NYC Summer: Garment District

I finally got the perfect fabric (I hope!) for my vintage shirtwaist dress pattern. I thought I had written a post about buying the pattern but I guess I only put the photo up on the Project: Project Facebook page. I even neglected flickr, apparently.

I've been wanting to make a shirtwaist dress for a long time. I love how they are dressy but casual all at the same time and you can just do so much with them. I spent hours on Etsy finding the perfect pattern and was thrilled with it when it arrived.

I knew I would go to Beckenstein Men's fabrics in the Garment District. I stumbled upon the store a few years ago when searching for the perfect seamonster fabric for the yeti loves seamonster dolls that never surfaced (ha ha, elusive beasts). I knew I would find the most amazing men's shirt fabric in the perfect color. I mapped out the spot (along with the other places we checked out) and made it the first stop in the plan. And it was closed. (Homer slap to forehead, doh!). I read the hours but I didn't pay attention to Saturday. So anyway, lesson learned (I should change the name of this blog).

But at a shop close by, I was greeted by incredibly helpful salesmen (yes, they were all men) who put up with wild child (brought in by Mr. Lemon from Starbucks because I needed help deciding what color worked best on me in the tragically flourescent lighting). The shop had a great selection and the quality and color I was looking for. I'm really happy with it. The grosgrain ribbon from last post will be used as the belt. I'll post some pics of the colors together after I decide which way to go. I am not sure you can really get the fabric from this photo. It's kinda coral and kinda pink and surprisingly like the dress on the pattern cover which was not my intention at all. I had wanted to go blue but threw that out at the last minute. The warp and the weft are two different colors which adds some dimension and enhances the texture.It's very good quality and probably cost less than I would have spent elsewhere. I have to say I will check this store out again. Happy accident.

NYC Summer: Tinsel Trading

During my lunch hour at work, I read blogs and follow links and just get lost in it all sometimes. Back in April I read this post over at the Colette blog about Tinsel Trading and I just had to go there. Unfortunately, I don't have any good photos of the shop but Mr. Lemon kept the wild child occupied while I shopped around. She had a blast looking at all the bins full of bits. We bought her a sparkly letter Z for the alphabet in her room. I could have spent a million dollars.

Luckily, I didn't. But I did pick up some gorgeous ribbon. The striped grosgrain is to go with what I'll show you tomorrow. The yellow velvet on the far left is to spruce up some binders in my office. The wide brown velvet was just too gorgeous to pass up, the yellow striped velvety ribbon was really cheap, and who can see super wide orange ric rack and not buy it? Panda is in the shot because my little helper thought it was important. But can you see my yellow theme? How weird, huh? I've never really been into that color much before but I picked up a good bit of it on the trip.

Overall, I just loved this shop and will try to pop in every time I'm in Manhattan.

Carolina Fair Designs Pattern Giveaway Winners

For the first post on the Wraparound Dress, comment #19:
Nicole from Louisiana.

For the second post on the Pretty Pinafore, comment #1:
Carrie, the Non-practicing Librarian

Congrats!

If I can find your email, I will send it on to Caroline so that she can send you the pattern of your choice. We decided not to hold you to your original decision. You can change your mind and choose either one.

I used the Random Number Generator found here but how weird is it that for the first post it picked the last comment and for the second post it picked the first? I'm not sure it could get more random than that.

Here is a link to all the info on the giveaway. Thanks again to Carolina Fair Designs for being so awesome!

NYC Summer: Purl Soho

We took a weekend trip to New York recently to gather some supplies. Every time we hit the city, I make a point to stop into Purl. It was my first time in the new location and I thought it was great. Very roomy. They had a really nice selection of embroidery flosses, what seemed like the same amount of fabric, and a nice spot to look at patterns. Of course, there was the usual gorgeous crafty inspiration hanging out on every shelf and every corner.

The first thing to catch my eye were these little wool felt dolls by Mimi Kirchner. I didn't take any notes or photos of them while I was at the store but I couldn't stop thinking about them. When I got home, I did some snooping and found this awesome free pattern. I'm going to try to make one. I've had an idea brewing for a long time and I think this is what I needed to make it work.

I started my collection of Heather Ross' Far Far Away II with these lovelies. My color palette has been leaning toward this yellow and I bought several different versions of it on the trip (more on that later this week). The only embroidery floss available here is DMC and its generic counterparts so I decided to try some Trebizond silk (teal) and Londonderry spun linen (jonquil). They are both really lovely.

