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Modern Home Economics - aka Life Skills

Modern Home Economics - aka Life Skills

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What I've Sewn: Emery Dress In Gertrude Made Barkcloth

4 min

What I've Sewn: Emery Dress In Gertrude Made Barkcloth

I am so excited to share this post! This make is absolutely one of my favorites so far. Spoiler alert: it is an Emery Dress with Gertrude Made barkcloth fabric made for my mom! It all started last year when my sister sent me a text reminding me that my parent's 40th wedding anniversary was coming up. She said she wanted to throw them a surprise party, and, not living close enough to help very much with the finer details of the party (my family lives in CA and I live in CO), I

Gertrude Made: Outback Wife

4 min

Gertrude Made: Outback Wife

This past Friday I had the pleasure of meeting Cathi from Gertrude Made. I fell in love with her work the first time I ran across her Instagram account and continue to be more and more inspired by her as time goes on. For those of you who aren't familiar with her amazing work, she is a dressmaker from Australia who makes her "frocks" out of carefully selected vintage barkcloth. You can see some of her designs here. She designed her own patterns for the dresses and sews by siz

What I've Sewn: Geodesic Sweatshirt

2 min

What I've Sewn: Geodesic Sweatshirt

I am so excited to have been a part of the pattern testing group for Blueprints For Sewing's newest pattern, the Geodesic Sweatshirt. there is even a dome house near where I live in Colorado! I'm not much of a sweatshirt wearer, but this is definitely a design I can get behind. I studied architecture when I lived in Paris, so when I first saw that Blueprints had sent out a call for pattern testers I eagerly applied because I knew that all of her patterns are inspired by archi

Guest Post: How To Redesign A Wedding Dress, Part 3

3 min

Guest Post: How To Redesign A Wedding Dress, Part 3

Today is the last post in my Mom's series on how to redesign a wedding dress. You can see the first post in her series here and her second post here. I hope you have learned a lot! And remember, you can apply these concepts to anything from t-shirts to jeans! I'll be back from holiday next week, and have some exciting things planned to blog about after my return! Just as a reminder, this is what my Mom was starting with: If you remember from my last post, we left off with fin

Guest Post: How to Redesign a Wedding Dress – Part 2

4 min

Guest Post: How to Redesign a Wedding Dress – Part 2

Today's guest post is the second of three in a series that my Mom wrote for me while I am away on holiday. If you missed the first installment, you can find it here. She's writing about how to redesign a wedding dress, and the dress she is talking about was actually my grandmother's dress that she redesigned for my wedding (I am so lucky!)! So, warning: lots of sentimental photos (and lots of educational photos about her process). The original dress Cutting up someone’s weddi

Guest Post: How To Redesign A Wedding Dress – Part 1

5 min

Guest Post: How To Redesign A Wedding Dress – Part 1

Today the family takeover continues with a guest post by my Mom! If you've been following the blog for a while, you might remember I've written about her before in my spring cleaning supplies post and on my about page. She's an amazing seamstress and I wish I had paid more attention when I was younger to all the techniques she tried to teach me. But, it's never too late to learn and she's kindly agreed to pass along some of her know-how to all of us! I'm really excited about

One-Hour One-Project: Easy DIY Fabric Headband

3 min

One-Hour One-Project: Easy DIY Fabric Headband

Some of you may have noticed that I chopped all my hair off recently. I really love the new style - It's perfect for summer and brings a much-needed hair change. You see, I hadn't cut or colored my hair for about 2 years, so it was getting pretty long and scraggly. I had been wanting to make a change but kept putting it off until one day when I was at the local farmers market, this woman was handing out roses with a discount coupon attached. I wondered why she needed to disco

What I've Sewn - The Bombshell Swimsuit

2 min

What I've Sewn - The Bombshell Swimsuit

You guys. I've sewn a swimsuit! Inside-out front The first time I saw the Bombshell Swimsuit pattern, I immediately liked it but was far too intimidated to buy it. I knew that stretchy fabrics were difficult, and someone had once told me that bathing suits are among the most difficult things to sew which made me think that I would never be able to sew one for myself. Fortunately, for my birthday in April, my parents gave me an overlock machine & the pattern so I knew I would

How I Made The T-Shirt Quilt

5 min

How I Made The T-Shirt Quilt

For those of you that might have missed my last post, I made my first quilt! This post will be about the process of making the quilt. When my sister-in-law dropped off all the t-shirts I felt completely overwhelmed. Luckily, my good friend Nicholas Ball is a master quilter so I frantically texted him with all sorts of questions like "How do I start?" and "What is basting?". He patiently answered all my questions and advised me that once I figured out the pattern I wanted to m

5 Things I Learned While Making My First Quilt

4 min

5 Things I Learned While Making My First Quilt

Remember when I said I was working on something super secret and couldn't post about it until it was gifted? Well, it has been gifted and I am so excited to finally be able to share this with you guys! A while back, my sister-in-law asked if I'd be willing to make a quilt out of her son's old t-shirts in honor of his high school graduation. I said yes, and while I knew it would be a big project I had no idea what to expect since I had never made a quilt before. Ta-Da! My firs

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