McCall's 6744 Maxidress

I made this dress from some fabric I bought for one dollar a yard in downtown LA. i would say it's some sort of polyester viscose.. I'm trying to be more conscious about where my fabrics come from as I have been reading about the negative impact textile factories in developing countries are having on the environment.

This fabric came from a higher end designer who donated it to the FIDM Scholarship store. All funds go to fashion design students in need so I love buying there not only for the incredible deals, but also to help struggling students.

I only had two yards so I couldn't exactly match the stripes.

The top from=nt pattern piece was way too low and revealing for Isabelle so I drafted a new front by tracing one of her tops. Easy Peasy!

This dress was SO easy to make. I made it in less than two hours...

It's not exactly couture. the hems are just turned down and stitched with my double needle. I used the rolled hem feature on my serger to make a really quick hem 

isabelle is visting France this summer and I have been sewing her up some easy to pack items to bring.

This pattern is am A plus!

McCall's 6744

Pattern Description: 
A long gathered skirt maxidress with an option for a tank top bodice or a crossover bodice.
Pattern Sizing:
XS to XL
Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it?
Yes it did.
Were the instructions easy to follow?
This is a dress that is very simple to sew up and the directions are fine. I sewed it in a little over an hour.
What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern?
I felt the tank top top was actually TOO revealing for once. I usually have to lower necklines and tighten my patterns to give them a little more style. In this case I had to redraft the top, raising the neckline and widening the shoulders because my daughter was too revealed in the original pattern top.
Fabric Used:
A stretch matte ITY jersey fabric with large painterly stripes.
Pattern alterations or any design changes you made:
As usual I ignored the pattern sizing instructions and cut the dress in an extra small because I'm not a fan of all of the added ease in commercial patterns.
Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others?
Yes, I plan on trying this pattern in another fabric with some more design tweaks to it. It's a great basic maxi dress pattern.

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Shot Rockers Online Photography Course Giveaway!

Today I am really excited to be giving away an entire online photography course from Shot Rockers to one lucky reader! And I can honestly say, because I have taken the whole course which consists of a month's worth of daily lessons in video and PDF format, that this class is excellent, and an excellent value if you decide to purchase the course. Seriously. I'm not getting paid for this post either. Just my honest opinion. I have learned a ton from it!

When I first started blogging in 2010 I honestly knew very little about photography. I was using a point and shoot, took photos indoors with flash and couldn't tell you an aperture from an ISO and had no idea about exposure. I could barely upload a digital photo I was such a computer dud. My camera didn't have those capabilities anyway, so it didn't matter. In short, my pictures were crummy!

The photo on the left is from 2010. This photo of Gigi is hilarious! The photo on the right of Isabelle was taken a  couple of weeks ago after learning about utilizing natural lighting in the Shot Rockers class. I would probably increase my shutter speed to make the photo sharper, but it's a big improvement. Practice make perfect!

Over the past few years I have invested in a DLSR and a few lenses, and have slowly been learning how to improve my photography. When I took Tony's Shot Rockers class, I thought I might already know the material he was going to be covering. I was so wrong.

I learned so much from this class; adjusting ISO, shutter speeds,  aperture focal lengths, using external flashes, metering modes, adjusting white balance, composition, lighting.... Tony also teaches about editing, and taking better portraits and landscape photos. This class is so worth $119. But for a short time, you can get it for half off! Scroll to the bottom of the post to access the link.

Do you own a DLSR camera yet know so little about it that you end up shooting in Auto most of the time? If you are shooting in Auto you may be wondering why you spent so much money on a DLSR camera because your photos aren't that different from a point and shoot camera. Do yourself a favor and learn how to get your money's worth by learning to use your camera properly whether you take this class or not. And if you are a creative blogger like me, your photos can make or break the success of your blog. You can make the most gorgeous dress in the world, but if you don't know how to photograph it properly no one will want to see it! You have about a second to capture your readers attention and your photos are crucial to the success of your blog.

If you are already shooting in manual modes like I was, there is still so much to learn about metering, using your focus features, flashes, filters, etc. It's all covered in Tony's Shot Rockers class.Shot Rockers also has a blog where you can get free photo tips.
Here is the list of daily lessons:
Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO, Exposure compensation, understanding light, get the sharp photo, lenses, using tripods, all about flashes, filters, camera care, white balance,metering, shooting JPEGS vs RAW files, photo composition, storing photos, editing, better landscapes and portraits, and printing and sharing your photos online.

