Hey everyone! I just quickly wanted to share the second reversible tie-side pinafore I made from the Little Dress Kits pattern I reviewed a few weeks ago!
I made another version, just using the pattern and my own fabric – a cute pink polkadot and a green cupcake cotton. This time I also found a cute little model (who was allowed to keep it after the photo shoot, of course 😉 ) and took these pictures – isn’t she adorable?
Thanks everyone for your lovely responses to last weeks Featuring You guest post by Amy from SewsNBows!
This week, I’m very happy to introduce this very versatile and chic young lady to you: Hannah. I’ve been a follower of hers for quite a while now and am totally on love with everything she makes. If you love vintage clothing, girly dresses and everything that’s cute – prepare yourself for this lovely sewing blogger!
Well Hello There! My name is Hannah Smith and I blog over at Made with Hugs and Kisses where I share my obsession with sewing and all things creative.
I have been blogging for just over a year now, although it took me quite a while to get to grips with things. I was probably six months in before I finally figured out how to actually blog – you know, how I wanted it to look, what I wanted to say, where I wanted it to go. There is so much more to blogging than I originally realised but I have loved every second of it and am so excited for every post to come.
What has surprised me the most, however, is the people I have ‘met’ through blogging. My confidence and belief in my sewing skills is continually on the increase due to the amazing feedback and encouragement I receive from my lovely readers, and I thoroughly enjoy keeping up to date with the many, many blogs I follow, stealing tit bits of inspiration, and sometimes sharing them as part of my Eye Spy With My Sewing Eye series.
So a little bit of background info about little old me and my relationship with sewing. To start with, I am completely self taught. Exactly 4 years ago I was preparing to start university and had a month or two off before I began with nothing much to do. I had a sewing machine stored away that had never really been looked at never mind used, and decided to get it out and just have a go. Not being one to take things slowly I just jumped at the deep end and start making dresses ( sadly I don’t think I have any of these to take pictures of anymore). Of course there were a lot, and I mean a lot of mistakes made in those early days, and being impatient and a perfectionist did not help, but I persevered and did my best to work out what things meant and how to do things. And before I knew it I was completely addicted. Now, four years later, I have graduated from university, I have started a job as a primary school teacher and I am more obsessed with sewing than ever before, oh, and I have married my lovely husband, who best of all, supports my crazy obsession with sewing!
I mainly make dresses although I have been challenging myself to branch out into skirt and tops more recently. I would even love to try a coat this autumn, but we shall see.
My sewing style has developed a lot over the last few years as well. I suppose the most appropriate word to describe my sewing style would be girly! Team this with my love if a traditional silhouette, the big skirts the fitted bodices and an obsession with vintage was a natural progression and over the past year in particular I have seen many more vintage elements sneaking into what I sew, not to mention the start of a vintage pattern and sewing machine collection.
Q: Why did you decide to start a blog?
I suppose I started my blog because I felt like I was putting an awful lot of hard work and effort into learning how to sew and creating handmade clothes but, being self taught, I didn’t know if I was actually doing it ‘right’. I wanted to push myself, develop my skills, gather new ideas, but most of all I wanted to know that what I was doing was ok, that what I was making was ok, perhaps even bordering good! It sounds silly, and perhaps a little self centered, but I severely lacked confidence in my sewing ability when I started out my blog and was looking for a way to reach out, get to know likeminded people and generally improve. I now feel like a completely new person. I have come to learn that the only ‘right’ way to sew it to just make sure you are enjoying it, and the same stands for blogging too!
Q: What where your first ever blog posts about? How do you feel about it now?
Oh dear, I cringe when I think back to my early blogging days. Like I mentioned earlier I had no idea what I was doing back then. Looking back at them, and I urge you not to, I think they seem so impersonal. But hey, we all have to start somewhere. If it wasn’t for those early months I wouldn’t know what I know now about blogging. I know for a fact I will look back at my blog in another years time and probably cringe about everything I am writing at the moment, cursing myself for being too chatty or not having good enough pictures. I look at some of the blogs that are starting out now and think, oh my goodness they are so fantastic and clear, so professional looking and full of personality, how do they do it and how have they figured this all out so quickly! But it is all a learning curve and I am proud of what I am in the midst of creating.
Q: What are you doing when you’re not sewing or writing blog posts?
This question is a joke right… what is there to life other than sewing and blogging?! 😀
Nah, I’m only joking, although sewing, blogging, work and sleep tend to take up all 24 hours of my day. Of course I love spending time with my hubby too and I also have a multitude of animals that require my love and attention. When I find time I do like to dabble in lotother creative outlets from jewellery making to baking. A few extra hours in the day would be useful though.
