two easy kielo dresses

Hello! Today we have something you've seen a million times before and will see a million times again! 

Yet more Kielo dresses! What can I say, they work for me. I'd always intended to make more this year; I reluctantly put my first two into fabric recycling and I wanted to recreate the exact same things in better quality fabric, but those have been pushed back because a) that better quality fabric was nowhere to be found and b) there were maybe seventeen minutes all summer where I would have considered wearing a sleeveless dress. So I turned to some slightly more versatile versions. 

Standard Kielo is standard: free sleeve add-on from the Named blog, fabric from Walthamstow, scooped-out neckline because I wanted a little less of the print near my face. The only thing I did differently from usual was to not put the back darts in, and then wondered why on earth I'd spent so many years putting slim contour darts in jersey. It makes not one whit of difference and I'll never go back. 

This has been a surprisingly useful dinner dress; it's both dressed up and not at the same time, which I like. It's been far too muggy to try it with tights but hopefully that will work out too. I have zero idea how I'll pair that with shoes, mind you. Patrick and I both went trainers-only at the beginning of the first lockdown because the only thing we were doing was going to nine million house viewings on foot, and then we sort of forgot to go back again and now my feet react with indignance and fury any time I try to put them into proper shoes. 

(I took these photos on one of the very few sunny days we had and of course it was far too sunny and all posing had to be based around averting my eyes. This will not be a problem for the second set of photos.)

The second version I made was an answer to this summer specifically. Too warm and muggy to be wearing clothes intended for colder months, but also too grey and unseasonable to be comfortable in my usual summer fare. Bright dresses and jumpsuits have just felt like a lie. 

(Yeah, this is what it really looks like out here.)

This fabric is from Fabric Land and is a very narrow black, grey and pale pink stripe. Design-wise it's absolutely perfect for a not-summer maxi, but the actual substrate is kind of weird. The only way I can find to describe it is that it seems to forget that it's stretchy. The whole bodice likes to shift upwards and push the neckline away from my body, and I have to keep rearranging myself. The fabric especially does not like being a neckband and if I ever come across a fabric that won't look like ass with this dress, I really think I'll cut it off and redo it. I don't know how often people who read this blog are influenced to buy or not buy fabric from what I write, but just in case: do not recommend. 

Even with that inconvenience, the dress is just the perfect thing and I've been wearing it all the time, usually with trainers and a denim jacket. This will keep me going through spring and autumn and I'm definitely going to make another one with a similar vibe (though I probably won't make it the subject of a post). Finding the right fabric is going to be a challenge for me as I'm not often drawn to the everyday prints above the eyecatching ones or the bright solids, but the maxi dress is my spiritual home and I'd really like to spend a larger proportion of the year wearing them. 

Me: [decides to take a short break from writing this post to look for suitable fabric]
Also me: [finds bright-ass yellow tiger print jersey instead and wonders if the definition of "everyday print" can be stretched that far]

I don't have much more to say about this pattern or either dress I made from it, so instead I'll share with you a small triumph from my month so far: after literal years of writer's block that hasn't been helped by any of the methods I've tried to get through it, I have managed to write a small amount of fiction every day of September so far. It doesn't sound huge when it's put like that, but it is. A plot hasn't really emerged yet but I do have the beginnings of a set of characters that feel real to me and have relationships that I understand, which has always been the best point for me to start from. I'm really looking forward to seeing what I have at the end of the month and I'm genuinely impressed that I managed to make myself do the thing with absolutely zero outside impetus to do so. 

I'm not sure what will be up next. I have several things completed and waiting to be photographed, as well as the first few things from my autumn plan in progress, so I'm a bit spoilt for choice. We'll see which one proves easiest to write about, I think!

quarantine projects: Kielo dress

Hey, I'm here! And I made something!

Until this past weekend I hadn't touched my sewing machine in weeks. I had several things cut out and ready to go, but the concept of sewing was stressing me out so. hard. Do you ever have that thing where you stall on a project because you have to change the bobbin thread and you just don't want to? I had that, but with every possible next step I could conceivably take. I spent three full hours arguing with myself yesterday about getting the ironing board out to interface the ties. 

