Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Tablecloth + t-shirt = dress that needs more work

Jason has been absent this week as he is doing work on-site for one of his clients in an undisclosed location. So, here I am alone at home with the girls and wouldn't you know there are both sick with runny noses and coughs and the kind of snot that is putrid green and sticky like glue and everywhere.

It is a great time for me to sew a dress for Piper, right. For some reason I decided to take on this project this afternoon and after 3 failed attempts I finally almost finished it but it needs a little flair. It is a my own creation although very simple. I took a vintage tablecloth and cut it up to make a skirt that I sewed onto the a plain white t-shirt that I got from walmart (hell on earth) that I cut a bit off the end. It actually turned out pretty cute and will be cuter after I add a sash (maybe) and some appliques (maybe) made out of the scraps of the tablecloth.

I am not a seamstress in any definition of the word and I only proved that more to myself this afternoon as I tried and failed and tried again and failed again and so on. My mother did not sew and so I am self-taught and apparently I am not a very good teacher unless I am teaching phonics "special sounds" and then, well, I kick ass.

Anyway, the flaw I encountered was too much fabric. I hate gathering and bunching because I can never do it and it didn't help that I had twice the amount of fabric I needed. So I ended up cutting the amount of fabric in half and then it sewed up real quick.


here it is...I think I need to hem it up a bit and I'll be making another one tomorrow (maybe) since I know the tricks now it should go faster than today. And it looks better when the Bug is wearing it.

I wish I was good at this kind of stuff. I wish I had time to invest in getting better. But in the end, I rather be pushing my girls on the swings than hurting my back hunched over a machine.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You did good! Atleast you made an attempt..something I wouldn't of done to begin with! You go girl!

molly | mommycoddle.com said...

I just found your blog because you signed up for the swap...but I had to comment on this dress--I'm trying to do the almost identical thing, except I had the EXACT opposite problem--not enough fabric, not enough gathers, no flare to the skirt...so I want to ask you a ton of questions, but here's just two:
how much extra fabric do you add on for all the gathering?
does the fabric that you cut for the skirt have any bell shape (skirt shape) to it, or is it just a long rectangle and the gathering gives it the shape?
does this make sense?
I have pix on a recent blog entry.
looking forward to the swap!