Country Lolita Style for Valentine's Day

Kana here.  Valentine's Day (and Chinese New Year) are just around the corner, which means new clothes are a must.  The human was trying out some of her pattern design skills, and came up with these two dresses for us.  Both dress have princess seams and more lace and ruffles than a dress really needs, even though we all know there is no such thing as too much lace.

As an early Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year present, here are some links to our previous holiday crafts: 

Valentine's Day Printables and Chinese New Year's Printables

But now onto the dresses.

Z's dress closes in the front with a row of tiny buttons (and working buttonholes).  There's tiny lace trim along the front placket and around the collar, and lace ruffle at the hem.  The back has corset-style lacing for an adjustable fit.  Four different types of lace sacrificed themselves for this dress.

My dress has a cute bib-front and a round collar, decorated with a tiny coordinating button.  The dress closes in the back with velcro, but also has the corset-lacing backing for a better fit.  The bottom hem has a lace ruffle, and lace edging besides.  But the best parts are the puff sleeves, with lace insertion in the puff and the cuff, and even more lace trimming at the hems and the sleeve seams.  This is all-out lace and girly-ness, and I love it.

The human needs to make some more adjustments to these patterns before releasing them into the wilds of Etsy, so keep tuned.

Snow Day Arts and Crafts (Free Valentine's Day printables)

Hi, this is Samantha speaking.  Or rather, writing.  Nellie and I took over a table at the local generic restaurant (in a place that looks an awful like Tyson's but serves more than just ice cream) to escape from the snow today.

We brought some Valentine's Day activity books and coloring books with us.  Each little book has 6 pages of puzzles and coloring pages, and the front and back have prints of vintage valentines.  We also brought extra coloring pages in case we finished everything else.  They're of really cute cakes and chocolates and desserts.  Our human found the images from the Dover samplers and scaled them down for us.

We also brought our new scrapbook and filled it with vintage Valentines that we found.  The scrap book was made by cutting two sheets of card stock into 8 pieces each, punching holes in them, and tying them together with a piece of ribbon.  The front and back covers have metal eyelets for a bit of decoration.

And finally, because there's nothing like hot food on a cold day, Nellie and I had bowls of ramen with pork.  (And cakes, because our restaurant serves whatever we want.)

Tomorrow's supposed to be another snow day in the Northeast, so we'd like to share our valentines with you.  

Coloring books and vintage valentines: here.

Instructions for folding the books:  here

1940s Valentine's Day Jumpers

The snow days are letting me finish a few more sewing projects before Valentine's Day.  I think this in fact may be the first time I finished all the holiday themed dresses before the actual holiday.  Samantha and Nellie are wearing jumpers made from a Dollies Dressmaker 1940s pattern by Simplicity.

Nellie's outfit consists of a blouse made from a gold glitter fabric and a jumper of mixed pink hearts and gold glitter.  The straps of the jumper have pink braid trim applied.  The blouse is plain except for a tiny satin rose at the throat.

Samantha is wearing a blouse of white glitter fabric and a jumper of red hearts on a black background with lace ruffles at the shoulders and at the hem.  The blouse has a bit of decorative ribbon trim and several rows of pintucks (unfortunately hidden by the jumper).

The only complaint I had with this pattern was the final finishing step.  At some point, I was trying to sew through 6 or 8 layers of fabric, and my sewing machine was complaining about it.  I'll have to see how to do up the back in such a way that doesn't cause that to happen.  Also, the interfacing is totally optional.  The waistbands look just fine without it.

Matching Valentine's Outfits for Nellie and Samantha

I fully confess that I love dressing Samantha and Nellie in matching or coordinating outfits.  They just look too darn cute together.

Patterns Used:  Liberty Jane peplum top and easy shorts, both from Freebie Fridays

Fabric:
Cotton prints and ribbons from my stash that I was frankly sick of hoarding.  The ribbons came from either sales at Joann's or garage sales, and as with fabric, the stash breeds faster than I can use them.

Thoughts:
The first peplum top was a disaster since I tweaked the instructions so I could use velcro because I didn't have zippers around.  The waistband ended up half an inch too small for the bodice, and I had to redo the side seams so it would fit.  No idea what happened there since the second one didn't need any tweaks at all.  My favorite part had to be the little bow with a button finish.

Sweet Valentine's Day Skirt and Peasant Blouse for Kirsten (Free blouse pattern)

Once upon a time, I stumbled onto a quilter's estate sale and bought too much fabric.  Including a bag of precut 2"x4" scraps.  This outfit was the results of some of those scraps.

Patterns Used:
Blouse:  Peasant blouse/tunic by Jenwrenne Download Here and a ribbon sash
Skirt:  18 2" x 4" strips for the main skirt, one strip 2.5" x 27" for the bottom, one strip 2.5" x 13" for the waistband

Thoughts:
Well, I finally found a use for that jumbo red ricrac that came in a ribbon/trim grab bag.  Those things are mostly great, but sometimes, man, do they have some weird things in them.  I probably should have read the directions for the blouse before putting it together, so it has an elastic neckband, but also closes in the back with velcro.