i’m in the process of making a dress for my sister. she wanted something simple – a white dress with a halter neckline that hit a little below the knee. we went to the fabric store & she picked out new look 6457, view D. the fabric is a linen-look polyester something from joann’s. pretty simple stuff.
Archive | work in progress RSS feed for this section
ceylon progress
23 Mari’ve been lurking the ceylon pattern for months now… finally gave in a couple weeks ago and bought a copy. i initially planned on making it up in some navy polka dot voile or lawn, but searching has turned to be fruitless so i settled on blue pin dot shirting fabric from fabric.com (you just wait… my first choice will suddenly be fruitful and multiply. gah.). i’ve already made a bit of progress on the dress so i thought i would share with y’all!
first off, i will point out that i didn’t bother to make a muslin and just started cutting directly into the fabric. i like to live dangerously sometimes.
Continue reading
lladybird for spring 2011: a sneak peek
11 Marlife got majorly busy and i haven’t been sewing much as of lately. and by “sewing,” i mean “sewing for myself” – i’ve been working up a frenzy in preparation for nashville fashion week. not because i have anything to do with *that* event, but local honey is throwing their annual spring premier the same weekend. so yay, spring clothes!!
i’ve been working on some new designs & some new color scenes… playing around with more details this time around, especially ruffles & pintucking & bias stripes. i’m still working the colorblocks… i tried to pull away from it, but i can’t help it, i love colorblocking too much! there are a few “classic” lladybird dresses in the mix, but i’ll also be introducing some half-circle skirts dresses. fun!
here is a sneak peek at what i’ve been cooking up:
Continue reading
vogue 9668 v2.0 – progress
22 Febi’ve been working on my second v9668, aka the summer version. what should have been a fairly straight-forward project (i mean, i JUST finished the first one pretty recently, so the construction is very fresh in my mind) has turned into a huge headache and a lot of wow-i-sure-made-this-as-difficult-as-possible-huh.
this is the fabric i’m using.
it’s a lovely stretch cotton with a touch of sateen. GORGEOUS.
the importance of pressing
1 Febthere are two types of sewers: those who press, and those who don’t.
i must confess, in my early days of garment sewing, i fell squarely into the latter. why would i want to press anything? i hated ironing and i didn’t see a point in spending nearly half my precious sewing time smooshing a bunch of seams that were on the inside of a garment, aka, no one was going to see them anyway.
sadly, i can’t pinpoint the exact moment that i had my “A-HA, PRESSING!” revelation, but suffice to say i have turned a complete 180 as far as my iron is concerned. i am a pressing fiend, y’all. i have developed a love affair with my iron and my finished projects have never looked better. properly pressing really is the key to having a gorgeous handmade garment – as opposed to “homeade” (and probably sewn up with quilter’s cotton, yeeech).
(image borrowed from vintagesewing.info :3)
cranberry wool dress – muslin stage
30 Novhi everyone, i finished my coat over the long weekend!
then i discovered my camera is jacked up, the flash doesn’t work, and it’s been gross and rainy and gray. soo no pictures, sry sux 2 b u, etc etc.
i’ll get some up as soon as i can!
in the meantime, i’m working on my newest dress – vogue 9668.
i cut a 6 for the bust size and an 8 for the waist and hip. spent most of my saturday chopping the tissue up to allow for a full bust adjustment. i would link y’all to an online tutorial, since FBAs really are a lifesaver (and they are kinda fun, if you are into chopping up pattern tissue and retaping it a zillion times), but it looks like my favorite one was deleted 😦 i consulted my copies of fit for real people (aka the book my roommate saw laying on the counter and laughed at me for buying it, bc the clothes on the front are so awful) and the perfect fit (bc… idk, i guess i like having multiple fitting books or something).
this is what my pattern piece looks like now:
i need to shorten that side dart just a pinch, but i wasn’t in the mood.
my muslin is finished and it fits perfectly!
i only made a muslin of the bodice bc, honestly, the bottom is a bias circle skirt and that doesn’t really require fitting.
oh, and that’s not really muslin, it’s some horrible 60s green and white polyester monstrosity. and it is wrong-side-out, bc i drew my pattern markings (IN SHARPIE HEH HEH goddd i’m such a rule breaker) on the right side and just flipped the pieces over and ughh whatever have another picture:
looks good, y/y?
i’m waiting to cut out my fabric pieces. i need to stay the neckline with silk organza, but the tutorial i am following says it needs to be done before i actually cut out the bodice.
in the meantime, i went to the store on my lunch break and bought a bunch of skinny headbands, so i’m gonna spend my (possibly snowy? ew)evening making some cute little bow headbands a la casey brown.
lining the lady grey, part 1
22 Novi was able to get a good bit of sewing in over the weekend… we are in for the home stretch at this point! yay!
i would have started the lining sooner, but i am highly intelligent and managed to cut my weft interfacing for the wrong side of the jacket facing 😡 so i had to go back to the fabric store and buy more weft. now i just realized i also should have bought more thread. i can’t believe how much thread i’ve gone through at this point – an entire spool of silk, nearly 2 spools of the blue, and almost a full spool of the silver. it’s not like i’m sitting here sewing and ripping out seams over and over, either. ugh!
anyway, i’m about halfway done with the lining. it is in, so pretty much all that’s left at this point is a bunch of handsewing and working on the details.
help me choose a tag for my coat
17 Novas if i didn’t already have enough handsewing on my plate (and sewing in general, ew those christmas gifts ain’t gonna sew themselves), i decided yesterday that my coat needed a pretty embroidered tag for the inside, where i will put the tiny chain you use to hang one’s coat on a hook (speaking of which, where do you buy those things, anyway? the hardware store? the jewelry crafting aisle? i don’t think i’ve ever seen them at my fabric store). my pfaff actually has an embroidery unit – like, not those dinky little monograms you can make that are all of 1/2″ tall, but a legit hooks-onto-your-machine-and-you-buy-embroidery-cards kinda deal – but i don’t really care for machine embroidery. i like the texture of hand embroidery. so pretty!
here were the designs i found at needle’n’thread:
more under the cut!
Continue reading
pockets & sleeves – my coat is starting to look like a coat
15 NovYOU GUYS
MY COAT IS FINALLY STARTING TO LOOK LIKE A COAT!!
tailoring the lady grey, v2.0
8 Novi recently had a bit of downtime in-between working and sew-working (and, god, i just realized i need to start christmas present makin’ asap!) and i managed to finish the padstitching on my coat 🙂
i don’t know how i feel about padstitching. i want to like it – i love hand-stitching, and i love being able to sit on the couch (not that i don’t love my beautiful sewing room!) and i love that it is quiet so i can hold a conversation while i am sewing. but the shaping that is involved with padstitching, ugh, i could do with the hand cramps and the constant peeking under the bottom to make sure my stitches are sorta-kinda-not-really-hidden-whatever-it’s-the-bottom-and-no-one-is-gonna-look-there-anyway.
but it’s done! well. the lapels are done. the collar padstitching is my next big coat project, but baby steps, y’all.
LLADYBIRD 