Button-up in blue

Tweet

Here's a dress I finished up actually while we were at the old house but hadn't had a chance to grab pics of until now.

The pattern is Simplicity 6294 and the fabric is some kind of polyester slippery fabric from the Fabric Cave. I've had it sitting in my stash for a while but was never quite sure what to make with it. In fact, I think this is my first dress made from a plain coloured piece of fabric!

The pattern was for a 36 inch bust so I spent some time learning how to grade the pattern down using this handy tutorial from A Fashionable Stitch. I didn't both with the skirt pieces though, I was more worried about the top fitting. After finishing the pattern grading a made a quick muslin and ended up having to adjust the armholes (as always!). You may also notice the darts are slightly misaligned. whoops!

The buttons are just come left over ones I think I got from Reverse Garbage for 50cents a few months back.
I actually really like this dress and it's ended up on high rotation in my wardrobe. Only downside is it definitely needs a belt with it because the waist seam is a tiny bit wonky. The black belt (of the dress kind not the hiiiii-ya karate chop kind)  is the only one I own, but I think it would work quite well with brown, what do you think?

A few weeks back I also had a bunch of friends up from Canberra for the weekend and we had a bit of fun taking jumping photos off the back step. Isn't it funny how differently everyone jumps?!

The 20-something dress

Tweet

Well well well looking grown-up. I call this the 20-somethings dress, for some reason whenever I wear it I feel just that bit more grown-up. Apologies for the poor pictures but there's only so much photography a boy can be roped into doing. I need to invest in one of those stand things that you can tie to trees and stuff.

Guess what pattern this is??

Not sure what that creepy smiley balloon's about...

Guessed yet? It's the Sewaholic Renfrew! I've had this wool knit in my stash for a while now and was meaning to make a general Renfrew with it. But as usual I got excited and couldn't really see myself wearing a top on it's own so decided to lengthen it into a dress. I didn't actually re-trace the pattern I just keep drawing when I traced the fabric till I hit about the right length. This wool is a bit thin so it could probably use something underneath it, which I will look into. Just a petticoat or something.

The Refrew pattern was SO easy to make. Just whoosh, whoosh, whoosh and volia! There's a top (/dress)!.

I'll definitely be making more of these, probably a few t-shirts come summer, and perhaps using this as a base for some more t-shirt dresses.

The lovely cowl neckline.

Oh, also, loving the neckline on this. Simple but elegant. I've already got lots of comment on this dress from strangers (who have no idea I sew!). I paired it with some bright red tights the other day and it looked great. I think definitely the kind of dress to match with bright tights.

What's that over there?

Me Made May Day 1

Tweet

Learning how to take photos by myself. look, no head!

Me Made May is here! I woke up this morning and had a small panic that I really needed to wash my clothes in order to have something to wear. But I pulled out old faithful, my Colette Pastille. I LOVE this dress and cannot wear it enough. Everytime I wear it I think about how I must make another version of this, I can see it becoming a real wardrobe staple. You'll most likely be seeing this one a few times in May.

On the walk to work.

The world's slowest Indian dress

Tweet

Ta-duh!


 I finally  finished my Indian delight dress. I bought this hand printed block fabric in Jaipur when we were travelling around in January. I really wanted to make something I would wear often but that was slightly special.

 

 

The vital stats

Pattern:New Look 6824
Fabric: Indian block printed
Cost: about $10?
Time to make: a few epsiodes of This American Life. Including that Mike Daisey one and The Retraction. Have you listened? If not, I highly reccomend it!

Hanging out the washing in my fancy dress

To be honest, I'm not as happy with this dress as I would have liked to be. I had some major issues with the lining and just find this style/fabric colour doesn't suit me as much as I would like. The fabric was quite thin so I decided to line the whole thing. It was the first time I'd lined a skirt section of a dress and for some reason thought that I didn't need to keep the tucks on the lining (what was I thinking?!). So I eliminated the tucks and just sewed it straight up. Rooky mistake. Once finishing I'd finished it all I discovered it didn't go over my hips. Uh oh.


So I cut a massive line up the right and left sides and sewed in an extra section of fabric. Dodgy hey?
But it all worked out alright in the end.

This fabric has this gorgeous border print that I really wanted to be a feature on whatever dress I made. I managed to figure out how to place it so it ended up right on the edge of the cap sleeves. I am quite chuffed how these turned out.

This should get a bit of rotation during Me Made May, I need to maximise every handmade item I've got at the moment!

Ps. Sorry about the pictures in this post, blogger seems to be mucking up on me and having difficulty fixing it up tonight.

On my sewing table: an Indian suprise

Tweet

Time seems to have flown by recently and it seems like only yesterday I started my latest project. When we were in India I saw some of the most beautiful fabrics. In a fabric store in Jaipur my heart almost stopped numerous times from pure excitement and joy.

I bought this lovely block stamped fabric in above mentioned fabric store in Jaipur and couldn't decide what to make with it to begin with. So it sat in my cupboard for a while until I finally pulled out a dress pattern that I thought just might work. A dress pattern with princess seams!

I was hoping these princess seams might work better on my smaller bust and so far so good.

So some quick update pictures:

 

I discovered our stone coasters from India work a treat as pattern weights!

 

The fabric had this beautiful border on the edge which I plan to make into a feature on the dress. Stay tuned!

The top half - loving those princess seams.

On another note, does anyone know any online sites for making a moodboard?

Hope you all have a happy Easter and enjoy the break!

The pretty Pastille

Tweet

Told you I'd be back!

I convinced Benj to come down to the park with me this afternoon to snap a few pictures of the Colette Pastille I finished recently. Though he's no photographer, I think he did pretty damn well and will be roping him in for all my future photo shoots.

The vital stats (al la Sew Weekly)

Pattern: Colette Pastille from the Colette Sewing Handbook
Fabric:A blue cotton-ish thing from The Fabric Cave
Cost: About $5 for the fabic + an invisible zipper
Time to make: A looong time. I started cutting out the pattern for this darling before Christmas and managed to make the muslin, adjust and cut out the nice fabric pieces before we went away. But once we got back from India I got so carried away with work and what not that I only picked it up again about 2 weeks ago.

This was the first dress I've ever made a muslin for and to be honest, it paid off. While it took me longer than usual it gave me the chance to fit the bodice perfectly. This is the area I most struggle with as my sizing is pretty much straight up and down, so while I may be a 0 in the top, I'm a 6 in the waist and then back to a 2 in the hips!


I ended up taking some length off the bodice, slightly adjusting the darts and bringing in the hips. It would perhaps do with a bit more work in the top but I'm quite pleased how it turned out. I've already worn it to work twice and both times have received compliments which I'm always thrilled with. Better than my first few creations which caused the comment 'Oh, did you make that?'.

The pleats down the bottom, although you can't really notice them with this fabric, are a really lovely touch. I took the time to thread trace all the lines as the book recommends. In the end though they didn't match up for me so I ended up just measuring with my tape measure and pinning as I went. I'll probably try do something in between next time, the thread tracing took just that little bit long for my liking.


I'm still learning how to stand for photos, really not very used to it at all!

The fabric is from this wonderful place called The Fabric Cave. As it's open during the week I usually don't make it out there but once a month it's open on a Sunday so I duck out and pick us as much fabric as I can carry in my hands.