April Garment Photos and more

April was a great month-lots of show and tell and information from many of you. We love to see what you’ve sewn and hope that what we do is inspiring you to get to your machines and create wonderful garments for yourselves and others.

Here are the pictures-we missed a few so I’ll add them when I can get back home and photograph them.

Faux Wrap Tee

Easy to Sew Dress

Sporty Skirt and Stripe/Dot Tee

Tie Sweater

Wool Knit Top

I missed a picture for Laurel’s pillowcases but here are a few links from Nancy at the Associated group that give video instructions for making the pillowcases:
Pillowcase Tutorial
Sausage Pillowcase

LaVonne recommended www.homesew.com for great notions, etc.

And then there was Show and Tell!

Inside of Cheri's Verona Jacket

Mary's oliver + s patterns

Becky's Shawl/Vest

Click for more information on the Verona jacket or oliver + s patterns. All are highly recommended.

The shawl/vest that Becky showed was something she copied from ready to wear and got many oohs and aahs. Here is a picture of the garment laid flat. The edges are unfinished but she had another one with a neckband and finished hems.

Here are the dimensions for the garment as many of you requested. You will have to adjust for your body but this should be a good start.

Rectangle is 25 1/2″ x 45″. Inside “rectangle” is 8″ x 17″. Fabric is a mid to light weight knit. Put it on as if the one inside hole were the two armholes.

Happy sewing! Check out the new calendar (click on Calendar above). See you in May.

Wouldn’t it be cool

if there was an iPhone app that would allow us to keep track of our patterns and our stash?

I know there are a few of you out there with iPhones or their cousins. Cheri told me about MyStyle which is an app that allows you to take pictures of your clothes and make outfits, even wish lists of what you’d like to buy. Thinking it would be fun/useful to catalog my stash I looked around at the App store and found several. Fabric Calc is $14.99-a really high priced yardage converter app for industrial sewists. There is a cheaper ($2.99) version for the personal sewist-Yardage Calc. Fortuny, a very cool Italian fabric manufacturer has a free app that features their fabrics and you can order samples. May be an affordable option for a fabric fix-just browse through the app instead of Treadle! But the two that looked closest to what I wanted were Fabric Stash ($4.99) and Fabric Journal ($1.99). I like the looks of Fabric Stash better but will try both of them for ease of use, etc. (I can’t link any of these apps, just go to iTunes and click on App Store.)

What seems sorely lacking is an app to organize my pattern stash! My son, the geek, told me to blog about it and then go to the other apps and make suggestions and maybe someone would pick up the idea and run with it. So here’s the blog. You may add your own dreams to the wishlist:

Dream Sewist’s Stash App

~Allows you to enter your patterns from the big companies down to the obscure designers
~AND (and this is big) will download the information and picture from the pattern envelope in a font size that will allow you to read it-you won’t need to enter all that info-OK, I’d be happy with front and back views, yardage and notions needed
~AND (another big one) if the pattern company isn’t available or the pattern is out of print, an option for photographing the pattern envelope and an easy format way of entering the needed info-yardage, notions, etc.
~A wish list of patterns to buy
~Ability to comment on the patterns
~It would be really sweet if this was part of a fabric stash app and then you could match the fabric to the pattern and vice versa

Enough of dreaming, I need to get to work on April’s garments and Easter plans. I found a new blog that I spent way too much time looking at-but love! Fashion for Nerds. And here’s a great scarf tying video from the Sartorialist.

Treadle(link to their new blog) is having a sale from April 1-11. Don’t miss it!

Happy Easter from the Material Girls

March Fashion Sewing Club Garments

The March installment of Club brings a wide variety of garments-






And some great Sew and Tell-

Cheri is wearing the new Louise Cutting's new My Heart's A' Flutter

Fashion Sewing Club meets monthly and features garments with design changes, pattern review and sew and tell. All are welcome. Cost is $10. Click on Club to see dates, times and locations.

Christopher Straub at the Sampler

Seven Material Girls drove all the way to Chanhassen on March 12 to listen to Christopher Straub, a Shakopee resident, of Project Runway-Season 6 fame. He entertained about 30 of us with an informal question and answer format and had a great drawing for two of his handbag designs. None of the Material Girls won 😦

Christopher is now designing bags of all kinds and will also have a new line of garments to show at MN Fashion Week.

The Sampler will be hosting Valori Wells, a fabric designer for Free Spirit, on May 19th from 5-7 pm. Cost is $30 and they’re promising more great giveaways.

Trench Coats and Fabric Snobs

As I was listening to my fellow Material Girls at the March Fashion Sewing Club I wondered if we were becoming fabric snobs. Most of the fabric we purchase is from Treadle Yard Goods-but not everyone shops there or even knows of the store. Christopher Straub of from Project Runway fame hadn’t even heard of it, for goodness’ sake!

Anyway, in defense of our exclusivity, or just plain love of so many Treadle fabrics, it takes time to shop and since we mostly find ourselves at Treadle, that just happens to be where we buy our fabric. When we were teaching classes and holding Club at Hancock we also found fabric there.

