In the Blood

Mary Moore Crawforth

I love sewing, and I especially love sewing dresses.

On familysearch.org (open to anyone who would like to find out more about their ancestors) I noticed there was a picture and story attached to the name of my ancestor, Mary Moore. As it turns out, she was an excellent dress maker in her teenage years and made dresses for rich ladies in London around 1850 I believe. This information is so amazing to me, not only because I love love love old fashioned clothes but I am descended from someone who could really make them?! Before patterns were used?!

She was an amazing woman who left her beautiful home in Yorkshire for the plains of Utah when she and her husband joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She traded her beautiful dresses to feed her children. I love her and I am inspired by her example.

Halloween Prep

My little ones' costumes are coming along and I am so excited! I think they will look great. Can you guess what they will be?

P.S.-Homemade pattern weights rule.

P.S.S.- My sewing machine became jammed and I almost hyperventilated. It reminded me of when Matt first bought be this two ton sewing machine from the seventies at a garage sale and no matter what I did, it jammed. Luckily I was blessed to be able to fix it (my current machine)! Huzzah! ;)

Silly Fox Scarf

I used this pattern to make this silly fox scarf.  

Work it!

I seriously need a sewing room.

Before I go on, I must address my name change. I did it because I'm not the only one that considered herself "the lazy seamstress." That's okay. "Sarajolie" seems less popular and is a name I've used since I was a kid. I combined my name with the name of a favorite actress, at the time (once someone asked if I was a member of the Jolie family and it totally made my day).

So I have a lot of projects in the works. It is so freaking hard to find the time to work on them, but I am trying! Hopefully I'll have more completed projects to share soon.

Cherry Dress

Yeah! I finished the dress!

My dress making skills are improving...even though there is still room for improvement.

I'm very happy with the results...and if I look weird in the pictures it might have something to do with Matt making fun of me the whole time!

But I Really Can Sew! (a bit)

My current sewing project is moving at a glacial speed. Hopefully it'll be done before the end of September. In the meantime, here is proof that I can sew, a bit.

I sewed the following last year:

My first real dress! I won't bore you with the details, but I developed my "lazy" method which I don't recommend but it works in a pinch. (Maybe someday I will go into details but not today).

This dress is also a little rough around the edges (I had to dye it) but I absolutely love the color and the lace.

And I also sew blankies!

I completely made up this pattern! I gave it to a really special kid.

I made this one for my youngest baby.

I had to make this one because (1) It reminded me of the book I was reading at the time, "The Snow Child" and (2) all of my Christmas stuff is "Scandinavian" (real Scandinavian people probably wouldn't think so, but again, I was inspired so I ran with it). The pattern came from a book called "Scandinavian Stitches".

The Plan: Butterick 6582

I have so much to write about but I am going to start with this, my newest sewing plan:

 

Butterick 6582. I want to make the dress on the top left.

I am using a fabric similar to the one above.

The whole idea was inspired by this swimsuit. I love it!

My goals:

-make a "proper" muslin

-do a lot of hand sewing!!!

Hand sewing scares me. Not only does it take forever but it also can be fragile and ugly, in my opinion. I'm going to try it though, because I bit the bullet and watched Craftsy's Sew Retro. It was amazing! In it, Gretchen does a lot of vintage touches that make dresses look fabulous. Hand sewing is one of those things. It was like taking a master class. Seriously worth every penny to see start to finish how she makes dresses.

Also, have you seen Professor Pincushion on Youtube? Also a gerat resource that is free. She has a lot of dress patterns that she walks through completely, start to finish.

Finally, I have been renting all the Threads magazines my local library has. They are amazing! Those are my sewing finds this week.