This fabric was a mood booster purchased at the behest of my mother. I spent some time scrolling around different sites trying to find something that felt right (and wasn't also £23 per metre, damn you beautiful Art Gallery jerseys), and eventually came across this at 1st For Fabrics, a company I've never used before. Why this was the one I couldn't tell you. Floral prints on a white background are just not me. I've only bought one once before, and that was entirely because it reminded me of my recently deceased grandmother. That definitely isn't the case here. But I kept looking at it, and I knew it was the right one even though I was deeply confused as to why. 

This is a completely standard Kielo with the short sleeve add-on and a slightly scooped out neckline. I always scoop out the neckline a little when I make the dress with sleeves; for some reason my shoulders look weird if I don't. It's the first one I've made on the overlocker and it took about a third of the usual time. Maxi-length seams sewn with a stretch stitch take FOREVER and I'm not a bit sorry to have left that behind me. I still haven't got my overlocker skills down completely so I basted the neckband in first, which made the whole process of overlocking a curve much less annoying. 

I'm delighted with how this dress turned out. The fact that the fabric is so not what I would usually go for makes the dress feel fresh and interesting to me, despite the fact that I've made this pattern so many times I could do it in my sleep. It's a completely different summer vibe for me and I'm really enjoying it. Also this fabric is perfect for the job - it's still thin and drapey but noticeably more substantial than most viscose jerseys, and miraculously it's still opaque even when stretched over my boobs. I'm wearing a bright red longline bra in these photos and you'd have no idea. 

The one sad thing about this dress is that it's made me confront the reality of my earliest (and still favourite) two iterations of the Kielo. It's so much more obvious now that they're dying. My green version was made from 50p per metre fabric because I fully expected it to be an unsuccessful toile, and I used a finishing method on my stripy one which was nowhere near as successful as I apparently thought at the time. I'm not convinced I knew what the words "bias facing" actually meant. I was all ready to put this pattern away until next year, but now I'm pretty sure I'm going to need to track down similar but better quality fabric and just remake the exact same two dresses again. I'm not prepared to live a life without an emerald green Kielo, dammit!

At the moment I'm not going to make any promises about the next post. When I originally said I'd go back to posting twice a week I had a backlog of things to post and was sewing away enthusiastically, but now I have nothing in reserve and sewing is tough. Hopefully completing this one will get things moving again, but I have no way of knowing right now. So I'll just say that I'll do what I can when I can, and I'll be back as soon as possible. 

How is everybody doing? This is week ten of lockdown for us, which... nyaaargh. We've slowly started reintroducing Zoom socialising into our lives, and thanks to the slightly relaxed lockdown rules I got to stand two metres away from my little brother in a halfway park and chuck a homemade face mask at him. I'm incredibly angry about the way our government is approaching this whole thing and it's absolutely a preamble to a "you all did it wrong, peasants, it's your fault" in a few weeks' time when everything gets worse again, but those two hours of seeing another human face did me a power of good. 

a winter maxi

Hello and welcome to another instalment of Really Not Prioritising the Plan at All! I blame January. I don't know why I'm so bad at January. This one's been better than most because I've been incredibly socially active and going to a bunch of new classes (including my first pattern cutting weekend, which was... mixed, but I don't want to do a full review until I've tried to apply the techniques myself), but I'm still not able to function like a proper adult. I'm having to sew what my brain will allow me to sew, and this time it's something that wasn't on my list at all.

 

In a sense, this has kind of always been on my list. In summer I wear literally nothing but jumpsuits and maxidresses and I feel great. I often think about making winter versions and sometimes I even try to do it, but so far nothing has worked out the way I want. My ideal cold weather jumpsuit still eludes me, and most maxidress patterns I see at the moment are knee-length dresses with a massive ruffle whacked on the bottom to bring it down to the ankles. Nope. I've also historically had a bit of a static problem when trying to wear maxis with tights. But I kept thinking about it, and when I came across this fabric a month or so ago, I knew I wanted a long-sleeved Kielo dress.