Q: Do all of your friends/family know that you are a blogger?
Of course! I rarely meet someone new without talking about sewing and blogging!
I find a lot of the time people don’t understand what I mean by ‘I have a sewing blog’. They certainly don’t understand how time consuming, addictive and rewarding it is. But to be fair, a year ago I wouldn’t have known what that meant either.
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
A few posts ago I let slip that I have been working on drafting some patterns to put up on my blog for my readers to download for free to use for themselves. This has taken up a lot of my time recently but I have learnt a lot from the process. I am hoping to have the first one up very shortly. I don’t want to ruin any surprises so that is all I will say for now 😀
Q: If you had £500 to spend on your blog/hobby, what would you buy?
I would like to migrate over to wordpress.org so that I can have more control over my blog, but this is a very complicated process from what I have read so I would want to pay for the WordPress squad to do this for me.
There would be quite a bit left over so with this I would organize a sewing bloggers meet up, perhaps in Birmingham again, and go on a HUGE shopping spree and lunch!
Q: What can we look forward to seeing on your blog in the future?
Well, not only will there be some free patterns to download, I also have plenty more tutorials planned, some indie pattern reviews and of course lots more handmade creations. I have BIG things planned for Made with Hugs and Kisses it would be great if you could follow along with my journey 😀
Now… I just need to find the time to do all of this!
Here is a quick round up of some of my favourites
My favourite handmade creation:
My favourite blog post:
Perfectly Vintage – read it here!
My favourite fabric:
My favourite pattern (that I have used):
I have lost count of how many dresses I have made with this pattern!
My favourite pattern (that I want to use):
Victory patterns – Anouk
Hello fellow sewing enthusiasts!
My lovely mum recently sent me a dress to make alterations and I decided to make a pattern from it first before cutting it apart. It’s a super easy and super quick sew and I thought I’d share it with you. 
This is the dress I will refashion (taking off the sleeves). The blue one is the version I made yesterday.
In this post I’ll share the pattern and instructions on how to sew everything together. It’s one size fits all!
All you need
– a 90x180cm or 37×71” piece of fabric
– scissors, pins, matching thread
– matching ribbon or bias binding
Here’s the pattern!
As you can see, it’s super easy. It’s basically a rectangular piece of fabric you sew together on two sides and then add a waistband.
I used a 90x180cm scarf which was already hemmed on all sides. If your fabric has raw edges, hem it before you start. If you’re using lightweight fabric (which I recommend!) you can use a narrow hem foot. They work great!
You start with the neckline. You can either make it a V-neckline like in the pattern above or do something totally different. The V in the red dress starts 24cm/9.5” below the center fold. I decided to make a boat neckline which is even easier to do.
To get the boat neckline, I pinned the fabric to the dressform and cut off fabric until it had the shape I wanted. Try it on and see if you need to make changes!
I liked it the way it was and left it like that.
To finish the raw edges I used 7mm ribbon. Bias binding would be even easier. If you have neither at home but a bit of fabric left, you can make the bias binding yourself by cutting out strips at a 45 degree angle.
Pin the ribbon to the neckline, right sides together. Edgestitch about 2-3mm from the edges.
Fold the ribbon over and topstitch it on 2-3mm from the edge.
It should look like this on the right side of the fabric. All raw edges perfectly enclosed!
For the side seams, fold the fabric on the center line, left sides together. Sew the back and front together as shown in the pattern. Starting 20cm/8” from the bottom edge and 10-15cm/4-6” from the sides. The stitched line should be approximately 42cm/16” long.
To be on the safe side, you can pin the sides together first before you start sewing and see how it looks on you.
Now you need to add the casing for the drawstring/waistband. I used 2cm wide bias binding. You can also use ribbon or a strip of remnant fabric.
Stitch the casing//ribbon on in the front and back (left side of the fabric!) as shown above leaving the casing open at the side seams to form a tube for the drawstring.
In the front, sew on the casing only on one side as you need to make a little button hole first!
Now that you’ve secured the casing, mark the center of the waistband in the front and make a little buttonhole wide enough for your drawstring. Make sure it doesn’t get larger than the casing/ribbon is wide! I used the buttonhole setting on my sewing machine. You can also sew a buttonhole by hand, but I’m lazy lazy!
Now stitch on the rest of the front drawstring casing.
To get the drawstring through the narrow tube use a safety pin. (Start on the right side of the fabric)
Make a few knots or add some beads to the ends of the drawstring to keep it from slipping back into the casing.
And you’re done!
