Today is our last day on the train from Chicago to San Francisco! We are on the California Zephyr, which is an Amtrak superliner. You can see what the train is like and what we’ve been up to for the last three days in on my Instagram feed (@madebyrae). We’ll be flying back at the end of the week after we spend a few days in the Bay Area. Fun, fun!!

I’ll be back on the blog soon with some fun sewing projects!

Happy Monday, everyone!!! It’s Elliot’s birthday today! Want to see the cake I made him?

He loves Guido. We had a fun birthday party yesterday with family: lots of presents and food and attention, so it was a bit hard for him to go to school today.

I’m currently knee-deep in pant pattern production, so I don’t have much to show for myself, sewing-wise (except for piles of pant samples. Do you want to see those? Might be kind of boring…), but last night I found five minutes to read some blogs, and I thought I’d share a few of my favorites with you. I think these will make you smile!

Matsutake – Katie is a DIY queen who always, ALWAYS…

A couple of weeks ago I made a guest appearance on the Pink Castle blog for their Spring Cleaning series with a post about how I organize all my patterns, especially the printouts and tracings that can really pile up in my sewing room over time.

I also talk about tracing patterns with Swedish tracing paper, something that I highly recommend. Head over to the Pink Castle blog to read all about it!

Um, so maybe you didn’t even notice, but I totally flaked on the final KCWC sew-off challenge, which was supposed to be a catalog-inspired garment. Elliot got sick and was home from school Friday afternoon (poor baby, he looked so pathetic on the nurse’s cot when I picked him up with his rosy fever cheeks), and then we were out of town this past weekend. You know how it goes: I thought maybe Friday afternoon I’d be able to squeeze some sewing in, and then maybe Saturday morning before we left…and it just didn’t happen. I was also double-dog wiped out from trying to keep up with the sew-off all week long. Thursday night I emailed Kristin and hinted that I wouldn’t…

The other day on Instagram, Kristin posted a picture of her stacks of fabric and asked for help. She had a ton of ideas for Kid’s Clothes Week Challenge but wasn’t feeling really excited about anything. I was in the same boat. So I told her I’d email her a list of all of the KCWC ideas I had, she could pick her favorite ones, and then we’d both make them and compare once they were finished. She whittled down the list for me, and now we have a plan. YAY!!! Extra motivation for us both to help us get it done. Super fun.

Want to know what she picked? Maybe you want to play along too? Here’s our…

School is almost back in session (or already back in session…waaaah!) and cooler weather is just around the corner.

That means it’s time to sew some FLASHBACK SKINNY TEES! Let’s have a sale!

Here’s how to use the coupon code:
1) Add both Flashback Skinny Tee sewing pattern pdfs to your shopping cart

$10 – Flashback Skinny Tee

$10 – Flashback Big Kids

2) Enter the Discount Code FLASHBACK to get your $5 discount

3) Check out!

More Good Stuff…

Want more info on the Flashback Skinny Tee sewing patterns?
Flashback Skinny Tee (sizes 12 mo -5T)
Flashback Skinny Tee for Big Kids (sizes 6-14)

If you’re new to sewing with knits, don’t forget to go…

I’ve had a few people ask how I did my hair in the maxi dress post:

I used the Simple Gibson Tuck tutorial from Sara Lynn Paige. As you can see by comparing the picture above to the picture below, I have really thick hair so on most people I think it will look more like the picture below unless you use the roller which is optional in the tutorial.

Click on the image below to go over to SLP for the tutorial:

image by Sara Lynn Paige, used with permission

Sara is a fantastic professional photographer. Her website is full of really amazing photography and is really fun…

First. Am so excited about my fabric samples that came from Spoonflower yesterday. This little foxy print is one I designed in Inkscape last fall in just the blue and orange. It took a $1 swatch sale at Spoonflower last month for me to try out a few other colors. Still like the blue best, but the pink/orange combo is a close second. More on these later, but if, perchance, you need some foxy fabric of your own, these are now available in my Spoonflower shop. What do you think??

Second. I finally saw Moonrise Kingdom this past weekend with Mr Rae (it finally made it to our indie theater here in Ann Arbor) and I…

For those of you who are local Michiganders (yes that really is a word) and interested in the women’s garment courses I’ll be teaching/assisting with this summer, we’ve got four courses lined up at Pot and Box in Ann Arbor Michigan. Here’s the first one, later this month:

Here’s the deets:

Trace & Make T-shirt Workshop

“Bring a great-fitting t-shirt you already own, and in one evening we will show you how to trace it and make a new one out of knit fabric!! Our awesome instructors Rae (lead instructor for this course) and Karen will show you how. You’ll hone your knit-sewing skills and learn a little something about patternmaking, too!”

Cost: $50 + $10 supply fee…