scrap busting

Monday 26 October 2009
Thanks everyone for your lovely comments on my dress - it was certainly good to have one come out look smashing after a few failures at the muslin stage lately! I've already hand washed and pressed the dress, and it's now been lovingly placed in my wardrobe where it will probably stay for a long time since I have no other special occasions coming up in the forseeable future....

Anonymous - I think this dress would work really well with an a-line skirt, or any style of skirt for that matter. I'm thinking about making this dress again in a cotton for day wear with a less severe pencil skirt style. While there is plenty of room around the hips because of the pleats, the skirt is very narrow around the knees and definitely needs the two side slits to make walking possible.

Gail - there are a few reviews of this dress over at Pattern Review in addition to SewTawdry's fitting and crafting tips which are really helpful because as usual the BWOF instructions are not so helpful. That said though, once you've worked out how to sew the side pieces to the bodice pieces it's all pretty straightforward after that.

katherine h - oh no! As Sew4Fun said, special night outs don't come along too often after babies so I'm so sorry yours ended short with you being sick.

image from Sewmamasew.com
Jean it's funny you should mention making a fabric alphabet letters for your grandkids because I've been doing the exact same thing for Anna! A contest of scrap busting ideas is being held over at Sew Mama Sew!, including a tutorial for padded letters with magnets in them to put on the fridge, so I've been gathering little squares of fabric and tracing the letters to make two sets (since Anna's name has two A's and two N's). Not that this has made the tiniest dent in my fabric stash, but it's fun anyway.















There's heaps of tutorials for using up fabric scraps, my favourites being the one for drink coasters made from old CDs, a ladybug pincushion, a fabric brooch and a yo-yo necklace. I'm sure you're all like me and have scrap bags that are as out of control as your fabric stashes, so it's worth a look at all the fun ideas.

8 comments:

  1. I know that it isn't always possible to leave comments about comments that have been left on one's blog, but I really appreciate the time you take to do this - and I didn't even leave a comment! Makes it seem much more a two-way process and I enjoy 'listening in' to the conversation ;)

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  2. I love those padded letters. What a wonderful idea. you are so creative.

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  3. OMG love the alphabet idea from scraps! It's the zeitgeist again, as I've been thinking about scraps and have been seeing posts about it around the blogworld!

    And big congrats on your dress, how great is it to have a new machine. I thought I was a struggle town sewer until I got mine, things were always going wrong on the old Janome (30 year old Janome mind you) and the newer machines are just life changing!

    HA! Never thought I'd be gushing about a sewing machine! xoxo

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  4. Exactly what I was talking about! Yep... nice to have something else to use up some of the scraps hmmm?
    So, did you have a good time with the other "mom's"? Always was nice to get out of the house and with adult people!

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  5. In a rush of madness, I threw out all my fabric scraps when we moved. I had 30 years of scraps..I don't know what came over me..lol

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  6. What a great scrap busting idea. Just this past weekend I was moving two bags of scraps and wondering what I could do with them. They're too big too throw away, but too small to make garments from. Your ideas have inspired me and I am now going to plan some christmas gifts from my scraps!

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  7. I've been planning to make a similar alphabet but the idea to put a magnet in them is brilliant. I'll also have to make two sets to accomodate our names, and I'm pondering making a third set of just vowels.

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