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)

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 Overnight Bag

Project: The Overnight Bag

Goals: install a zipper with very little fuss

Appropriately enough, the overnight bag project spanned overnight. I decided to use an old H&M top of mine (purchased in Amsterdam in 2005) which I never wear anymore because the front has a weird line, then I did all of my measuring, cutting and pinning (before I let Pebbles run around I did a careful search of the floor where she likes to run and found the prodigal pin cushion next to my fan, for some odd reason). Here's the process:

Here's the bag. It's quite large; I measured the base to get an idea of how big the zipper panels should be (55,5 cm x 14,2 cm) and then added some to even it out a bit and give me some seam allowances.

Here's the zipper I purchased, which is longer than 55,5 cm, which I was pleased about.

Here's the top I'll use for the paneling; it's very stretchy, which made it hard to work with later on and which annoyed me mildly.

I measured the panel out from the back of the top, and then I put dots at regular intervals to help me cut it out since it's so damned stretchy. I put the dots on the inside of the top, thinking I'd use the outside as what would be visible, but I realized after I had made the dots that it might be better if the colors were a bit muted. Even when I go into something planning to plan every little thing, I still make split second decisions. Annoying.

Here's the panel I made; you can see the edges are a bit jagged because I simply cannot cut in a straight line.

Then I cut the middle out of the panel all the way to the bottom hem. One thing I do always try to do is use any hem already included in the fabric I'm refashioning so I don't have to bother with it; the only flaw with this one is the hem thread is black, whereas I used white for the stitching. After that I pinned the zipper in and smoothed out any puffing that occured because of the stretchiness. Then I turned the bag inside out and started to pin the panel into it to see how it would look.

After attaching both ends of the panel I turned the bag right side out again (and pricked myself at least 12 times with all the pins) and admired my work up to that point.

I decided not to use the machine til this morning because, as I've mentioned, she's noisy, so Pebbles was able to doze peacefully while I was working. (She's pictured sleeping under the laundry drying rack, which is her favourite place to nap outside of her cage. Don't be alarmed by the red thing next to her bum; it's some piece of something, not a piece of her.)

This morning I turned the bag inside out and stitched it all in together but experienced HUGE issues with the stretchiness of the fabric.

I even changed the foot to a zipper foot, although in all honesty I'm not 100% sure what it did for me.

This is the final result. You can see that the stripes don't match up anymore, because of the damn stretchiness of it all. Next time I install a zipper I will not use such stretchy material. That said, the stitches seem to be holding up well and it does keep the top closed, which is all I really wanted.

The end of the zipper is a bit nutso and it's very difficult to get this part stitched properly with the machine, so I think I'll have to do some handstitching to get the thing not to open on itself.

Here you can see the great disparity between the two sides of the fabric. I know, though, that this is not the fault of my planning in terms of measuring because I did a damned good job. It's because of the stretchiness. So I'm not too upset. The panel on the top is the one I did second, when I started taking into account the stretchiness. I learned a lot about fabric types (i.e. don't use the rest of the shirt until I've figured out how to deal with it) so that's good. At least I'm learning things.

The Board Marker Ball

Project: The Board Marker Ball

Goals: to try to make a zipper-based case for my board markers

Nikki has an amazing pencil case from an Australian stationary shop which is mainly a zipper with its edges sewn together to form the shape of it. I was inspired, so I decided to try to make one too. Unfortunately, I didn't find a zipper long enough for this project. That might be because I've only been to one sewing material shop and it's TINY. Anyway, I went yesterday morning and got a tape measure, some new thread (purple, for my dress refashion), and two zippers: one for this project, and one for putting in my giant TopShop bag (which I plan to start on tonight).

Here's the zipper I purchased for this project. Because it wasn't long enough to make up the whole pencil case, I needed some fabric to sew in to increase its dimensions.

I decided to go with the skirt I took the tiger lily petals from. I still had quite a bit left and it looked good with the zipper, color-wise.

I thought a good size for the base would be the same size as my Body Shop body butter, so I used it as a template to cut out the base and the top of the case, both of them two-ply to give them more strength.

Then I stitched the circles together.

After pinning the circles to the zipper,

I realized I'd need a patch to connect the base with the part of the zipper that raises up to start circling around, so I cut that out, "measured" it, and attached it to the base. Because I'm winging this project, I have no pattern to go on; I think I should make a pattern for this if I'm going to try it again.

Then I cut a strip of the skirt (two-ply again) to act as the lengthener for the body of the case. I sewed it closed as well.

It took several attempts at pinning it all together to get the shape I wanted (which was not this one).

This is what the strip looked like pinned to the zipper. I was very pleased with this.

Then I realized sewing in a circle is HARD WORK. This is what the base turned out like. Not pretty.

I then stitched the strip onto the zipper. Again, as with the tiger lily and the cardigan, my lack of planning came back to bite me in the ass. I kept making decisions while I was at the sewing machine, which does not go well with sewing a finished product. Here you can see where I went a little snip-happy.

Eventually the case started to take shape.

I liked how it looked from the inside.

The real challenge then came with putting the top on. I almost completely broke Ethel when I hit the plastic bit of the zipper with the needle; the bottom thread was refusing to load. I was heartbroken. But then I thought "What if I change the needle; maybe I broke it." I couldn't see any signs of trauma but thought it was worth a try. Then Ethel was working again! Hurray! I'm going to try with the old needle again next time I sew in case it was just knocked wonky when I hit the zip.

This is how the final product looks in one of the classrooms at Central School. It turned into a sort of ball, which is odd. It looks very much like an eight-year-old made it. Oh well. It does the job. My plan now is to plan and measure and cut and pin* all of the bits I'll need for my zipper-in-the-bag project (which I'll then sew in the morning because it's getting late here and Ethel can be a bit noisy), which I'm hoping will go smoother because it doesn't involve sewing in a circle. Fingers crossed.

* I lost my pin cushion. How, I don't know. Hopefully I'll find it.