Christening Gown and Sewing Tips Part 2 - Cutting Out

Here are all the pieces for the Christening gown all cut out ready to sew. This dress has a full yoke facing/lining with an unlined skirt. So I needed to cut 2 front yokes, 4 back yokes, 1 skirt front and 2 skirt backs.

MY SEWING TIPS PART 2- CUTTING OUT
These tips apply to all sewing projects

* Make sure you have sharp pins with no snags in them, otherwise you may permanently mark your fabric. This can be an unsightly mistake to make with expensive or delicate fabrics.

* Make your iron your best friend! Pressing takes time but ultimately will give you the best results. Have your iron and ironing board close to your work area. Press pattern pieces and fabric before you start pinning and cutting.

* Keep your nails filed smooth to prevent snags in the fabric. This one may sound a little silly, but if you have ever tried sewing with very fine fabrics and your nail has caught the fabric, you will know what I mean!

* Pin the pattern pieces to the fabric within the seam allowance, that way if the pins do mark the fabric they will not be seen once the garment is made.

* Make sure you have a sharp pair of dressmakers scissors. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to cut your fabric properly! See this post to see how I keep my scissors sharp.

* When cutting out make sure you follow the layout instructions and double check everything before you cut. Otherwise you could make a very costly mistake!

* Make sure you transfer necessary markings to your fabric. Pleats, center line , ease, notches etc. These are a big help as you sew.

* Check each step before you sew. Unpicking is time consuming as well as frustrating and can permanently damage some fabrics.

I will add the links to my other sewing tips here once they are published.

SEWING TIPS PART 1 - PREPARATION
SEWING TIPS PART 3- SEWING
SEWING TIPS PART 4- FINISHING

I hope you find these tips useful. If you have any handy sewing cutting tips you would like to share, please feel free to share them here by adding a comment below.

Christening Gown and Sewing Tips Part 1- Preparation

I have been asked to make a christening gown. The grandmother wanted to make it herself, but found she ran out of time. I will share the progress with you as I make it.

Here is the pattern of the dress with the fabric and lace as supplied to me. I have been asked to make the basic dress and then sew several layers of lace on the bottom.

Here is the first in my series of sewing tips designed for those of you beginning so sew. These are not just for sewing heirloom outfits, but are suitable for anything you want to make.

MY SEWING TIPS PART 1 - PREPARATION
These tips apply to all sewing projects

* Use good quality fabric, lace and thread if you intend to keep the gown as an heirloom. Cheaper or inferior materials may not survive the test of time very well.

* Use thread suitable for the fabric you are using. Incorrect threads will give unreliable results.

*Use fabric recommended on the back of the pattern envelope. You can not cut woven fabric with a pattern designed for stretch fabric. This is because woven fabrics do not have the same stretch capabilities of knit fabric.

* Some fabrics specifically require pre-washing before you cut them out. This is a very important step with some fabrics and can make a big difference to the appearance of the finished garment. If you are not sure, check when you buy your fabric.

* Take your time, and read all instructions carefully before you start. Keep referring to them as you go.

* If you are not very confident with sewing, I recommend to make a trial gown using a similar fabric to help you work out all the kinks you may encounter and changes you want to make BEFORE you sew the final garment. You can then use this as another cute outfit too, so it won't be wasted.

* Make sure you and your work area are clean! Marks from hand cream may not show up until years later. Wipe over all surfaces and make sure there is no residue of sewing machine oil anywhere, including your machine, table and anywhere else the fabric may touch.

* Some fabrics need to be left to HANG! This will allow the fabric to drop if it is going to before it is cut. If the garment is left to hang after is is made, it may go out of shape. Yes this has happened to me, one dress need to be re-hemmed 3 times and that was AFTER being left to hang for 2 weeks! When you purchase your fabric ask if you need to let it hang.

I will add the links to my other sewing tips here once they are published.

SEWING TIPS PART 2- CUTTING OUT
SEWING TIPS PART 3- SEWING
SEWING TIPS PART 4- FINISHING

I hope you find these tips useful. If you have any handy sewing preparation tips you would like to share, please feel free to share them here by adding a comment below.

Want to see Websites I like? Stumbleupon is the key!

