Me Made Mother's Day | Week 19 | #52wonderfilledweeks


I learned my lesson last week and am writing this week’s offering in word, where, you know it will be SAVED if something happens!  Anyhow, today is Sunday, May 13th, Mother’s Day and I finished my project for this week approximately an hour and half ago…that’s how busy this week was.  To be fair I did a cool project with vinyl earlier this week, but since I already shared pictures I didn’t think it would be fair to use that as my #52wonderfilledweeks challenge entry.  I thought I’d have so much more time this week and had visions of busting out several new tops for my self and P but things kept piling up, rehearsals, visits with friends, carpooling changes, babysitters…and then it was 11:30pm Saturday night (aka last night) and I thought *welp* I made it 18 weeks…But I got up this morning and knew I could whip up something new and that I needed and went to work.

The downside to working with a new pattern is that you have all the prep, printing, taping, tracing, cutting the pieces out AND THEN you can finally start cutting your fabric.  The other downside is that you worry over what fabric to use.  You never want to use your good, expensive, or custom fabric for a first-time pattern try.  That’s why I’m such a sucker for deals.  For this project I decided at the last minute to use these white stars on black, double brushed poly from Knitpop.  I wanted to make something “new” but not so new it would take all day, so I chose the Pumpkin Spice Dolman from Patterns for Pirates.  I have actually made this pattern before but they updated it and made a few adjustments since then, so I thought it was a good time to check it out.  I really like the dolman style sleeves (bat wing) on my body type.  The Sweet Tee Pattern from P4P and the Mama Claire from M4M are also dolman sleeves.  I had to re-download the pattern from my account, print the pages, tape them and then trace the size and options I wanted.  That took the longest amount of time, about an hour or more between helping with the kids.  Since I’ve made the pattern before I did make a few changes as I went.  I opted to make it short sleeved but instead of cutting at the short sleeve marking I cut at the long sleeve mark (where you’d normally attach the lower sleeve).  I didn’t want a gaping whole at my arm.  I think the next one I try I will use the short sleeve marking and see how it goes. I also didn’t use the printed measurements for the neck band or waist band.  My experience has been the neckbands are too tight and pull funny, so I opted to use the 85% + 1 inch for my band width (across the stretch).  Since I used the longer sleeve marking I used the same formula for those bands as well.  For the waistband I made it a touch snugger.  All in all I think the shirt turned out pretty cute.  As with anything I will make a few more until I get it exactly the way I like it.  The actual sewing of this shirt took about 20 minutes! Can you believe it?  I am excited to have another pattern that is quick and makes me feel good, in my arsenal. I've included a few tips this week as well, see the pictures below!

Printing the updated pattern.


Traced and cut out.

Pro tip here (HA) make your life easy and cut out the paper pieces
with a rotary cutter just like you do when cutting your fabric.
Just be sure to mark your blade so you don't mix your paper and fabric blades.

I always print all the sleeve and length options and just fold under what I don't need.
In the case of the curved hem I may have to cut off part of the hemmed pattern but I mark it and just
tape it back on when I need it.  No need to print the pattern over and over again if you're careful.

Here you can see the shirt sleeve.  The drawn line is the short sleeve mark.
Where I have it cut is the long sleeve line, or where you'd normally attach the lower sleeve option.

I couldn't decide, start bands or solid black.  I asked Facebook and the vote was unanimously black!

Measuring the sleeve opening for the bands.

Getting ready to tuck my serger tails.  My Mom introduced me to these needles (easy thread) and they are amazing!!

There is a small "V" where you can simply slide the threads thru and down, no threading necessary.


Tucking my tails back thru the seam allowance for a nice, clean finish.

All done! So comfy.  I love the fit overall!

Me with my oldest baby💜💜💜<3>


If you didn't see the the #52wonderfilledweeksBONUS earlier this week here it is! All the little girls in P's preschool class have the same three water bottles.  You can really tell which parents shop at Costco 😂 P's bottles have been taken home by other kids several times but we didn't want to put her name on the bottles for security reasons. Then hubs reminded me that I could add custom vinyl to mark her bottles.  I love how they turned out! 

I opted to make each one different and was able to use some of the vinyl that came with my machine.

I mean how cute?

I think I'll make this one into a shirt too!




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