Finally some new pillows

BAD blogger!!! I just noticed that my last post was a loooooooooonnnnnnnnnnng time ago!!!  Life is busy!   Really busy. 

I've been sewing for a few years now, and just recently (FINALLY) decided to make some new pillows for our house.  Strange, since this is a simple thing to sew, but pillows seem to fall to the bottom of the "to sew" list for me. 

I was completely smitten with Ruby Star Shining line from the amazing Melody Miller, and finally decided that if I was going to cut into my little stash, I would love to see it every day in my living room.  (And then I won't have to go visit it in the cupboard in teh laundry room, where my stash resides). 

So, one fantastic tutorial on how to install a piping and a hidden zipper on UTube later, my new pillows were born.  (Bonus:  the gentleman on the UTube video has a great English accent, and calls his pillow a "cushion" - which makes it so nice for someone who has to watch the 3 part video many, many, many times before finally comprehending it well enough to go forth and sew.  Thank you, Phillip!!!  Well done!  Cheerio!

I LOVE 'em!  (The pillows, I mean)!  And my husband doesn't hate them.  I'm calling that a winwin. 

So, without further ado, please meet my new pillows. 

Oh, I am really more excited than is appropriate!  But a HIDDEN ZIPPER!!!  Wow!  I really really did it!!!  (jumping up and down)!!! 

Rapunzel dress

So I finally did make a princess dress from my stash of Heather Ross's Far Far Away 2 line.  This is the Oliver and S Ice Cream Social dress, with a little yellow and white polkadot print on the shoulder, and some coordinating pink velvet ric-rac at the seam just to punch it up a little.

I really like this style dress for a little girl, and especially loved the ones I've seen on Flickr where they used all one fabric/print instead of color-blocking it.  My only problem was that the shoulder is cut as one continuous piece front and back, so Rapunzel and her tower would have been upside down on the shoulder in the back had I used that print for the whole dress without altering the pattern.  But I still love how it turned out, polkadots and all!

  Lainey loves to wear her new dress - so I imagine I'll be making a few more of these.  First, I really want to try out a couple of O+S patterns I haven't used yet....  everyone raves about these patterns, and now I can see why. 

Love that twin needle!

They seem to be kind of a cross between the standard sewing pattern and a boutique pattern...  not nearly as annoying and unhelpful as the standard pattern, and not quite as long-winded as some of the other boutique patterns I've tried.  Really a good balance for the "intermediate" sewist.  And while it's not a "quick sew" it really does come out nicely, with the inside looking almost as good as the outside, and some nice details, like the notched pockets.