Twirls and Trees

So I've been busy with orders and testing lately, but I wanted to update you all on both...

First, I wanted to show of this cute firefighter set... cause I love it, and I totally love these two patterns together...  The Hangout Hoodie from Peek-a-Boo and the Chapsters from PetitBebe.  There are just so many great ways to customize both.

I even included my mini shop logo on it!  Have I shown you guys my logo?  I love it... I had originally paid a gal to do it, and we were just in different universes when it came to design concepts, and the communication was really shoddy, and all in all I was just really unhappy with the drafts, so I tried to be fair about it and asked for 1/2 my money back and let her keep half for the work she had tried to do.  Anyways, I decided then to make my own... and here it is...

 And moving on...I've been busy testing some nifty patterns, yes I said nifty... Only one is out so far, so I wanted to share it because over in her Candy Castle Patterns Group there is a mini-sew along this week!

The dress is the Peppermint Swirl Dress - available now on her new website http://www.candycastlepatterns.com/

Testing this dress was so much fun, it really is sort of neat how the skirt comes together... but first... here was my fabric:

It's hard to tell, but they all sparkle.  Now, I tend to rush into patterns, so PLEASE take time to read how to lay the fabric to cut out the flounces, why you ask?  Because you need 7 of each color (if you do 2 colors), but you cannot cut the fabric if its folded... only stacked...  So what I ended up doing was tracing the pattern pieces onto one piece and then cutting out the fabric into the same size area (FQ for size 5) and stacking 4 at a time to cut).

So here are some progress shots....

This was the night before Thanksgiving... So I was baking and sewing... Connor stuck his finger into the crust :( 

HOW COOL IS THIS?  sorry, but it totally floored me to see it once I got done connecting the pieces.  Now, about 1/2 the testers just serged the pieces together, but I'm sort of skittish with my serger still, so I sewed then serged all my seams, and it really didn't seam to add too much time. 

And this is where being a tester gets sad... I was sitting on the couch, watching TV and using my handy dandy glue pen (instead of pins) to put my bias on, and this is the moment where I realized that the original estimate for how much to get was short... I was like 17" short and I had none of the same pink to make any... which did two things... made me very sad because I wanted to finish AND sent me to Joann's the next day... my first time ever Black Friday shopping...and I picked up a nice little stash, waited one person to get it cut, and was out of the store in an hour.  

So back to my dress.... Ta-Da!

The longest part of the dress was cutting out the flounces, I think.  They took at least 4 Netflix episodes of HIMYM.  After that, you'll be amazed at how fast it all comes together.  I think if I had the ability to sew uninterrupted, it would have been maybe 3ish hours?

The best part of this dress? Like the absolute best part?

 THE TWIRL!!!!

We also took some time last week to go to the city tree lighting!  Where they did this thing... that I will not make jokes about, but will say the name and if you snicker than you are clearly as mature as me... it was called the "Ball Drop" and they advertised it as they would drop 300 balls into a parking lot and everyone could go rush and get their three dropped balls...  Ok, so the balls were pingpong balls dropped from this firetruck:

And they had discounts and free prizes for the local shops on them.  The kids got balsa gliders that lasted all of 10 minutes (go figure, right?), and we hung around for the tree lighting... to which Santa arrived on a motorcycle drawn sleigh where the riders all had antlers on their helmets... seriously, how cool is that?  The kids were excited to see HoHo (as my friend's little one calls him) and we almost got some decent tree pics...Sigh

Anyways, grab your Peppermint Swirl pattern and run on over to the group for the mini-sew along -- it'll be fun AND if it's cold where you are .... the sleeves are all interchangeable with the Candy Castle Princess Dress, which you should totally get too, because its gorgeous!