Colette Patterns Spring Palette Challenge: #1

So, as promised, the first piece of my spring palette challenge was Simplicity 2250, a really cute and flouncy little number.

Simplicity 2250

Originally I was leaning towards view C (with the contrast) with the straps of A, but I ended up not doing the contrast so I guess it counts as view B with view A's straps. Either way, I'm quite pleased. I'm a little bit excited because I've decided to do my first ever pattern review in the way I've figured is somewhat standard in sewing blogs. Okay...

The finished dress; you can see how difficult it is to discern the darts and such

Pattern description: from envelope: "Misses' dress in two lengths, jacket and tie belt." I just did the dress, not particularly keen on the jacket (based on the drawing alone).

Sizing: 14-22, I made the 22 out of the habit of making the largest possible size since I cannot ever take accurate measurements of myself, and then altering later.

Fabric used: This lovely cotton I found at Joann's while I was in the States, which I bought 3 yards of in case I could find a project for it. 

I completely fell in love with this; after my first Simplicity dress (which I'll post about after it's done washing), which is brown with a similar blue polka dot print, this print made me want to work in a particular palette

Notions: a 30cm zipper (the pattern calls for 12'', so that's the closest I could get. It's light blue and, in theory, should be invisible).

Did it look like the photo or drawing when you were through?: Yeah, it totally does.

How were the instructions?: The bodice darts and pleats are a bit complicated, which is part of its charm, and I've only ever done very simple darts and tucks under the bust, so I was a bit nervous. The instructions were fairly clear; I didn't even try to understand what was happening with the invisible zipper instructions, but that could've been because I was nearing the end of the project and was ready to stop. There were a couple of steps where I had to sit, smoke a cigarette, and figure out what the hell was going on, but I always triumphed, and after I figured a step out the instructions and pictures made sense. I put this more to my lower level of experience than anything else.

isn't that lining pretty? I got it at Sezon ages ago (I can't remember what for) and it looks just great with this print

Construction notes: I'm still not sure how I would've tackled an FBA on this beast of a bodice; I'm lucky it ended up working out all right. The lining has princess seams, so that would've been easier, but I wasn't too bothered about getting that right. The pleat markings were a bit confusing (maybe because I briefly forgot what a pleat would look like) so I think I messed up the bodice pleats, but the skirt pleats came out fantastically. Also, I switched the two back panels by accident. Again, my fault.

I was so pleased with myself at this stage

Any changes? Yeah, as mentioned above since I didn't do an FBA the bodice hits below the bust lower than it normally would, so I only lined the front of the bodice and not the back (the pattern calls for an underlining as well as a lining proper, but I skipped that bit). I also just gathered where I wanted to, instead of how the pattern dictated, because I got all cocky.

Close-up of the bodice detailing, which, again, is a bit hard to work out because of the print

Likes/dislikes: I really liked the pattern; I think it would look better with a horizontal stripe (to show the darts and pleats better) but I love it with this fabric. Plus it was fairly easy to follow and I didn't have to change really anything.

Would you do it again? Would you recommend it? Yes and yes.

Conclusion: Anything that makes me feel nice while I'm wearing it is great, plus it's got a little bit of a Betty Draper vibe, and that's never bad. It came together easily and logically (after I used some logic, of course) and gave me confidence to work with other patterns. So I'm quite pleased!

Check out that rack. No joke (also I just realized it kind of matches that wallpaper, which is ridiculous)

Project Runway Season 8 Episode 2 - Marie Claire Challenge

The second challenge of this season's PR was to create a piece which best represents the Marie Claire woman. It was way too hot and I did not want to leave the flat, so I decided to do another refashion. The first thing I chose was this blue dress from H&M Moscow, which I love but is a knit and so calls unneccessary attention to my tumtum and, ironically, doesn't stretch enough for my bust:

I love the colour, though, and the tubing-combined-with-drawstring tie:

I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with it, though, so I looked through the rest of my stash of "Things I like but never wear" and found this dress from New Look in Cardiff:

It's a bit short and tight at the bust but the print is so adorable! I loved the pockets, too, but we'll talk more about them later. I decided to make an elasticated bodice out of the New Look dress and make a skirt with a ruffle out of the blue.

First things first, I cut the bodice from the skirt of the New Look dress:

Then I removed the pockets (which I briefly considered transferring to the blue skirt, but then thought that might be too much)...

... then used my new sewing gage to measure how much to turn over for the elastic casing at the top.

Then I fed the elastic through and left the bodice alone for a little while.

I cut the bodice off of the blue dress, decided how long I wanted the skirt to be and cut off the remaining bits to make the ruffle. I zigzag stitched the bottom of the ruffle and made a gathering stitch along the top:

And then I gathered and stitched it to the base of the dress.

Then I pinned the bodice bit to the top of the skirt...

...and stitched them together.

Looking good! I then pinned the casing for the drawstring to the back of the dress...

...and stitched it on.

I threaded the drawstring through the casing and TADA a new dress!

I still have the bodice from the blue dress so I'm thinking about making it into a shrug or something wear over this (as a friend said, that would take it from day to night). I'm very pleased with this little number.

Project Runway Season 8 Episode 1 - Refashioning Challenge

So the first challenge of this season's PR was to take something that another contestant had packed and refashion it into something new. Ideal! I'm obsessed with refashioning. At first I wasn't sure how to get something from someone else, but then I remembered that Tasha had brought over loads of old things for me to use, so I put the 3 remaining pieces in a bag, shook it up, and randomly drew one of them. I picked this red dress from Warehouse:

I almost never wear or work with red, so I was at a loss for a little while. Luckily, though, I've been obsessing about peplums lately and so I decided to use the fabric to make a peplum for a cardigan I already have.

