film petit: ferris bueller’s day off

January 31, 2013January 9, 201457 Comments

for film petit this month…BUELLER!

so so fun, you guys (do i say that every time? i might). Jess, Shannon, and I each picked one of the three main characters in 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, directed by John Hughes. though the movie came out when i was pretty little, i’ve seen it quite a few times, especially in high school. it’s about three high school kids, Ferris (ringleader), Sloane (girlfriend), and Cameron (best friend) who skip school and end up having an epic time in downtown Chicago, narrowly escaping discovery by their creepy principal and family at every turn.

i sewed a mini version of Ferris’ best friend, Cameron Frye (played by Alan Ruck). he’s a hypochondriac, nervous, goofy guy that’s really great at impersonating adults on a phone call. Ferris ropes him in due to the fact that Cameron’s dad has a red Ferrari that Ferris uses to dupe the school into releasing Sloane. he is the most reluctant with the most to lose in the escapade, but he joins in.

Cameron has a couple different looks, and i got a big kick out of shrinking it down for two-year-old O. i realized that this is probably the least “costume-y” outfit i’ve made him yet for film petit, and i’m sure he’ll wear these clothes a ton.

aside from the cream knit on the jersey, tiny bit of plaid, and the suspender supplies, the fabric here is all upcycled from my husband’s donate pile!

for the chinos, i used the basic pocket pants pattern from Growing up Sew Liberated in 2T. i narrowed the leg and eliminated the cuffs, adding a faux fly and a slightly wider waistband with patch pockets in the back. the pockets have plaid lining to invoke the tam that Cameron wears in the movie.

the red wings hockey jersey is the vintage v-neck from blank slate patterns in jersey knit sewn in 18 months; i added color blocked cream bands and freezer paper stenciled a red wings logo on there.

the gray caduceus shirt is my fave – it’s so simple but has such a unique style to it. pattern is Rae’s flashback skinny tee in 2T with short sleeves and another freezer paper stencil. i applied the fabric paint lightly for a more vintage-y look. i found both freezer paper stencil outlines via google image search and cut them by hand.

i made the suspenders using this tutorial, which was awesome. i liked that it had adjustable vest buckles, made it feel authentic.

all together now! hockey Cameron…

and casual suspender Cameron…

can you tell O had a blast modeling? i had hoped to get photos at an art gallery but also didn’t want to take him to the actual art gallery. suddenly i had the idea to go to Powell’s where they have a rotating art exhibit in the Pearl Room. black and white art, plenty of room for photos, not too crowded, nothing breakable, free of charge. perfect.

now, while little Cameron climbs back into bed to sleep off his crazy afternoon, head over to check out what his buddies are up to!

our fabulous guest this month, Shannon from luvinthemommyhood, sewed Sloane! white fringe coat, you guys. WHITE FRINGE COAT. her daughter is the perfect mini-Sloane, truly.

and my partner Jess, oh you know her, she’s just over there sewing leopard print vests for her 3 year old – she did Ferris and her little guy also got WAY into the role. check it out!

***

here are the guidelines for film petit:

every month or so, Jessica and i (plus a guest blogger) sew an outfit (or outfits) for our kid (or kids) inspired by a movie we love. our next guest will be Sabra from Sew a Straight Line!
please add any of your movie-inspired kid sewing to the film petit flickr group. if you sew along with our film petit choices, we’d love to see that too!
this is a pretty relaxed series, really the only rule is to make outfits for kids based on films you love. if you have any questions, please let either of us know.
film petit archives: the life aquatic with steve zissou, amélie, fantastic mr. fox, psycho, moonrise kingdom

P.S. oooooooh yeeeeeeeah.

*this post contains affiliate links to amazon. if you make a purchase after clicking the link, i receive a small commission.*

flocking bird silk shirt with sleeve tutorial

January 28, 2013June 1, 201441 Comments

My next post as a member of the Britex Fabrics Guest Blogger Team is up today over on the Britex Blog, and I’m sewing with SILK! This gorgeous navy and ivory flocking bird print was completely irresistible to me, and I was so excited to make a beautiful flowy top out of it for my sister Laura. I’ve never sewn with silk before so this was quite a challenge – I had a lot of research to do before I started. The result is completely worth the extra effort I think!

I started with one of my favorite adult patterns, the Wiksten Tank. As I’ve done before, I decided to add three quarter sleeves, which gives the shirt a bit more substance and slightly more formal look, while maintaining the ease of the pattern.

Today I’ll show you my method for adding the sleeves.

