Coat for Isabella

While I was pretty happy with progress on Isabella's coat the motifs on the front just didn't quite look right. The lightbulb moment (also known as the Attack Of The Blindingly Obvious) was reading Gail's comment - that she'd wear it sans motifs. Um, yes. It immediately brought to mind a picture of the coat without them, and the obvious solution - take some off. I only unpicked the top two and bottom one, which I think improves the balance considerably.

The buttonholes are made with my Greist buttonholer, which I love so much! Keely helped me pick buttons when we actually managed to meet up in person this week! (By "helped" I mean "distracted the twins while I looked at every button in Anne's and Threads")

Hard to photograph without it collapsing and hanging oddly. I need a child sized dress form.

And in other squealy excitement, this is currently drying on my kitchen bench.

Can't make it out? Here's a closer shot.

The logo designed by my clever friend, printed onto fabric with my computer printer! I used this tutorial, and it is so easy it's fantastic. Once it's dry I still have to heat set the ink with the iron, and do a test wash, but apparently they work really well. I can't wait to see how they stand up! I would love to print some vintage dress form images I have and make them into a collage to hang on my wall....

New stuff

I very firmly believe the adage that it aint what you know that counts, but who you know. I ran into M at her work a week or so ago (as opposed to running into her at our fortnightly craft nights, at which she is FORCING us to make a quilt. There you go M, I complained!) She mentioned running into a former colleague who has just opened a shop in Port Chalmers to sell locally made baby/kid stuff! Does that sound like me or what?! She suggested I contact her to see if maybe there'd be room for me. So I did, and yesterday I went to see her with some things. All of which are now in Little Chalmers on my behalf. I love designing, patternmaking and sewing. Don't like promoting myself, so having my things in a shop (on consignment) suits me perfectly!

Here's the latest crop. A bubble dress, modelled by Isabella. So willing. So unable to stand still. (I do love this shot though.)

Shirt.

Trousers. Not sure why the photo of the back is first, but it's too much trouble to shift them around before I post!
Front. I love the robot stencil. I have discovered that freezer paper stencils can be used more than once, which is great!

Here's Isabella in the altered Heidi dress. I re-cut the sleeves to be un-gathered petal sleeves which vastly improved the balance of the dress, and sewed buttons (from the shirts used) to hold the straps. Better.

Progress shot of Isabella's coat. Facial blurring done by Isabella, not me editing.
Back. Really loving this.
I still have to do buttonholes and buttons on a couple of things, but that means hauling out Georgia's sewing machine since it works much better with my buttonholer than mine since it actually sews slowly. Which mine doesn't. So that won't get done till the twins are in bed or at Kindy.