DIY Maker's Tags

Every so often I will come across something at the thrift store with a “handmade with love” tag sewn into a seam. Seeing this instantly gives the item life as I start thinking about the makers creative process, their choice of fabric and thinking about who they made it for. In all honesty I haven’t labelled many of my makes. I don’t really like the look of most store bought labels, and while I love embroidered labels, they are very time consuming. I’ve been finding that by the time I get to the final steps of sewing and adding embroidery to a dress I just don’t have the energy to embroider a label as well. So I’ve been thinking about how I can make something I love that’s a little faster then embroidering my entire name in tiny letters. Here are a couple of the fully embroidered tags I’ve made in the past:

For the new DIY tags I decided to use stamps and fabric paint. A couple years ago I was a member at a local pottery studio and so I had a stamp made so I could label all of my pottery pieces. The stamp is made of metal and intended to leave an indentation in clay, so I wasn’t sure how well it would work with paint on fabric, but it worked great! To get this stamp made I sent an image of my name in cursive writing to this Etsy shop. The brass stamp is a more expensive option but I’ve also had acrylic stamps made from this shop that work as well. And of course you could use a simple set of alphabet stamps to spell your name out too. That was my plan for stamping the year, but my basic set of stamps didn’t have numbers included so I just used a paintbrush to paint the year on these tags. The fabric paint I used is the Pebeo Setacolor Opaque.

The stamping technique that worked best for me was using a paintbrush to spread paint on the bottom of an empty yogurt container, pressing the stamp into this thin layer of paint, and then pressing the stamp down (quite hard!) onto the surface of the fabric and holding for a couple seconds. I tried this on cotton, linen, and some scraps of Nani Iro double gauze (that’s the blue fabric). The more tightly woven and fine the fabric is, the more crisp your lines will be. After letting the paint dry it needs to be heat set, which means you need to hold an iron on it for a few minutes. I ended up adding a couple simple embroidered flowers to mine and now they are ready to go!

To sew a label onto your garment, turn each edge under 1/4” and stitch down by hand using whip stitch. Basically you are attaching them the way you would an applique patch. With thread that matches the garment and a delicate whip stitches you will barely be able to see the stitches from the right side of the clothing. Give this a try and let me know what you think! I will be labelling everything I make with these tags from here on out!

My Finished Alabama Studio Camisole Dress

This post is a part two in a series, see the first post here. Where I left off last time was right after painting my fabric pieces with the Magdalena stencil, and then testing out the couching embroidery technique on swatch. Since then, I’ve spent about a year embroidering this fabric. This was my first year of being a Mom, so most of this stitching was done while my baby was napping or while I was sitting next to him and he was doing his tummy time. Looking at all this embroidery brings back sweet memories!

I did all of the outlines first, and then decided not to cut out any fabric within the outlines. You can see that I played with this technique in my swatch, but once I finished the embroidery I just loved the way it looked. Piecing the dress together felt like it went so fast after the embroidery, so I think I ended up putting the dress together in just one week, which felt fast considering it is all hand sewing!

To piece the dress I used Coat’s & Clark Button & Craft thread in brown, and then I felled all of the seams down with a top stitch in the same thread. The binding on the neckline and armholes is sewn on using the same thread and the cretan stitch.

During construction I did end up making a couple modifications to the pattern. I never made a mock-up for this dress so I was crossing my fingers it would fit okay, luckily the modifications I made were very easy to do. I shortened the straps and lowered the armholes by an inch, which essentially just lifts the neckline as it was too low on me. I had also cut a size large from the pattern, which matched my postpartum body measurements, but I am a little smaller now so I took out a 1/2” at each side seam and also graded the waist into more of an hourglass shape. I left the extra slack in this seam in case I ever want to make this dress a little bigger again! I didn’t take too many progress pictures of these modifications, so hopefully I explained it alright!

I got to wear this dress out to dinner already. It does feel like a fancy dress both because of the heavy weight of it but also because of the shape and structure of it. The skirt really holds it’s shape well. I will definitely sew this pattern again but next time I will try with just plain fabric and adding a corset tie to the back. And as for the embellishment technique, I am very happy I gave it a try! I loved working with the fabric paint and the stencil, it’s such a great way to give yourself an outline for embroidery. Couching stitch was fun too, although I would not attempt to do it on such a large piece again, maybe just for a camisole shirt instead. Overall the Alabama Chanin style it so unique and fun to play with, I recommend taking a look at the books and giving it a go!

Adding Embroidery to my Henrietta Hinterland Dress

I posted a wrap up of my Henrietta X Hinterland linen dress that I finished a couple weeks ago. The dress is a mash-up of two sewing patterns, the Henrietta Skirt and the Hinterland Dress bodice. I chose some sweet little yellow flower buttons, and after wearing the dress a couple times I wanted to add a little bit of embroidery to the neckline. My thought process being that the embroidery would help the buttons fit in with the dress a little more naturally, so they weren’t the only yellow bits on an entirely blue dress.

