Super simple split-side skirt

self drafted
I picked up some beautiful velvet in Abakhan a couple of weeks back - a good-sized bundle of textured emerald green. I had planned to use it to make a pair of trousers, but I was a bit too optimistic on the meterage. Instead, I managed to squeeze out a skirt of fairly lengthy proportions and it's quickly become my most worn item.

Looking seasonally witchy - lurking in Sheffield basements on Halloween
Feeling the need to 'achieve' something (i.e. finish a garment), I was aiming for the simplest sew - an elasticated waist skirt made up of just 3 pieces. Rather than using a pattern, I improvised with the amount of fabric I had.

Rough sketch of my made up pattern pieces
I cut the waistband a bit longer than my natural waist (to allow room for a little bit of gathering once the elastic was inserted) and made sure this length would match that of the front and back skirt once they were sewn together. All I had to do was sew the front and back skirt pieces (both cut to the same shape/size) together into a tube, and attach the waistband. I constructed the waistband in the same method as The Great British Sewing Bee casual trousers - this Megan Nielsen tutorial also nicely sums up making an elastic waistband.
Split-seam Pinterest inspiration

It wasn't until I'd nearly finished that I realised the skirt was utterly boring - despite the dreamy velvet - and it would be fairly restrictive to walk around in as it was so long and narrow. So I got the seam ripper and went straight for the side seams. I measured my rips, so the splits came just up to my knee, and finished the newly exposed raw edges, reinforcing the tops of the splits.

Post-split shot

For such a spur of the moment make, I'm so pleased with the results. I've seen a few long tops, tunics and dresses (possibly in Zara) with similar side splits. It's pretty hard to catch the splits on camera as I'm wearing tights, but I tried...

Trying to show off the split-seam
The weight of the velvet definitely lends itself to the style and movement of the skirt. I'd like to try something similar in a heavy crepe. And maybe I will get round to making those velvet trousers at some point!



Stay in touch!

Seventies sun dress

finished project
So this one is my last sew before packing up my machine for a little while to move house, and I'm absolutely itching to wear it in all it's 1970's sun dress glory! But it's being saved for my holiday next week.



I bought the lovely vintage fabric from a fab little vintage shop called Copper & Corduroy when I was in Bristol recently. I keep spotting pictures of dressmakers being wonderfully creative with vintage table clothes and curtains, and I LOVE retro prints, but I've always struggled to drop on a fabric that's the right weight for sewing with. (No one want's a beautifully patterned, but starched to hell dress...) But this was just right - a soft brushed cotton, and it looked like it was in decent condition too. The pattern and colours are just dreamy, my phone pictures could never do them justice!



Just one thing I've found about sewing with vintage fabric... be ready for some hole dodging.
Like I said, I checked it and it looked in decent condition. It really was, but when I pressed it, I found a few little holes dotted around that look stress and damage from where the fabric had been folded. Luckily, some clever pattern piece placement meant that I could dodge the majority of them!


But as luck would have it, I went and pinned my CF pattern piece bang on a whole. So I had a bit of patching to do. I applied a bit of iron on interfacing on the reverse and then picked a matching thread to stitch over the hole and enclose the raw edges. I'm pretty pleased with it, but the print is so loud that it detracts from the patch job anyway, which is a good thing as I had a fair few more to do on the skirt. I positioned my pattern piece so the holes were clustered around the bottom of the back skirt pieces, where it would be harder to spot my patching.



The dress is made from a self-drafted pattern I've been working from and adapting for a while. You can see previous incarnations here (the Liberty one), here (the earliest one), and here (the party dress one). For the latest version, I adapted the neckline so it was round. The skirt is based on the Emery dress, with a decent amount added to the length - it's not quite as long as I've made it in the past though.



The petal sleeves, as always, remain the same, but I absolutely love them, they're definitely my favourite part of the pattern. They're so interesting to sew and really comfortable to wear - no pulling or tightness at all. 



And here is the finished garment! Hoping it will be warm enough in Barcelona so it gets a Me Made May wear. Now to pack for hols and house move... see you on the other side!




Science vs Sewing vs (broken) Technology

Emery

I've been utterly consumed by work, so once again it's been a little quiet on the sewing front. It doesn't mean I haven't been making though... Here's a rather silly picture of me looking pretty proud that the giant atoms I made for the annual Leeds Festival of Science weren't a complete Pinterest Fail.



Another HUGE sewing set back is my broken sewing machine, which I'm less than impressed about having had it for less than a year. The bobbin case seems to wiggle around and then jam when the hand wheel is turned backwards, and the thread is getting all knotted after just a few stitches, It's under warranty still, but I'm having difficulty with getting it sent back to the suppliers to be seen to. All I can say is that I would never buy something like this from a seller on Amazon again - in future I'd only buy directly from the manufacturers themselves (i.e. Janome) or a reputable, nearby shop. 



