an Anna dress and some feelings

 I'll be frank here: this dress makes me a bit sad. 

This is a By Hand London Anna dress that I made to wear as a bridesmaid's dress to the wedding of one of my oldest friends. On the week of the wedding, I finished the dress on the Tuesday... and the following day got pinged by bloody Test and Trace and had to self-isolate until the Friday after the wedding. I had to FaceTime into the wedding, which was half an hour down the road from me, feeling absolutely physically fine (PCR tests confirmed no Covid for me) and it made me so, so sad. I took these photos on the day of her wedding in the hope of being awkwardly photoshopped into the actual wedding photos later on, so fair warning they are mostly very stupid. And now I have this dress, and I really don't know if I'll be able to wear it. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that it's got feelings stuck to it now. 

The fabric is a viscose I ordered from The Textile Centre (she'd asked us to wear blue and suddenly I could not find blue fabric anywhere) and it worked really well for the pattern. Not super thin, plenty of drape, none of that weird plastic-type feel you can sometimes get with cheap stuff labelled viscose. I used my original Anna pattern with FBA rather than the newer one with the built-in D cup because the shoulders of the largest size were too big for me. I went up 1.5 sizes in the waist on the assumption I'd be eating a big dinner and drinking a lot, and put some ties in at the side seams so that it would be somewhat adjustable depending on what portion of the day we were in. If I decide I can get over my feelings and wear this again, I'll probably take it in a bit because it's not massively flattering when not cinched. The neckline is finished with a bias facing because we all know I hate the facing that comes with this pattern. 

Honestly, that's about as much as I have to say about the dress itself. This is the kind of thing that under normal circumstances I either would not bother blogging or shove in at the bottom of a different post as a bonus. But I have not made much recently, and I have a bunch of photos of me being a dork and pretending I'm at a wedding, so I'm going to put some of them here and chat for a bit instead. 

(I would not have worn these yellow suede heels to the actual wedding, despite them being the shoes I most often wear to weddings, because it was chucking it down for most of the day and they would not have survived. You'd think you'd be fairly free from that sort of thing booking your wedding for early August, but NOPE.)

I also FaceTimed into the toasts. We tend to keep half-bottles of fizz for when we want to celebrate something but aren't up for ploughing our way through a full bottle, which was especially fortunate that day because Patrick, though he was also confirmed Covid-negative, was sick as the proverbial and absolutely not up for joining me in a glass of mediocre Cremant. I also had a tiny wedding disco, all by myself. Spotify wedding party playlists are atrocious, by the way. I know the party isn't the first dance and it's not particularly important that lyrics be wedding-appropriate and such, but who is playing Pony by Ginuwine at their wedding? And is there footage of it? 

[general representation of me at a wedding. I hope they just photoshop this into the background of every single crowd shot]

All of which is to say, it's been a weird time inside of a weird time, ten days of not leaving the house was NOT good for me and the fate of this dress remains uncertain. For now I've put it away, and maybe in a month or two I'll have a look at it again. If summer suddenly happens in September like it did a few years ago, I might even try to wear it. I hope I can make peace with it, because I do think it's very pretty. We shall see. 

[also general representation of me at a wedding]

I'm extremely looking forward to my family coming to visit this weekend (and also terrified that it will be prevented by threatened or actual Covid). We've booked Sunday lunch for my mum's birthday but otherwise keeping things fairly low-key, staying away from London's biggest crowds and having a good time with the wine cabinet. Before that happens I'm hoping to get some sewing done; I have a bright red Sallie jumpsuit cut out that I'd really like to complete this week. Not that we'll have the weather for it, but I would still like to own that jumpsuit now. 

Up next: finally an update on the sewing room! What's done, what's to come, general fantasies about owning a dress form and becoming some kind of draping genius running away with me! 

an experiment - D cup Anna bodice

I did not mean to go radio silent for two months. My health has been a problem thanks to, you know, everything, and my creativity has been completely shot. I've not even been able to write, which is super unusual and scary for me. And then we decided to start house-hunting, which is even more draining (especially when you're avoiding public transport and you have to walk to every single viewing). But now we've had an offer accepted, so fate and paperwork willing we'll be moving into a place that's actually ours very soon. Our current flat is beautiful and lovely in so many ways but it breaks all the time and it's almost impossible to get them to fix anything. Over the past couple of days our ceiling has started leaking again, in two different rooms, because the guys upstairs got their bathroom redone but for some reason not made waterproof? Why. We are spending our last months here with takeaway containers taped over the light fittings.

