If you’re stopping by from Noodlehead, welcome! Anna is one of my very favorite blogging friends, and I’m thrilled that she asked me to be a part of her Sewing With Knits Mondays series. I hope you’ve been following along each Monday on Anna’s blog and also Shannon from Luv In The Mommyhood’s blog – they have both shared some great tips and had some super guests joining in. No reason to be afraid of knits anymore, ladies!

Materials:
existing fitted knit tank top
2-2.5 yd knit fabric (60″ wide)
2 packages 1/2″ wide elastic
1 package double fold 1/2″ wide bias tape

A Couple of Tips Before We Begin:

• I recommend checking in the “fashion fabrics” section of JoAnn or your local fabric store to find a great knit fabric. Stretch fabrics are usually found in the jersey knit section in most stores, but often nicer prints more suitable for fashion are found in other areas and mixed in with the polyester/rayon fabrics. You have to search a bit more, but it’ll be worth it if you find something you love. My fabric is 96% polyester and 4% spandex, and was a great quality. A touch of spandex makes any fabric a dream to work with.
• If you have a serger, use it! Although you’ll need a regular machine for parts of this dress, sergers make life easy when sewing with knits.
• If you don’t have a serger, no problem! Use your regular machine and a ballpoint needle (trust me, it’s important!). For seams, many newer machines have a stretch stitch option, or you can also use a long and narrow zig zag stitch to accomodate the fabric stretching. For top stitching, you can also use a long straight stitch.
• As you sew, try not to stretch the fabric, or it could result in puckers. Allow the feed dogs to guide the fabric through, and you’ll end up with nice smooth stitch lines.
• Because knit does not fray, finishing seams is not necessary.

Directions:
1. Lay fabric out, right side up, and fold each selvage edge to the middle.

2. To cut our dress front and back, we’ll use an existing knit tank top. Fold the top in half, matching side seams, and place on fabric. To allow for gathering, we want our dress to be 1.5 times the width of the tank. My tank was 7″ from side seam to front fold, so I moved the tank out an extra 3.5 inches from the fabric fold.

4. Determine the width you’d like your dress at the bottom. For both maxi dresses and skirts, I like the bottom width to be around 50″-60″. Since we are cutting both the front and back pieces out of one length, if you want the bottom width larger than 60″, you’ll need extra fabric to accomodate that. Divide the width by 2 (since we’re working on a fold) and mark that, perpendicular from the hem.

5. Adding 1/2″ for seam allowance, cut around neck, underarm, and side seam of tank front. Continue on, joining up with bottom width mark. Before cutting, ensure that your dress will be wide enough at the hipline, plus a bit of ease. Since we added 50% to the width of the tank top, this should be enough to fit most hips, but it never hurts to double check :).

6. If your tank was pointed at the top like mine, trim the point to flat, to allow for the 3/4″ straps plus 1/2″ on each side (for seam allowance) to be inserted later.

7. Mark underbust (where bottom of your bra sits) on fabric, where elastic will sit under bust. If needed, you can try your tank top on to find the exact area to mark.

8. To cut back piece, fold tank top at center back, matching side seams. Adding 50% to tank back width, place tank fold parallel to fabric fold. Adding 1/2″ for seam allowance, cut around top back and side seam of tank back, as you did for front piece.

20. Fold one strap in half lengthwise and stitch raw edges together using 1/4″ seam allowance.

22. Repeat steps 20 and 21 with remaining strap.

25. Try dress on and determine back strap placement. Pin straps in place (it helps to have someone help you!).

Tell me you don’t have at least one pair of jeans sitting in your closet, waiting to be hemmed. You don’t want to pay someone to hem the jeans for you, but aren’t quite confident in your hemming skills. Hence, the jeans continue to sit… Sound familiar?! It’s time to learn how to hem jeans, my favorite way!

No more excuses! Give your wardrobe and your confidence a boost by hemming them yourself! This easy method of how to hem jeans is both fast and easy, and even allows you to keep the original hem. Your jeans will fit like a charm in no time, and soon all your friends will be dropping off their too-long jeans for you to hem!

Before you know it, you may even find yourself altering your jeans from bootcut to skinny or straight!

Got 15 minutes? You’re golden. Here we go…

How To Hem Jeans

Materials:
Your favorite pair of too-long jeans!
Measuring Tape
Size 16 denim needle (I like to use these needles (affiliate link) for stitching through the multiple layers of denim)
Thread

Instructions:
1. Ready to learn how to hem jeans? First, try on your jeans and fold the hem up (right sides together) to the length that you’d like your finished hem. Remember to wear a pair of shoes that you would normally wear with the jeans. If you wear flats most often, throw on a pair. If you like to wear wedges, go with those.

2. Take off your jeans and measure from the bottom fold to the bottom of the original hem.
3. Divide the measurement from step 2 by 2. Example: I folded my jeans up 2 inches in step 1, and divided that 2 inch measurement by 2 to get 1 inch. Using the new measurement, fold the hem up again and pin in place (remember to ignore the original hem when measuring).

4. Continue pinning each pant leg as in step 3, until both hems are completely pinned.

5. Using a zipper foot, stitch around each jean leg, through both layers of jean, as close to original hem as possible. Note: Do not stitch ON original hem, but immediately adjacent to it.

