Mild Experimentation Series: revisiting the fuller skirt

Back in my first few months of sewing, I made two versions of the Sewaholic Hollyburn skirt. I was thrilled with both of them until I realised I'd made one way too heavy and one way too light, and they both went the way of the recycling bag some time ago. The pattern has sat untouched since then, as I decided I didn't actually like full skirts anyway.

In August I did a mini-project where I took a selfie in the mirror by the front door on my way out every day to get a sense of what I was actually wearing and what I felt good in, which was fairly successful (I'd like to do it again, but now there's a lime tree in front of the mirror because my boyfriend is obsessed with plants), and it included one day where I wore my cherry print circle skirt, the oldest handmade in my wardrobe and the one I choose to keep for sentimental value as it's much better constructed than my actual first skirt was. It's not so much my style these days, but I do make a point of wearing it at least once every summer. Looking back on the picture I took that day, I found myself thinking "OK, that actually looks great," and then everything I thought I knew was called into question. Yes, I'm being dramatic. It's allowed.

This thought combined with my desire to find a cute skater dress to wear to dance events made me reconsider my anti-full skirt stance, and I decided to experiment with my Hollyburn pattern again.

This burgundy cord is the final part of my Goldhawk Road corduroy spree. I had two metres, so I knew I'd be able to squeeze a miniskirt out of the remnants and therefore if I ended up not liking the skirt I'd still be able to have something wearable in this fabric.

Construction was incredibly simple. It's quite funny coming back to a pattern I'd only ever used as a rank beginner and had thought of as quite an involved project because it had proper pockets, and realising just how simple it is. Except for the hemming. I still hate that. I'm having a bit of an argument with myself at the moment because on the one hand I think this would be a great skirt to use for a party dress, but on the other hand that hem is a pain in the backside. One day I will find a hemming method that looks good and I don't hate, I'm sure. 

The top is another Papercut Coppelia, which I've been planning since about five minutes after I published my autumn plans post. I ordered this jersey online and wasn't sure about the colour at first, but it's actually great - it's muted enough that it looks more autumnal than Christmassy when worn with reds and greens, but I'm also pretty sure I can get mileage out of it as a festive top. It does feel slightly weird, though, and I don't think it photographs very well.

Overall, I think this was a successful experiment. I've been wearing this skirt - and this outfit - pretty regularly since I made it,and the fact that the skirt is fuller than I'm used to hasn't made me feel any less like myself. I don't expect this to start a revolution in my wardrobe, but I have been craving a few more frivolous dresses lately (ridiculous emerald maxi dress aside, my projects tend to be really quite sensible and practical, and I'm feeling in the mood for a bit of nonsense) and this would be a really great skirt to add to my favourite bodices. If nothing else, a dance dress where I could securely keep my phone with me all night wouldn't go amiss. 

What am I giving the side-eye to? I've no idea. But I'm sure one of you must have done something. 

This is going to be my last completed project post of the year. Starting this Thursday I'm going to be putting up my 2017 review posts, and once those are done I'm going on hiatus until the new year. Patrick and I are going to the Christmas markets in Bruges for a few days and then we'll be hosting Christmas here for the first time. It'll actually be the first time we've spent the 25th together because we've been putting off the "who gets who for Christmas" negotiations as long as possible. But no more! We are adults, and we can handle this shit.

Up on Thursday: my favourites from 2017!

Givre me one reason to stay here...

(You thought I was done with the convoluted music puns? NOPE.)

Yeah, I know, first post of the autumn and it's something that wasn't on my list at all. But there is a reason for that.

Last month I got an email from Camille at Deer and Doe, asking if I'd be interested in an advance copy of one of their new patterns in exchange for photos and a review. I've never been approached about this kind of thing before and applying to be a "pattern tester" has never interested me, but I really like all four of the Deer and Doe patterns I've previously tried and I respect them as a company, so I said yes. The pattern they sent me is not one I would have bought if I'd seen it for sale, but since it was free I thought it would be a good opportunity to try a Thing That Might Not Work (you know, like I said I was going to do in my 2017 resolutions and then didn't really). And here it is:

