Too Late For Love Dress: An Easy Knit Tunic Dress Tutorial

This is an easy project a beginning designer can take on. I think my dress here turned out a little short but that was what Isabelle wanted. Just like her favorite shop Urban Outfitters which is chock full of little dresses just like this.

Pattern: 

Traced from a loose fitting T shirt.

Fabric: 

Too late for love comic print I have had in my stash for over ten years. As I pat myself on the back for getting through my fabric stash... 

Inspiration:

This Striped Mod Cloth Dress.

Would you like to make a knit tunic too?

Here's how.

Trace around a t-shirt. Extend the armhole as pictured to make a one piece dolman sleeved dress pattern.

Mark on you fabric where your side seam ends. Draw in your neckline. You can make it lower to create a scoop like I did or leave it as is. Mark where your casing will be sewn on at the waist. Also measure how long your hem will be. 

Also add your 5/8 inch seam allowances now. 

Lift up your hem at the side seam about 1/ 2 inch to eliminate side droop. A good way to do this is to measure from the waist line down to the hem from the CF and then the side. Make sure they are the same length. 

Above is the line I drew to sew on my casing for the elastic. I finished my neck , sleeves and hem with a cover stitch machine but you can get the same effect with a twin needle on a basic machine. Just fold over your fabric 5/8 inch, press them, and stitch.

For my waist casing I have this great lycra knit binding which works. You can also use bias tape ironed flat or make your own casing from your dress fabric. Just make it about 1/2 wider than your waist elastic. My elastic is 3/4 inch wide so I made my band. Sew it on with a very small seam allowance, between 1/8 and 1/4 inch.

Elastic for the waist should be about 2 to 3 inches smaller than the waist measurement.

If you are quick this pattern will take about 1/2 hour to make and cut and about an hour to two hours to sew. 

Let me know if you make one.

You can post it on my FB page!

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Homesteading For Spring

We haven't had much of a winter this year. Spring will be here early and its time to get the old homestead ready for spring!

My husband came home with  some new hens from Lupe over at the feed store. I am guessing they are...

 Easter Eggers chickens since their eggs are this lovely bluish green color. The only other breed that lays eggs this color are Araucana chickens. Araucans are becoming quite rare and have tufts of feathers on either side of their faces. Plus they are expensive and not the type of chicken you would buy at a funky country feed store! So I'm pretty sure these are Easter Eggers.

We got our organic seeds in the mail from Johnny's Seeds in Maine. They have several organic and heirloom vegetable seed varieties.

We planted early spring seeds: kale, spinach, arugula, lettuce, beets, asparagus, turnips, and cabbage. I bought a new seedling planting kit because a lot of my seeds died outside last year.

The planting kit works really well and the seedlings sprouted in two days!

Since we didn't have much of a winter the bulbs shot up early. I dug some of them up and spread them around in the flower bed. They can clump together if you don't dig them up and spread them out every couple of years. Gigi helped me plant lots of pansies, snapdragons, and poppies. It's nice to have a little helper around while the other children are in school.

A long day working outside had Gigi good and tired and ready for her evening bath.

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70's childrens clothing. Love them or leave them? Old School Rehash

I was at an estate sale on Friday and came across a drawer full of seventies kids clothing. It was a blast from the past. I was a kid in the seventies and eighties and wore clothes just like them. Striped tube socks, shorts, old school Kinney sneakers, and polyester bellbottoms! There was even a Marineland Park T-shirt. Marineland shut down in the eighties but I loved going there as a kid. I had to buy these clothes!

Being a tomboy I wouldn't be caught dead in one of those Holly Hobbie maxi dresses but these outfits below?

Right on!

My mom could not stop laughing when she saw these pictures. She said they reminded her so much of my brother and I when we were little.

Now for those of you who remember these days here are a few more flashbacks of clothing you might have worn:

I had a pair of these indestructable Toughskins from Sears. 

Garanimals matching clothing from Sears held a lot of playground status.

I think these dresses are adorable now but I hated them when I was little!

This would have been more up my alley.

Maybe they should ad some toupees and some golf clubs for these little guys to wear and use?

Below are some sewing patterns I unearthed on Etsy for those of you who would like to try making some groovy duds for your own kids.

So what's the verdict on kids seventies clothing? Love them or leave them?

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Sew & Tell Saturday 2/11

Welcome to Sew & Tell Saturday!