I chose an embroidery pattern from a book in my collection. It’s a Japanese embroidery book by Mayuka Morimoto which I ordered from Etsy. The embroidery patterns in the book are all of whimsical forest creatures, but for this dress I just used a simple greenery pattern from the mouse page. I chose a couple shades of green from my DMC cotton floss collection, and the beads are all tiny Miyuki Delica glass seed beads, the same ones I used on my wedding dress embroidery. I traced the pattern from the book onto a wash-away interfacing (I use a sew-on interfacing). Stitching this design only took me a couple of days, and then I rinsed the interfacing away and gave the dress a final wash and it’s been in heavy rotation ever since!

In some of the photos here you can see that I added a maker’s tag to the dress, I’ll share more on that soon!

Pattern Mash-up: Henrietta x Hinterland

I made my first Hinterland Dress last year (see it here!) and I’ve had every intention to make a couple more because it really feels like such a closet staple sort of pattern. The pattern has lots of options and so many people have hacked it, in fact the designer even has a course walking you through all the different things you can do with the pattern. So this is my first try at hacking the pattern into something unique. I decided to mash-up the dress bodice with a more interesting skirt, and chose the Henrietta Skirt pattern. This is a pattern from Spaghetti Western Sewing, and oh gosh is it a dreamy skirt. It has gathered side panels that give the skirt so much more volume, which I love not just for the look but for comfort.

Straight-away from the photos you can see I went with the sleeveless option from the Hinterland pattern, and I added an elastic waist. Initially I though I would just use the waist tie like my last Hinterland. When I tried it on it just wasn’t looking right so I decided to seam rip the waist seam and add a casing for some elastic in the moment. I just cut 2 strips of fabric and sewed them between the bodice and the skirt, just enough room for a 1/4” elastic to run through. This worked much better for cinching this heavy fabric than just a tie, although I did keep the tie on the back for the aesthetic. Otherwise I didn’t really change much about either pattern. I sewed all my straight seams using the french seam method, so a couple seam allowances had to be increased to accommodate that, and of course I converted all the top-stitching to hand finishing techniques, but otherwise I kept to the patterns exactly as given.

As for materials, everything came from my stash, which has been a New Year’s Resolution for me. After I use up all my big cuts of fabric you might start seeing a lot of patchwork projects from me for the rest of the year! This blue fabric is the Laundered Linen from Maiwa. It’s a heavyweight linen at 245 g/sm but given its weight, it still has incredible drape. I made my embroidered Myosotis dress out of it a few years ago and I love the way it wears which is why I bought this. This fabric also doesn’t need a lining, and will hold up to embroidery so great. I’ve embroidered quite a few pieces now and honestly I wish I had used a more sturdy fabric for most of them. Embroidery is so much work and I want these clothes to last! The buttons I used are ceramic ones I made last year when I was a member at a local pottery studio. I love these and wish I had made more! And the facing is just a scrap of lightweight linen from my stash.

I am so happy with this dress, it feels so good to wear. I sewed it in about 2 weeks during nap times, which is a pretty quick make by my standards. I have plans to add a bit of simple embroidery to the neckline before summer truly hits and this dress is put into rotation. I’m keeping the embroidery design simple so hopefully I can get that done in the next week or two, more photos to come!

Links:

Fabric: Laundered Linen from Maiwa

Bodice pattern: Hinterland Dress by Sew Liberated

Skirt pattern: Henrietta Skirt by Spaghetti Western Sewing

A Second Sunday Cardigan

When I started sharing my crafts online (almost 10 years ago now!) I pretty much exclusively shared knitting. I had caught the knitting bug and would spend hours every day stitching away. I had a go at pattern designing, yarn-bombing, and plenty of personal knitting projects as well. But these past few years I have been much more focused on sewing and embroidering. I think it’s natural for interests to shift like that and I’m sure in a few years I’ll be focused on something else. I still like to always have a knitting project on my crafting back-burner, it’s a cozy and easy-to-pick-up project in between my other projects. I decided to make a second Sunday Cardigan because I wear the first one so much, and also because I like repetition sometimes. You can read about the first Sunday Cardigan I made here.

I decided to make this second one a more neutral taupe colour, so I used Blue Sky Fibers Woolstok Worsted in the colour Gravel Road held with Lichen and Lace Marsh Mohair in the colour Linen. I knit with three strands of wool, one of worsted wool held with two strands of mohair. Before I started knitting the sweater I took a quick photo of the beautiful yarn. I just checked the date on this photo and I took it in towards the end of 2021, which means this sweater has been my back burner project for two years now!

It turned out absolutely perfect, just like the first. I am a huge fan of this pattern, these sweaters are my two most worn! Will I knit a third? Maybe! But after working on this one for two years, I think whatever sweater I choose for my next one, I will try to start and finish in 2024. Let’s see how it goes!

Knitting Pattern: Sunday Cardigan by Petit Knit

Worsted Yarn: Blue Sky Fibers Woolstok Worsted in Gravel Road

Mohair Yarn: Lichen and Lace Marsh Mohair in Linen