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!

The moral of the story is………

…..buy the fabric you like WHEN you see it!  Went back to the fabric shop today to buy my lovely fabric I’ve had my eye on for ages

only to find that there wasn’t enough!  Aaahhhh, I’d even found thread, zip and bias binding to match. Bugger!  So had to choose something else.

Plan B fabric (btw, love Plan Bs new track, not usually my cup of tea but how fab is this?)

So now my fabric is washed and dried ready to go, I’m out with the girls on the weekend so hopefully it will be finished my then. Watch this space……….

Busier than I thought I had been!

I’ve been busy making a roman blind for a friend the last week or so.  She asked me a few weeks ago if I could make one for her, she's had the fabric for 18  months and a towel at the window so she wasn’t in any desperate hurry.  When we bought our first house we couldn’t afford any curtains so our front bay windows had a combination of towels, sheet and a big piece of cardboard to block the light!  As it was so complicated to put it up we just left it there day and night for about 6 months!  Have ever you had some makeshift curtains?   Anyway she asked me and I said ‘Oh I’ve never made a a roman blind but I could find out, it will be no problem!’  After trawling around on the internet for a while I found a great resource – YouTube is a wonderful thing! There also a great forum with loads of great posts and people happily sharing their knowledge and experience.  My friend had given me blackout lining and I know from past experience machine stitches perforate the lining and allow light in, I didn’t want to do this so I had to hand stitch most of the blind.  I think the only machine stitching was the pockets to hold the doweling and sewing on the Velcro at the top!  So from this exercise I’ve learnt about roman blinds, herringbone stitches, stab stitches and perfected my slip stitches!  Its also nice to be sewing in straight lines rather than curves to fit bodies!  

Close up of the rings

Folded up blind

I can’t show you the blind in situ as we need my friends other half to put some battening up (as long as that takes less than 18 months I don’t mind!)  but it should be ok. 

 

Another thing I’ve been doing is converting our home office into a sewing room!  As we’ve moved away from desktops towards pcs and smartphones we don’t have the need for an office like we once did.  Hubby works from home on occasion but he can do that anywhere and even in MY sewing room, if I allow it! 

A big work space, check out the scissors hanging up! How exciting!!!

I was previously using the spare room but every time someone came to stay I’d have to pack up which was annoying so now I can leave my mess!  There's still some officey stuff in there and loads of books on the bookshelves but its nice to have such a large work surface and have the sewing machine and overlocker out at the same time.  The ironing board probably won’t stay there permanently as it usually lives in the cupboard downstairs but its a nice novelty not have have to run up and down so I might bring it up when I’m sewing……..

And Sewing, I have been.  I got Simplicity 2209 (I do prefer the Sewaholic/Colette method of naming patterns rather than random numbers, it sounds much better  to say ‘I love your Truffle dress’ than to say ‘That Simplicity 2209 is gorgeous!)  free with Sew Mag recently and I decided to give it go.  I’ve also been following The Couture Dress course with Susan Khalje on Craftsy.com and although I’m not making a couture dress and using full couture techniques I did follow her instructions for making a muslin/toile and disregard the seam allowances and use the sewing line as your guide.  Its so much better especially as my cutting skills aren’t the best but using this method it doesn’t matter as you never have to match up raw edges instead matching up sewing lines. I used a 20 top and 22 bottom and graded the waist out although I possibly could have got away with a 20 skirt.   I’m glad I did this as I’ve learnt a few things making this muslin mainly around the unusual darts on the bodice, its vital to sew them in the order listed and making the muslin allowed to see that the darts needed to be moved so I unpicked it all and moved them with no problem.  That's the beauty of a muslin.  I solved most of the fitting problem on my dummy first and then fine tuned them on me.  

the dart points needed lowering

I lengthened the skirt

As you can see I’ve done a swayback pinch, I’ve taken the front and back in at the shoulders.  The back had to have a few tweaks as I wasn’t happy about it.  I seem to have to take huge chunks out of the shoulders of all patterns, I must have a very rounded back.  I’ve used the Dart-Be-Gone method Susan was talking about on her course.

I tightened up the back a little more after these photos were taken. 

I’ve finished the work on the muslin and have to get the fabric tomorrow I’m going to use this  fabric for it which I’d already spied in the fabric shop but didn’t want to buy it until I’d tried the pattern out…..

it’s a blend, cotton 70%, polyester 25% and spandex 5%. 

Its funny I remember when this pattern came out last year and I didn’t think much of it, I think I was blinded by the dreadful jacket on the cover but when it came with the magazine I was more intrigued, I remembered that Scruffy Badger made one and loved it and from this muslin I can say she’s right!  The darts are somehow really flattering and surprisingly easy to sew.  I just hope the final version looks and feels as good.  I hope so as I’m thinking of making another one using different fabrics as I think that might be a good stash busting exercise although I’m assuming I would need to use similar weighted fabrics for this to ensure the dress fits and wears properly.  Have you tried this before, what advice would you give?

So it turns out I’ve been a lot busier than I thought I hade been!!!!!

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!

Carbon Copy

So I received some money for Christmas and I’ve thought I would get myself a dress form hopefully in the sales.  But after looking at some I can’t get a grip on which one I want so I thought I would ask the font of all knowledge, t’internet!  I guess the first question to answer is what do I want from a dress form.

I want to

• have as close a representation of myself as possible, I’m quite prepared to pad a dummy (in fact it will probably be essential to do this as I have ‘bits’ that need to be taken into consideration)
• I would like to have flexibility to change the dummy as I have gained back a bit of weight I lost previously so I don’t want to do a Duct Tape Dummy in case because I will lose the weight!
• be able to tissue fit on the dummy and be able to see all the way round and pinch and tuck and pin everything together
• same with a muslin/toile, I guess I need to be able to stick pins in the dummy
• Hemming……
• I’m not too bothered about the aesthetic of the dummy
• not be too freaked out at seeing what I look like in the flesh!  Tall order I know!  Maybe that's the point of it, to be able to see myself the way others do and understand the fitting solutions my body needs. 
• I have about £140 to spend so want to take advantage of the sales

Looking around there seem to be a few options

Source

I like this one for its aesthetics and it looks stable and robust.  Is it flexible enough in its adjustments? How many adjusters do I need? Is more better? This one has 10. Split waist, foam backed. 

£149 including hem marker

Source

Looks a little less stable and less attractive but attractiveness is optional!  Has a hem maker, do these work?  How?  12 adjusters including a split waist

£99

 

Source

This one has only 8 adjusters but has legs so adaptable for trousers.  I’ve never made trousers, no plans to make any but might feel differently in a years time……..  Have a very squishy tummy, saddlebags and bottom so would this be better?

£120

 

Source

Diana seems to be a popular dress form, this is the fuller figure version, do I need that?  8 part body with 12 auto set dials.  What does that mean? Split waist  Looks ok. 

£124

source

8 party body with 12 adjusters again with a split waist , foam backed so I can stick pins in

£99

 

So whadda ya think?  Do you have a dress form, are they useful or is it something that will sit in the corner and never get used?  I’m veering towards the Lady Valet but is it worth the extra cash?  Do I need a stretchy cover for it as well, I’m guessing so to keep the extra padding in place.  Help!!!!!!!!