Blood Sweat and Tears!

How come I’ve already made Simplicity 2209 yet this version was a right pain in the a**e?  I thought things were supposed to get easier!  The original version gave me a major headache on the neckline due to the changes I made so I made a new bodice muslin, sewed it up and it all looked ok so I cut out the fabric, sewed it up and it looked bloody awful!  The darts, which on 2209 are a bit unusual, just wouldn’t work, I had to take it apart about 10 times, I tweaked, snipped, unpicked and eventually I got there.  I also took out the pleats from the front skirt but left the back ones.   This meant I had to take the width in slightly to take up the slack.  And here it the finished article……

Instead of the facings on the neckline (I HATE facings, don’t get them, yuk yuk yuk!) I used a gingham bias binding. 

(Cheesy grin!)

(Still a little excess in the back but by now I’m past caring!!!!)

I originally wanted to make a pink linen version of this but couldn’t find the right shade of pink but when I saw this poly/cotton I thought I would give it a try.  Given the stress I had with this dress I’m glad I didn’t use a linen as I put it away for a couple of weeks just so I didn’t have to look at it, if it was linen I would have felt guilty about it!  I’m glad I used the bias binding as I think it breaks up the impact of the dress a bit I was a little afraid it would be a bit too Barbara Cartland!

So that was Mays dress onto June, after pondering if I was too old for gingham I decided to go for it, so next up is Simplicity 2588 in navy gingham.

I’ve been making a muslin today and I’ve never sewn a princess bodice before so its very interesting.  So far after a number of tweaks I’m liking it!  Next onto the skirt………

Sewaholic Cambie Dress

Ok so its May already and you might have noticed that I didn’t show you a dress for April.  Well I was actually doing a top-secret, can’t-tell-anyone pattern test for Tasia at Sewaholic.  That's right when Tasia put out the call that she needed pattern testers I jumped at the chance and pinged back an email straight away.  Then I panicked, what if I wasn’t able to do it, what if I ran out of time, what if the dress wasn’t something I would like or normally buy?  Well I needn’t have worried on that score, this is Tasia we’re talking about.  When I got the pictures of the dress I literally swooned, I was so happy because it was perfect, I am of course talking about the Cambie Dress. 

After consultation with the family I decided to make version B, the full skirted dress.  I made a muslin of the bodice which was pretty much perfect straight away, the only change I’ve made is to shorten the sleeve caps, which is easy enough to do on the fly.  Let me warn you, this is a very full skirted dress with a full lining so there was a LOT of fabric to wrangle.  I went to Ditto fabrics and found a lovely red cotton/silk mixture.

source

I lined it with cotton, in hindsight it might have been better to line the skirt with a silkier fabric as I think there’s too much friction between the layers. 

So ta da!

 

what a dreadful picture!

Its such a lovely dress and I love the shoulder detail, as Tasia said not quite a sleeve but not quite sleeveless.  The pockets have been loved forwards slightly which I was a little bemused by but they actually end up being perfectly placed for your hands!  With Sewaholic patterns there are lots of little details that you don’t find in ‘Big 4’ patterns and they just make the whole thing perfect! 

Now I need your advice, after the last request for advice I went out and bought navy gingham fabric and now I’m pondering making an a-line skirt version of Cambie.  What do you think?  I’m also in the middle of another Simplicity 2209 but for some reason having problems which are slowing me down, the original plan was to make a gingham version as well but now having these issues and thinking about Cambie again I’m considering my options.  So please blogosphere tell me what to do…..

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March Dress

I finished Simplicity 2209 this week, although I made a muslin to test the pattern I made a few rookie mistakes.  I made some adjustments to the bodice front to pinch in some excess fabric.

As you can see it altered the sewing line of the neckline, so I smoothed out the sewline, all seemed good EXCEPT I forgot about symmetry, the adjustment on the left was different to the adjustment on the right so the curve of the neckline was quite obviously not symmetrical! 

(can you see the left side of the neck line is very different to the right?! Doh!)

Once I realised my error I had to work out what to do, I spent ages trying to bring the sewing lines closer to symmetrical on the muslin ready to cut out a new bodice BUT I was a very small amount of fabric short!  Bugger!  So I spent ages fine tuning the bodice, it took about 3 or 4 adjustments each only shaving millimetres off but eventually I ended up with something I don’t hate!

Sorry for the rubbish photos!

I still want to take a little extra in on the waistline but other than that I like it!  I had a few compliments from friends when I wore this as well, always a good sign.  I need to make sure the neckline on the muslin is sorted out otherwise I’ll have the same problem again as I think I would like to make this dress again.  I fancy it in a solid linen probably a raspberry colour if I can find some. 

