Latest sewing plus some Craftsy blog posts

A quick post today with a little bit of my latest sewing and links to some of my recent Craftsy Sewing Blog posts. The response to my last post of Pattern Whispering was fun to read - and you all really like those posts. What should be the next category for Pattern Whisperer?  I have to give that some thought but I'm leaning towards cropped jackets - think moto style or other jackets that are not a blazer or a jean jacket.

Thank you to commenter Fabric Tragic who reminded me of the name sack dresses, which I had in my mental list but completely blanked out when I wrote the post. Sack dresses, not the prettiest name but describes that style well.

The last day or so I've been playing around with a shift dress pattern in anticipation of my next class at Hello Stitch Studio in Berkeley. It's Sew a Summer Shift dress this upcoming Sunday 6/11, 10am-5pm and there are a few spaces spaces available if you want to join in. While I do love complex patterns having a nice shift dress pattern in your repertoire is so useful. When the weather warms up it turns out those are the dresses I reach for again and again. 

I sewed this one up to play around with a pattern, and create some all-in-one facings which I am going to demo as well as other finishing options. This fabric is a slightly thick batik I bought ages ago in Hawaii and then got it home and it didn't seem right for any garment. This morning I was looking through my stash and decided that it felt like a lightweight denim - just right for a shift dress. Plus the print works great for this design.

I used this New Look pattern which is really cute but for a simple item you are not going to believe how many changes I made, both in fit and design. Which merit their own post so I will get to that in the next week or so. The pattern envelope says D0562 but the pattern tissue has NL6500 as the pattern number so I suppose it is listed under both pattern numbers.



My other class at Hello Stitch for June is the Fit Lab (Sat. June 17, 10 am-5 pm) where I will show how to take measurements, choose a starting size, and  how to cut and mark the muslin to make it the most useful as a test garment. Then everyone will sew up a muslin garment and see how to adjust that plus the most important part  - how to adjust the paper pattern based on the changes to the muslin. We'll be scheduling another of these classes, maybe in early fall and we just added a Sew a collared Shirt class. Coming up we're planning classes for Jackets (you know that's my favorite!) and perhaps wrap dresses.

In other projects I've had a few posts on the Craftsy sewing blog recently including this one on fitting muslins.

  

Link to Craftsy blog post:  Fitting Muslins



Link to Craftsy blog post:  Sewing Shirt Collars




Link to Craftsy blog post:  How to sew a Plant Hanger

I've been writing blog posts on the Craftsy Sewing blog for more than 3 years! Doesn't seem like that long. The topics have been all over the place from how to sew princess seams (I think the most popular post) to fitting, sewing pillows, and all kinds of other stuff. They come up via a Google search and you can narrow it down by adding Craftsy in the search terms if you vaguely recall a post I've written and want to find it again. As always - if you have any ideas for topics, either here or as a Craftsy tutorial please let me know!

Up next, more details on how I can make a simple shift dress more complicated, ha ha. Also just finished my once per year item in polyester. Mildly enthusiastic, but it could be the muted color more than the fabric.

This morning it's raining here - which is unusual for June but we N. Cal gardeners take the water any way we can get it. Every week I tell myself no more new plants and yet there are some things that made their way onto the garden bench this week. No self control! Plus a succulent sale on Sat. Plants or fabric - both irresistible!

Happy Sewing, Beth

Today's garden photo, one of those plants I bought at the local junior college horticultural department sale, and what a great value - going on 2 years and lots of blooms. Penstemon "garnet" I believe.  And a couple of posts back I had a picture of a rose, I found the tag in my garden folder and the variety is: Miss Behavin'    I think they are running out of names for these plant varieties:)