The Fantastically Generous Bloggers Shirt

I had a week off from le blog last week, sacrilege I know! But as you may know from my previous post, I started a new job and as we are on the countdown to Christmas there is just so much to do! I've been bringing a few things together, including some ideas for my secret santas. I decided to take part in two this year. One by A Krafty Kat, the one that I took part in last year, and have grand plans for my pressie. Also I have taken part in a newer crafty secret santa by Stitched Up from the Start I've got a great person and can't wait to get it all wrapped up and sent away.

How has your week been? Mine has been good, the new job wiped me out for the first week, lots of meeting new people (even though I've only moved down the hallway) and wrapping my head round a whole world of new acronyms. But I'm feeling good about the move, and can't wait to go to my (two!) Christmas parties.

When I got this new job, I started to think about getting some more work appropriate clothing. I would say that work clothes are one of the things that I love most about making my own clothes, I think I might have mentioned that in my Washi post. I want something that shows my personality, can be dressed up or down, and is layerable (because I sit on an air vent... not as exciting as it sounds). The photos in this are terrible, you can probably tell that yourself but I thought I'd mention it, sometimes it's either terrible pics or freezing pics while your neighbours watch you whilst clearing a garden. I went with bad pics.

Enter my Pauline Alice Cami Shirt

I got the buttons, and lovely... especially bad photographed bias binding from my secret santa last year, I snuck in under the line for making this before the next Christmas! This lovely packet came with instructions, I was to make a shirt. I hope I did you proud Santa!

Unfortunately I didn't find a place for the light blue ribbon, but it awaits in the stash for the perfect project. 

The detailing comes from another lovely bloggers de-stashing from the 2013 Birmingham blogger meet-up, unfortunately I didn't make this years... I was hungover (to my eternal shame). But hopefully it will be on again next year and I can tag along because it was a brilliant day. I got the following material from Amy of Almond Rock, in the great de-stash/ swap, and added it to cuffs and collar.

The shirt is a little tight in the back (see slightly unflattering picture below), I did widen the sleeves as per the adjustments I thought of from the Zig Zag Cami, including a wide shoulder adjustment, which did work as the shoulder seam now sits comfortably on the edge of my shoulder. However, I don't think I widened the arms enough and that is what is causing the tightness. On to the next version!

I bought the skirt in this post from a charity shop in Edinburgh when we lived up there, it had weird little tacked on badges of squirrels and owls, which I removed. It's a great skirt for walking up a hill, or going to the office, and is super warm for chilly knees. The lining was recently falling apart so I attached a new lining to the inside of the skirt, using the edge of the old lining to stitch to.

I love a colourful lining, this was another purchase from the blogger meet-up... there have been a few things languishing in the cupboard for a while ey? Feels good to be using up the stash.

Overall I'm very happy with this shirt, this pattern is on its way to perfect, and once it's right I have so many plans for pattern hacking. I'm very excited!... but should get back to making Christmas pressies. Selfish sewer? Who... me? Hope you have a great weekend.

Debs

Jazzy Washi Dress

Hello everyone,

How's your week going? This week is my last in my current job, I've got a new job beginning on Monday! I'm a little nervous as it's a step up, and I don't know a lot about it just yet. But I'm excited to be moving onwards and upwards in my career. My outside of sewing life isn't something I talk about very often, but I'd like that to change, my fave blogs always show a little bit of themselves in their posts and I want to try and do that too.

So now I'm going to talk to you about the Washi dress. My favourite dress pattern to date, this is the dress that I get the most compliments about, and I'm already on my second version.

With shirring in the back this is ridiculously comfortable as well. Look at the fabric! I bought this at the minerva meet-up on a rainy summers day in Darwen, and went through a few plans before I landed on the washi dress. I found this pattern reading The Creative Perfectionist, who made it sound so comfortable, work wearable, and excellent weekend wear that I had to give it a go. I've found that the tunic a-line shape it creates is very flattering for me (or so I'm told) and I plan on making many more of these.