Now I feel a bit silly wearing blue dolphins here in London city, but I’ll be in Germany over the weekend, so hopefully I can take this dress on a little trip to one of our bathing lakes (and look slightly overdressed. Certainly no dolphins there either haha).
As always, if you have any questions just pop me a comment! I also LOVE seeing and featuring your makes! If you’re making this dress, sent me a picture of it. Contact details on my about page!
Happy Sewing! xxx
Hi everyone! Phew, what a weekend! I not only attended the London Sewing Blogger Meet-Up on Saturday and met a few dozen lovely seamstresses, but now I’m also officially done with my master’s after handing in my last essay yesterday. (Yep I went fabric swapping instead of working on my last assignment ever and it was awesome! If you want to read about the Meet Up, lovely Claire who organised everything wrote about it on her blog!)
And by the way, I did not forget to choose some blogs for the Liebster Award nomination, I was just too busy being a student and a seamstress at the same time 🙂
I know, stop talking and get down to business!
I finished dress #12 of my 27 Dresses Challenge! A green halter dress which reminds me a lot of the Marilyn wiggle dresses and believe me, this dress is so tight – there’s a lot of wiggling!
I used the #122A pattern of the Burdastyle magazine July issue.
Besides all the wiggling, there’s some serious risk of wardrobe malfunction with this dress. I was stupid enough to ignore the Burda instructions (like always…) and chose a stretchy, but obviously not stretchy enough fabric for making this dress.
Now it’s not only super super tight, but I’m afraid I’ll never wear this dress outside our flat. Why? Look at this!
It doesn’t look too bad in the picture, but in reality my boobies look like stringed ham on Christmas.
There are also some other things that went wrong which you (lucky me) can’t see in these super blurry pictures (sorry, broken lightbulb and both me and Mr.Thisblogisnotforyou were too lazy to get a new one.)
The fabric of the bodice part of this dress is basically the wrong way up. Yes! Stupid! Why?
I decided to cut out the fabric while watching a movie (distraction) in the living room (broken lightbulb). On the first look the fabric looks the same from both sides. If you look closer (which I obviously didn’t) you see that the fabric on the right side is slightly shinier than on the left.
Where is Tim Gunn when you need him? A “This concerns me enormously” would have helped. Thanks, Tim.
I’ll better not tell you that I sewed on the skirt wrong side up the first time, ending up with the raw edges on the outside. No, I better won’t.
Hi everyone! I’m happy to introduce my new blog series FEATURING YOU to you guys today! The series starts off with one of my absolute favourite bloggers: Amy from SewsNBows! I came across her blog earlier this year and since then couldn’t stop marvelling at her projects! She’s also been one of my constant readers and always the first one to leave a lovely comment!
Clear the stage for… *dramatic drum roll* …AMY!
Hi! My name is Amy, and I’m the nut who blogs at SewsNBows. I’m surprised and flattered that Charlie invited me over! I’m going to try real hard not to bore you to death 🙂
I have a fashion design degree that I never have used in the “real” world; and I own a small construction company with my husband. He does all the hard stuff, like actually working, and I do all the boring stuff, like payroll & accounting.
Together we created a small human named Bella, who is the best of both of us. I only have 1 kiddo, age 8, but if you’re new to my blog you’ll think I have 4. That’s because my 2 nephews and baby niece live 2 doors down, and our kids pretty much live in both houses. I constantly say,”my kids”,”my boys”, and “my baby”.
I grew up in a small town in Oklahoma, and couldn’t wait to get out. I headed to Southern California to design school when I was 17, graduated a couple years later, and couldn’t wait to get back to Oklahoma! I missed the laid back attitudes, the friendliness, and lets be honest-the cost of living is awesome here! So I’ve been back in Oklahoma every since, but I was craving a creative outlet, especially a couple years after we started our business. Once we were fairly successful, I needed to leave my long time job to work full time at home.
That’s where the blog came in. When I started sewing again, I really needed a lot of help remembering everything I’d forgotten in the last decade. I found a lot of helpful pins on Pinterest, which connected me to sewing blogs. I didn’t even know what a blog was prior to that! The rest was a wrap. I wanted to carve a place out for myself in the online sewing world.
I mostly post my children’s clothing creations, doll outfits, hair bows, and an occasional hilarious craft fail. My readers tend to be sewists as well,since I’m not very diverse, but I have a broad range of sewing blogs friends; from quilters to couture. Of course, I have met some really awesome crafters and mama bloggers too.
Here’s my interview with Charlie!
Q: For how long have you been blogging and why did you decide to start a blog?
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Q: What was your first ever blog post about? How do you feel about it now?
