up). The tablecloth is gathered and topstitched. Let me just say that I really, really, really wish I had curved it down to match the top of the table. It drives me crazy!

There is a tiny piece of velcro holding the bottom of the tablecloth in place at the bottom outside corner. When you lift the tablecloth up there is a storage pocket underneath.

It hold all you need to have a little tea party!

The teacups are made with blue cotton scraps fused to brown scraps and brown scraps fused to white flannel (for some "stickiness" on the cotton page.) The two double-layer, fused squares were then sewn in a teacup outline with the tops left open and cut out. (Backstitching is very important here. On the ones I didn't go over well they are starting to pull apart and will need fixed.)

The tea bags are made with white cotton folded in half and sewn in a tea bag shape. I even stuffed a little real, fruity tea in there before sewing the whole way around. Seam rippers come in handy for lots of things! :) Bakers twine is sewn in to connect the tag and tea bag.

But, if you aren't in the mood for blue teacups, you can also use the purple set...

The teapot is just two layers- cotton and flannel.

Besides being purple, these tea cups are a lighter shade of brown. I couldn't get a great shot of the inside but you can see the flannel back here, too.

What is a tea party without some sweets?

The chocolate chip cookies were a pain!!! The kids destroyed my Frixon pen, so I was trying to sew from the back side of the cookie and it would shift so that I kept missing the chips I had embroidered on the front.

I told you to remember the pie from THIS page. Well, here is a teeny, tiny version! I wove the little strips and laid it over the circle that was fused onto the felt. Then I sewed around the circle and trimmed the edges. Around the felt circle of the bottom crust I used pinking shears.

This page has the most detail, by far. There are a lot of little pieces to it, so that may be something to consider if you don't want to clean up after your kid.

There are three more pages to go and I have a page with the links to all of the pages in Grace's Quiet Book HERE.

If I get a moment or two, I will try to link up at these parties:

February 17, 2014

Grace's Quiet Book- Paper Dolls Page

February 17, 2014/ Lindsay

The paper doll fabric I found two years ago started this whole quiet book thing. Yeah. I procrastinate a little.

I was totally inspired by THIS paper doll quiet book page so you can read all about it there. Stef gives a nice tutorial on how she made hers. The only thing I did differently on the dolls was that I used a blanket stitch and left some of the white edge around the dolls.

On the clothes, I did three layers of interfacing and fused them to a layer of flannel so that they kinda' stick to the fabric and they are very durable.

Also, I was a bit lazier. I made a dresser instead of an armoire. I just made a pocket out of two layers of interfaced brown fabric. I stitched rectangles on to resemble drawers and sewed on some vintage buttons for drawer pulls. In hindsight, I wish I would have done two knobs on each drawer. Anyway, it holds all of the clothes very nicely.