An Up-cycled Dinosaur Embroidered Baby Shirt

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My first make for our coming baby boy! Right away when friends and family started finding out that we were expecting I started getting asked if I I’m planning on making all of my baby’s clothes, and I always have to answer that I’m definitely not! I spend so much time on each piece that I make, so I end up only completing a handful of projects a year, and that just won’t work for a growing baby. But I have been excited to make a couple special things to welcome him into the world. It’s one of the things that has been helping me to relax and prepare mentally.

So my first make has been a little butter yellow henley style t-shirt, embroidered with the sweetest little dinosaurs. The fabric I used is from a shirt I thrifted a few months ago that I didn’t love the fit of. Unfortunately the thrift store near me decided to permanently keep their change rooms closed after they closed them in 2020, and sometimes it’s hard to get the sense of how something will fit by just holding it up. I missed the exchange period and so I wanted to upcycle the shirt into something I would get to use. The fabric is a linen rayon blend, it’s very soft, and it was just enough to cut a baby shirt from.

I used a PDF pattern I found on Etsy: the Miguel Shirt from a shop called costurinha sewing patterns. The pattern includes a long and short sleeve option, and sizes for baby’s and kids. I made this one in the smallest size, the 3 month size, but I’m hoping to get some more use from this pattern in the future. I think a colour-blocked version of it would be really fun as well. The only change I ended up making to the pattern was to add a seam down the back piece. I was using that shirt I thrifted, so I didn’t have enough fabric to cut the entire back piece as one, but I actually love the seam. I don’t think it looks out of place at all and it was what got me thinking about that colour-blocked version.

The dinosaur embroidery pattern is from the Love Embroidery magazine, originally printed in issue 15, but after that issue they added it to their free pattern archive online. I’ll link to the pattern below, which is a design for the magazine by Jessie Newton. It was such a quick and easy one for such a cute touch to this shirt. I used one of my favourite methods for transferring the pattern: I traced it with pencil onto some water soluble sew-on interfacing (affiliate link), and then basted that interfacing onto the shirt before stitching. The interfacing just rinses away when you are done stitching.

I ironed this little shirt before taking these pictures but honestly that will be the last time this ever gets ironed. It was so finicky of course! And really I think with linen wrinkles are just a part of the look. I’ve linked everything relevant below, and I can’t wait to share a photo of my little one wearing this when he arrives!

Links:

Miguel Shirt Pattern: costurinha sewing patterns

Little Dinosaurs Embroidery Pattern by Jessie Newton: Love Embroidery Magazine

Wash-away sew-on interfacing (affiliate link)

My Handmade Wedding Dress: Part 2

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Wedding Photos by Isle + Oak Photography

Some links in this blog post may be affiliate links. This means if you click through and purchase the product, I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank-you.

So nearing a year after my wedding I should probably wrap up recording all the details of this project! I posted a Part 1 (which you can click here to read) where I talked about the materials and supplies I was using, the design sketches, embroidery samples and the mock-up of the dress. I’m going to wrap up everything else in this blog post, which mainly includes the embroidery on the silk organza, hand sewing the dress, and then some final photos from the wedding!

The embroidery motifs I came up with were all pretty fast to stitch, and the little beaded starbursts were really fast and satisfying to stitch onto the organza as well. I think what ended up being more time consuming (and maybe it just felt like that because it wasn’t that thrilling to do), was all of the tracing! I had a little sheet of the 9 motifs I was using, and I traced those onto a paper copy of the dress pattern where I wanted the embroidery to be. I tried to place everything randomly and kept flipping and rotating the motif’s so that they would look a little more unplanned. I then traced these arrangements onto a water soluble interfacing (affiliate link) which I then basted onto my organza fabric for stitching. But once I got to this point and had all of my pieces prepared for stitching I felt like I started to breeze through the actual embroidery.

Wedding Photos by Isle + Oak Photography

The silk organza was going to be the top layer of my dress, so I couldn’t start actually putting the dress together until all of that was done. This made me a little nervous because we were getting closer and closer to the wedding and I didn’t actually have anything coming together that looked wearable! This was the point when I basically had to ditch the sleeves. I had everything else embroidered, and I had just started on the organza for the sleeves, and my anxiety started getting the better of me. I needed to start constructing this dress! I decided that I would make the sleeveless version of the Lune Dress and if I had time before the wedding I would make some detachable sleeves for it (spoiler: I didn’t have time for them!).

Sewing the dress itself took many, many hours. I talked in Part 1 about how I would be entirely hand-sewing this dress. The fabric was just too delicate to risk running through my machine, especially with all the time-consuming embroidery already done. Also, because the organza is sheer, you can also see the seam finishings from the outside, so I wanted them to be very neatly whip-stitched. The dress was three layers overall: the organza over layer, the silk charmeuse main layer, and a silk habotai lining layer. Looking back I wish I would have machine sewn the lining layer to knock a couple days off the construction of the dress, but I think I just got into a mindset that the entire thing had to be hand sewn. By that point for the lining I was just hand sewing to say I did it.

