A sewing retreat

Last weekend, I went on a sewing retreat with ladies from my favorite online sewing board.  I have been on that board since 2009 sharing my sewing creations and talking shop with the ladies.  It is always interesting to go meet people in person that you have “spoken” to online, as their appearance and voice are never really what you expect.  I knew what a few of them looked like from them showing what they made for themselves, but most were a mystery.  Luckily, I was able to remember all their names in short while and we all got on fabulously!

Honestly, remembering everyone’s names was what I was most nervous about.  I’ve got Mommy Brain…big time.

During the retreat I made the Girl a shirt, botched a few swimsuit attempts for her, and made myself a shirt, skirt, dress and almost finished a dressy tank top.  I have to modify the shirt for the Girl, since the armholes aren’t big enough.  I will post the two other things when I get them finished.

Here are my spoils from the weekend…

I didn’t buy these fabrics together, and my daughter declared, “They don’t really match!”.  I think it works, though.  The skirt is my often made pencil skirt out of a really nice weighted fabric with some lycra in it.  It has a zipper in the back, and has a satin feel to the fabric.

The chiffon shirt is meant to sort of look like this one from CAbi.  I didn’t have a picture to look at when I was making it, so I went from memory.  I should have made it a bit wider, but oh well.  It still fits and looks nice.  I used the sewing machine exclusively on this, as I did french seams for the shoulder and side seams.  This type of fabric tends to have edges that unravel easily, so I wanted to make sure they were durable.

This dress is the same dress that I made here, only I put godets on the side seams and made a cowl neckline on the back.  I wanted it to be a bit easier to walk in and more of a flowy skirt.  I also had a lot of this fabric, so I had plenty for making this dress.  This isn’t the easiest dress to get over your head with the thick elastic in the middle.  I think on the next one I make, I will try to do casings with thinner elastic at the waist.  I will definitely need to use some knit interfacing at the middle when doing that, though.

I also want a deeper cowl in the back.  I found a tutorial online on how to draft one and she cut it on the bias.  I drafted it like she did, but cut it on grain.  The bias wouldn’t have worked for the stripe, but another fabric would work better.

Look…all the stripes meet up!

I am all jazzed up for sewing again, so hopefully I can get the other items finished up soon.  I also have a Mei Tai I need to make for an old daycare teacher/babysitter of the kids.

Oh, and I just started a 1,200+ page trilogy.  It’s pretty good so far (if you like the fantasy genre with world building and assassins), and I forsee some late nights reading.

Too much to do!