I’m coming up on my 1 year anniversary of blogging on August 31st. My first post was about a cool vintage pattern piece I found inside an not so old pattern envelope. The post was hopelessly boring, and the photo was about 20x too big. I didn’t realize I needed to resize my photos until much later, when a sweet reader emailed me. Please don’t read it. It’s truly awful!
Q: What was the first blog you regularly read?
I came across Sew Can Do, Sew Country Chick, and Threading My Way pretty quickly. I seemed to always end up there when I was googling for a tutorial, and their personalities just seem like people I like in real life. Rachel from Once Upon a Sewing Machine was the first person to reach out to me and show me kindness. It means a lot to new bloggers, it’s like a life jacket when you’re drowning!
Q: How and when did you learn how to sew?
The first time I sewed was on my grandmas lap. We sewed Barbie clothes together, and later, American Girl doll clothes. I’m glad I have a daughter & niece, because sewing little doll things takes me back about 25 years, to the very beginning of my love for fashion and textiles.
Q: What are you doing when you’re not sewing or writing blog posts?
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Q: What does a normal day in your life look like?
When I’m done with work stuff, like accounting, payroll reports, whatever, I have a few hobbies other than sewing & blogging. I spend a lot of time swimming and working in the garden. This summer I’ve taught myself how to can and preserve produce. I’ve been helping my daughter with her soap making business. I go to my nieces baby pageants, and this weekend I took my nephews camping. I live a pretty quiet life, but its never boring! I love being busy, and there’s never enough time to do everything I’d like to.
My daily life is any combo of the above activities, with many cups of coffee in between. Oh, and the phone is ringing the whole time!
Q: Do all of your friends/family know that you are a blogger?
Yes. My whole family supports me, and they all love and encourage me…but they just aren’t into sewing. They make valiant efforts to read it…but it would be like me reading about scuba diving. Not my thing! So I appreciate them so much, but try not to blab about sewing and blogging too much. I save that for my online buddies 🙂
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
So much. I’ll be pattern testing for Once Upon A Sewing Machine & Sew Much Ado this month. Im also a guest at the Sew Many Books series at Nap-Time Creations. I’m dying to sew a Tinny Dress for Flip This Pattern at Francis Suzanne. My friend Gina from Party of Eight: Our Story and I got the pattern around the same time and vowed to sew it up together. I’m never this booked up, and I sort of love it. I feel like a cool kid. When I slow down, I want to learn how to sew those huge fluffy cupcake skirts from chiffon or voile. They use fishing wire in the hem to make it curly…I need this skill for my nieces little pageant dresses…they are gonna break the bank if she keeps wanting to compete!
Q: What is your go to pattern brand?/ Or if you’re not using patterns, what is your favourite tool/technique to work with?
Commercial patterns-KwikSew is my fave, but I use them all. I like KwikSew because the instructions are clear and the illustrations make sense. I use them all though, and have a disgustingly large pattern collection, including a ton of vintage.
I’m digging independent pattern designers online more and more. I like the idea of supporting a small business.
I love patterns from Elegance & Elephants, Figgys, PeekaBoo Pattern shop, BeMyGoth, SewMuch Ado, and Once Upon A Sewing Machine, (coming soon.) there’s a whole nuther’ list of pattern designers I love for doll clothes too!
Q: If you had 500 dollars to spend on your blog/hobby, what would you buy?
Despite my best efforts to destash in July, and continuing this month, I know in my heart that I would buy more fabric and patterns. I’d make a reckless purchase since its free money- maybe get a piece of that Liberty of London floral I’ve been lusting over!
Q: What can we look forward to seeing on your blog in the future?
I have lots of loose plans for the blog. I can’t tell you how soon I’ll get around to any of these things, since I have a fear of commitment; and find I don’t work as well under a deadline.
I’m pushing myself to broaden my scope by sewing with knits and delicates, sewing more women’s wear, and learning to “stone” pageant dresses and sew fishing wire hems.
I’d like to do some vintage pattern giveaways to make room in my sewing room.
I’m working to improve my shabby photography skills. It’s not my area of interest, but it’s a necessary evil.
I plan to write more sewing tutorials, to get more viewers over to my place. They would be simpler techniques, as I still have so much to learn!
In my fantasies, I have lots of cool sponsors and a few ads to bring in a bit of money, along with a line of girl/doll patterns, but that will most likely not form into a plan in the near future. There is a huge level of commitment and work required to earn money blogging. To be quite honest, I’m too selfish to be “beholden” to any companies, and I’m having too much fun now to bother!
Charlie, thanks so much for letting me take up space today!