This is the Givre, a knee-length jersey bodycon dress, with three-quarter sleeves and a contrast yoke in view A and sleeveless with a scoop neck in view B. I was a bit nervous about this, because I do not wear bodycon dresses. From the front, I like to show my natural body shape and have clothes fit fairly close to my hips. From the side, not so much. I have a fairly sizeable pot belly and I do not like wearing clothes that cling to it. Dresses which mould themselves to the underside of my abdomen make me incredibly self-conscious, and stupid as it sounds I find it hard to concentrate on anything besides that if I notice that it's happening. With that and my general wardrobe preferences in mind, I decided to make view A as a mini, size up in the hips and use a thicker fabric. The pattern calls for light to medium weight jersey with at least 50% stretch, so I bought a sweater knit from Fabrics Galore that was stretchy and not too heavy, but would also be less likely to do upsetting things than a drapey viscose jersey. To make it a mini I cut the pattern at the length line for the smallest size, and this was probably slightly too short. It was perfect until I realised I had to hem it. D'oh.

(This was first thing in the morning and as flat as I get. Give me a slouchy chair and a bowl of pasta and it's the widest point on my entire body. It's not the best.)

I cut a 44 in the shoulders, 46 in the bust and waist, and 52 in the hips. As I said, I do actually like my massive hips, but they do make for some weird-shaped pattern pieces. The dress came together very easily in a couple of hours, and is as well-drafted as Deer and Doe patterns always are. The pattern pieces have a fair amount of shape in them rather than relying on the jersey to do all the fitting work, which is what I've seen in a few other patterns, so the final garment is actually fitted to me rather than just stretched over me.

My absolute favourite thing about it is the neckline and skinny neckband. I've often not been quite happy with the way neckbands look on me (unless I've done something deliberate with it, like my stripy Vogue dress), but I've never really thought about why until I tried this dress on, looked in the mirror, and thought, "Wow, that neckline looks great." I think this looks way more professional than the wider neckbands, and I'm quite possibly going to alter all the neckband pattern pieces I currently have. I also think the proportion of the neckline itself is perfect. 

I think this dress is killer, but it remains to be seen how much I'll wear it. Even going up a hip size it's still a bodycon dress and it still clings. I can't tell you now whether I'll become comfortable enough with that to wear it outside regularly (as a dress, anyway. Because it's bodycon and I shortened it, I can easily wear it as a top under most of my skirts). But I'm not completely ruling it out because I love the way this looks from the front, and it's a great autumn dress. We'll see how much my confidence behaves as the weather gets cooler. If it turns out that I do wear it, I'll definitely be making another. 

Either way, I will definitely be making this up as a top. It fits me perfectly, I love the neckline, and because of the yoke there's a lot of scope for colour-blocking. If subsequent versions go together as well as this one did, this could well become a TNT for me.

Success!

the very mild experimentation series: a chiffon kimono jacket

(I thought I'd scheduled this for last week, but apparently I didn't. Oops.)

Learning to work with chiffon has been on my mind since I started sewing. I actually bought a piece on one of my very first raids of the remnant bin, but got rid of it six months later when I realised I didn't know what the eff to do with it. Not in the sense of "oh God, I can't work with chiffon, I'm rubbish", more "oh God, why did I buy this print that would only look right on a Masonic wife tightly sipping a glass of sherry and glaring at anybody under 45" (I'm a Mason's daughter, just trust me on this). I didn't buy any more to replace it because by that point I'd stopped remnant bin raids and started looking for stuff I might actually wear, and that rarely includes chiffon.

But then June hit, and temperatures of up to 34 degrees were mentioned.

I bought this particular piece of chiffon from The Textile Centre at the end of last summer. I had grand visions of a flowing layered maxi dress, and only recently admitted to myself that a) I didn't have anywhere near enough fabric and b) the dress in my head would almost certainly require complicated underwear arrangements, meaning I just wouldn't wear it. Fuck strapless bras. The idea of the kimono came to me when I was trying to find something to throw over my shoulders that wouldn't also cause me to sweat to death, and I realised I had a gap in my wardrobe.

The pattern is the Sew Over It kimono jacket, which I've made several times before. I still have and get tons of wear out of one of the two I made for myself, and I've made several more as presents since. It seemed like a good first-chiffon project because it's just a bunch of straight lines. I wanted a little bit more flow to this one, so I cut it longer (I'm not sure how much longer, just as much as the fabric would allow). The insides are French-seamed, and the hems are scratty. Next on my to-do list: learn how to do a half-decent rolled hem.