Sorry I can't have any featured projects this week. My internet has been down and I had to drive to my dad'd house to use his.So sadly,I have a photo free post today.

But I do have two things to share that inspired me today:

1. I took Lily to see the film Hugo. I was mesmerized the entire time. If you haven't seen it yet, please do as it won't be in theatres too much longer. A little orphan boy lives inside a Paris train station and discovers a magical world through his penchant for fixing clocks and machinery when he meets an old toy merchant with a secret past. The set design alone is worth going to see and it makes me remember why Paris is my most favorite city in the world! We both enjoyed the film so much and the 3D was so well done.
2. I discovered Molly Makes magazine today! A British sewing and craft magazine, I found myself thinking this magazine was made for me! I was surprised to find it at the bookstore as we don't get too many foreign magazines outside of LA. I think I like it even better than Marie Claire Idees, my other favorite craft magazine which is French. 

So are you ready to show off your sewing projects this week?

Now, if you've been to this party before you can skip this boring part, but if you haven't, read on!

Link the post of your project in the InLinkz form and not your blog homepage. Please leave a link back to this blog by copying my party badge html below to your post or sidebar or party page so others can find out about the party.

And please do visit a blog or two here and leave a comment. To you non blogging readers out there, we love comments!

And I love new Followers and FB likes of course! Don't you? You know you do!

If you don't have anything new you are welcome to dig back in your blog and sometimes everything old is new again, right? Like high waisted jeans! As long as we haven't seen it yet.

Thanks for participating.

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Copying From The Shops: The Elasticated Waist Tunic Dress

As much as I love vintage sewing I don't always feel comfortable wearing  fitted retro style dresses. I need a few casual dresses to spice up my wardrobe. I will be creating an everyday dress every week for the next month.

I love these simple tunic dresses with elastic or tie waists for everyday wear:

The styles above are examples of the simple tunic style and are available at ModCloth

This elasticated waist tunic  is very popular now and you will find this style in shops like Modcloth, H&M, Urban Outfitters, and Anthroplogie. 

The tunic stye is also cute in a woven fabric as seen on this Anthropologie dress.

Correspondence dress by Anthropologie.

This style works for kids as well!

Easy care and comfy for the little ones.

Little girls dresses from JCrew

I made a dress that is very similar to this girls J Crew dress last summer!

 I made this striped dress from a seventies sewing pattern last summer. If I could just flare out the skirt a little it would be just perfect...

While this style would hardly be considered high fashion, it's a very wearable look for busy moms like me. 

 This is the type of thing I like to wear to run errands in Southern California's year round sunshine. It's 77 degrees today!

( For those of you in eastern Europe right now, I pray the weather will warm up for you.)

  Spending 168$ on a dress  like the beige one from Anthropologie above is not something I'm interested in. Plus, I can't stand cheap synthetic knits like you find at most mall shops.

One of my blogging inspirations this week was reading how Cation Designs created her own pattern for  this dress she made below:

If you would like to adapt a pattern to make your own tunic dress here are a few ideas:

Mccall's 6112.

The skirt works but I think those sleeves are too voluminous. If you trimmed down the sleeves from the pattern you would have a look similar to the brown and green dip dyed dress Mod Cloth dress shown. Below is my trimmed down version.

This is my version of McCall's 6112. I redrafted the top to be more fitted and created ties on the sleeves. I think I made it about an inch and a half too short. Since this photo I added a little band to the bottom, lengthening it a little.

 

Burdastyle May 2011

This Burda pattern is close. This would work for recreating the beige Anthropologie dress.

Burdastyle magazine 2/2011

I think this style above would also work! It looks similar to the red printed Modcloth dress.

Simplicity 2147

This Simplicity style would also work but you would have to adjust the pattern to create an elasticated waist. You would cut the dress pattern in two at the waist to add the elastic waistband. Or you could just add a casing to the inside and thread the elastic through.

Stay tuned to see what I come up with.

I will also be creating a tutorial if you would like to draft your own dress.

Stay tuned next week!
I just spent hours trying to figure out how to add a navigation bar under my header. If you would like to add one too, I would be happy to send you a link for a great tutorial on how to.
I was also hoping for some bloggy advice? I changed the font of my blog. I think it goes better with the Sew Country Chick style. But I wonder if you find it hard to read and what you think about fancier type fonts for blogs in general.If you have been here before do you prefer the old look? I would love it if you left a comment about it!

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