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Completed: Advance 8295

Hey-o, remember when I got all that awesome swap haul a couple of weeks ago?

And this pattern was part of the prize?

Well, look Ma – it’s a real dress now!

This was a pretty easy/fast make – although I caught myself trying to cut corners to get it put together even faster. WTF! I actually considered omitting the buttons & installing an invisible zipper – WTF! The buttons are the cutest part! Thank god I put the pattern aside for an evening & got my senses back.

But in all honestly – arranging those gathers at the yoke & sewing everything down was a giant pain in the ass. It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s passable and that’ll be ok with me!

The only change I made to the pattern was a drastic shortening from tea-length and I took about 2″ off the side as the bodice was a bit loose – I just folded the placket over one more time & that worked perfectly! Oh, and the bodice is underlined with batiste – the fabric is a bit sheer. Hope you can’t see my undies lol.

I sewed the whole thing up without any clue what kind of buttons would make the final cut – I didn’t have anything decent on hand, and I needed at least 9 for this dress! And buttons are expensive, ugh! Thankfully, I found a little card of these yellow guys at the flea market – $1 for 9 🙂 Not too shabby! I wanted blue buttons to tie in the blue yoke, but yellow is good enough 🙂

Oh, the blue yoke, btw – I don’t look too fine in this shade of yellow (or ANY shade of yellow for that matter!) so the blue yoke was necessary to keep my face from getting too sallow-looking. There is blue in the floral print, but it’s darker (the bright was all I could find). I think it works, Landon thinks it’s too randumb. Thoughts?

Do you see my tiny slip-stitches on the inside? NEITHER DO I. Seriously – the best thing I learned from that Bombshell class was slip stitch. I use it on everything!

Here are those yellow buttons – I took a tip from Sunni and stitched all the button holes with bright blue thread, to tie in the blue yoke. Unfortunately, you don’t see it too well when it’s buttoned up. Ha, oh well!

I also made a matching belt – it’s a tiny bit small. I suck at making belts, boo.

As a side note, it might be a little quiet ’round these parts for the next couple of weeks – Landon & I just got approved for a new house (it’s rental, we’re not buying!) so we’ve got a month to move. Which means boring stuff like packing & lifting, but also fun stuff like paint colors & new decor! I’m super pumped, albeit a little stressed (and poor!). Oh, and don’t worry – I still have a sewing room. A bigger, better sewing room – with hardwood floors. Yay!

Tags: advance, completed, dress

Comments 59 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Completed: A Totally Tubular Simplicity 1803

27 Jun

“Tubular” is such a weird word. I mean in the sense when people use it as a synonym for awesome or rad. I mean… it’s literal definition is something that is tube-shaped. What is so rad about a tube? English language, you mystify me.

You know what is pretty ~~rad~~tubular, though? This Simplicity 1803 pattern, yeah! Now that we have set aside our differences, a beautiful relationship can be allowed to bloom. With this in mind, I would like to introduce you to my latest incarnation of Simplicity 1803, heading straight up Awesomeville.

This print is pretty loud in comparison to what I normally wear, but I like it!

There’s not much to say about the construction here – it’s pretty much the exact same as my Disaster dress, although a bit more simple (no underlining, machine-stitched hems, etc). I did discover that the fabric has a very subtle stretch, which made the dress a bit too big… so I ended up with some pretty giant seam allowances at the zipper. We’re talking 1.5″ seam allowances. Yeesh! On the fip side, the stretch makes the dress quite comfortable.

I remembered to put the pockets in the correct place this time! No princess-seam pockets for this girl!

This fabric is just fabulous… a nice, drapey rayon with a hint of stretch, and a really busy pattern that hides sweat – which is quite important these days, considering we are gearing up for a high of 108* later this week. I KNOW.

I did make the waist tie this go-round, although it blends in pretty well with the busy print. Oh well, I guess it provides a bit of texture?

It was difficult to get pictures of this dress – most of them ended up totally blown out with light. I kept moving around to different areas of shade.

Then I noticed the awesome neighborhood stray cat in my back yard!

This cat is so cool! He’s super friendly and VERY vocal, and he loves having his belly rubbed. I know he’s skinny as shit, but I’ve actually tried feeding him before & he refuses it. He looks pretty healthy and is definitely quite social, which gives me reason to believe he’s probably someone’s pet prowling around the neighborhood. I see him about once a week and we are best friends. I have named him Bobby, fyi.

