Spring is in the air.....

I have been busy.......
This is my latest project.....

It is a little girl's dress..... size 6..... mid-calf length..... 100% cotton..... flirty little flounce sleeves..... sweetheart neckline..... lining and slip are poly/cotton..... three large yellow buttons.....
A full length view......

It is fully lined and has a built-in slip with a tulle ruffle and a layer of tulle between the slip and the dress skirt.

The back has a large bow and sash that goes around the lower part of the bodice. It has a zipper closure.

Full length view of the back.....

This photo shows the tulle ruffle.....

Here you can see the layer of tulle between the slip and the dress skirt..... The slip makes it a whirly twirly dress that any little princess would just love to wear..... perfect for church or any special occasion.....

This was a fun project to work on! It took many hours of work with Viki and much hand sewing, but I like the results. This little dress is for sale and I will be putting it in my etsy shop. If anyone is interested, it can be found here. I have the child's body measurements for the size 6, if you need them, please let me know.

I did have 3 wonderful days of gardening this past week and then 3 days of rain, but the weather is warming up again and I hope to be able to get in my garden again soon. Have a wonderful weekend.

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

Anticipation....

I can't wait to see these again .........

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

Sweet Memories....

Speaking of aprons..... were we? Oh, we weren't? OK,
The story of this one goes like this....
I made this apron for my daughter....We owned the Sweet Boutique candy store together. Unfortunately, with the economy the way it is, it forced us to go out of business and we closed the store at the end of January. We were in business for 6 years and had a good time with it. It was a lot of hard work and could be very stressful at times, but we both loved it. So, it was a very hard decision to say, OK, we have to let it go. Fortunately, we were not in debt to anyone, and closed the business before that happened. So, as a memento to my daughter, I made the apron on my new machine...Viki.... from the curtains that we had at Sweet Boutique.
I used one panel for the skirt and then I used the fabric from another for the waistband, ties, and pocket.

I embroideried the waistband.....

Full length view:


And the pocket.....

It came out really cute, and she loved it!

And I had the fun of fashioning, recycling, and gifting!

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

Another project......

This is my latest project. It all started when I went into my attic yesterday and brought down a box of fabric that my ex-neighbor and friend gave me about 10 years ago. She gave me 6 boxes, 5 are still up there. This box had all neutrals in it. Upolstery, drapery and curtain fabrics. Her brother has a store that does those custom made things and she gets the leftover pieces of fabric. She makes bags and aprons and things with hers. I was looking for some fabrics to use on my new sewing machine. Then I started looking through some of my Somerset magazines, for some ideas of something that I could use the fabric for. I saw a pouch that holds artist supplies and an art pad and then realized that I had some scrapbooks that could use some spiffing up and so I dug through the fabrics and found some that would work. I'm going to do a tutorial-type thing here, because I did remember to take pictures as I went along.....

The first step was to make a label. This is a brown paper bag that I stamped the title on. I cut around it with my decorative scissors. This is the fabric that I chose for the cover. It is really heavy upholstery fabric. I had to iron all the fabrics to get the creases out. The fringe is the selvage edge and I decided to use that in the design.

This is the liner fabric......

I used a piece of this gauzy stuff under the paper label.

I cut a piece of fabric to size and just started gluing it onto the back cover.

I layered all the stuff together for the front cover. I put a piece of tulle over the paper to help protect it from wear.

I did a row of hearts on the top and bottom of the label and just straight stitched the sides.

This is a silk rose that I tea dyed the other day. I wanted to try it and it was perfect for this project. I cut a strip of the gauzy material and made a bow and put it in the middle. There's some tea dyed lace under the whole flower thing. I also added some buttons around the label.

This is the back inside cover with the lining and the outside cover all glued on.

I had some vintage hem tape and I used that to cover the raw edges of the materials.

This is a cover that goes between the front and back covers to hide the edges of the pages. This is a closeup of the fringe......




Taa-Daa.....

Here is the completed album......

A closeup of the decorations, notice the big jewel in the center of the flower and another piece of that fringe on the left side of the label.

This shows the cover that hides the edges of the pages.
So, another fun project completed. I hope you enjoyed my tutorial of how I made this album /scrapbook cover. I am having so much fun crafting these days. I have some other things to show you, also.

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean