Launching Sewing at the Rock

Welcome to my blog.  I plan to use this blog to chronicle my sewing, quilting, and other needlework accomplishments and attempts.  I live in the rural community of Little Rock, Mississippi, where we have one store and a post office.

My time for sewing is very limited, but I have been inspired by many sewing bloggers who are also working mothers and still manage to sew many beautiful garments.  It is time for me to join in the fun.  I have sewed all of my life, and I enjoy the process as well as the feeling of accomplishment that comes from knowing I have made something that is stylish and looks well.  I am not ready to go on a total ready-to-wear fast, but my ready-to-wear purchases have significantly declined.

To launch this blog, I would like to showcase a picture of a prom dress that I made for my daughter a couple of years ago.  The pattern is still in the McCalls pattern book, so I hope  that this is still relevant and inspiring.  The fabric surprisingly came from JoAnn's.

I made a muslin using similar fabric, and I used the smallest size.  I still had to cut several inches from the width of the bodice.  I sewed bra cups into the bodice, and added boning.  This was my first garment that I ever underlined and used boning.  I enjoyed the process of creating this dress for my daughter, but it was indeed a challenging project.




There were no markings on the skirt pattern to tack the poofs in the skirt in place to the skirt lining.  It took several hours of trying this on and playing with various poof arrangements to finally come up with the final assymetrical arrangement.  I believe my daughter thought that an impending disaster was about to occur.  She was very pleased with the end result.  A friend of mine helped to lay out the beads which were hand sewn to the shoulder and under the bust.  Here is a close -up view of the beading on the shoulder.

Here are a couple of these two bff's' pictures as they prepared to leave for prom.