I made a Dress......

So let me start this off my saying that I am not anything like Sara when it comes to dresses. This is to say that if someone gave me fabric and said "make a whole new wardrobe in one night" I would probably wear togas for awhile!! I just don't know how she does it. When I hear about the Sis Boom Rebecca shift, I thought I might give it a try. So here's my story!!

The fabric: I had this fabric from earlier in the summer when I would be teaching in TX and have my own classroom. The fabric was meant to be used for curtains!! I thought I would use this because I already had it and I had enough of it. I also used some leftover sky blue I had for the belt and neckline and I ended up using it for bias on the bottom because it was kind of short. Here it is before the back was done!

I thought that the directions were really clear and even though there were a TON of pages, it was easy to figure out what pages I needed to print and use. I definitely took advantage of the Frankenpatterning. My measurements spanned 4 dress sizes. The pattern said to add pleats to make things line up right. So I originally made the pleats in the front....big mistake! made a nice ledge. So I took them out and added them to the back (there is already one). This put said shelf in the back.....big surprise! Here is the shelf

So what I ended up doing is figuring out how much shorter I had to make the bottom of the top so that it would be the same length as the belt. It was 2 inches too long so I needed to take in an inch on each side. Instead of adding another pleat, I just made the original pleats bigger. I added an inch more to each one like this...

The middle 2 marks are where the original pleat was supposed to be and I went a half inch farther out on each side (which equals an inch) and did the pleat that way. It worked out soo much better. I did the bottom the same way. See, no more shelf!!

Ignore the bulge in back as I was slightly twisted when this was taken! (I promise!!)

The other thing I did different was installing the zipper. The whole glue stick thing just made a mess for me. I understand why the author put it in there, especially for someone with no zipper experience, but I did fine just lining it up on my own. 

My goal was to have a dress what came just above the knee but the dress ended up shorter than that so instead of hemming it, I made some bias and used that on the bottom. I would definitely recommend making it longer in the first place. It is always easier to make it shorter later! 

After making the first one, I decided to try it again with some jersey fabric I had. I made it the same way but with a jersey needle. (and I made the bottom longer!)

Don't you just love the shiny metallic of the fabric!!??

The nice thing about the jersey is that the edges are easier to finish.I just tucked them under and zig-zag sewed them. 

One other problem I had with both dresses was the arm hole. Majorly too big! I pinched them in to where I wanted them to be and sewed until they gradually met the original seam line. I meant to take pictures of this but forgot until it was too late.....sorry Sara!!

All in all, I think this is a great beginner project and I would love to try some other patterns like this to see what I can do. Now I think that I will go back to  quilting my blankets that are for Christmas gifts. If I am lucky, I will have them done by New Years! Thanks for hosting this Sara and best of luck to everyone sewing this and any other dress pattern out there!!

Tula Pink Pattern Reviews

Hi everyone! I am so glad that Sara asked me to test a quilt pattern for her. I had so much fun doing it. I am Kim from Kim's Krafts. I have been following Sara during the past year and then some and love all that she does. I actually did 2 patterns, one has already been done but I wanted to show you my version too!

The first one I did was the Grand Salon from the book Quilts from the House of Tula Pink! If you don't have this book you must get it! It is amazing and super informative. 

As you can tell from the pictures in the book, this quilt is a make-your-wall- look-pretty quilt and not so much a get-cuddly quilt. It really does look like a wall with pictures hanging on it. The first thing I had to decide was what fabric to use. I had just recently moved to Indianapolis so this was the perfect excuse to go visit Crimson Tate. I had heard soo much about it and fell in love instantly!! I looked around a million times and kept being pulled to some Amy Butler prints. I finally decide on prints from 2 different lines of hers that all went together, along with my favorite color of blue for the background and some brown stripes for the frames. She even had ribbon to match the fabric!!

This is a bag from the shop with a pic of the too cute Heather on it!!

I love how the brown lines aren't perfectly straight!

The only thing I couldn't find to buy was the buttons. I ended up making my own. It was super easy thanks to the kits I found to make them. And I just used scraps from the fabrics I was already using.

I made the buttons in 2 different sizes for variety.

The pattern calls for 1/4 yd of 8 prints for the pictures. I got a half yard of each because I knew they would be fussy cut and I wanted to make sure I could get good pictures from them. How much you need of your fabric depends on the size of your picture that you want to use. I did have some background fabric left over which is fine with me as I will use it to bind. I also had quite a bit of the strips left over from the frames. I might have mis-cut but maybe one shouldn't cut all of them at one time. 

