Little Girl’s Corduroy Jumper with Embroidered Pockets

I used Simplicity Pattern Number 7056 to make these little girl’s corduroy jumpers. As I had stated in a previous post, I purchased this pattern many years ago, so I would bet it is out of print by now. I picked the sizes that I was going to make based on the amount of fabric I had left of each piece of corduroy. So I ended up tracing a size 3 for the red corduroy and a size 4 for the purple corduroy from the pattern and I was on my way.. 

When I cut out the dress from the red corduroy, I found a flaw in the fabric so I did not have enough fabric for the facings of the jumper. Because of that I decided to use the same black fabric from the lining of the pockets to do the facings. Because this was a thinner, lighter weight fabric than the corduroy, I decided to use  interfacing on the facings of the red jumper. I did not interface the corduroy facings of the purple jumper.

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With both dresses cut out and the pockets all made up, the first step was to sew the pockets to the front of the dresses. Since I was putting two pockets on each jumper rather than just one as the original pattern called for, I was now the designer and could put them where I wanted. Not being very original, I just placed the red Mickey and Minnie pockets side by side. This looked cute to me since they were facing each other so I went ahead and stitched them down.

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The purple pockets on the other jumper took some more thought though. I tried to place the Bambi and Flower pockets side by side like I did the pockets on the red jumper but it was not as cute. Why were they not as cute I asked myself? Well it was because I had made the purple pockets first, so they suffered from the designs not being quite centered and the pocket’s curves not being quite even, since I was still experimenting with making lined pockets. So, sitting there side by side, the flaws of the pockets stood out like a sore thumb. So just as I decided to make the pockets again, the husband walked by and pushed one pocket up. There, that solved the problem! With the pockets not sitting next to each other, you did not notice the slight flaws in two pockets. Thanks to the husband the day was saved again.

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Not willing to use fusible interfacing on the red jumper and ruin what was turning out to be an adorable outfit, I used sew in interfacing. To help make it easier to sew in the interfacing, I used some spray on adhesive on the interfacing first before sewing. This made it like fusible interfacing and held it in place as I sewed. Using sewn interfacing with a little bit of spray on adhesive worked out so well, I plan to use the technique on other future projects.

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From there the jumpers sewed up quickly and easily. I had to remember how to use the “clip the curves” technique to aid in turning the facings, and clip an inward curve and “v” an outward curve. It was a lot of fun to see the jumpers come together. I had a great time picking out special buttons for each jumper as well. I am so excited about the finished jumpers, that I can’t wait to sew more of them. I know I have some nice soft tan corduroy in the stash and I want to make a jumper from denim too. Now my creative eye is on overload!

Making Pockets or The Curvy Conundrum

Years ago, I use to watch a PBS sewing program called The Sewing Connection with Shirley Adams. I really enjoyed the program. One week, Shirley was making kid’s clothes and stated that kids love pockets. Since then I have tried to include pockets whenever possible on the kid’s clothes I make, even though it would make the sewing of the clothes much simpler if I left the pockets out of the project. While trying to decide what I wanted to sew after the slit plackets learning experience, I stumbled across a pattern that I purchased many years ago for a simple little girl’s jumper. After seeing it I decided to just sew it up, and of course, the jumper would have pockets.

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The process started with a trip to the stash. For years I have collected small yardage amounts of corduroy to make little girl’s jumpers with, so I knew I already had the fabric to make this pattern. I dug through the stash and found two pieces of corduroy. Since pockets were a must on the jumper and I wanted to embroider on the pockets, I started to dig through the stash again looking for some matching fabric to make the pockets from. After several hours of searching the stash, the husband decided to check on me and make sure that the boxes had not tumbled over on me and crushed me to death. I showed him the two pieces of corduroy that I had found, so he asked why I was still digging through the boxes. I told him that I was looking for fabric for the pockets. He said, “Why not just use the corduroy?” I responded, “Because I want to embroider on the pockets.” To which he responded,”So.” Silly boy, you can’t embroidery on corduroy. Everyone knows that. Its actually printed in books. But, as I stared at the corduroy, I thought why not. The corduroy I had picked was not a deep welled corduroy. In fact it had very light wells. So, I decided to go for it.

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I cut out the dresses first, but more on that later. Then I hooped the scraps and started to embroidery. I did use Solvy stabilizer on top because of the corduroy. The designs stitched out fabulously with no problems on the corduroy. I was very excited. But,  as I learned later, the pocket construction learning process was just beginning.