6. Turn folded edges to inside of jean legs and try your jeans on to make sure you’re happy with the new length!

7. Press the folded edges upward toward the inside of each jean leg. You can also sew a couple of hand stitches at each side seam on the inside of each leg to tack the folded edges in place if you’d like. Note: If you had to hem a large amount from your jeans (I’d say greater than 2 inches or so), you may prefer to trim the folded edge and serge or zig zag the edges to reduce bulk. Make sure to press each jean leg from the outside as well to give a nice clean hemline.

A couple of days later I opened my mailbox, ripped open the big white envelope, and found this gem:

The challenge? Make It Work.

First, let’s talk a bit about what I had to work with, the good and bad about the pattern:

Likes:
Considering that the point of Sabra’s challenge for me was to make something good out of a pattern that was, well, not-so-good, I still managed to find some positives to work from with the pattern. With even the ugliest or out of date pattern, you can still find some positives to base your finished product on. What I liked most about this pattern when I first saw it is that there was a tunic option. I’ve decided that tunics and leggings are going to be my mainstay this spring and summer, so I was excited to see View C, with a nice long length. I also like the overall shape of the top, as it is loose and looks like it would be comfortable to wear. In a shorter blouse length, the top looks fairly shapeless and out of date, but transferred into a modern tunic, I knew I could make the shape into a positive.

Dislikes:

Without getting into too much detail (we’ll save that for a post of it’s own sometime), I took my measurements at several critical areas – hips, waist, bust, shoulder, and a few others, and, after adding ease to these measurements, used the original pattern lines to make the pattern fit my measurements.

And cut each side seam apart…

Next, I assembled each sleeve and stitch them right sides together to the arm openings.

And the tunic itself was done (I do iron my clothing once in a while, just not before I took this photo…)!

Need a fun, fast, update for your hair? I can always answer that question with a yes, and was so excited when I spotted Anthropologie’s Brocco Bobbies:

My first thought was how easy it would be to make something similar. They aren’t made of anything more than a fabric yo-yo, a bit of ribbon, and a little bling. The best part is you can customize your own bobbies to your own style and preferences, and the possibilites are endless!

Let’s get started…

Materials:
1. fabric scrap – approximately 4″x4″
2. 1/4″ or 1/2″ wide ribbon scrap – 3″ in length
3. needle and thread
4. glue gun
5. vintage brooch or button (my pink and gold “brooch” pictured was part of a vintage bracelet I found at DI)

7. small felt scrap

Instructions:
1. First we’ll make a fabric yo-yo as the base of our hair pin. Using a bowl or other circular item that is approximately 4″ in diameter (the finished yo-yo will be close to half the size of your initial fabric circle, so adjust accordingly if you’d like), trace a circle onto the wrong side of your fabric.

But for around $100, why not make 5 of your own? My very stylish little sister Audy asked me to make a Maxi Skirt tutorial (she’s one of those people we all hate that can rock horizontal stripes). And since I might not have been cool enough to think of it on my own otherwise, I’m glad she did so I can share it with all of you! I hope you make a few of your own — I can’t wait to make another skirt in a print!

Materials Needed:
(affiliate links below)
1.5-2 yards 60″ wide knit fabric (hip measurements greater than 38″ will need closer to 2 yards)
2″ wide elastic (for measurement see below)
Ballpoint needle

The bottom panel will be 1″ longer than the top two to allow for a 1.5″ hem allowance.

To determine the width of each panel, take your hip measurement and add 2-4″ for ease and seam allowance, depending on how tight you want the skirt to sit on your hips. I only added 2″ to my hip measurement because my fabric was very slinky had quite a bit of stretch.  If your fabric has less stretch, you may want to add up to 4″ for ease and seam allowance. That will be the width of your top panel.

For the middle panel, add 10″ to the width of the top panel, and add another 10″ in width to the middle panel for the bottom panel (bottom panel will be 20″ wider than top panel). If the width of your bottom panel needs to be greater than 60″, just divide the width you need by two, add 1″ to that measurement for seam allowance, and cut two pieces that size. Right sides together, stitch the two pieces together along one short end of each, and treat it as one piece from here on.

Note: This skirt is VERY forgiving, so if your fabric allows to only add 8″ in width for each panel without piecing the bottom panel, or you want a more flared skirt and want to add a couple extra inches, go ahead. This is one of those few projects where you can alter the measurements a bit (excluding the length, of course!) and your skirt will still turn out great.

Here’s an example of what a person with 38″ hips and a desired length of 36″ from the bottom of the waistband would need to cut for the panels:

Directions:

A Few Notes Before You Begin:

• All Seam allowances are 1/2″.
• When sewing with knits, always use a ballpoint needle.
• I would normally use a serger when sewing knits, but wrote this tutorial with the assumption that you don’t have one. If you have a serger — use it!  It will work great.  If not, the great thing about knits is that the edges don’t fray, so finishing seam allowances isn’t necessary.
• If not using a serger, set your stitch length a bit longer than normal (2.5-3 on my machine), or use a very narrow zig zag stitch with a medium stitch length. A lot of machines also have a “stretch stitch” setting which also works great.

1. Overlap ends of elastic 1/2″ and stitch together using a zig zag stitch, forming a loop.