Selfish Sewing Week Spring 2015 is Here!

I have been looking forward to this year's Spring Selfish Sewing Week (there's an awesome giveaway happening at this link) ever since last fall, when I first participated.  Then I got even MORE excited about it when Rachael from Imagine Gnats, who organizes the whole event, contacted me to see if I would be a featured stitcher!  Are you kidding?  I was thrilled!  My featured post will be on Imagine Gnats on Sunday, March 15th, but I thought I'd share some of the other selfish projects I have finished in the meantime.

First up is this Out and About Dress from Sew Caroline's pattern.  I bought the pattern a while back when it was a Friday Fiver (such a screamin' deal!) but hadn't made it yet--Selfish Sewing Week gave me the perfect excuse!

I had been holding on to this double-sided thick knit fabric that I found for 100 yen/meter in Nippori, Tokyo's Fabric Town, and knew this was the perfect project for it.  I used the darker side of the fabric (which has a ponte-type feel but I have no idea as to the fabric content since I STILL can't read Japanese) for the body of the dress, and the lighter side for the binding and cuffs.

I loved the design on the lighter side, but thought it was too close to my skin tone to work for the whole dress.  I love the color--it's a soft, peachy orange that is pretty flattering, although I did already make myself another knit dress in almost exactly this color!  Oh well, that one is for summer, and this one is more fall/spring with the thickness of the knit and longer sleeves.

I made a size Medium based on my measurements, and since this fabric is thick and not tooooo stretchy I didn't want to risk sizing down, but I would say that I will probably make a small next time.  It works for this one, although I did end up shortening the bodice just a tad, but it's not so big that I feel like I need to make other alterations.

I love the big deep pockets!

The back, of course

It goes perfectly with my double-gauze infinity scarf that I made from this cute Japanese maneki-neko (lucky cat) print!

I wore this outfit to my first craft show since moving to Japan--the cat is supposed to bring in customers, money and good fortune :).  You see them in lots of shops here, welcoming the customers in!

I would say my little maneki-neko did the trick--I sold almost 3/4s of my merchandise, and picked up several custom orders as well!  You can see the products I have available on my Sewbaby Crafts page (I just added that tab on this blog to keep things simple).