The biggest tip I have when cutting these pieces is STAY ORGANIZED. You will have different sizes of the background and frame pieces and it is very easy to get them mixed up. I clipped the like ones together and the put a note on them so I knew what was what.

Once the cutting was done, it was smooth sailing! Straight stitches with rectangles. This would be a good beginner project as there wasn't a lot that could be messed up. Her diagrams are great and simple to follow. It went together really well and I like the fact that there aren't a lot of seams to line up. It is very forgiving if you happen to have some not-so-straight lines!

I machine stitched the ribbon down with coordinating thread and it was pretty easy. It says not to put the buttons on until after it is quilted but I pinned mine on so that you can see the finished product!

I love how it looks and how the blue pops!!

In the book she has it quilted to look like a wooden wall which I love. 

I am undecided as to how to finish it, but I did get this AB fabric from her Midwest Mod collection on sale so I will definitely be using this for the back with the blue for the binding!

Let me know if you have any questions and hope you like it!!

The 2nd pattern I did was Space Dust. When I heard that this was paper piercing, I HAD to have it. I got hooked on paper piercing during Sara's New York Beauty quilt along. Once again I couldn't decide on the fabric and I was cruising out there on Etsy and fell in love with some (you guessed it!) Amy Butler polka dots.

The pattern called for 22 1/4 yds of fabric and as you can see I used 5. I got a yard of 4 of them and 1.5 yd of the cherry one to cover the rest. I had a little of each left (might have had to re-cut some triangles a couple times). For the background I found some awesome black with shiny silver sprayed across it. I only got 2 yards of the background as I didn't want the full sized quilt but wanted more of a wall hanging. (Thanks for the idea Sara!!) I had enough left to cut the binding for it too!

The week that I did this was the week of premieres on TV so I sewed during the day and cut and de-papered at night. It worked out pretty good for me. 

I already knew how to piece this together but Tula gives an awesome step by step guide and if you have have never done this before please practice with scraps before you dig into the real thing! As for color placement, I can't just be random- I am one of those plan it out people. I printed a blank copy of the pattern, got my sons crayons, and colored away. It took a few different designs to figure out what I wanted and what wouldn't make me go craaazy!

This was the final picture decided on. I think it came together well!

I had this hanging up during my son's birthday party and everyone loved it.

No clue as to how to quilt it! Nothing I can do to it will compare to how Tula had hers sewn....

But maybe one day I will come up with something that will give it a little bit of justice!!

Thanks again Sara for putting this all together and good luck to everyone out there getting their Tula on!!

Playing Teacher

So my mother-in-law is in town this week and she wants me to help her make a little blanket for my niece. She couldn't find what she wanted but I looked online and found this

at FGS and she loved it!
Her job was to cut it apart (and she handled that)
I thought she might try piecing it together and I even sent her a diagram...

but she waited for me so we went out and got some pink, yellow, and blue to go along with it.
She has finished one row with only one messup! She is halfway thru the 2nd row. Hopefully she can get most of it done by Wed. We leave to take her home Thurs am!

I also finished another block in the pellon Cathedral Window sew a along. 

PS-
My ma in law also found some thread that she gave me!

It is wonderful Madeira thread and there are some awesome metallics in there!!!

Sports weekend

I had a great sporting weekend. Friday night hubby got tickets from work for the Indianapolis Fever tourney game.

Not sure why it is sideways, but you can see that we were at the very top of the arena. The won this game and went on to win the championship on Sunday!!

On Sunday my dad and my father-in-law and I went to the Colts vs the Browns game.

It was a beautiful day and the big window and roof were open!

Go Browns!!

Prayers before the game!

HUGE flag

The Browns ended up losing by a few points but it was fun and I hope to do it again. Bengals also lost Sunday night so that made my day better!

For the love of Pellon

I am addicted to Pellon for interfacing and now they have some cool projects on their homepage. I am currently working on 2 of the sew-alongs. On is for a Halloween wall hanging and the other is a sampler of Cathedral windows (these are harder than they look but well worth it!) The Cathedral has some awesome prizes for those that complete the blocks and then for those that have the 9 blocks put together! 
Here is some of what I have done.

I still need to sew around some of the applique but I love these blocks!