I can sew too!

 

Butterick #3385 in dotted fabric (on sale in the remnant bin!)

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I'm real busy these days getting the house ready for an extended visit by the in-laws. In addition to "clean sweep"ing a lot of the crap out of the guest room/office, I finally got down to reorganizing all my stash and current projects. Wow, I've got a lot of things on the needles right now! And I also found three unfinished sewing projects to add to my two new ones. My side of our bedroom is suffering from some serious craft creep!

Last night's feeble attempt to stem the tide consisted of cutting out the fabric for my big Burda top. Here's the pattern pic (from the 12/03 issue). The pattern is written for fleece, but I wanted something springy, so I'm using this flowery cotton print my mother gave me gobs of, since the pattern requires lots of yardage. If the cotton doesn't work out, I might try it again with some polyester knit fabric I have. And if it does work out, I'll definitely be trying it again with my knit fabric! Here's a peek at the flowery fabric. It's the wrong side, so imagine it all brighter and bolder, if possible!

I hope to be able to sew up this top relatively quickly, so I can reacquaint myself with the machine and gain enough confidence to start the Butterick top. Hey, sew-alongers - any progress on the Butterick top so far? Did you check out the pattern reviews?

Yes, you knew it had to happen, a sew-along for that little Butterick pattern that everyone seems to have.

I know that some of you will be done in no time, so we'll make this a brief one. How about the month of May? That gives me a goal to shoot for too.

To get warmed up, I'm trying out what looks like a pretty simple Burda pattern for a cozy, blousy top. Well, the pattern instructions look simple once I find the pattern pieces in this maze of lines.

Yikes!

We left our intrepid newbie seamstress last September, hands full of cotton prints and head full of fun summer patterns, but in a crisis over a skirt gone all wrong. Well, 'tis the season again for cotton prints and fun summer patterns! So when Carolyn reminded me that I had once planned to make this fabby little top, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to get back into it. A dip into the fabric stash and I found the perfect fabric too - cotton dots that I picked up on my trip to Germany last year.

I can't help but think of this project as "pknitty", 'cause that's the name of the blog where I first saw the pattern and it reminds me of the Cleo pattern in last summer's Knitty. I loved those two tops! And Carolyn pointed out that one of the Sew Hip it Hurts gals made a cute little pink verison of this one too. Carolyn's planning on sewing-along with me, which is very good, since after a six month hiatus, I'll need a lot of hand holding.

Oh, and as for that skirt, I'll be calling in some reinforcements (in the form of super-seamstress and fellow Knitsmith, May) on that one!

I've been so excited about my knitting projects this week, that I forgot to take time out to do some sewing. Thus, the summery projects haven't progressed that much since I pinned out the pattern pieces last week. All I've done is cut out the pieces and baste the side seams of the skirt together to check the fit.

I made it to the fabric store, though. I picked up this fun Butterick pattern, which I saw on pknitty's blog (love that name!). Originally I wanted to knit the Cleo top from the summer Knitty. I swatched a lot of yarns from my stash but couldn't find anything that really worked at that gauge, so when I saw the sewing pattern, I thought, heck, I should just sew one. Now I have to buy some fabric for it. I have cotton prints in my stash, but the pattern calles for georgette. Do you think I could try it with cotton??

Finally, my best find at the fabric store was this ribbon, which will perfectly top off my tiny tank.