Baby Shower Cupcakes

A coworker is about to have a baby girl, and we wanted to throw her a surprise office lunchtime shower. We all pitched in to buy a piggy bank and fill it, and I volunteered to make the cupcakes. Because it's not a baby shower without cupcakes! I take almost any excuse to bake desserts for other people. Unfortunately, I didn't get pictures of my cupcake process, because I haven't quite figured it out yet. I keep trying the same recipe because it worked once when I messed up and added half the flour I was supposed to, but now whenever I make it I have to add way more milk to make the batter thin enough to spoon into the liners. They were still tasty, not too sweet, but a bit heavy. I will post a recipe when I perfect it.

The cupcakes were swirled with bright pink, and I put strawberry buttercream icing on top. Let's talk about buttercream... I don't like it. I have tried it with just butter, with butter and shortening, either way, it always tastes "off" to me. And it's just me apparently, because it always tastes delicious to other people. On the bright side, it has forced me to be creative, and come up with delicious buttercream variations.

Take the standard recipe:

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening
1/2 cup softened butter
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons milk

And replace the shortening with:

1/2 cup coconut milk (the thick part that floats to the top, not the watery stuff at the bottom). This makes the buttercream much lighter, and less overpoweringly rich. It also adds a delicious coconut flavour.

OR

1/2 cup cream cheese (softened). It is still pretty heavy, but now tastes like cheese. Yum.

OR

Add 1/4 package jello mix in flavour of choice instead of replacing the shortening. This is what I did here, and it made the icing taste delightfully like strawberries. It did add a little bit of crunch, but that can be avoided if you make the icing the day before and let it dissolve overnight. It's not totally necessary, as I only noticed it because I was told to expect it when I googled it. No one else noticed it at all. It does change the color a bit (it was supposed to be more pink), but I really like the color it turned out.

I piped "roses" using a large star tip, starting in the middle and swirling out.

I also made little sugar-paste flowers and buttons from plain white sugar paste. Buttons are super easy and quick, just cut out tiny circles (I used the bottom of a piping tip) and poke 2-4 holes in the conter.

Anyways, enjoy the pretty pictures I took before packing them up and giving them away.

Love, A

Scalloped Skirt and Vintage Hat

I was browsing through my daily blog feed, and I found this scalloped skirt tutorial that I just had to try:

http://www.extrapetite.com/2013/05/tutorial-diy-scallop-hem-for-skirts.html

I loved everything about it, the navy colour, the adorable dainty scallops.... I didn't think I would have a chance to make until I had my next thrift store run, which I promised myself not to do until I had a few of my on the go projects under control. Luckily, my friend Rachel's grandmother invited us to come raid her closet. Guess what I found? A navy blue pencil skirt that was my size!

The blog linked to above has a fantastic, easy to follow animated tutorial.

This is the skirt before:

 I marked where I wanted it to land with a pin, then drew a line 2-3 inches below that.

I cut it at that line.

With a little help of course!

Where would I be without my favourite assistant?

I measured the width of the skirt at the line, and divided that number by 7. I set my hemming callipers to the number and went around my house for something round that measures that at a third of the way. I found a brass ring and made marks at the right width. I then traced around the ring.

Then I slowly went around my chalk marks with the sewing machine. It was actually much easier than I expected. The fabric went exactly where I told it to go.

I cut around the circles, leaving about a quarter inch, and snipped up to the thread in the corners.

I flipped it out.

It was pointy like the instructions said it would be. I took a butter knife and iron and forced the scallops into a nice rounded shape.

Much better. I put in a blind stitch all the was around the inside, and that's it!

I wore it out this afternoon for a quick walk to the hair salon and shopping at a nearby vintage store, where I bought a pretty hat!

Love, A

Skirt and Pocket Square

When we went to visit the MIL, she let me raid her fabric collection. I found this absolutely fantastic fabric with an amazing pattern. And it seemed destined to be a skirt because it was already cut up into pieces just the right size for a skirt.

This is what I started with:

I sewed the smaller pieces to either side of each large piece, and then sewed that all together on one side. I hemmed the ends of the long piece and then folded the sides in a bit and then folded it in half, right side out, and ironed it down, making a kind of a bias tape. I pinned it to the end of the skirt piece and then started making inch wide pleats and ironing them in place until I just had 1.5 inches of overhang left on the waistband. I basted the skirt inside the fold of the waistband and tried it on. I stitched up the last sides, leaving enough room for a zipper. I put a buttonhole on the overhanging tab and a button on the other side. Lastly, I hemmed the bottom.

