Hand smock summer dress: PR&P spring 2014#week4

Here's come the last week of Project Run&Play, the most difficult theme of all(for me), the signature style.

I've a hard time making decision what to make. Then the harder time to finished and blog it on time. 

By a little free time, I want to create a hand smock dress. The dress was done on the night before our family trip. So, I have to took all photo during the trip and now I am editing them and blogging by my iPhone.

This dress is made from The Sally dress pattern by Very Shannon. It's cute and comfy. I made it my style by adding the smock on the front bodice of the dress and attach the cute owl appliques on both pockets.

This type of smocking would looks better on clean polkadot fabric. It will create a petal like from binding 4 dots together. Mine is a bit too busy but I still love it as it  turned out.

This is a mini-how to for this smocking. Start by marking sign on the dots. Then put the needle from wrong side of fabric at no.1. Pull the thead on right side of fabric and put the needle down on no.2. Then up on no.3 and down on no.4 and so on and so on. When down on no.8, pull all the thread together and secure the thread at the wrong side of fabric. Move to the next group four dots along your designed area.

The owl applique looks cute, right? I'd love to take the compliment but I didn't creat them myself. I found them as an iron on applique at nearby craft store. ;)

Sorry for too much of photo on this post. I've just love how the dress turned out and can't resist to post them. It was approved by the girl too. And I hope you would like it as well.

Thank you for stopping by. I really love to hear your comment.

Love,

Penya

KCW April 2014 : The twirly jelly rolls skirt

This is official 5th day of KCW April 2014 but it's my actual 1st day to start any sewing for my kid in this week. Here's the result.

Twirly jelly rolls skirt on the bed head model

 I let the girl select which jelly rolls she want for her skirt. She selected the polka dot mixed one and asked for skirt that she can twirl in.

It did pass the twirlability test

The last tier of the skirt made from 5 strips of fabric. I've connected all short end of 5 strips together and run the very long roll on my little ruffle foot. Then attached it with the next tier, running on ruffle foot and so on and so on. The top tier was measurement of my girl's hip plus extra inches for comfortable. The last step is to let the girl select elastic band and attached it to the skirt. (I didn't hem the skirt, just used the pinking sheers. Fact is, handle the pinking sheers along the 220" length (44"x 5's) of skirt's hem is not easy as I thought) 

It's colorful, isn't it?

 It's not difficult project, just a bit of time consuming and a lot of ruffles to handle. I would love to did more delicate hemming but too lazy. What do you do when you have to finished the twirly skirt hem without the serger?  

Thank you for stopping by.

I would love to  hear from you!

Love, 

Penya

Coloring page dress # Project Run and Play season 9 sew along

I found this awesome idea at Welcome to the Mouse House last year and lucky enough to found this TIDNY fabric at Ikea store nearby. So I can make my version of coloring page dress for the girl.

My coloring dress from the Norah dress pattern

We trown in the coloring party. Each mommy made something from this fabric and let the kids color them. We have got some dresses, tops for girls and drawstring bags for boys. For my girl, I used the Norah dress and Tunic pattern which is the good frame for this project.

Coloring party

My girl is more than happy with her work (others kid as well). All of them very proud of themselves, so do moms!

So proud in her own color dress

I took the photo of her in this dress after many times of laundry. The dress was get worn very often. You may notice the color was fade a bit.

We plan to make another party in the near future, maybe the easy batik party. It would be nice if you can share the idea. We are during summer break. Any activity to entertain the kids would help the moms a lot.

Thank you for stopping by, I really love to hear your comment. :)

Love,

Penya

Strawberry dress for spring : Project Run&Play, spring 2014 sew-along.

In fact, at 37 degree Celsius here shouldn't count  as a spring, I guess. We are embrace early summer and realize that the temperature may shoot up to over 40 degree this year. What I can do is sewing the new dresses and tops for my girl in my little sewing corner to make this summer more colorful. And my girl spend a lot of her times in our village's garden. Especialy on her beloved tree. Can we count this as her favorite place?

I bought "Sew Classic Clothes for girl" the awesome book by Cottage Mama for many months ago. And now I modified classic A-line with round yoke to be a bubble dress with round yoke. The dress was inspired by the strawberry, which I think very suit with this season.

The strawberry bubble dress

The book is great. I was so stumble to understand armhole instructions process at first. But once I got the idea, the result was came out so perfect. I love when the clothes I made have done so neat like this!

Strawberry on the tree

I still made almost of the girl's dress in flare out or twirly style. Because she is a "full of energy type" girl. Narrow A-line skirt will forbid her from jumping and tree climbing which are her favorite activity.

Daddy did comment that the dress may look like a watermelon dress instead of strawberry... but my intention in the first place is to make a strawberry dress. Even the nearly 40 degree temperature can not make me see it as a watermelon. (But I want one for sure, who wouldn't want a slice of watermelon in the hot day?)

I made it in size 4T. With the small figure of my girl, it still has roomy to grow in the dress which is perfect! And maybe my next project would be a watermelon inspired outfit. what do you think?

Thank you for stopping by. I really love to hear from you!

Love,

Penya