However, an email from a frustrated Trench Coat Class student was the final nudge I needed to make a special trip to Hancock Fabrics at Southtown. That and the niggling feeling of fabric snobbery and hearing that the store had undergone some rearranging.

So here are my happy finds for trench coat fabric at Hancock. I’m not including prices because I didn’t write them down or even look in some cases. Most of the fabrics are in the upholstery section but the last picture of the solid color fabric is in amongst the regular fabric and is labeled as jacket or outerwear. The colors-a gold/brown, silver/gray and blue/black are especially distinct and appealing (to my eye, anyway). Let me know if you want more specific directions to the location of it.

There’s still room in the Trench class-see the class listings at the top of the site.

Love Your Serger

This Thursday, March 25, is our Love Your Serger Class day. The project will be Total Serger Tee Techniques and Tips. A mouthful and two hours full of how to put a tee together with your serger. We’ll bring a pre-cut American Girl Doll size t-shirt for you to work on or you can cut out a tee of your own and bring it to class to sew together. This means an opportunity to use your coverstitch if you’ve never done that before (you know who you are) or if you don’t have coverstitch, we’ll use the rolled hem lettuce edge to finish edges.

The class is held at Associated Sewing in Bloomington, March 25, from 2-4 or 6:30-8:30 and the cost is $15. Click on the class name to register and pay through PayPal or send an email to kristin@materialgirlsewing.com

Here’s a picture from the February class where we made a ruffled pillowcase.

Ruffled Serger Pillowcase

Almost Paris-Without the Passport

After riding in an airplane and a shuttle van, I was dropped off at an unassuming corner across from the Puyallup (pew wallop) Fairgrounds. As I began a weekend of people watching it seemed that quilters were in the majority and garment sewists the minority at the Sewing and Stitching Expo. To add fuel to the fire I saw a woman wearing a hat which made it look like she had a scissors stuck through her head. But then I kept looking and slowly but surely I started to see people wearing clothes that were handmade. On Saturday I spotted two young designers.
Friday I took a class from Marcy Tilton about Paris influences in her sewing. Some of her slides were from our trip in November. Saturday noon I sat outside eating a crepe filled with Nutella just like in Paris. The cherry trees are blooming.
And then there were the many, many vendors and their displays. So much like what I saw in Paris.
Although no one would call it the Eiffel Tower, the old bridge that we crossed on our trips between the motel and the Expo reminded me of it. The runway shows were full of creativity and ideas and people! There was gorgeous fabric and must-have notions everywhere. I WILL fit into my suitcase and I can’t wait to get home and sew!
The fairgrounds had great food-fresh raspberry scones, BBQ, gyros and crepes. People were wonderful-all manner of sewing sisters, best sewing buddies, mothers and daughters and even the occasional husband/wife team.
I’m thankful for my sewing buddies, especially Cheri, who has been a great driver, Kathy, Sandy and Marcy and Katherine, without whom I probably would never have dreamed of attending the Expo in Puyallup.
It was almost like Paris-OK-there were some similarities.
But Paris didn’t have Mt. Rainier.
Enjoy the pictures.

Marcy’s Jacket Finished

What began as a great pattern, ended as a great pattern. Here is the finished product. I was thinking it would be scary to have Marcy see it up close but the sewing techniques make it fairly easy to avoid many of the “this is so homemade” telltale signs.
I’m very pleased with the way the different elements of the fabric came together-even if it is subtle. I’m wearing it today to the Puyallup (pew ahl’ up-according to the locals) Sewing and Stitching Expo in Washington. Having a great time-cherry blossoms and daffodils are out-raining and fifties. An added bonus is that I’m running into my Paris traveling companions!
More later…

Sewing Through Marcy Tilton’s Patterns

After going to Paris with Marcy Tilton I decided to work my way through her patterns. So far I’ve made the vest, tee shirt and skirt. I’ve been very happy with the results. Today I got a good start on the jacket pattern. The fabric is a beautiful purple and blue on a gray/black background. It’s available on Marcy’s website (click to link). It has a large repeat which I thought would work very well with the pattern. Most of the jacket pieces are straight so I could use different elements of the fabric (top section is purple hearts, lower section is more of a fleur de lis). I’ll be using other elements of the pattern for the collar and cuffs.
The pattern directions are very clear and take small steps so it’s easy to read the pictures and figure out what to do. Marcy also takes advantage of the serger-something many patterns don’t do.

Jacket before collar and sleeves
Fabric Closeup
Another fabric element closeup
Fabric repeat

February Fashion Sewing Club Garments

Despite the bad weather we had a fair turnout and lots of great show and tell. One of the Treadle attendees got motivated to add four pieces to her wardrobe giving Marcy Tilton’s new tee pattern a try. A few of the Bloomington attendees were busy with children’s and American Girl doll garments.

Debbie's tee and 8th Ave skirt

Shapes Three Fold Vest

Three Fold Vest back view

Fifth and Final Felted Mittens

Debbie's Ruffled Shirt and Simplicity Trousers

Ruffle Close up

Three Fold Vest and Marcy Tilton's Skirt

Marcy's Tee and Skirt

Laurel's Mix It Top

Laurel's Blouse

Marcy's Skirt-Short Version