As you can see there is a lot to learn!

Here is a little extra something for y'all.. Tony is now offering his course half off to readers of Sew Country Chick! (In case you don't want to take your chances on the giveaway or don't win. That is an amazing deal! Click here to check it out!

Now on to the Giveaway.


Please fill out my Rafflecopter form below to enter my giveaway.
Sorry, this giveaway is open to Sew country chick subscribers only!
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Why We Moved To The Country

Eight years ago  I was a pampered housewife living  in an exclusive area of Los Angeles.

My husband and I spent our weekends going to swank bars, nightclubs, and Hollywood parties. We rubbed elbows and drank martinis with celebrities, heiresses, and lots of fake people.

I wasn't shocked to find the husband of a couple we sometimes went out with that lived on the beach in Malibu, arrested for running a huge scam were he bilked millions from folks in the midwest to fund a Christian movie company that didn't exist.

Like many people in Los Angeles, you never knew quite what the real story with anyone was, as many people had a facade they showed to the world. That extremely wealthy looking man who pulled up to the club in his Ferrari might be living in a small rented studio, and the car might be leased.

I myself had grown up on the east side of LA, my dad a sound editor for the movies, and my mom was an ex hippie. I married right out of fashion design school to my husband, ten years older than me. His business had thrived so I had quit my budding career to raise the kids. We were riding the whole technology boom of the late 90's. We thought it would last forever. Little did we know everything would change for us after The Great Recession of 2008....

I had long since stopped making clothes or being creative. The Hollywood lifestyle was wearing me thin, and one night, lying in bed awake, I told my husband I wanted off the merry go round of our lives. I wanted to live in the country, away from all the noise and chaos of LA, where we had both grown up going out to clubs and parties since we were both young teenagers.

Luckily, I have a husband with an open mind. He wanted to change too. He wanted to start farming, and I wanted to homeschool the kids. We had recently sold our house in France, so that was no longer an option. We decided to look locally for a new life.We searched for an old farmhouse and found the perfect one about and hour and ten minutes out of LA. But a world away.

We traded in our fancy cars, got a truck and a mini van, and I learned to ride a quarter horse at a ranch across the road. We are surrounded by avocado and orange ranches and live across from a river in an area that has looked the same for the past hundred years, almost forgotten by time. We are a few miles outside of a small farming town, with few restaurants besides taco places, so sometimes I pack the kids in the car, drive them down to LA and take them to a museum so they can have some culture.

We raise chickens, make jam from the fruit on our trees, have homeschooled, go to church, grow our own veggies, and I now make most of the clothing for myself and my girls. Even though I am only an hour and ten minutes from LA, I still find it hard to believe I had never heard of this place before I moved here.

When I became pregnant with our fifth child four years ago, I started to sew clothing regularly again, rekindling my love of making clothes. I started my blog Sew Country Chick to document my progress. I am now designing most of our own clothing, making patterns, and considering selling some of them.

Making things has become a way of life and so much more rewarding than an endless cycle of consuming that many Americans are hooked on.

I'm not trying to say that living in the city is bad, and plenty of creative people do live there, but for me, moving to the country was the best thing I could do. I had to get away and slow down to find out what it was I wanted to do.

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Quilting leather tutorial

Quilted leather is a great technique to step up your fashion sewing projects and add a rock & roll edge. Whether you make a full project with this technique, or just add touches of it to a project, it looks really cool.

Below are some projects I pulled from the web to illustrate how you can incorporate quilted leather or vinyl into your fashion sewing.

An extreme example of leather quilting from the 2009 Balmain collection.

Quilting on pants from Michelle's final collection on the season's Project Runway.

from Burberry....
Are you convinced that quilted leather is a great way to add some  flavor to your wardrobe?
But how to do it?
Here is my method.......

Two layers of batting gives a nice puffy look, but use only one if you want only a little dimension. To do two layers iron on one layer to the leather, then iron on the second layer on top of the first layer.

Quilt your grid along the lines you drew on the wrong side of the leather. I would advise you to trim each line as you go. Some of my threads got caught in my quilting lines and I had to pull them out and trim them, which was time consuming.

