Dressed in Donuts

Hello friends! I present to you my Donut Emery Dress. Sometimes it can be hard to visualize how a simple piece of fabric can be molded into something functional. I thought I'd get those wheels spinning by turning one of my own fabric designs into a wearable garment that would make even Ms. Frizzle proud (I know i'm not the only one who still watches The Magic School Bus). 

Dress: Made by Me using Donut You Want Some (purple) | Garment Pattern: Emery by Christine Haynes

The fabric is Donut You Want Some in purple printed on Kona Cotton. The garment pattern I used is Emery by Christine Haynes. After stalking every Emery made, I finally caved and bought the pattern. This dress is a lovely, simple, and classic silhouette which makes it the THE perfect garment to display boutique patterns in all their glory. The best part....it has pockets!!!!!!! It can't get any better than that. 

I made a quick muslin to see where I needed to adjust the fit. I ended up doing a small bust adjustment and shortened the bodice so that the waist falls at my natural waistline. On the muslin, I shortened the skirt by a few inches, but decided not to alter the length after all. I made this dress specifically for my brother's college graduation. I left the sleeves off because I was assuming that there was going to be some semblance of warmth in Rochester, Ny... boy was I wrong. Good thing it was held inside because it was freezing. Any who, I must say I really am infatuated with this dress. I even have donut earrings to match! 

left: old size || right: updated size

three color ways available printed on Kona Cotton

The fabric is available in my Spoonflower Shop in three different color ways. I changed the scale of the pattern in order to make it more suitable for smaller projects (this dress was made with the old size). While the Kona Cotton is a dream to work with, it does have a tendency to fade a bit with the first wash. The good news is that the basic cotton ultra and the new cotton lawn ultra fabric bases don't fade at all. Hip Hip Hurray for bright colors! 

Sunday Stash: Amitie Stash Club Part 1

Stash clubs are AMAZING! Not sure who invented the whole pay-for-a-random-assortment-of-fabric-samples concept, but God bless them. I'm getting ahead of myself, let me back up a little.  Amitie Textiles Fabrics is a fabric shop located in Australia that hosts a few different stash clubs. I was apart of one of their clubs for a few months and wanted to share the lovely samples I acquired. Enjoy!!

p.s. The samples in these pictures are folded in half. The size of each is 10" x 11".

My goal when joining this club was to step away from fabrics that I would normally pick out to use in a project, while only incurring small samples of those same fabrics. It's my way of forcing myself out of my fabric comfort zone.

Have you joined a stash club before? Let me know your experiences in the comments!

Let's Talk: Fabric Scraps

Lately i've been on an organizing kick; when I say lately I mean for the past few months…not sure if that counts as "lately", but it does today. Organizing also includes getting rid of/donating everything that we don't need, want, or use anymore. Now to my dilemma...I'm sure you have figured out that I happen to sew a lot, which means that I accumulate a ton of leftover fabric a.k.a. fabric scraps. (dun, dun, DUN!!!). The actual scraps aren't the problem though…the problem is that I have no idea how to organize them in a way thats functional, simple, and quick. Do I arrange them by size? color? Should I store them in boxes? bags? baskets? Should they be cut down to specific sizes (i.e. 2in. squares, 2in. by X-amount rectangles, etc.)?

Help me out here. How do you organize your fabric scraps? Please let me in on your secret…I promise I won't tell.

p.s. If your on the hunt for a great blog about organization check out Annie from Live Simply. I stumbled upon her website last week and have been reading non-stop. Not gonna lie…kinda wish we were friends haha. Not creepy at all right? Right.