I had a few scraps left of the fabric, so I decided not to let it go to waste, and make a pocket square for my boy.

I felt like a vintage wife, making a matching pocket square for the husband out of scraps....

None of leftover pieces were big enough for a pocket square so I made a patchwork quilt style square. I cut out squares and rectangles until they made a larger square.

I hemmed all the edges (one fold only) and then stitched them together with the faggoting stitch function on my sewing machine. It made a pretty, corset-like binding to keep the pieces together.

D loved it.

Love, A

Skirt to dress refashion Part 2

So I had a very productive long weekend, and finished TWO dresses, a skirt, and made some jewelry! The weather was really dark all weekend though, so I only managed to get pictures of only one dress in the brief sunny period we had on Victoria Day. It was actually quite lovely, D and I went for a walk to a friend's house and he snapped some pictures of me and my dress for me. I took pictures of the lilacs that are starting to bloom and the last of the tulip festival tulips....

Anyways, after chopping and hemming the skirt, I though that there was just enough fabric left over to make a top. I've never made one before, so I decided to follow a pattern.

I liked the top, but because I already had a skirt, I cut the pattern at the "lengthen here" line.

I lined up the pattern pieces on the bottom of the skirt with the hemmed part being the bottom of the shirt. It didn't quite fit the entire top on, but thats because the lengthen here line was at the hips and I only wanted it to go to my waist. I kept the hem in case I wanted to keep the dress as a top.

I cut out the pieces (I made them all the the same distance from the hem to the second lengthen here line, you can't really see that from the picture.)

I didn't take a picture of this step, but I just followed the directions that came with the pattern and sewed all the pieces together.  I sewed on the facing and then turned it right side out and ironed it into place.

You can see I kinda made a mistake with the facing when I forgot to flip the piece when tracing. That's ok though, no-one will be looking at my facing... I hope.

I pinned it onto my skirt then, and tried it on, and made sure it was pinned at the right level, then basted it onto the skirt. And then tried it on again. Because ripping out a seam takes a lot longer than pulling out a basting string. As I've learned the hard way.

Rant time... I went all the way out to Fabricland last week to get zippers for this dress and for some other skirts that needed replacing. They did not have black zippers in any of the lengths that I wanted. You would think they would stock more black and white ones than coloured ones! And they even spaced out the remaining black ones so that it looked like they had all the lengths, but it just made it confusing. Also, they only had separable zippers with giant plastic or metal teeth. I really wanted to keep the original zipper in the skirt and just add a separable one at the top, but it would have looked hideous with giant teeth. Ok, I'm done now.

So I took out the original zipper on the skirt and pinned on the new one. And then I basted it, and tried on the dress.

I carefully studied how the original zipper was put in and tried to reconstruct that with the new zipper. I learned how to use the zipper foot on my sewing machine, thanks to youtube. I also learned the buttonhole foot and the button attaching foot.

As you can see in the above pic, the buttonhole was now on the wrong side. Because the tab would have had to have gone under the zipper to button. So I sewed up the old buttonhole and put in a new one on the tab. I resewed the button over the old buttonhole (when it's buttoned, you can't see it.) Lastly, I put a hook and loop at the top of the dress to keep it from sliding open/prevent zipper damage... well really it was because the zipper didn't quite get to the top....

The last thing to do was the straps. I measured from the highest point on the front to around the back, and added three inches to that. I cut 3.5 inch strips of the remaining fabric (they were half the length that I needed, so I sewed them together into a longer strap). I folded them in half wrong way out, and ironed them down. I sewed a hem about an inch from the fold, and then cut off the excess fabric. I turned it right side out and ironed it again to make flat straps.

Then I couldn't decide wether to do tank top straps, a cris-cross in the back, or keep it simple with straps that tied into a halter. Then I thought... por que no los tres? Then it could be either of the three depending on my mood.

I sewed the straps to the facing/top of the front. I then folded the other end over twice to hide the raw end and stitched it into place, twice. I then put in on and marked where I needed to put the buttonholes for straight straps and cross straps. I made buttonholes where the marks were.

And I put little buttons on the inside of the back of the dress.

And after trying it one more time and taking it in a bit from the sides (even after all the trying on, it still felt a bit big), I was finally done! My first ever dress!

Here are some pretty pictures of it:

Love, A