Told you he was friendly 😉

Although he never sits still long enough to get a good picture!

This is the dress front. Again, I went with soft pleats instead of thread gathers on the skirt. I’m a big convert of the soft pleat!

Dress back, lapped zipper.

Orange zipper! Also, check out my massive seam allowances lol

I’m trying it with a belt for work today, I think I like it better than the tie… it breaks up the pattern a bit.

As a side note – I’ve got one sleeve on my Miette sweater now!

My sleeves is a little shorter than the pattern calls for (I skipped a few rows of stockinette), but I still think it’s a little long for my preferences. I guess that means I have T-Rex arms hahaha.

This sweater has been really fun to knit, but I’m looking forward to finishing it so I can work on something a little less mindless 🙂

Also, don’t forget to enter my Shabby Apple Giveaway if you haven’t done so already – it closes this Friday 😀

One last thing – I just looked up tubular, and according to dictionary.com: excellent. (Surfing and later general youth slang. Having to do with a tube [wave] that is good to surf in.) : That pizza was totally tubular!

Tags: completed, dress, knitting, Miette Sweater, simplicity

Comments 34 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Completed: Simplicity 1803, aka, The Disaster Dress

19 Jun

I am calling this The Disaster Dress, but it’s really not that bad. Promise! My main issue could have *easily* been solved in the muslin stage – had I actually been paying attention when I tried it on.

Anyway, this is the ever-popular Simplicity 1803. If my dress looks familiar, it is because I was quite obviously influenced by Gertie’s perfect version. I had to have one for myself!

I guess I should mention exactly why I chose to call this dress a disaster. It doesn’t look much like a disaster now – I worked around all the fitting issues. But hoo boy, getting there was an adventure! This pattern has some wacky shit going on with it, y’all. WACKY, I tell you. First, we have the issue of ease. I know this has been talked to death about all over the sewing blogesphere, but seriously – this dress has a LOT of ease. Let me put it this way: according to Simplicity’s size chart, I fit in the 12-14 range. I cut a 4 in this pattern and it fit perfectly. There is about 4.5″ of ease in this pattern… consider yourself warned. Anyway, I cut my 4 & sewed up the muslin, put it on, glanced in the mirror, and started working on the real dress. I am a fit-as-you-go type sewist – constantly pinning & basting to double-check the fit. Right before I sewed up the shoulder seams, I realized that the curves of the princess seams were nowhere near the fullest part of my bust – how I missed that, I have no idea. The shoulders were WAY too short – which is actually kind of ironic, since I usually have to shorten that stuff quite a bit for my teensy shoulders. Of course, I already had the bodice half-sewn (and underlined!) at this point. Long story short, my shoulder seams are sewn with the scantest of scant seam allowances – like, less than 1/4″. The fit and everything is in it’s proper place – but barely. Also I have no idea exactly where I’m going with this story, except that you should definitely scrutinize your muslin.

Also, another beef I had with this pattern was that they skipped some vital steps in the instructions – such as sewing up the side seams. Wtf, Simplicity? You will give me half a page on ~how to sew a dart~ but then forget to tell me to sew up the side seams? You cray.

This is part 2 of Stuff I Made Using Birthday Gifts – the teal Bemberg rayon lining was sent to me by Alicia of Iron On Maiden (can we also collectively agree that she has the coolest blog name ever? Yes.) for my birthday! Yeah! It is underlining this awesome black eyelet from Mood. I also finally got to test out my new interfacing from Fashion Sewing Supply – I used the light-weight fusible and it is AWESOME. I never thought I would actually like fusible interfacing, but I think I just officially converted.

Other than the above rant on sizing/fit (and lack of side seams), this dress went together pretty quickly. The only other change I made to the pattern was to swap out the gathers for soft pleats – there was a LOT of gathering involved, and my fabric is quite thick so I was afraid it would get too bulky around the waist. To make the pleats, I matched up all the seams/notches as I would if I was gathering, and then just pleated the fabric until everything looked good & matched up. Pretty easy! I think I like this much better than I would have liked the gathers, too!

The pockets are really fucking stupid, though. They are in the right place according to the pattern – but WTF!? Who puts pockets on the princess seams of a full-skirted dress?! I know the Iris Shorts have similar pockets, but they actually contribute to the design… in this dress, they’re hidden in the folds. Of course I didn’t notice this until I actually sewed them in – and of course it is displayed prominently on the envelope. Oh well.

