I made this over the weekend by draping a yard of this coral t-shirt knit fabric over my dress form. It took a lot of experimenting but I'm pretty happy with the result!

I absolutely love that dress! Why can't I ever find pretty, unique lace like that?! Awesome job!

Thanks The original pattern is more boxy, but I took it in a bit at the waist because things like that tend to make me look like I'm wearing a tent. I left just enough room for it to fit over my head.

I like it a lot!  What is the closure - I can't tell if there are buttons, or what.....?

It's a loose fitted top so there are no closures needed. Best part about it!

I'm feeling a little adventurous this year. For my new year's resolution I decided to finally start my own sewing blog and kick it off with a challenge. I'm going to sew one new garment each week until March.

I finished my first garment on the very first day of 2012! It's the free Sorbetto top from Colette Patterns.







I'm really happy with how it turned out! I'm planning on doing up a few more versions of these later this year. I love how easy and versatile this pattern is.

Do you sew, knit, crochet, or just love to make new things out of whatever you can find? Come join the Gainesville Craft Collective! We meet the first and third Tuesday of each month at Coffee Culture from 6-8pm (any deviations from that will be announced on Facebook).

Join us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=135081733171108. You can also "like" our page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gainesville-Craft-Collective/148832778479896 to recieve updates in your news feed.

Do you sew, knit, crochet, or just love to make new things out of whatever you can find? Come join the Gainesville Craft Collective! We meet the first and third Tuesday of each month at Coffee Culture from 6-8pm (any deviations from that will be announced on Facebook).

Join us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=135081733171108. You can also "like" our page at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gainesville-Craft-Collective/148832778479896 to recieve updates in your news feed.

I haven't checked here in a long time so sorry for the delay, but I did actually start up a craft group over the summer and we're doing really well! We've got members who knit, crochet, sew, scrapbook, make hula hoops, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. You can join us on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=135081733171108 and make sure to "like" our page (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Gainesville-Area-Craftsters/148832778479896) if you want to get updates in your news feed.

We meet the first and third Tuesday of each month from 6-8pm at Coffee Culture. Occasionally we meet at the Millhopper Library for bigger projects (basically anything that involves lugging in a sewing machine). Come join us!

That's a good idea! I was about to go experiment with the cut and spread method mentioned here (http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/4368/making-sense-of-pattern-grading), but if it begins to look too stab inducing I may resort to making myself a bodice block instead. All of these vintage patterns follow pretty closely to that anyway, I would just need to make adjustments to the darts and such. I'm not sure how I'd deal with the round neck facings like this one has though. I'm thinking just cut out the original onto my muslin and use my dress form to figure out where I need to trim it. Thanks for the tip!

I inherited a huge stash of vintage sewing patterns and fabrics a couple of years ago when a friend's grandmother passed away. She made all of her own clothes and obviously had excellent taste! My favorites are the 60's era McCall's, they look like something Joan would wear to the office on Mad Men. Especially this...



The problem is that all of these super fabulous patterns I'm dying to make are a much larger size than I am. Most of these fit a 39-41 inch bust and I am a scant 31 1/2. I've made a few dresses from simple modern patterns (with lots of mistakes and trial and error...but I'm getting there). Should I bother trying to grade this pattern down or will it just make me want to stab myself in the ear with dressmaker's shears? I've also thought about trying to find some sort of vintage pattern swap so any suggestions there would be great.