Sewing Shop Reviews #2 + 3: Place at Belorusskaya and "Season" at Alekseevskaya

This morning I had some work to do at Belorusskaya metro, and then afterwards I decided to hit up this fabric shop called Season I found on yandex, this time searching for "fabric store for clothes" (not gonna make the curtain mistake again). I chose this one because it seemed to have a good selection AND it's on the orange line of the metro, my line. I'd have to pass that station on my way home from Belorusskaya anyway, so I figured, excellent, I'll do that.

I got lost on the way back to the metro after the business I had to do near Belorusskaya and I saw this little shop and figured "what the hell." Let's just say I shouldn't have bothered. It was another curtain shop, with little in the way of service or selection. So I booked it out of there pretty quickly.

Then I went to Season at Alekseevskaya. It was perfect. The women were helpful (after a bit) and I bought some alarmingly inexpensive fabric, a zipper and a button (in case things go awry with the dress I'm planning on making tonight/tomorrow). I checked to see if they had extra long zippers for the pencil case idea and they did not. Oh well, they have tons of fabric, a glorious selection of buttons and ribbons and zippers and even some patterns! I'm in love. Some of the fabric is grotesque but there was not a lighthouse in sight and there were even some prints I liked. And it's so near in my flat (Moscow-relative, of course). Plus there's a giant pet shop across the street from Seasons with tons of rabbit food. I'm very very pleased.

The Flamingo Skirt

Project: The Flamingo Skirt

Goals: make a skirt from a pattern I found on the internet

After Googling skirt patterns I found this one, which is adorable and amazing and I thought it would be a good match for this duvet cover I got from Ikea.

I cut the pieces as prescribed from the pattern. I don't have a craft table or a yard stick, which did make it a bit more difficult, I think. I also got craaaaaazy body conscious and added a couple centimeters to the waist measurements because I was terrified of making it too small.

Then I zig-zag stitched the ends, which turns out to be one of the more clever things I did; I'm not the straightest cutter so the zig-zagged bits helped me later to line the thing up.

Next I pinned the zipper in. Looking gooooooood. The zipper is one of the things I'm most proud of about the final project.

After I pinned the rest of the back panel, I sewed it all together.

Then I pressed the fabric for the waist band. Here's where my "add a few centimeters" idea didn't pay off... it's way too big but oh well, better too big than too small.

I stitched the band together.

Then I sewed a long stitch in the top of the front and back panels...

... and gathered the fabric along it.

Then I stitched the top and bottom panels together. It's starting to look like a skirt! At this stage I was terrified that the gathers would come loose.

I turned the skirt inside out and pinned the band to the top...

...and stitched it in.

Then I folded the band over and stitched it from the inside.

I added a button to close the band and voila it's finished!

As mentioned above it's a bit big so I'm going to fold and stitch the band to take some length off of it, then split the side seams to reclose them. I also think at this point I'll add pockets to it, because then it would be perfect.

The Morsbag

Project: A Morsbag

Goals: to make a reusable shopping bag, to gain some confidence in using the machine

As mentioned previously, my next project was to make a Morsbag. I followed the instructions on the website (linked to in the last sentence) and here's what happened:

I started with this skirt I bought in Texas two summers ago. I think the last time I wore it was six months ago, which means it could be cut up and used for this.

I measured and cut out the panels for the body of the bag (keeping the side hem original to the skirt as one of the sides of the bag)...

... and cut out from the remaining bits of the skirt the handles.

I pressed the handles with my iron (with no ill-effects to my arms this time)...

... and stitched three rows of stitches to make them keep their shape.

Then I took the body of the bag and aligned the handles inside the top of it.

I then attached the handles with Ethel, first stitching across the top of the bag and then making these strong boxes over the bottoms of the handles. (The flash from my camera makes the black look grey)

Then I stitched up the bottom and the other side of the bag to close it. If you look at the handles it's plain to see that one is much shorter than the other...

... so I made another strong box on the length of the longer handle to try to even it up a little.

Then I turned the bag inside out and did another row of stitches around the sides (to give it strength, allegedly) and this is the final product:

I'm going to use it as a belated birthday present for a friend of mine, since I've never finished the present I planned on giving her last year. I'm pleased with it; the skirt fabric had quite a bit of stretch to it so I'm glad this worked out.

