My own great fabric shopping day, weather not so good!

Micihelle, It sound like you had a really great day. Lots of good bargains. I'll tell you one thing though you'd never catch me going out in that kind of cold. Minus 35C converts to minus 31F. Is that what it's always like where you live.I'd be in the house all winter bundled up in about 6 layers of Polar Fleece. Juno

LOL Juno, not all year round. It can get as colder, but not often, and this year has been warm, it was our 4 days of winter! We have winter for 4-6 months, and the rest of the year is nice. I like spring and fall because usually the temperature is about 15-20 degrees, I think thats around 70F. In the summer it can reach about 40C, but thats about the highest, and not too often. Its sort of hard to live in a climate where you wear as much clothes as possible half the year, and as little as possible the other half, but I love it here! It makes me appreciate each season even more. And we get to wear lots of different clothes too, skirts, pants, parkas, so many fun things to sew! In the winter polar fleece is really expensive, in the summer its not so bad, I keep meaning to stock up. Today, at 30% off, it was close to $17/meter. and it wasn't very nice either. Definitley not top quality either.

I just cut out the pillowcase dress and little knickers for my 2yo, it took about 30 minutes, without a pattern, but for this its not needed, and the knickers, well I hope they work out! They were last minute and I had to cobble alot of pieces together, but maybe some flat felled seams will look good on those! 2yo helped me the whole time, reaching for scissors, swinging the yard stick at me, playing with the scraps. I think I spent half my time ducking and saving her from getting into trouble! I still have to decide if I am going to french seam it or use the serger. In all honesty I will probably french seam because I love doing them, and I didn't want to buy 4 cones of lime green for one tiny dress! This dress in total will cost me less than $5 for fabric, thread, bias tape, and elastic, not including my time. I will have to try to remember to post a pic. I will finish it off hopefully on monday!

Michelle Giordano

Have you got a link / directions for this pillowcase dress? Having recently gained a small daughter, this sounds like a useful pattern for me to use in 18 mths time!

TIA,

Sarah

You don't have to match the threads unless they show on the outside! And even then they don't have to match.

When I got my serger, this group advised getting 4 each of basic colours that I used a lot, and then odd cones of different colours. I now have a stash of about 40 cones - 4 white, 4 black, 2 navy, 2 grey and lots of odd colours - about 6 different blues, reds, greens etc.. When I get the next project out to do, I pick the 4 closest matching cones. Put the closest match in the left needle, and the 2nd closest match in the lower looper. The other 2 threads really don't matter.

HTH

Sarah

I don't have a link, but I made a tutorial for you in "Paint". I posted it here:

not great quality, but it is a good start. you could search on for a tutorial for one too, but I have problems with the search feature there, its slow for me, so I just look at a few pics on google and figured it out myself, and also my kid used to have a store bougth one so I remember that one too. HTH

Michelle Giordano

I rarely even change threads any more at all. One serger is set up for white thread, and the other is set up for black, so I just go between them. Back when my girls were little and I did a lot of holiday sewing, I would switch from white and black to green and red, and I may do that again, now that I have a little grandson!

Karen Maslowski >

You wonderful person! Thank you for the tutorial - I've saved it for future useage - looks nice and easy, and easy to get on the child!.

I'm convinced clothes other than baby grows are overrated for very small babies - and there are some out there that make life difficult.

For instance tops with poppers down the back, outfits with too small an opening to get them over the head easily, oh yes, and all in one outfits that require you to put them on over the babies head.........

Many many thanks

Sarah

I also hate too small head openings, since kids don't like their heads being squished! My kids had average heads, but my brother's head was so huge, it was a miracle he had clothes on at all! His head is still huge! But he is a teenager now, so thats to be expected LOL! (ok thats a joke, but he's a big kid!) I just issued him his I.D. awhile ago (thats what I do) and when I measured him he was 6'2 and only just turned 15!

Thanks for liking the tutorial, I had a dress like that for the 2yo and found it really easy. I hopefully will finish it today and will be able to post some pictures!

Michelle Giordano

Michelle, many thanks for the tutorial. I misplaced mine years ago, never giving a thought I'd need it again; till lo' & behold my brother has a G'baby that is so precious. She is 9 months old and I am now sewing for her; plus a close friend was presented with a g'daughter in December. I hope you don't mind me passing the pattern on to her for later use. Your brother sounds like my G'sons, one is 20 and 6'7"; the other two, his cousins are gaining on him quickly, they are 14 & 17. Your weather is TOO cold for me, I would like to see Canada one day, but not in winter, thank you. Emily

Of course you can pass it on! Anyone who googles images of the dresses could figure it out anyways, so why should I be greedy of a pic of a rectangle with semi-circle cut outs?

If its too cold for you now, you should come in summer, it can be anywhere between 15-40. Or just visit British Columbia, its really nice there, not so extreme as Saskatchewan.

Hope all the babies like their little dresses, until they get to the stage of taking off all their clothes, of course!

Michelle Giordano

He should be an actor - from what I read, a lot of movie stars share that trait. It seems to come across on film better than a regular size head or something...

(another snip)

Reminds me: I made the mistake of making a romper for DGS and put velcro to fasten the shoulders, thinking it would be easier for his mom to dress him. I was obviously not thinking of the reverse. He immediately learned he could pull the shoulders open and walk out of his cute suit!

Jean M.