Anyway! You're here for sewing.

By Hand London are (finally) expanding their size range and have come up with a D cup bodice block for the larger sizes. I fit into the top end of their original size range, but need a substantial bust adjustment, so I was curious to see what the fit would be like on the new block. BHL sends out updates to their patterns automatically but the new size range was by request, so I asked for it.

You might recall this fabric from a post I made a few months ago, where I said I didn't want it to be a dress because I didn't like the colour next to my face. Most of the suggestions were for a long skirt, which was my original intention, but the longer I put it off the more I realised I'm just never going to wear an ankle-length orange leopard print skirt. It's either too fancy or not fancy enough, and I just couldn't picture where or how it would get any use. When I first thought about testing out the new bodice I was reluctant to order any new fabric (most of the stuff available online is too expensive for a test and since we're now moving very soon I don't want to acquire too much more bulk to transport), and decided that I might as well use the awkward orange leopard print and get it out of my stash rather than hold on to it forever waiting for the mystery perfect pattern to present itself.

I basically never trace my patterns unless forced to, but I had done so with my previous Anna bodice in order to alter it. 2016 Jen had zero interest in a V neck bodice and I never bothered to make that version or copy the cutting line onto my pattern piece. I'd completely forgotten there even was a V neck option until I came to cut this version out. Taking the fabric down further away from my face seemed like a sensible idea.

This version of the bodice is a UK 16. What I probably need is a D cup 14, probably even a 12 in the back. On this one I had to cut down the back panels by about 2.5cm and take in the side seams by a further 1cm each side. I increased the length of the underbust pleats by 1cm as the bust as drafted seems to sit a little lower than mine and it made the whole thing look slightly nightgown-ish on me. For future versions I'd also fold a couple of centimetres out of the front neckline, as it's a little loose. I can't stand facings so I swapped that for bias binding, and also altered the back to a V to cut down on the excess of orange leopard a little more.

When I first tried this on I thought it was a bit frumpy-looking, and ended up taking the slit several centimetres higher to counteract that. I normally keep it as it is but this version really needed the extra bit of skin. 

This fabric is unlike any I've used before - it's a substantial but also shifty viscose with a very silky feel and the fibres sit almost like hide - so before I did any of the finishing I spent some time sewing test stitches into scraps to see how it would look and whether I'd need to hand finish the whole thing to make it wearable. I concluded that it wasn't so bad as to need handstitching everywhere but the neckline would definitely look off if I machined it, so I slipstitched the bias binding down and hemmed everything by machine. In retrospect I should have handstitched the slit as well. 

Having worn this dress to go out into the garden and take photos of it, I'm glad yet again that I didn't make the fabric into a wrap skirt. It turns out that it sticks to everything. Coming down the stairs back into the house I got stuck to the brick wall no less than three separate times, and had it been a wrap skirt there would definitely have been indecency going on. 

Will I wear this? I don't know. Thanks to a combination of quarantine and really weird weather I'm only wearing a very tiny proportion of my clothes anyway. What I am thinking of is wearing this as a housewarming dress. We're obviously not intending to have the big party we would otherwise have had, so assuming things don't go horribly wrong and we're all banned from other people's houses again we're going to have lots of little gatherings in twos and threes. And since we have lots of friends with fun clothes they've not been able to wear in months, I'm considering a fancier dress code. I deliberately didn't over-fit this so it's very comfortable for sitting around in.

I'm hoping to be inspired by the prospect of imminent relocation to get on and get some more fabric out of my stash. My plan is to attempt some sort of "sew every day" challenge next month like I did in September last year, and to write about how that's going if I don't have any finished projects to share. I have some things arriving from Minerva as part of their blogger partnerships and I'm hoping that will be motivating too (I asked for something really expensive and they agreed to send it to me, so I now kind of feel like I scammed them even though it was literally on the list of fabrics to pick from? Anxiety disorders suck).