This is how I feel about the pockets.

I do like the scoop back!

Bonus drunk-looking picture of me.

Do you like my birdy brooch? 🙂 I tore up an old necklace (well, it was already broken), glued a pin to the back & spray painted it blue.

Here it is without the belt!

I love how bluuuue the inside is. The facing is a simple black broadcloth – again, the eyelet was too bulky for facing. I trimmed it with some matching rayon seam binding (also in the package from Alicia – told you she was awesome :D) and catch-stitched it to the lining.

Lapped zipper & soft pleats (and that red spot is from my camera – I was wondering why it kept leaving a spot of haziness in every picture. Then I noticed that the lens was incredibly dirty. At this point, I am sure you are questioning how much I actually pay attention to things. Not much, I’m afraid).

Anyway, despite all the shit I went through to get this thing put together, I’m absolutely happy with the finished dress! I think it’s quite flattering & can be worn for a number of occasions (and seasons, for that matter!). So yeah! Now that I’ve sorted out my issues, I will probably make another one… I have this awesome/wacky rayon fabric that I picked up at Goodwill recently; I think it’s perfect for this style. What do you think?

Tags: completed, Diaster Dress, dress, simplicity

Comments 65 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Me Made May – Week 4 Roundup

25 May

I wish I could say that this was the last week of MMM’12, but May is a sneaky little month that manages to have 5 weeks crammed into it. So here’s to week 4 – we’re, uh, 4/5th of the way through!

5-19
Top: Thrifted, resized by me
Shorts: Simplicity 5110
Earrings: Thrifted
Shoes: Converse
Sweet Shadez: Pangea (Nashville)
Getting ready to ride Tour de Nash! Don’t worry, I (begrudgingly)wore a helmet – it’s in my back bike basket 🙂

5-20
Dress: Simplicity 8345
Belt: Thrifted
Necklace: Bracelet I converted into a necklace
In my sewing room – I was pretty sick of taking daily pictures at this point!

5-21
Dress: Vogue 1227
Cardigan: Thrifted
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Target
Necklace: Antique, restored by InVintage.
My birthday! 😀 Since I couldn’t wear a dress called “The Bombshell” to work (I mean, our dress code is sorta lax but it ain’t that lax!), I wore last year’s birthday dress. Also, that necklace is my very favorite piece of jewelry I own – and the most expensive one to boot (and by “most expensive” I mean it was still less than $50 because I normally buy my jewelry at the flea market lol).

5-22
Dress: Vogue 1174
Bolero: Thrifted
Shoes: Nine West
-CONFESSION- I made this dress over 2 years ago & I have only worn it once (twice if you count me putting it on for pictures)! I just really hate the way I look in strapless dresses. Inspired by MMM’12, I pulled it out of the closet, dug in my scrap bin for the rest of the blue satin, and made a halter neck strap. Now it is much more wearable 🙂 Yay!

Here it is without the bolero 🙂

5-23
Dress: Simplicity 2412
Belt: Handmade
Necklace: Fire Finch (Nashville)
Shoes: Nine West

5-24
Dress: Simplicity 3061
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Jessica Simpson
Earrings: Pangea (Nashville)
I pretty much always wear this dress with a nautical flair, so this time I tried to go in a different direction. I think I like it!

5-25 (today!)
Dress: Vogue 1117
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Steve Madden
I love this dress so so so much, but the poor thing really doesn’t get as much wear as it deserves – I made the mistake of lining it with polyester lining! Ew, so hot! Oh well, that’s me – suffering in the name of Looking Good.
ALSO: Bonus! I got this fabric from Gorgeous Fabrics, and it is mad cheap right now – someone go buy the rest of her yardage!

I’m pretty bored with taking pictures of myself every day – it seems so redundant and, I dunno, kind of narcissistic (which is how I feel about most fashion blogging in general, SORRY). I will be glad to put this project to end next week!

As a side note, I counted my remaining handmade garments and I definitely have more unworn pieces than there are days left in May. Right now I’m trying to decide if I should pull this project into another week or so, just to wear ALL my shizz, or consider a month good enough & move on. I haven’t repeated any outfits – I just own a metric shit ton of clothes – and I really miss some of the stuff I wore at the beginning of the month.