So that's Marchs dress done, dusted and worn!  And guess what I’ve already started on Aprils dress as I have a deadline unfortunately its all a bit Secret Squirrel so I can’t talk about it  but I might be able to drop a few hints if you’re interested!

February Dress

So Miss C has been nagging asked me to make her a dress for ages, the clients requirements were :- twirly dress and had a bow.  Off we went to the fabric shop and she chose this……

Wow what bright colours and the combination!  You can’t tell so much on the picture but the spots kinda dance before your eyes!  Anyhoo twirly skirt sounded like a circle skirt to me so using Pattys worksheet and my husbands brain I tried working out the size skirt I could make.  We quickly realised that it was limited by the width of the fabric (as long as you didn’t want to piece the skirt) so that sorted that out but as I wanted to make a dress I would need to make a bodice first, measure that and use those measurements rather than her waist measurements.  Miss C now has a hand-made-hand-me-down from Miss M so I decided to use that pattern as the bodice shape.  As its more of an empire line I extended the bodice by 1” and made it up, it was lined inside with white cotton, I topstitched all the edges to stop the lining rolling (anyone have any idea how you can understitch such as small bodice?  I couldn’t even think about getting it under the machine) what I should have done as well was to trim the lining so that it can’t roll forward, next time….
Once the bodice was completed I needed to work out the waist measurement, taking into account the seam allowance for the zip.  I had decided it do a hand-picked zip mainly because I would have a waist seam, neckline and ribbon to match up and I didn’t feel machine stitching it would make that easy.  I also wanted to try it out, why not use more couture style techniques on kids clothes!  So I measured the waist and this time hubby wasn’t around (some one has to earn the money to buy fabric round here!) so I worked it out myself!  Well you can guess what's coming next can’t you……  I cut out the donut shape, cut the back seam to put the zip in, and pinned the bodice to the skirt, by the time I got the end of the bodice I had about 3” of extra fabric!!!  I have no idea how that happened but I just hacked it off and pretended it never happened!  I guessed in a full circle skirt it was wasn’t going to show……..

and it didn’t!

How cute it that?  Its a perfect twirly dress for a little girl.  I haven’t hemmed it yet as I’m waiting for it to drop (although tbh on such a small skirt I don’t think it will be a problem but better to be same than sorry).  Miss C tried it on and she loved it, a full circle is certainly very twirly.  I’ll get an action shot of her soon.

The back matches perfectly and I even matched the thread for the ribbon! 

Inside is neat, all edges are either contained in the bodice or overlocked.  I’ve added my label as this is something I’m proud of!  My only concern is the ribbon as its satin rather than grosgrain, (they didn’t have the right colour) I just hope it holds up to washing and wearing….
Now I know that you are thinking, “Hang on Louise, aren’t you supposed to be making a dress for yourself?”  Well you’re right and I did try…. I started making

but all I seem to have made was a big pink sack!  I added some width to the hip and now its very deformed, that same problem I had on Januarys Dress so I think I need to look a bit more carefully at what I’m doing.  So I’m going to count this as February Dress as maybe I’ll revisit  2406 later in the year. 
I’ve signed up for Susan Khalje Couture Dress Course on Craftsy so maybe that will next months dress although now I’ve made a circle dress I think I want one for myself and add it to Burda 101 bodice.

January dress

Well I made it by the skin of my teeth.  I set myself a challenge to make a dress each month this year and the very first month I’m almost late!  What with decorating, visits away and procrastination I didn’t even buy any fabric until 25th Jan!  My plan was to use New Look 6802 but I’m not sure that's what I made!  I did a FBA, I also added some width to the hips and length as I wasn’t sure how long I wanted it.  So I’d spend ages fiddling with bits of paper, I also had to take a wide pinch of paper out of the back neckline otherwise I get a very bad gape at the back neck.  I don’t actually know what this is called or what it is supposed to resolve but it seems to work….  Once I got the fabric, I realised I hadn’t bought enough, I first bought  2m and then went back and bought another 1m although half would have probably been enough.  I started cutting it out and that when everything started to go wrong.  I wasn’t convinced about the darts I’d created in the paper pattern but sewed one up first of all.  Once I had it looked completely wrong and in the wrong place so I took it out, then a number of mistakes were made on my part which I had to fiddle to resolve, I won’t go into details but pieces ended up upside down and back-to-front!  Anyway I ended up with a dress AKA a sack!  I did need the darts so I did a fudge which I made a design feature which was to add a fold at the waistline which affected the bodice and skirt part.  It somehow works. 

I stitched in the ditch to get this looking ok.

 

The next thing I had to change was the fit, although the measurements and tissue fitting all showed it needed to add some width to the waist/hip it was too big, so I pinned and shaved a bit off especially the waist. 

