Emily's Oliver + S Family Reunion dress

The Oliver + S Family Reunion dress sew-along started on June 13.  Here's the link to the Above All Fabric blog about it http://bit.ly/iDAd5b  I was all set to go with my fabric from my stash, and the pattern and buttons I'd gotten at Haberman's. http://habermanfabrics.com/
I'd already traced the size of the pattern that I needed and cut 2" off the bottom to give the right length dress for Emily.  So I pinned the pattern to the fabric with the help of my trusty assistant, who has to inspect each step of the way.  Baby has the idea that the cutting table belongs to her.

One of the first steps was ironing on the interfacing.

I had no idea what a great purchase those little silicon finger covers would be.  But they've saved me many burnt fingers.  So the interfacing has been pressed on and here I'm folding the back facing over.
Next were the pintucks.  I marked the right side of the fabric with yellow tracing paper, which shows up a bit in the photo, I think, but will wash out.  I normally don't like to mark the right side of the fabric, but couldn't figure any other way to be able to see these.  Here's the back.

After the pintucks the little tab for the front was put together. As the sew-along was progressing, you  could check out other people's photos on the Flicker site http://bit.ly/mP9Fhg.  I'd seem several that had added lace, rick rack or some sort of trim around the tab, and I decided to do something like that myself.  I had some leftover green in my stash that perfectly matched the green embroidery on the fabric.  So I added that around the tab.

I thought it looked great until I looked at some of the other photos in the Flicker group and realized I'd put it on in the wrong spot.
Now why am I showing you that I made a mistake?  I was reading in Problogger http://bit.ly/llivPa the other day how people don't like it if you come across as perfect.  They want to read a blog and see that you make mistakes just like they do.  Hey, if we never made any sewing mistakes there would be no need for seam rippers.  So I pulled off the tab and redid it.  And here it is where it's supposed to be.

As I mentioned last time because of all the other family things I was trying to get finished before Father's Day weekend, I ended up getting behind with the sew-along, and didn't catch up till the last day.
The shoulder seams and neck facing were different than any I'd ever done and required close watch of the instructions.  Half of the shoulder seam was done 'normally' with right sides together, and the rest near the neck edge, was done with wrong sides together.  I've always thought of a facing as being something inside that you didn't see, but that wasn't the case here.  The neck facing was sewn to the wrong side of the neck and then turned over to be the neck edge on the right side.

Now that the neck facing is on it's obvious why the tab had to not be at the top edge or a lot of it would have been hidden.  Glad I saw that before I got too far!
Next came the sleeves.  I noticed that my fabric was raveling a lot, you can probably see it in the photo above, so I decided to serge the seams.   With sleeves I always run gathering threads between the front and back notches, gather the sleeve a bit and use a lot of pins to hold it in place.  Then I run the seam on my regular sewing machine, pull out all the pins and check that it's the way I want it to be before going to the serger. For this dress, since they were using 1/2" seams, I adjusted the serger to be a narrow 3-thread overlock.  I run the serger slowly and keep moving the fabric out of the way so that I don't catch a part of the dress or cut something that I don't want to cut.  The photo below is after the sleeve seam was serged.

The sew-along recommended using French seams for the side seams.  Since my fabric wasn't sheer and I'd already worked out the serger settings, I serged the side seams instead.
The hem facing was the next step.  I was concerned about having enough of the green seer sucker left to make the doll dress that Emily's Mommie had asked me to do, so I used the solid green that I'd used for the tab trim for the hem facing.  Since Emily is short I decided not to add the 5 rows of stitching at the bottom.  Next came button holes and buttons.  The buttons looked a bit delicate and I didn't want to break them so I sewed them on by hand, after making the button holes with the machine.  And here's the final dress.

Along with a close up of the top.

Now all I have to do is make the doll dress and something for Emily's twin brother, Jake and I can ship the new outfits off to them.  I'll add a photo of Emily and her doll in their dresses when I get them.

Every Friday?

So I told myself that I would write a post for the blog every Friday.  Well, as you notice there was nothing last Friday.  Am I the only one who underestimates how long everything will take?  Or do you do that too? 

