SewBaby News

I am excited to introduce what will hopefully be a regular feature here on SewBaby News: The Ask Sewfie advice column, written by Jen Lopez, the owner of SewFun patterns. Jen has a great sense of humor and as a sewing mom of 3 children, ages 2-20, she has a lot of wisdom too! Ask Sewfie... advice for the sewing obsessed, because you know you need help. Dear Sewfie, I’m thinking of putting my sewing machine back into storage. Although I really love sewing, I live in an small apartment and with two young children, I have no time or space for it. What do you think? -Xina Dear Xina, No! Storage is no place for a sewing machine! Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need alot of time or space to enjoy sewing as a hobby. Instead of thinking you need a block of 5 hours to execute a sewing project (which, as a busy mom, you will never have… but you already knew that) all you really need is a small corner to set up your machine and little blocks of time here and there. ...

Young Image Summer 2011 cover My Image Summer 2011 cover We are excited to announce that we are going to be the US dealer for the new pattern magazines, My Image (for women) and Young Image (for children)!  These pattern magazines from the Netherlands each include 16 patterns in the most fashion forward, yet very wearable styles! Line drawings of patterns included in My Image Summer 2011 You can see the Instructions included are in English, German, French and Dutch.  There are no illustrations in the instructions.  These are master patterns which means that you need to trace them to preserve the original.  You will need to add seam and hem allowances to the patterns.  The sizes for women include European sizes 36-44, and for children 80-164 (approximately 18 months- youth size 12). Line drawings of pattern included in Young Image Summer 2011 magazine We are expecting the magazines to ship out to us this week, but I'm not sure when...

Congratulations to Jansie, who is the winner of this Giveaway.  The giveaway is now closed. This week we are happy to introduce you to a wonderfully talented new PDF pattern designer, Denise Knapp, owner of Whimsy Couture !  We are carrying 30 e-patterns from Denise at SewBaby.  Denise was kind enough to answer a few questions about herself and offer a giveaway of 3 of her patterns of your choice!  Where did you grow-up, where did you go to school, where do you live now? Tell us about your family. I was born and raised in Germany and moved to the States over 10 years ago. I live in the outskirts of Washington D.C. with my husband, two kids and a dog. How did you learn how to sew, and what inspired you to start your own pattern line? I learned sewing in school when I was 12 and loved it ever since. Years ago when my little boy was born I discovered how fun it was to make baby clothes and slowly went into drafting patterns. My own pattern line started aroun...

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!  We escaped the winter weather here in Illinois for a week in sunny and warm New Orleans.  If you haven't been, it is definitely worth a trip- delicious food, beautiful surroundings and great jazz!  We luckily avoided all of the airport delays that the news is reporting. But now we're back to the frozen tundra, and I'm happy to be sewing again! I'm still loving all of the knit tunic patterns in the new European pattern magazine- My Image !  We are expecting our second shipment of this pattern magazine to arrive any day now.  All of this upcoming shipment has sold out.  They were ordered back in early December, but with this crazy winter weather, things are taking a long time to get here from Europe.  I made M1011 from a plum wool jersey with a tiny gold grid when you see it up close.   Wool jerseys are hard to come by, but so much nicer to wear in the cold winter than cotton or poly knits- so grab...

Congratulations to Genevieve P!  She is the winner of the SewBaby News Giveaway prize.  This Giveaway is now closed.  Thanks to everyone who made such nice comments! The popular blog SewMamaSew is sponsoring a Giveaway Day!  We are participating and would like to offer a prize of 3 SewBaby patterns!  If you are new to us, we offer over 45 patterns for baby and children's clothing, accessories and toys.   Below is just a sample of what we offer. Please visit our webpage to see our complete selection, as well as our great selection of children's fabrics, snaps, and other unique children's patterns from independent designers. To enter, just leave a comment about which SewBaby brand pattern you would like to win the most.  (Please note that although we carry other brands, this giveaway is for our SewBaby brand patterns only.)  We will ship internationally, and the prize winner will be selected randomly on December 17th.  Make sur...

I received a very unusual fabric in my last FabricMart mystery bundle.  It looked like a black mesh sports fabric in one light, but if you turned it another way, you could see royal blue sequins. I wasn't sure what to call it, but I found this definition and thought it fit the fabric: "Iridescence is an optical phenomenon of surfaces in which hue changes in correspondence with the angle from which a surface is viewed." I wanted to make something for parties that myself and my daughters could all share, and I thought my daughters would like McCalls 6242 .  This is a real sleeper of a pattern, as you cannot tell from the cover photo how neat the construction is for the sleeves.   McCalls 6242 with Iridescent Knit Sleeve gusset from the inside. Sleeve gusset from the outside. The sleeves are two pieces and they have a hidden gusset underneath, so that you can wear the top without your bra showing under the arm.  I lov...

I was anxious to try out the Colbert Jacket Style M1006 pattern from My Image magazine , and knew I wanted it to be black, after Dei at SewHotMommi blog wrote a post about every woman needing a LBJ (Little Black Jacket).  I had a pretty loosely-woven basket weave black wool in my stash that I could envision as a jacket. So excited to make this jacket, I didn't want to take the time to preshrink the fabric.  After cutting, I decided that ALL of the pieces needed to be interfaced, as the fabric didn't have the substance it needed by itself, and would just be a wrinkly mess without completely interfacing every piece. At this point, a little bell went off in my head.  "You better not use any steam to fuse this interfacing, as this wool is too loosely woven and is going to shrink like crazy."  So, I did "dry" fuse the interfacing, and could clearly see the interfacing bubbling where the fabric had already begun to shrink underneath it, even with no steam, ju...