Swimwear

We went to a water park recently and I was impressed with the swimwear... some people look carefree in their swimsuits but many looked uncomfortable and just wished they could be a little more covered up!  I saw just ONE girl in a homemade, modest swimsuit.  It looked just like a dress, but with short skirt and short sleeves, made of swimsuit lycra.  She was so comfortable and pretty! 
I decided my daughters must have this.
Bought four yards of nice textured lycra and started cutting.  I have this Kwik-Sew book with a whole bunch of patterns in it, patterns for everything and the book was only like $15.  I used the leotard pattern with short sleeves and just added a skirt, and the pattern for short shorts. 
It came out SO WELL!
I used the serger a lot which made it super easy.  The serger's differential feed means you can set it so the front feed dogs go a little faster than the rear, so the fabric's slightly gathered instead of stretched, and the seams come out perfectly smooth.  It's tough to make knit fabric come out smooth with a regular machine! 

REALLY talented is when you can hold it up and take the picture at the same time  :-)
I actually tried it on myself and it fits me too, just a little tight!  I'm going to get more fabric and make myself one too.  I'm not so important because I'm the one who's in charge of the group, not one of the swimmers...

The dress was too tight at first, because I cut it as for a swimsuit.  You don't want a dress to dip in at the middle back like a swimsuit does.  So I had to slice it open and add a triangle... now it looks just fine.  That's why I bought a floral pattern! 

All done...

Matching shorts. 

Andrea refuses to have her face in the picture  :-) 

Triune Biblical University site up

My latest project, Triune Biblical University  is online.  Check it out! 

the Pleated Dress Project

Big idea I just had to try  :-)
What if I evenly pleat across a width of fabric, sew along the pleats partway down, then cut a dartless bodice shape out of the pleated middle section and let the skirt form naturally?
Here's how it came out.

My calculations of how much to pleat in order to gather the full width into the width of the bodice pattern I was using. 

 

String Quilt Top Done...?

I thought it would be a lap quilt or something.  My husband said he liked it and was it going to be for the bed?  I thought he would hate it!  He's the tidy, organized type. 
Well it would look pretty cool on the bed, wouldn't it!  Just needs to be a little larger  :-) 

the free Round Ripple pattern written out

To my crochet friends-- would you try this pattern and see if I've written it out right? I'm not used to following written patterns (prefer diagram form) OR writing them! So I'm not too sure about this. But I got a request from someone who wanted to make one and can't follow my graph :-)
Would you let me know if you find a mistake? 

(EDIT-- I changed this post on July 8th, so that there's only one row of any that has a multiple of three!  In other words, one row of 3dc, two rows of 4dc, two rows of 5dc, one row of 6dc, etc) 

Chain 5, join w sl st to form a ring
1. ch3, 11dc in ring for a total of 12dc
2. ch3, 1dc in same space, 2dc in each dc around, for a total of 24dc
3. ch5, 1dc in top of previous ch3, *skip 1 dc, in next dc 1dc, ch2, 1dc, repeat around and join
4. sl st to next ch2 space, in space *2dc, ch2, 2dc repeat around for total of 12 groups
5. sl st over one dc, ch 3, *in ch2 space make 2dc ch2 2dc, in next dc make 1 dc, skip 2dc, in next dc make 1dc, repeat from * around, join with sl st
6. sl st over next dc, ch 3, dc in next dc, *in ch2 space make 1dc ch2 1dc, make 1dc in each of next 2dc, skip 2dc, 1dc in each of next 2dc, repeat from * around, join with sl st

etc... increasing one dc every other round, or if that's too many for your gauge, then every time the number of dc is a multiple of three, only do one round of that... hope that makes sense, it's what I had to do to keep my project from curling up :-)
Here's the page with the diagram... http://janelwashere.com/crafts/round_ripple.html

I started a thread crochet doily version...

Edit--I already think it should have only ONE round with 3dc!  It was starting to curl up.  I've ripped out this much progress, and I'm doing 4dc immediately after the 3dc row.  I'll post again if it works  :-)

(July 8th)  YES and here's the new version!  It's coming out perfectly now!

Spiral dress 2

http://janelwashere.com/crafts/spirals.html

I made this using the Spiral Dress top, and the skirt pieces of Spiral Skirt 1. So finally Skirt 1 gets tested! It came out pretty much as I expected... which isn't really what I was going for.

 I made it from a floral because that's pretty much all I want to wear! Call me a church lady, it's okay...

Camera in left hand  :-) 

THERE, just so you can see the lowest limits to which I will sink... there is that dress turned inside out with the seams highlighted so you can see them!!  
Because I know, otherwise they'd be quite invisible  :-) 

Quilt idea

Wandered into quilt shop yesterday and saw this pattern on the wall. Isn't it clever! And all strips, no diagonals to cut.