done well: weddings

Showing posts with label weddings. Show all posts

Wedding wheel quilt

>> Tuesday, June 12, 2012 – sewing, weddings

I just don't know how they do it. "They" meaning all those blogging mothers out there. They are super-moms. I love reading Made (www.danamadeit.com) where there are such great sewing ideas and inspirations by mother-of-three, Dana. And oddly enough, Dana's most recent addition to the family, Clara, was born on the same day as Lily! And it hasn't slowed her down one bit! Definitely a super-mom.

Maybe my blog has suffered a little, but I'm still so impressed by the little bit of sewing, crafting, and baking I get done these days. A different level of super-mom, but super nonetheless.

My most recent project was a quilt for my brother and my new sister-in-law (congrats Karl and Joelle!). I had been following the 100 days of Modern Quilting hosted by themodernquiltguild.com/ and came across a fabulous "Ring Quilt" by Isobel Piper. It was the perfect design for a wedding quilt that was a billion times easier than the double wedding ring quilt I made my parents, but still had the "infinite circle" motif to represent their eternal marriage.

The wedding colours were teal, silver, and lime green, with an emphasis on the teal. It was great fun going through my fabric scraps to pull out colours for the wheel segments of the quilt. I used a Kona solid in "natural" as the background and then echoed the colour wheel with an ornate circle fabric from the Karavan collection by Valori Wells (the same collection as the pink elephants from Lily's houndstooth quilt) for the back of the quilt.

The pattern originally comes from the book Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts which I borrowed from the library. I remembered to trace the wheel segment template but neglected to copy anything else, so there was a lot of guess-work that went into this quilt. I had to do lots of trimming so that everything fit together in the end and created a circle rather than an oval.

I loved how Isobel Piper used concentric circles for her quilt, so I decided to do the same, although I used an entirely different technique. She took the time to draw the circles on the quilt -- I am far too lazy for that. Instead, I taped a quilting pin (since it is longer than the average pin) to my walking foot and using the head of the pin as a guide so my circles were the same distance apart. Genius, I know.

The quilting got progressively more difficult as I got closer to the center, so for the very middle of the quilt, I personalized a K and J with the wedding date.

My brother's wedding was simply gorgeous. Everyone (except maybe Lily...) had a wonderful time: an incredible venue (with a fantastic view of the Ottawa canal and the Parliament building), delicious food, breathtaking flower arrangements, and of course, a room full of wonderful friends and family.

[Photo by Kevin Fong]

[Photo by Elizabeth Pagnotta]

It was my absolute pleasure to spend Lily's nap times quilting this wedding wheel quilt for my brother and sister-in-law. May they continue to cuddle for afternoon naps until they are old and grey.

Post pregnancy Marilyn Monroe dress

>> Thursday, March 22, 2012 – baby, sewing, weddings

They call it the 4th trimester: the first three months after giving birth. I'm not sure why I didn't think it through, but for some reason I thought that after the baby was out, my belly would disappear. I had brought my favourite comfy clothes to the hospital only to find out that it was still incredibly tight at the waist as it takes several days for the uterus to shrink and for the belly to disappear. Silly me.

For the first month after Lily was born, I was still wearing my maternity pants, maternity jackets, and cardigans that didn't need to be buttoned up. Slowly, I was able to start zipping up my sweatshirts and wearing my old sweatpants. Slowly, I pulled out my old jackets for this springy weather. Slowly, I started to shed the baby weight.

Although this gradual reunion with my old wardrobe was exciting, I was not confident that I would be able to fit into a dress in time for my cousin's wedding. (Congrats Tiff and John!!!) The wedding was this past weekend, a little over a month after Lily's birth.

I took advantage of Lily's more sleepy days in the first couple weeks (and the extra adrenaline I had pumping through me) and sewed a dress from the book Famous Frocks that my (soon-to-be) sister in law bought me for Christmas. The book is a collection of iconic silhouettes from famous 20th century stars. From Audrey Hepburn to Twiggy. Jackie Kennedy to Madonna.

I decided to make the famous Marilyn Monroe dress, but with criss-cross straps rather than an open back.

The pattern was simple, and I was able to easily tailor to my odd post-pregnancy shape (medium chest, large waist, still no hips or butt...) I also had the perfect fabric in my fabric stash: a shimmery stretch jersey in a rich merlot-wine colour.

I worked on the dress for maybe an hour every day for two weeks: whenever Lily was down for a nap and I just didn't have it in me to nap while she napped. After about two weeks, Lily decided her crib was not nearly as comfy as napping in our arms so the sewing came to an abrupt stop. I had finished everything except the hem, and the straps on the back. Since I had used a jersey fabric (which doesn't fray) I just left the hem as-is and pinned the straps on with safety pins!

