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Friday Flower

May 20, 2011

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"A basket of petunias hanging outside your window is a cheerful sight!"

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Simplicity 2015 1080 Dottie Angel long dress pattern hack

I've made this a bunch of times so this was a pretty quick weekend project. The fabric I used here is Cloud 9 Cirrus organic cotton in Iris, which is a shot-weave purple/magenta. It's a bit like homespun but tighter. So . . . back to 1080 As a side note: I made some alterations to this already, but you don't need to do that to lengthen it. I changed the sleeves to make them easier to bias-bind: . . . and did an FBA: But you can do this with the stock pattern pieces. I didn't even retrace the pieces. I just laid them on the fabric and used my clear ruler to measure down from the hemline and out from the waist point, and drew that on with a tailor's pencil. I added 14" of length (I'm 5'7"), which allowed for a bout 1" of foldover at the bottom to attach a bias hem facing. This was solidly full-length. I made this as wide as the fabric width would permit. For the back piece, I wanted to distribute the a

Simplicity 2015 1080 Dottie Angel dress part I

. . . sigh. Yes, I've hopped on the twee dress bandwagon. Enter Dottie Angel: (I'm scalping part of this from my Sewing Pattern Review writeup .) Okay, this is going to sound a lot more negative than I mean it to be: The problem with simple patterns is that they usually fit one specific body type really well and everyone else poorly-to-not at all. This one, it turns out, has two pattern pieces that are the same except that the front has markings for pockets. Yes, you read that correctly: The front and back are the same. The up side of this is that, yes, it's easy to sew. But does it fit? . . . not so much. The back width and bust width are identical, so if you're bigger than an A cup, it will be tight across the front. Going up a size doesn't help because then the shoulders are too big (and the bust is still probably tight. My first muslin was like this. I'm a just-barely-a-C-cup so we're not talking D

Breyer shrinkies

Well, darn. I recently acquired an old-but-new-to-me Breyer 103 Appaloosa Yearling. She's absolutely gorgeous. I wanted a second one because mine, who I got in 1988, at the end of the run for that color, is not very pretty. She has a pale color and a sort of ashy finish. I always wondered about this but didn't think a lot of it because Breyer's paint jobs in the late 1980s and early 1990s were generally pretty bad. I also recently acquired an old-but-new-to-me Indian pony that is MUCH darker than the one I've had since whenever. I think the dark ones were earlier models. Anyway, this got us started talking online about variants. I said I needed to post pictures of my two Yearlings because the one was so much nicer than the other. I've always had this in the back of my mind but she's been OK all these years . . . until last night when I got her out to take a picture. Y'all--my 103 is a shrinky. (On the right.) Certain batches of Breye

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