We had a neighborhood garage sale last week and my kids ran a surprisingly profitable lemonade stand and got rid of a ton of old toys that were just languishing around the house. I told my daughter she could use her proceeds to buy a toy of her choice at the Doll Hospital, and she chose this doll that looks quite a bit like her mother (freckles and red hair).

Wood decided to make this doll a summer dress and a matching one she could wear herself. But I have to tell the story of that fabric. We have been looking for a decent fabric store south of 8 Mile for some time, with little success (the JoAnn in Grosse Pointe doesn't count). Wood googled a few stores in the city and the first one we visited turned out to be pretty worthwhile. The La Bon Fabric Store (or Labon, as I think it's called these days) at 18999 Livernois Ave is an amazing relic of when that stretch of Livernois was known throughout the city as "The Avenue of Fashion" (it still is, the store's proprietor reminded me, but the luster of what that once meant has faded as so much retail fled to the other side of 8 Mile). I think quite a bit of the fabric in the store was deadstock, although there was a good variety of fabric types and colors. We were looking for a place that carried canvas as well as fashion fabrics, and Labon did. A lot of the notions were the sort of things you'd find in a fabric store back in the 1970s and 1980s, back when many more people actually made clothes for themselves. The space itself was pretty remarkable, and I learned a lot about the store's history just talking to the owner about the decadent 1940s lighting built into the ceiling. There were huge remnants of deadstock fabric for $2-$5, including the vintage piece my wife used to make these two dresses. It's definitely worth a visit for anyone in the area who is interested in vintage fabrics and a bit of Detroit history.

 

No pattern for this dress, but it's not dissimilar from some of the simple summer dresses she made here. The next Woodcraft I am eager to share with you guys is the product of a whole lot of knitting hours, so stay tuned.

Previous Project: Juniper Bonnet

Okay, it's me again. Sorry! Wood's job has been keeping her really, really busy. She has her first trial today and I just haven't been able to get her to write any blog posts about the projects she has been able to complete over the past few months. She has made some really cool clothes, including this dress she made last week:

That's the back of the dress. Aren't the buttons cool? She used the now out-of-print Puppet Show Dress pattern from Oliver & S. I found the pattern at Haberman's and picked out the red chambray fabric. Yes, my transformation to total housewife is almost complete. Thank God I don't know how to work the sewing machine. I have spent all week canning jams, though, so I don't know if I can say my masculinity is still intact. Here are some photos of the dress on the kid:

That photo shows a bit of the hem, which is the part of the dress she struggled with the most. At least, that's the part of the dress I heard her swearing at the most.

This shows the little button detail on the sleeve:

I'm going to keep posting her projects for her if she doesn't get around to doing it herself. Don't get me wrong, she's busy, but she does find enough time to make all these cool things. Plus, she's become the world's biggest fan of Law & Order: SVU over the past few months, which is really what's dug into her blogging time. "You know," I'll say, "You could write up a quick post about that sleeping bag you made the girl while you're watching Ice T and Mariska Hargitay. . ."

"Quiet," she barks. "I'm doing research."

Previous Project: Build a Dirt-Cheap Dog Cart

Jim has been asking me to make Juniper a chambray dress for months. I'd forgotten about that, though, when I set out on a Saturday afternoon with Juniper to go fabric shopping for her Easter dress. I knew I wanted to make her an oliver + s jump rope dress, and I was imagining it in a muted solid or gentle stripe. Of course, when we got to the fabric store, she was captivated by the bold Easter prints: giant rabbits, pastel eggs, and bright yellow chicks. The half an hour that we spent looking at fabric was more intense and stressful than any day I've spent in the office. My first argument against the Easter-themed-prints was that I wanted her dress to be something she could wear all summer. I thought this logic was totally sound, but she saw through it, and started  dramatically accusing me of hating everything she loved. We went around and around every bolt of fabric in the store and I thought we'd never agree. I wanted her to be happy with the dress, but there was no way I was going to spend hours making a dress out of a fabric featuring poorly drawn bunnies carrying Easter baskets in their paws.

And then I remembered: this child loves to please her father, even if she could give a hoot about my snobbish tastes. I told her that Jim (who has been wearing a lot of chambray work shirts these days) wanted her to have a dress to match his shirts (which he did). She was sold. I told her she could pick out any fabric in the entire store for the pockets of the dress, and she carefully selected a great Liberty of London print. In fact, I'm not sure that I could have picked out a better coordinating fabric if I'd done it myself.

The best part about the chambray is that was also perfect for the overalls I wanted to make Gram. You'd think I would have figured this all out before we set foot in the store, but that's just not how things work around here. And in the end, Juniper felt like she had a role in designing her dress, so I suppose the agonizing thirty-minutes in-store were worth it in the end.