The dress turned out great. It ended up being just a bit loose; I probably lost a bit of weight in my chest/back since my initial fitting, but I just pinned the straps a little tighter. (Photo cred to my cousin Kev.)

Lily also had her own custom made dress. No, I'm not crazy and didn't also try to sew Lily a dress at the same time. My friend Danielle, from beadmarket.ca, sewed Lily a dress intended for this summer, but it was just too cute that I wanted her to wear it for the wedding. I sewed a quick belt to tighten the dress a bit and added some red tights to complete her look. Unfortunately (or fortunately) she was asleep in her carseat for most of the wedding and didn't get to show off the dress until the end of the night. I didn't get a great picture of her wearing the dress, but you can still tell she was cuuuute in that outfit!

Pleated Marble Dress

>> Wednesday, July 13, 2011 – sewing, style and fashion, weddings

Another wedding season means more dresses! I was determined to sew at least one new dress this year, especially since I had such success with my first party dress.

I still feel most confident sewing with cotton, so I made a quick trip to the workroom and picked up a beautiful pale sage marbled print by Princess Mirah Batiks.

I was inspired by this beautiful pleated strapless dress by BCBG and decided to modify the Mary Adams pattern to have a fitted pleated dress.

Modifying dress patterns is hard! There's a lot of math to get everything to fit just right. I knew I wanted to create the pleated detail, add pockets, and even try to mimic the peekaboo lining.

I think I was quite successful in achieving all three details. The difficulty with a cotton dress is that it tends to wrinkle, and doesn't fall or drape as nicely as a more silky fabric. I think I should have made the lining out of a different fabric so it didn't stick to the cotton dress as much.

In the end, dress number 2 from Mary Adam's dress book was still great. It's such a great pattern that can be used over and over with slight modifications (but not without a little headache)!

Wedding cards: I do

>> Tuesday, January 11, 2011 – craft, weddings

I've just returned from a weekend of crafting. I can't wait to tell you all about it. Here's a little crafty appetizer that I've been meaning to post for a while.

I love to keep things. Dustin likes to declutter. Regarding the subject of whether or not it was important to keep all the wedding cards from our friends and family, we were at an impasse. I thought it was a no-brainer. Of course we needed to keep the cards so we could read them over and over until we were old and grey. Dustin felt that we had already read them, enjoyed them, and should then recycle them because they will likely sit in a box in the closet forever.

Our compromise was to re-craft them to become new weddings cards! They're a perfect "personal touch" for the happy couple.

Most of the time, I craft the cards in a mad rush because the wedding is the next (sometimes same) day. I don't usually remember to take a picture to share on my blog.

After about 3 years of these re-crafted cards, I have a few pictures. So now I will share.

So many things are great about making wedding cards from old cards.

Reason #1. I have read and reread the cards so many times. When I'm looking for a card with a good design, I will always pick a few to read through; some of which I can't quite bear to cut up quite yet. My good friend Jenn gave us a beautiful black and white card that was perfect for re-crafting. I've finally brought myself to cut it up.

Reason #2. I can steal the captions. Most of the time, I don't have a page-full of congratulatory remarks for the bride and groom. It's nice when the card says some of it for you, takes up a little space, and gives the inside a punch of colour.

Reason 3. I also love that I can play around with matching colours and patterns. It took me a while to realize that I was a terrible scrapbooker. I bought all the supplies, oooo'ed and ah'ed at all my friends' scrapbooks, and then struggled to finish anything. Making these wedding cards is like micro-scrapbooking. They are small contained projects with all the creative options of scrapbooking.

I think the most time consuming part about making these cards is deciding on matching paper. Since the realization of my failed scrapbooking career, I had a large stack of paper with no future; when I make these cards, I only use paper that I've already got. It was incredibly easy at the beginning, but as the pickings got slim, it was harder to find a nice match. Challenge accepted! I spent one evening earlier this month pairing cards with paper. Hopefully this speeds up the process when I (inevitably) forget about the card until the day before (or of) the wedding.

I have one friend who donated a stack of her wedding cards to us. In return, I gave the couple some of the cards that came from their stack. Hopefully they didn't mind me reading all the lovely congratulatory comments in their cards, too! If you're ever at an impasse about keeping cards, try re-crafting them! Or give them to me and I'll re-craft them for you!

Inspired by Carrie and Christian

>> Tuesday, September 1, 2009 – musical/movie references, sewing, weddings

From sewing

Earlier this summer I found this beautiful fabric that was reminiscent of the Christian Dior dress that Carrie Bradshaw wore on SaTC in season 3.

The fabric just sat there all summer as I tackled birdie sling after birdie sling, a new Japanese Dress class from the workroom, a leather clutch, and a million other home projects.

I always planned to make it into a beautiful dress. Although the CD dress was likely impossible, I decided to try a modified version of Heather Ross' Mendocino summer dress.