Eight-ish years ago, I began sewing for my unborn daughter. In the back of my mind, I knew that my ultimate goal was to get “good enough” to make her First Holy Communion dress. My mom let me help her design my First Communion dress and doing that with her is one of my core memories of childhood. I walked into our local JoAnne’s with her and saw a bridal gown that I loved, my mom created a similar version for me to wear. My goal when I set out to make this dress was to form similar memories with my daughter. Several months ago, Maria and I sat down…
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Christmas Sewing 2022- What I Made and How!
**There are affiliate links in this post** Shewee!!! I did it! This Christmas sewing was a bit of a whirlwind. To start with, I didn’t have my sewing machine. Which made it even more…interesting. Where’s my machine you ask? In the shop, I somehow really upset my feed dogs and have to have a new feed dog unit installed. Soooo I was sewing with Maria’s machine. Its a great little Babylock American Dream but its lacking a few bells and whistles. Oh well, it worked! So here’s the rundown of what I made: Gail Doane’s Traditional Wool Coat, two Children’s Corner Patterns Tates, one Children’s Corner Pattern Paty, one Collars…
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Grand Millennial Ottoman: How I Breathed New Life into an Old Piece.
I was gifted this old ottoman from my Grand-Mother-In-Law some time ago. I immediately had a million ideas for it, got overwhelmed, and promptly put it in my basement storage room to sit for all of eternity. Recently, we’ve purchased land (19 acres!) and have decided to build a new house. This will be our “until-the-kids-move-out-of-the-house” house. So my goal is to make the style fairly timeless and elegant. I’ve always been a sucker for timeless, elegant, children’s clothing, but when it came to home decor I pretty much followed whatever trend I was feeling at the moment. I’d like to stay away from that with the new house and…
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Picture Smocking on Corduroy, my Solution to Carpool Line Entertainment.
Its been a minute since I’ve done a blog post. Life has been wild around here! We’ve purchased land (nineteen acres) in my hometown and are slowly starting to take the steps toward building a house. I’ve found myself spending a ton of time in carpool lines with Robby and Maria in different schools and keeping up with John Luke is a full time job….see the picture below for his personality in-a-nut-shell. I’ve discovered the best way to spend my time in the carpool line is smocking…otherwise I get sucked into social media and yucky news. Soooo these outfits are the fruits of the carpool. I’m going to start with…
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Blue Gingham with Love.
So, let me start at the beginning with these outfits. The first outfit that I made was my own dress. I used it as the inspiration for the rest of the garments. I had a friend reach out to me (@becsewsthings on Instagram) with an image of a ready-to-wear garment that she loved. We dreamed and schemed about how to make it and finally hatched a plan. I’ll list all the parts of this plan below. This is the ready-to-wear garment we wanted to recreate. I’m no stranger to blue gingham. I love it with all my heart. So I’ve fully embraced its recent resurgence in popularity. In my experience…
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Sewing up Something New!
If you’ve looked around at any ads lately you will notice that shirring is EVERYWHERE. You can’t escape it. If its not on an adult dress, tweens’ shirt, a child’s dress its on a child’s shirt. Its all over the place! If you read my previous blog post you know I plan to incorporate it into some of my spring and summer sewing. This weekend I got a chance to give it a go and I am so pleased with the results! The first thing I did was make “toile” or a “muslin.” I made this using the Children’s Corner Bishop pattern with a few alterations. I added two inches…
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How Children’s Corner Store can transform your Sewing Experience.
Learn why choosing to learn to sew with Children's Corner is easy, affordable, and convenient.
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Derby Dreams-Children’s Corner Patterns’ Patty and Johnny
This is a description of the creation of sibling set Kentucky Derby outfits.
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Children’s Corner Johnny, Mary De and Kathy Dykstra Diaper Set- A Sibling Set
This blog post is about the creation of three garments, each for a different sibling. The outfits are coordinated but can easily be worn separately.
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Guest Post by Margy Hood: Lessons Learned
Guest Post By Margy Hood. Her work has been featured in several issues of Sew Beautiful magazine. Find her on Instagram @margyhood Over time I’ve learned that the more effort put into planning and prepping a project, the less likely I have to “un-sew” (aka: use my seam-ripper), and the more enjoyable sewing is. I learned a lot on my last project, and want to thank @DressThemDearly for allowing me to guest-blog and share both the successes and failures of that project with you. A friend recently called and asked if I could make a birthday dress for her daughter, Mary Charlotte. What she envisioned was Mary Charlotte…smocked on a…