Of course, it helped that I ended up buying a yard of the baby chick fabric. I'm a sucker. I made it into a bag for her to put her eggs in at the Georgia Street Community Garden's Easter Egg Hunt.

About Gram's outfit: I didn't use a pattern, and just made him a pair of pants the way I usually do, and added a bib and suspenders. I eyeballed the whole thing, and it all came together in one night. Pretty easy, and goes well with his favorite hat.

It was nice to sew some clothes again; I've been so into knitting I've been neglecting the sewing machine, and it was good to get back behind it before I sew the kids' Dutch costumes for Tulip Time this year (!). 

Previous Project: Felted Slippers

A few months ago, my knitting mentor DW sent me some beautiful yellow yarn from a local mill on Prince Edward Island. She knew that I wanted to make something for Juniper, and she knew that yellow was her favorite color. The yellow yarn she sent me was gorgeous and incredibly soft; I couldn't wait to make something with it.

The only problem was finding the right pattern. I fell in love with this cool, modern dress, but the pattern called for a lighter-weight yarn. I don't know if it's because DW was excited to see me use yarn that she sent me, or if she is just a crazy lady who doesn't mind doing a ridiculous amount of work for someone else, but she painstakingly modified the original pattern so that I could make the dress with thicker yarn. I don't know how she did it. I'm guessing it was a combination of the various math subjects that I hated in high school tossed with some magic.

DW's pattern was easy for me to follow, and because I was using thicker yarn, the dress came together pretty quickly. I started it two weeks before Juniper's birthday, and used nearly every non-working minute to knit. I had just enough time to block it before her birthday. Juniper knew that I was making something for her (no way to hide the project from her when I was sneaking in stitches during dinner), but she didn't know what it was. I promised myself I wouldn't be disappointed if she didn't really care for it, but she loved it and wore it all day on her birthday.

(I can't take credit for the sweet knitted gnome. It was a birthday gift from Juniper's teacher, who gave me a copy of the pattern. I can't wait to try it.)


Juniper and I chose the buttons together. Browsing buttons is probably the most fun part about a trip to the fabric store, but when I actually have to buy buttons and also consider the emphatic input from a nearly-five-year-old, it can be difficult. Of course the nearly-five-year-old wanted every fluorescent flower or giant-sparkly-faux-crystal-button, and I was starting to despair when we finally found these tiny white rabbits. They satisfied her desire for the buttons to "be" something, and they satisfied my criteria that the buttons be simple and not compete with the dress.

It's no surprise that DW has made her modifications to the pattern available on her site for anyone who is interested. She is just too nice. The size I made for Juniper is probably best considered a 3T, but you could easily make it longer or shorter. I think it would fit any 2-6 year-old with length modifications. (**Edited to add: DW's modifications are no longer available on her website. Tora Froseth, the author behind the original pattern, asked DW to remove her instructions. Of course DW obliged.)

And there's the birthday crown. She loved that too. I followed a template in Kata Golda's book for the red bird, but made the pheasant based on a sketch by Jim.

Finally, comments are broken here on woodcraft, which stinks because I love getting comments from you guys. The best I can do is encourage you to comment on ravelry if you're a knitter, or to leave a comment on flickr or DW's post.

Previous Project: Felt Stuffed Creature

After a cold and rainy first half of June, it is finally so hot in Michigan that the kids are spending a good portion of each day in their bathing suits. But when Juniper isn't wearing a bathing suit, she is wearing a sundress.

You can sew a girls' sundress in a little over an hour, making it a ridiculously easy project perfect for this weather (it's always better to be outside than cooped up behind a sewing machine). I've been using a pattern from Heather Ross' book Weekend Sewing, and her instructions are also available on the Martha Stewart website.

The first one I made was with Heather Ross' Underwater Sisters Blush from her Mendocino line:

Juniper asked me to make one for her cousin the night before they had their first sleep over together at their grandma's house, and when my daughter asks me to sew something, I am in her thrall (especially when the request is for someone else). So I made this one for her cousin, who has big blue eyes:

A note about smocking: Heather describes in her book and in the online instructions how to sew with elastic thread, and I tried it at least three different times on different days with different fabrics before I finally got it right. Once I figured it out, I was so thrilled I felt like smocking everything in sight. My children and the dog run away from me for fear of being smocked.

To create smocking, hand wind elastic thread onto your bobbin without stretching it. Then put the bobbin in your machine, and make sure that you put the elastic thread through the thread slot in the bobbin compartment before you pull it up with your top thread. When you pull the elastic thread up, it will feel like it is pulled tight, and that's okay. The first few times I tried, I was so careful to make sure that the elastic thread didn't have any tension, that I didn't make sure it went through the thread slot, and when I sewed, the elastic thread was really loose and loopy and completely wrong. When you've got it right, your fabric will gather a little bit as you go. When you're finished sewing the lines across (I did 8 lines, 1/2 inch apart), spray the fabric with water and iron it on a very hot setting. The smocked portion will shrink right up, just like magic. You might let out a little squeal, it's just that exciting.

