Tree Fleur

Did you know that September is National Sewing Month? Did you also know I had to bribe this kid with candy to take this picture? You do what you have to do, right? And she looks so pretty!

She LOVES this dress. As soon as Piper put it on, her face lit up with delight because it twirls and it is long! I used the Flutter Sleeve pattern from this great shop on Etsy called FooFooThreads (Click HERE to check it out) I have used the pattern several times. I tweaked this one a little by adding a longer ruffle at the bottom and more ruffle on the bodice. The Fabric: Frances Newcombe, Cherie, Tree Fleur in Sombre

The perfect fall dress

I just made this dress for a beautiful little girl. Her mom picked out the fabric. She was looking for something Fall and I think she nailed it! It turned out so pretty!

A sweet lady in our church, who can no longer sew, gifted me all her sewing notions. I have a nice box of buttons that I pull from when I can. I think these buttons pull it all together!

The fabric: Makower UK Forest Friends and Amy Butler Lotus Wall Flower in Cherry.

Memphis Fabric

We were thrilled to visit one of my BEST friends and her crew in Memphis in July. She is so dear to me. And she also has a love for fabric and sewing. While we were there, we had visited her favorite fabric store called Bumbletees. Bumbletees also just happen to be having a sale too! Woo hoo! She left with beautiful fabric for a quilt and I bought fabric for a dress for Piper.

Piper loves a good twirly dress. I am so thankful she still loves the dresses I make. I used the Flutter Dress pattern I had purchased off of Etsy. And I just love how this dress turned out!

You had me at hello....

Sometimes I NEED to take a stroll through Mary Jo's, this HUGE fabric store in Gastonia, NC. Today, I found this fabric. And, well... it would not let me leave until I bought it. Then I came home and made pillows for my living room. And I LOVE them.

Baby Geranium Dress

I made this tiny little Geranium Dress for a dear friend who was pregnant with her 2nd child. Her first is a boy and she was excitedly expecting a girl. I was tickled to make this itty bitty dress. It is such an easy pattern and yet too cute for words!

Now, the funny story about this dress. This friend also found out a month before delivery that not only was this little girl breech.... she was also a BOY! Big surprises and lots of last minute changes. But she is in LOVE with her baby boy. And the dress, it will just wait for a little sister. At least I am hoping there will be a sister somewhere in the future!

Easter Dresses

For Easter I decided to make Piper a Geranium dress from a pattern that I absolutely LOVE from Made by Rae (click HERE if you are interested in the pattern) And then I ended up making two dresses. I started making this one...

And then I saw a dress with these colors and made this one:

She ended up wearing the second one to church on Easter morning. However, that has been the only time she has worn it. While waiting on Sunday School to start, Piper did a little doodling on the dry erase board. She is not sure how she got marker all over the front of her dress, but the eraser sure does. After much treating, scrubbing, soaking and repeating, I put it in the pile to redo. And it will remain there until it is too small for her. Hey. You live. You learn.

Fall Dress

One of my favorite fabric stores on-line is called Hawthorne Threads. Not only do they have beautiful fabric, they also provide coordinating fabrics on the same page or a link away with the one you are interested in. My hardest part. Plus, there are pictures of dresses, quilts and more included. I actually pinned this dress on pinterest and when I saw it on this website, well... I just had to buy it.

Here is what I ended up with:

And I am in LOVE!

And so is she.

I bought extra fabric to make Karis a skirt or top and possibly myself a skirt. I have been looking forward to sewing something for myself since it has been a while. And I just love that my girls still enjoy getting handmade clothing. Warms my heart!