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The first thing I learned was that even though the scrap was big enough to hoop, it was not big enough to center the embroidery design on the pocket. Oops! The pockets would need to be smaller than the pattern called for. Luckily, I learned this lesson early on with the first two embroidery designs and so I used larger scraps for the second two designs. I thought I was going to have to embroidery the first two designs again but I decided to try and make them work instead.

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Because of the embroidery designs, I decided that I wanted to line the pockets, so I put a piece of fabric over the thread on the back of the design, so that it would not be rough on the child’s hands or the thread would not get caught on something put in the pocket. This should be simple, I thought to myself. I would place the pocket and the lining right sides together, sew around the curve and finish off the top of the pocket. This is were I learned that I can not sew curves worth a darn! I sewed down one side and around the first curve ok, but sewing the second curve and back up the other side was not as simple. I could not get the same curve the second time. It did not match the first curve at all. I unpicked my sewing and tried again. It was a little better, but still not exact and so I tried it again. The third try was ok, but still not great. I decided to try the next pocket and I had the same problem. Was this going to be like the slit plackets and just take tons and tons of practice to get it right I wondered? I finally had a brilliant idea on the third pocket. I sewed down the side and first half of the curve and stopped at the center bottom of the pocket. I then turned the pocket over and did the same thing on on the opposite side. The results were great. I kept the same curve both sides this time. Hurray! Success was mine!

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I then had to launder the pockets first before I could iron them to dissolve the Solvy. This would tell me how the embroidery design really faired being stitched on corduroy. The embroidery design went through the washer and dryer perfectly and it did not seem to make a difference that it had been stitched on corduroy.

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It was now time to attach the pockets to the front of the dress.

Without Further Ado, I Present the Slit Plackets

First the good news! The slit placket on the last green kid’s shirt that I made came out of the washer and dryer with flying colors. It did not fall apart like the first one did. The fabric, the slit placket, and the interfacing did just great. The next step was to complete the shirt. But before I could do that I had to decide what design I wanted to embroidery on the shirt. It wasn’t so much my decision but the husband’s. I needed the husband to decided what design he wanted on his shirt, and then I would know what design to put on the kid’s shirt. If the husband picked a design I needed to try it out first before embroidering in on his shirt, and so the kid’s shirt became the best place to try a sample.

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The husband narrowed his choices down to two designs, a panda bear and a tiger. Since the tiger design was too large for the kids shirt, I decided to just put the panda on it and see how it turned out. When I finished embroidering the panda design, the husband like the design on the green fabric enough to pick the panda design without trying the tiger design first.

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After completing the husband’s shirt and the green kid’s shirt, I decided to go back to the first shirt with the placket that fell apart in the washer and see if it could be salvaged. With a little skill and a lot of luck, I was able to restitch the placket and get something useable from it. Since I had been viewing several panda designs, it was easy to pick a design for this shirt.

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After the husband’s shirt, the kid’s shirt and the trial and error samples with the green fabric, there were only scraps left, but enough to make a size 1 t-shirt with long sleeves. So, rather than putting the scraps back into the stash, I decided to just whip up this little t-shirt instead, and since all the embroidery thread and supplies were out I decided to try a design that was up for consideration on the kid’s green placket shirt. I like the design quite a bit and plan to use it again.

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Now that the my slit placket adventure is over, I am glad I went through it. I learned a lot and improved my skill of sewing slit plackets quite a bit. But, I am ready to move on and sew something else besides green fabric and slit plackets.

Stealing From Goodwill

I didn’t mean to do it, but the fabric kept calling to me. This piece of grey fabric with black rose buds was found in the mystery boxes I was sorting through earlier and it had made it’s way to the Goodwill box. This fabric was originally purchased and put in the stash to be a shirt for me long ago. When I pulled it from the box it had spent so many years in, I could no longer see me wearing a shirt made from it. Although it is the right color for me, the little flowers just did not appeal to me any longer, so into the Goodwill box it went.

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While the fabric was in the Goodwill box, it kept catching my attention until my creative mind just took off with it. Just because I did not want to wear tiny flowers did not mean that some little girl would not just love to wear them. I began to see a little girl’s dress with an embroidered design on the front made from it in my mind’s eye, so I pulled it out of the box and got to work on it..