I got this fabric from Walthamstow as usual, and if he has this in a different print the next time I visit, I'm going to make the exact same dress with a square neckline. It's a super-light sweater knit that's thin enough to drape nicely but substantial enough to keep me warm, and it is the absolute perfect thing for a winter Kielo. I was really pleased to find an actual horizontal print for once; I've been burned so many times by buying prints online only to find when it arrives that they were displaying it at a 90 degree angle and the stretch actually goes the other way. Of course, I then realised that the Kielo has a centre back seam for the vent and I would have quite a pattern matching job on my hands.

It's not perfect, but it's good enough.

The colour palette is pretty muted for me, and though I like this dress a lot it's not an experiment I'll be repeating much. If I wear this with my beige coat and my standard not-doing-much-today lipstick I look like I got very sick at a hempen crafts festival.

Embarrassing confession time: I made this dress with sleeves a few times in 2017 and it was great. I then misplaced that version of the pattern and had to redo it when I came to make it again last year. Both times it felt weird in the bust/armhole area. If I position the dresses just right I can still wear them, but they're annoying and uncomfortable to put on. I assumed it was something to do with my fluctuating size and decided to make another copy of the pattern. When I got everything out and ready and looked at the new armhole curve, I realised something: my bust is still the same size, and my last version of the pattern had the armscye drawn on upside down. D'OH. So now I've done it again properly, and it's really comfortable. 

(I take this photo literally every time I make one of these dresses and I'm sure it can't be useful anymore, but here it is nevertheless.)

On this version I scooped out the neckline and added wide cuffs. I only decided on the cuffs because the sleeves came out at a weird length, but they actually make a huge difference to the overall look and feel of the dress. I don't think I'd like it as much with a plain stitched-down hem. I really enjoy the two sets of spikes pointing in towards each other.

I adore this dress. In the last two weeks I've worn it as often as I can get away with, which is the number one way for me to tell I've made an unqualified success. It's super comfortable, it works for pretty much everything that isn't either the gym or a gala of some description, it's warm, and it doesn't stick to my tights! Perfect. I really hope to make another one before winter ends, assuming I can find the right kind of fabric. 

In terms of what's next, I feel like everything I have left on my list is pretty involved, and I've also given myself an overly ambitious plan for one of my Minerva projects this month, so we'll see how we go. I'm definitely not getting it all done by February, but I want to prioritise the coat and the shirt. Chances are I'll be skipping another week of posting, but hopefully be back with something I actually need and planned to make. Fingers crossed! 

summer sewing: red Kielo and bonus Wanted hack

I don't think the internet needs any more Kielo posts, but hey:

Meet the new Kielo, same as the old Kielo. Actually that's not true; making a pattern a few times allows one to refine things and this is the best finish I've achieved on this dress. When I made my first one I put neck and armbands in with extreme incompetence and ended up folding them underneath and topstitching them down with yet more incompetence. My second Kielo was finished by turning and stitching, and it's kind of OK for that one because the jersey isn't that stretchy. This jersey (another Rolls and Rems purchase), however, is extremely stretchy and wouldn't have lasted five minutes with a turned-under neck hem, so with some trepidation I decided to try bands again. It turns out my sewing is much better now, so the bands went in nicely, laid flat and were as simple and unobtrusive as you could wish for. It's funny how unaware you can be of your own progress. 

I also experimented with using water-soluble tape in the hem to get nicer twin needle stitching. It's definitely a huge improvement and something I'll be doing all the time with awkward fabrics from now on, but it's still not as nice as I'd like and I think I'm going to have to start experimenting with tension settings more. Ugh. 

The one issue I have with this version is that in person, the fabric is kind of see-through. It didn't look see-through when I was checking the fabric, but made up into a garment and on my body, it is very possible to tell what colour my underwear is. It's easily fixable by wearing a vest top and bike shorts underneath (although not right now because it is 32 bollocking degrees and extra clothing is deeply uncomfortable and WE ARE NOT SET UP FOR THIS there is no aircon in this country and we're all dying), but I didn't realise that when I took the photos. It hasn't photographed too badly from the front, but let's just say there's a reason I haven't posted a back view of this one. 

