There's layers to this shit player, Tiramisu, Tiramisu

(Sorry. I haven't even heard that song all the way through, but it gets lodged in my head every time I've worn or looked at one of my Tiramisu dresses in the past year or so.)

I haven't made a Tiramisu dress since early last year, and given how often I wear my spotty one I'm not quite sure why. I think it might have something to do with finding out more about the company after I made my second version; the way that indie companies operate and market themselves means that I'm much more reluctant to make a pattern when the company and/or its figurehead is behaving unprofessionally, even if I already own and like the pattern. (See: why I have never made a second Moneta.) But I had some fabric that gave me an idea, so I broke it out again.

I got this fabric at Walthamstow Market for a whopping £1.10 per metre. There were two of these huge panel prints in every metre, and also a lot of plain navy space, so I wanted to make a dress with pattern on the skirt and nowhere else. I got two metres, cut it out on the single layer and had two of the panel prints left over. It's amazing how much fabric you start saving when you ignore the cutting layouts.

This fits more like my first Tiramisu than my second, which is a shame because I much prefer the fit of the second one. As I was writing my notes for this post I remembered that I went down a size for the second one, but I must have not altered the pattern to match. It won't stop me wearing this one, but it will motivate me to alter my pattern now.

I did change a few things on this one. I eliminated the centre front and centre back seams so I didn't have to cut the print in half, I used the neck and arm bindings as facings instead because I'm really not hugely keen on the look of the bands, and I stitched both the bands and the hem down by hand. That's not something I would normally do with a jersey dress, but I spent most of last week back with my parents preparing for my grandmother's funeral and I wanted to have something practical and uncomplicated to keep me busy in between flower logistics and eulogy writing and all the usual funeral things. Having been somewhat stressed by all this, the stitching is probably not my best work, but from where I'm sitting it falls squarely into the category of "Fuck it, that'll do" and I have absolutely no interest in redoing it. Unless it falls apart, which I suppose isn't out of the question.

There will probably be more Tiramisus, though I don't have any particular plans for another one. Part of me would like to give it a go in the striped fabric it's designed for, but I'm not bouncing around with enthusiasm to create and wear a stripy Tiramisu of my very own. I did just buy some ridiculous black and white striped jersey where the stripes go all over the place and change thickness and stop randomly and become something else, and I briefly considered using that; putting on a wide-eyed innocent face and saying "I used stripes, just like it said" to see if anyone would come out of the woodwork and explain to me that I'd done it wrong. Ultimately, though, I think it would just hurt my eyes, so I'll use it for something simpler.

I'm hoping to have a really productive week of sewing, but this does depend on the bundle of haberdashery and patterns I ordered actually turning up (I've never had this problem before, and I'm a bit grumpy about it). If it doesn't, I might just wrap myself in all the fabric I've acquired recently and stomp up and down the flat proclaiming myself to be immensely talented and the height of style. It would make for a different sort of blog post, anyway. 

Me Made May week one

Here is an extremely cobbled-together collage of what I wore on days 1-8 of Me Made May:

(For reference, reading left to right and top to bottom I am wearing: Cake Patterns Tiramisu dress; Gertie Sews Vintage Casual cropped sweater and Sew Over It tulip skirt; Cashmerette Appleton dress; Sew Over It 1940s tea dress (blog post on this coming on Thursday); Sew Over It circle skirt; Sew Over It tulip skirt; Butterick #4443 dress; Sew Over It cowl neck top)

I got a bunch of different assumptions and restrictions into my head this first week, such as:

- I should try not to wear anything shop-bought at all
- I should never repeat a full outfit
- I should never wear the same thing twice in any context
- I should not wear a shop-bought piece that becomes the focal point of the outfit

Trying not to repeat a full outfit is probably a good additional restriction. I have a few default combinations but it would be nice to come up with some more, and this seems to be as good a time as any to experiment. The others are all active hindrances to what I'm trying to achieve with this and I need to get rid of them.

Week One observations:

1. London weather was oddly sunny and pleasant and this confused me.
2. I don't really own any spring clothes. All my clothes are either "summer" or "Britain", and when it came to choosing things to wear for sunny but not especially hot days I was a bit stumped.
3. Having to pose for a selfie every day is actually really annoying, but also useful as it counteracts my tendency towards scrattiness.
4. I definitely prioritised the things that were better made, which I don't normally do.
5. I wore a LOT more prints and traditionally feminine stuff than I ordinarily would, but I'm not sure how much of that is related to point 4.
6. I am going to struggle to get to the end of the month without a pair of self-made trousers, but also I really don't want to make trousers right now.
7. I would really like to be dressing like the bottom left picture more than I do.

So far this has been a pretty good experiment, and I look forward to seeing what I've learned at the end of the month. I can guarantee you that I'll be entirely sick of the daily selfies by then, though.