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I decided to make a size 5 (small) dress. Since the fabric was originally purchased for me a shirt there was plenty for any size I wanted to make. I went to my pattern box and picked out a basic dress pattern, a bodice with a gathered skirt. Because the fabric was a woven cotton instead of a knit, I knew I had to make some way for the little girl to get it on because it wouldn’t stretch. Since I was not in the mood to play with a zipper, I decided to do a slit in the back with a button. And I wanted to keep the front left open for an embroidery design. Because of the grey fabric, I knew the embroidery design would need to be bright and full. But when I saw the black Mickey and Minnie Mouse red work outline design, I knew that was the design I wanted to use. This design absolutely would not work on the grey fabric so I decided to make the front and back of the bodice in white.

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With the basic design in mind, I cut out the dress and got started. I embroidered the design first with the black bobbin thread which you know worked great. I decided to double the bodice instead of making a facing. The white fabric I picked for the bodice is thin so I figured it would work as a lining as well. For the slit in the back, I drew a line in the center back about 2 & 1/2 inches long. I then sewed down each side of the line, tapering at the end. It worked great. I got the results I wanted and only had to stitch it once. I about fell off my chair at this point, since I figured I would be unpicking and restitching the slit at least 3 times to get it right. I also added some corded elastic to one side for a button hole. As always, sewing is a learning experience and I made the loop too big. So, when it came time to pick a button, I had to pick a larger button and place it to the side to accommodate my large loop.  Next time I will make the loop smaller and I will pick the button first so I know what size to make the loop beforehand.

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I decided to use the bodice fabric to line the skirt too. Since I have never really lined a garment, I was not sure which technique would be best. Should I attach it to the gray fabric? Or should I have it separate like a slip under the skirt? Because of the colors and design, this dress was turning out very tomboyish so I decided to attach the lining to the skirt. This seemed to work out fine. I hemmed the skirt with the lining before I gathered the skirt and attached it to the bodice.

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I used the floss method to gather the skirt. I zigzagged embroidery floss to the skirt and then pulled it to make the gathers. It worked great and was much easier than pulling threads and stitches. I would have liked more gathers in the skirt but I gathered it so that it fit the bodice. I will cut the skirt bigger for more gathers if I make this pattern again.

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Even though the dress did not turn out quite as I had envisioned it, it is very cute none the less. I like the colors and of course the embroidery design. I still have plenty of the grey fabric left, but I can’t decide if it should go back into the Goodwill box or back into the stash now. I am leaning towards the Goodwill box, since I have so much other fabric to work with. I’m sure my creative mind can pick a different piece to play with next.

Black Bobbin Thread

It’s always the little things, isn’t it? The simple act of changing the color of bobbin thread used on an embroidery project made all the difference in the world and gave a perfect end result. I am so excited about this little change that made such a huge difference in my last project.

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I wanted to put a simple black outlined design on my latest sewing project. I have used my machine to embroider red work a couple of times in the past. It has usually been a fight to get the tension just right so that the white bobbin thread is not pulled up into the design. I have even gone as far as to dab the white thread with a black sharpie pen to hide the white thread in the design before. For this design, I finally wised up and used black thread in the bobbin instead of white. This time when the bobbin thread pulled up into the design you could not see it. It blended in perfectly. The design came out rich and full and all in sharp black.

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Excited about these results, I had to try it again so I grabbed a bib towel from the closet and stitched another outline design and the results were once again rich and full.

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Now, why I did not think of using black bobbin thread years ago, I will never know. I have known since day one of embroidering that they make colored bobbin thread and that if your stitching a monogram on towels you can even use your top embroidery thread in the bobbin so the design looks stitched on both sides. But, it just never dawned on me until now to give it a try. I am so excited about the results that I plan to use a lot more black bobbin thread in the future. I am planning on using black bobbin thread on more than just outlined designs too. I plan to use it on all my dark designs and to even switch out bobbins on lighter colored projects when it is time to stitch the outline of the design.

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Stay tuned for the results.

Thanks for the Memories

My niece recently posted some pictures on her blog of her kids in clothes I made for them many years ago. It is always great thrill for me to see new pictures of the kids. But to see them in the clothes I made is extra special, and it sent me on a trip down memory lane.

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The first picture was of her two youngest boys. She has 4 now, by the way. The older of the two boys in the picture is wearing a jacket I made for her oldest boy’s 3rd birthday, 7 years ago. Both boys looked so cute wearing the jacket. With a little reminiscing, I remembered the construction of this jacket. It was the first time I had made welt pockets. I did not want just patch pockets on this jacket and I remember reading about welt pockets in one of my sewing reference books.

