Colourful Teacher Gifts

 

Last year, for teacher gifts, I made the Mother & Daughter Totes from Oliver+S which is one of their free patterns. I'm not sure why I didn't make them again this year, but this pattern on Sew4home caught my eye.

It is a Roll-up Makeup Brush Case, made with a wipe-clean lining. Most of these type of patterns have square corners, but I liked the curved corners and the Sew4home website gives a template for this.

 

It's a lovely easy pattern and what took me the most time was joining the bias binding on the outside.

This is the inside of one of the rolls with some mini brushes inside

and opened out to get the full effect.

I used a very varied mixture of fabric from Stenzo, Hilco, Moda, Farbenmix, Patty Young and laminated cottons from Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner.

 

I've had a lot of fun making these, matching and mis-matching colours of fabrics, bias and ribbons. I have 2 more to make and that will be the end of my assembly-line sewing for a while.



 

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Lots of Tea Parties ... Part 2

Ok, so I went a bit wild with the Tea Parties! This bunch started with one I made for a niece who had just turned one, and first birthdays are special, so a little dolls dress was also deemed necessary. This one year old has a cute little 3 year old sister, and I couldn't leave her out, so I went matchy, matchy. Completely over-the-top matchy!

By the time I got to the dolls dresses, I was running out of matching fabric, but I kept them as close as I could.

Though the dolls dresses turn out really well, they are as time-consuming as the bigger dresses. I suppose leaving out the piping and ribbon would have made them much faster, but then they wouldn't be matchy!!

The insides are finished with flat-felled seams again. As these are summer dresses, they will probably be worn on their own ( on the 2 hot days we get in August;-) so I didn't want to leave scratchy seams.

And finally we have bloomers! my daughter wears leggings rather than bloomers, and because I feel I missed her 'bloomer' stage, this was my 'fix'. I topstitched the seam allowances of these to keep them neat and used French seams for the sides.

The smaller Tea Party dress is sized down from the 2Tto5 pattern to 12to18 size and I had to do the same with the bloomers. Multi-sized patterns make this relatively easy.
The main fabric is Patty Young Flora and Fauna and all the ribbons are Farbenmix.

There's one more Tea Party post, and a sneaky peek in one of the pictures above. Pin It Now!  

Yet another Feliz, so .. again .. lots of pictures!

I'm not too sure how I ended up sewing another Feliz, especially after the time this one took! My niece is six tomorrow. Last year I made her 2 dresses and she really liked the twirly one. Her mother sews, and had admired the Feliz dress, so I mentioned I would sew one for this years birthday.

Like the other dresses, I sewed French Seams for a neat finish, added lots of ribbon, all Farbenmix, except the elephant one.

There had to be accesories to match, and perhaps I went a 'little' over-the-top!! - so a bag, purse and hat were also added.



The ruffles didn't seem to be as difficult this time, though still take ages.

The hat pattern is my own and the bag and purse patterns were adapted from a Japanese magazine - Cotton Friend Autumn 2008. This is a sweet bag for a girl who likes to carry things around with her.

My daughter (3) modeled it for me - so it's much too long on her - which happily means that it should be ok for the birthday girl.

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A Prize that keeps on Giving!

Having named a new pattern for the designer Patty Young (a great prize in itself), I received an extremely generous prize from her in the post.

So I got to work. To increase the fun from the prize, I didn't use the fabric and pattern together.

Firstly I made Kyoko using a solid babycord and I lined it with gingham as well as making my own bias binding - this was all very easy which has a lot to do with the clear instructions in the pattern.

The obi belt is so great looking and was also easy to make.

Then I went looking for some dress patterns and found one I had been thinking about in a Japanese book 'My Favourite Dress'. I made a few changes to this pattern - buttons instead of a zip, different fabric in the pleats, lined the whole top of the dress.

Attaching the pleats was the most time-consuming part, but it turned out very pretty. I adore this Mod Blooms cord - it is so striking.

I wasn't sure about the pockets, but added them anyway and sewed some 'mini dots Kiwi' ribbon on top.

Well, this was, and is, such a great prize, from a very talented and extremely generous designer.

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Naming a Pattern.

I posted some suggestions on the Modkid blog to name some of Patty Young's future patterns. I have 12 nieces and I couldn't list all their names, so I picked some that I thought suited her style. Guess what!? one of my nieces names got picked - Nina. I am so delighted and it is an honour to have named one of this designer's patterns.

I have been sewing for less than a year - mostly for my daughter, but she couldn't wear all that I was making for her - so I started making for my nieces as each of their birthdays came up and 2 nieces have dresses made from Patty Young fabric. One I posted about here and below I've attached pictures of the other dress. For this dress I adapted a Japanese pattern (m ISBN9784529045261) by adding lining and a ruffle.
The headscarf is my own pattern.




I haven't sewn anything for Nina's birthday yet, so maybe she'll be lucky and get something made from 'her' pattern! Pin It Now!