The curved cut-out needs a little work, as the points don't lie flat. However, there are hints and tips in the dress pattern for how to combat these issues. As I hadn't made the pattern before I just made it to the pattern specifications and hoped, but I'll be trying out some of these techniques in my next version. 

You can see there is a little extra fabric in the back, I'm not sure what the solution is to this as it needs that extra fabric for movement. Any thoughts? 

I'm very proud of the shirring on this, I've only ever tried shirring a couple of time before this and though not disastrous they were not exactly triumphs. I followed some of the tutorials online, and the information that came with the pattern, and I'd definitely recommend doing this. However in essence here are the three things I learned:

1. Slightly stretch the shirring elastic as you wind it on to the bobbin

2. Practise practise practise with the material you are going to use, whilst adjusting the tension until it is right

3. Pause halfway through each line and make sure your elastic isn't caught anywhere, and that the tension is correct. 

I hemmed the edge with some bias binding that I also picked up from the meet-up, I have started to pick this up whenever I see any nice bias binding as it is my favourite way to hem a dress.

So what's your latest fad? Have you got a go to Tried n True (TNT) pattern? Also, did you see my shiny shoes? (this is my new favourite phrase) they are part of my, buy awesome shoes plan. The plan has been very effective so far... well if you think, 'it takes a certain kind of person to pull off hipster shoes' as a success, which I definitely do. 

I'm off to watch another five mins of Stargate the movie before bed... Captain O'Neills hair! I'll leave you with what appears to be my favourite new pose, the who... me? shoulder pose.

Exploring Embroidery

Something that I don't talk about very much on here are my other crafting adventures, probably because they are so slow! I always have one or two things on the go, from knitting, to crochet and embroidery, but not often do I have anything finished to show.

Recently I bought an embroidery sorting box... I doubt that's its real name.  I've had all of my embroidery threads in a little box all mixed up for quite a while, and they were starting to get knotted.

Ooh look at those lovely colours, I spent hours winding these on, it makes me very happy to see them all lined up in their rainbow. I used to spend hours sorting my felt tip pens like this, woe betide anyone who messed them up! Anyone out there have any idea how to use the pink windy thing in there? I think it's for winding on the threads, but it basically just fell off a lot or felt really loose.

When I went on holiday to Donegal, a couple of months ago now, I had an idea I would do some sort of craft, something small, and I love doing embroidery, so I took along all my bits and pieces. I came up with the below, it's still in construction, as with all embroideries these things take time.

Drawing this embroidery has really opened up something in me, I've been drawing on and off all summer, and have a few more ideas for embroideries in the pipeline. I'm also trying to develop my techniques so have started to collect new stitches, and ideas for new images on my pinterest board, take a look if you have an interest... Ha don't think I ever made the connection between interest and pinterest before.

I was hoping to knit a cardigan on that holiday, I've only ever attempted to knit something the size of a cardigan once, and I got bored halfway up a sleeve.... so wish me luck! I say 'was' and 'hoping', as the wool didn't arrive in time for the holiday, and it keeps being sent to the post office depot, and as I haven't been in home on the weekend for months I still haven't got the wool! I have finally now sent it to Mr.T's work so hopefully I'll finally get this summer cardie made... in time for winter ha ha. Sounds about right, have a great weekend!

Accessories and Venue

The veil, I wanted to buy my veil by the time I had finished the dress, I was tired to be honest and a bit wiped out with all the other making we'd been doing. Unfortunately we couldn't find a nice one under about £100 so out came the sewing machine! I mean veiling is about £5 a metre for goodness sake.

To make the veil I picked up the 1 1/2 metres I had bought, clipped it to my head with a kirbi grib and marked on where I wanted it to end. I then led it out on the ground, cutting off any excess. I then folded it first in half lengthways and then downwards, and rounded off the edges. I looked up how to make one online but couldn't really grasp their instructions. But once I had the fabric laid out the material all became clear.

