Another new make on the Janome M7 using various stitches and features to make a great dress perfect! I found a link to a free blouse pattern on the Australian Peppermint Magazine on Spoonflower. Following the trail of cookie crumbs (or thread bits), I then found the Wide-Strap Maxi dress pattern, which is a free PDF download. They ask if you’d like to make a donation to support the cost of the site, so I did, and I GOT A THANK YOU! Nice! Click on the pattern name or here for the hotlink. Along the way I took pictures and the edited them into this under-3-minutes video:

There’s no audio for the first two minutes, but there are captions. At the end for the video of me out in the yard, you may want to turn up the sound…I increased the volume on the film clip, but it is still sorta quiet when I am turned around.

Here are some of the pictures from in the video!

The cotton lawn fabric is from Leslie Tucker Jenison’s Wildwood line for Robert Kaufman. I purchased mine on Etsy in late spring 2021. The dress has a facing on the front and wide straps (hence the name Wide-Strap Maxi Dress). I shortened the dress by 8 inches to a midi length. The only other change was to add interfacing to the facing since the cotton Lawn is so soft. If made in linen or a heavier weight cotton or tercel, would likely not need the interfacing.

From the back: there is a casing at the top, with wide elastic inside. You set the length so that it holds the dress snug against your back (NO wardrobe malfunctions!) but not tight (no “muffin top”!). The pattern suggest testing the placement of the straps. I agree. The gathers had a tendency to move, with the dress going flat in the center and the straps moving towards my underarms. Which led to the straps falling off my shoulders. So with the dress OFF, I move the straps toward the center and safety pinned them in place. This concentrates most of the gathers in the center, which makes it flattering from the front and solves the straps-falling-off issue. I will stitch a vertical line on the casing/elastic so I can remove the pins, but using pins first to get the straps where YOU want them is a good idea. I also now understand why some sundress patterns have the straps go really narrow and “V” in the center. This way, though, they easily cover bra straps.

Since I live in Maine and my 20s and 30s were long ago, I find that I feel rather bare, but I am getting used to the open back. I had thought even before making it that I would shorten the straps to be less bare, but discovered that would put the darts well above my bust and make the front fit poorly. If/when I make this again, I will cut extra at the top sides, shorten the straps, and then figure out a better-for-my-body placement of the darts.

Like many of the indie patterns now, the instructions are like a class in a bag–they certainly aren’t like the bare-bones info in the Butterick and Vogue patterns from the 70s, 80s and 90s that I grew up using. There are delightful instructions for using French seams which totally enclose the raw edges. Hint: be sure to trim the edges of any fraying threads before you sew the second part of the seam so that no “whiskers” pop out.

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Having a selection of presser feet makes it SO MUCH EASIER to do beautiful work! I like my clothes as pretty on the inside as on the outside!

Thanks as always to Janome America for having me as a Janome Artisan since 2003!!!!!!!

It’s a delightful feeling when your young adult son asks you to make a shirt for him. Since he lives about 5 hours away, going to a fabric store together wasn’t a good option, so I sent him to Spoonflower. LOVE it when his sense of humor prevails: he selected Mer-Pugs! Here’s the link to the fabric; I chose to print on cotton poplin as I’m not fond of their Signature Petal cotton. Needing to order 3 yards, it was a splurge, but it turned out great and he loves it!

The pattern is Liesl & Co.’s All Day Shirt Pattern. I used this earlier when I made Joshua’s donuts shirt (yes, they both have the same sense of humor!). Since Eli is a bit bigger, I was able to use what I learned making Joshua’s shirt in 2019 (blogpost here). I still had some issues getting the collar to be the size I wanted on the collar stand–I was careful to follow the instructions, but think the collar should be about 1/8″ longer on each side. Eli did not want any pleats on the back but did want short sleeves. He lent me a shirt that fits just the way he wanted so I kept that in the studio to compare as I made the merpugs shirt …much easier to adjust that way!