If all continues to go well I'll be back again next week, probably with text rather than another project unless a miracle happens this weekend. I hope you're all safe and holding up!

Bonus question: does anyone know of a good tutorial for switching out the collar on a jacket pattern? I want to make a heavily modified version of the SOI Amelia jacket and the number one thing I want is to get rid of the pointless flat collar for something that looks better. I've never really altered jacket patterns before and collars aren't my strong point, so I don't really know what I'm doing. Any advice on an easy change or a signpost to a more in-depth walkthrough would be super helpful!

quarantine projects: Anna tops

So I still haven't finished the Fiore skirt. My anxiety has gone full steam ahead and I'm doing this thing where I'm convinced I won't like it when it's finished, so if I don't finish it I never have to confront the failure. I don't know why I do this. I have legitimately stopped watching TV shows in the past because I heard that my favourite character dies and if I stop watching the show I can preserve them alive forever, or some such nonsense. I'm doing my best to work past it, but in the meantime, here's some scraps projects I made a few weeks ago.

I made a top using the By Hand London Anna bodice and a small fabric offcut several years ago, and at the time I said I wouldn't do it again because it was a bit weird. But that top is still in my wardrobe, and I wear it all the time in the spring and summer. It does require super high-waisted trousers, but that's basically all I own these days. So when I went through my stash and found three extremely small pieces of jersey I knew I'd never be able to make into an actual T-shirt, I decided to knock up a few more weird Anna tops. They're all the same - lengthened by about eight inches, neck finished with a bias strip topstitched to the inside, wide hem turned up and stitched. 

I found this one in the Abakhan bins and was planning to make an exercise T-shirt out of it. As you may know, I get a bit overexcited when I go to Abakhan and don't always check things properly, and this was one of those times. In order to have enough length for a proper T-shirt, the stripes would have to be vertical. I'm sure that can work, but it's not what I wanted. So it's been sitting here waiting for me to think of something else or get rid of it. I have actually worn this for exercise a couple of times, doing dance classes on Instagram Live in high-waisted leggings. 

This is a piece of light ponte I picked up at Walthamstow. Annoyingly, I had my fabric records mixed up - I thought this was a scrap I'd picked up at a fabric swap, and I only realised it wasn't after I'd cut this out and had enough left over to cut the same thing again. This could have been a proper T-shirt. Gah. But I cut the same again anyway, and I'm going to try and make the second one into a dress with some black fabric of indeterminate composition as the skirt.

Whatever happened to that scrap from the fabric swap remains a mystery.

For some reason this one came out slightly shorter than the other two, so even with high waisted trousers it shows a little more skin than I'd like. All my Anna tops ride up a bit during general wear, but all you get is a very tiny sliver of skin showing which I quite like. If there's skin showing as soon as I put it on, however, I end up in a much less comfortable place after twenty minutes or so. I've been wearing it with a cami underneath, as you see here, and that's fine but does mean I have to put slightly more thought into getting dressed than I'm really prepared to do right now. 

And finally, we have my favourite! This was another Abakhan bins purchase, except this time I was well aware that it was super tiny and I probably wouldn't be able to do much with it. But I couldn't leave without it. The print looked similar to the second dress in this post (also an Abakhan purchase) and when I saw it I thought it was the same stuff in a different colourway, but it's not at all. This looks and handles like a lightweight viscose jersey, except it's sweater knit. It's the weirdest thing. 

This is the one that I'm really getting wear out of. I keep talking about needing to look like I've put more effort into my clothes than I have for the sake of my sanity, and this is exactly that kind of top. It's super comfortable and once I've put it on I don't really need to think much about the rest of my outfit. Especially good for pretending you've dressed up for a Zoom call. 

I'm hopeful that I will be able to finish something this weekend. Even if I have to put the skirt to one side for the moment and cut out something else. I really don't like not being able to sew, it makes everything that much worse. The chambray I ordered has turned up but it's not quite the colour it appeared in the listing. I don't really want a jumpsuit in the strange mid-blue that it actually is, so I might have a look through my pattern stash and see if there's an experiment I can try with it! 

autumn sewing: a wedding guest dress

OK, OK. I can explain.