It's times like this that I realise how much I'm relying on technology/a nifty piece of engineering to do the work for me, and how completely in the dark I feel when it goes wrong. It would be nice to know a bit more about the technical side of these things, and saving myself some of the annoyance/panic/frustration I feel when things aren't working quite right.

My wonderful mum stepped in (in light of such an emergency) and packed her sewing machine in a suitcase and brought it on the train to Leeds. I'm not sure if it was a subconscious thing, but it could be that sewing with my mum's machine has influenced my next project - it's screams 'my-mum-in-the-late-eighties'...



...Lots of fabric, fuss and florals going on in this dress. The particular floral I used was a steal from the wonderful Ray-Stitch sales a while back; a 'slightly imperfect' Liberty (perfect is boring anyway). I think it's a viscose/poly and has a decent drape. It's heavy enough to allow the skirt to hang well, whilst still having a good amount of movement.



The dress as a whole comes from a chain of ones before it (as those of you who have read my blog before may have noticed!) The bodice was another excuse to perfect my self drafted pattern - mainly the lining as I didn't do it so well on the last try. I still seem to have a bit of trouble getting the lining spot on - joining it to the facing is much more difficult because of the angular neckline - but it's so much better than my last time. I've got the under-stitching down now too, so I'm really pleased with the finish on the neckline. And I still love the petal sleeves. I think they might be my favourite feature of the dress.



The skirt is a basic long gathered skirt, based loosely on the skirt of the Emery Dress - with added length! I'm really attracted to midi-length garments at the moment, as can be seen with the skirt I posted about last month, so I thought I'd go for something similar in dress form.

I've also been sewing with both Me Made May and a holiday to Barcelona (also in May eek!) in mind. I feel like I've at least ticked one garment off my 'to sew for May/holiday' list with this.




The only thing I'm not quite happy with - and it's entirely my fault - is that I sewed in a standard zipper rather than a concealed one. I remember asking for concealed in the shop, but before I noticed, I was sewing it in and it was a just a standard zipper. This means that you can see it a bit on the back, but at least it's neat, and it's behind me so I'll never see it anyway, ha.

I think I'll get a lot of wear out of this one, especially in summer. The self drafted bodice is become quite the 'go-to' thing to make, primarily because I know it fits me perfectly without any adjustments. No muslin making = good in my books! I think I'll be look for ways to alter the neckline and skirt to try and change it up a bit so it doesn't look like it's becoming my uniform!

Coming up... I have some time off to dedicate to sewing, plus some very special social sewing plans in the pipeline - hopefully including wine! - that might be of interest to anyone who lives in Leeds/West Yorkshire.



I would go out tonight... But I haven't got an occasion to wear this dress to

finished project
Sooo I finished my first make of the year, and this one really has been a long time in the making, with the process spanning the last few months of 2014... it's my (almost) final self drafted dress! If this is starting the sewing year as I mean to go on, then I think I'm onto good things!



This is a wearable muslin of sorts, made from fabric that I wasn't at all scared to chop into and ruin - it's some sort of viscose/synthetic, drapey stuff that was £4 for 3.5yds from the Hebden Bridge WI Rag market, very late 80s/early 90s no? My retro fabric is sort of at odds with the perhaps more vintage design of the dress - it's based on a picture of a Viven of Holloway dress I collected for a mood board - but I'm going to claim that it's all the name of added interest.

Although I've made and tweaked many a muslin during the pattern drafting stages, this is the very first time I've put the whole pattern, bodice, skirt and lining, together as a finished garment. I've already spoken about the most challenging part to fit (the bodice) in an earlier post, where I made it up as a dress with a simple gathered skirt. It was mainly an excuse to use this lovely patterned brushed cotton, and break up what felt like weeks of staring into calico-white-space.  



The bodice and sleeves have only had a couple of tweaks since then. The tulip sleeves pulled a bit at the back during wear, so I lengthened the back-sleeve pattern piece just a bit. This piece then gets gathered in ever so slightly, so it has a bit more 'give' or movement. I also moved the shoulder seams so they sat a bit further forward too.

The skirt had to be drafted from a basic pattern block before I could make the draped and gathered tulip skirt that I dreamed of. This is great though, as now I have an overall basic dress pattern that I could make up or play around with - one pattern, many looks!



I did some draping and pinning on the model and a little bit of cutting too - I have to say that I was a bit reluctant with the cutting, it took a bit of encouragement of the tutor at the evening classes I went to at college! It helped to give a rough idea of how the finished garment might look, and I could work backwards from the pinned version to understand the pattern pieces I needed.