Anyways it all came together and I am really happy with the overall look of it and with the details of the dress. The hem ended up surprising me a little bit in the best way. It almost flares out a little bit where I sewed it, reminding me of a flower shape, which makes this wedding dress feel straight out of a fairy garden scene.

This definitely tops my list of projects I am most proud of in my life. From how much time went into it, to everything new I tried and learned, to the way I felt when wearing it, I just couln’t have imagined a better outcome! I hope you enjoy the photos and I hope this post inspires you to try something just a little bit bigger than you think you can handle, you might surprise yourself!

I also ended up using the piece of embroidery that I had started for the sleeves before I decided to scrap the sleeve idea. We framed a couple of our wedding photos for a photo wall in our apartment, and so to complement the arrangement I framed the embroidery piece in a vintage frame I ordered from Etsy. It looks like I cut a piece of the dress for framing but really the dress is still completely intact and stored away!

This dress, along with a couple of my other projects were featured in Issue 36 of Love Embroidery Magazine. You can order the magazine here.

Some other related links:

Wedding Dress Part 1: Planning, Mock-up, and Embroidery Samples

Our Wedding Photographers: Isle + Oak Photography

Silk Organza Fabric: Maiwa

Silk Charmeuse Fabric: Rokko Fabrics

Silk Habotai Lining Fabric: Maiwa

Beads: Beadworks on Granville Island

Embroidery Thread: DMC Six-Strand Embroidery Floss (affiliate link)

Interfacing: Wash-away water-soluble interfacing (affiliate link)

Dress Sewing Pattern: Lune Dress by French Poetry

Vintage Oval Frame: Carter & Wainwright on Etsy

Hinterland Dress Pattern Review

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I just finished my winter black and white plaid Hinterland Dress. It’s machine sewn and hand finished, so it ended up taking me a couple months to make, although a large part of why is that I really slow down my crafting come winter, we will call it a form of hibernation! I do a lot more relaxing and I work at a slower pace. I also took a little break from it around Christmas to make a couple new ornaments for the tree. But with it being finished around half way through January that still gives me lots of time to wear it while the weather is still cold.

The fabric is a light to medium weight cotton plaid, with one side being a brushed cotton so the inside feels like a soft pair of pyjamas. I bought it at one of the fabric stores here in Vancouver, Dressew. It’s called Urban Homestead Gatherings Woven Plaid for Moda, and it looks like right now Dressew still has some available so I will link to that below. I chose some simple black horn buttons, and overall kept this one pretty simple as I didn’t really think embroidery would look good on top of the busy plaid print.

I didn’t change much about the pattern, just a couple elements from the machine method to the hand-sewing method (gathers, buttonholes, neckline binding, and the hem). I also changed the placement of the waist tie to be closer to the centre back. I have a couple dresses that use the waist tie method that the pattern uses (sewing the waist ties directly into the dresses side seams), and I find it pulls on those seams in an unflattering way. Also when you wash the dress with those long ties they can get tangled up with your other laundry. So adding some tie loops that you can thread a long waist tie through solves the laundry issue, and moving those tie loops in a little solves the pulling at the side seams.

Sizing wise I went with a size 6 on top and a size 10 for the skirt which worked perfectly for my pear-shaped body. I also added 4 inches to the length of the dresses skirt piece. I absolutely love this pattern and all the different variations it includes and I’m excited to make a linen one next for summer.

Plaid Hinterland Dress

And this photo above pretty much shows how I’ve been styling the Hinterland Dress! With warm wool tights and my favourite vintage boots. I add a wool sweater and a winter coat before I head out and I am very warm all day!

Some links you might find helpful:

Using Liberty Tana Lawn to Sew a Vintage Dress Pattern

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This is a quick make from a vintage pattern that has been in my stash for a couple years. I wanted something quick before I get into another long haul embroidery project, and this one seemed like a perfect quick sew. Not entirely sure if it is supposed to be a nightie or a dress pattern, and I was a little worried it would just end up looking like a potato sack tied up with ribbon, but in the end I am very happy with this. It is made from a vintage Anne Adams pattern that I found on Etsy. I made the ties out of the same fabric as the dress and then added a bow at the neckline to cinch it in for better coverage (it was gaping a little without this, as the neckline is cut on the bias). I used lace for the neckline tie and bow and even though it makes this lean more towards looking like pyjamas I still love the look! Lace gives such a romantic look. The fabric I used is a Tana Lawn from Liberty and the lace is from Fine French Laces. I haven’t really felt inspired to start making winter clothes yet, so I think I am just going to carry on with summer dresses and admire them in my closet until next summer comes.