Now it was beginning to look like an ok dress, sleeves next, turns out the long sleeves are very long!  I thought they would be a 3/4 length and in my haste I didn’t even try to tissue fit them or anything.  So now I had a dress for an orang-utan!  I tried a couple of methods to resolve this and eventually sewed a line with elastic in the bobbin, shirring the fabric shorter.

So what did I end up with I hear you ask? Well………

……something that's not too bad! And hopefully doesn’t make me look pregnant!

(P.S. I’ll get some better pictures soon when hubby is around)

Not the greatest dress in the world but not the worst either.  As you can see I’ve left it quite long as I felt it looked quite flattering. 

What do you think?

It was strange working with jersey knit after using woven fabric before.  I found it difficult to cut out as it kept moving and lining up selvedge was very had as was finding the grain line.  Coincidently my new Sewaholic pattern, the Renfrew turned up today I’m hoping that Tasia will run a sewalong that might help me with some of these issues.  I also found it hard to identify pieces and which way was which as the knit seems to have a mind of its own and just holding it in your hand is a challenge!  But sewing it was easy, most of it was done on my overlocker using the knife and it was quick and easy and even the mistakes I made were easy to resolve as long as you were willing to be creative!  So whilst I started with New Look 6802 I ended up with something unique!

Starting to panic

So I set myself a challenge to make a dress a month, its half way through the first month and I'm making very little progress!  Eeek!  Progress I have made

• Bought myself a Lady Valet dummy
• Set up dummy and padded it to resemble me ( a highly traumatic experience I'm not ready to blog about!)
• Fiddled with New Look 6802 to fit it to me.  I think its about ok apart from the length.  I've done a FBA (first one!), made the whole thing bigger as I just can't seem to stop eating atm!  

What I still need to do

• Check the sleeves, hopefully they will be ok
• Make a muslin especially as I've made so many changes although I'm not sure about this as I would normally use calico but this is for a knit pattern so shouldn't it be done in a knit?  Any ideas?
• Make the bloody thing!

Whats stopping me doing all this......

My living room atm

And the rest of my house looks like.....

so once my decorating finishes then I will be back to the sewing.... promise!

2011

Well its review of the year time……
I thought I would make a mosaic of the things I’ve made, and compare it with my plans for this year.  Dangerous really as it shows that I did some of it but not all of it!

(Edit – My mosaic went walkabout!)

The main thing I wanted to achieve in 2011 and failed was a better understanding of pattern drafting. I’ve come to the conclusions that I need to use commercial patterns more first to get a better grounding in how patterns work etc. 
I also failed to make lots of clothes for myself with only 1 skirt, 1 dress and 1 top!  How rubbish is that?  I DID make a dress for my MIL and a couple of things for Miss M but an epic fail for me.  Miss C also didn’t get a look in this last year, something she is very aware of so that needs to be rectified in 2012!   I also made a few things for the home this year as well, especially Christmas. 
I have a plan, I’m still fed up of always being badly dressed and have come to the conclusions that maybe dresses are my saviour.  In the summer months I wear RTW dresses 90% of the time but in the colder months its just jeans and t-shirts and not very flattering ones at that.  So I need more dresses. And I’m setting myself a challenge.  I plan to make 1 dress each month.  12 dresses in 2012! 

I’ve even made a badge!

Now I know compared to Mena this is nothing as she makes a dress every week or even a 7 dresses in 7 days but there's no way I can achieve that so I’m committing to more than I currently achieve but within reason.

• New Look 6802  I already have this one lined up although I’m wondering how the gathering will work on my tummy but well see what a muslin looks like. 
• Simplicity 2406 which came with Sew Magazine recently,  I was thinking of View C as a wintery version and View D as a summer version.
• Burda #101 I want to make another version of this but with a circle skirt rather than a rectangle
• Burda #104 which I want to use a a base for a basic well fitted bodice that I can then adapt (boat neck, v-neck etc) and ambitiously draft a sleeve to fit the bodice!  

After that, who knows.  I don’t mind making multiple versions of the same dress, it doesn’t have to be a unique pattern each month.  I would like to rub-off a version of a RTW dress I wear all summer and there are loads of other patterns I’ve got stored in BurdaStyle favourites such as Coffee Date Dress or Danielle.

What about you, do you have 2012 sewing plans, will you give yourself a challenge like me?  Stevie has called them  Re-sewlutions which I think is a great name, do you have re-sewlutions?  What are you going to do better this year or what new skill are you going to pick up?
P.S. Its 2 years since I started this blog!  Can’t believe its gone so quickly and I can’t believe how rubbish I am at updating!  Next year will be different I promise!!!!!