I had made the flower for my bouquet but as I had two it was making the bouquet unbalanced, so I used it on the veil! I used a variety of lace including that used in the wedding dress, and then attached a small veil comb underneath. To finish the edges I used 3metres of ivory lace trim, just sewing it flat onto the raw edge as veiling does not fray.

The bouquets were a joint effort between my mum and me, the two at the bottom were made using the excess off the bottom of the bridesmaid dresses so as to match my beautiful bridesmaids! The leaf you can see poking out of the top one is a felt cut-out of a leaf I picked up when Terence and I got engaged. I knew there was a reason I was so sentimental!

Here you can see a sample of the (over 100m!) of bunting that we made for the wedding. My sister and I cut out the majority of the triangles (with some help from Mother in Law), and my Mum sewed basically all of it together herself. Don't know how she managed to keep going, it was amazing! We used all sorts of colours and designs, trying to stick mostly with the blue and green but adding in the odd galaxy fabric to keep things interesting!

One of my favourite elements of the decoration were the centrepieces, they were made with hand-made flowers, spray painted candelabras, dinosaurs and animal toys and a whole mess of help from all of our amazing friends and family. Thank you to you all, I'll leave you with the pics as they tell the story of their construction better than I ever could.

You made it through the wedding posts! Well done! Just wanted to add a quick note to say thank you to everyone who helped us with this. It was the biggest thing we've ever done/ will probably ever do again. Thank you to all those who had a hand in our wedding, whether you made things, or just listened to us gripe for months on end about all sorts of nonsense. We love you guys! You made our day what it was.

Finishing the wedding dress

So I'm going to jump right in to the technical biz here.

 

The lace overlay was constructed using a lace top that I already had, I was looking for a pattern without separate sleeves but struggled to find anything! Is this something that just doesn't exist? Have you got one? Not that I really want to know as it's a bit late now ha ha.

So anyway, I decided that something I knew would fit was the next best thing. I began by ripping through all the seams of the lace top, (so much black thread!)

With regards the gathering at the sleeve head, I first marked where the gathering began and ended with white tacking thread.

I then used these markings to construct the templates above, tracing around the pattern pieces of the black lace top, and transferring my thread markings on to the pattern piece. In order to negate any stretching and distortion of the pattern piece which may have been caused over time to the top, I then halved my pattern piece, and laid one side on top of the other matching the sides.

I traced over both of these, smoothing out any differences on either side, and cut out a new pattern piece based on this tracing, and came up with the above!

I used this tracing techique to create the bodice pieces as well. I knew the finished bodice of the dress would be at my natural waist, so marked this on to the bodice piece as I went along. Also, on the back I added the Mathilde blouse button plackets, I knew the size of these would work with the buttons I had chosen, and as I had made the Mathilde before, I knew I could follow the super detailed instructions online. Once I had constructed all of this, I added two big gathered rectangles for the skirt and I was almost there!

This is the first pic of nearly done dress I sent to my Mum and Sis halfway through, as you can see it's not the most flattering pic of the dress. But I was so ridiculously excited to see a dress appear! A few changes I made as I went along were to broaden the neckline to something a little more open and flattering, I used french seams on the sleeves which I thought would be really confusing but was actually quite straight forward (I'll try and do a specific post on this the next time I do some).

I added the green/blue silk as a centre band at this stage as I realised I needed something to break up the white of the dress. I had never intended to have a solely white wedding dress, and this piece helped to break up all of the white that had somehow occurred :-)

I realised once I had done this though that it needed something a little special, some bling if you will (and you will). So I found this one online: 

Copyright Nikki Rodgers 

Isn't this pic gorgeous? It was taken by my super talented sister Nikki. If you want to take a look at some more pics of me in the dress, and some great shots of me and Mr T with umbrellas and wellies take a look over on her blog.

