Design-Your-Own-Fabric Dresses

All the rage everywhere in sewing land is designing your own fabric.  And for good reason — it is fun to have complete control over the design process and get *exactly* what you are looking for.  Most of the time people are talking about designing their fabric with the likes of Spoonflower, but I decided to go old school with the girls this summer.  I busted out some watered-down fabric paints (to make the painting easier) and about 2 yards of solid white fabric and let the girls have at it.  (You might remember that I briefly mentioned this when we did it in July.)

They started out with a bunch of sprinkling:

And then moved on to painting some spots:

And finished with a great piece of fabric:

I’ll admit I had trouble giving up control on this fabric, and wished at times that I didn’t put the green or purple fabric paints out, or that I made them only paint instead of sprinkling, or that I made them only sprinkle instead of painting, or or or.  Ultimately I was happy enough with the finished product.

In August I tried to make them dresses out of the fabric, but my machine did *not* like working with elastic thread and died on me.  After being repaired, I finally brought the dresses back out and finished them in October.

I used Izzy and Ivy’s Ava Tie Top pattern.

For Julia’s, I thought it looked good without a bow and therefore didn’t add the tie loops or make a bow.  I also cut off some of the length and didn’t do the pintucks on the bottom of the dress.  The dress fit well and I really liked it.  For Julia.

Julia was really into posing that night…

As for Elena’s, it didn’t turn out as well.  It ended up being too narrow/thin for her frame and I decided to go forward with the tie loops and the bow to hopefully hide the fact that the dress is too narrow.  Instead, the bow pretty much takes over the dress.  (FYI: The bow was this size on the pattern I got.  The newest cover of this pattern appears to have a smaller tie/bow.)  I cut the length and didn’t do the bottom pintucks on this one either. Since this outing, I don’t think Elena has taken this dress out even once to wear.

At least she had fun painting! And eating her candy necklace!

And I’ll definitely consider having them paint fabric again.  It really was a lot of fun!

Boo!

Did I scare you?!?  (sorry, channeling my younger daughter who “hides” all over, jumping out with very loud but not very scary or surprising “Boo!”s.)

At the beginning of this year I got all sad reading everybody’s reviews of 2011 with lists of things they’ve done.  The thing is, I did *lots* of crafting and sewing in 2011, but I did a poor job of documenting it.  And I miss blogging about everything.

So, for myself, my goal for 2012 is to blog more about my crafts.  And it only took until late January to get that goal written out!  ha!

Anyway, I love show and tell.  And although this is a brief hello, there is definitely more to come.

As evidence that I’ve been busy, here’s a picture of 4 different bindings ready to go on quilts!

They look rather patriotic together, don’t they? The red ones are for semi-patriotic quilts — I at least plan on donating them to Quilts of Valor.  The blue one is for a space quilt, and the one binding is for a very feminine floral quilt my mom made.  I called dibs on it, and she gave it to me all done except for the trimming up and the binding.  Pretty good deal if you ask me!