I also have another jersey maxi dress to share, and it may well be the last one of the summer. I'd planned to make a Butterick 5181 woven maxi, but I finished my toile this weekend and I hate it. The back is too low, the skirt is too bulky, and the waist is just weird. I still want my fancy black viscose to become something, but it won't be that. (I now have a couple of toiles that look horrendous on me and I'm considering putting them into one "fail post" so that the information is out there but I don't have to spend too much time looking at terrible pictures of myself.)

Anyway:

This is another Vanessa Pouzet Wanted top hacked into a maxi. When I made my first one back in May I loved it and had immediate plans to make a second... except none of my fabric was right for it and I didn't want to make a "maybe" dress. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to Walthamstow looking for toile fabric and this was just sitting there. Perfect maxi fabric that also happened to be in my summer colours. Win!

Originally I thought I would make the top in horizontal stripes and the skirt in vertical stripes, but after making the top part (which I had to do twice because I hadn't fully anticipated how much more annoying these stripes would be to match than regular stripes) I did some experimenting and realised it didn't look quite right. I think the variation in stripe width and unequal amounts of colour made it look unbalanced. So I just did the whole thing horizontally, which looks better but was way more annoying because I had to match these stripes all the way round. In most cases I'm not overly concerned about pattern matching, but I HATE when stripes are off. 

My first version of this dress has stretched out quite a bit at the neck from heavy use, so I made the back neckband a little smaller on this version. I also haven't elasticated the waist (just gathered the skirt fabric), though I still might go back in and do that depending on how its first week in my wardrobe goes. 

I'm super pleased with this dress. The fabric is somehow classically summery without having any of the traditional summer prints or colours, and the dress is a statement piece while also being super-casual and comfortable. With these two done I now have six maxi dresses I love, which I'm pretty sure will be enough to get me through the summer. I'm not saying I'm definitely done, just that if I don't get any more fabric/pattern inspiration, I'll probably be fine.

Up next: the jacket, hopefully? Maybe better not to plan for that during a week where the heatwave is having a heatwave...

spring sewing: the other things

Hi! I'm back from New York! We've had a great time - eaten and drunk far too much, caught up with friends, seen Come From Away which was phenomenal, rode on a strange light-up fish carousel thing, all the usual NYC stuff. I've now finally recovered from my jet lag and crammed enough vegetables into my body to calm it down a bit (is it a general thing for American restaurants not to serve veg with anything or were we just spectacularly unlucky?) and I'm ready to start thinking about sewing again. My summer sewing plan isn't finished yet due to a chronic lack of fabric (no, seriously) but I hope to have rectified that by next week. 

For your amusement, here are a bunch of things I don't have enough to say about to warrant a post of their own! Some of these are from my spring sewing plan, some of them I just made because I could. This will wrap up everything I intended to make except Simplicity 8424 (which will get its own post) and the trousers (I've made a couple of pairs but I'd like to do some more work there before I post about it).

Aqua Named Kielo

This is probably my least successful Kielo and I'm not entirely sure why. Maybe the fabric is too thin? It looks odd wrapped in the front the way I normally wear them and I much prefer the look of it wrapped in the back like this, but I'm not really comfortable actually wearing it that way because it's so clingy. This one is on probation right now.


Goth dress

I bought this fabric to cheer myself up and to indulge Teen Goth Jen. This is an Anna/half circle skirt and I completely hate it, so much so that I got rid of it a week later. It's just not me in the slightest; even taking a few photos in my back garden I felt deeply uncomfortable wearing this. Teen Goth Jen will have to find another way to feel her oats, and having been reminded that I do actually like red, I will have to make myself another red dress in a style that fits Current Jen better.

Stripy Wanted T-shirt

I really love this, but much to my confusion it doesn't seem to go with anything else I own. I'm going to try and work out why this is so I can find a way to fit it into my wardrobe.

