New Dresses for Africa Out the Door

This past month, a handful of women from my church worked again on sewing dresses for little girls in Africa. We met on 2 separate occasions, in my sewing studio to construct dresses. We used the basic pillowcase dress design. Our fabric included actual pillowcases as well as raw yardage. We used bias tape and grosgrain ribbon for straps that knot in bows on each shoulder. These dresses work so well for all sizes of girls and can be worn a lot. I love the variety of fabric as well as the cute embellishments added to each dress to make them special. I hope the girls who receive these dresses really feed loved.

Here's all 30 dresses packed and ready to send with our team over to Nairobi Baptist Church! To find out how you can get involved with sewing dresses for Africa, email me at liz@mommysaidsew.com.

Patty Young Pattern Test

I greatly enjoyed being a pattern tester recently. A few hours away from Chicago, Patty Young designs fabric collections for Michael Miller and her own patterns at Mod Kid Headquarters. I met her this past summer and picked up a few goodies at her sample sale.

 Being a pattern tester was challenging and exciting. The challenge for me was to follow the pattern exactly (no renegade sewing on this this one). And to work with only the fabrics Patty sent me from her Lush collection. The second challenge wasn't really that hard (despite my love of mixing and matching from different designers) because the Lush collection has some really great and diverse choices of prints and colors. Both Lauren and Grace got a Chloe Dress and Grace got a Paige Jacket. I really love that jacket, especially because one side (yes it's fully reversible) is sewn with laminates. Grace now owns the cutest rain coat I've ever seen in my life. I learned a great deal from following the patterns and emerged with some new tricks. I've already used the pocket design from the Chloe dress as cargo pockets on a pair of ruffle pants.

Pictures of Lauren and Grace in Patty Young's ModKid designs:
Making it Fun
ModKid Boutique
QuiltHome 1
QuiltHome 2
Hawthorne Threads (click to enlarge small image)

Library Tote Bag

This Anna Maria Horner Home Dec weight cotton sateen fabric from her Drawing Room collection was just dying to be turned into a library book tote bag. Whips up in a snap and makes a great birthday gift for a kiddo or a mommy.