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I remember sitting at the sewing machine hurrying to complete the pockets because they were coming to see us, and we were going to a local craft show at the high school. I remember hoping that the little guy would like the airplanes on the fabric and that he would be able to zip up the jacket by himself. I remember being concerned about the zipper because it was a smaller tooth zipper than I wanted to use but the color was right.

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The second picture that my niece posted was of her youngest boy in a shirt I made for the oldest boy back when he was just one year old. All 4 of her boys have wore this shirt now. I am amazed it lasted this long. I made this shirt just after I got my very first embroidery machine. I used the scraps from a shirt I had just made for my husband.

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In fact, there ended up being enough scraps for two shirts in size 1. One shirt was embroidered with Mickey Mouse and the other shirt with Donald Duck. Donald Duck is my niece’s favorite Disney character so you can see which one the little guy is wearing in the picture. On these shirts, I put ribbing around the sleeves. Each time I see I picture of one of the boys in these shirts, I regret adding the ribbing. To me, the ribbing gives the shirt a feminine look and I have not added ribbing to the sleeve of a boy’s shirt since.

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I would like to thank my niece for posting the pictures and for taking care of the clothes, I made so that each boy could enjoy them and I could see them wearing them.  Now that she has 4 boys and the oldest is a tween and is becoming very particular about what he wears, I have not done any sewing for them recently. But, with as much as I love sewing for kids, it might be time to get back to the sewing machine and get some new clothes made.

And… ACTION!

I see where patterns are on sale again at Joanns and now that I have worn both of the shirts I made from my new Connie Crawford Butterick patterns, I thought I would report on the wearable muslins I ended up making from the patterns and how the garments/muslins are performing.

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B5503

The golden shirt I made from pattern B5503 is very loose and very comfortable and the fabric is so soft. It is a pleasure to wear but I do feel like I have a pup tent on sometimes. Even with cutting so much off the the length and width, it is still huge. This keeps me from wearing it to work or out to dinner but it has became one of my favorite hang around the house shirts. For some reason I’ve gotten tons of comments from people when wearing it about how much they love it so it must look ok on. As I said before, if and when I make this pattern again, I will use my basic sloper as the start and just use the design ideas from the pattern to spice up the shirt a little.

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B5583

The princess seams of pattern B5583 are wearing well. The first time I wore the shirt I was very self conscious of the princess seams. Would the princess seams show off my rolls that I so carefully try to hide? But, the more compliments I got on the shirt the better I felt about the way it looked. There are a couple of things that I will definitely change on the next shirt from this pattern. First, the front facings will be cut smaller. With such large front facings, I feel like the shirt has a steel breast plate in the front. The large facings make the front heavy and hot when wearing. Sitting becomes an issue too as thebreast plate bulges as you take a seat. Cutting down the facings next time will make this shirt a more comfortable fit. Next, for me the arms eye needs to be deeper. I feel a slight constriction when I reach in this shirt. This is an easy fix for the next shirt and it will make it easier to fit the sleeve in as well.  The final change is to take some of the fullness out of the back princess seams at the hem. I will need to give this some study before I make the cut on the next shirt. I may need that fullness to sit down in it.

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Embroidery

As far as embroidery designs go, check out the monorail design on the husband’s new shirt. Ooo, doesn’t he look sharp? It seems to be wearing very well and everyone including him seems to love it.

And Last In Box Number Three…

The contents of box number 3 is what made it easy to send a box of fabric to Good Will. Box 3 contained a lot of scraps. Although I find scraps useful to hang onto because I sew a lot of kid’s clothes, over the years I have found it easier and easier to just throw scraps away or to discern if there is any usable length to donate or use. Box 3 contained all three types of scraps, some went right to the garbage can, some went back into the stash but most had enough yardage to go into the donation pile.

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In box 3 was some useful gray fleece scraps that were just perfect for some kids sweatshirts. I love gray sweatshirts and they are also so much fun to embroider on because almost any design looks good on them. So, these scraps made it to the sew now pile.

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I laid out the gray scraps on my cutting table and then got out all my kid’s sweatshirt patterns in sizes 1 to 4. I started to arrange to pieces and quickly found that one size 1 shirt and one size 4 shirt fit the best. I cut out the pieces for them and then moved to the embroidery machine to get to work putting something fun on them.

