Gingham Day Dress - Vogue 9103

It's no surprise I tend to wear my clothes very fitted for that vintage look! I love a tucked in waist and a flaring skirt. :-) The down side is, when it's post-holidays and you've gained a little weight all those dresses with the nipped in waists can be a little uncomfortable, lol. I was tired of feeling squeezed in so I decided to just make a quick dress with an emphasis on comfort to wear during the in between times. I looked through my pattern stash looking for a shape that skims the waist rather than squeezes it, and I came upon Vogue 9103. I know, it's a modern pattern and everything!

So I went to work, and managed to cut and sew it within one day! I've been working on so many complex projects lately that it's nice to see that I can actually complete a simple project in a timely manner. :-)

I was pleased with the resulting dress, it's VERY comfortable, it has one of my favorite features - sleeves without having to set in sleeves!

And it has a lovely surprise little ruffle in the back, which makes it even better.

There are pockets, of course!

It also goes really well with my large collection of sweaters! I love that it's neutral so it can go with any color. Here's a pop of red!

So, I'll just be over here living in this dress until I lose the holiday pounds. ;-)

2016 Project Round-up

Happy New Year!!! I thought it might be fun to take a look back at what I've accomplished this past year. These last few months were a little rough, but a whole five days before Christmas I finally finished all my orders, and finally had the pleasure of seeing my to-do list completely empty on my task board! Is there a more beautiful sight?

I started this board at the beginning of last year, and it has worked exactly as I hoped it would! Love being able to see what is coming up, and being able to focus on tasks as they come.

I thought it would be fun to count up all those post-its and see how many of each thing I made! So here's what I came up with.

I separated out all my different stickies into categories. Dresses were the biggest category by far, this year, with aprons coming up a close second!

For the smaller miscellaneous stuff, at least what I recorded (I know there are some I made without putting on the board!) I have -

200 Tissue Holders

50 Bookmarks

5 Notebook covers

4 Wreaths

20 Clothespin magnet sets

And a lot of other onesie twosie type projects!


Costumes were a big theme this year, whether for Halloween or comicons or people heading to Disneyworld! I had 8 total...I think I made one last year?


I had a total of 23 aprons!

And a total of 27 dresses, which included the Purple Wedding Dress, 6 bridesmaid/jr dresses, and a wedding gown turned baptismal gown! I also made 2 skirts, 2 girl's hoop skirts (that was a first!) and 4 petticoats.

Of course, I also have to mention that right smack dab in the middle of all this making of stuff, we completely gutted and redid my sewing room! I didn't sew for a couple months in there. I'm still so thrilled with how it turned out, and I want to share more details about that when I can. :-) Here are a few before and after shots.

It's good to look back and see that, despite a constant nagging feeling that I'm not being very productive, I actually did quite a lot this year! I was getting a little overwhelmed at the end of the year for a combination of personal and project related reasons, so I'm aiming to do a bit better with work/life balance this year. That might mean I have fewer projects this year, but that's ok! I'm looking forward to enjoying whatever projects I do manage.

So far this year I'm in the process of making another comicon costume, and 3 fun dresses for my nieces! I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot more girls' dresses this year, I have lots of ideas and they are so fun to make.

I hope, too, that with fewer projects I'll have a bit more time to blog about them. I do love documenting and sharing what I make here, thanks so much for following along! May you have a healthy and happy 2017!