Vintage Fablique Hanging for Sewing

This was one of the gems found in my great aunt Maude's sewing stash. The kit was made by Coats, and the copyright on it is 1978.

It's intended to store sewing supplies, but I'm just using it as a decoration. It seemed easy enough at first, but it had a lot of little details that made it take longer than I thought.

Random Sewing Projects (One Involving Hedgehogs)

I did quite a bit of sewing over the summer, but I wasn't great at updating. Here are just a couple of my faves.



Pattern: Moneta by Colette Patterns
Fabric: Doodles Hedgehog Knit Fabric from Joann

Beaucoup de Baby Hats

It seems like everyone I know had a baby around the same time. I got behind on gifts really quickly. I intended on knitting something for each baby, but I got overwhelmed with the sheer number of babies so I decided to make multiple jersey hats on my serger instead.

Pattern: Top Knot Baby Hat by Pretty Prudent (Free Pattern)

Fabric: Scraps from many of my Moneta dresses

Sewing a Moneta with a Peter Pan Collar

Summer ain't over yet! My go-to dress pattern these days is Moneta by Colette Patterns. I probably have about six of these dresses, mostly in knit fabrics from the juvenile section at Joann. I figured as long as the print is distracting, no one will ever know it's the same dress. Shhhhhh.

Fabric: Knit fabric from Joann

Pattern: Moneta by Colette Patterns

Happy Crafty New Year! Top Instagram Photos of 2017

Happy new year! For those of you not on Instagram, here's a little recap of my top 9 photos of 2017.

Clockwise from top left: Sami in her Bristol Ivy Brooke Sweater and me in my Agrotera Sweater by Amanda Bell; Alex and Nietzsche in their weenie costumes; Me holding Yoko's sweet bunny at Echoview Fiber Mill in my Amy Herzog Options Sweater; Me in my Arm Knit Cable Scarf; Alex's knitted sock collection; Steve and Liz's fox wedding gift; foxy brooches for my crafty friends; the first winter snow of 2017. Center: Me in my Stephen West Dotted Rays shawl.

Mollie Makes Foxy Felt Brooches for Foxy Ladies

When I try to make something handmade for lots of friends, it's always a fail. So this past holiday, I looked for a gift that I could give lots of people. For inspiration, I went back through my Mollie Makes archive and found this adorable fox brooch kit that I hadn't even touched.

I made the foxes assembly-line style and was able to whip up quite a few in just several hours while I watched embarrassingly crappy Christmas movies on Netflix. Yeah! Handmade gifts for all!

Pattern: Mollie Makes Issue 32 Fox Brooch Template

Supplies: Felt, pin backs, and embroidery floss -- all from my craft stash! Woohoo!

A Goodwill Tricot Vintage Skirt Gets a New Home

A few months ago, I spotted this awesome unfinished skirt at a Blackberg Creative Studios pop-up shop. It had to be mine.

The skirt had a hand-stitched hem and lovely machine-stitched seams, but it was missing a waistband. I decided that since I didn't have any matching tricot fabric at home, I would just cut from the top of the skirt to make a new waistband.

Nietzsche is like a little shadow these days, so I let him be in the picture.

The only downside to this vintage fabric is that it clings to your legs if you -- ahem -- don't do a great job shaving your legs. Or don't actually try to shave above the knee at all.

Check out those awesome colors!

This is what the top of the skirt looked like before I cut into it. I just measured twice the width of my elastic, plus a 1" seam allowance so I would know how much of the waistband to cut off. Then I used chalk to mark where I needed to cut.

I chopped off a few inches for the waist band, then I gathered the rest of the skirt.

I used an old length of elastic that I found in my great aunt's stash for the waistband. I like that it's a bit wider than the usual elastic, so it doesn't roll in on itself too easily.

Have you ever given an old skirt a makeover? It certainly did take less time than starting from scratch!

6 Patterns to Sew in 2016

I have a lot of sewing patterns and a lot of fabric. They look sad and lonely in storage, so this year I'd like to put them to work in my wardrobe.

This list was inspired by my recent purchase of a new serger -- Alex's birthday gift to me from December. The serger will be here sometime next week, so in preparation I'm cutting out a lot of patterns (mostly skirts so far) so that I can finish those seams when the serger comes.

All of these sewing patterns are dresses except for one lonely shirt. Dresses seem to be what I sew the most, and also what I wear the most. The crazy part is that I own all of these sewing patterns except for one, and I even have fabric for most of them. Here's my wishlist for what I'd like to sew this year:

Clockwise from top left: B6284: A vintage-inspired dress from Gertie; Colette Moneta: I have a nice plum knit fabric that would be perfect for this!; M7086: A pattern from circa 1963. I bought fabric for this one at Blackberg Creative Studios during a holiday sale; V2903: I've procrastinated on this one because it requires about 7 yards of fabric. But look at that beautiful skirt!; Fancy Tiger Crafts Sailor Top: I have a nice Liberty of London print that I've been hoarding for years that will work nicely for this one; M6886: This one's from a Craftsy kit I bought last year. The serger will be awesome for this!

