Sew What?: October

Here are some sewing projects I finished up last month and some of my current works-in-progress.

Claire's dress is just a standard A-line dress with a contrasting fabric band around the bottom and a super-cute flower pocket. Claire had her hand in her pocket all day long. David got a matching romper out of the leftover fabric. I can still do this while he is short.

This is David's "puppies" according to Claire. The reversible side is the puppy fabric and I cut out one puppy to make an applique on the side you are seeing. It is nice to get 2 wears out of an outfit before washing and ironing.

Another short romper for David with a snail applique.

Matching pants for Claire's pumpkin dress from last year. These pants really are the same color as the pumpkin applique even though it doesn't look like it in the photo.

In progress ...

I finally learned how to use the utility stitch function on my mom's super-nice embroidery machine. I spent the day over there on Saturday while Will was at the Bama/Kentucky game and Meme and Poppy played with the kids. These pumpkins are on both David and Claire's fall outfits for this year. Fortunately, Meme did the applique on Claire's dress and I just had to do this one. I hope to have them finished by Saturday in time to wear them to the Pumpkin Patch.

Claire and David also got matching "Roll Tide" outfits (this is what Claire said when I showed her). I love this elephant head applique in gray/red/white check on gray pique background. I actually traced this applique from a friend's Hannah Kate outfit. I hope that is not illegal-I think it's okay as long as I don't sell it? I don't do copyright law. We are taking the kids down to Tuscaloosa in a couple of weeks and they will be in style with the Bama crowd.

I have a bittersweet relationship with smocking. It takes a really long time to smock and construct a dress. But, the finished product is so beautiful, I decided to start another dress for Claire. Now that regular TV is back on for the fall, I can smock while I watch TV at night after I have put the kids to bed. This is a dress for Claire. She will probably wear it in the spring. The fabric has cute little bicycles all over it. The top photo is the smocking, which is about halfway finished at this point. There will be some lime green in there too. The bottom photo shows the bicycle fabric and the Madeira hem on the bottom of the dress.