Friday, April 27, 2012

nightie-night

First things first, could someone answer this for me? I got an email from Blogger telling me I need to be sure and update my "legacy" blog (whoa, I've been blogging so long I'm a legacy), but it already says "Google" on my dashboard, so didn't I already do it? I don't want to lose access to my own blog!

Moving on, I have a bit of birthday sewing to share. Daughter turned 7 last week (7!) and I managed to just squeak this gift in under the wire. Seriously, just before dinnertime the night before her party I parked both kids in front of a video and sewed like a crazy person in the dining room. I managed to snap a couple photos too. Somehow, she did not see anything!



















I will tell you this - it's no secret that I am generally a lazy seamstress. I choose simple patterns with clean lines and I don't care for projects that take days on end to finish. Patience is in short supply! But I think this nightgown was worth the time and effort.

The pattern is McCall's M4505, which is actually for undergarments (slips, camisoles, bloomers). I chose to use some pink rose print lawn I got from fabric.com last year (majorly on sale, like maybe $3/yard?) and whatever lace I could find in my stash. Consequently, the lace at the collar and armholes does not match the lace at the hemline, but they are awfully far apart and similar enough that no one has noticed so far!

The buttons were a gift from a dear friend, and they look absolutely perfect on this fancy nightie.



















By the time I did most of the gathering and lace application, I had used one entire bobbin of thread. I had to spin another just to complete the gown. The ruffle was easily the length of my living room before gathering, and each ruffle panel took 4 passes of the sewing machine to complete - lace placement line, lace stitching line, ziz-zagging the raw edges down, and topstitching to finish. Only then do you assemble the ruffle into one long piece and gather it to fit the gown!

A new skill for me on this project was stitching a continuous lap. Not too hard, but requires some patience. It came out pretty good for my first try.

The nightgown hasn't seen any use yet because it is 40 degrees here. It has snowed 3 times this week. Boo.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I got the same email. I logged in through my Blogger page and checked it out (I don't trust emails) and it seems that they're forcing everyone to use blogger through Google now. Nice. I already have a not-used Google+ account so it was an easy switch but it make my blog visible on my profile which is NOT what I want. so I had to change my settings. I don't get it but I didn't want to lose 5 years of blogging. I really just need to print it in book form and call it a day.

Love the nightgown, so feminine. And I like being called a "dear friend". :)

Staci said...

I got that email as well. I had one really old blog that I'd set up and wasn't on my google profile, so I'm hoping THAT's the one it was referring to... it'll break my heart if my main blog suddenly disappears. But to the best of my knowledge it's linked to my google (gmail/google+/etc) account already so I don't know what else they'd want me to do. They're making me nervous, though.

sweetpea family said...

I very nearly went to bed early after writing my blog but then I started to read my favourite posts - love your new nightie. I was so inspired I got out my fabric stash and think I may have enough to make my grandaughter - Daisy a nightie. Its now sooooooooo late and I've got so much to do tomorrow - but I've had fun - night night x
http://sweetpeafamilyblog.blogspot.co.uk/