New year, new plan

New Plan? I plan to TRAVEL. Well, fake travel ;) I plan to blog travel and pattern travel and style travel and share it all here! I'm not sure I even know what that means - I just hope to share with you as much and as many things as I can find... so that you hide a few treasures here and there as I uncover them. 

If you know me and hang out in my sewing room (aka my sewing Facebook groups... ) then you KNOW I have some major lady-crushes on several European bloggers. Shall I introduce you? Yes, I shall. 

HERE you go. Meet Joma-style. Before you click... please be forewarned that this is the Alice in Wonderland of all rabbit holes. you will fall... deep and far... into her blog of lovelies! 

NEXT wonder over here. Ohhh Charlotte, how you woo me. 

CLICK to keep on keeping on ya'll.  WARNING WARNING you'll end up buying patterns in her store! There is no question of my love for Pauline Do and everything she does ;) 

STOP and don't click here... unless you just MUST fall in love. Claudia over at Ki-ba-do stole my heart years ago! Her little Lina shirt is probably one of my MOST sewn and re-sewn patterns ever. 

What you should know... these ladies are all German :) What you should also know... I speak absolutely NO German. Yet I have been able to sew patterns from each of the above ladies that produce patterns and drool over ALL of their blogs and creations without having to know German! YA'll - it's like giving someone a hug.... seeing their beautiful creations... it's universal. I see it, I drool and they feel warm and fuzzy inside from my accolades. No translators needed (but in case you wanted to... Google will help translate!) 

Ok. So I may work backwards over the next months :) Re-introducing ya'll to some of my lady-crushes but 2 nights ago... I saw JOMA-styles blogpost on this dress from Lillesole & Pelle .  I gave that blog post a big, fat, warm hug. I followed it further along to their blog.... HERE.  You guy still following? Guess where I ended up?  HERE.  MY FINAL CLICK.  Insert more drool. I stayed strong ya'll! I went to bed. I considered my evening to have been well-spent sleuthing the Euro-blog-sewing world and I went to bed without purchasing a new pattern. I mean, I could adapt what I already have right? Guess what. I got up the next morning and promptly purchased it. Don't hate ya'll, don't hate. It was money well spent. 

Now purchasing a new pattern isn't a problem... paying for a pattern and letting it sit in my email, on my "downloads" file or in my dropbox without even being printed is my problem. The struggle is REAL ya'll. You know it... you're giggling now and pointing the finger at me WHILE YOUR OTHER THREE FINGERS POINT BACK AT YOU. So I vowed to sew it.... that very day. 

Print (on A4 nonetheless! Go me), tape, cut and go. Here's what I had (you can print JUST your size? SCORE. Taping was a breeze)

Note - how do I sew? this is how... with a mini-me by my side who has a very-helpful addiction to his iPad. 

Pattern was well written. Well shoot, I can't say that... I didn't read it ;) But I DID follow the photos and well my own sewing intuition! The pleats were the most difficult part - I lined up the dotted lines first BUT when my pattern piece was still too wide... I figured it out. It's quite easy really - well marked and perfectly spaced! You simply fold each pleat mark ON the dotted line so that the solid lines line up! You sew those together so it looks like this: 

Then turn it over - iron the down nice and flat and sew across the top to hold them into place. BOOM. 

A little dirty secret? I totally watch Golden Girls from my laptop while I sew! SQUEE sew time is ME time. 

Now the pattern has 3 necklines. A turtle-neck, a slouchy turtle neck and then a more cowl-neck option. I went with the cowl-neck option BUT after seeing that lovely blog I posted earlier... I knew I wanted to adapt it. If I wasn't in a sewing-fury I would have taken better photos to show you guys how I adapted BUT I sewed the front and lining pieces per the pattern and nestled them into one another, right sides facing like so. 

Then I sewed around the bottom to join them ALL the way around except leaving 2 small 0.5 inch openings side by side for my little drawstrings. Blow up the photo and you should see...  

NOW Here is where I forgot to take photos! Oops. I clipped into the curves of my seam allowance there and then turn inside out.  Now those little 1cm openings that I have side by side... I found those and stitched a straight line all the way up... from bottom to top... at each side of those and one stitch straight up the middle. Then I used my handy-dandy bodkin pull to pull up thin strips of fabric up each little tunnel. (My aqua fabric is perfectly stretch so it naturally curls in! PERFECT - I simply cut a 12x1inch strip and once you pull it through, it curls right up.  I knotted the end and stitched across the top to secure them! Easy peasy) 

AND after I had 2 little draw "strings" secured in there - I attached the collar per the pattern and tied a nice little bow. NOW isn't THAT fancy??? Cute right? I KNOW?! Tighten it, loosen it... ahhhh I still love it. 

I finished up the dress with a 1 inch hemline and BAM. Here you go ladies! NOW TELL ME.... money well spent??? 

BUT WAIT - little sister was not to be left out! Of COURSE not. In fact, I finished hers up to size the pattern ;) This is a size 110 on my 5 year old with a 22.5 inch chest. It's actually quite perfect! So for Lily's (above) I just cut it slightly bigger myself instead of re-printing the next size. This child quickly said "I don't want a puffy neck though mama" - so she got a nice, normal neckline and as you can tell - that works nicely too! 

SOOO Battle of the styles... who won ya'll?