Of course, some Alexander Henry. I'd seen the larger print before but never the smaller one. I think they'll look lovely together and I have a pattern in mind. The polka dot trim caught my eye and I think it will look good with some fabric I picked up at Ikea. You never know...

Finally, I bought a teeny tiny bit of this Liberty of London gorgeousness to match the storage boxes from Target. I'm going to recover some pillows we have on the pullout in the office and I thought it would be nice to throw in a bit of this as an accent. It's not the same pattern but I didn't want to be too matchy matchy.

Snap Tape Tutorial

Patterns for kids clothes often call for snap tape. This is twill tape with pre-set snaps all ready for you to sew into your garment to make potty training and diaper changes easier. It seems to me that while this tape is handy, it's often hard to find. The tape I've found is also wider than I'd like and the snaps are set too far apart. I decided to make my own to get exactly what I want. Here's what to do if you want to do as little hand sewing as possible.

Materials: 1/2" twill tape. Size 15 or 3/8" snaps*. Garment in progress.
*Note if you want to use larger snaps, you will need wider tape.

As you can see in the image above, the FRONT of the garment will provide the top of the two flaps so that the opening will face toward the back. This is where I placed the open (female) side of the snaps.

1. Hem the bottom of the legs, leaving the crotch seam open (see sides of picture below).

2. Turn the BACK crotch seam under twice to completely finish the edge just like you did with the hem of the legs. Turn the FRONT seam under once about 1/4" to clean up the edge (not pictured). Stitch.

3. Cut 2 pieces of 1/2" twill tape to the width of the crotch seam, adding about 1/4" to allow for turning under at both sides.

4. Turn the ends of one piece of the twill tape under and pin. Stitch to the right side of the BACK.

5. Turn the ends of the second piece of twill tape under and pin. Stitch the twill tape over the unfinished edge of the FRONT crotch hem on the wrong side of the fabric.

6. Mark on the tape where you want to place your snaps so they will match up when closed. Set your snaps following the package directions. The prong (male) side goes on the BACK. The socket (female) side will go on the FRONT.

7. Handstitch the wide opening closed on both pieces of tape.

This is what the open (female) side will look like.

And you're finished!

I hope this will be helpful. It took me a couple of tries to figure out the best way to do this with the least amount of handstitching possible. Please let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.

Two little things

Here's the little scrap of fabric from the doll I wrote about in yesterday's post. Each little flower head is about 1/16" so super tiny. It appears to be 100% cotton. I would love to know more about it. The fabric reminds me of some feedsacks my grandma had saved from when she was a little girl. It's gorgeous.

And this little mess is part of my design process for making the little Lego sack. I thought someone might find all my math interesting. On the left is a list of the fabrics I used with checkmarks next to them. I wanted to have a good amount of the fabric showing all around. There are also lots of little things crossed out from my bad math and from changing my mind. The bag is also mostly lined. I know I didn't write that yesterday. Because of the way I stitched the window and the zipper in there, however, I had to leave two seams (I think) exposed on the inside. If I made another one of these, I would eliminate that. I will have to think about the construction a lot more and not stay up past midnight.

Oh, and don't forget about the giveaway.

And I didn't forget about the snap tape tutorial. It is complete but I wanted to show you the romper I made using the technique first. Alas, the terrible twos have hit us hard and I only have the one model (and the job that keeps me at work most weekdays). If I have time, I'll do the tutorial before the romper and show you the romper next week.

Old doll I bought at a yard sale

I got this beautiful doll for $4 recently. It's not something I look for at yard sales but it caught my eye and I couldn't stop thinking about it; it's just so beautiful to me. It came with a dress that I do not think was made for the doll but was either a baby dress or something for a larger child's doll. It all smelled pretty musty so I soaked the whole thing in a bucket of Bac-out then hung it out on the line to dry. The dress dried right away but the doll was still sopping wet after several hours. I decided to just rip her apart and pull out all the stuffing.

It appears that the doll was full of cotton balls. It was packed pretty tightly. I don't know what they used to stuff dolls with but this was stuffed long before the invention of polyester fiberfill, that's for sure. The only clue is a tiny scrap of floral print fabric that I left in my scanner at work (where I was so busy that I did not even have time to write this on my lunch).

Her face is in pretty nice condition and the arms and legs are complete except for a small chip off the left thumb. I'm going to re-stuff her and set her on my shelf as is. I love the patina on the cotton fabric and the hairline fracture at her neck. It should be pretty easy to put her back together but I have never attempted something like this before. I'll post a scan tomorrow of the little piece of fabric. I'm thinking 1940s.