SewBaby News

This is my Spring Break, and I had hoped to do a lot of sewing, but the sewing gods had other plans for me.  My beautiful Babylock Serger, which I've had for 20 years, with absolutely not a hiccup, finally needs new blades.  One of my sewing students let a pin sneak through, and I got a nick in the blade.   I've ordered a replacement, and hope that it will arrive soon.  And rather than sew without my baby, I decided to do some much needed organizing.  I mean- I really, really, really needed to do this.  I am not an organized person, and I would rather do just about anything else.  Usually I wait until I just can't find something before I organize.  I'd rather live with chaos than wait to start a new project! Part of that organizing meant boxing up all of the scraps from prior projects and taking them to the IDEA store - this is a reuse/recycle thrift store that is absolutely my candy store.  All the proceeds from this store benefit the ...

I wanted to make something to wear over my black and white mini-wardrobe , and had purchased this interesting cotton jacquard when Fabric Mart had it for it's Deal of the Day at $2.99/yd last month.  The photo above is with the Closet Case Ebony t-shirt.  This fabric has an interesting texture in addition to the print. Here's a close-up: It was BOLD with a capital B, and I wasn't quite how to use it.  My original need was for a jacket, but I thought that with that large of a print, it would be better as something longer, like a dress. So, it was between either a dress or a jacket, and I waffled one way and then the other for about a week, and then it hit me- how about a longer jacket that kind of looks like a dress?

Last Spring, I made my daughter a black and white mini-wardrobe ( here ), and as I was making it, I was thinking all along, I would really like a lot of these for me too!  I typically don't wear black and white, so this is a bit of a style evolution for me.  Who can say what causes our tastes to change?  So, fast forward one year, and I put together a few things in black and white for me!  I think it might have been precipitated by the fact that my hair was gray, and black and white seemed to compliment that.  But, in the middle of sewing these items, I decided I was done with gray hair, and colored it.  LOL!  So, I hope that there is another reason for my taste change! 

Amanda Browder (left) and moi Have you ever looked at your fabric stash and thought, "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I sewed all of these fabrics together and then draped them out of my apartment window."  Yeah, the thought never crossed my mind either, but it did for artist Amanda Browder!  She did it, and people loved it, and she's gone on to create art all over the country, building on that original concept. Amanda Browder is a Brooklyn based artist.  You can see some of her other work at her website:  www.amandabrowder.com . Last October, Amanda came to my city and as luck would have it, to one of my elementary schools, to work with our community to create "Chromotopia"- her vision for the front of the school.  This was a collaboration between our elementary school, the university, our community and Amanda.  Amanda would end up coming several times for community sewing days, and yesterday, the culmination of months of work was instal...

If you are a long time Ottobre Woman subscriber, or a new Ottobre Family subscriber, you probably know the feeling of going through all of your old issues to find just the right style to suit you at a particular moment.  Maybe you weren't in the mood for cropped pants when the magazine first came out, but now you are, and what year did you see it?  It can be a little confusing, flipping back and forth, comparing one thing to another.  Alice Hall from Abilene, TX  has come up with a solution!  She has taken the time to compile all of the Ottobre line drawings from 2006-2018 by specific garment type.  It's fantastic!  Now I can just thumb through this, instead of going through 12 years of magazines!  The page above is just one of the pages- all of the sleeveless woven tops in the magazine's history.  There are 53 pages now in the index. She's organized it by garment type, fabric type and even by sleeve type!  Alice has gi...