I know I said in my plans that I was definitely not going to do an Anna bodice this time, and this is... clearly an Anna bodice. However, this wasn't what I originally intended to do. This is what I originally intended to do:

This is a Cashmerette Upton bodice/Sew Over It tulip skirt mash-up, the second unpublished garment I made for the Minerva blog last month. I was really happy with the way it turned out and very pleased with the fit of the bodice. I fully intended to make another one of these to wear to the wedding, but my search for a mid-weight woven fabric that was both appropriate for an October wedding and something I actually liked was long, frustrating and fruitless. Eventually I bought a piece of stretch velvet, still intending to make this UpTulip, but then realised that a) it would need to be lined, b) I had no idea how to install the lining with no back seam, and c) I was absolutely not prepared to put a zip into stretch velvet. Not necessarily because I thought it would be difficult, but just on principle. What's even the point of knit fabrics if you have to put a zip in them?

So, I went back to my old faithful. Obviously I then realised I was going to have to line that too, and managed to do so easily enough that I probably could have managed the Upton. Sigh. 

(I'm aware that the bust pleats are behaving very strangely in these photos. I promise it doesn't look like that in real life.)

Because of my fabric issues I made this fairly last minute, and when I realised I would need to line it I didn't have time to go and find a lining-weight navy blue jersey. So I used the only even vaguely appropriate thing I had to hand, which is the mustard yellow I was intending to use to make a bodysuit. I've since come to terms with the fact that it's terrible bodysuit fabric, and if I really want a yellow one I'll need to find something a little less... well, a little less likely to scream "THIS IS WHAT BRA I'M WEARING TODAY", put it that way. Mustard yellow is not the ideal lining colour for this dress; you can see it a little at the shoulder seams here, and the combination of shades does remind me somewhat of the five terms I spent in Catholic school (after the nuns stopped running it, but recently enough that other kids still remembered being taught by said nuns), but I did what I had to do. 

It was pretty easy to line this top without needing a back seam - I sewed the necklines together first, then closed up the armhole seams with a proto-burrito method, and then the side seams. I cut about 5cm off the neckline and armholes of the lining so it would sit on the inside, which has mostly worked except for that bit on the shoulder there. Rest assured I went back in and did some hand stitching on the neckline to keep the lining hidden for the actual wedding. 

I didn't put pockets in the skirt this time. I thought it would be more trouble than it was worth, and much as I like the idea of having my phone on me for stupid dancefloor photos, I also know I'd have been paranoid about it falling out and would end up dancing with hands in pockets. That's a tough look to pull off. 

The front pleats on this skirt are much bigger than on the pattern as I accidentally cut the front skirt too big. D'oh. 

For the wedding itself I wore the dress with my ancient ice blue pashmina that seems to work with many more colours than it should. I love mixing blues. It was probably too cold for a short sleeved dress and pashmina, but one thing I just do not own is a wedding-appropriate jacket. I don't go to a lot of winter weddings and it didn't occur to me that I might need one until my mum asked me about it four days prior. This should spur me on to put "wedding-appropriate jacket" on my to-sew list, but chances are it will do no such thing. I also wore my silver and navy shoes, which I did not put on for these photos as I was rushing to get the pictures taken in between rainstorms. The full look from the day itself is on my Instagram if you're curious. 

The wedding itself was really lovely. I actually ended up being grateful for the stretch fabric as the wedding breakfast was IMMENSE and they were incredibly generous with the wine. (I really appreciate large amounts of carb at weddings, so that I can be less ill the next morning.) We were all bussed out to a barn in the middle of the countryside, where we found cava and lollipops and a fire pit with marshmallows on sticks and fancy gins and an evening hog roast and both regular cake AND a cheese wheel cake. And dancing. Lots of dancing.

Here is my best visual representation of me at a middle-class wedding disco:

I'm currently in the process of slightly reworking my sewing plans for the rest of the autumn. The yellow bodysuit probably isn't going to happen now (as I mentioned above), and since deciding to make a brightly-coloured leopard print maxi skirt suddenly every third person in London seems to be wearing a brightly-coloured leopard print maxi or midi skirt, so my enthusiasm has dimmed somewhat. I still want to make that fabric into something, but I'm less sure about what it should be now. I also think I've missed the window where a light autumn jacket would have been useful. I want to finish my Sirocco this month and then see how much inspiration and energy I have left.

