The Romance Novel Blouse Grosgrain Giveaway

Head over to Grosgrain and check out her beautiful blouse giveaway: The Romance Novel Blouse Grosgrain Giveaway. It is beyond lovely!

Tank dress tutorial & giveaway

So, I wrote the tank dress tutorial last night, and was planning on posting it. However, then I thought... maybe I should wait until after the giveaway? I'm not sure- I'd like some input! I taught my sister, who has done some sewing but not a ton, how to make one yesterday and used it for the tutorial. Here's a picture of how it turned out:

It's hard to tell in the picture, but the aqua tank top picks up the colors of the aqua flowers in the skirt beautifully. Guess what her favorite color is??

The "Cabo" Dress Tutorial - T shirt refashion

I came up with this dress quite a while ago. It was so easy and cute, I decided to make a tutorial but I never got around to posting it. After seeing Disney's from Ruffles and Stuff adorablebeachcomber tutorial, I thought I would post it since it is essentially an adult version of her dress!

What you'll need:

- The biggest T-shirt you can find - at least XL

- elastic to fit around your ribs under your armpits

Directions:

1) Start with your T-shirt. It's very important that you get a giant one!

2) Cut the sleeves and collar off the shirt. Cut as little as possible off the top, or the dress will be too short!

3) Cut along the seams of the sleeves so they open up.

4) Now, sew the ends of the sleeves together to form a tube. This will be your ruffle! Also, sew up the sides of the shirt where you cut the sleeves off. Make sure you taper your seam down the bottom of the arm hole though, so you don't have funny puckers where your sewing ends.

4) Here comes the slightly tricky part. You need to attach the tube to the inside of the shirt so that it is inside of the t shirt, and so that you can flip it out and have both right sides facing out. Basically, we are attaching it and making an elastic casing with it.

Here is a close up (sorry it's sideways..) of the correct way to do this. If you pull the ruffle out from the shirt after you sew it (so it isn't inside of it anymore), the seams should look like this.

5) Now, pull the ruffle down over the right side of the dress. The right side of both the ruffle and the shirt should now be showing. Next, stitch along the top of the ruffle, leaving room between your stitch and the seam attaching it to the main dress for the elastic to be threaded though. Stop your stitch about half an inch before the place you started.

6) Through the gap you left, thread the elastic through the casing. Sew the ends together once it's through all the way.

7) Now, here's the creative part! You can leave it as is, like I did with this one, and pair it with an awesome belt. Or, you can make a casing around the waist and thread some elastic through.

Or, make braided straps and a belt like Disney did in her beachcomber dress!! I'm going to have to try that next :)

Check out this awesome fuchsia vintage belt - I got it for 2 bucks at a thrift store! I think it looks pretty great with the dress!

I think this dress would be especially cute in a navy blue, with a striped sash and braided straps like in Disney's tutorial. What do you guys think? If you make this, post your links!

Tank Dress GIVEAWAY teasers ;)

Hello ladies!

I'm still confined to bed, but tomorrow morning I am taking a little outing to the FABRIC STORE!! And I am beyond excited about it.

This also means I will be picking out the fabric for my upcoming tank dress giveaway. I am so excited about this, but am a little concerned about getting people interested in it. So, if you're interested, comment and let me know!!

Here are some pictures of 'tank dresses' that I've been seeing in some awesome places (modcloth, anthropologie, etc...) that I will be keeping in mind. Which one is your favorite??

Grandpa's Shirt refashion - Tank top dress (tutorial!!) & GIVEAWAY??

I knew I had to wear one specific shirt of my grandpa's in Hawaii. It's very tropical and he wore it there often. However, I have very pale skin and orange tends to totally suck the life out of me. So, I didn't want to make a shirt or anything that would be close to my face with this particular hue!! I wore it as a bathing suit coverup (hence the black underneath!), so I didn't get the best pictures. But oh well.
After thinking on it a while, I decided that maybe pairing it with white would result in something wearable - and it was! Not only that, but I found the easiest, best way to make a quick dress on the cheap!
I am so, SO excited about this dress because of the potential it holds. As soon as I've recovered enough to start sewing, I think I'm going to make about 10 million more of these dresses. And, to share the love, I'll be posting a tutorial of the very next one I make! I promise, you'll absolutely love the easiness and comfort of it! So check back soon!


ALSO - I'm thinking about making one of these as my very first giveaway!! I've always wanted to do one, but since I don't have an incredible amount of time for blogging I never got around to it. If I can get enough people interested in it, I'll do it! Comment if you'd be interetested in entering! :)

Fabulous summer news

So, I'm going to be spending the summer working in research and a university in California, and have my apartment lined up and everything. However, I won't have a car, so I've been contemplating how I'll make my near-weekly fabric store runs. Finally I decided to actually look up if there was one in the area, and guess what - there's one 3 BLOCKS AWAY!!! I am so excited! Not only that, but it looks very, very cool - lots of moda and other designer fabrics. I have so many projects planned for the summer, so this is perfect! Yay!

Tropical Sweetheart dress - finished!!

I posted a while ago about this dress i was working on to take to Hawaii - it is based on this

Unfortunately I didn't get as many/as good of pictures of it as I wanted to - especially of the back. I added a ruffle down each side of the zipper, which had the double benefit of looking pretty awesome and hiding the zipper a little more! Here's a crappy little picture of it:




I did the dress in a cotton watercolor print with a hot pink satin for top lining. I used the same lining fabric to make a one shouldered bow. I've been loving all the one shouldered designs that are so popular now, and that seemed like a good way to easily incorporate the effect!!



The other modification I made to the dress was that I didn't include the sleeves - easy change :)



I have a bachlorette party coming up in a month or so, and I'm thinking of using this same pattern to make a strapless or one-shouldered red dress with big rosettes on it or something, kind of like one of these:


What do you think??

Home from vacation, and on to surgery

I just spent some time on vacation, so I didn't post much because I was so busy sewing to prepare! I have almost all of my grandpa's shirt refashions finished, and I'll be posting pictures and tutorials of them as soon as I get them downloaded! I also finished the sweetheart neckline dress I was working on - pictures of that are coming as well.

Unfortunately, I'll be going in for a major surgery on tuesday, so I won't be doing any crafting for a few weeks, probably. I do have one project that I'll be working on - it's a wedding gift for a friend. She recently got a sewing machine but hasn't done a lot of crafting in the past, so I'm making her a sort of beginners 'kit'. Any ideas for stuff to go in??