I thought I was smart….

until my machine jammed over and over and then I broke a needle.

I was making an mp3 player holder as a gift for a sweet 8 year old girl in our neighborhood.  Her mom said she’d love if it could be worn on her wrist. 

I searched online and found this tutorial on Sew Mama Sew that looked super easy.  It was, until I thought I would just add some elastic threaded through a tube of matching fabric that scrunches to be even cuter.  It doesn’t look bad…but I know the stitching is horribly crooked.

Now, my machine = wimpy.  And I am pretty sure not many machines could sew through this many layers of fabric, batting, and elastic.  My dreams of being a genius were shattered:

Check out the lower right hand corner.  Seriously…my machine hates me.  Anything over 3 layers of fabric is too much for it and it jams.

At least the fabric is cute and it’s still functional!

Sew Through the Decades Challenge, Week Seven: 1960’s

I used McCall’s M5972, view A.  I actually really like the other two better, but they are more work and I just don’t have time right now…maybe someday.

As some of you may have seen my first post, you’ll know I’m pretty positive the pattern doesn’t call for enough fabric.  So I had to settle for something found at Wal-Mart for $5.00 a bolt.  I do like how the fabric looks and the price, but I didn’t love working with it.  In the middle of the project I was thinking, “Why did I buy you, cheap fabric?!”  And then it answered, “Because you are cheap, too.”  True story.  And that is all I’ll say because my last post was a bit more whiny and no one likes a whiner:).  

My inspiration:

(source here)

Here you can see why I need to cover the zipper with something worn on top—I’m sure I did something wrong and it’s supposed to be invisible somehow.  

I’m excited to see your 60’s projects!  Next decade up:  1970-1979!

Oh, I get it now.

Remember this post here about my disastrous buttonhole?  I read and re-read the instructions in my manual, and it just didn't work.  I just thought it was my machine, because heaven forbid I would be doing anything wrong.

Today Kathleen from Grosgrain has solved the mystery of button making failures at my house.  Her tutorial is great--well, her whole blog is amazing.  I noticed something on her machine that she pulled down.  And I thought, "Hmm, darn, I don't have that on my machine." 

Just by the slight chance I had maybe missed the thing, I walked over to my machine, and what d'ya know?  There it was, hanging out all innocent--like it was there the whole time. 

Sneaky little thing.   Sure, you are there NOW, but where were you when I needed you? 

And where were you in the instructions? 

Oh right, that makes sense now.  Buttonhole lever. Number 5.  I must have just skipped that part.

Shhh….

Wanna know something? This last project kinda kicked my behind:).

Let’s take a little stroll through the last sewing project, shall we?

So it turns out The Sunshine Dress wasn’t always so…sunny.

This following picture is the original dress, and was supposed to be an Easter dress for B. I was so happy with the end result.

Until I tried it on her.

It seemed rather tight, but I SO wanted to see it on her. So I kept trying--until she was stuck. (This is a reenactment, and sadly, no where near as bad as the first time on).

B and I were giggling our heads off trying to get it off of her. I was pretty relieved she wasn’t screaming, as I might have had to cut the thing off of her!

That would have been bad enough, had I not asked my friend Sabra if I could try it on her smaller little BOY. His arms were looking very similar, kind of sticking out the top all twisted. Sorry Sabra.

Let’s look at the dreaded buttonhole.

So look at this combination waiting to create a perfect buttonhole:

Stitch set to AUTOMATIC button hole maker? Check. Button in button foot? Check. Stitches set where they should be? Check. Sew a button? Not so much. The machine stitched in one place, and one place only. I thought I just needed to be patient. Maybe I was supposed to do the work, like by using the backstitching lever. No such luck. Turns out that my automatic button maker doesn’t work. update: ahem, yes it does.  So the result?

This:

I KNOW! What is that? But it’s fully functional—I’ll give it that. ;)

The dress that I just finished does fit Lil’ Miss B. Did the second try go perfectly? Nope. First, I AGAIN made it too small. Ha ha ha! I mean come ON, how hard can it be?

I started to topstitch around the neckline. It was going great. But then I noticed that I wasn’t sewing a very straight topstitch. I totally noticed, and I didn't even stop. I was in denial. I just kept sewing right along, hoping that in the end, it would all be alright. Turns out that it didn’t work out and I had to do the topstitching over :).

On another note, I used fake sunlight in the tutorial for the dress. Could you tell? Probably, but I like that they are still bright pictures and almost as good as sunlight as far as tutorial pics go.  The trick is to use daylight bulbs!  I got the 100 watt ones. They are so very BRIGHT! And it looks like I'm about to warm up some baby chicks.

And last, but not least, we found a pretty field of purple flowers to take some of the final pics of the Sunshine Dress.

Only as soon as I got B and my 5 year old D out of the van, two huge dogs started bounding through the field to, I don’t know, say hello? They were barking and running all around us. Needless to say, B and D were not impressed in the least. They both started screaming.  B was probably crying because of her brother screaming—he’s been bit by a dog before and is a bit scared of them now.

So B was grumpy in our first spot. She didn’t want to get down, she kept looking for the dogs, and she did NOT want to hold the flower. So we got some keepers here.

Want to see what’s she did right before we left for pictures? Luckily I hadn’t put on the dress yet!

Real life. You gotta love it! :).