Ethereal Layered Skirt

This skirt makes me want to dress up like a fairy princess!

front of skirt

I made the skirt in two layers, one layer of lilac/lavender prom dress satin beneath a layer of a shimmery translucent white fabric. It gives the skirt an ethereal look and adds dimension.

back of skirt

In the back of the skirt I used the eye sides of hook-and-eye tape to create a lace-up corset back. The lilac fabric underneath covers the small gap.

I bet this would be cute bustled too!

styled as a dress!

Look, you can also wear it as a dress! It's totally cute and ends just below the knees. I think it needs a different belt, maybe a darker purple? Alas, I don't own many belts...

French seam on translucent fabric, seen from the outside

I found that french seaming worked very well with the see-through material of the skirt since all of the hems would be visible even from the outside.

How to Sew French Seams
French seams work best when the seams are straight (not curved). When you cut your fabric, leave 3/4" - 1" seam allowance. 

First sew the seam with the WRONG sides of the fabric together, sewing 1/4" or less from the edge of the fabric. 

Press the seam allowance to one side of the seam, then fold the fabric so the RIGHT sides are together, press the seam so you have a nice folded edge along the seam with the seam allowance inside. 

Now sew the seam with the RIGHT sides together, greater than 1/4" from the edge (the remainder of your seam allowance), encasing the raw edges inside a thin tube.

French Food - Meat Stuffed Veggies

I came across an old cook book Tante Marie's French Kitchen.  Two dishes under the Vegetable section looked rather interesting.  Stuffed Cabbage and Stuffed Onion.  Both were stuffed with ground meat (ground beef and sausage meat). 

The Onion was easier to hallow out than I expected, once I got in, I was able to use a spoon to scrap the inards out.  Using the onion scraps to make a sauce, the onion was baked.  My the sauce was my favorite finding out of the whole book.

The stuffed cabbage had funny (but clever) directions to basically make sure you also stuff the meat between the leaves inside the cabbage.  In this case it the cabbage is braised for house in a flavored water.  The water turns into the popular Hong Kong cafe Luo Song Tong 羅宋湯.  I ended up enjoying the soup more than the main dish.

Refinished French Provincial Nightstand

I purchased this nightstand from a Craigslister for $25. It was old and a little worse for wear, but I knew it would make a great project! I found a lot of pictures of similar French Provincial-style furniture which had been painted, remember this Inspiration blog post?

Can you believe I didn't take a before picture? Oh well. This thing used to painted a yellowish white with gold detailing, very similar to this desk, and the hardware was unpainted.

Here are the products I used. "High Hiding Primer" - two coats, much sanding. Olympic Satin paint "Rise and Shine" color - four coats. Topped it off with one coat of MINIWAX Wipe-On Poly. The can says you should use two coats, by one coat seemed to cover well. I would have added a second coat if I'd missed any spots. The Krylon white (gloss) spray paint was used on the hardware, in several coats.

I love how it turned out, so cheery and pretty!

I even lined the drawers with a pretty black and white floral contact paper. Adorable! Now the dresser is in my guest room, which I haven't done much with yet. But a bold pop of color is always a great start!

Now that I think of it... this nightstand could also be really cute in the livingroom/dining area to hold table linens or games.

Damask Drawstring Bag

Drawstring bags are great to have around if you need somewhere to stash money when you are in the middle of dancing.

Just slip it around your wrist, stuff the money in, tug it closed, and keep on groovin' to the beat!

My sister asked me to make her a "money bag" that she could use for the money dance at her wedding. Knowing she likes the nouveau-French style and had pink as a wedding color, I came up with this style. I found the cute damask fabric in the remnants bin at JoAnn's, and I already had the wide grosgrain ribbon on hand.

To make the bag, I cut out the circle bottom then measured the circumference and used that measurement as the length of the rectangle that comprised the rest of the bag (taking into account seam allowances of course). This is a very simple project that really doesn't require a pattern. I sewed it by hand because my sewing machine wasn't working at the time.