Sewing Through the Years

I based this shift off of Bernadette Banner's example .  I decided to go with an off-white ecru/beige muslin fabric, rather than a linen, as she had made hers with. For my drawstring, I made a 5-strand braid out of a cotton twine that we had already. The Shift: Here is the schematic that Bernadette Banner provides in her video (linked above), I took a screenshot so that I could refer back to it more easily.  After washing my fabric and cutting all the pieces out, I followed Bernadette's measurements for the neck hole, 5.5" for each shoulder with the rest for the neck hole. The front has a depth of 4.5" while the back is 2 1/4" in depth. I rounded the corners of the neck hole. In the future, I think I'll make the neck hole a bit smaller as the shift slides off my shoulders if the drawstring is not tied. I split the gores into triangles then stitched the straight edges of the triangles together with a backstitch. Then I felled the seams. N...

I've had this gorgeous, friend-dyed fabric for several years. It had always been sort of ear-marked for this  bag pattern. I finally got around to actually sewing this bag but used the pattern as a guide rather than following it super faithfully. As I didn't really want to cut this fabric into pieces and I also wanted a rather large drawstring bag. Which I achieved! It sits about 15" high and about 17" or so across one side panel. I had four pieces of around 19"x19" fabric - purple, green, blue/green, and blue/purple. I decided I wanted the two darker ones as the 'outside' and the two lighter ones as the 'inside' of the bag. I cut the 3" corner square in the two 'outside' fabrics, per the pattern, then seamed up the area again per the pattern and continued seaming up the sides. Then I repeated this for the 'inner' fabrics. Next I turned the 'inner' fabric pouch inside out, put the 'outside' po...

I took a 1-week intensive class at the beginning of the summer (June-ish) of 2018 and sewed 2 corsets utilizing 2 different modern commercial patterns - Simplicity 8129 and Simplicity 1345. S8129 is an underbust corset with 4 views while S1345 is an overbust corset with 5 views, blue and black/gold respectively. I don't know how the instructions are in these two patterns as I followed the teacher's instructions and never looked at the provided instructions. The teacher provided the interlining, the grommets and the tools to set the grommets, the steel-ring boning, the sewing machines, and advice/instructions. We brought our own inner and outer fabric, bias binding, and lacing. Neither corset does much in the way of shaping, though both are relatively comfortable to wear. I haven't worn the black (overbust) one as much as the blue one. The blue (underbust) one does lift my bust a bit. What I learned: refresher on machine and hand sewing (finishing the bias binding),...