Sewing Shop Review #1 - "Textile Interior" at Medvedkovo

Yesterday on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com I ordered some things I didn't want to bother trying to find in Russia (tailor's chalk, a book called Sewing Green, and a bias tape maker); today, after the frenzied high of online shopping I thought it would be prudent to try and find some places in Moscow where I can buy sewing notions and helpful bits. So I spent quite a bit of time on yandex (kind of like a Russian Google) looking for fabric shops and places with names like "Sewing World" and "The House of Fabrics." None of them were near where I live and I decided my first sojourn should not be halfway across Moscow so I yandexed "fabric stores medvedkovo" (Medvedkovo being the region where I live in Moscow) and came across one "store" in this furniture-showroom type place a couple kilometers from where I live. So I hopped on a bus and went. The plan was to take pictures and document what I saw and found, but right inside the doors of the place is this huge sign with a picture of a camera and the red circle-and-line forbidding business. So all I got was the picture above of the outside of the building, "The House of Furniture."

I went to the little corner on the top floor of the building which had the fabric and it was fairly impressive, even though about thirty too many of the swatches had lighthouse motifs. The women working were the opposite of helpful so I spent a good amount of time browsing and trying to decide which fabrics I'd want to make things out of and I found some I really really liked, not only for their lack of stretchiness but also for their material construction and design. I was fairly certain that the place was only for curtains but I figured I could use the material anyway. So I called over the less-than-helpful woman in charge of it and she started drawing up a quote for me; she was surprised when I said I wanted a square meter of the fabric because this was a curtain shop. Then she told me it would be two weeks until I could collect my fabric, which all seemed very Soviet to me. So I said "no thanks" and as I was walking out I heard her tell her friend that I was a дура, or a fool. I spun around and was like, "hey, lady, we just had an entire conversation about fabric in Russian, don't you think I'd be able to understand the word fool?" I was furious and very happy I hadn't purchased anything.

Based on the other results of my yandex search I think I can find a better fabric store, even if it will be less convenient in terms of location. I don't need that shit. I miss customer service.

Next weekend due to (un)foreseen visa circumstances I'll be in Vilnius, Lithuania, and I'm going to look into sewing shops there. That should be exciting! Anyway, today's project will be to draw up a pattern for a Morsbag and then whip one up. We'll see how that goes.

The White Scarf

Project: The White Scarf

Goals: to make a scarf from an old sweater, to have a white scarf

My plan for my outfit for today (for going to watch Wales v Ireland at an Irish pub and then to go Judey's leaving do) is to wear the dress I finished yesterday and my new spring coat. I realized, though, that I don't have a scarf that would go with this little ensemble. What's a girl to do? Well, I could make a scarf. So that's what I did.

Most of my scarves are pink or purple or blue, but all of them clash with the pattern of the dress. My spring coat goes fairly well with it, though. I decided to make a white scarf to match the outfit (plus I can just wear it with the coat and any other outfit, really).

I have this sweater from Zara that is a little too tight (turns into a sweater-bra, basically) and I never wear it. So I figured, why not refashion it into a scarf? Earlier this week, when I started the whole refashioning-thing I was hesitant because I'm kind of a pack rat and I don't like getting rid of things. But now I'm totally okay with it if I can wear it now as something else. At least it's getting use.

I cut the sweater up into pieces for the scarf.

The initial idea was to use the two strips from the body as the middle of the scarf, and use the sleeves as the ends. So I turned the sleeves inside-out and stitched the cuffs closed. The sleeve on the top is right-side-out, and the sleeve on the bottom inside-out.

Then I attached the body parts with the sleeves by using the same techniques as making bias tape: I put the pieces at right angles to each other...

And stitched a diagonal seam.

Then I cut the seam allowance off and unfolded the pieces. Voila!

Here are three of the pieces connected with two diagonal seams.

I attached the sleeves and figured I had finished my scarf. But, if you look at this picture, you can see that the scarf ended up looking like either a child's pair of tights or a scarf with gym socks sewn to the ends. Oh dear.