With that being said, I am going on vacation starting tomorrow at the buttcrack of dawn. SO EXCITED. We’re going to the beeeeach! And I bought a cute bathing suit! (For the 3 of you who are worried about my cat being left alone – don’t worry, I got a housesitter 🙂 Wow that sounds so grown-up haha). I’ll still be documenting MMM’12 in the Flickr group – hopefully all with pictures ~on the beach~ haha – but the blog will probably be nice & silent for the next few days.

Have a great weekend – holiday or not 🙂

Tags: bike, birthday dress, dress, Me Made May '12, vogue

Comments 36 Comments
Categories Me Made May

Me Made May – Week 2 Roundup

11 May

I know what you’re thinking – two posts in one day? Is the world really in the process of ending? Is Jesus coming back (no, actually, that was supposed to happen last May, except we all know SOMEONE didn’t bother to show up to his own damn party)? At any rate, I hope y’all love meee because you’re going to have to look at my mug twice today, teehee.

I left off last Friday, so we’ll pick this up starting Saturday!

5/5
Dress: BOMBSHELL
Shoes: Steve Madden
Excuse my disgusting sewing room floor, I hate vacuuming!
Ooh, but see my iPhone!? Landon bought me an early birthday present! He is the best 🙂 I’m on Instagram now if you want to follow me 🙂

5/6
Dress: Simplicity 4170
Cowboy Boots: courtesy of my mom’s closet 🙂
Necklace: Fire Finch, here in Nashville
This is actually the very first dress I made with a pattern – so it’s super pre-blog (I think I made this in 2006). Don’t get too terribly excited about how good it looks, though – the original bodice was total shit – I didn’t line it, didn’t gather under the bust (lolwut), inserted the zipper rather terribly by hand, etc. The bodice you see now is what happened after I learned some skills 6 months later, ripped it off, and re-made. It’s still kind of amateur looking, but that’s ok!

5/7
Dress: Vogue 1086
Cardigan: Thrifted, reconstructed by me
Belt: Handmade
Necklace: Thrifted bracelet, reconstructed into a necklace by me
Shoes: Target

5/8
Top: Jalie 2921
Skirt: Express
Sweater: Free People, sized down quite a bit by me (it’s supposed to be loose-fitting)
Shoes: Steve Madden

5/9
Top: Simplicity 4400
Skirt: Thrifted, sized down & repaired (the shirring at the waistband was completely busted so I sewed in new elastic… does this count as Me-Made?)
Belt: Thrifted
Shoes: Jessica Simpson
Earrings: Thrifted
The light was really bad that morning, so here you get to see the side & crawl space of my ugly house!

5/10
Top: Sewaholic Renfrew
Skirt: Colette Ginger
Cardigan: Thrifted
Belt: Thrifted
Feather Earrings: Tennessee Renaissance Festival
Shoes: Giani Bernini

5/11 (today!)
Top: Jalie 2921
Trousers: Vogue 2925
Shoes: Walmart (lol yep)
Scarf: Flea market

If you don’t recognize my top, that’s because it’s very new & very un-blogged! This top was actually the whole reason why I bought the Jalie pattern – I thought it looked quite similar to Colette’s Jasmine pattern, except in a nice knit instead of bias-cut woven. I’m not going to make a separate post for this top, just because I would basically be repeating my last one, but I will go over the minor pattern changes I made:
– I shortened the neck ties quite drastically. I can’t give you a real measurement – I just put on the pink top, pinned the ties until I liked the length, and copied that to my pattern piece.
– Instead of arranging the ties as suggested by the pattern (through a hole in the front seam, tied, or fastened with a buckle), I wrapped a small piece of matching bias tape around them & sewed it into place by hand.
– Took in a little bit at the side seams to make it more fitted.
– Shortened the sleeves to cap sleeves.
– Top-stitched the hem & sleeve hems with a double needle in matching blue thread.

I am rather pleased with the result! Although, it is quite sailor-y so I definitely run the risk of looking really costume-y… I think I kind of look costume-y in this outfit, actually, but IDGAF.

Oh, I should probably talk about that ADORABLE dog standing behind me… that’s Turtle 🙂 She is the dog of my bestie/life partner, Morgan (the one who moved to Macedonia!). Her mother is keeping Turtle while Morgan is fulfilling her time at the Peace Corps. Anyway, she’s actually out of town visiting Morgan, & the originaly dogsitter had some medical problems so I’m taking care of the dogs for her until then! I just love Turtle, she’s such a little sweetie (and Percy, the other dog, was lounging on the steps directly behind my camera FYI 🙂 I’ll try to get a picture of her at some point). This also explains why I’m suddenly standing in an area with an amazing garden backdrop – it’s her house! And look – you can see my little truck in the background 🙂

Man, I love this dog. She’s such a ham.