(Also we took this photo in the grounds of our hotel in Seville a few months ago and that place was so beautiful it almost makes me angry.)

Kwik Sew harem trousers

This was an attempt at exercise/loungewear. I like them in theory, but they are WAY too big. I fell between sizes and the pattern tissue told me in no uncertain terms that I was not permitted to cut between sizes or blend between them, without explaining why, which I found kind of weird. In case there was some sizing danger I wasn't aware of, I played it safe, cut the larger size and found that they nearly fell off. (Also it only includes a 6mm seam allowance, which seems weird for something with this much gathering?) I will have another go, but I'll probably size down twice. All of this has left me not hugely enthused about future Kwik Sew patterns, if I'm honest.

Also in the above photo I'm wearing a Simplicity 1716 cowl neck top. I've actually made three of these (one of which was a Christmas present) but I've never blogged them because I cannot find anything to wear them with. This seems to be a running theme with me and tops and I need to work out what that's about.

Up next: my summer sewing plan and my trip to Mood!

winter sewing: several long-sleeved Kielos

So the main reason I put this dress on my winter list is because I wanted to make one for my mother for Christmas. I already had the idea of a burgundy dress in my mind, and decided to make it another Kielo when I found out that she was still trying to wear the sleeveless one I made her in November. In England. There's only so much work a cardigan can do.

I went to Fabric Store in Walthamstow and bought three metres of burgundy jersey and three metres of some random stuff to make a test version. I found it hard to imagine how the sleeve add-on would work, so I was a bit nervous about launching straight into a version for someone else.

Here's my test version:

It's great. I hadn't been at all sure that this would work, but I should have trusted that Named knew what they were doing in the sleeve department. 

As well as the sleeve itself, the add-on comes with new armholes to trace onto the original pattern. They're not that different, but they do reshape things slightly so that there is, y'know, an actual armhole there. It remains an incredibly simple dress to cut out and make. 

This version is longer than I had figured it would be, but I deliberately cut it a lot longer than I thought I wanted it so I could experiment. I'm glad I did; when I pinned it up to the length I thought I wanted, the dress lost a lot of its drape and just looked a bit odd. I actually really liked the way it looked at midi length, but my wardrobe just isn't set up for that. I'd never have found an occasion I'd be comfortable wearing it. This length is a bit more versatile without losing the drape. 

I've worn this dress for a New Year's Eve party and also for a day touristing around Belgium, and it works equally well for both. I'm really pleased with it.

Here's Mum's version:

I think she likes it. 

This is almost exactly the same as the first one, except that it's longer (Mum is generally not here for short dresses, but also isn't here for ones she might trip over either, so there's a sweet spot region somewhere between the calf and the ankle), and also it looks like I made the sleeves shorter, though I don't remember doing that. Looking at all three dresses in this post, I think I must have made the sleeves longer than the pattern on the first dress and slightly shorter than the pattern on this one. I did not like this fabric at all and I'm quite glad you can't really see how bad the twin needle hemming looks on this. Mum assures me it doesn't bother her, but it bothers me. Stupid twin needle. I WILL master you, dammit.

After I'd made those two, I decided that what I needed most in life was a long-sleeved, maxi length sweater knit Kielo. I once bought a winter maxi and never wore it because I was too busy trying to disappear at the time, but I think about that dress regularly and it's one of the few things I regret getting rid of.

BEHOLD. I have managed to create a slightly stylish wearable blanket. 

For some reason I'd got it into my head that it had to be white, which is very unlike me. I found this stuff in The Textile Centre; it's quite thick, very stretchy, and unbelievably soft. It's also really annoying to work with, but ain't that always the way.

(Sorry these photos are so overexposed. The weather changed dramatically in between outfits and I didn't notice until I came to edit them.)