Up next: more velvet! In jumpsuit form!  

summer sewing: a jade green maxi dress

I got it done on time!

I haven't made a BHL Anna dress since late 2017, when I made several of them in quick succession the decided that I'd reached saturation point and really needed to find a new go-to woven bodice. What happened instead, as you may have noticed, is that I've barely made a woven dress since. It just feels like too much work. I've made a few attempts in the past to fit a princess seam bodice properly and it's REALLY annoying. Trying to get the neckline to lie properly, the waist to hit where the waist is supposed to hit, and most awkward of all the fabric to sit in properly under the bust instead of creating a weird slope from the apex to the waist was super frustrating and I just gave up. Maybe I'll try again soon.

With the Anna, however, you just make a couple of pleats and you're good to go.

When I bought this fabric - viscose crepe, beautiful texture, swishy rather than floaty if you want to get technical - I'd intended on trying a new strappy maxi dress pattern with it. I saw a pattern in Sew Today that looked like just the thing, but they didn't provide a photo of the back and when I went to buy it, I discovered it wasn't remotely bra-friendly. I had a look for something else I liked, came up short. Everything was either not suitable for wearing with a bra or was button-front, which I just don't like. I was going to hold on to the fabric to see what else would be released in the summer before I realised I had to attend a wedding on the 7th and didn't have anything to wear. I'd known about the wedding for a while but hadn't got clarity on the dress code (i.e. whether visible lower leg was acceptable for the temple or not), and by the time I realised the bride was going to be way too rushed off her feet and stressed to answer my nitpicky questions I barely had a week left to make the dress.

I played it safe and made the full-length version, and I'm glad I did. I'm still not exactly sure what the temple rules are; there was a woman there in a shorter dress and they didn't kick her out or anything, but everybody else was covered to the ankles, so I felt much more comfortable in a maxi (even though it was raining all day and I had to be on full puddle avoidance alert). I omitted the front slit for obvious reasons. At first I thought I might unpick it later to put the slit in after the wedding, but after wearing it for both days of the wedding I think I'll keep it like this. It's slightly less fancy-glam with no slit, and while I'm a big fan of fancy-glam it's not always the most versatile thing.

This is a size bigger than I usually make because stress-eating has consequences. I'm trying to work on that now (in conjunction with my therapist, no diets, slow progress, all the good stuff) but in the meantime I do need a little bit more room. The fabric also has a very slight stretch to it, meaning that the dress is super mega comfortable and I would be quite happy to wear it for eating giant meals. In fact, that's likely to be its main use over the summer. Other than that it's my standard altered Anna with a 2.5in FBA and no neckline facing. I have never used the included facing on any of my Annas after hating it so much on my original trial bodice, but I use a different alternative finishing method almost every time. For this one I used bias binding and topstitched it down to the inside.

Here's a photo we took outside the wedding venue. I wore a pashmina to cover my upper arms (I didn't make it, I bought it in Spain at least fifteen years ago) and I borrowed a pink and green headscarf when we got inside. The two-scarves thing was a bit unwieldy and I would have been better off with a shrug or jacket or similar, but I don't have anything that a) is formal enough, b) can be reasonably worn indoors, and c) doesn't look like ass with a full-length dress. I definitely didn't have enough time to conceive, buy supplies for and make such a garment, so unwieldy double-scarf action it was. For the reception the following evening I just stuck one of my Lupin jackets over the top to get me to the venue then wore it as is. Much curry was eaten. Many open bar cocktails were had. Much dancing was done to Uptown Funk, which seems to have finally dethroned Billie Jean as the opening wedding disco song of choice, and joyous techno-bhangra. Despite the dress being full length and me being drunk, I had zero issue dancing in it. Bonus!

