Made By A Fabricista: Fall Wardrobe Ideas for Girls

Happy Fall Ya’ll! This month I was inspired to create outfits for my girls with fabrics giving fall vibes. My eldest landed on the orange polkadot jersey, and I couldn’t resist the beautiful burgundy floral challis for my youngest. With my $50 budget, I purchased four different fabrics for four garments, and I just love how they all came together!

My eldest recently turned thirteen and has decided she only wears pants and tops, thank you very much. I selected a nylon Ponte to make a pair of Jalie Renee Ponte Pants, and aside from the fact they don’t have pockets, she’s a big fan! Renee is a really easy sew and the darts in the back, along with the elasticized waist, make them easy to fit. With all the holiday dinners coming up, these pants are the ones you need for feasting comfortably! Being a double knit, Ponte is an easy knit to sew as it’s fairly stable. If you’re new to sewing with knits, Ponte is a great place to start!

I thought my daughter would like a loose fitting top, so I decided on the FREE Jalie Emilie. This one actually has a roll neck but I knew my kid would hate pulling it over her head, so following the suggestion of another maker, I simply skipped attaching the collar, turned the raw edge under 1/4 inch and top stitched. The cotton Lycra gives it a slightly boxy look. Fabric Mart has so many great knits that would be perfect with this pattern - between the sweater knits, rayon Lycras, and jerseys, you have tons of options! I’m definitely thinking of making a few of these for me! (Like all Jalie patterns, each one includes both kid and adult sizes).

In contrast, my youngest has been requesting more dresses - yay! I don’t really love sewing with challis, but I just couldn’t resist this beautiful print! I decided to use the Peony Patterns Yarrow Dress, which is a wrap style dress with ruffles, sleeveless and mid-length sleeve options, and cute ties for closures rather than buttons or zippers. I chose to skip all the ruffles as I felt my daughter may have had opinions about them! The dress is easy to sew, and my daughter is really happy with it. I also added inseam pockets to the skirt, but forgot to give my daughter a heads up on that before we took photos! Following the instructions, I stay stitched the bias front before assembling the dress, but I did find it was a little wavy after I finished it. Being a bit lazy, I skipped using my old-faithful, SewKeysE Tape. Lesson? Don’t be me. Use the tape! If you’re working with bias edges on rayon, this tape is a MUST!

I really love the Jalie Charlotte cardigan and I’ve made it many times! The cropped version is a staple, especially for pairing with dresses. It’s a little bit tricky to sew as assembling the corners of the waistband and top stitching the button placket is a little fiddly. I decided to save myself some time by skipping the buttons on this one. I may add them later, but so far Miss 8 has not complained. The wool-cotton-modal jersey knit worked really well for this pattern, and I love the color of it - I know it will go with many outfits!

Thanks for encouraging me with my projects this year! I hope this one has inspired you to create something new and affordable either for you or the kids in your life!

NATASHA | @auschicksews

Made By A Fabricista: Liberty Snow Day

Hi everyone! While we’ve been blanketed with snow out here in Southeastern PA, I decided to conquer my fear of button holes and make NewLook pattern N6749. I was able to snag a few yards of the Jess + Jean print Liberty of London Tana Lawn for it. It’s always exciting when Fabric Mart is able to get Liberty fabrics in! I always make sure to grab some. Cutting into a beautiful piece of tana lawn is scary every time. The fabric is such good quality, I’m afraid to mess it up! I had to be extra careful as this is also the first directional pattern I’ve worked with. But one of my assistants made sure all of my pieces were laid correctly. Something I wanted to try out with this dress was finishing the inside seams using the overlock stitch on my domestic machine. Normally I would french seam, but it was nice to not have to worry about cutting seam allowance in half, sewing, trimming, flipping, and sewing again. Next time I would cut the seam allowance back before overlocking, but I thin...

Made By A Fabricista: Embracing Winter in Wool Boucle

As winter drags on, the cold weather is such a bummer to me and feeling uncomfortable and cold so often is rough. Meanwhile, I listened to a podcast all about how people in very northern countries deal better with the onset of dark, freezing winter with a radically different mindset of embracing the inevitable season by reframing the chill as refreshing and the opportunity to spend most time indoors as cozy. I can do that! I found a gorgeous, quintessential wool boucle suiting in black and white to make myself a luxurious outer layer while I’m outside attempting to embrace the sting of dry winter air… It’s kind of working. So classic, so chic! Wearing boucle is always an uptown move and I certainly do feel sophisticated in it. This black and white houndstooth combination feels especially Old Hollywood, and what a treat to make something with this! I sewed the Daphne Jacket from Vivian Shao Chen. There are no closures, and the shape is boxy and very easy to wear over multipl...

Made By A Fabricista: Sewing + Running

It’s not every day that I get to mix two of my favorite hobbies. Especially when one hobby is sewing and the other is running. You can’t sew and run at the same time, but, you can go running in something that you sewed! With this realization, I embarked on my first hobby-merging adventure. We’ve had some frigid temperatures in Pennsylvania this winter. Since I’m an outside, stroller-pushing runner, I bundle up my son and myself before I hit the road. The temperature feels 20 degrees warmer for outside runners than the outside air. For the children being pushed in the stroller though, it feels about 20 degrees colder. With these differences in temperature for each of us, layering is the only thing that ensures that we both stay perfectly warm. My running wardrobe has been lacking a warm top layer. My son’s wardrobe would also benefit from having another warm layer, so I knew pullovers were what I should make. Inspired by a name-brand ¼ button-down fleece pullover I saw,...

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