Here are a few things I discovered when trying to figure out how to quilt leather:

Two layers of fusible batting gave a nice padded look. 

Don't try to use spray adhesive on normal batting. Everything will get gummed up, including your needle. Yuck!

Don't just try to pin on normal batting either... It will shift around when you are trying to quilt the lines. I tried that too..

Make sure you cut your strings after sewing each line. Or else the loose strings will get caught in your quilting lines. can you see this happening above? Practice makes perfect! ( That's why I did this project in vinyl and not the awesome chartreuse leather i have been saving...)

You WILL need to line your quilted leather. The batting will feel all scratchy next to your skin if you don't !

Sew & Tell Saturday 5/10

Welcome to Sew & Tell Saturday!

Many of you have been busy sewing up clothing for your spring wardrobes and I'm looking forward to see what you've made!

I've been working on a pair of slim floral print pants with a sleeveless peplum top the past two days. It was my first time making a fly zipper so now that I know how, I'm excited to get to more pants and shorts projects with the fly zip. ( It was one of those things I avoided)

I have also been reading my new book, Overdressed, about the fast fashion movement. I didn't buy this book for a long time because I had read lots of reviews and got the gist of it, but WOAH! This is a total must read, and will really make you glad that you are a part of the handmade clothing movement.

So let's get to our featured sewists from the last party.....

Japanese pattern top and bubble shorts from Sewing Like Mad

Vintage Style sunsuit  from Stitch-It-Up

A 1960 dress pattern sewn by Cari Homemaker

A stylish spring jacket for boys from Kid Approved

Feel free to garb a button!

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Liberty Of London Boutique Dress: Knock It Off Series

I am very happy to be participating in Heidi's Knock It off series today. 

When I recently saw a dress made from Liberty of London fabric on the J Crew website I new I wanted to make one. 

The J Crew dress $148

Cute, but I wanted more details...

Sometimes you have to go"straight to the camel's mouth" as they say.

I found what I was looking for online at The Liberty of London Boutique...

Liberty Childrenswear dress $148

Now I had to figure out how to make it...

I found this Liberty of London fabric in downtown Los Angeles at Micheal Levine and it's available here at their online shop. It's called Mauvey and is an identical print to the fabric on the dress from the Liberty of London boutique in London. But it's a different shade; I liked it a little more. 

That's one of the great things about sewing your own clothes. You can change little details.

As someone who normally doesn't pay more than five dollars a yard for her fabrics, I buy them in the garment district, it was a splurge for me to part with thirty eight dollars a yard for this fabric. But I think it was worth it. Don't be surprised to see more Liberty fabric projects on the horizon!

Here is the pattern I used:

Before I decided to buy another pattern or make a pattern myself, I looked through my collection of vintage patterns and Japanese pattern books. I found a pattern in one my Japanese books that would work. I can't tell you which book it is, because the cover fell off!

I made the ruffle a little wider, the waistband a little more narrow and the skirt a little more gathered.

And I turned the facing outward instead of having it inside the dress. This method is called a reverse facing.

I can't wait to use the rest of this fabric. I love it. Next up, a blouse for myself.

Buttoned Up Birdhouses:Kids Craft Tutorial

Today I'm sharing a simple and fun spring project you can make with your kids using Mod Podge Wash Out, Craft Barrel Paint, buttons, and inexpensive mini birdhouses from the hobby shop.

In case your kids didn't get around to making a gift for mom, grandma, or auntie!

My girls love doing Mod Podge projects. What kid doesn't ? Mod Podge Wash Out for kids is perfect because it's easy to clean up after your kid makes a huge mess. And if they are having fun, they probably will!

Here are the materials you will need for the Buttoned Up Birdhouses:

Mod Podge Wash Out Formula

Craft Barrel Paint in bright spring colors

2 packages colored buttons from the craft shop

5 mini birdhouses from the craft shop

Paintbrushes

Paint the birdhouses with two coats of the paint each.

After my girls were done panting, I have to admit I touched them up a little.

I can't control myself sometimes. Plus, they missed some spots!

Once the birdhouses are dry, paint a little section with Mod Podge Wash Out and have your child glue on the colorful buttons.
When the buttons are dry you can paint on another coat of Mod Podge to seal the birdhouses.
Now go hang some up in the garden, make a garland or nail them to a tree,