So I cut some more fabric from the sweater to elongate the scarf and get rid of the gym socks. For the ends this time I decided to use the hemming detail where the sleeve met the body of the sweater, turned inside-out.

I sewed them all together and here's the final product, on my kitchen chair.

I'm very happy with it; since I used both the front and the back of the sweater to make the scarf two-ply it keeps its shape very nicely (without looking like a neck brace). It's a bit uneven on the sides (because the sweater was a little stretchy) but I'm not bothered. It looks decent on. So, here it is on my rack of scarves:

...and here it is with the dress from yesterday and the spring coat.

The Refashioned Dress

Project: The Refashioned Dress

Goals: to make a dress I can actually wear out of the house

Well, I've finished the dress. The dress which I started last night. After rereading my posts I've discovered that I can be a bit negative about things. I mean, I've had the machine for less than a week and I've done quite a bit with it: the cardi, the skirt mending, the zipper, the board marker ball, and now this dress. The problem is I've become quite frustrated with myself for not being better at what I'm doing. After thinking about it (while wearing the dress at one of its less-finished stages) I've decided I'm going about this all wrong. I need to do small projects, build up my confidence and skill, and then go into doing bigger ones. That said I still felt obliged to finish the dress.

Okay, now that my self-analysis/pep-talk is over I can get to the dress. The plan for this dress was to take this pink number

and couple it with this skirt I bought it at Texas Thrift, which I thought would be cute to cinch with a belt and boom instant strapless dress. The problem was that the elastic at the top of the skirt did a wonderful job of digging into my chest, so it looked odd. I was going to still keep the pink M&S dress as the exterior of the dress but line it with the skirt, then make some straps. As you'll see, the final results were pretty much the opposite (not literally, though; I don't even know what that would look like).

First I'd like to mention that the brand of the skirt was "Phool."

Okay, so I cut the elastic waistband off and then I cut along one of the seams. This is how much fabric I had to work with, aka "tons".

I pinned the dress to where I wanted to sew (the idea was to sew the top panel of the skirt to the top panel of the dress). I was quite pleased with myself here but I should've realized that my careful planning could not and did not take into account my new greatest foe: stretchy fabrics. I HATE THEM.

So what happened next? Well, I did one half of the dress by keeping the pink dress taut, because I figured the elasticity would hold. Well, it doesn't. Also my stitches went all wonky. Here I became annoyed, but I soldiered on. I finished the stitching (because of my obsession with keeping the pink dress taut to try and keep it stretchy I didn't have enough skirt to line the dress) and tried the dress on. Disaster. You know how when you look in your closet and you see something you haven't worn in ages and you're like "why don't I wear that anymore? It's soooo cute" and you put it on and there's always something that makes you go "ohhhhhhhhhh that's right" and you hastily take it off? Yeah, this pink dress was one of those items (as you can see from the before picture). With the lining of the skirt it became even worse. I was pretty close to devastated. I mean, my goodness. Why can't at least one thing I make turn out the way I want it to?

It was at this point that I stopped taking pictures because I got so annoyed with everything that had to do with everything. On a whim I turned the dress inside out and realized, "Hey, wait a second... this doesn't look half bad." The pattern of the skirt hid my horrible stitches and actually looked fairly decent.

The only problem was that it didn't close completely (because of the point above about running out of skirt fabric). So I took the dress off and stitched up the lower part, which came out surprisingly okay.

For the next step I stitched up the top half. The upper "hem" is a little uneven because I haven't sewn it but to be honest I don't have much faith in my sewing abilities right now and I'm terrified to ruin the dress. So, here's the before and after:

I cinch it with a belt, obviously, so in a poetic fashion the skirt has now reached the potential I saw in it earlier this year. I don't hate it at all. I tried to take a picture of the back but this was the best shot I came up with:

My god but I have a lot of hair. The back isn't fantastic so I plan on wearing this dress with a cardigan; I'm fairly certain cardigans were invented for this exact reason.

Here's a picture of the dress on my bed:

Anyway, I'm making a promise to myself to not be so overambitious. My next project will be a Morsbag which I think i can do with little to no fuss from the rest of the fabric of the skirt (I'm putting off the apron for now).