So that was that! Dress made, I can't believe I made it in time, though there were a few things I hadn't done yet once I'd made the dress. It kind of went like this, I made the dress! Yay! It's done! Woop!

Oh wait.... I need a veil, and shoes, and what do I wear on my nails? Am I wearing tights? I do really need a haircut.. arg! Ha ha, obviously the dress had taken priority for a while there.

Next time, accessories!

I made my man a tie!

Hey folks, I done made my man a tie :-)

You proud? Selfless sewing, not even for a birthday. Feel like I deserve extra props for that one. This came about when I bought myself the last of the roll of a red, blue and white check to make a skirt (now completed... love it!... I owe you a blog post on that one). I had seen the 'gentleman's tie' pattern on coletterie, and mentioned in passing to Mr T that I might make him a tie (if he was lucky... and I ever remembered etc etc) This must have stayed with him though because when he saw my skirt fabric he said... that would make a nice tiiiee (the lots of vowels indicate excitement and intrigue). Now I know for a fact it would be another lifetime until I found some more fabric he would want a tie from. He denies it constantly but he's pretty fussy when it comes to his clothes. So (completely selflessly) I decided to sacrifice some fabric in the name of a tie.

Mr man likes his ties pretty thin so I traced one of his favourite ties onto the main lining (the long thin pattern piece). There wasn't a lot of difference in size so I just folded over the excess inside the tie to give it some bulk. I cut it on the bias as well to show all the colours and the check to its best.

I added in some floral underneath too, I did make it myself after all, had to sneak some floral in there somewhere. Confession: I first cut out this lining in a very manly black and white, but I cut it wrong side up (three times... doh!) So I resorted to the florals. All I can say is that fate (read subconscious) intervened.

Have you basked in the glory of some selfless sewing recently?

Re-made New Look 6723

Here is a link to my original post on this dress. I was very happy with it when I first made it. But due to it having so much ease (even with me taking out however much I did at the time) it was ridiculously comfy, but also impossible to wear underneath anything. No problem says I! I bet i'll wear it in the summer when I dont have to wear a cardigan/jumper. What fool am I? I may be one of those crazy people who enjoys the british summer but even I have to admit a dress that I can't wear layers with wasn't going to get much wear.

So back to the drawing board! I took off the sleeves, brought the neckline down by an inch or so, completely took out the underlining (I didn't feel it was necessary really) and instead bound all my edges with bias binding (my favourite finishing technique). I heightened the waistline by another couple of inches (apparently I have a super high waist), and last but not least changed the gathering to two extra large pleats, I think this is more flattering as it doesn't create the same bulk at the waist it had before. This was the result!

I have lost some of the super pattern matching from the first rendition, but I haven't stopped wearing the dress since I refashioned it so I think it was definitely worth it. You can still see the original pattern matching in the back by the zip though, makes me happy.

Hope you've had a good weekend so far :-)

Dino Blind

So I've been trying to tweak the bathroom, make it as colourful as possible to detract from the strange grey geometric tiling. I think i'd quite like the tiles if they weren't on every wall. I'm not a big fan of this in general, I think it has something to do with going to university housing where all the walls and floors were covered in beige tiles.

So anyway... dino blind! Not much to this one, me and Mr T each chose a dinosaur, (me being stegosaurus, his being a velociraptor, and we spent a happy evening watching tv and cutting out dinos from sticky back vinyl plastic pieces (from amazon, you can choose whichever colours you want!)

I adjusted the blind (got to play with a hacksaw), measured the blind and marked where the dinos would go, and that was it! Love this blind, kind of want to put ones in every room of the house now.

Sleeveless Mathilde

Here is my Mathilde Sleeveless Blouse as promised! I love this blouse, it's floaty, spring-like, work appropriate, and a stash bust, hoorah. The fabric was bought in my years at Abakhan and is a polyester-type chiffon-type material (not very accurate description I know). 