I put pockets in this one, but not in the other two. My thought was that winter Kielos are more likely to be worn with jackets and thus less in need of pockets, but that this one will probably be worn mostly around the house and it'd be handy to have a place to keep my phone. This turned out to be exactly the case; I tried wearing this out of the house once and it didn't go well. Partly because I was wearing boots with buckles and they ripped away at the bottom of the dress, but also because this dress is way too warm to actually be worn outside. I was too warm going for a walk in this on Christmas Day. I put this dress on for these photos, stood still in front of a camera for two minutes in a house where the heating was off, and then had to take it off because I was sweating. It's a ridiculously warm dress. It's going to be great for sofa days, though. 

I was originally planning a fourth sleeved Kielo in black sweater knit, but now I'm thinking that might be one too many and I should try something else instead of getting stuck in an endless loop of repetition. I will certainly revisit this pattern at some point, but I think I'll put it away for now. 

(Also, nope, I didn't tidy up for these photos, and nope, we still hadn't taken our tree down. There's a reason I'm not a lifestyle blogger, alright?)

Next up: if I can get photos of my boyfriend's dressing gown, then that's next in the queue. If not, it'll either be hats or melons. Heh. Melons. 

summer sewing: birthday dresses of varying success levels

My mum's two dresses were the last things I made this summer. That's partly because her birthday is towards the end of August and I didn't want to have the dresses just hanging around for months for me to obsess over and poke at, and partly because I had VERY SPECIFIC visions and was afraid of not being able to live up to them. In the end, I sort of did and sort of didn't, as I'm about to show you.

I'm going to start with the successful one:

This, obviously, is the Named Kielo, which I've made twice before (and worn constantly this summer). Mum asked for one of these after seeing mine, and I agreed on the proviso that I got to choose the colour. I love the way she looks in rich autumnal colours, but they're quite hard to find so she rarely wears them. I, because I am very smart, didn't properly realise that because these colours are hard to find, they were also going to be hard for me to find, and I searched for the right fabric for more than three months. This led to a ton of empty-handed fabric shop trips, stressing out, and panic-buying the wrong colours (and in one case, panic-buying the wrong colour online late at night, only to discover in the morning that I hadn't actually bought anything at all. I don't quite know how that happened). I finally found this one in A-One Fabrics on Goldhawk Road about two weeks before her birthday, and I legitimately gasped out loud, "Oh my God, it's my vision!" I am such a twat. 

I think this colour is absolutely perfect on her and I'm so pleased. The fabric has a slight crepey texture to it and doesn't wrinkle at all, so it's going to be a really useful travel dress (she's off to Las Vegas in a couple of months with some friends she's known since school, as a "we've all reached this milestone birthday this year, we're still alive and still like each other" celebration). I don't know whether it will carry over seasonally with cardigans and boots and so forth, but we shall see. 

At Mum's request I shortened the dress to below-knee length as an anti-tripping measure, and since that brought it to maybe a couple of inches below the start of the back vent, I didn't bother putting that in. I also put the secret pockets in this one, for tissue-stashing. 

I'm super happy with the way this came out, and I'm so glad I found the right colour. She looks exactly as fabulous as I thought she would. 

Now for dress number two, which I don't think is a success (and is also wrinkly because transport):

This is the Cashmerette Webster dress, and I don't like this version at all. I just don't think this fabric was intended for this kind of dress, and I don't know what I could have done to it that would have made it look good and fit Mum's requirements. Left to my own devices I probably would have made something like the Deer and Doe Centauree (the only cotton sundress I have), but it has a gathered skirt and Mum doesn't like any extra volume at her hips. The fabric feels lovely, but it just doesn't have the drape. She looked great when she tried my navy version on, but in the stiffer fabric it's really obvious that I didn't fit it on her. 

On the plus side, the neckline looks really nice. I also hemmed it with a narrow bias facing, and it's the neatest hem I have ever done in my entire life. Hems are the bane of my life, so I was very pleased with myself. The dress is very comfortable and breathable, but if it just ends up as house dress for hot days I won't be at all surprised or offended. 

Overall I'm quite OK with these outcomes. The first dress is great, so she's got a nice birthday present that she can get a lot of wear out of, and the second was a learning experience which led to me finally making an actually neat hem. I'll make her something else for Christmas to make up for it.