Red Checker Skirt

I'm back to some proper sewing posts! Hoorah! Though if I'm honest I made this skirt last Summer so this post is a bit long in the making. I loved the process of making this skirt, and was so excited while in the process as I thought it would be gorgeous. And then I tried it on.. and though it fit very well, and I was really proud of the finish, it just didn't really suit me (not to my mind anyway). 

I think choosing to make an a-line skirt with this material was where I went wrong. 

When I was making it, the material looked all flowing and lovely, but obviously as I made a slim a-line skirt, the flowing loveliness disappeared.          

In order to make the skirt I adapted New Look 6128, using a combination of the original width of the straight skirt, and overlaying the a line version over the top to add extra fullness.

I then added a placket down the centre based on the back placket on Tilly's Mathilde blouse.

Some of you may recognise that I made Mr T his tie from this skirt material. On the bodice you can see how I wanted it to look, and below is how it looks on me. Not quite right, it catches on my hip and then kicks out, not a great look.

I know how to fix it though. I think I'm going to add a panel in the sides of the skirt in the shape of a trapeze between the side seams, add another couple of pleats, hopefully that will give it back that flowing loveliness like on Betsy!

Don't forget to join my pattern pyramid competition. Time is running out! 

DFabricate Needs You!

I won! I won! I won a pattern pyramid! So here's the deal, a bunch of bloggers in Wellington on 1st December 2012 decided to put a little pack together based on Did You Make That's Pattern Pyramid plan. Since then this package of patterns has been winging it's way around the world, New Zealand, Europe, Britain. My pack came from the lovely Annette Tirette came all the way from Belgium. 

There are some fabulous editions in here... Annette included some lovely postcards too which have now taken pride of place in the sewing room (I'm going to do a full post on this soon!).

These were some of my favourite... aren't those Butterick ones so similar to Tilly's Miette skirt? It was so hard to decide which one to keep. In the end I went for the vogue pattern below. I've been planning on making a jacket and thought the hoodie might be a good introduction, plus I love the white top. Now to conquer my fear of jersey!

On the right is my addition to the pile, a pattern I bought to make a bag for my sister which sadly never saw the light of day. It has been judging me from the pattern drawer ever since, taunting me with my lack of unselfish sewing (sorry sis!). I hope one of you can make better use of it.

Now I don't have a massive readership, and this is such a big thing, I don't want anyone to miss out! So I'm hoping you'll be able to help me. I would very much appreciate it if you could pass on the link to anyone who may be interested... a line at the end of your blog, or a quick share? I'd love to give this an element of competition with more than a few entries, and I'd really appreciate your help! As a bit of an incentive I'll be adding some lovely gifts in with the packet too. But you'll have to enter to find out!

The rules are simple, if you'd like to join in, and you have your very own blog, write a comment below, linking to your blog by 31 January 2014. To keep things interesting why don't you write which pattern your tempted by, or which patterns are looking at you from your pattern cupboard/drawer/bag that make you feel guilty?

On the 1st I will pick your name out of the hat and let you know who won, and what I'll be including as a little extra.

I'm so excited about being involved in a social sewing giveaway, I hope you're tempted!

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2014 lovely people.

How are you all?

I had... I'm not going to lie here, a very drunken welcome into 2014. One of those nights were you think, have I changed at all over the past 5 years, or am I just exactly the same? It was slightly depressing to be honest, so the idea of ringing in the New Year with shiny resolutions etc wasn't really on the cards.

But a few days have passed, the dehydration (and embarasment) has dissipated, and I have so much to be thankful of for the past year, and a lot to look forward to.

Christmas was awesome, much more calm than usual and that suited me down to the ground, one of my favourite parts of it was participating in the Secret Santa present project as organised by Krafty Kat.

This was a brilliant idea, bringing me closer to a blogger as I tried to figure out what would be the best pressie. I hope they liked it!

Plus, I got my gift through the post and was so excited! Love getting post at the best of times but then to know it contained a little pressie based on what I might like was fabulous.

Here is a (terrible) pic of me super excited opening it:

And here were the lovely contents:

I don't know if you can read the lovely note that came with it (I took the package all the way to Northern Ireland with me on my flight so the packing got a bit crumpled). But my Secret Santa has set me a challenge. I am to make a shirt with these trims (in my favourite colour no less) with piping on the back yoke, blue buttons and bias binding on the seams. A shirt is actually on my goals list so this could not have been better suited! Thanks Santa, such a thoughtful gift. 

I have lots of goals for my year, but at the moment they are floating around a bit in my brain rather than being written down so I'll come back to that. In the meantime, I wish you a craft-filled, goal achieving 2014. 

Merry Christmas!

What a fantastic year, hope you've all had a blast like me, I'm shattered ha ha! Just arrived in Derry today for Northern Ireland Christmas, looking forward to copious amounts of tea, reading craft magazines and doing nothing (except visiting 1 thousand relatives). It's going to be amazing!

Thank you very much for helping make this year as great as it has been, this blog keeps my creative brain ticking over, always thinking of new things and helps me to gain perspective, not only of my makes but of my life in general. I love every minute of it.

Here's to an amazing 2014 for you all!

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.

Wedding Invitations

So it's been a bit wedding dress heavy over here in my last posts, so I thought I'd give you a break, and you can see me and Mr T's joint effort on the invitations. All of the drawn elements were done by my super talented husband (so weird to call him that still), you can see some of his drawing skills here. And all the embroidery/ fabric elements were me :-)

Hope you like them! We love them, I want to put them up all over the house. Maybe I'll have to settle for just the one.

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!