Hollywood Cherise

The Hollywood Cherise features in the Summer 3/2012 issue of Ottobre. The main part of the dress is gathered onto a yoke and as the little cap sleeves are part of the rest of the dress, there are no sleeves to sew, making this a quick dress to put together. I made this gingham version for Amélie around the end of November or start of December.


I omitted the pockets from the pattern.The instructions suggest cutting them on the bias, but I had trouble maintaining the nice square shape when I did that, so ditched them altogether. Most likely they would only end up full of sand at this time of year, anyway.


As you can see from the photos, it is a comfortable dress to wear. Amélie has no trouble playing in it, and it is perfectly breezy for a hot, summer day. It can also be made shorter, if you like, so it can be worn with pants or shorts as a tunic, rather than the full-length dress.


The final detail was the pearl snaps I added to the back of the dress. Easy to do up and undo, and a perfect compliment to the classic red gingham fabric I used. I love this pattern, and Amélie seems to love wearing it, so I might revisit it some time with some different fabrics.


The Hollywood Cerise used about three fat quarters of fabric from my stash. The Christmas Tree Skirt in the previous blog post used approximately 10 FQs of fabric, but I bought six FQs of fabric and used the rest from my stash. I also purchased 15 FQs of fabric to make myself a top and a further 12 FQs to make Maxx a shirt. Why, oh why does this feel like a major confession?! SYST13 Running totals: in = 140, out = 268, total = -128

A Christmas Tree Skirt

Each year I try to add something hand-made to our Christmas decorations. This year it was the tree skirt. I followed the directions for A Simple Old-Fashioned Christmas Tree Skirt which I found on the Moda Bake Shop website. The pattern really is very simple and is just a top with binding around the edge. I decided to back mine and quilt it before binding.


The instructions fail to mention any indication of seam allowance. I assumed there was a 1/4 inch (6mm) seam allowance included. The pattern pieces are not accurate anyway, as there are pieces you have to chop off after each seam. I did something a bit different to the instructions, which was to use all one colour for one star piece and another colour for the other star piece. The original pattern used the same colour for both pieces on each block (does that make sense?)This meant the two greens alternated all around the skirt. If you decide to do the same, you need to realise that you can't just fold and cut, all pieces must be stacked with right sides all facing the same way and cut.

I prefer the way the original skirt was pieced, as it gives the star a three dimensional look, which I thought mine would get too, but instead mine has a bit of a pin-wheel-spinny look if you get what I mean. I think a chunkier star would have shown off the green fabrics a bit better too.


I quilted around each star point, just next to the ditch with some green Aurifil, using my walking foot and then switched over to my free-motion foot and used some red Gütermann sew-all, as that is what I had at the time. I chose to do a kind of feathery-paisley quilt pattern, which wasn't really a pattern, but sort of made-up as I went thing kind of (very loosely) inspired by the Craftsy Quilt Class I've been watching. I see that Angela Walters has a feathers class too, I might have to take a look at it.

I finished my Tree Skirt up with some picot-edge bias that I purchased from the Haby Goddess. I didn't quite have enough, so I finished up the straight edges with some left-over strips from the Walk in the Woods Jelly Roll from Amélie's quilt.

This wasn't the only Christmas item I made this year. I also made some Chubby birds and Gingerbread men decorations for teacher presents, but I was so busy that week that I never stopped to take photos before gifting them. You can see other gingerbread man decorations that I have made in Christmases past, but I haven't made any birdies and taken photos of them to show you.


Would you like to be able to make a Chubby Bird of your own? You can buy the pattern on Craftsy, here, (for really cheap) and get it instantly, but if you like, I have a spare copy of this pattern. Not a digital one, but an original greeting card sized pattern. I bought one, and I also have one that was given to me and I would like to give it to one of my readers. If you would like to be the lucky recipient of this Creative Card, tell me where you are from, how you found my blog and why I should give it to you. I will choose the best answer in a couple of weeks. I am happy to post it to anywhere in the world.

Roxy Long Socks

It is so hard to get back into blogging when you have been away for so long. Life got a bit busy in that last school/kinder term and I lost my blogging mojo... I am just going to just jump back in and tell you about some of the things I made in the last couple of months (one at a time), and then we will just carry on as if I was here all along, okay? Let's start with Roxy Long Socks.

Roxy Long Socks is a pattern by Lisa Tilse of The Red Thread. Lisa gave me this pattern after I did some pattern testing for her. I've always admired Roxy, and I just knew she would be loads of fun to make. The pattern comes with a printed face panel, and you can buy additional face panels if you want to make more, or there are even instructions to make your own face if you wish. The pattern includes both a spring and winter version of Roxy. I chose to go with the Winter version as I liked the pointy hood.



I made Roxy for Amélie for Christmas. Apart from the face panel that came with the pattern, she was made entirely from scraps from my stash. I put her together over two nights, so a reasonably quick project. I must admit, that first night I was up until 3am.... Of course, Amélie was quite happy to add Roxy to her ever-growing collection of hand-made dolls. She is quite a tall doll, at around 65cms. Here is a picture of Roxy with some of Amélie's other dolls to give an idea of scale.

If you are not familiar with the other dolls, let me introduce them. On the left, we have Miranda. Miranda is made using the Kinder Doll pattern by Jodie of Ric-Rac. She does have a nice dress, but prefers to get around in her underpants most of the time. Next to Miranda, is Elsie Cabbage, also a Ric-Rac doll, and on the other side of Roxy Long Socks is Little Red, again, a Ric-Rac pattern. Miranda has a couple of brothers and some cousins too.


I am a bit behind in blogging stuff from the SYST13 challenge, I should be caught up by the end of January. For this project, I used maybe two fat quarters in total. SYST13 Running totals: in = 107, out = 255, total = -148