Tags: Bombshell dress, denim, dress, ginger, Jalie, Me Made May '12, renfrew, simplicity, vogue, vogue 2925

Comments 21 Comments
Categories completed projects - new, Me Made May

FINALLY COMPLETE: The Bombshell Dress

7 May

Yay! It’s done, it’s done, it’s done!

Those of you who follow me on Twitter or lurk the MMM Flickr Pool have already seen this picture… I snapped it right before I left for a lovely Saturday afternoon wedding (spoiler: it was a beautiful wedding and I overindulged and DEFINITELY paid for it the next day, ugh haha).

I did take better pictures, though! And now I will share then with the group 🙂

Fair warning – there’s a lot here, and you can see that I moved locations a couple of times while shooting. I actually took over a hundred pictures – I know that sounds kind of, uh, self-obsessed, but the light was extremely bright and it’s pretty difficult to get a good shot when you have to keep running back and forth to the tripod! I was able to narrow the selection down to WAY below 100, but there are still quite a few. I normally feel a little narcissistic posting a bunch of pictures of myself in the same freakin’ pose, but I’m really proud of my dress so just indulge me this one time. Ok? Ok!

Here is where I started – in my backyard. Isn’t it so lush & green? Lovely backdrop for this dress 🙂 Unfortunately, the light was too harsh here, so only a couple of pictures survived the cut.

On the porch (which appears to be the best light ever; this is why you always see outfit pictures on this porch haha). Not a terribly awesome picture of me, but – my hair! My hair looked so good! Alas, it was almost 90 degrees on Saturday and extremely humid so the curls ended up drooping about 5 minutes later. Ah well.

It got too hot, so I gave up and went inside to the air conditioning.

The strap! I made mine fairly wide, with small gathers where it joins the bodice. There are button holes & buttons, but the strap didn’t sit right buttoned in, so I used tiny fell stitches to anchor it to the top of the bodice as well.

I’m not going to share any more pictures or details of the insides, I think there are plenty enough as it is on this blog!

A few thoughts on the Bombshell:
– It is quite comfortable! Of course, I tend to wear my clothing with little to no ease regardless, but boning is something that I’ve always associated with discomfort. The boning in this dress is great: it kept everything into place but didn’t hinder any movement whatsoever.
– When I first finished the dress, I was worried that the bodice was too long for my torso. Maybe I’m just used to a shorter bodice, because this one absolutely ends right at my waist, so it’s the correct length. Anyway, now that I’m looking at the pictures, I think it looks fine.
– Despite multiple muslins, the middle of the bodice does not actually sit flush against my chest. I guess my cups are a smidge too small as it should fit just like a bra does (and my bras do fit with the middle flush against me. Is that tmi?). Then again, I think any gal who is increasing the cups to fit a chest that is too big for the original pattern size is probably going to struggle with getting that piece to lie flat. The lesson here: no one else noticed, and I only noticed because I have this wonderful angle of looking straight down. I still think the fit looks great. Don’t sweat it if yours doesn’t lie flat either!
– As I mentioned, it was 90* outside and the wedding ceremony was in the middle of a flower garden covered with direct sunlight. It was hot outside! And even though my dress has many layers and is extremely fitted, I didn’t feel any more warm that I would in shorts & a tshirt. Make sure your fabric (and lining) is very breathable if you are planning on wearing this in super hot weather!
– I enjoyed working on this dress, and I loved the process of all the fiddly detail work, but I will confess that toward the end I was just ready to be DONE! I think this is a great dress for a special occasion, but make sure you give yourself a nice long deadline in the distant future so you don’t feel terribly rushed – a dress like this, with all the fitting, and handwork, and special techniques… doesn’t need to be rushed.

I guess that’s it? I am very pleased with my finished dress, and I definitely think the course was worth the $$ – I learned so much, including new favorite hand-stitches and little tips/tricks that never occurred to me otherwise. If you are still on the fence for a class like this, I hope this post & these pictures nudged a little closer to my side 🙂

And I’m still rolling along Me-Made-May! 🙂

Tags: Bombshell dress, completed, dress, killer project that almost killed me, Me Made May '12, spring/summer 2012

Comments 60 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Recon: The Hawaiian Sundress

30 Apr

I’m still slogging away on my Bombshell dress – although right now it appears to be more of a bed than anything:

More on that later! Today, we will talk about my newest recon.

