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!

Spotty Anna

The last time I made an Anna dress, I had to make a lot of adjustments to the fit to get it right. This time round I learnt my lesson, I used the finished garment measurements instead. To do this I used my Upper bust, bust and waist measurements.

There is usually only about 1-1/2 inch difference between my upper bust and bust, so I've never done a full bust adjustment, choosing to make any adjustments once the dress is made. Maybe if I find a dress that I find has a lot of issues I might do this in future.

However, I have found that it is useful for me to grade from the smaller size at my upper bust for the shoulders/ neckline to the full bust measurement. I did this on the Anna as below:

This means that I get a closer fit above the full bust line. This dress therefore now fits so much better than my previous version (before all the adjustments). It's so comfortable to wear, and I added my favourite skirt on as well New Look 6723 , this is basically just a trapeze shape which I add pleats to once the bodice is made. In order to do this I stitch the skirt sides together, and pin to the bodice (with pleats sewn in) at the side seams.

I then find the centre of the bodice and mark, and the centre of the skirt and mark. Pinning these two centre points together and then up to the point of the pleat like so:

I then create a pleat from this point by folding over the excess fabric to the inside. I then do exactly the same at the back, but instead of folding the fabric under itself, I create a box pleat by bringing the excess fabric from either side of the pleat into the middle.

Using this method, I can ensure that the pleats on the skirt and bodice match up perfectly. Using this skirt instead of the drafted Anna skirt means I can have a big lunch and not worry about the consequences ha ha. Once I got the bodice right on this dress, I managed to make it up in 2 1/2 hours! I've now made two for friends and two for myself, I'm becoming a bit of an Anna obsessive.

I got the inspiration for this dress from a Cath Kidston one I saw that was navy polka dot with ric rac on the bottom, I really liked the style, though it's probably more twee than I would normally go for. I bought the fabric from ebay though and it has already started to fade quite a bit, so I may need to replace it soon. I've found it so easy to wear to work, I think another couple in some 'sensible' fabrics may be on the cards.

It looks like the back is quite gappy in these pictures, and there is a little bit of ease here, but the dress is so comfortable I wouldn't want to make this any smaller. My other version is in a slightly thicker material, so may have needed to be brought in. But I'll tell ya all about that when I post it!

Do you like the shoes? Definitely not sensible, I decided this year was the year of the shoe. They are the perfect way to feel dressed up, and Ive only fallen in them a couple of times! (I always fall over... even in flat shoes, no real reason just that the ground likes me) I think I want to get some more fancy shoes. I figure I dont buy ready to wear very often these days, so I can splurge occasionally.

Christmas Party Pastille Dress

Crikey, this post has been a long while in the making!

I received the Colette sewing handbook last Christmas from my Grandma. It was an absolutely brilliant pressie as I learnt a lot reading through the pages, but the colour palette in the book, along with some of the rather fitted/ floaty sleeve-ness of the patterns made it a little difficult for me to visualise myself in any of them.

When I was thinking of making a dress for my works' Christmas party I thought it would be a good excuse to give these patterns a try, and the pastille on the front cover caught my eye. I liked the subtle sweetheart neckline (not the bow... too twee for me) and the sleeves which aren't a separate piece, something I hadn't done before. I knew such a fitted straight skirt would not be a good look on me, though I did swap out the skirt for a straight one in for my stars in their eyes dress. However, looking closely at the picture I could see that the skirt was a separate piece from the natural waist, so it would be an easy job attaching a skirt I liked.

I used the digital rose print fabric I picked up at the Birmingham blogger meet-up, and fully lined the bodice.


I decided to make a muslin of the bodice for safety, and found that something strange happened when I calculated the sizes. I had to cut out a size 6-8  shoulder/ bust but a 14 waist? I think I did a calculation wrong as when I tried this on it was all kinds of wrong, I then cut an 8 waist (in fact I trimmed it to a 12, then a 10 and then an 8!)

Even after I had done this the triangle darts did not work on my body (lucky this was a muslin!) I then pinned the darts closer to my body to fit as I wanted, and I ended up with a close fitting bodice, and half moon darts. Has anyone else ever ended up with rounded darts? Is this a thing?

I used the muslin as my lining, and made the following dress. I finally got round to taking pics of it last weekend! That's a whole 8 months ha ha ha.

I put on a bit of weight after Christmas , and the wedding, and holidays... so this dress became a little bit tight. You can still see in the back it could probably do with a teeny bit more ease, but I've lost most of this weight now so I'm not worrying about it.

I took these pics with my shiny new Pentax Q10, which is somewhere between an SLR and a standard digital. Having no knowledge of how to use the SLR (and no real inclination to learn) was infuriating, so Mr. T got my this for my birthday, it feels a lot more manageable. There are still a lot of settings, but I'm not feeling overfaced any more which is good.

I've taken another whole bunch of pics, so expect some more regular viewing for the next few weeks.

Holiday..!

Makes you feel so nice

There have been a flurry of holidays here, I spent a week in Donegal with Mr Ts family, relaxing, drinking too much red wine, walking about, kicking butt on the pitch and putt, getting burnt on cloudy days, standard british holiday goodness.

Also it was my birthday on Sunday! So I went camping, for the first time successfully getting a group of my friends on holiday together! (believe me this is a feat in itself). Here I got burnt again, played a viking game called kubb and narrowly avoided hurricane Bertha. Safe to say 26 is a good year so far.

And now we've just booked a holiday in amsterdam for next week! It's all holiday here. On that note, I'm going to be sewing with the above very soon... still don't know exactly what I'm going to do, but now I definitely know it has to be amsterdam worthy!