What's on your to-sew list for this year?

New Crafts for the New Year + Top Instagram of 2015

My top nine Instagram photos from 2015

Funny. My most popular Instagram posts in 2015 also happen to be some of my favorites from last year. (Well except for one. You don't even want to know what happened with that sweater in the bottom middle. More on that when I stop crying.)

Every year I make the same crafty resolutions: 1) I will not buy any new craft supplies until I use up most of what is in my stash. 2) I will not begin a new project until I finish the UFOs.

This never happens. Example: 

January 1, 2016. Me: I will finish these UFOs before I begin a new project.

January 4, 2016: Me: Oops, I started a new project.

Lots of FREE Sewing, Knitting, and Crochet Patterns

When I'm writing for Craftsy, my favorite posts are free roundups. There are so many awesome free sewing, knitting, and crochet patterns available for download from talented designers. In fact, I often end up downloading most of them as I'm writing.

Spend your money on fabric and yarn -- because you know you need more of those -- instead of patterns when you download these fab freebies from Craftsy.

Get FREE Accessory Sewing Patterns

Sewing an Oliver + S Family Reunion Dress

I sewed this dress for my niece for her birthday back in March, but it's only in the last week that my mom could persuade her to try it on and take pictures. Judging from these photos, I think she likes it.

Super Quick DIY: How to Hide an Ugly Wall

Alex and I just moved into a house that was built in 1905. Though we love the house, there are a few quirks. Translation: we have some slanted floors, a few very odd closets, and some ugly walls.

There's one particular place where the stairs create a little slant in the wall. Alex thought it would be cool to put something there, but everything we had, including a few canvas paintings, were too heavy. Fortunately, fabric saved the day.

We dug through my fabric stash and found a piece of fabric we both loved. (It's an Anna Maria Horner fabric from her Innocent Crush collection.) I sewed a little 1/2" hem around the entire piece, and then we just tacked it to the wall. The whole thing took less than 15 minutes!

 

How do you hide ugly walls?

Simplicity 2444: Sewing with Slippery Fabric

I admit that when I first saw Simplicity 2444, I was seriously turned off by the gigantic bow and the cape collar. But as with any other pattern, you have to look past the packaging and check out the elements of the dress. And I'm so glad I did!

From now on, I'm referring to this dress as my Cinderella dress. The dress turned out a bit fancier that I intended, and I felt like I was going to a ball when I put it on. Definitely a good twirling dress.

Patterned Fabric Coasters

Since moving to Asheville, I've acquired some nicer furniture than the IKEA setup I had in Brooklyn. One of those pieces is a dining room table I bought when I lived in Pittsburgh.

My mom refurbished it for me and it's quite beautiful. This means I can no longer use craft knives at the table, cut fabric, and leave drinks. No, that was crazy Brooklyn Ashley. Now that I'm sophisticated (teehee), I use coasters.

I took the materials for these straight outta my fabric stash. They're reversible, and I lined them with some quilt batting scraps I had. I think I see place mats in my future, too.

Have you ever sewn any functional home décor? There's a lot more fabric where this came from!

I Ain't Afraid of No Silk

I hold myself back a lot when sewing. Buttonholes, zippers, bias tape -- at some point I have run from them and later been forced to conquer them. This was the case when my friend Liz asked me to alter some sleeves on a dress she was wearing to a wedding.

Alter some sleeves? No problem! But when I found out the dress was silk, I got a little worried. I had never worked with silk before and if I messed this up, Liz was going to look like a bag lady at the wedding. I bravely changed my machine needle, did some test stitches on a scrap of the silk, and whatdya know? It turned out pretty well.

In honor of my bravery, some of my favorite silk fabric picks.

Clockwise from top left:

Aqua/Gray Misc Jersey Prints from Mood Fabrics

Teal Green Dot Silk Jaquard from Denver Fabrics

Bone Floral Voile from Mood Fabrics

Champagne/Rose Floral Jersey Prints from Mood Fabrics

Viburnum Fleurs from Vogue Fabrics

What are you scared of when you're sewing? Maybe I can persuade you to try it!

Colette Patterns Spring/Summer Palette Challenge

I'm a huge fan of Colette Patterns. I own several of their patterns (one being the Peony pattern I made my owl dress from) and love browsing their blog for sewing ideas. So when the gals at Colette proposed a palette challenge, I said ooookay!