A week or so before I'd gone to Haberman's http://habermanfabrics.com/ to get the Oliver +S Family Reunion Dress so I'd be ready to go when the Family Reunion Dress sewalong on The Above All Fabric blog http://www.aboveallfabric.com/blog/ began.  Right there displayed in the pattern area was a dress pattern for a girl and her American Girl doll.  When Maddy, our 8-year old granddaughter, had spent the weekend with us she'd indicated that she would like to have a matching outfit.  The patterns were Kwik Sew 3767(http://bit.ly/jjISuQ) for Maddy and 3771 (http://bit.ly/ltUjFh) for her doll. Of course, I couldn't resist!  Now all of a sudden I had dresses to make for both granddaughters and a doll.  Well, actually I'm going to make a doll dress for Emily's baby doll to match her Family Reunion one too, but I've got to make my own pattern for that, so it'll take awhile longer.  Now my next problem was that Maddy would be here the Saturday of Father's day weekend, and so I needed to finish the dress for her and her doll by then. 

Fast forward to the end of the story.  I got the dress for Maddy and her doll done by Saturday.  I didn't finish Emily's dress until the day after the sew-along finished.  I still haven't started her doll dress.  Oh, did I mention in the middle of all this I was cooking all the food for the family gathering on Father's Day?  And had to make a new tablecloth for the picnic table too?  What a week.  I spent Monday this week just catching up on housework stuff.  And then my internet went flaky Tues and Wed. So much for trying to catch up on a blog.

What I'm going to do is to write a post about Emily's dress and another about Maddy and her doll's dresses.  I think it'll be less confusing that way. So here goes..... First will be Emily's Oliver + S Family  Reunion Dress that I did with the sew-along.

What I'll be doing for week June 13

Well, I'm finally starting to feel better after over a week with a bad sore throat.  Finally ended up at doctors and on antibiotics.  My best friend came down with strep and is on same meds.  Likely we both caught it when we shared that mac and cheese Wed a week ago.

Last week I did manage to get the dress made for myself that I needed for award cermony.  I learned years ago to alter a pattern using wax paper, then make a muslin and fit that on myself.  Once I'm happy with the fit, then I cut the good fabric, and can throw together the real dress in short order.  One friend said I should go through and describe that procedure, and I'll add it to the 'to do' list.  I'd need a lot of photos and didn't take any as I rushed to get the dress done.  Here's photo of my dress.

It was Simplicity 2247 http://bit.ly/kZZEE7  I liked that it had an A, C and D cup pattern and so you didn't have to do that sizing yourself.  The fabric was something out of my stash from probably 10-12 years ago, most likely from Fanny Fabrics in Thunder Bay, ONT since my note said I had 3 meters.  I lined the dress, but not the sleeves, since the fabric was a little sheer, and I didn't a want see through dress.  Oh, I'm wearing a sea glass necklace and earrings that were birthday present, but they came from Fish Princess Designs http://bit.ly/kT4eYd on Artfire.

So this week should be busy.  I'll be doing the Oliver + S Family Reunion Dress sew along with the All About Fabric blog  http://bit.ly/jUcgyu  Making dress for Emily.  And when we were at my Mom's Memorial Day weekend, my daughter asked if I could make some matching outfits for Emily and her doll.  So that's the other challenge this week is to make one for the baby doll that Emily is carrying in the photos below.  Fortunately I saw this post in Craft Daily Newsletter http://bit.ly/kUsjqP earlier this week about changing full size patterns to doll clothes patterns.  It was using a misses pattern and making one for Barbie, but I don't see why it wouldn't work for changing a toddler dress pattern to a baby doll one.  And Sketchup software was free download from Goggle!   So this will be a real adventure!!

And since the rest of the family will be together for Father's Day here, I want to get a dress made for Maddy and her American Girl doll.  I'm using Kwik Sew 3767 for Maddy and 3771 for the doll.  Just washed the fabric so waiting for it to dry before I start on that.  Need to finish the collar and buttons on the sweater I knitted for baby Evan too.  Should be a fun week!