u/Smallfriesandbeans

Found some adorable vintage fabric at the thrift store that was so nostalgic I instantly knew I wanted to make it into a mini dress with lots of ruffles! I don't know for sure but I think it may be a cotton fabric.

I didn't use a pattern to make this but here's roughly how it went: I folded the fabric into quarters so the front and back would be one piece then I laid a loose tank top on the fold line to get the shape of the neck holes, straps and arm holes ( I made the arm holes a bit bigger afterwards). I drew a line from the bottom of the armhole to the edge of the fabric where I wanted the dress to end for the side seams. Since I wanted it to be more flowy I added in two long trapezoid shaped panels on the side (see pic 2) and then ties at the bottom of the armholes to bring it in at that point. For the ruffles I cut strips of the fabric and joined them together to get a long enough piece and did a rolled hem (sorta it wasn't as tight as I wanted) on the edges with a contrasting blue thread, then after ruffling(?) them I sewed them onto the dress along the neckline and the bottom of the dress. Then I finished it off with a small red velvet ribbon bow (attached with a safety pin so I can remove it if I want to).

If I had to do it again I would've planned out measurements for the ruffles instead of just going for it. I love how the ruffles turned out but they easily took almost twice as long to finish since they were so long. Also I think because the fabric has a looser weave the rolled hem on the serger would grab the edges of the fabric and just pull away from the edge so I had to redo many portions of it and for some places I just took it onto my sewing machine and did a zigzag stitch across it.

Overall this was probably the most successful vision to execution conversion I've ever done and I'm pretty happy with this!!

I have had a Singer Ultralock (14SH644/54) for maybe 10ish years? and recently the numbers on the right needle tension dial (green) separated from the rest of the dial, I tried to snap the numbers back on but couldn't and I also noticed the upper looper thread tension discs (red) weren't getting any tighter past maybe tension levels 3 or 4. I called a local repair person near me and he literally started laughing and saying no before I could even explain the issue and said that he doesn't want to work on this type of a machine as it's a nightmare. I called a Sewing & Vacuum and was told (without knowing what the issues were) that their repair times were on average a few weeks and starting at around 190ish.

I don't have any issue with the repairperson's reaction (I thought it was hilarious and I laughed also since I find it a pain to even thread it!) but based on his reaction (plus the cost estimate from S&V) I was wondering if it's even worth it to fix? Does anyone have any experience with this machine or this issue? I've had no issues so far and would like to keep using it but if this is a typical sign of declining performance I'd rather save myself the trouble. I've also used this machine for so long maybe newer models have better capabilities that it'd be better to switch either way?

I had a vision of a bag that resembled a bouquet of tulips the night before going to the tulip fields and decided to go for it! I've never sewed a bag before and didn't bother to look up any tutorials so naturally this took all night. I didn't really get a good full photo of it on but you can see it in photo three for an idea of size.

I self drafted this but it's basically a pouch with an outside white layer wrapped around it. The stems and strap are sandwiched between the layers and the tulip heads are attached to the side panel. Materials used were cotton fabric and batting, stuffing from an old pillow, and the outside is a repurposed blank tote bag I had.

There are a lot of imperfections but I learned a lot and there are a lot of improvements I'm hoping to make in the next version!