Clothes – Sew Bittersweet Designs

First Day of First Grade!

4 Comments / 2016 Finishes, Clothes, Personal Post / By Melissa Dunworth

Whoever told my Anne that she could grow up…I’m not happy with you! She needs to stay little and mine forever!

Seeing as I’m not going to get my way and she is going to keep growing up into a beautiful little girl, I need to come to terms and celebrate that! Today she started First Grade! I am in shock and yet so proud of her too. She handles everything that is thrown her way with such grace and poise, she is wise beyond her years. Here are our standard back to school photos in the new dress that I made her.

She told me that she wants to be a doctor, and given the amount of time that she has had to spend in hospitals during her short lifespan I think she would be amazing. I know she would be full of empathy for her patients and beyond understanding of nervous parents. That being said…she is six and surely her dreams will change many times between now and when she needs to make tough grown up decisions like what she wants to be when she grows up. Heck I’m 35 and still haven’t quite figured that out!

Dress information – Fabric is House of Hoppington by Violet Craft and the pattern is by Simplicity. It is the same pattern that she picked out last year except this year she wanted the version with the cap sleeves.

And now that school has started, I will be spending quite a number of hours with Spike, we have 5 customer quilts ready and waiting and hopefully will be receiving two more tonight. We plan to burn the school hours together until I get my little girl back! I hope everyone has a very happy Wednesday and I have a few projects to show you in the next several days that I didn’t get to share before I went on vacation last month! So stay tuned!

Because everyone needs giraffe pants…

9 Comments / 2015 Finishes, Christmas, Clothes / By Melissa Dunworth

This week I made Anne a pair of giraffe pants. You may remember her giraffe hoodie I made last year.

Holy cuteness batman! I mean seriously!

Well, this weekend we were going through her pants drawer looking for sweats, only to discover that none of her pairs fit anymore. Not surprising since she has grown about 4″ from last winter. Happily I had just barely enough giraffe fabric left over to make her a lovely pair of pants!

If you ask me, she is still pretty darn cute!

I made my own pattern using a pair of her jeans and I serged them together on the Pfaff serger that I never use. Then I hemmed them and put in the waistband on my Janome 15000. I love that I’ve gotten to the point in my sewing where I am quite content to sew without patterns. It’s a nice morale booster for this lady!

So here is the first of my Christmas sewing, these are an early present to her so she doesn’t freeze during our Pacific Northwest winter.

Happy Holiday Sewing!

Quilt Market Sewing

5 Comments / 2015 Finishes, Camelot Fabrics, Clothes, Quilt Market / By Melissa Dunworth

This month I had the honor and pleasure of sewing some adorable dress samples for Camelot Fabrics and their Mickey Mouse and Friends booth at Quilt Market.The first outfit I got to make was this adorable Kimono Style Romper.

This dress Anne wanted to keep! It is the Hummingbird Dress and is just lovely.

This is the Sweet Comfy Romper by Puperita. It is fully lined and completely adorable!

This is the Teeny Tiny Tunic and is a free pattern from Camelot Fabrics. I wish this came in Anne’s size (heck! I wish it came in mine!). It is hands down my favorite outfit that I got to make.

Everything looked amazing in the booth, check out this great picture from quilt market:

Camelot Fabrics wrote a great blog post about the booth yesterday and you can read about it here and they have some fabulous new lines coming out that Anne and I really excited about. This new Mickey line, but also the new Disney Princess Collection. Can’t imagine why Anne is so excited 🙂

This was part of the reason for my silence during the month of October, I had to keep these projects under wraps until they were revealed at Quilt Market, but I hope you will agree with me that they were will worth the wait!

Have a happy Friday!

Princess Merida – My October Finish

12 Comments / 2015 Finishes, A Lovely Year of Finishes, Clothes, halloween / By Melissa Dunworth

I did it! Despite throwing my back out, I spent 5 hours yesterday, sitting on a heating pad and sewing. I know I couldn’t have finished if I had needed to cut anything but luckily I cut out everything a week and a half ago. To date, this is the most complicated pattern I have made. This is only more complicated than Elsa from last year because there were so many more pieces. I still disliked sewing Elsa more – that slippery fabric was AWFUL!

This is Simplicity Pattern 1557

Here she is, the sleeve gauntlets are made, she even has a bow and arrow (thanks Nana and Baba).

I made her the cape to go with it, she was a little upset that I didn’t do the applique on the front that the pattern shows, but we watched the movie this weekend and when I pointed out that Merida does not have an applique of herself on her dress, she was fairly satisfied that she didn’t need one either.

I just love the way she looks with the cape on! This costume will last forever because it was 6 inches too long and instead of cutting the excess off, I simply folded it up and hemmed it, that way as she gets older I can let it down and it will last a little longer.

I don’t consider myself a clothes person, but the more I sew for Anne and the more I see the joy it brings her, the more I enjoy it. I will always be a quilter first but I will do just about anything to put a smile on my baby’s face!

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate, and happy princesses to those who don’t! I for one have a very happy princess in my house right now!

PS. You have until Halloween to link up your October Finish! Get on it!

The First Day of Kindergarten

7 Comments / Clothes, Personal Post / By Melissa Dunworth

Well autumn has surely arrived in Western Washington, where we call home. It is a balmy 46 degrees this morning while I write this post. Along with autumn arriving (a bit too early for me), Anne has decided to grow up before my very eyes and become a Kindergartner. Not sure where she got this crazy growing up idea from, but alas, yesterday was the day when I had to turn my baby over to complete strangers for 6.5 hours for this thing called school.

Just yesterday my baby girl looked like this:

Ok, so maybe this wasn’t yesterday (after all Anne wouldn’t touch pasta with red sauce with a ten foot pole these days), but still! This is all I saw yesterday when I was taking this picture:

I mean seriously! She just kills me being all grown up. The last two years she has wanted to be a pilot, this year she wants to be a zookeeper. I love how her personality has changed and developed over the last 5 years.

Can you tell her mommy might be a quilter? Look what she designed during open free time!

So there you have it, my baby girl is in Kindergarten. Bring on the fears that accompany normal children and multiply them by multiple health issues and life threatening food allergies. Quite frankly, I’m surprised I survived yesterday with all my worry. Anne, was of course, just fine!