First of all, if you’re working with silk, here are a few general tips I picked up. You’ll want to sew with silk or cotton thread, using a microtex sharp needle, so make sure you have those. Next, you’ll need to reflect all of your pattern pieces so you’re not cutting on the fold, but just a single layer of silk.

When you’re ready to cut, head over to my fellow Britex Guest Blogger Jen from Grainline Studio’s tutorial for cutting silk. It worked amazingly well! I cut between two layers of Swedish tracing paper with a rotary cutter and it was a frustration-free experience.

Now, to create the sleeve pattern.

1. Lay your pattern on the right side of your tracing paper and trace around the armhole curve

2. Lay your ruler down at a 90 degree angle to the pattern grain, mark a line as far as you’d like the sleeve (use another shirt of yours for length reference)

3. This is what your pattern will look like so far

4. I added a little extra loft to the shoulder curve to give myself room for a puff sleeve and to add a seam allowance. Draw a slight S to finish the arm curve, then draw a slanted line to the same length as your top line, connecting them with a vertical line (the lighter curve is my original tracing, darker line is my final pattern)

If you’ll be cutting silk, trace out your sleeve again with plenty of room to reflect the pattern so it’s just one piece. If making this out of cotton, you can just use the pattern on the fold. Cut notches where indicated to guide gathers (on your silk, mark these with chalk).

Sew two rows of gathering stitches between your markings, then sew the long sleeve seams together. I chose to serge each side of the seam allowance and press them open, as I thought french seams might be too bulky. Set each sleeve in, gathering what’s needed to match the armhole opening and sewing inside the tube. I then serged the seam allowances together to finish the armhole.

Finish the tank per pattern instructions – for the silk, I used a baby hem and navy cotton batiste bias tape to finish the neckline. You can either choose to hem the sleeve with a baby hem, or a wider one and thread some elastic through to hold it at your elbow.

Enjoy your pretty new silk (or voile, or batiste, or vintage sheet, or rayon) shirt! Thanks for modeling, Laura!!

Head over to the Britex Blog to see my post and leave some love over there if you’d like, and while you’re there be sure to peruse their sale section. The drape and beauty of this silk just can’t be beat (it goes on sale Feb 1).

**Britex Fabrics is a sponsor of this blog and graciously provided the fabric for this project.**

fat quarter pot holder mini tutorial

January 25, 2013January 28, 201314 Comments

my sister Laura is getting married this spring! we’re super excited, he’s a great guy. oh and i get to make another flower girl dress! yay! Em and her cousin are co-flower girls actually, so depending on the design complexity, i might be making two or my mom might make the second one. we’ll see. anyway.

she had a bridal shower last weekend, and i was actually on top of the present-buying for the most part. i had thrifted some great big vintage doilies for table decorations a while ago, as well as a mason jar with bubbles in the glass, both of which fit with her decorating scheme. i also got her a Silpat, since Laura loves to bake. and then because something had to be handmade, i made her some pot holders (starting the night before and finishing the morning of the shower).

i subconsciously matched the colors to the Silpat. haha. the main fabric is from Denyse Schmidt’s Hope Valley line, and i’m not sure what the binding is (if you know, please tell me!). both are from Bolt.

here’s a quick words-only tutorial for these simple pot holders, which are a great way to use fat quarters, practice quilting if you’re scared of quilts, or to whip up as a quick gift if you have a few supplies on hand. super easy, super fast.

fat quarter pot holders

this tutorial makes two hot pads that are quite large, you can scale them down in the “trim to square” step if they’re seeming unwieldy to you:

grab two fat quarters (FQs) – one for the body and one for the binding – some batting, and twill tape
cut four 9.5″ x 9.5″ squares of FQ, and four 10″ x 10″ or so squares of batting (for two pot holders)
make a sandwich – one FQ face down, two layers of batting, one FQ face up (try to line the FQs up on either side as best you can)
mark a diagonal grid starting corner to corner using tailor’s chalk or disappearing marker – mark lines 2″ apart
pin baste between the lines
quilt using a walking foot along the lines
trim to 9″ square (or smaller – i think 8″ square is standard)
cut 2.5″ strips of the second FQ for binding on the grain, enough to go around each pot holder (you’ll probably have to piece two strips together)
baste a loop of twill tape to the wrong side of the pot holder, and bind using your favorite method. i usually hand stitch to finish my quilt bindings but this time i zigzagged them for speed and stability – this tutorial is great if you need it
make another one
DONE

not too bad, eh? i love how puffy the double layer of batting makes them, and the zigzag stitch will keep them secure through washings.

mmmmm pillowy.

