Christmas Skirts.

My mother asked me if, this year, I would make Christmas skirts for the girls instead of buying them Christmas dresses (as was her yearly tradition before being moved to a nursing home).  Um, how do you say 'no' to your mother in a nursing home?

Finding festive fabric was the first hurdle.  We don't have any big fabric stores within an hour or so, and our walmart didn't have a scrap of anything Christmasy.  Go figure.  Another reason to hate that place.  It took me about two weeks of looking before I remembered a place that MIGHT have some, and I was right.  They also had a great selection, and charged half the price I would have paid anywhere else!

If all things go well, I can knock off a skirt in 3-4 hours.  And thankfully, things went well.  I had all the skirts (plus a tree skirt) done in the space of a week, and we found pretty sparkly turtlenecks to go with them at Kmart.

Patchwork Tiered Ruffle Skirt

July 31, 2012

I saw this adorable skirt for sale on a somebody's home sewing blog.

Adorable, yes.  But I am not willing to part with $30 per skirt per little twirly girl.  Do the math.

Then I found a set of free instructions for a similar skirt here.

Difficulty level:  Beginner.  Sounds good to me.

Since fabric stores are going out of business left and right, the only place to go around here is the local Walmart.  So I bit the bullet and went.

I knew there wouldn't be any associate available in crafts to cut fabric for me, so I went the convenience route - fat quarters.  Sounds like a drinking game, or a dessert, but it's actually a cute little bundle of quarter-yard fabric pieces, already assembled in coordinating colors.   I was in heaven.  

Thankfully Andy had all the children with him that night, so I had the luxury of perusing the material without interruption.  It was laughable - I plunked myself down on the floor in the middle of the aisle with my fabric choices spread in front of me.  Cheetah prints for Theresa?  Lavender and pink ballet for Natalie?  Colorful batik for Clare?  Decisions, decisions. 

I limited myself to two choices that night, because I had no idea how easy the project would be or if my sewing machine(s) would even cooperate.  I went with rich colors and matryoshka dolls for Noelle.  This bundle just screamed Noelle!  And when I showed the girls the fabric, this is the bundle Noelle snapped up immediately, squealing with delight.

First I cut the material into blocks.

Then we laid the blocks into rows, deciding how we wanted the patterns arranged.  9 blocks in the top tier, 14 in the middle, 19 on the bottom.

Every sewing table needs a bottle of soap bubbles wrapped in zip ties.

Clare is sewing each tier together in a long strip.  She did almost all the piecing together.

This is the 1950 Singer that we rescued from a yard sale.
It is the preferred machine among the seamstresses in this household.

Then I topstitched the rows to give it a cleaner appearance and make the inner seams lay flat.  Clare didn't want to attempt this part because she was afraid her stitching wouldn't be straight and well, this would show.

Then we really got into the project and I forgot to take any more pictures of the process.

I made the casing for the elastic, and hemmed the bottom.  She put in the running stitches, and she really had a knack for gathering the ruffles.  I pinned the tiers together, and she sewed them.  Everything went smoothly, but then we had a fight at the end and I wouldn't let her finish putting in the elastic.

Suffice it to say that we started sewing around 11:00, and the skirts were on their bodies by 3:00.  Total cost for two twirl skirts - under $20, with lots of blocks left over for other projects.  About six hours time commitment.

P.S.  I finished a third skirt today, August 16 - the cheetah print for Theresa.  It took me about three hours of sewing time, but that was spaced out over three weeks.  It turned out the best so far!!!

Ashley's Angels

Several months ago, I chanced upon a website that touched my heart.  Ashley's Angels is run by a sweet woman named Dawn who makes burial gowns, burial wraps and other meaningful items for families who have miscarried or lost a newborn.  The idea behind it is not only are preemies too small for most clothes in stores, but also that shopping for something reverent enough to bury their child is almost unthinkable in the midst of all the pain  they are experiencing.

This, I thought, was definitely something I would love to do, to ease a suffering family's burden in just some tiny way.  I began a correspondence with Dawn and requested the patterns.

Simultaneously, seemingly unconnected, there was a handsome desk out on one of our neighbors' lawns, with a "free" sign on it.  Well, surely I could have used another desk, but I was surprised to find that it was, instead, a sewing table with a 1950 Singer machine inside, with drawers full of accessories and attachments.  Does it work?  I asked the neighbor.  She had no idea.

Enter Pete, a local retired sewing machine mechanic and shop teacher that one of my friends knew about.  He took the machine for a few days, oiled her up, replaced the cord, tuned everything up, and even gave me a tutorial - all for under fifty bucks!  He pronounced that it sewed beautifully, and said that if I wanted to buy an all-metal machine like it at today's prices, it would cost me over a thousand dollars.

Today I am down to three kids.  The house is like a ghost town.  Two are at work, two are with friends, two are at the grandparents'.  The remaining three are watching television.  A perfect opportunity to finally try out the new/old machine and the angel gown pattern all at once.

I am not a very careful seamstress.  Most of the time, good enough is good enough. I hate pinning.  I don't press.  But I usually just make pajamas or dress-up clothes, so it usually wouldn't matter.  Until now.

These have to be perfect.  I am in for a long haul here, fighting against my own haphazard, slipshod manner.  The finished product will be worth it, though.

Pete was right; it does sew beautifully.

The prototype, made from an old sheet.  I love the shape of the angel wing sleeves.

I had some trouble with the lace, and I don't like the way the neck turned out.  I think it should be a little bit lower.

Lace is surprisingly hard to come by in our area.  All the fabric shops are closing up.  This piece was a leftover scrap given to me by a friend.  Now I wish that after my grandmother died, I hadn't given away the bags of sewing notions that we found in her attic.  At the time, it just looked like a bunch of clutter that I had no space for.

The pattern said the gown should be open all the way down the back, but I sewed it up partway so my daughter could dress her baby doll in it.

It looked better flat on the table.  :-/

Oh well, you know what they say - How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

Practice, practice, practice!