Adventures in Non-Quilting

This past Saturday I had the pleasure of attending a dress making class at Nido Fabric Shop in Burlington, VT.  My friend Megan and I decided to sign up for a class together.  We ultimately decided to try the Laurel Dress by Colette Patterns.  The site says this about the dress:

This chic and simple shift dress is easy to sew, astoundingly versatile, and comfortable to wear year-round.

I decided to go with a simple red-orange quilters linen by Robert Kaufman and a pretty red and white cross hatch for the bias tape edges.

This was my first attempt at sewing clothing so I was really nervous to start cutting the pattern and fabrics but eventually sucked it up and dove in.  It was simpler than I thought and the pattern was really simple to cut which really helped.

time to dive in!

laying out the pattern pieces before class

We sewed non-stop from 9am to 2pm and both had nearly completed dresses!  It was great leaving with an almost ready-to-wear dress!  Megan used a beautiful vintage-esque Liberty of London print.

Megan was all smiles!

sewing the final seam on my dress

I was so excited that I had to try it on before we left the shop.  I need to take it in a bit around the waist to make it a little more fitted/flattering and then finish sewing on the bias tape at the neck and hem the bottom.  But I'm so excited to get to wear my finished dress!  I think when I made it again I will shorten the sleeves just a bit and enlarge the neck line to be more of a scoop neck than a crew neck (I just feel that it's more flattering on my body type).  But I couldn't be happier with my first attempt at three-dimensional sewing!

my nearly complete dress

Happy Quilting!

A little of this and a little of that.

I've got quite a few WIPs at the moment that I wanted to share with you.

I picked up some 1 1/2" Hexagon English Paper Piecing templates on a shop-hop with my local quilt guild this fall.  I wanted to try it out so I grabbed some 4 1/2" fabric squares that I picked up from a local quilt shop that was going out of business and picked out the greens (my first few were blue before I decided to stick to one color) to start working away.

These have been a fun project to take on the road with me while I'm waiting in line or something.  For the most part I've worked on them at the laundry mat while waiting for washers and dryers.  I think when it's done I might call it my "Laundry Quilt."  I will probably gift this quilt to someone (maybe my Mother in Law) since these more traditional fabrics aren't really my style.

In March I'm taking a sewing class at Nido, the new fabric shop in Burlington, VT.  Some of my girlfriends from college were interested in learning to sew their own clothes and since I'm really only comfortable with 2D objets (read: quilts) I though this might be a fun opportunity to learn some new skills.  We're making the Laurel Dress by Colette Patterns.  It's a simple shift-style dress with lots of options to customize.  To see some of the fantastic versions of this dress check out the Colette Patterns Flikr Group.


I've been really struggling with picking a fabric for this dress.What I like to sew with and what I like to wear are two TOTALLY different things.  Just check out my Apparel Fabrics Pinterest Page for proof.  I've looked at everything from shirting stripes, forest animals, bicycles, neon dots, gauzy florals, and even lace (but that requires essentially making two dress, one in lace and one for a layering shift)

Finally I decided on the Dot Chambray in Indigo from Robert Kaufman's Chambray Union collection.  My fabric came yesterday and I am in love!  It is unbelievably soft and I think it's going to make a beautiful dress that I can wear both to work and casually.  I'm glad that I ordered this fabric when I did.  It's already out of stock again!

Now I just have to wash/iron it and work on cutting out my pattern pieces for my dress.  I think we're going to go to Nido's open sewing night the month before our class for help with that portion though since we're all newbie dressmakers.

Finally,  I've made some more progress on my challenge quilt that I shared last week.  I was able to finish my gem center and I'm really loving the piece so far.  Now for the next challenge.  Piecing curves!

There are a few spots that get a little muddied from lack of contrast (as you can see in the black and white picture below) but overall I'm really happy with the piece.  At this point, I'm definitely not taking it apart.

I'm linking up with this weeks WIP Wednesday over at Freshly Pieced.

Anyhow, that's it for today.
Happy Quilting!