I'm very pleased with this and I think it'll work just as well for standard summer days as for fancier occasions. I really like it with my denim Lupin. I'm particularly looking forward to wearing it during our holiday to San Sebastian next month, where we will just be eating constantly, as far as I can tell (it's my father-in-law's birthday and he's been planning this trip for at least a decade) and it's always good to look fancy as you fill your face with seafood. I won't make another Anna for a while but it's really nice to revisit an old favourite every now and then. 

Next up: either leggings or summer robe, depending on how photography goes this week!

 By Hand London Anna dress

Fabric: Viscose crepe from Walthamstow
Cost: £9
Pattern details: (as if you need these) Kimono sleeve dress with boat or V neck variations, underbust pleats, seven-panel skirt with maxi or knee-length variations
Size: UK 18
Alterations: 2.5 inch FBA, facing swapped out for bias facing
Would make again/would recommend: Yes/Yes

a ridiculous melon dress

So originally, there was a point behind the making of this dress.

A few months ago I got Butterick Retro 6318 free with a magazine, and despite it being absolutely nothing like my usual style I was beguiled enough by the illustration to want to give it a try. I bought this citrus-print stretch cotton from Fabric Land so that the toile could plausibly be a "wearing to Lindy Hop events" dress (even though I haven't been to a lindy hop event in about two years) and sat down to cut out the pattern.

Then I stopped. And then I reconsidered.

The pattern for the skirt was literally a rectangle intended for heavy gathering, and I discounted it as soon as I realised. One, I'm not toiling a rectangle. Two, I can handle a little bit of gathering at the waist in light fabric, but because of the way I'm shaped (my high hip is very wide) I turn into a shelf if there's too much bulk there. I decided to find a different skirt and put that onto the bodice. Then I looked at the bodice, and it made me nervous. I couldn't work out how I was going to do an FBA on a pattern piece that was basically a square. The shoulder sloped straight down from the neckline creating pointy triangles, and extended into grown-on short sleeves that weren't very short-looking. Maybe pointy triangle shoulders are a legitimate thing, I don't know, but based on literally everything else I've ever made I couldn't see how it would be comfortable. And by this point, I really liked the idea of the citrus dress.

So I wussed out.

What this dress actually is is an Anna/Hollyburn mash-up. Yes, another Anna bodice, I'm sorry. But it's so quick to make and fits so well! Also it was actually the closest approximation to the original dress - high neck, grown-on sleeves, no extraneous pattern pieces. I chose the Hollyburn for the skirt because it was a level of "fuller skirt" that I knew I'd be comfortable with and I wanted to try the slash pockets on a dress (for possible future transferring onto everything). Looking at it now it doesn't even remotely give off the vibe of the original,even with the couple of pleats I added in the front, and I probably needed to go longer and fuller, but that would run the risk of turning into a dress I'd never wear. Originally I intended to use the sash from the original dress, but after cutting it out and mocking it up I decided I didn't like that either. The sash is single-layer so the wrong side shows and it just looked sad and sloppy. At some point I might try it again, in a thinner fabric, doubling up the sash so there is no wrong side on show. But for this one, I just threw the idea out.

On the plus side, I actually really like this. Novelty print cotton dresses are not my style at all, but something about the colour combination of dark and lurid makes this work for me. It's incredibly comfortable and rather than just being a dance dress, I've been wearing it all the time. More of these!

I will say, though, that I totally didn't realise how the straight edges of the citrus slices would break up the print. I almost threw out all my back shots because I thought my skirt was hitched up and the zip was super wonky, and had to look quite closely to realise that everything was fine. Also it looks like there's a huge bust dart or fold of fabric on one side, and I swear there's not. Stupid optical illusions.

I will definitely be repeating this one, though almost certainly not in novelty-print cotton (unless I find more fruit I like. Turns out I'm not as averse to fruit print as I am to most others). Even in the winter I get tons of wear out of it with a jacket and/or a wrap top over it, and it's nice to know that a dress doesn't have to be jersey to be super-comfy for day to day wear. And I will be putting these pockets on basically everything. I've been realising lately that I rarely use in-seam pockets because I'm worried about stuff falling out, but these? CARRY ALL THE THINGS.

Yup.

Next up: the expensive and time-consuming paisley dressing gown which I have THOUGHTS about...