Ruffled nappy cover

So I'm donating an outfit to an event in Lancaster being organised by A Cupcake Mum for Blog it for babies.  After much procrastination and munching of prawn crackers tonight I managed to pick up where I left off last night sewing (I did eventually get off my bum!) and cracked on with the nappy cover, only to discover I forgot to buy thinner elastic for the legs.

Anyway the good part is the pictures, although nappy covers look naff unless actually on a baby!

You'll have to excuse the loose threads I don't trim until I'm finished.  I've made the nappy cover to go with this dress

I think it's ace and hopefully whoever gets the dress in the raffle will think so too!

Today I am mostly feeling rubbish

I am exhausted for no obvious reason today.  Apparently my energy has been stolen and this time it's not by the tiny humans.  It was my turn for a lay in so I slept late, then went back to bed at lunchtime and only got up at about 5pm yet I'm still tired and have that weird shaky feeling where nothing quite feels stable.

So not only have I wasted the day (something I do enjoy doing occasionally) but I have the urgent sense to do 'something' with my day which usually is sewing but I do not have the motivation today.

Now I've had my whinge I might actually crack on with sewing...unless the lure of the TV and chocolate gets too strong.

'The' Apple dress

About two weeks ago I bought some apple fabric from ebay.  It was amazing and I was so hideously excited about using it that I managed to completely psych myself out of using it.  I've done the same thing with some fabulous Cath Kidston.  It's the fear of royally screwing something up then not being able to put your precious fabric back together.

Well tonight I decided to grab the pull by the horns so to speak and just went for it.  I'm really pleased.  It's not perfect but then nothing ever is.  It's good enough that I'd happily let someone have it though.  It also has no buttons because I have no idea what to do with it.  I was thinking a couple of red apple buttons then thought it might be apple overload so while I'm considering options it remains buttonless.

So onto the pictures!

These are easily my favourite dresses to make at the moment.  They're fairly quick and simple and look really good.  It's quite reassuring to know that you can actually sew and crack something out in an evening especially as I was predominately making quilts for ages.  I'm also going to apologise for my poor cutting mat.  My eldest darling son has drawn on it with crayon and I've failed to get it off, even with baby wipes which we all know are the solvent to 99% of things that children draw with.  It's also periodically attacked by the cat just to make sure it knows it's place in pecking order (below the cat but possibly above me).

Chinese style wrap dress

I'm continuing my journey into making items of clothing predominately dresses for little girls, though they do get a model on my boys when I need to check a similar size.  As an extension of that journey I have decided to start blogging about my sewing (and other unrelated) escapades.

This is my latest attempt at a dress.  You will have to excuse the Thomas the Tank engine stickers on the door.  Unfortunately our very small flat has limited places to hang items to photograph (particularly at midnight which is when I was taking them).

I wasn't overly impressed with the fabric I have to say, but I did get it in a sale for something ridiculous like £2 a metre so I should probably be grateful it didn't decide to fray instantly.  As this is my first attempt I have just used whatever print came to hand as soon as I put my hand in the fabric box.  I also tend to be quite lax when it comes to matching threads when I'm doing a rough first attempt hence the reason there's a monochromatic thing going on with the bias binding.  Also please ignore the random piece of bias tape hanging off the bottom it needs tacking up but I really couldn't be bothered last night and as it's a first attempt dress I'm not too fussed as no one will be wearing it.

I'm quite chuffed with how it has turned out.  I almost always seem to be surprisingly pleased with myself after I've successfully made a piece.

Just to recap on the dresses I've made before (and shameless post pictures).

This is my first ever dress.  It's a wrap around pinafore which is apparently fantastic for showing off cloth bums.  I made it out of a remnant of ikea fabric (Susannah) and some plain red cotton.  I love ikea fabrics for sewing with as they are generally quite a heavy weight cotton and I find them very easy to manipulate.

This is the second dress, also an ikea fabric which I believe has been discontinued now (boo as it's gorgeous!).  I made this specifically for a rather fabulous little girl called Sophie.

My third dress was made from bits a remnant of material.  It was bought from hobby craft nearly 4 years ago now but I'm sure there are very similar prints (if not the same) still floating around.

I then decided to move on and try marking a party dress but being a spur of the moment decision I used a heavy furnishing fabic I'd bought to make cushions and some spare hot pink cotton drill.  I was so impressed with myself when I finished this as I'd had some real difficultly understanding how it was supposed to go together I woke my husband up in the early hours to show him.  Quite understandably he didn't really care for being woken up over a dress.

We then had the slightly over confident satin 'dress'.  I've decided I don't like working with satin and that it is the devil's fabric.  After finishing I was desperately disappointed with it more so because I'd just put hours of care and effort into making a dress that at best only mildly offended my eyes.

So I thought that Making the band thinner would save this abomination.  It didn't.

Then we come to the car dress which I adore.  It's made for a friend who's daughter loves cars but they are unable to find any kind of clothing with cars on or a girl.  Now this I find totally unfair so I offered to make her a dress to fill this need.  I used an ikea fabric.  It's available as yardage fabric or you can buy it made into bed linen.  I assure you I used the yardage not the bed linen.

I'm not 100% happy with it at the minute as I think it needs a waist band.  I've discussed this with my friend and I think we've agreed it would look better with a waist band so I'm going to make one in the style of a road.  It's going to be black cotton with white lines embroidered on.  I for one am stupidly excited about it!

If you made it to the bottom of my rather mammoth blog post you probably deserve a medal!