honeycomb garden party
so for over a year now I've had a several yards of white eyelet fabric left over from the flower girl dresses i made my nieces for our wedding.
i decided to use this fabric to make five coordinating dresses for my cousins' daughters. they all live in DC, which i'm told gets quite hot and sticky in the summer, so i figured some lightweight casual dresses would be appreciated.
i fell in love with this honeycomb print the moment i saw it at fabric depot in portland. however since nora and etta, who went shopping with me, were less than thrilled with it, i only bought it as a backup. i ended up not using it for the flower girl dresses, but was very excited to use it here.
i first made the garden party dress by oliver + s for nora and etta here (that fabric also came from fabric depot). i thought it was a sweet style (and already had the pattern traced out) so i decided to make it again here just with a different sleeve option.
i made two pattern alternations:
- i added pockets in the side
- i did a full lining of the back bodice
but enough talking, lets get to the good part, semi artistic pictures i took in my living room!
love,
aunt maggie
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within an hour of finding out that talia was going to be a girl i went to my fabric stash and starting planning her first dress.
after a decade of sewing for other people’s daughters i knew sewing for my own would be fun…but i had no idea how much fun.
more flower girl fabric leftovers!
i was smitten with the true bias mini southport dress from the moment i saw it and couldn’t wait to make my own. however as we all know being really excited about something often leads to building it up in your head and being let down by the reality.
so for over a year now I've had a several yards of white eyelet fabric left over from the flower girl dresses i made my nieces for our wedding.
a few years ago I came home from work to the best surprise: the good folks at oliver + s had sent me a package of goodies! (i’ve already shared the first things I made from this package here.)
another back to school post!
maya started kindergarten this year and is the third generation in our family to attend the ann arbor public schools. so naturally a new dress was in order.
lets talk fabric selection.
back in may we went up to heldsburg for a wedding. the wedding venue, our Airbnb, the rehearsal dinner venue, and a fabric store were all within 800 yards of one another. combine this with the fact that we referred to the groom as "sargent substance" back in college and what do you get? I'll give you a hint" it rhymes with 'funk maverick bopping'.
now that we've covered maya, neela, and etta's flower girl dresses it's time to make something for nora. i knew whatever I made had to be very special as nora was so very helpful in picking out my dress.
I knew one of the flower girl dresses would need to be my favorite oliver + s pattern: the library dress, and who better to make it for than my rough and tumble namesake etta?
my youngest niece is miss neela banana peela. Now this child is so perfect anything would look great on her.Â
when I was in portland this past weekend nora and etta put on their new bee mine dresses and we went for a walk around the block.
okay it's not a film, but v and I have been watching this Amazon series.
set in 1962 it's an alternative version of history in which natzi germany and japan had won World War Two. America fell and is now split into the japanese pacific states (west coast) and the greater natzi reich (east coast and mdwest) with a neutral zone in the middle (rockies). the main character juliana crain is a san francisco woman about my age who lives with her Jewish boyfriend until she joins the rebellion.
remember that awesome fabric combo i came up with for maya's second playdate dress? well i had a fair amount of fabric left over and i was at a loss for what to make with it.
then i remembered the book report dresses i had made a year earlier. maybe the cut of the pattern that worked so well with the busy and bold ikat would also work with the tessellation print.
each time I think I've blogged all my past projects another one surfaces. here is another one i found.
i was so smitten with the library dress pattern from oliver + s after making it first as instructed for maya, then with a zipper modification for nora and etta's back to school outfits that it wasn't long before i made two more for nora and etta, this time from a simple purple polka dot cotton.
quick post today....
i first saw this joel dewberry print at gather here a few years ago. it was beautiful but i wasn't sure how i would find coordinating fabric so i held off.
a few months later i saw it for sale on fabric.com when i was order something else and this time i couldn't help myself.
one snowy day back in cambridge I bundled up and headed to gather here. on the store dress form was a darling rendition of the book report dress by oliver + s. inspired i started looking for a fabric for my own version. i came across this ikat print and knew it would be perfect.
two years ago our friends joe and kathryn got married and i decided to use the occasion to make myself a new dress.
i found myself wanting something special so i went to spoonflower, a site i had read provided a lot of the fabric for the little things to sew book by oliver + s.
it was amazing. i spent hours looking at prints before ordering a few swatches. once they arrived i quickly settled on the teal serpentine and placed an order for two yards in cotton sateen.
as previously mentioned nora and etta are quite girly. i, however, am not. so finding fabric that appeases them yet i can stand is often a challenge.
when i came across this rose and coral abstract print at gather here a few years back i knew immediately they would love it and bought a few yards.
a little while back vic's mom asked if i would like some vintage sewing notions and patterns. you see the mother of one of her friends had passed away and the friend could only part with her mother's things if she knew they were going to a good home.
well i was happy to provide said home, and today i'll share some of the wonderful things i received.
before the trick-or-treaters head out i wanted to revisit some of my favorite costumes from the past few years and give a preview for this year.
because of our age vic and i go to a lot of weddings these days. because we meet in college (same freshman dorm) a lot of these weddings have the similar guest lists.
last fall we had three weddings, three weekends in a row, all on the east coast. by the time we got through the second (our fifth of the year) i was so sick of all my dresses i couldn't bear the thought of wearing any of them the next week, especially when half the guest list would be the same.
so i did the logical thing and decided to make a dress 100 hours before the ceremony.
a few years ago when i was just discovering the glory that is oliver + s patterns i went to visit vic's family in pennsylvania for the weekend. now i've already talked about how i find hand sewing to be a great way to bring your sewing when you travel. but another thing is pattern tracing.
when done right pattern tracing is time consuming, especially if the pattern has a lot of pieces. add into that doing the same pattern for multiple sizes and you're looking at hours and hours of work. fun work, but work. so i brought along the croquet dress pattern and traced both versions for all three girls that weekend. not a small task.