and here’s how i wrapped the gift up. i’m a huge fan of the old “make a wedding rehearsal bouquet from shower ribbons and a paper plate” tradition, and really love to wrap shower presents with fun toppers to add some pizzazz to the practice bouquet.

i wrapped the gift with simple brown craft paper, topped with white grosgrain ribbon and a pom pom flower with felt leaves! i hot glued the leaves to the bottom of the flower to make sure it all stayed put, threading the tails of yarn from the pom pom through a small slit i cut into the felt to tie it to the ribbon.

i’m so looking forward to Laura’s springtime wedding!

oh and if you make a pot holder using this mini tutorial, please add it to the flickr group. thanks!

winter white blazer

January 22, 2013March 22, 201445 Comments

because i had to.

remember when Em wore her brother’s blazer during October’s film petit? it didn’t quite fit her, but still looked so cool that i’d been wanting to make a girlified blazer ever since. finally, with Christmas sewing behind me, i got my chance!

i originally had it in my head that i wanted to do bright blue velvet blazer like this Crewcuts version, but when i went shopping at Fabric Depot with my sister in law, i spotted a creamy white stretch corduroy that i thought might look just gorgeous (and she agreed). the white shouldn’t pose too much of a cleanliness problem…unless her brother comes at her with spaghetti-o hugs.

the pattern is the popular Basic Blazer by Blank Slate Patterns (affiliate links) in a 3T (size chart here). it’s available both digitally AND as a paper pattern, if you prefer (i bought the digital version months back). i’d never seen it sewn for a girl before, so i ended up making some modifications both to girlify it and to put it together in a bit of a different way. i followed the instructions as written when i made it the first time and they worked, but you know how sometimes there are multiple ways of doing things and certain methods just click in your head because you’re more used to them? that.

here’s what i did:

cut the back on the fold, eliminating the center seam allowances
shortened the length by 1.5″ so it hit at her hip, redrawing the bottom front curves
moved the buttons up, marking where i wanted it to close during a fitting
interfaced the collar (both sides) and the jacket facings for structure
clipped into collar’s seam allowance before basting it to the jacket, pinned the collar 1″ from each front edge
added flap welt pocket on the right
lined the jacket using this method, a fab tutorial by Grainline Studio which includes finishing sleeves without hand-stitching (woo!)

i love this jacket. it’s the kind of thing i’d never spend $100 on at a store, but with a fabric store gift card and some elbow grease, i’m super happy it’s now in her wardrobe. i have no idea how often she’ll wear it, but it is very soft and i did make the lining very Em-like so i have high hopes.

i stitched around an elephant-stamped linen patch with metallic silver thread and added a hanger loop; the combo of both make it seem Crewcuts-y to me. the lining fabric itself is a gorgeous dec-weight Alexander Henry print (“Laurel Canyon”) that Caila sent to me around Christmastime because she’s just a super sweet gal. the buttons are a pretty metallic gold/silver flower design.

speaking of metallic, i definitely made her a super twirly (two selvedge-to-selvedge cuts) skirt from Nani Iro sparkly polka dot flannel that i had left over from the commuter cowl to go with the jacket. it’s double topstitched with metallic silver thread and she really loves dancing in it.

get your Basic Blazer pattern here (affiliate link) and please let me know if you make (or have made) a girly one – it’d be fun to see more little gals in blazers! there’s also a Blank Slate Patterns flickr pool if you need more inspiration.

she wanted to show off this sticker. i guess she’s now entering into her Disney princess phase?

social media friends and other stuff

January 19, 2013January 19, 20132 Comments

i forgot to mention that monday i was over at The Train to Crazy for her Social Media Friends series – a great way to link up and build your social media following.

she’s featuring bloggers and their different types of social media pages each week with a linky party to join in, and mine was Facebook! did you know that skirt as top has a Facebook page? i try to link my blog posts over there as soon as i can, and sometimes there are film petit previews and other fun stuff too – just hit like to follow.

taking a cue from Jessica and others, i wanted to share a quick WIP. right now i seem to have a bunch of things in progress (which sometimes bugs me – too many WIPs get me twitchy). but the most exciting thing i’m working on right now is next project for Britex – it’s sewing with SILK! i thought this was a brilliant plan until i realized i’d never sewn with silk before and i had no idea what i was doing. i’m taking my time and scouring the internet before i dive in and ruin some pretty fabric.

i’m finding some great tips from fellow Britex Guest Blogger Team member Jen from Grainline Studio – she made a gorgeous tassel scarf tutorial recently AND has a fantastic tip for cutting silk that totally works and saved me from a lot of cursing and drinking yesterday.

have a good weekend!