Saturday 29 April 2017

International Dress

This was supposed to be a surprise b-day present for my sister, so I was worried about whether she would like the style, the fabric and the colours.
I was pretty clear on the pattern to use (Burda 115-04/2016), it is not particularly fitted, I have already sewn it as a top, so just a few slight adjustments would be needed and the dress would be OK.

The fabric is a real batik bought two years ago in Indonesia and therefore, it was a nightmare to match :o) In addition to the flower pattern, there were big eagles every 30cm or so.

So I decided to cut the front and back in two pieces and avoid the eagles which somehow did not go well with the rest of the fabric. But a sewing line in the middle of the dress meant pattern matching. Pattern matching supposes you have a regular fabric, and I had everything but...



You can see that on the detailed photos: sometimes the regular flower intervals become ... just less regular. I did my best, but on a close view, the matching is not always perfect. For the record: the sewing line runs horizontally in the middle of the photo, but you can also see the fabric irregularity on the horizontal line.
There were two lines on the fabric where the flowers were much closer to each other than on the rest.

I also wanted to add pockets and as you can see, pattern matching on the sides was out of my possibilities - somewhere it worked, somewhere it worked less.
Closed
And open

The pockets and the back neckline are stabilised with vliseline, and I did not bother to hem the dress, as I cut it on the fabric selvage.

Overall, the result is not so bad.
And the fit seems fine.

So here we have a dress made from Indonesian fabric, made in France, travelled to Czech Republic, on order to be worn in Berlin

Sunday 23 April 2017

50's Red Flower Dress

This was just a quick make before attacking a big-blazer-project (finished now, but yet to be photographed).

This pattern appeared in the February issue of Burda and even though it seems simple, I kind of liked it. In the end, I only used the top from Burda and cut out a 3/4 circle skirt, which I drafted directly on the fabric.

The fabric is a very light cotton, pretty suitable for the almost circle skirt.
The top is self-lined, I very much like the V neckline and the little coverage of shoulders - this comes always handy to protect them from the sun and not to freeze at work. The skirt is sewn with French seams, all others are covered by the lining.


There is not much more to be said about this dress, it was extremely quick to be done. I might have taken it in a little more around the waist in order to accentuate the contrast between the full skirt and and the bodice. At worst it will be worn with a belt, we will see.

As there is not much to be said about this dress, I will at least show you my stash level evolution since the beginning of the year, as I am extremely proud of this.

Minus 10m since January, at this speed I will soon be entering the levels not seen since some time. Strangely though, it is less visible on my stash storage which seems to be full the still the same way. I will try to take some time to re-fold everything which might help as well.

Sunday 16 April 2017

My B-day Dress

Or... a Bathroom Dress. What a strange name for a dress. The story is when we found our new home last year, we were pretty excited by everything in it, except for the colors in the bathrooms - green and violet combination in one and turquoise and violet in the other. In the beginning, we wanted to repaint them or just DO something with it, but we ended up getting used to that and it is not a priority anymore. I even found bathroom rugs which go perfectly with the bathroom turquoise - thank you Ikea! And yes, this dress matches perfectly our bathroom.

I rarely sew for specific occasions. More often I just sew a dress and then the right occasion occurs for the first outing of the new dress. And this was exactly the case of my birthday dress. Basically I wanted to reproduce the same dress I made for mast x-mas, but in a lighter and more colorful fabric - it is a very comfy and versatile dress so I figured I needed one for spring.

The fabric comes from my Malaysian batch (which is getting thinner and thinner) and it is quite a change from my usual brown-red-orange color combination. It is a very fine silk which under some angle was even transparent. In addition, it has the terrible tendency to stick to your legs - not quite the needed effect for this kind of dress. I lined it with a very fine black silk which has exactly the same problem and it worked magic: the fabrics ended up sticking to each other so it is like they have become one "normal" fabric which behaves correctly.

As for the pattern - it is just a copy of this dress (which itself is a copy of an old RTW :o). I think this time I made the skirt slightly longer, just in case.. Apart from that, nothing special to add. I put a small elastic in the waist, as well as to the sleeve finish. I stabilized the neckline area with some silk organza which worked pretty well.

The dress is a quick make: the only challenge is not to overstretch the neckline and sew together both layers in order to form the waist casing for the elastic.

As already said, the dress was first worn on my birthday evening and we even had time to take some pictures. I must say that it was a very appropriate outfit since we went to an amazing Indian restaurant.

Tuesday 4 April 2017

Non-Selfish Sewing - GBSB Dress II.

For the first time I did sew something for somebody else. When I created my GBSB dress, the first comment from my little sister was that this was not a dress for me, but for her. She had some ideas behind that reflexion, but actually she was right. I was ruminating too much about this dress and the truth is it was perfectly her style.

X-mas getting close, I decided to sew a copy of this dress for her as well, I still had some of the wool crepe, as well as the underlining cotton-silk.

My sister lives some 1000km far away, and I was not going to meet her before x-mas, so not fitting possibility. We are of a same height, but she is thinner than me, so I just figured out that if I take in 1-2 cm, the fit should be OK. Anyway, the dress is supposed to be large.

I was paying more attention to making sure the pocket opening is not too large and the dress hem is not too narrow - two little things I can see on my version.

Honestly, I do not know if she is wearing it but I would say the fit is pretty much OK here :o)