See you on the other side.

Sister feathers dress

As part of my continuing challenge myself to do things plan I've been making clothes for other people. I want to learn all the neat tricks for fitting, as well as getting myself out of my comfort zone of clothes for me. I have specific tastes in clothes, and though that's awesome for me it means I don't get much opportunity to make things that are a bit different. 

My sister has a whole set of completely different clothes/ comfort zone. Check out her pinterest board to see some of her style. So for her birthday I decided that I wanted to make her something special. 

You may have seen this fabric on Charity Shop Chic recently. I also picked this up at the Minerva meet-up recently, which was a fantastic day. I love seeing how people use and interpret fabrics in completely different ways, do you know of anyone else whose used this glorious fabric? Here I have used the fabric in a single layer for a floaty soft garment. The pattern is from Lekala, a rather unusual russian website where you input the measurements and they send you a bespoke dress pattern to print off. I wouldn't use it all the time, but they had a dress that I liked (sans collar) so gave it a go. The instructions were pretty hilarious, basically 1. attach sleeve 2. sew together ha ha.

I won't lie it was a bit of a bugger to sew. I mean sure it slips and slides around a lot which is the usual for this sort of fabric. But unfortunately the print is almost a sort of coating, so when I used my usual thin needle, it was catching threads and pulling. With it being such a dark colour when it pulled it was really obvious with a big white line. Therefore I swapped for a thin stretch needle. Because of the ballpoint, instead of piercing the fabric it slips to the side of the threads thus limiting the number of pulls.

No pattern matching here I'm afraid. Hopefully it will fit and my sis will treat us to a pic of it in all its glory. So nerve wracking sending something off and hoping for the best. Hope you like it sis! 

Refashion Skirt

Certain ones of these posts are from quite a while back, I have such a backlog of projects that I can't quite remember the ins and outs of the pieces I'm talking about :-S But the sun is shining these days so I'm getting pictures taken, which was my main issue before.

It's not like the darkness in the photos really puts me off, I'm definitely not the worlds best photographer so a little bit of light is probably not going to make a huge difference to what my skills can manage. It's just that when it's light I feel like I can achieve things, I can be bothered to get changed, and sweep the garden, and maybe even change shoes. I never can be bothered to put on make-up, but I never really wear make-up so that would be kind of weird. Though I did for my last make and enjoyed it, I guess it depends on the day.

So anyway, here is my next project! This was a refashion project, I bought the skirt in a shop in Stockbridge. It was full length and I typically didn't take a picture of it before I started. But here's a pic of the finished project!

Just to confuse you, I took these before I changed my hair. The waistband was a little small, but it used elastic so I knew I could make it bigger. I unpicked the waistband, evened it out into a rectangle rather than a triangle... not my sort of thing. I added a full lining of white muslin to give the skirt body as it is a very soft drapey fabric (not sure what it is but it's lovely).

I kept the original pleats in the skirt, and shortened the length considerably. It is now a perfect sunny day skirt for work with a shirt (like in this pic) or at the weekend with sandals. It turned out once I made all this that the waistband was a bit too big, son of a gun!! So I just stitched the back together pinching out 2cm either side at the back waistband. At some point ill replace the elastic and then it will probably fit fine. 

That's it! Signing out

Zig Zag Cami Dress

Next stop on the list of challenges, a shirt dress! I love wearing shirt dresses, I wear them all the time and so I thought I'd give a collar a go. Plus I promised Mr T a shirt (i must be mad) so I thought I could make myself a collar on a dress without anyone scrutinising, bit of a practise.

I used the Pauline Alice Cami shirt dress. I found the pattern pretty easy to use, but I think the fit needs a little bit of work. Look at the pattern matching across the front.. what? Feeling like a winner. Also I dyed my hair again, bit of a last minute decision, went to boots and figured I needed a change. I did the double dye by tying the bottom of the hair in pig tails and dyed up to where the pony tail started. It's not the most even dye but I like it.

So yeah, the fit. I think it may be time for a full bust adjustment... dun dun duuuh. This dress stretches across the front, and there's some gaping at the side of the bust. So yeah, next time I'll give an FBA a go.

Other issues are around the shoulder/ arm area. There is a little bit of bunching at the top of the shoulder. This is only my second time setting in a sleeve though so I think I just need a little practise. However, the shoulder line should be on the edge of the shoulder and is actually a little high, so I think the pattern needs extending out a cm or so.. plus even though I measured my arm against the pattern piece it is a little tight on the arm.

So a few changes to be made to the pattern but otherwise pretty happy.

Here's the back! I put loads of pleats into the top, I like the look of these smaller pleats, and I used the whole width of the fabric for as much extra skirt as possible. Plus pockets of course, I like the inseam pockets on the pattern, they are just the right size, and have used them again in my most recent make.

The collar went really well (even if I do say so myself), though I found the instructions on the pattern a bit difficult to follow as a first timer. I went to the website and looked at the sewalong for some guidance but again... didn't really get it. I therefore looked at the archer sewalong for a bit of help (figured two -alongs are better than one) and it was so much easier to follow. I'd definitely recommend it. 

So I love this dress! I love the fabric, and the brightness and the fact that if you get too close to it you get a headache ha ha. If you're making your own clothes, whats to stop you making something you really love, especially if it's super bright. Therefore I submit this as my Oonapalooza make for July. Read more about Oonapalooza and the wonderful woman who inspired it here.

And in her honour, here's a gif of me dancing around... with much more of an attempt at modelly face, in honour of Oona.