(I call this the "holding arms out awkwardly" series.)

I had very definite ideas about how I wanted to position the flowers, and due to the way the flowers were laid out on the fabric it wasn't all possible. The most important thing for me was to get a large flower cluster slightly off-centre on my back, and the way I had to fold the fabric to do that meant there wasn't as much choice as I'd have liked for the rest. I wanted flowers on the front pieces, but not in identical layout, and a plain black collar piece, so I did that as best I could and then the sleeves just had to be cut from whatever was left. 

I think this is cute. However, I wasn't getting quite as much wear out of it as I'd hoped, so I bought a semi-acceptable black jersey from Fabric Land and made another V9199.

I really like the way this looks over an all-black outfit, and it's making me want to make some black shorts (which I'm not going to do unless it's a pair of tailored wool shorts to wear over tights in the winter, and there's no way on earth I'll be wearing chiffon in the winter). The dress is only a couple of weeks old, but I've worn it like this a couple of times when the weather allowed, i.e. when it wasn't pissing down with rain in the middle of bloody August WHY IS THIS A THING, and it's cool and breezy and stops my arms sticking to themselves, so it does the job. 

This is the dress on its own. I don't like it as much as my stripy one, mostly because the fabric isn't quite right. Also it's too big in the back, but I'll take that in next time I have black thread in my machine. I screwed up my first attempt at the neckband, so I just cut it out, meaning that the neckline is a little bit wider. It doesn't bother me at all, but I won't go out of my way to do it again. 

The dress is okay, and I will get some wear out of it. The kimono is also okay, but very much for hot days and holidays, so I probably won't wear it a huge amount, but will keep it for next summer. Chiffon was exactly as annoying to work with as everyone says it is, and I probably won't be using it again in a hurry. I will if I'm inspired to, but for something I'm not bouncing around with excitement about, I don't think it's worth the faff. 

Next week I'm doing my autumn sewing plan a little early, to give me time to give Mum her dresses and photograph them on her properly. I'm a bit nervous about the fit, but mostly I'm just happy I got them done with time to spare. 

Smugface!

Megan Nielsen Flint, or experimenting with trousers

In terms of woven garments, so far this year I've made a coat (which went well), a skirt (which seemed like a great idea but in practice I don't actually like), and part of a dress (which was a disaster and is now sitting waiting for me to work out if I can save it). Everything else has been jersey dresses and a couple of tops. Since that is what I tend to wear most often it's not a problem, but it has left me feeling like I'm in a bit of a rut. So it was time to mix things up a bit.

These are the Flint trousers by Megan Nielsen, a pattern I loved as soon as I saw it. When she had a 20% off sale I ordered it directly from her website, reasoning that even with shipping it was still slightly cheaper... and then I got charged £12 customs, making this the most expensive pattern I've ever bought. Sigh. I don't know how common the customs thing is (I got charged the one time I ordered Decades of Style patterns too, though my boyfriend insists that low-value items like this aren't meant to be subject to customs charges), but it can't have helped that the pattern shipped out in a massive box packed with cardboard bubble wrap type stuff. "Hmmm, a box. Looks valuable. Better charge for it."

Since my trouser-making experience is limited, I wanted to make a toile first.

Here is my toile, made of the worst fabric in the entire world. Try as I might I could not capture its full hideousness on camera, but please be assured that it looks MUCH worse than this in real life. The place I ordered it from called it "terracotta", which I presume is a typo for "paper church decorations constructed by Brownie Guides for the harvest festival service". I used to be that Brownie Guide, and these shorts give me flashbacks. There are so many colours this could be that I would like - burnt orange, mustard, tan, the terracotta I thought I'd ordered - but instead I have this. Pumpkin sugar paper from the back of the art cupboard realness. It's also horrible fabric - scratchy and stiff, yet also wrinkles as soon as it senses you looking at it. It is the very worst of all linen qualities. I wore them for a day to make sure all was OK with the fit, and then I threw them away.

