dress

Sew What Club’s Adorable Patterns for Women and Girls

August 30, 2015

It's not everyday that a beginner sewist can create an elaborate, well-fitting dress in one day. Today, Spoonflower team member, Jenny, guides you through a playful assortment of women's and girl's clothing patterns offered up by the Sew What Club, made possible by Kelly and Chris Crawford over at Sewing in No Man's Land. With unique and approachable patterns delivered electronically each month, the Sew What Club helps feed your monthly sewing habit in the most beautiful way possible. Let's take a peek at what they're churning out!

Prints Made to Fit a Vintage Cocktail Dress

July 26, 2012

For our latest competition we asked designers to concoct something appropriate for use in a midcentury dress that will appear in a local production of the play, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. The winner — we are pleased to announce — is Elizabeth Halpern, an accomplished designer who lives in the Hudson River Valley of New York. This is her first Spoonflower contest win. Way to go, Elizabeth!

The final votes — for those who follow such things — were:

1. 463 votes for Cocktail_Flowers by modernprintcraft
2. 442 votes for the Paisley Peacock by bzbdesigner
3. 419 votes for Rockabilly Rose Cocktail Dress by art_is_us
4. 419 votes for Blowing Away by jennartdesigns
5. 394 votes for Sylvia by papermoonpatterns
6. 391 votes for Mid Century Dress cocktail by legeretdesign
7. 377 votes for cocktail dress roses by minimiel
8. 358 votes for 50's Daisy by happy_to_see
9. 312 votes for Carnival (green) by mktextile
10. 304 votes for Canary Flowers and Stripes by danielleonfire

Little girl’s shirred sundress tutorial

July 23, 2012

I’m the mother of three daughters who, to varying degrees, are still interested in having their mama make them clothes. Actually, it’s almost a competitive sport around here where handmade clothing equals love points. If one girl gets something made for her, someone else is bound to be pretty cranky about it and demand that she also get a new dress, skirt, or what have you to even up the spread of love.

This means that it’s very useful to be able to make things up quickly sometimes. I do have quite a few lovely, more complicated children’s clothing patterns that I make when I know that I have the stamina for all that tracing and fitting together of many pattern pieces–and most likely, for doing it at least twice for my two youngest daughters. But more often than not, I wing it with simple clothing for them that I can make quickly, more than one time, and without much more work than taking accurate measurements of impatient little people.

This simple shirred sundress that I made for my youngest daughter, Phoebe, is just such a simple project, taking more time to type about than it did to actually make it up. I used a single yard of Spoonflower organic cotton sateen printed with Sally Harmon's — aka, Boris Thumbkin’s — dear Train design, and I had a bit of fabric left over to use in patchwork projects down the road. Here’s how to make up a sweet and easy shirred sundress for a little girl in your life.

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First, start with washing, drying, and pressing your yard of fabric. Trim off the unprinted selvage edges of your yard.

Fabric Fit For A Play

July 20, 2012

The costume director from one of our local North Carolina theaters, the Cary Players, called our office one day looking for a print to use for a vintage pattern dress in an upcoming production of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. To help him out — and because it's such a fun theme — we decided to ask designers to come up with a print for a mid-20th century cocktail dress. This week the community will choose the top ten, and the costume director will choose his favorite to use in the play!