UODPH review

I thought it might be useful for me to look at the things I've made with a couple of months' hindsight. I'm not going to literally review everything I've ever made, because that will get dull, but I'm already grouping some of my makes into batches, right? So to start off with, here are my current thoughts on the products of my Unnecessary October Dress Pattern Haul.

1. Tiramisu

Indisputable success. This is great, and I've worn it a lot. Literally the only bad thing about it is the itchy stay tape in the shoulder seam.

2. Wren

I have never worn this and I am never going to wear this. But it was a good test run, and my second attempt is one of my favourite dresses ever. If I can persuade myself to take apart something I've made, I'll take the top off this and have it as a skirt.

3. Cambie

Two problems with this dress. It could have done with a full bust adjustment, and it is the stupidest colour ever. I mean, it's a nice colour, but it goes with literally no other colour in the world because it's such an optical illusion. This should be a great work dress, but I don't generally go around with bare arms and there is no colour of cover-up that works with it (though I do wear it to work on a fairly regularly basis with a black jumper). I should make another.

4. Elisalex

I wore this at Christmas, and it's a Christmas dress in my mind now. It's also quite heavy. Again, I should make another. I have a mash-up dress using the Elisalex bodice in the works, and you'll be seeing that fairly soon.

5. Moneta

I like this dress and I wear it fairly regularly, but I don't think it's going to last very long. The fabric isn't great quality and it doesn't have much recovery, so it's actually quite difficult for me to tell what I think of the pattern in and of itself. 

Best: Tiramisu
Worst: This particular Wren dress
Would remake: All five (what, ALL FIVE out at once? If you did the voice in your head, we should be friends), and I've already remade two and a half of them.
Biggest overall problem: Fabric choice

Tiramisu, part two

I'm not sure why it took me so long to make another version of the Tiramisu, because it's amazing.

Look at that skirt. LOOK AT IT. 

This is an incredibly soft jersey that I bought in Bristol, and my original plan was to make Vogue 6815 in jersey, omitting lining and zip. I'd still like to do that, but I really wanted a dress made from this fabric and I didn't really want to use it up on an experiment. So I went for something that I know works.

(Please excuse my terrifyingly white face. There was this unfamiliar bright thing in the sky at the time.)

Construction was more or less the same as my first Tiramisu. I went down a size in the waist, because I'm a size smaller in the waist now (not anywhere else, though. Sometimes my figure looks like a cartoon), and I used clear elastic rather than stay tape in the shoulder seams because the itchy stay tape is my least favourite thing about my purple Tiramisu.

This dress is a perfect fit and I think it's fabulous. It's got a 40s vibe that I really enjoy, and I can (and do) wear it basically anywhere. One of my favourite things I've made so far.

(Burlesque class update: less than two weeks until the triumphant debut of Amber Moon! Erk.)

I do wonder why I see this dress on sewing blogs all the time, but rarely anything else from Cake Patterns. I love how this dress is constructed, but when I've searched their other patterns, most of the reviews have been middling to poor, or good reviews from people employed by Cake Patterns. Maybe at some point I'll feel inspired to experiment with another one of their patterns, but I don't want another ARGH just yet.

What I do want is another Tiramisu, and once I work out exactly how to deal with this strange black and sort-of yellow sort-of-animal print border fabric I have, there will be another Tiramisu. Nom.

UODPH part one: Tiramisu

(yep, that is a really unwieldy acronym, and yep, I'm using it anyway)

The first project from my Unnecessary October Dress Pattern Haul was the Tiramisu from Cake Patterns. I had the fabric, and I was excited to try out their pattern sizing system, so I started cutting this one a couple of days after I got it in the post. It hadn't really occurred to me before I looked at the sizing on this pattern that something being drafted for my bust measurement wasn't the same as something being drafted for my cup size, and it explains a few of the shoulder problems and gaping I've had in previous projects.

It's REALLY comfy. It fits well around the waist. The skirt is a good length and hangs really well, and also POCKETS. I also think overall it's got quite a specific kind of vintagey look that I really don't have anywhere in my wardrobe, and I think I'd like a bit more of it.

The instructions were very clear that the shoulder seams must be stabilised with stay tape. So I did that and now they're really itchy. I've cut most of it away, but it's still quite annoying and I'll probably need to cover it up at some point (redo the seams, you say? Couldn't possibly. It's finished now, see, and we can't go back. STOP LIVING IN THE PAST).

I started writing the post before I took the photos, and I wrote several lines about how the V-neck was a bit too narrow for my taste and I'd much rather it was wider at the neck. However, having seen the photos I'm taking all that back. Maybe it photographs better than it looks in real life, I don't know, but seeing the pictures I wouldn't change a thing about it. There are a couple of minor fit issues round the bust, and I'm not knowledgeable enough to be able to fix them properly, but beyond that this is a great dress and I will be making more. 

And now, especially for you, a couple of Jen's Over The Top Ridiculous Modelling Shots:

Thank you for indulging me.