Blog Archives

Baby Christmas Dress

Posted on11.8.14

I was thinking about making a baby Christmas dress for Granddaughter Lilly and wondering about fabric when this appeared at my door.

A bag full of curtains!

There were four pairs of curtains in the bag, all lined with red fabric. I didn’t take measurements but there was a LOT of fabric in there!

Unpicking

First was the job of unpicking, I like to reuse as much as possible so the curtain tape came off first. That will get saved in my haberdashery box for future use.

Then I separated the lining. I’ll only be using the printed fabric for this baby Christmas dress and will hardly use even 1 of the curtains. Enough to make a dress each year as baby Lilly grows!

Making the Dress

Then it was time to start making the dress. I used a BurdaStyle pattern, 9752 which gives a few different options on style.

Following the instructions I pinned the pattern onto the fabric. There’s a tutorial here for how to read sewing patterns.

I usually find Burda patterns easy to follow but the collar on this on really had me stumped. I spent a long time trying to figure it out but after a bit of trial and error and the help of a sewing forum I got there.

I used to have a problem inserting sleeves but have finally mastered that skill!

This is the top half of the dress finished ready for attaching the skirt.

The skirt was straight forward with a simple gather around the waist. I’ve used this technique on many baby dresses and will be posting a “how to” tutorial soon. It gives a nice fullness to the skirt and makes sure there’s plenty of room around baby’s hips.

Baby Christmas Dress Finished!

Because of the problems I had with the collar this took me around 8 hrs to make. I did manage to run up a matching bib in that time though. Now Lilly will have this cute baby Christmas outfit to wear over her first festive season!

Wall Organizer

Posted on9.19.14

I did say I was going to do some tutorials on the “Home made Christmas Gifts” page and a wall organizer can make a useful and adaptable gift for anyone.

I made this one with fabrics I had to hand being an avid upcyler but you can really let your creativity lose and choose according to who you’re making it for. A wall organizer will even work in a garage if you use stong fabrics so there’s an idea for the men in your life!

I gathered my materials together:

Cotton velvet and printed cotton, I’m sure you recognise them from other projects, after all this blog is all about upcycling!
A piece of cane cut according to the size you make.
A piece of strong ribbon or thick string, cut depending on low you want it to hang.
I used gift ribbon for embellishing but you can use anything for this.

You can make this any size you wish, just adjust the following measurments to suit.

Cut out:

61cm x 102cm of velvet (any strong fabric will do for this)
3 pieces of cotton 25 x 50cm (any non stretch sturdy fabric will work)

Fold the velvet in half lengthwise right sides together and pin then fold the cotton in half right sides together and pin.

Sew 3 sides on all the pieces leaving an opening for turning right sides out. Finish off the seams either with overlocking, pinking shears or the zig zag stitch on your sewing machine.

Turn right side out then press and topstitch all pieces. If you’ve been reading my other posts by now you should recognise a common theme, squares and rectangles doubled and topstitched. There are lot’s of useful items to be made this way!

Make a hem at the top of the velvet piece to hold the cane.

Pin the 3 cotton squares evenly down the length of the velvet. This is where you’ll see how accurate your cutting and sewing has been so far. I will blush here and admit I got somewhat distracted, making it trickier to line everything up! Stitch them onto the velvet leaving the top open (for putting things in). I used a zig zag stitch for this to add more interest (the photo doesn’t show it too well).

Then it’s time to add your embellishments to suit the recipient of your gift. Buttons work well as do scraps of cloth and ribbon.

Thread the cane through the hem then make a loop at each end of the thick string and hook one over each end of the cane.

And there we are, the simplest of gifts and these wall organizers can be made for every room by using colours to suit your theme.

How to make Plush Baby Booties

Posted on8.26.14

As promised I’m going to show you how to make plush baby booties like these, and the ones in an earlier blog post “Here’s one I made earlier.” I used fleece but you can use any fabric or trim. These are small enough that it wouldn’t take long to sew them by hand if you don’t have a machine.

First download the pattern here Upcycled-Baby-Booties

The pattern is for 3mths but I’ll explain how to make them smaller later in the tutorial.

Next gather your materials:

Fabric (fleece and cotton work well)
Elastic (1/4″)
Pattern

Cut out the pattern pieces from the paper.

Fold the fleece (it doesn’t matter which way) and pin the pattern pieces to it.

Then cut out the pieces remembering to cut 4 for the upper.

Take the 2 “back and side” pieces and stitch a hem along the straight edge wide enough for the elastic.

Thread the elastic through the hem using a darning needle with a large eye.

Hold onto both elastic ends and pull to gather.

To secure the elastic in place stitch back and forward over it.

Tidy up the ends and you’ll be left with 2 pieces like this.

Now, this is the bit that’s tricky to explain hence the extra pics! Take 2 of the uppers and sandwich the elasticated pieces between along the straight edge.