How many of us have loads and loads of bookmarks saved and don't remember what they were for. Well if you are anything like me, I find it is sometimes quicker to Google the page I am looking for, just to find it again.

Sooooo I decided a while back to start using Stumbleupon to keep my bookmarks in one place and share them with others. It is a social bookmarking site where you download a toolbar to your web browser and then you can give web pages you like the thumbs up (this is good) or thumbs down(bad) if you don't want to see that kind of thing again. You can also randomly stumble through websites in topics you like so you can bookmark and share them with others on your own stumble blog.

My StumbleUpon blog has tags/categories so I can sort the pages depending on the topic and I can even write a review too. I often use my reviews and thumbnails to help remind me as to what is on the page to make it easier to find later. If you go and have a look around you should find enough to keep you busy for a while. (wink wink!)

You can read more about StumbleUpon and download the toolbar from here.

So if you want to find out what I like head on over to my Stumble blog. I have tried to keep it mostly sewing and crafts related to help spread the creative inspiration and share some fun things with others. There are tags/categories on the right hand side of the page to make it easier to see topics you are interested in. If you like my blog SewDelish or even my StumbleUpon blog please leave me some love by giving them the thumbs up! Even if you don't have the tool bar, you can easily give them the thumbs up by clicking on the little icon that looks like this.. at the end of each of my posts.

See you all soon, hopefully you don't get so hooked on stumbling that you forget to pop back in a say hello! :)

Happy New Year!

Well the festive season is now over and as usual we had loads of food leftover. So much that we made up numerous plates filled with delish Christmas goodies and pretended to be meals on wheels for our family and friends. After all there is only so much turkey, mince pies, pavlova and trifle one can eat!
Hope you found something lovely under the tree at Christmas! I know I did! I will be sharing a few things I have been making with it in the next few weeks. I have just finished writing another post scheduled for tomorrow that should keep you busy for a while. (wink wink!)

Wouldn't you know it, right at a critical crafting time last week, our printer decided it was time to go to printer heaven. It wasn't recognising cartridges and would take absolutely forever to print a black and white page! So now armed with a new printer (and oh soooo much better) I can print lots of things in just the same colour as shown on the monitor! I have been trying to give it a work out, just to make sure it still works! LOL
Anyway enough of the chatter, I am off to finish some tidying in my sewing room and then to cook some dinner.

Happy New Year to you all and I hope this year is much better for you than any before. I have lots of ideas for this year that I would like to share with you. So don't forget to keep checking back or even subscribe (the link is above) to be notified when I update with new posts.

xx

Christmas Printable Freebies and Blog Anniversary!

I can't believe it has been exactly one year since I began blogging. I have learnt so much about blogging and the internet and I am still learning new things.

To celebrate Christmas and my blog's anniversary, I have made up some Christmas printables for you to download and use. Just click on the images you would like in this post then save to your computer or print it directly from there. You may link to this page, but please do not sell the images or place these directly on your site. These pages have been made using a combination of free fonts and an image editing program.

These are great to use for scrapbooking, making cards and even just to decorate the gifts you give. I would love to see some photos if you wish to share them. I may even feature them here.
I have also included some colouring pages for kids. They print 2 images to a page, so you can make them into a mini colouring book if you wish.

Merry Christmas to you all and thank you to my dedicated readers for your comments. You know who you are. Have a safe and wonderful Christmas.

We have a Winner!

My sincere apologies to those of you waiting to find out the winner of the Mushroom Bag, I have not been well since I last posted. Hopefully things are on the way up again and I can get back into creating and blogging.

I used a random number generator, but couldn't figure out how to copy and paste it here, so the winner is...............

No. 1 - STACI!

Congratulations Staci, I will email you for you address, so I can post it out to you.

Lily Rose Lane and Blog Candy Giveaway!

To celebrate the opening of my shop and reaching over 30,ooo visitors I am going to give away one of my Mushroom Bags.

They are perfect for storing your mushrooms in. They are made from 100% cotton and are washable. They can be re-used over and over again. If you don't eat mushrooms I don't why you couldn't use it for keeping something else in!

If you would like to be in the draw please leave a comment here and make sure I have a way of contacting you. It is open worldwide and the Deadline for entries is the 3rd December 2008.

Good luck to all that enter.

xx

This competition is now closed.