I love this purple cardigan; I bought it in H&M in Paris and it's been a go-to of mine since then. I was very excited about the dark purple + red combination as well. I also decided to add a little red bow near the collar to try to bring the red in more.

I cut the bottom of the dress off in one long strip, then eye-balled (I hate measuring) how much I'd want to have gathered for the peplum. I didn't want too much volume, just enough for a slight flounce, so I cut off some of the excess to use as the collar bow:

Then I did what I'm best at: gathering. I gathered the long strip til it matched up with the bottom of the cardigan and then stitched it on as though it were a ruffle. Then I made a small, boxy bow and stitched it on near the collar and voila! New cardigan made from someone's clothing.

I'm very very happy with it. Here are some pictures of me in it:

It's unfortunately way too hot for me to wear it, but I'm superexcited about the future. Also, I think I might make a pencil skirt to go with it out of a similar red fabric. Sassy!

The Ikea Fabric Swedish Fairy Tale Skirt

So this skirt was a bit of a problem. I'm still not 100% convinced of my novice-ness in sewing so I get a little too easily convinced I can do things that are either not possible or not flattering.

I bought this fabric at Ikea when they didn't have the number fabric I am currently obsessed with:

Yesterday I started working on it. Part of my problem was I only bought one meter of the fabric, so I didn't have much to work with and I had a very small margin of error. My initial plan was to simply use elastic from an old skirt I have and use that to gather the top. It didn't take long for me to enact this plan:

This is the skirt I was using as a template (and from which I took the elastic band). I think I'll turn it into a flow-y strappy top at some point, summer-style. One advantage of making my own clothes is that I can account for the fact that I'll probably be wearing a bra, so I can make the straps perfectly. Anyway, back to the skirt.

I cut the fabric to the length I wanted, cutting two strips (one from the top and one from the bottom) which would then become the casing for the hem. I used my new tailor's chalk which was awesome.

I stitched the two sides together to form what would become the side seam.

Then I attached the top and bottom panels (to cover the hems) and threaded the elastic through the top one. Here is where my big problem happened: There was just way too much fabric at the top for the amount of gather I needed at the elastic, so it got very thick and bunchy.

In this picture you can see just how thick and bunchy it was. 

I thought I'd take some of the stress off of the top by making the skirt a bit better fitted, so I took it in as demonstrated above. This didn't actually help the waistband so I was superfrustrated. The only place the skirt looked somewhat decent was right on my hips, which isn't really my style. During the day at work though I had time to think about it and I decided I didn't mind that much, I love the fabric just too excessively and I'd wear it anyway I could.

This morning I decided to just completely retry the top of the skirt, this time directly attaching the elastic to help with the gathering and so I wouldn't have such a chunky waistband. So I had a fun time using my stitch remover, then I attached the elastic. You can also see that I started to reattach the waistband cover at this stage too.

Ta-da! It looks much better now, the waistband is not nearly so chunky and weird. The only problem is that, since there's no gather to the waistband cover at all, there's no give from the elastic. It's like the elastic isn't in there at all. Which I discovered when I tried to pull the thing over my hips. No dice. So I have to squeeze in it by pulling it over my head. I think I'll put a button or something on it, to give it more give for easier getting into.

Here's the back of the skirt, or the front if that's how I want to roll.

 

I also made this new pin cushion from a wooden doll thing I got at Ikea. Not sure how I feel about it, though. I think it's a bit creepy.

And here I am in the skirt. Luckily it fits perfectly just under my breasts, which is a little frustrating because I had finally managed to convince myself yesterday that I didn't need to only wear high-waisted skirts. Oh well. 

The Ruffled Apron

Project: The Ruffled Apron

Goal: to practice gathering

Two of the pieces Tasha brought over yesterday were this skirt...

...and this dress. I thought they went really well together, so I thought I'd make a ruffled apron like this one out of them.

I cut all the pieces to the specifications on the website (I decided to make two ruffles from each of the pieces, then use the waistband from the skirt as the band of the apron and extra from the dress to make the straps; also, I used some more from the sheet I used for the convertible dress as the back of the apron)...

...and harvested the buttons from the dress and skirt (supercute cloth-covered buttons!).

Pebbles was running around at this time, sniffing the cloth (Tasha uses different laundry powder than I do, I guess) and then playing with the tape measure, as pictured left.

I hemmed the edges of the back of the apron...

...then hemmed the sides of the ruffles. I didn't do the bottoms because I'm l-a-z-y. I also stitched a loose stitch along the top for the gathering part.

I gathered the tops of the ruffle panels and then fit them on to the backing (step one seen here...

...and steps two through four here)

Then I stitched the straps and the band on to the edges of the apron.

Ta-da! A finished apron! You can see on the first picture just slightly where the band meets the panel on the right it's a bit bunchy, and then in the second pictures on the top left why that is. There were just so many layers going through the machine I think it got a bit confused. And overwhelmed.

I was going to give this to Tasha as a wedding present and then realized that that is very 1950's so I'm just gonna give it to her and think of something else as a present for the wedding. I'm quite pleased with it and it didn't take me very long at all.

I think this would've gone smoother if I hadn't been refashioning from a dress and skirt, both of which had pockets. That said, though, it turned out surprisingly well. My next project is a very simple one, to put an old skirt of mine under a dress I've never worn to make the dress decent enough to wear out and about. I might even do that today, since I've still got so much time.