A small favor...please...

Some of you may remember this top. I made it about four weeks ago from the Jamie Dress pattern. I didn't care for the skirt portion of the dress so I turned it into a top!!!!


Well, my dearest Sara convinced me into submitting it to a contest at Made By Rae.  Sara always is so encouraging that way :o)




Now the favor...

I am gobsmacked that I made it past the first round of voting and am overly excited!!!!!!

I did a shorter version also but  I submitted this one to the contest. The voting is today. If you could please go to  VOTE HERE for my top I would very much appreciate it!!!! 

Thank you so much in advance!!!!


Kim :o)

Jamie tunic shirt part deux

I decided to construct another Jamie dress minus the long skirt to show what I did differently to make the shirt instead of the full dress.



The bodice is the same as in the instructions. For the skirt, instead of the recommended skirt yardage I took my hip measurement and added four inches. I will be withholding that information to my grave.The length I cut at fourteen  inches. That gives lots of leeway in deciding how short or long you want the top. I am 5-7 and it was mini skirt length on me. A very short mini skirt so more a micro mini ;o) Not a look I need to be going for at my age.

When you get to this point, try the dress on! This was the point of no return!!!! Once that zipper goes in this baby is complete. If you find there is still too much fabric in the skirt you can rip the stitches and take and take more out without having to redo the zipper.





















Here are the finished shots but first let me say to all the women that sew clothing and take pictures....I bow down to you!!!!! Good golly Miss Molly!!!!!!!! It is harder to take ONE decent picture of yourself in a garment than it is to get a toddler potty trained! The shots are horrible, I confess, but these are the best. I may have to have my entire computer hard drive erased to get rid of the really really bad stuff that I did take. I miss the good old days of having the ability to burn the photos and negatives :o)

This is the shorter version

This is the longer version

Many thanks to Sara for starting the Jamie Dress Sew-A-Long and she was kind enough to invite me to guest post on photography ( not the fashion kind that involves tripods and timers) here. Sara, you are awesome!!!!!

I have a confession

I admit it openly, as much as I love girly dresses and toe cleavage high heels, I am just not someone that wears them. I am not comfortable in them so I have them in my closet and look at them but they do not ever make it off the hanger and onto my body to leave the house. I look up to those women that can successfully pull it off and bow down to their fashion greatness.

My friend Sara can pull off these great looks, she has the beauty, body and the seamstress prowess that it takes to make anything look amazing! So when she started the Jamie Dress Sew Along and posted pics of herself in the dress it was like looking in a fashion magazine and thinking...I can look like that too! Never mind that I am 20 years her senior and 20 (cough) pounds heavier, the dress was so cool looking on Sara I had to have one too! And so I started it!

I have never made anything for me to wear. This was to be my first attempt at sewing a garment and after a few frantic messages to Sara on pattern placement I was really ready to try.

 Cutting it out was easy enough.

Then I was able to get the bodice together and was pretty impressed with myself.

I was feeling very accomplished and proud of myself until it came to the skirt! There was so much fabric so I had to stop and make more frantic messages to Sara asking if it would ruin the dress to downsize the amount of fabric in the skirt. She told me to make sure to try it on first. After that I hacked at the skirt fabric and was much more pleased with the result. Until I put the dress on. It was then I realized WHY I cannot wear this style of dress comfortably. It makes me look matronly  :/ I am very realistic about what does and does not look good on me and this DID NOT! I loved the bodice. It is fitted and lovely very good for my body type. I wanted to use what I had worked so hard for and not have it just sit in the closet.

In comes my friend Andy!!!!!!!She brought muffins and a new perspective!!!!!!

and a really cute Goodwill find to show and tell :o) Isn't this too cute!

Back to the dress, Andy is the same body type as I am on a much smaller scale, I am 5-7 and she is maybe 5-3? She saw my concerns and asked a simple and brilliant question...

"Can you make it into a shirt?"

YES!!!!! I can keep what I love about the dress and make it into a tunic type shirt!!!!! 

THANK YOU ANDY!!!!!

And this is what I came up with :o)

( please excuse the horrible pictures, it is raining and I had to take these myself)

I love the bodice I used the med but I think I may try the small:?

full top shot that has not been hemmed since I am still deciding how long to make it.

Without the Kermit the Frog sweater

I will be making another one and cutting more fullness out of the "skirt" portion ( it is still too poofy for my full bottom half) and giving it a more pleated look but overall I love it and cannot wait for summer!!!!

I am linking this to Quilt Story Fabric Tuesday
I would put a cute button here but I am just not that advanced :/

Kim :o)

Where are the serger threading Gods when you need them?

 When we moved here almost two years ago ( that went by fast), we had movers pack everything in CA to bring here to VA.  There were at least ten of them and only one of me and so I could not keep up with them all, except for the guy that kept laughing at all my fabric boxes. Seriously, he laughed at them and the same thing happened when the guys unloaded the truck too. Silly men!  I can guarantee that NONE of my Heather Ross was lost in the move!  Other things were lost or packed in strange places. One shoe was packed in garage stuff as were some frilly things ( how did those get in there). Very odd stuff was in the kitchen pack up too!

The part of the story that matters here is that my directions to my serger are GONE! They are nowhere to be found and the serger tweezers are gone too. If you have a serger you know how important both of these things are. If you love your serger but do not use it often it is even more critical to have the manual on hand at all times.

I usually do not have a problem with this but today I want my serger to help make the Jamie dress. I have all the pieces cut and was ready to start then I remembered I needed to change the serger thread.

I am lucky that my serger does come with a sort of threading diagram in the front. Clear as mud,right? I swear this is the kind of thing that makes one need some wine or a beer at the very least!

I opened it up at went for it! I was feeling like McDreamy going into brain surgery... really I did! It took a few tries and a few words I had to say quietly so Adam did not yell them out at Katy's school pick up later today but...

I DID IT!!!!!!

A thing of beauty. At least to me :o)

And for those interested, Sara ;o), I finally chose a fabric for the dress.

Isn't it lovely?

Kim :o)

My love of Swedish...

Okay, maybe not Swedish fish but I do like those too :o)

Swedish pattern paper is what I am talking about. It looks like this (or at least mine did) when it came in the mail. I only needed to use it once and I was hooked to it's amazing quality.  

It is easy to handle and you can iron it with no worries. I never iron with my left hand but Adam is not big enough to take pictures yet.

Nice and ironed out and ready to use

I am starting my Jennifer Paganelli Jamie dress and am going to use this paper so I can remake the dress without fear of the pattern pieces tearing or getting to wrinkled too use.

I cut out a piece of the tracing paper a bit bigger than the pattern but not larger than the pattern and tape it down making sure not to cover the pattern lines.

Trace over the pattern lines and copy all the useful information on the pattern. For me that would not include the pattern size.

Detach the tracing paper and cut out the pattern.

 ( I clearly forgot to take the tracing paper off first in this pic*blush*) 

I have used many other papers for tracing and this is what it can look like after many uses.

 YUCK!

And traditional tracing paper is not much better!

I know that it takes a little longer but the results are really good. I can store and reuse my pattern as much as I like with no worries of it being ruined.

Now on to making this dress!!!!!

Kim :o)