Flutter Sleeve Dress

I love how the fall season likes to make an unexpected grand entrance. And, of course, we always welcome it. You know there are cool days ahead, but there are some that are cooler than you expect. Time for pumpkins and everything pumpkin. I know, you were thinking pumpkin spice latte, but I was thinking of pumpkin cheesecake and Trader Joe's pumpkin butter. My favorite. The mornings have been getting cooler and I love walking out to crisp, cool air. This past Saturday was the unexpected grand entrance. It was suppose to be almost 70 degrees. But I think it reach a very crisp and breezy 60. By the evening, it was in the 50's and chilly. We were also at a beautiful fall wedding, on a farm where there were pumpkins everywhere! With October showing up so quickly and these cooler days, I realized I needed to get started on sewing some dresses for my girls. Each season I think, "should I sew or just go buy??" Thanks to Pinterest and Zulily I keep pinning all these ideas for sewing. So, I went on my sewing Pinterest board (SEW CAN DO THIS) and found a dress that I have wanted to make for a while. It reminds me of a Matilda Jane dress. It sent me to an Etsy shop for a Antique Fair Flutter Sleeve Dress pattern. With a few easy clicks, I bought the pattern. And I am so happy I did. It came with a long but easy to follow tutorial with pictures for every step. So I went shopping for fabric! I have had my eye on this Amy Butler fabric for a while. I spent way too long trying to pick the perfect coordinating fabric to go with it. I always second guess myself after I buy it, unless it's off a website where they have matched coordinating fabrics for you! I love those websites! Hawthrone Threads does that for you, check them out! My other favorite place (because it is close by) is Mary Jo's in Gastonia, NC. And this is what I bought there:

A sweet lady in my church who could no longer sew and knew I did was so generous in gifting me her sewing stuff- fabric, lace, buttons, zippers, everything. The buttons were a favorite! Before I buy buttons, I like to dig through my stash and find some jewels in there. And I loved these with this dress.

Here is the finished product. I think this is my favorite by far! Confession: I hung this dress visible downstairs so every time I walked by it, I could look at it. I don't have a lot of things that I am good at. But when you practice at one and see your improvement overtime, well it is just rewarding. I feel so proud of this one. Especially when I think back to the first dresses I've made.

Here is Piper at the wedding with her best friend. Piper loves this dress too. It twirls.

bow ties anyone?

Don't you just love little bowties? I made these bowties for a friend and a cute whale applique. All three of these for a neat baby shower. The idea is to decorate a onesie to bring to the shower. The bowties snap off. Easy to clean and easy to change out!

And this was for another friend. Some cute little one year old is going to be a stud!

simple skirt

birthday room makeover

Piper wanted a little room makeover for her birthday. Without changing the paint color on the walls (since we just built this house) we bought some new covers and made some pillows. It is amazing what a few small changes can do. My inspiration was Piper's famous heart balloon. She doodles these all the time. They are in almost every picture she colors and draws. It's her signature. And I just love it. I love them. They are Piper.

A little sneak peak of her room. I still need to get some fun pom pom garland to hang over those pictures. Speaking of those pictures, that was a fun pinterest project she and I worked on this summer. Hand print mermaids. She loves mermaides too.

Easter dress

Ever make a dress and realized you are not pleased with it? So you take it apart and redo it. Or even worse, put it in a pile to come back to and sadly you never do. To much disappointment I made a dress for my youngest for Easter and was never satisfied with it. And because it was the night before I let her wear it anyway. It was not bad, it was just not what I imagined it would be. Determined to not let this one sit in that pile I decided to redo it. With a few tweaks, this dress ended up being one of Piper's favorite summer dresses. Simple. Twirly. Comfy.

And this kid, she is our sparkly yet feisty, full of life, full of joy and loud giggles 3rd child. Only this one could convince a grandmother to buy fake nails like this. Could you turn down this face?? And yes, we let her wear these nails to church.

pink chalk fabric

Ordered some fabric from one of my favorite online fabric stores Pink Chalk Fabrics. They are celebrating 6 years and I got a cute party favor (pink measuring tape). Not sure what I am going to make with this fabric. I just wanted to show you what I got.

baby blanket

I love making baby blankets for baby showers. This one may be one of my favorites. 1 1/4 yard of flannel and cotton. Easy and sweet!

fabric shopping and peach tree blooms

Have I ever told you I love fabric like most women love shoes? I love going to the fabric store and just looking. But I am also a woman so I like shoes too! But back to the fabric. I love when I walk into the fabric store and I see fabric I like and it is sitting right next to other fabric in the same line of designer and color. Makes visioning a dress or skirt much easier than walking around for an hour doubting your choices. That is what happened when I saw these. This fabric was just sitting there asking to be a dress and skirt. So I had to get it.

