shameless pictures of my girl in her new jumper...

Okay so I was fairly cryptic in my last post - which when accosted by some of my friends, I found humorous because I really can't believe that people are interested in what I have on the horizon. That's me, lack of confidence girl.  I will fill you in on that later, but first I have a new jumper to share.  

I was hired to do a jumper, so went out and picked out some fun fabric and such.  Turns out it wasn't exactly what my client was looking for - no problem, so I decided that it would be just perfect on Penny, and it is.  You see I don't sew every day (yet) so I like to do a small personal project before I launch into a hired one.  It's like getting my sewing legs about me.  Plus, I wanted to try a few different things in the way I laid out the pieces and how I put it together - which ultimately saved me time and made for a much more finished looking product.  I am happy - now if I just had a serger, it would be perfect, but that will have to wait until a few clients from now (it finishes the raw edges of fabric). I also was pretty happy to test drive my new pressure foot.  So if you are at all familiar with sewing machines they have a foot, a little two toed foot that puts pressure on the fabric evenly so that your stitches are straight and your fabric is smooth.  Well about a year and a half ago my pressure foot broke -it was plastic and I had my needle set wrong and BAM - it was gone.  So one would think that finding a pressure foot for a Singer sewing machine would be fairly easy.  It's a name brand and the machine is just ten years old.  Well you would be wrong.  There is only one store of ALL of central Indiana that carries the foot I need.  It was in my old neighborhood, but I don't get down there much and when I do the store is usually closed. I could order it online you say, well that would be true, but I wanted to see the foot, size, etc. since I also join pretty tiny ribbon together -so larger feet wouldn't necessarily give me what I need. So store shopping was my only option.  A few weeks ago I sauntered down to the ol' neighborhood and picked up my foot - a metal one.  I am smitten.  Up until now I've been sewing with a zipper foot - which is a pressure foot, but it only has one side so you can sew in zippers, making my job feeding the fabric and joining ribbon that much more difficult.  It is amazing what correct tools will do for a project.  So sewing Penny's jumper today was a dream, it actually takes my more time to cut my pattern out than to put it together - now anyway, with my new foot.  It went together like with out a stitch (pun intended) and Penny is a doll about being fitted and letting me pin things onto her.  Ah, such a girl.  Well here are like a billion pictures of my ragamuffin girl in her new dress that she reluctantly took off before bed:

details

discovering pollen

Penny rarely walks, she's always running AND falling and then running again

hello model pose (mom clearly takes too many pictures of this child)

 wishing the grill wasn't there...

Penny has naturally curly hair, so we experiment on a daily basis on how to tame the beast during this humid time of  year, we've yet to win, but we aren't quitters...

mom and her girl

So what I discovered with my latest client is that I like giving choices.  It takes some of stress off of me to find "the perfect" fabric, as if I were reading their mind.  So instead I went out and found 6 sets of perfect fabric and emailed her the options - she loved two and we agreed that one really was going to be the best fit for her - here's a teaser:

I've got to be honest with you, I LOVE to pick out coordinating fabric and pull it together with just the right accents.  I never thought I would love it as much as I do, but I do.  So these evening I'll be cutting out my next project and hopefully getting that done this weekend (coming your way Stacey!)  Working on this project has opened my eyes to a new world of possibility.  I don't have things completed, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that I am expanding PP into a few girlie items.  Right now it's just my jumper and I'm farting around with a top and skirt pattern, along with little purses and such.  One thing at a time though.  Right now I'd like to incorporate what I did with this project, offering several groupings of fabric and allowing my client to choose from those fabrics.  Of course, I'm always game for a creative license endeavor, but I think that a lot of people like the ability to choose, making it entirely their own.  I guess I'd like to ask some of my loyal friends and fans for their input on how you think that should be laid out - do you have any suggestions? I'm all ears - so for now I am annoying my friends with girls who shop and shop well - I've been fortunate with a multitude of hand-me-downs so I am not as savvy when it comes to shopping for the little ladies.  

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, be safe and enjoy.  I'll be hanging out, sewing and painting (I am working on what I think is one of my coolest paintings yet) and I'll post again soon!  Thanks!

BTW - if you haven't had a chance to check out my Noblesville Blog for the Indy Star - I'm going to include a link here on this page - check it out or RSS it if you are interested.  Thanks!