I actually started plotting the making of this dress on Friday afternoon – I found this sweet Hawaiian maxi dress and I spent the rest of the afternoon obsessing over how to make my own. My drive home from work ended taking A FUCKING HOUR AND A HALF (I drive about 5 miles & it usually takes 15-20 minutes – tops! 25 minutes is long enough to make me feel desperate, no lie) – thanks, Country Music Marathon! – so I had plenty of time to plan the making of my new dress. I realized the head start was actually hanging in my closet.

If you’re feeling underwhelmed, well, so was I. I picked this dress up at the thrift store last summer – I loved the print, and it’s rayon which is my faaaavorite fiber to wear in the summer. Also, it was $2. Unfortunately, it’s a big shapeless muumuu. I thought I could cinch it with a belt and be done with it, but belting that much fabric leaves some weird gathers & poof, so this was a dress reserved for hanging around the house.

This was a REALLY easy (and fast!) recon – I sewed a strip of wide elastic at the waistline, cut 6″ off the hem & sewed that to the elastic neckline. Done and done!

The original inspiration is sleeveless, but I actually like the extra ruffle the sleeves give, so they stay… for now.

It is hemmed a little short – you can’t tell from these pictures, since I have the tripod angled, but I could definitely use an extra inch. Although I did wear this to shop the flea market with my mom on Saturday & she never mentioned the length (or lack thereof), so maybe it’s not as bad as I think it is.

I got a LOT of compliments on this dress! Probably more than I’ve ever received for any of my clothing – funny! It seemed like every other person I ran into had something nice to say about it 🙂

Oh, and thanks to the elastic waistband – it looks great without a belt! This will be extremely important once the rest summer heat+humidity hits 🙂

Some construction notes…

The elastic waistband was really easy to insert – I measured the elastic around my waist, and then sewed it to the middle of the dress (try it on first to check the placement), giving the elastic a good stretch while I sewed it on. I just used a straight stitch, since it’s not a really high-stress area.

From the front – it gathered up nicely, I think!

To make the ruffled collar, I sewed cut-off dress bottom (hem intact!) to the inside of the dress, wrong side up. Again, I stretched it as I sewed so it would gather up.

Then just flip the ruffle of the outside, hiding the seams.

The hem is finished with a small rolled hem. No, I didn’t take a picture. I’m sure you can use your imagination 😉

And that’s it! Easy, breezy, beautiful… err, this’ll be great for Me-Made-May 🙂

As for the flea market… well, the pickings were pretty slim this go-round 😦 I did meet two vendors who said they have loads of fabric they need to sell off, so I gave them my contact information and hopefully I can spend the money I didn’t spend at the flea market on their fabric 🙂 Haha!

I did pick up this pattern… there’s not a listed manufacturer anywhere, just the pattern number.

I love the button placket.

It’s undated, but based on the fact that it’s unprinted & it has THIS across the top of the (sparse)instructions, I reckon it’s from the war era 🙂

I also bought two pieces of stretchy fabric, although they were from the thrift store, not the flea.

Probably going to save this one for winter, it’s kind of… velvety? I like how loud it is, though. And yes, my cat is modeling because she refused to get off the table.

This is polyester, but I just love those 70s stripes!

The Bombshell is making excellent progress – and it still fits! YAY!

Tags: Bombshell dress, dress, fabric hoarding, flea market, minidress, reconstructions

Comments 20 Comments
Categories completed projects - reconstructed

Completed: Floral Minidress

5 Apr

I know I have this labeled as a “sundress,” but we’re just gonna go with minidress because… this shit is itty-bitty.

I used McCall’s 2185 to make this up. The fabric is some class of sheer cotton that has the appearance of printed cheesecloth… it’s really interesting. It was actually given to me by the same friend who provided me with that awesome slinky cheetah print – I know you are all totally jealous of this friendship right now (did I mention she is also my Life Partner? Truth.), I’m kind of jealous of myself tbh ;). Anyway, the fabric is super duper see-through so I had to underline the whole thing to keep things (somewhat)modest. I used batiste, and I’m actually kind of pissed right now because I’m not 100% thrilled with the finished dress and woe is me, that was most of what was left of my batiste 😦 BOO.

Anyway, the pattern was fairly easy to work with. It’s a size bigger than what I have been using lately (34 bust instead of my usual 32 bust), so I did pull in the seams an extra 1/2″ or so at the waist because the original look was pretty sack-like and extremely unflattering. Interestingly, the seams at the hip were WAY too tight – despite the fact that this is supposed to be an A-line dress! – and I had to skimp by on 1/4″ seams to make room for my legs. So weird. It’s still not flared enough, but ehh can’t do anything about that.

I also ran out of batiste on the length-wise so the hem is pretty fiddly. I had a good 4″ or so of dress fabric that was not underlined and it looked really awful. I ended up putting a facing of sorts at the hem, using bleached muslin (because I’m not wasting anymore batiste on this dress!), and then flipped it up to meet where the underlining ends. I had to hem the dress twice, but it works I guess. I considered adding a line of ribbon around the bottom of the dress to cover the seams, but they’re not terribly noticeable and I honestly don’t care about this dress anymore anyway. It’ll be good for puttering around the house on weekends – nice and cool for summer – but that’s about it. It’s so short!!

There was supposed to be a self-fabric belt, which I planned on making, but I was having major problems turning it right-side out – the flimsy fabric kept pulling past the sew-in interfacing & I ended up ripping a giant hole in it, ahem, mostly on purpose because I was angry and I wanted to destroy something. Whatever, belt, no one wanted you anyway! I like this turquoise belt better anyway. Isn’t it awesome? God, this belt is so awesome.

You may notice that I did not photoshop my roots in these pictures. Today I just can’t be arsed to care. Any they kind of look like shitty highlights, anyway lol.

I did photoshop a piece of trash out of the background though. Photoshop is awesome!

I know the facing isn’t even at the top of the zipper… NO CARE.

Underlining! And check out the zipper –

Have you ever seen a metal invisible zipper? I hadn’t!
It’s a little too thick for my invisible zipper foot, though, so as you can see, it’s not exactly invisible. Still kinda cool, though 🙂

Oh, here it is without the belt

Boooooo

I guess I can muster up a smile, though.

Kinda bummed that I’m not OMGWTFBBQ about this dress, but ehh life goes on. I think it looks better in the pictures than it does in real life, to be honest 🙂 I still had a metric shit ton of this fabric (the original length I was given was over 7 yards and I’d be shocked if I used 1.5 yards on this dress), so I definitely want to make something else with it. I’m thinking the Chantilly. Thoughts?

I also just realized my birthday is in like a month and a half. Ack! Better get started on my Bombshell Birthday Dress 😀

Tags: completed, dress, meh, minidress, simplicity, spring/summer 2012

Comments 48 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Completed: The Tacky Shirtwaist Dress

2 Apr

I actually don’t think this dress is tacky at all – I think it’s kind of kitschy & cute! Landon however, hates the fabric – “that looks like a set of curtains my mother had” – which means that I’ll be wearing this dress a lot around him, just because. I’m a terrible person.

ANYWHO let’s talk about this pattern for a minute. This is Simplicity 2458, a sweet little 1958 shirtwaist pattern that includes a few different options. I went with option 2, but I cut the sleeves & hem significantly shorter than indicated by the pattern – the original hem came down to my ankles. Total frumpsville! I tried to take a picture for lols, but I couldn’t get the tripod far enough away to capture the true essence… so just trust me on this one. Anyway, the pattern was lovely to work with, although some of the instructions were a little dicey. A dress like this uses a LOT of fabric – I think I used close to 5 yards! Fortunately for meeee, this fabric was part of one of my ‘fill several giant bags full of fabric and pay $5 for all of it’ flea market finds, so this dress ended up being cheap 🙂 I’m actually surprised at how well the pattern fit straight out of the envelope – the only sizing adjustment I made was to add about 1/2″ at the side seam under the bust dart. Everything else fits great! There are 10 darts in just the top of this dress – 4 vertical bust darts, 2 horizontal bust darts, and 2 vertical neck darts in the back. There are actually 2 darts in the skirt as well, but you can’t see them for all the ~soft pleats~ hovering at the waistline. Also, I think this dress really needs pockets. I’m not the kind of girl who things pockets belong in all dresses or anything like that, but I feel like this dress would have benefited from some deep side seam pockets. Maybe next time!

I actually really hate the buttons on this thing – I think they are tacky as hell & they make the dress look really cheap. I really need to find some nice turquoise buttons, but these’ll do for now – they were what I had in my stash (and I actually went to the store in search of buttons but WTF why are buttons so expensive?! It was like $3 for two buttons – and now I’m seriously regretting that I passed up all those pretty antique Czech glass buttons at the flea market last month. Dude wanted $1 a piece & I thought that was way too high, but looks like I was wrong. Ok enough with the button tangent.) The off-white belt is my attempt to pretend like the buttons were on purpose. That is all.

Dress with belt:

Oh, do you see where the button placket on the skirt is kind of sinking into the folds? I clearly used much too heavy of an interfacing down there, and it is weighed down as a result. It’s a fairly sturdy, mediumweight sew-in interfacing – worked beautifully on the collar (so crisp!) – but it really doesn’t belong on the skirt. Especially since I’ll probably never unbutton those buttons.

Dress without belt:

This is me running back into my house because I realized it might be a good idea to lock the door.

Came back with a petticoat!

The skirt looked a lot more full in real life, argh.

Also, I found a caterpillar 😀
(sidenote: someone made a snide comment about my septum ring a couple of posts ago… good for you, lady, I hope this picture grosses you out lol)

Instead of a button at the waistline, there are hooks & eyes. This keeps everything nice & flat without gaping! Sorry about the yellow smudges – I tried to edit them out best I could. This is my tip for getting hooks & eyes positioned so they actually latch closed – sew on the eye, and then rub chalk all over it until it has a layer of powder covering it. Close the garment and press down slightly where the hook should go… when you pull the garment open, there should be a little dot of powder that is exactly where you need to sew the hook. So helpful!

Lace at the hem 🙂

That’ll be all, folks! 🙂

Tags: completed, dress, shirtwaist, simplicity, spring/summer 2012, vintage

Comments 60 Comments
Categories completed projects - new

Completed: Colette Parfait

27 Mar

Damn, y’all. I know I was all pumped about getting my Spring & Summer wardrobe‘s ass whipped into shape, but I didn’t realize I was going to rip through it so fast. WOE IS ME, WHAT IF I RUN OUT OF FABRIC.

Anyway, I made a Parfait! And this fabric… it might even be more delicious than it’s namesake (I know!). I bought 2 yards of this stuff… 4 years ago, I think? I had plans for some shitty sundress, but thankfully went into hoarder mode & it’s sat on my shelf since. It is the most amazing, soft, silky cotton voile I have EVER put my hands on… seriously wish I could cut a little swatch to mail to all of you. It feels sooooo good! And I’m not even a “purple” person (although, for some reason, everyone else seems to think I am. Must be my dark hair?), but I just love the purples & greys in this fabric. Love love love.

I’ve actually made this pattern up before – here’s the Craftster link. This time ’round, I size down to a 2 and omitted the pockets and facings. The top & midriff are lined with a lovely white batiste. I was afraid the skirt was going to be too sheer to wear without a slip (or underlining), but guess what – I have on TURQUOISE underwear in these pictures and ho ho ho I don’t see them at all! I will, however, approach direct sunlight with many precautions.

I don’t have much else to say about this pattern except pay attention to that cutting layout! The majority of those pieces are cut on the fold. I think the fabric requirements are pretty generous, though – I still have nearly 3/4 yard of this voile left. Although I didn’t cut the facings, I don’t think they really take up that much fabric, you know? 🙂

Check out this picture of me – I look pissed lololololol. Honestly, I was just testing the camera to make sure everything was centered and the light was good. But I crack up every time I look at it so I’m going to share my mean mug with the rest of the world. THERE YA GO.

If the left side of my back looks weird, it’s because I photoshopped my (turquoise)bra strap out. Photoshop is so magical, y’all.

I love the button straps, but now I’m wondering if I should have sewn the buttons on with black thread instead.

The under-buttons are clear – why waste a pretty button that won’t be seen??

Bastiste lining 🙂

On a side note, does anyone know how to determine if a fabric is lining fabric or not?

I bought this stuff at an antique mall over the weekend – dots! So fun! But this fabric is totally stumping me! It’s not super slippery like traditional lining fabric, although the sheerness makes me pause (seems too sheer to be apparel fabric). The part that confuses me is that it’s textured. Does lining fabric ever have texture?
FWIW, the fabric is 100% poly. I bought it because it was $1 and, eh, I can use it either or. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but I just think it looks really obvious and kind of tacky when people use lining fabric as apparel fabric. So I don’t want to make that mistake! Thoughts?