I'm Katie. I love sewing. I sew dresses, skirts, bags, and lots of other stuff. I also love drawing and occasionally painting. My blog lets you see what I'm creating right now.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Amanda's bag


 I made this before i made the doll clothes but I just hadn't finished sewing the straps on it. 
This bag is designed by me, made for Amanda's school books.  It has 7 inside pockets and a zipper pocket in the lining.  It closes with a magnetic snap.  There's a thick, flexible piece of plastic in the bottom of the bag (between the outside fabric and the lining) for durability.  For more durableness there is a layer of thick, stiff interfacing between the bag and lining.  
Original sketch











I probably won't get many chances this week to sew but hopefully next week will be less busy!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

50's clothes for vintage dolls


   So someone asked me if I could make some 50's clothes for these dolls.  I think the dolls are from the 1960's.  I designed every outfit and had to make patterns for each doll except for the dudes shirt and pants.  It was a lot of fun! Definitely time consuming though.  I had to hand sew like 50 bazillion snaps. Haha here are the pictures. (sorry about the crappy lighting).

The Dad's outfit.


The Mom's outfit.



Teenage Boy's outfit. Look at that stuuuddddd

Teenage Girl's outfit.

and my favorite... Little Girl's outfit. 

That's my latest sewing project! Next up: Josie's bag =) 

Thursday, August 5, 2010

I'm getting there...




So I FINALLY added a new listing to my etsy shop. Here's the link http://www.etsy.com/listing/53179976/brenda-flower-hobo-purse 
You know you want one. =) I can make custom bags too.
I'm making another one of these in a burgundy red and white for my shop ...as soon as I finish all my other projects.  

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

The tale of "the prom dress"


     So here's the story.  In January, I received an email from Joann advertising their "Own Your Look 2010 Prom Dress Contest".  I probably would have deleted it as usual except for I saw how huge the prizes were.  The grand prize winner gets 50,000 dollars.  But I still thought I could never make a prom dress, I've never done anything that complicated before!  But I got encouragement from my family to enter it.  I wasn't going to prom though because its kinda ridiculously over rated.  So I asked one of my friends, Bekah(who was actually going to prom), if she would like to be my model. Who wouldn't say yes? 
     This dress was the biggest accomplishment I’ve made in my life. This is completely, 100% my design. I did sketch after sketch and finally came up with something I loved.  I was originally going to use a deep purple/blue satin but I could not find that color anywhere so I settled for my next choice, teal. First I sewed the dress in white cotton to work out the little difficulties and technicalities of my design and fitting. I redrafted the simplicity 2440 pattern to make the one shoulder bodice. Then I basically cut out blocks of fabric and hand gathered them onto the bodice where I wanted them placed. THAT took forever. It took me a while to figure out how to do the bubble hem since I’ve never done one before but I eventually got it all figured out. I added a few jewels to the sash to give it that “prom feel”. Last minute, I designed a clutch to go with it. Bekah looked amazing, it fit her like a glove, and I am so happy how everything turned out. She ended up wearing the white cotton dress to her graduation, which I added a shoulder strap to, and made the sash wider to give it a different look. 
    Ok so I didn't win anything.  I did not get to be in the finals of the contest.  I'm sad but I don't regret making it.  I posted this dress on burdastyle.com and Burdastyle made it one of the member projects of the week. That was pretty exciting.  It got over 12,000 views and 87 comments. Here's a link to the posted project on Burdastyle:http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/elegant-teal-prom-dress
The End =)