I created a Pinterest palette board to collect all my ideas. The palette that sparked my inspiration was a beach-themed fashion spread in Marie Claire, which is ironic because the beach is a very scary place for me during summer. It features a redheaded model in colors that I never really considered before, like melon and white. And they didn't eve airbrush her freckles out of the photos!

I'd like to make some skirts and shorts in these colors that I can pair with simple tops. I also like the idea of adding a taupe accessory, like the photo above with the mint green skirt, white top, and taupe belt. I don't have the confidence to wear colors like melon and taupe in clothing, but I could definitely try to pull it in with things like belts.

What colors are you going to wear this season? And do you think pale-skinned people like me can pull off colors like white and melon? I'm nervous!

Peony Owl Dress

At the beginning of the year I joined Sew Weekly's contributors to encourage myself to complete a few sewing projects this year. It took me 3 months to do it, but I finally posted a project. It's up on Sew Weekly now.

You might remember the owl dress from when I finally figured out how to properly install an invisible zipper. I did a lot more than install a zipper on this little baby. Gathers? Check. Facings? Yep.

I've worn this dress a few times since sewing it and always get a lot of compliments on it. It's not without its flaws, of course. (The back waist seams don't exactly meet...) But I'm really proud of it and definitely plan on using the Colette Peony pattern again several times.

I'm such a flake when it comes to finishing my sewing. What pushes you to complete projects?

Invisible Zipper Mistakes

When it comes to sewing, I'm like the ill-behaved child who does things wrong but never learns a lesson from it. You could beat on me, put me in time-out, take away my favorite toy -- and I would repeat my bad behavior again and again.

Take invisible zippers, for example. Take a look at the "invisible" zipper I installed on a pillow last year:

But Ashley, you're thinking, I can totally see that zipper. It's not invisible.

No kidding. But that was a pillow on my couch that I drool on, so who cares? When it came time to install the same zipper on a dress, I really had to get my act together.

I'm working on this Peony dress in owl fabric. I love it, and I want to wear it. So I gotta do this thing right the first time.

I used the Colette Patterns invisible zipper tutorial to help me along. Important lesson: don't skip steps. I know you want to breeze through it so you can watch the Being Elmo documentary on Netflix. But you don't wanna go down that road.

First important invisible zipper step: Iron those zipper teeth. Really push them out of the way.

I originally tried installing the zipper with my regular zipper foot. Slap me on the wrist, because that was a waste of time. I broke down and ordered an invisible zipper foot ($30?! $30 for a little piece of metal?). Look at the difference with those straight stitch seams. One seam is from my regular zipper foot and the other was using the invisible foot. It's quite a difference.

You really gotta roll those teeth back to get in that little ditch with your sewing machine needle.

Sewing with the correct zipper foot:

The dress zipper looks ten times better than the pillow zipper. It's puckering a little, but I'm proud. I think this mean kid finally learned her lesson.

Do you ever skip steps and then regret it? Surely I'm not alone in this. Share an example, and I promise not to slap your wrist.

Sequin Headbands

At Christmas dinner, my cousin Keitha was wearing an awesome gold sequin headband. I immediately fell in love with it, so I went to Hobby Lobby and bought some stretchy sequins of my own.

I paid less than $1 for each quarter-yard strand of elasticized sequins. The gold looked amazing with Keitha's black hair, but not so great with my red hair. I went for black and silver instead.

The project was super quick. I measured the sequins against one of my other stretchy headbands, then checked the fit by pinning a safety pin to the band and trying it on.

The final step was sewing a simple seam. I folded the band over twice so that no loose sequins would get lost or tangled in my hair. I would suggest hand sewing because when I tried to run it through my machine, the needle kept puncturing all the sequins. Hand sewing guarantees you really catch hold of the elastic base instead of the sequins.

I'm not so crazy about the silver because it reminds me of my baton-twirling headband from 1st grade. I can't wear it with just anything like I can the black one.

What I liked about this project: It's cheap, fast, and easy -- just like your go-to prostitute.

What I listened to while I made this project: The Bust Magazine Best of 2011 playlist on Spotify (If you have Spotify, get the playlist!)

Monkey Boy Birthday Place Mats

Earlier this year, a customer on Etsy contacted me to make custom place mats for a monkey-themed birthday party in November. I had almost forgotten about the party until I opened my Etsy messages to find a photo of the place mats from the party!

Photo by Silvia Enders

I love making these, but I really love seeing people use them for fun things like birthday parties! I especially loved the party favors tucked into the utensil holders.

If you're looking for place mats for the holidays or birthday parties, I have a few sets in my Etsy store, including some pretty polka dot sets!