I used one of my favorite patterns Simplicity 2171 easy and so many different ways to use it.

The skirt is from a pattern I got off a great website called MADE. Click HERE for the link to the skirt pattern. She has so many variations too.

This was a spontaneous photo attempt. It was very overcast. Maybe too overcast. But when the peach trees are in bloom you cannot delay. It is a short window. So I bribed the kids and got these sweet pics. I am glad they love each other. Well, most of the time.

Memphis skirts

Last summer my crew went to Memphis to visit one of my best best friends. We do not get to see each other often. So this trip was much needed. My family loved being there for a week. Do you have a friend that just gets you? That would be her. She sews. She also taught me how to smock. I love talking to her about things we want to make and things we actually make. While I was there, she took me to one of her favorite fabric stores. We bought some fun fabric to make her girls and my girls skirts. We ended up having too much fun and not enough time to sew. So, I came home with the fabric to finish what we had started. Here is one of the skirts I made.

Piper is my skirt girl. She loves skirts and dresses and all things twirly.

She is also my little shadow. While I was drawing out some ideas, she too decided to do the same.

Corduroy

Don't you love when you come across fabric that is on sale and pretty? When I came across this corduroy, I did not feel guilty buying all that was left on the roll because it was on a great sale. I remember asking myself why is this still here? Is something wrong with it? Nope. Nothing was wrong. It was waiting on me. After sitting in the closest for a while, I decided it was time to pull it out for the fall. First, I made a dress for Karis, my oldest. It fit terrible thanks to a not so great pattern I will never use again. I did not want to waste my efforts and the fabric, so I decided to redo it to fit Piper, my youngest. The lining is a little weird on the inside because of it but who will be looking on the inside? Thankfully, Piper loved it!

A friend loved it too, so I made one for her daughter! Also a requested clemson bowtie onesie and a cutie girlie onesie for babyshower gifts.

I did not want to leave Karis empty handed so I made her a twirly skirt also out of some cute corduroy. I used the NEWLOOK A6258 pattern (I think I got it at Walmart). Thankfully skirts are safe with her and she loved it!

wedding dress label

My younger sister got married in November. It was a beautiful wedding and so much fun to be with family for the weekend. Before the wedding however, are lots of fun showers. Sadly, I was not able to make it to all of them. Buying gifts off of their registry was fun! But after going to a few showers, I wanted to make her something special. So I made her this wedding dress label. I did the embroidery by hand so do not look too closely. She received it with happy tears!

Here is the history of the wedding dress label: "In the 20's and 30's, couture gown designers starting designing personalized labels for their clients, and attaching them inside the gowns. Now brides can use this special touch to make wedding gowns truly their own. When the tradition of labels for wedding gowns started, it was seen as the last time a bride would use her maiden name. So the bride's full maiden name and wedding date was sewn into the gown. More recently, brides began choosing to put their name and the groom's name on the label with the wedding date. Today, anything goes--from nicknames, monograms, or symbols--whatever the bride feels has the most meaning for her. These labels are sewn into your wedding gowns lining at the hem, or inside the top of the gown, where a typical clothing label would go. They can be sewn in any color, but are most commonly done in blue for the traditional "Something Blue." They can even be sewn as a pocket to hold something special, like a good luck charm, or other precious item that you want to have with you on your wedding day. After the wedding, the label becomes a memento for future generations to have the name and date from the day the dress was worn. This is a special touch for a dress that will be handed down. And if you decide not to keep the dress, the label can be removed, and kept as a memento of the gown-perhaps to be placed in your wedding scrapbook, next to a picture of the dress. Whatever you choose to have stitched on the label, it is a wonderful way to make "The Dress" truly your own. History of the wedding dress label ©Monde Design"

Smocked dresses

We were so thrilled when my husband's cousin asked my kids to be in her wedding. Karis was asked to be a flower girl, Piper the bell ringer and Berit the ring bearer. I was even more thrilled when she asked me to make the girls' dresses! Then the pressure was on. The bride and her mother said what ever I wanted to make they were happy with. So when I came across this dress in the Sew Beautiful Magazine I thought this was it!

Only because you can never get a pic of them smiling at once.