Earlier this year I showed on Facebook and Instagram how perfectly I was able to align and topstitch the pocket:

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My daughter-in-law Ashley is my “daughter by another mother.” She is crafty and smart and nice and boy did I get lucky! (Well, my son Joshua was smart too….) Anyway, she was interested in sewing, so for a few years we worked on small projects together. She liked it so much we decided to SPLURGE two years ago and give her a combined Birthday and Graduation from College with Honors with a Teaching degree (yup, popping proud): her very first sewing machine, the Janome M7200. What with moving, starting her teaching career, lack of space in the first apartment in Portland, she just finished her first solo garment, the Sorbetto top, and I am SO impressed! She has every reason to be proud!

Our sewing garments journey began before graduation, when Ashley said she’d like to make her own dress for graduation. She picked a pattern with (!!!!) fitted bodice, set-in sleeves and an invisible zipper! We sewed in my studio on the Janome 9450 I was using at that time (I’m a Janome Artisan and have been on the loan program for 16 years now!). I’d do the first half of something to show her, then she’d do the second half, including a complete set-in sleeve perfectly done on her own! From the start, she showed an inclination to make my heart go thumpity-thump: do it WELL with care and attention to detail. Here’s Ashley modeling the dress in our yard just before and then at graduation:

Thank you Joshua from bringing Ashley into our family. Thank you Ashley for being you! Thank you Sue for being my co-mother-in-law and raising such awesome girls! And thank you Ashley for letting me share and brag on you!

I’ve been developing some new classes using paint on cloth and I thought as part of being a Michael Miller Brand Ambassador and a Janome Artisan what better thing to do than combine all these things I love in one! Some of you may remember this post from when I did a DIY improvement to my hall sconces; one of the lampshades was Queen Anne’s Lace screen printed on linen. I used the thermofax screens I made for that again for this top.

Two years ago I made my DIL Ashley a linen jacket for job interviews. It was a revelation! Working on another body (not mine) was SO EASY–I could see what needed fitting, figure out how to make changes, assess fit and lines. So I vowed to get a dress form. KaCHING! What I wanted was over $400! Nope. So I cast about for something less expensive. A local quilty friend had a friend with one to sell…done for $75. And it still mostly adjusted and wasn’t musty!

For your listening pleasure (you’ll need to read to the end to understand why), open this in a separate browser window.

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However, I discovered that the dress form and I were built on different molds. I honestly didn’t look as good as the dress form even though the measurements were correct. For starters, most dress forms start with a B-cup. The only time I was that large, I was nursing my sons! So I had to shrink in the torso to get a proper full bust measurement and shape, then pad out everything else to correct ribs, high bust, etc

But even that didn’t do it. Luckily I had long planned to get proper measurements done. Fiddlehead Artisan Supply (if you ever get to Belfast Maine, you MUST MUST MUST go there; quilt fabric, garment fabric, paint, art supplies of all sorts, crafting supplies….in other words, heaven!) has a classroom. Students can pay a VERY modest fee per hour for the teacher to come and help you. When I went, there was one student sewing and me getting measured. I figured I could try and explain to hubby what to do (but do I really want him to know my actual size? NO!) OR I could get someone who sews and would do it properly. Easy choice. The following is a chart I made to use at that session.

To prepare, I looked at patterns, sewing books and knitting books to figure out every conceivable measurement I might need, ever. And I put them into a chart. I have created this a PDF for you to use!

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I learned SO MUCH about the shape of my body in this process (and I’m fine with lumps…life is better with ice cream, although 10 pounds fewer lumps would be nice too….the 20 I need to lose ain’t gonna happen). And I learned about the pattern industry, the “blocks” (body shape bases they use) and fitting ease. I can now use my stand-by—measure a garment I have that fits the way I want and compare with what I measure on the pattern–along with the dress form and get a fit that I want!

In the coming weeks I’ll have several garment making posts. I have made a top, a skirt, a tunic, leggings, have another pair of leggings on the cutting table, and a pinafore/jumper on the design wall. Ailith (traditional Scottish name meaning seasoned warrior–my paternal grandmother was Irish but born in Glasgow, I am named after her, so I liked Ailith) has been a great help already. Can’t wait to share. Oh…and why red dress?