Having got over the mild fabric trauma, I decided to move on to a proper pair of trousers. The pattern is for shorts and cropped trousers, but my wardrobe can't really accommodate wide-leg cropped trousers right now, so I lengthened them (and graded them out slightly, because too much hip for the size range). This fabric is a really soft suiting I bought at Walthamstow Market - yes, it's black, which is super hard to photograph, but also I do actually need some black basics and I'm going to put a bit of effort into making them over the next several months. I've tried to lighten the pictures so the details aren't completely obscured.

The pattern is well-drafted, quite simple, and really rewarding. Because they're loose the pain of fitting trousers is much reduced (I'm still planning on a properly fitting pair but I am having body image issues right now and can't face it), and they can easily be made up in an afternoon. And the design is fantastic - it works as a basic item in a normal wardrobe, but it's also detailed and different. The waistband wraps over at the left side, and the left pocket is half-open to allow you to get them on. There's an internal button (or press stud, in my case) holding them closed, and then they tie together at the top of the pocket. It's stuff like this that makes me not resent making basics, and I need more patterns like this in my life.

I almost never wear trousers these days, so I'm going to see how much wear I get out of these before I decide if I make another pair. I hope I do, because I enjoyed the process of making them so much that the eventual outcome was almost beside the point. It was one "oh, that's cool!" after another. I do really like these, though, and I think they'll be useful. I can wear them at the weekend without feeling like I'm dressed for temping, but equally I could wear them to work and they wouldn't look weird or out of place.

One thing I would like to do is remake my toile. A pair of orange shorts would actually be a great addition to my wardrobe if I could find orange shorts-appropriate fabric that didn't upset me down to my very soul. My new mission will be to find some, and banish the memory of that harvest festival tablecloth stuff for ever and ever. It's possible I'm being a touch dramatic, but it's really nasty fabric, OK?

But these I like. Applause to Megan Nielsen! And now back to your regularly scheduled dresses. 

spring sewing: a vaguely spring-like dress, two ways

So it's probably fair to say at this point that most of the things in my spring plan aren't getting made. I've not been in the right frame of mind to start an enormous time-suck project, and anything requiring me to buy new fabric has been shunted to the back of the queue. It's not that I haven't been making things; I have. But I've been making jersey dresses with fabric I already own, and here are two of them:

It's a white dress. This hasn't happened since primary school.

My original intention was to make the fuller-skirted version of Vogue 8972, and I got as far as cutting the pattern out before I realised just how flouncy the skirt was. If I'd tried to make that in white I fear I would have awoken Teen Goth Jen from her slumber and then I'd have to spend the next eight months putting flowing black lace sleeves on everything to calm her down again. Which I think we can all do without. I'd still like to try V8972, but it's going to need to wait for a different fabric.

The pattern I ended up using for dress #1 is Vogue 8724, which I bought online after seeing a ton of positive reviews on the site (not so common an occurrence). It's a mock-wrap bust with overlapping pleats at centre front and back princess seams, and comes with cup size options (YAY). The fabric is white ponte from John Lewis that my mother gave me for my birthday. It's SO soft I would happily just sit there and stroke it, but apparently people don't like it when you do that. Of course, they don't like it when you make it into a dress and then sit there and stroke your thighs either, but hey.

I knocked this up in a couple of hours and I really like it. The fit is great. The fit on the back is PERFECT and the only change I had to make to the front was to wrap the bust panels over a little further for modesty's sake. I sewed the panels together at the front along the neckline hem to guard against gapping, which seems to have worked pretty well and doesn't make any noticeable difference to the overall look of the thing. 

The pattern is a yay, and I recommend it if you like the style. After a couple of wears I even got used to the extreme white. My main concern with this dress is its versatility. I would consider this to be a 'nice' dress (i.e. not slobbing around at home and running errands), and my 'nice' dresses are usually worn to weddings, dinners and dances. Wearing white to a wedding is still a faux pas, and if I wore white while eating literally anything or even existing in the same room as food I would become one giant stain within seconds. I also don't think I'd ever wear this dress dancing - I strongly prefer to have cleavage covered up while doing full body contact dance. With this last point in mind, I made a second dress with the leftover fabric.

