Quick and Easy Cowl neck Jersey Dress

Quick and Easy Cowl neck Jersey Dress

I had been in Mandors and bought a length of Jersey from their rack of offcuts and decided to try make myself something cheap and cheerful. Since I wanted it to be cheap and cheerful I wanted to see if I could get a free online pattern. I originally had it in my head that I wanted to make a long sleeve top with a cowl neck, but when searching for cowl neck patterns I came accross the Eva Dress on a website called your style rocks.

Butterick B5216 A & B

Butterick B5216 A & B

Fast Easy sewing with cotton.

Following on from the tricky silk party dress I decided to take a step back into the fast and easy pattern world and stick to a reliable cotton fabric.

I chose the Butterick B5216 pattern because I loved the variety of tops it offered. I also thought that with them being so simple it would be easy to adapt the straps to make them a bit different.

Mandors had a great stock of cotton liberty fabrics, so the only problem was not buying too many! I decided on four fabrics to make version B 3 times and one of version A. Instead of using fabric for the straps I bought some ribbons which matched my chosen fabrics, and some buttons just to add a wee bit more detail to them.

This definitely was a fast and easy pattern, especially since I wasn't doing the straps, so it was great for getting my confidence levels up and for making lots of wee summer tops quickly.

I Pad Cover

Make an Ipad Cover without a pattern

I had some fabric that I bought in mandors from their offcuts that they often have on sale beside the till.The decission then was what to make with it and as it was coming up to Christmas I decided to make my mum and Ipad cover as the one she had was a bit chewed by the dog. I thought it was a really fitting fabric as it had lots of magazine covers on it, so more fitting for an ipad cover than a piece of clothing, which is what I usually make.

I searched the internet for ideas and patterns but in the end I measured and cut the fabric to my own sizes. It's a first generation Ipad I was making it for and a lot of the patterns out there are for the more recent ones and the ipad mini. I got the dimensions for it from this website and set about working out my sizes.

With the Ipad sizes of 9.56 x 7.47 x 0.5inches, I converted it into metric sizes (I work in metric on a daily basis and just find myself getting confused if I go between the two) so this gave me dimensions on 243 x 190 x 13mm for the Ipad. I decided to make an envelope style cover and worked out I needed the following;

• Fabric - approx 600mm x 550mm
• wadding to pad the cover out 
• 250x192mm card to provide a structured back 
• ribbon 
• a button

This sketch shows my thinking behind what material I would need to cut. There were two lengths of 260x516mm to be stitched together and filled with wadding and card. These would then be sewn at set distance to create the folds to give the envelope effect.
The small squares of fabric would be folded into triangles and sewn onto the right side of the fabric to create holds for the ipad.

Upcycled furniture - Queen Anne Footstool!

Upcycled Queen Anne Footstool

When we moved into our house we were had nothing. Don't get me wrong, I'm well aware that a footstool is not a necessity, but it was something we wanted and so to get the things we needed and wanted within our budget we had to start bargain hunting.

I was sitting telling my gran how I'd been searching the charity shops, gumtree and ebay for a Queen Anne footstool to repair and reupholster and how I couldn't found one when, low and behold she had one in her garage! I instantly remembered it when she showed me it and was excited to start the task of covering it!

I had looked online for tutorials since I had never done this before and found this really useful..

http://www.instructables.com/id/Upholster-a-Queen-Anne-style-stool/

When I had stripped off the three layers of fabric on the old stool (my grandparents had been recovering it for a while, one time stapling on the fabric and another time using nails. F.Y.Y. don't use nails they're a nightmare to get out and look really untidy.) I discovered the inside of my stool was nothing like the one in the instructable, infact the cushion was pretty much crumbling away. 

simplicity 2362 Maxi dresses

Simplicity 2362 

Liberty Fabric Maxi Dresses

I am a big fan of the maxi dress, however, I am a bit of a strange shape, a bit top heavy I guess. I found that when I tried them on in stores I had to go fora much bigger size than I do for any other clothes if I wanted to stop myself pouring out the top of them. This also resulted in them not fitting well below the bust and me feeling like I was wearing a bin bag. Obviously the only way for me to get a maxi dress  I was comfortable in was to make my own.

I selected the simplicity 2362 pattern as I liked the variety of tops you can have to the dress and really liked the idea of having pockets. I'm a big fan of pockets - they provide somewhere to put your hands when awkwardly standing for a holiday snap!

I decided to go for styles C and E, only I made E the same length as C. I cut the pattern a size up from what I usually use in preparation for the awkward maxi dress and for the first time used my dress making dummy for more than just taking photographs of what I've made. I took my measurements and adjusted my dummy to fit and get started.