Halfway there

Two down, two to go. I used Simplicity 2363 for mom. I finished it up yesterday.

I think it turned out okay for the most part. Good thing is mom likes the color and the fit is dead on. Except for the sleeves. I think the next one we will put a little elastic in it. Just along the bottom edge of the sleeve. She has requested that I lengthen the dress a bit as well too. No problem there, the main thing is it has the fit and ease she was wanting.

I was a little put out on one thing though. The embroidery work. I had problems with the interfacing, it is too stiff. It also caused the fabric to pucker around the stitching. Not sure why that happened. This particular design was supposed to be done in pinks, but I wanted to match the fabric colors. I also turned the fabric a quarter of turn to make the design run up and down instead side to side. Also, it took me longer to run the embroidery machine than it did to sew the dress. The design is bit involved and has a long (at least to me) run time. Then, the hooping each time (six times) along with thread changes (3 colors, six times) was a little boring as I like to work faster. Thankfully I didn't choose one of the designs that had like six or ten thread changes. Here is a shot of the yoke to show the detail better.

Like I said, the fabric puckered on me, but she liked it and that is what is important. Overall, I count is as a success. What do you think?

I also finished up my daughter's zebra print skirt. Funny thing about this pattern was the yardage I used. Miss J picked out this zebra print fabric because she has a top that is made of similar fabric. After looking over the fabric, I decided which way I thought the stripes should run and cut accordingly. I used the Simplicity 2606 pattern again for her, cutting it down a size. The pattern called for 2 1/8 yards, but when I cut it out, I used less than 2/3 yards. Goodness, what to do with the left overs?

Now, to start on my dress and the bible cover. Then I will have to have a quilt fix before cutting more garments out. LOL I have way too many ideas running around in my head as well, but I will work them out one at a time.

As a side note of interest. I joined a sewing challenge called Self-Stitched September. You can read about it by clicking on http://sozowhatdoyouknow.blogspot.com/2010/05/join-me-self-stitched-september.html Zoe, did a similar challenge, Me Made May, and had a huge amount of participants, most of which wanted to keep it going. So here we go. I am challenging myself to make 12 items for either me or my daughter in September. I may have to include what I make for my mom as well. We will see how it goes.