Venice Button Jumper

This little jumper was created from our Venice Chemise and Capri pattern (more details on how that was done next time).  

The dark olive corduroy and vintage-look buttons are nice for fall and school and cooler weather fun times.

  To begin, I sewed up one side seam of the skirt, placed the long skirt piece on my work surface, dumped out the buttons and started playing. 

I tried wavy lines of buttons, pointy lines of buttons, shapes and random button scatterings. 

After each new attempt I would walk away and come back as though viewing it for the first time.  (My design instructor called this "sampling".)  Sometimes I'd leave a design for a few hours.  Being able to view your design from a distance is helpful, as well, as this is generally how it will be viewed by others.  Because the buttons were just laying on the fabric and were not attached, the best I could do was kind of a side view from across the room.

I tried lots of designs before settling on the button "flowers" on the skirt.

I glued them down with a washable fabric glue and began the task of sewing each button to the jumper.

Since I was using 5 different color buttons, I chose the same 5 colors for thread.

Never matching the thread color to the button color I began stitching.  Sometimes I used two colors of thread on one button.  I stitched the buttons on differently, as well. 

Sometimes with an "x".

Or two bars.

Or one bar.

Keep in mind that buttons have two right sides.  The right side and the other right side.

The point was to be creative and have fun.

So today we re-purposed a pattern and found a use for a lot of random buttons.  Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.



Click here for Venice 

Voile Venice

You may not recognize this as our Venice pattern.  A very simple change was made to create this pink Swiss voile and white linen version of Venice.

We cut the Venice top off at the "lining" point on the pattern then added rectangles of fabric for the front and back skirt pieces.  For this size 4 we we cut the voile about 9" x 2 times the width of the front and back yokes.  The linen was cut slightly shorter.   

Stitch the side seams of the Venice yoke and the side seams of your skirt pieces.  We wanted to keep the voile overlay out of the way of the back button area so it was trimmed and narrowly hemmed at the back edge.   Finish skirt edges of the Venice top with narrow hems.  Gather the skirt and attach to bodice matching center front and side seams. 

Then just complete the top according to the instructions.  Ruched piping was used as an accent.  Love the uneven, bunchy look of it.

To construct the flowers cut 5 bias strips of voile 1" wide by 6" long and 5 bias strips of voile 3/4" wide by 6" long. 

Beginning with one 1" strip stitch, by hand, the short edges together to form a ring.  Stitch a running stitch along one long edge and pull up to form flower.  Stitch together in the center.  Repeat with 3/4" wide strip.  Lay smaller flower on top of larger flower and hand stitch together in center.  Attach 3 pink pearls to center of flower.  Repeat for the other 4 flowers.  Stitch to Venice top. 

In the next few days we'll post the white linen capris that will complete the look.

Click here to see Venice and our other patterns.