It's been a staple through Me Made May, as some of you may have noticed. Not sure why I'm pouting in so many of these pictures... maybe I was feeling especially posey. Apologies for looking so shattered in these, it's been a hard week! I'm shattered, but it's nearly the bank holiday weekend. Before I get into the ins and outs of this make, I wanted to let you know that me, my sis and best friend went to London last weekend and found the bridesmaid dresses... and they are amazing! Can't wait to show you, you lucky people you.

I put a lot of effort into this blouse, this is the first time I've ever worked with chiffon (?), and wanted to make sure it wasn't skew whiff. I took my time, and wasn't able to draw on the fabric with anything that would show up due to the pattern/ material so as you can see (just) in the above three pics, I traced all my markings with tacking stitches in orange. This was a very lengthy process, but totally worth it, as everything turned out straight, and my tucks are much better than with my black Mathilde.

I wanted to really highlight the best elements of this top (like the tucks and yoke) and didn't want them to get lost in the pattern, so I added some lace along the seam of the yoke, and was going to add some behind each tuck, but it just looked far too busy, so I settled on the top line and I'm really happy with it.

I also bought both ivory and pale grey bias binding to finish the seams, to see how both looked, and I settled on the ivory as it went so well with the lace. And I bought orange flower buttons to go along the back, but again it looked busy so I went for ivory buttons, but in all different shapes and sizes (relatively similar) this did take a while, as each button hole was different to the last. But it was a great stash buster, this has been good on the stash-busting all round. To complete, here are some pics of me looking silly and tired.

Me Made May '13

'I, Deborah of dfabrication, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '13. I endeavour to wear at least one me made item twice a week, posting the outfits on my blog at least once a week for the duration of May 2013' 

I signed up for Me Made May! Possibly the hair that broke the camels back or some other such proverb, but I couldn't help myself. I'm trying to be much more involved in the whole sewing community and therefore So'Zo's massively popular challenge (where members wear one me made item a day for the month) seemed a good place to start. Of course, I haven't gone quite to that extent, mostly because of my four skirts, 2 dresses and 2 tops does not a months worth of clothes made. But I thought it would be a great opportunity to try and stick to blogging more, (which is why you can see I've added blogging to my pledge) and a way of finding inspiration for my next make. 

And on to my first pic for Me Made May!

A fabulous pose I'm sure you'll agree... quizzical

This is my second Mathilde Blouse, I loved the first one I made so much I started another immediately, worn with my second New Look 6128. You can't tell in this (rather badly lit) photo, but it's a sleeveless option. I'm so proud of this top, it's made of a chiffon-like mystery fabric (another pickup from my days at Abakhan). And I managed to get the tucks to be pretty darned straight! I've got a more in-depth post planned... But in the meantime Happy Bank Holiday Weekend!

I've got my embroidery workshop tomorrow, only one place left! I'm so excited, and nervous, and various expletives of feeling. Wish me luck,

Deborah

A Mathilde Blouse and New Look 6128 skirt

My Mathilde Blouse!

I made this (it feels like) months ago! and we've finally had some sunshine so I thought I would show you my homemade outfit.

The skirt was so boring I decided not to post about it, but in short it's another New Look 6128, in a red and black check (which definitely doesn't match at the seams).

But it's perfect for work, and it fills a whole in the wardrobe.

Hope you like the boots! I was pottering around the garden in my work clothes and walking boots before these pics got took, and I'm far too lazy to go get fancy!

To the main event!

My Mathilde blouse. I'm so proud of myself for making this, I'm sure there are mistakes and tiny things I could do better, but this was the first time I've ever made a blouse, and the first time I've used a slippy fabric. I love this blouse and I'm not afraid to raise my arms to it. In fact, I've begun a second one immediately! And in the over-confidence from the black blouse, I decided to make it in a chiffon/ georgette from my stash, wish me luck!

Here's a sneak preview:

More to come! If you'd like this fabulous pattern, along with the wonderfully in-depth instructions click below: