dresses, a skirt, and blatantly ripped off ideas

I finally cracked open one of my fourties era patterns, and made some dresses out of what was supposed to be a night dress. I'm so scandalous, haha.

black cotton lawn (and newly strawberry hair)

ties in the back, don't mind the wrinkles

It was originally floor length, but I hacked a bunch of the skirt off to make a better sun dress. other than that this is exactly how it came out of the envelope. Loose fitted garments are so much easier to make!

dopey look and a big gate

it was rather windy, haha

While I had been planning the black version of this dress for months, the pink one was completely spur of the moment. I saw the fabric in my local craft store and had to make it up right away. Originally I thought of it as a trial run for that pattern before cutting into my real, well thought out black version, which of course resulted in me wearing this one about three times as often. Why are the unintentional projects always the ones that end up most loved? At least in my closet :).

standing in the bush/shade to photograph pale fabric

hello bush, such a nice day to run around in the yard, isn't it?

In fact, I liked the pink rose dress so much that I had to go back and get the same fabric in the green colourway. And a larger rose print in blue! The blue needs to be some sort of, as yet undecided on, outrageous shirt, but even before I got out of the store, I knew the green was going to be this tiered skirt. Yay for comfy elastic waists, and garments made entirely of rectangles! It was so simple that the Japanese pattern book I got the pattern from didn't even have pattern pieces for it, just the dimensions of the rectangles and how many of each. It has a little self fabric bow at the waist to indicate which is the front, but I didn't get a picture of it.

On my sewing table (dining room table, really) right now is a black batiste Violet, and an asymmetrical lolita skirt that will probably be shelved for a while, as the fabric is too warm to wear right now anyway. Also, I just discovered the delightful Cindy at Cation Designs, and her wonderful idea to use sheets (especially kids superhero sheets) to make dresses. Needless to say, I now have a selection of retro geek sheets in the mail, and can't wait to make them into the cutest dresses! The only catch being that I refuse to wear nerdy paraphernalia unless I can have an intelligent conversation about it, so now my love of sewing has combined rather unexpectedly with my love of comics, as I must at least start reading about each superhero before the dresses get made. What a tragedy ;).

velvet and satin

I was feeling a definite lack of knee length black skirts, so I used the black duchess satin originally bought to make some fourties style trousers and made myself a cute little skirt. And of course it needed a ruffle. And a bustle. And now I wear it every other day because who doesn't love a ruffly bustled satin skirt for day wear, haha.

For christmas my mom took me fabric shopping, and I've been feeling gothish lately, so everything I bought ended up being red or black. Being a sucker for velvet, I pounced on a bright red piece when I realized it was both stretchy and machine washable. When my boss called this morning to say it was a snow day and not to come in, some sewing was inevitable, so I finished off a nice red top. It's even fairly warm, so I actually have a vaguely season appropriate piece of clothing now!

Both pattern I made myself, although I did reuse the neckline and armsyths from my red plaid dress. The skirt is six panels, with an extra three slightly shorter over the top in the back. the overskirt has ribbon sewn into channels in the center seams and pulled up to create the bustled effect.

The gathering on the front of the shirt was actually a last minute addition, after trying it on and deciding the neckline could be more awesome. Now it makes me thing of disney princesses for some reason, hahaha.

I will probably do another swayback adjustment on the top pattern before I use it again, there is still a little bit of fabric gathering there, although not enough to bother me on this piece. I think the pattern would be cute with lace sleeves, don't you?

Dresses and skirts

Frolicked about in my yard last week taking pictures while it wasn't raining or cloudy :)

red plaid dress and a silly face

yellow gingham chantilly

can't really see the dress, but I'm cute, haha

relatively normal skirt in the front...

fancy lace up bustle in the back!

the ivory lace skirt i never wear cause my slip is too tight

more red plaid, half circle skirt and jacket

the stripe are horizontal in front and vertical in back :)

I'm back!

I may have been absent from this site for a while now, but I swear I've still been making things. I hope to get better picture of some of them at a later date, but for now, this is what I have to show:

Self drafted skirt made out of ivory coloured eyelet. The weird picture of it hanging in my kitchen doorway is because, being completely devoid of slips, I can't actually wear this yet (stupid eyelet and it's being full of holes, haha). I used the scalloped salvage edges for the hem, so cute.

It has twelve pieces that are sort of right triangles. My original idea was that this would make the hem line lower and pointy at every other seam (does that make sense?) but my triangles ended up being to small for that to really work. That's ok, maybe in the future I will try to make this idea again. In the mean time, I'm quite happy with this one, althought I have yet to see what it's like to wear. There is a vintage half slip in the mail to me though, so soon we shall see :).

I got bored one day, realised I had been sewing for over a year without a pin cushion, and decided to do something about it. I used these instructions, found through the lovely Jo from Bridges on the Body, and whipped this baby up in a couple of hours of hand sewing. Then came the fun part of cramming torn up quilt batting scraps into it and then trying to sew the last side closed without them popping out, lol. I can't believe I waited this long, it's very nice to have something to stab when I get frustrated with unruly pattern pieces somewhere to keep my pins. ;)

In sudden impending need of having something better to lounge around the house in than undies and a tank top, I went on a pajama making spree. Above, we have a nightdress made out of some weird slinky knit stuff I found in the clearance bin of my local fabric shop (100% unknown fibres, haha). The pattern was a ?forties? slip pattern that wouldn't normally have fit without alteration, but this stuff is so stretchy it was fine as it came :). It also pulls on instead of zippering as per instructions. Who would want pjs with a zipper? psha. After some frustrations with skipped stitches, and subsequently discovering that one truly does need to use ballpoint needles for knits, it went together pretty painlessly.

But sometimes a girl need seperates, so I threw together some pj pants as well.

Love the pink check :). So much so, in fact, that I used the leftovers to try out Colette's free madeleine mini bloomer pattern. No, I'm not modeling that one :P. But aren't they cute?

I still have some of both the pj fabrics left over, so look out for more coordinating pieces still to come.

I have another skirt and Colette's new sorbetto top pattern to show off too, but those will have to wait for daylight so I can get good pictures.

progress, finally

With Betty-the-Janome happily back in her place on my coffee table, I'm finally making progress on the pink and grey plaid shirt. I catch: I can't seem to care about it. I know I need more shirts, and that it will be very cute, etc, but all I can think about are pretty dresses with matching half jackets, fourties trousers, sweet little tops in brightly coloured silks. Spring is popping up all over, and it's whispering to me to make gingham dresses, not flannel shirts. Unfortunately, all of the projects I'm excited about have either the pattern or the fabric (or both) still in the post, so I'll just have to bide my time.

shapeless box of a shirt

So far, I have the darts, side, and shoulder seams sewn and edged in bias tape, with the sleeves about to be put in. I'm a little nervous about those; not only have I not set in sleeves since grade nine home ec, but after unthinkingly taking in the side seam on the blouse body, my sleeve hole is two inches smaller than it started out being. Pinning that much out of the arm seam made for awkwardly snug sleeves, so I'm going to try either gathers or tucks in the sleeve cap to take up the extra slack. With some luck it will look like an interesting design feature instead of a slapdash fix, ha ha. My first attempt at pattern matching didn't work very well, I will have to read up on it in my lovely new sewing books before trying it again.

side seam pattern matching = fail

After that I guess I'm done for the night, as I realised when I went to cut it out that I'm right out of interfacing for the collar and button strips. Oh dear, that means it's off to the fabric store for me tomorrow morning, with all their pretty spring fabrics... and a fifty percent off everything sale... Somehow I think I'll be coming home with more than interfacing ;).

As far as me-made-march goes, I've been good about remembering to do it, but not so much about the photographing. Days 6, 7, and 11 somehow got missed, but here's the rest of the week:

day 8/12

Me made pink peasant skirt, with black/white striped shirt on day 8, black/pink striped shirt on day 12.

day 9

Me made pink ruffle shirt, with a lovely pink skirt from the now closed In The Starlight website.

day 10

Me made red peasant top with me made grey corduroy jumper skirt.

And next week I'll try to remember pictures every day, and hopefully some new wardrobe additions to show off :).

challenge outfits

As I have yet to get up and do something productive with my next project, here are days 3 to 6 of the me-made-march challenge.

day 3

Full length, self drafted, ruffled peasant skirt, made from my christmas present fabric, and a matching blouse (new look 6599) with ruffled lace trim and heart buttons. I still have some extra fabric left over to make a matching corset and shrug, one of these days. 

day 4

And this is when I ran out of self made shirts, ha ha. Self drafted corduroy and satin kilt with black eyelet trim.

day 5

 One of my first sewing projects, two layer ruffled skirt with ribbons sewn into the waistband on top and between the layers, which can be tied together to gather the top skirt layer at each side seam. I rarely use it, but it's nice to have in case I feel like dressing like a bar wench, ha ha.

Day 6 (today) is just day 3s skirt and a rtw top. 

Bonus Jewellery shot from day 2, self made dangley earrings and super cute octopus pendant from etsy.

decisions, decisions

I desperately need more blouses. Skirts are so tempting to make, and then I end up with nothing but lovely fancy skirts paired with t-shirts, not good. In my stash is this pretty pink/black/grey plaid, just calling out to be made into something while the weather is still cold enough to  wear it.

wouldn't this be great with a black pencil skirt?

This is definitely up next on the cutting table, I'm just having trouble deciding which of these shirts it wants to be. The Smooth Sailing blouse from the ever talented Lauren at Wearing History?

very Katharine Hepburn

Or the short sleeved version of this Simplicity pattern I got from my grandmother?

c. 1969

On the one hand, if I use the first one, it will give me the chance to work any kinks out of the pattern before I make it up in a fancy gold fabric I have waiting in the wings. On the other hand, my grandmother's notes on the second one indicate that it won't need much tweaking (it evidently fit her, and we're pretty much the same size and shape), and as this is my first try at either inset sleeves or a collar, not having to worry about the rest of it too much would be nice. I had meant to pick one and start cutting it out this morning, but too much procrastinating (and watching Muppets Tonight on my computer) has left me with no time, so it looks like I have till tonight to decide. In the meantime, here are my outfits for the first two days of me-made-march:

top adapted from butterick 3906, self drafted corduroy jumper

the circus skirt, new look 6599 blouse

Circus skirt finished, woo

One broken machine needle later, the stripey skirt is finished. It reminds me a little of the circus, ha ha. In a good way.

finished, if not ironed

And and extra picture of the full length. I'm standing on a chair because I was too lazy to find another place to set the camera.

the socks say "right foot" and "left foot"...

Stay tuned for what's next (as I haven't decided yet, ha ha.)

This should be interesting

As I was sitting here trolling sewing sites (well ok, lets be honest and say while I was procrastinating about doing actual work), I decided to take part in Me Made March. This may prove a little bit challenging, as I only have about 5 things each to put on the top and bottom parts of me. But hay, incentive to get with the sewing! My pledge:

'I, Sarah from http://sarahsewing.blogspot.com/, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-March '11. I endeavour to wear at least one self made piece of clothing each day for the duration of March 2011'

Wish me luck! Now off to start sewing myself more options, quick. Up next, I'm attempting to make a skirt along this line,

plaid formal wear!

out of this lovely heavy weight satiny material I found on etsy a month or so back.

cranberry and gold (swoon)

If my calculations are correct, I'll have plenty left over for a coordinating... something or other. We'll see what it wants to be when the time comes :).