The side seams are just straight french seams, and then pretty much everything else is just finished with a narrow hem. I chose to hand sew all the narrow hems and then I also hand stitched the casing for the lace bow around the neckline. The fabric is Liberty of London Tana Lawn, which is a very lightweight but still crisp cotton fabric, I used the Sufyan pattern in green. You can get the fabric here: Liberty London

The lace I used for the neckline is one I ordered online from a shop called Fine French Laces (www.cottonlace.com) and I think it suits the dress perfectly. I can’t seem to find the exact lace I used on the website but it was an ecru coloured lace under their rare lace category, and it is about 2 cm thick. They have lot’s of similar ones currently available though!

And of course the pattern is vintage so I don’t have an exact link to where you can buy it, but my favourite place to look for vintage sewing patterns is Etsy.

Wedding Dress Part 1: Planning, Mock-up, and Embroidery Samples

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Sewing a wedding dress seems like it ought to be the culmination of my sewing career, although I do hope that’s not the case, I hope there’s some more fantastic projects in my future. The wedding dress just feels different because, when will I have a chance to wear something like this again? This is a big one, and it might be my most exciting make for the next little while.

There are a lot of reasons why I’m approaching this in a very thought-out and well-planned way. Mainly because that’s just me, I don’t tend to ‘wing it’. But also: because I don’t really feel confident sewing with such delicate (and expensive!) fabric, I’ve never actually made a full-length dress, and I really want this one to fit me well. For everyday wear I think a more casual fit is nice, but for my wedding dress? I want this one to fit me like a glove, perfectly tailored. So I’ve actually spent about a month now doing the set-up for this dress. I found a sewing pattern that I fell in love with, the Lune Dress from French Poetry. And you can probably tell from all my recent makes that I need to incorporate embroidery into this, so I decided to do a sheer embroidered overlay or overdress. A vision of this was starting to form in my head.

So a couple things to work out. Will this pattern sew up like I’m imagining? What fabrics am I going to use for the dress, and for the sheer overlay? And lastly, what am I going to embroider on it?

I started with a mock-up or a test run of the Lune Dress pattern. I sewed the mock-up in a lightweight cotton with a tulle overlay, because I already had the cotton in my stash and the tulle cost only a couple dollars a meter. The tulle actually was in the running for the final fabric, but more on that later. The pattern is just incredible, it was so easy to sew up, and not only are the instructions great but there is also a ‘sew-along’ video for it on the French Poetry website. I did have to make a couple changes to make the overlay work, and it was really helpful just to practice all the steps and make my own notes on what helped me. I feel really confident sewing the final dress now that I’ve already gone through the steps once. The fit was pretty good too. I forgot  to take a picture of the ‘before’ fit but basically I just had to take out the waist a little at the side seams, shorten the shoulders, make the dress longer, and then tweak a small fit issue at the centre front.  

As for my fabric choices, I chose an off-white silk charmeuse as the underdress. A silk habotai light weight (8mm) silk for the dress lining. And for the overdress I was torn between the tulle I used on the mock-up and a silk organza. I love how sheer the tulle is, but I honestly struggled a bit working with it on the mock-up. It was so slippery and so hard to see what I was cutting, and the one I was using was very weak! It even ripped a little when I was trying on the mock-up, which really wouldn’t work for hugging and dancing and just the general merriment one does on their wedding day. So I started considering a silk organza I had in my stash. It seemed like it might be too stiff, it just didn’t have the same drape as the tulle, but it is such a beautiful fabric, and it is very strong too. So I decided to do an embroidery swatch on both fabrics. 

These swatches gave me the chance to practice the type of embroidery I want to do on the dress, and I got to see how each embroidered sheer fabric would look overtop the silk charmeuse. This process sold me on the silk organza, it was just so much more enjoyable to work with, and I was more excited when I held it in my hands. As for the drape, I spent some time googling silk organza dresses and wedding dresses, and I found lots of beautiful examples. I think as long as the fabric is cut the right way then it will drape in a nice feminine way. There are of course a lot of seamstresses who make very boxy garments with organza, but I don’t think with the pattern I’m using it will be boxy at all.

And my embroidery turned out exactly as I hoped. Lots of floral and botanical elements and then the beaded starbursts just make me so happy. It’s all enjoyable to stitch and not too time consuming (which is very important, considering this dress has a deadline!).

So that’s pretty much where I am now. I feel really confident to power ahead on the final dress. I am going to be hand stitching the entire thing because the thought of putting these fabrics anywhere near my machine just stresses me out. I’ve never had luck sewing fabrics like this and I would just much rather turn on some music and stitch away by hand. In fact I’ve been following a couple hand sewing teachers lately and have really been preferring that process. I bought myself an instructional book called Hand Sewing Clothing: A Guide by Louisa Owen Sonstroem so that I would have as many tips and tricks before I really got started on this dress. So this week I will be working on thread tracing all my pattern pieces. This is essentially drawing the pattern pieces onto your fabric using basting stitches. I always do this anyways for embroidered panels but for this project I’m going to try it for all the pattern pieces. It will make for some very precise sewing. Then I need to plan all my embroidery pattern arrangements for each pattern piece, and then it’ll be onto the mammoth portion of this project: the embroidery! 

Supplies and resources I’m using so far: