KinderRose: Toilet paper to the rescue!

KinderRose: Toilet paper to the rescue!

Toilet paper to the rescue!

Yikes! this dress was hard to photograph. All my pictures were flat and blurry. Daylight or artifical light didn't make a difference. I finally settled for laying the dress on the floor. It still looked flat. So I stuffed the sleeves and yoke with toilet paper!

I especially like this picture with the flannel pants. Looks so warm and cozy!

This close-up of the yoke turned out pretty well too.

Tea and the green dress

Today Deborah and I had tea at the library. We heard Laura Schaefer read and talk about her new book The Teashop Girls. It was so great for Deborah to meet a real published author. And she is a local Madisonian. Both Deborah and I read the book beforehand. I think it was fun for her to read about girls in our own town with references to places we know about. She was such a friendly lady, I hope her books do well and she writes many more.


The green dress is almost done! Just buttons and buttonholes left to do, hopefully tonight won't be too crazy and I can get them done.

I added a lace ruffle around the circular flat lace.

The sleeves are smocked with the same colors as the neckline.  I added 1 1/2 inches to the sleeve length, folded that extra up and ran the bottem edge of the sleeve through the pleater. That way the edge of the sleeve looks finished. Then when I closed up the underarm seam with french seams I made sure the end of the first seam was securly tucked inside the second seam.

I hand stitched the four-inch deap hem. This way it can easily be let down as the child grows. Corduroy tends to leave a mark when you let out the hem. Sometimes I would tack on a matching ribbon or lace around the hem line on Deborah's dresses. I thought it looked more finished and less noticable that the hem had been let out.

SAGANews: Saturday Already?

SAGANews: Saturday Already?

My secret other lives.

I actually have three lives that I live simultaneously. 

1) I am a wife and mother to two children.

2) I am a classically trained professional musician.

3) I have a sewing business.

Recently I have been having trouble deciding which hat I have on at any given moment. And they do overlap. My son is tall and skinny. After hours of searching the stores for jeans, we gave up and bought some denim material and I made him a pair. They still need some tweaking, poor kid. But I have dresses to make for my Etsy store!

I played in a string quartet for a wedding this weekend. I am forever depressed by how frumpy I have become. I prefer to be comfortable and my 'comfortable' clothes are sweats. Even my dressy black is getting old and frumpy. So I took time out from my sewing business (and my family) to try my hand at a pair of pants for myself. Here's the result.

A little blurry but it's very difficult to take your own picture!

Today I am focusing on the shop and baby clothes. I have ideas for FIVE different warm, winter dresses. The first is this kelly green corduroy with white lace. So far just the yoke is done.

I originally planned to put the lace on by machine. After pinning it on the yoke, I realized it would be so much easier just to whip it down by hand. 

The embroidery I kind of made up as I went, eye-balling the green curvy line then putting three red french knots in each curve.

KinderRose: "Better-Than-Tights" pants

KinderRose: "Better-Than-Tights" pants

These pants are so soft and comfy!

Now available on my Etsy Shop in three sizes.

www.KinderRose.Etsy.com

"Better-Than-Tights" pants

My daughter and I share a mutual dislike for tights! I hated them when I was a kid, still do. She hated them. And how do you get tights on a squirming child? But I had made some very fancy dresses for her to wear in the cold Illinois winters. My solution: "Dress" pants, as she called them. 

They are made of soft, white flannel. All seams are enclosed French seams. And the lace around the ankle is so sweet.

Better pictures to come tomorrow, with daylight!
With those better pictures will be a new listing on my Etsy sight :
www.KinderRose.Etsy.com