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Since many designs would look good on the shirts, I had a difficult time picking just two designs. But, in the end, I turned back to my Peanut’s designs. I picked two designs that I had never stitched before, one for a girl and one for a boy. The gray fleece embroidered beautifully and the designs turned out great. But then again, all Snoopy designs do in my opinion.

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I then went back to the cutting table and picked colors for the ribbing which was easy after the embroidery was done. The sewing of sweatshirts went quickly and was great fun. Kid’s clothes are always fun to sew for me. They are usually simple and the results are always so cute.

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Now, as I look at the pile of scraps destined for Good Will, I begin to second guess myself. The gray scraps were transformed into such cute clothes. Couldn’t the rest of these scraps turn into the same? Yes, they could, but I think I will let someone else have the fun of making those scraps into something. And so off to Goodwill they go!

From Box Number Two…

With my first mystery box of fabric shirt done for myself, it was time to make the husband a shirt. From the second mystery box in the closet, I pulled this large piece of blue interlock knit out. Once again, I don’t know where or when I bought it, but I am sure I fell in love with it then as I have again now. It is a beautiful piece of fabric with a great soft feel and stretch.

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I cut the husband’s shirt out and then applied the interfacing to the fabric. The interfacing did not give me any hassle, which was nice. Do you think I have finally figured out the trick to applying interfacing? Or is the interfacing just teasing me, and will bubble and curl even more than normal the next time I use it?

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The sewing process for the husband’s shirt went smoothly. Before I opened up the mystery boxes from the closet, I had started a shirt for the husband but had not yet finished it. So as long as I was sewing the new blue shirt, I decided to finish up the first shirt at the same time. It is made from a ribbed green knit that has tons of stretch. Needless to say, with the stretch, the green shirt took more time to finish up than the blue one took to make. I only thought that I used a lot of pins on my shirt to keep the fabric from stretching. It was not even close to the number of pins I had to use on each seam of the husband’s green shirt to keep it from stretching too much.

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Embroidering designs on the shirts became a little more challenging than I expected, well at least on the green shirt. The only difficult part of embroidering on the blue shirt was picking the design. After looking at many designs, I returned to the my first choice, the Peanuts Snoopy as a World War I flying ace. It stitched up nicely on the shirt and it looks great. I love it, of course since it is Snoopy. Hopefully the husband will like it half as much as I do.

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The green shirt was made for the new Haunted Mansion design I had recently digitized for Halloween, but with the stretch, I just was not sure it was going to work out. Luckily over the years, I have learned and remembered some hard learned lessons, so I hooped up a scrap piece of the green fabric and tried the design out first. Due to the stretch, it did not work out. I hooped another piece of green scrap differently this time, tinkered with the design, and tried again. Still it was a No go. Disappointed, I looked though my designs and found a design I just loved, but have just never put on anything until now. So, I present to you superhero Tootsie Roll! The stretchy fabric still gave me a hassle with this design but since it was smaller, stitched from up and down rather than side to side, and had a much lower stitch count, I was able to make it work without too many problems. I think the design turned out cute and I like the chocolate buttons I chose on the shirt with the design.

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Now the dilemma, I want to finish sewing up the fabric from the boxes, but I am anxious to get into the stash and find a piece of fabric for another shirt to put the husband’s Haunted Mansion design on. So, what to do next?

Where did the summer go?

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Well Spring has long since sprung a leak and sank, and Summer has come and gone so fast I’m not even sure if it was really here at all. And now it’s time to settle into Autumn and Fall and very shortly Winter.

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And with that I am working on several new projects to blog about into the fall and winter. Here are a few highlights of what is coming up.

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I’ve started to make the yearly Halloween costumes and they are turning out great this year. Luckily my husband always has several ideas about what to be for several years into the future and I wrote a list down of his ideas a few years back so I don’t have to worry what to make, just what I want to make the next year.

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The husband wasn’t super excited about me creating a template for the Halloween costumes out of paper, but I find it is the easiest way to do it.

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The husband also wanted a new shirt for Halloween this year too so I’ve been working on that as well. While I was at it I made myself a few new work shirts and a few shirts just for fun too.

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I also have been making some cold weather kids clothes. But stay tuned for all that and more in the coming weeks.

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Here are some photos with some fun things I did over the summer, plus a few just for laughs…

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