My favorite thing about making this dress for girls Juniper's size is that the 44'' width of most quilting fabrics is the perfect size, which means that you can use the whole width of the fabric, from selvedge to selvedge, and you don't have to finish the seam allowances. (Just like the oliver + s lazy days skirt pattern). I don't have a serger, and even though I've gotten pretty good at using a tight zig-zag to finish my seam allowances, I love it when I don't have to, and it gives the dress a professional quality that most of the things I make don't have.

I made Juniper another dress just a few days ago, and I suspect I'll put together a few more before the summer is over. The ritual of sneaking into her room and hanging the dress on the back of her door while she is sleeping has become a tradition. That way, when she sneaks into our room in first thing in the morning I turn around to smile at the sight of her so happy already in her new dress, no matter how early it is.

Previous Project

Amazingly, over a week later Juniper's favorite color is still yellow (though she tells me that soon it will be purple, but just not yet). The best thing about yellow is that it isn't pink, but it also looks great on her. To mark the momentous occasion of her first new favorite color in two years, I made her a yellow dress.

I used this tutorial for turning a men's dress shirt into a girl's dress. (Thanks for sending me the link, Mike!) I found one of Jim's old yellow shirts in a box full of biz-cas clothes, and from the looks of things, he never plans on wearing them under normal working conditions again anyway:


And then I spent an afternoon turning it into this:

I used an old cloth napkin for the waistband. I liked the scalloped edge, and it was also the only other fabric I had on hand that was yellow.

I put the finishing touches on the dress after Juniper was in bed. When I was done, I hung it up inside her room on the door knob. At 6:30 the next morning, I heard the sound of her feet pounding down the hallway and she climbed into our bed before I could even open my eyes. I covered her with the blanket, like I always do, and settled in for another ten minutes of sleep. A few minutes later, I heard a giggle, and opened my eyes for the first time to ask her if she'd seen the dress in her room. Her eyes were wide -- not a speck of sleepiness left -- and she just nodded. I closed my eyes again. A few minutes later I pulled back the blanket, and sure enough, there she was -- fully dressed, with white socks pulled up to her knees. She giggled some more and jumped out of bed, so proud of herself for surprising me and so happy with the dress.

I think purple might have to wait a while.

[there is a flickr group for this dress. It's so fun to see what everyone has done.]

Previous Project

In early March, I started sewing an Easter dress for Juniper. We worked on a sketch together, and I could picture in my head exactly what I wanted it to look like. She picked out the fabric, I supported her choice, and we headed to the basement where my sewing area is. And then I had one of those days where you keep making mistakes. I did my best to fix every mistake, but then when I finally tried the bodice of the dress on Juniper it was way too small.

So I did what everyone should do when you're having one of those days: turned off the sewing machine and just walked away.

When I was ready sit down at the machine again, I had less time and fabric than when I started. I couldn't afford to mess around again. So I cracked open an Oliver + s pattern I had stashed away, and in one afternoon, came up with a perfectly simple dress that both Juniper and I loved. The pattern called for buttons, so I finally pulled out my sewing machine manual and figured out how to do it. It turns out it isn't really hard at all.



I wanted to make a petticoat or slip to go under the dress, because the fabric in the dress is extremely lightweight. I rummaged through my closet and found an old dress from H&M that I must have only bought because it was $20, not because it was flattering or anything I normally wear: it was a scoop neck baby doll dress made out of lace. I think I was pregnant when I bought it, and maybe wore it once. It's the kind of thing that ordinarily would have gone right in the box for Salvation Army.

Instead, I made a skirt out of the lining, and then attached a layer of lace underneath to poke out from under the dress:



The Oliver + s pattern also includes a playsuit, which I made for Gram. The playsuit came together really quickly because I was already familiar with how the bodice was constructed. I made Gram's out of lightweight blue and white striped fabric:



Jim wants me to make more of these in bright primary colors, because Gram has already grown out of the beloved blue jumper.

The night before Easter, I made two bonnets from a pattern I bought on etsy. (Buying patterns on etsy is great: you never quite know what you're going to get, but it's cheap and you get the pattern emailed to you right away.) The pattern only when up to a 12 month size, so I made that size for Gram, and then enlarged the pattern and made one for Juniper.


Of course, the outfits were ridiculously lightweight for Michigan weather, so I had to cover them up in winter coats at the egg hunt. I really didn't mind though -- I made the clothes as a way to welcome spring, and I know they'll get a lot of use out them all spring and summer.

(more pictures on flickr.)

Previous Project