Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Shirred Top

The other day, I noticed alot of my daughter's shirts were getting too short. An awesome excuse to do some fun sewing with pretty fabric, right?! I had an idea of what I wanted to make, and after looking around, I found this awesome tutorial from 'From an Igloo'. Perfect--except, that I didn't have quite enough fabric to make double layers, but still wanting the weight, I folded a strip in half and made that the bottom--so no hemming. And, I found out that my Janome does an amazing shirring job!!! I did not have to touch the tension at all! My old, infamous Shark was a bit of a war to get it to do shirring half decently, so this was quite the enjoyable thing to find out. (To be honest, I had been putting off trying shirring on my Janome, in case it wouldn't work and I'd get frustrated with it!)


My dear daughter was not too picture friendly today--it was quite the challenge, first of all to get her to wear the shirt, and then to stand still long enough to take even one decent picture. Out of like 15 pictures, I picked these two--they are the best I could get!!!

Oh, and the fabric is a lovely find from Walmart! It's a nice thick, stiff cotton. Very easy to work with, and it actually feels like it'll last. Now, just bring on summer!!! Or at least some real spring....

And, an update:
I had to make some hair clips to match. So, I turned to one of my favourite flower tutorials--the Pointed Flower Tutorial.


And, modeled on my daughter as she was jumping on our bed:


And, here is the whole set, unmodeled due to lack of co-operation from my model :)