By the time I got to making I just wanted to get on with it, so I hardly took any pictures, sorry! I sort of worked out the skirt and skirt lining pieces as I went along. The skirt lining seems to want to peak out just a little where it's draped at the front, but I can live with that, and I think I'm prepared for what to do when it comes to the final final version.



The only bit I struggled with - and it was entirely my fault - was the lining for the bodice. I drafted it against the facing which I'd already added a seam allowance to, and then added a seam allowance to the lining  as well - CONFUSED?! Basically there was too much bodice lining to fit into the garment. I only realised what I'd done wrong when it was pretty much sewn up, so took the lazy 'oh well, it's on the inside, no one can see it anyway' route and left it as it was. But I need to shame myself and show it publicly to make sure I don't do it again. Here you go...



So there is a bit of gape and excess in the middle. But if you ignore that, the rest of the lining doesn't actually look too shabby...



Other than that one one blip, I'm so so pleased with how the dress has turned out. Even though I'd drafted it to fit me perfectly (and tested it) I still had 'the fear' when I was inserting the zip, that it might not do up - it has just been Christmas after all... but it fits, and I feel absolutely fab in it :) Now if only I had somewhere to wear it to!



So to round up, pattern drafting takes time, effort and patience, lots of it. But I don't think I've ever been more proud of something I've made and I can't wait to wear it! 



I've already got my fabric ready to make the final final version. I've chosen a rich teal crepe with a bit more weight to it, and a contrast mustard/gold fabric for the lining (for when you get the tiniest flashes of it). The only thing I'm struggling with is finding a perfectly matched concealed zipper - does anyone have any internet shopping suggestions to help me track down one in the perfect hue?

Self-drafted sewing

Emery

So this post is about something I've been working on for quite a while and I'm really excited to share... My very first self-drafted sew! I mentioned that I was going to an evening course in pattern drafting a little while back, and this is my first finished garment - a sort of wearable muslin and product of the pattern pieces I've been working on.



It's by no means perfect, and the final garment I'm working towards will probably look quite different, but it has princess seams, pleats and petal sleeves and I'm pretty proud of it (try saying that after a glass of vino ha!)



The course is very self directed. I just took along a mood board in the first week and ended up using one of the dresses as my main inspiration (the one in the middle on the right hand page, I think it might be Viven of Holloway). It has quite a vintage feel and a few features and techniques that made it interesting and just the right amount of a challenge to draft.



I had to start off with the very basics, so I made my own bodice block. A block is a basic pattern piece that you make using your measurements to perfectly fit you. It took a few muslins and tweaks to get right, but it will be really useful as a starting point to have and work from. Some of the others in the class made personal blocks, and it was really interesting to see how different they all looked! My front bodice differed massively in size to my back - no wonder I've ended up trimming down the centre back seams on a fair few of my makes! It's all starting to make sense...

 By using the block, and playing with it in both paper and fabric form, I managed to work out and create all the extra features - of course I had the help and support of the wonderful tutor too! Let me show you some of the pattern details...




 I removed that humongous breast-accommodating dart on the front bodice in favour of a princess seam. I usually avoid princess seams because the prospect of adjusting them to fit my bust fills me with dread, but now I have a block it's easy peasy! I took the princess seams all the way though the back bodice too so they match nicely at the shoulder seam. Then, like my inspiration image, I added this neat little pleat on the outside shoulder.



I opened up the neckline and took it into a shallow v shape, which is actually really flattering. Much to my tutor's umm... disgust.... I top-stitched the neckline. I don't think it's so bad to be honest, but in what felt like true Project Runway style, he said that the top-stitching 'absolutely killed it' (and not in a good way haha). Following this, I did get shown how to properly draft and apply a facing, and how to understitch so you never get a peek of it from the outside. Never going to attempt dodgy topstitching again!



On the plus side, the tutor did say that my concealed zip was excellently executed - hooray! Even I can't believe how well I matched all the seams!
I drafted basic sleeves from a ready-made block, and then from that, worked them into two pieces to form a petal. There's a small box pleat on top to add fullness, and a couple of small pleats in there. I love the sleeves, but they feel just a little bit tight in the back when the dress is being worn. I think I need to make them a little bigger (cut and spread technique maybe..?) and slightly gather then into the back bodice to add a bit of ease.
For this version, I added just a very basic gathered skirt which was roughly based on the Emery skirt. I'm working on drafting a wrap pencil skirt for the final version of the dress, which I'll hopefully be making up in the next few weeks. I'm imaging it in a lovely emerald green wool crepe...
So in all, I'm pretty pleased with my first self drafted dress! I've learnt a lot along the way and still have a few things to tweak for the final version, but I'll definitely be wearing this one with pride :)

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