This dress is the same By Hand London Anna/Sew Over It tulip skirt mash-up as my tropical print dress from October. That dress is one of my current favourites for dancing in, so I thought I'd make another. I made a couple of changes, both of which were ill-advised: I added a bit more length to the sleeves, which I don't think I like, and I added pockets, which are somehow too small to fit my hands in even though I used the same pattern I normally do. Sigh. This is the problem with sewing as therapy. 

The first dress is much nicer, and I'll be looking for excuses to wear it. The second dress is a better fit for my wardrobe. I am counting both as successes.

On spring sewing: I'm still going to do the red dress, and rather than making trousers I'm making a pair of shorts to try out a different pattern. I'll make better plans for summer, honest. 

the Very Mild Experimentation series: going without a waist seam

In my last post I mentioned some suspect advice I'd read about green not being a good choice for someone with my colouring, and several people told me that was nonsense. I know it's nonsense (basically any saturated colour works for me, and it's muted tones and pastels I have to be careful with), but it's interesting how these generalisations are presented as fact and can easily get into your head. A little while ago I was searching for styling advice and kept coming across stern-voiced pronouncements on "The ONLY three silhouettes that work for your body type" and completely serious "50 things you should NEVER wear if you're over 30" articles that I genuinely thought had been parodied out of existence. And yes, it is nonsense. Yes, finding personal truth in one of these articles is basically akin to finding insight in a daily horoscope. Yes, it can all fuck off and rot. But it's insidious, all the same, and there are times when I actively need to fight against it.

All of which is to say, I'm taking the first step in my resolution to try some shit out and see what happens, and that first step is a dress without a cinched waist.

The only dresses in my wardrobe without close-fitting waist seams are wrap dresses with waist ties (and my favourite wrap dress pattern does have the close-fitting waist seam). This is cool, since I like my waist, but if I can have a wider range of shapes in my wardrobe then I'd like to. I'm unlikely to ever be the woman in loose-loose silhouettes or enormous slouchy sack dresses, but a slightly more relaxed look every now and again couldn't hurt. I picked Vogue 9196 because it still had plenty of seams and fitting lines, but no waistline and a nice relaxed 60s vibe that I thought I'd like to have a go at.

I am dressed exactly like the pattern envelope in these pictures; I already had the blue ponte and once I saw the illustration I couldn't get it out of my head. No, I didn't have to put the boots on, but why not go full dork, I always say.

As you can see, I do still have shape in this dress. It's not meant to be completely straight up and down and I think I prefer it that way, since most straight shift patterns don't appeal to me in the slightest. When I was taking my introductory class at Sew Over It, the instructor pointed to a sample of their shift dress and told us that was the ideal next step in our dressmaking journey. All eight of us took one look at it and said, "Hahaha, no," and it was never spoken of again. The idea of a relaxed T-shirt dress appeals to me more, but I think that would take a lot of work to get right for my figure. I'm not opposed to trying, though.

Ponte is one of the recommended fabrics for this dress, but it's mainly drafted for wovens and is meant to have a centre back zip. I had to do a lot of weird folding to get the pattern out of one metre of fabric whilst also cutting the back pieces on the fold, but I made the effort knowing I was likely to need the second metre for a second attempt. Which I did; the first dress had several problems. One, the armholes were too high and it looked weird. Two, the back V as drafted was way too deep for me. Three, I hadn't compensated enough for my narrow back and the dress had what I can only describe as a shower curtain quality from behind.

I recut the dress with lower armholes, a different back neckline, and two sizes smaller for the back pieces. I also took a few inches off the hem, because I wanted a 60s dress and the knee-length version had more than a whiff of sack about it.

I love the colour of this dress, and in person I really like the way it looks. In photos the silhouette is jarring to me, probably because I'm so unused to seeing it. It hasn't put me off wearing it, though - it's easy and comfortable and put together, and with opaque tights it's a really nice dress for both dance events and general mooching about. Whether or not I make another one depends on finding the right fabric, but I'm definitely open to it. 

Aaaand some frond fondling to close. I tried to take a photo of me doing that arms down, hands pointing out to the side pose that a lot of sewing bloggers do when they're wearing something vaguely 60s, but in every single frame I had a face totally suffused with inexplicable fury and murder. I have learned my lesson and will not be trying that again.