I finished my renaissance dress sewing project in the summer of 2010 and wore it to our state Renaissance festival.

How to make a dress out of a napkin

Yup. I made a dress out of a napkin. I made two. doll sized of course, but one thing you should know is that they were cloth napkins.

Creating doll clothes is one of my favorite hobbies. And I have a huge supply of cloth napkins, so I will be busy these days.....

Theater costumes!

My school is doing a spring musical this year, and that got me thinking about what they might do for their costumes! They might just rent from other big theaters or Opera houses, or they might have the students that are interested help out, like they do for the lights. So I asked a friend what they do for the tech stuff and he said they have students do it! So I emailed the director of technical things for the play telling him that I am an aspiring costume designer and would like to help out. I am so excited because I think they will need me, and now I have a chance to work with costumes! And the play takes place in the time period that I have been studying. I can't wait. The play is called "Kiss me Kate" a take off on the play "The taming of the shrew" by shakespear.

Mannequin Prom dress

I know it has been a very long time since I last posted anything, but that is because I haven't been sewing much. But I have gotten back into it by making myself a small work station for sewing projects like pillow cases and tiny prom dresses! Yup, that is what I have sewn so far in 2010. I made pillow cases for each of my siblings for Christmas and I just finished a tiny prom dress for my Mannequin. I used some pretty purple fabric that I got for Christmas from my brother for this prom dress.

I love purple fabric. If I ever go to a prom I would want my dress to look like this, purple with twists in the fabric so it looks like roses.

And my dress would have a gold sash, a wide gold sash around the waist.

I hope to enter this in our county fair, I wrote out the instructions for how to make it and I made the pattern! Tiny prom dresses are fun!

Computer

My computer crashed a few months ago that is why I haven't been writing. We are hoping that it will be back up and running in January. look for posts then.

Sewing class

As you may know, I am taking a sewing class at Andover High School this year. I just recently finished our first project in that which was a bag. We didn't have a pattern, our teacher just told us each step. It was pretty fun even though it was sort of easy. It was more relaxing than stressful. I love my bag! Here is what it looks like.

It was loads of fun to make and I use it every day. I like to sew stuff that is useful. As you can see the inside is blue and the outside is purple with a yellow pocket. I also got to use an embroidery machine for my pocket design. I put my initials on the pocket front just for fun. I did something I had never done before with this project, the corners of the bag. It was interesting how we did them. We folded the corners so the seams lined up and the just stitched across them. I was sort of scared to do that because I thought it would ruin the corners, but I guess not. It ended up giving the corners a sturdy edge and look more professional. So in the end I had a bag, a nice bag that I was proud of.

Something new!

I decided one day that I wanted to design and sew something new, something different. So I took an old skirt pattern and altered it a bit and made a smaller sized pattern. I cut out the fabric with my new little pattern pieces and started to sew. I really didn't know what i was doing to tell the truth. In the end it looked like a little doll sized skirt! I went and got my American girl doll to try it on, but it was to big. I was disappointed. I had wanted it to work. So I tried it one her in a different way, as a dress! It ended up working perfectly as a strapless dress!

I went out into the garden and took some pictures of her in it, and here they are.