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This is a Cashmerette Upton bodice/Sew Over It tulip skirt mash-up, the second unpublished garment I made for the Minerva blog last month.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!  

autumn sewing: peacock skirt (and bonus Givre)

I didn't post last week for two reasons. One, I'd decided to start about five projects at once and so had five half-finished things as opposed to one or two actual wearable garments, and two, I was having an especially bad time with sewing and self-image. I've put on a bit of weight recently so a lot of my clothes fit awkwardly, and I couldn't get my head around picking a size or taking photos of the finished product. But equally, not sewing was making me sad, so on Friday I decided to make my peacock fabric into a Sew Over It tulip skirt. It was in my plan, I've made the pattern over a dozen times and I know it fits, and I had enough fabric that I'd be able to remake the skirt if my size changed drastically any time soon. Also, it takes me about 20 minutes these days.

(In these first three photos I look like I don't have any legs. Please ignore that. I do still have legs.)

I got this fabric from Fabric Land in Bristol, and it was the genesis of the whole peacock theme thing. I usually breeze past the printed cottons and stretch cottons in Fabric Land, but I saw this from the other side of the shop and I knew it had to come home with me. Colour is king in my wardrobe, and the saturated blue and yellow with tiny hints of red and purple is just too perfect. 

Unusually for me, I opted not to put pockets in it. I might regret that somewhere down the line, but I wanted the skirt to be as simple as possible and I didn't have workable pocket fabric immediately to hand. It should fine - it's autumn now, so I'll be wearing this with a jacket more often than not. I used a regular zip instead of an invisible zip, because all the invisible zips currently in my notions box are 22 inches long and bright salmon pink. When did I buy a job lot of salmon pink zips? 

(I took these photos in our stairwell. I'd got myself all geared up for photo-taking, then realised it was raining and the flat was a mess. I think it works and I'll probably do it again - apart from anything else, I look way less murderous making eye contact with the camera from this angle. The struggle with RBF is an enduring one.)

While we're here, let's talk about the top:

I decided to make another Deer and Doe Givre dress, because much to my pleasant surprise I've been wearing the first one all the time. This one isn't quite as successful - the fabric doesn't stretch quite as much so it's a bit restrictive, and also something about the combination of colour, texture and overlocking (my friend Micky fixed my overlocker, and I managed to do this one dress before it did something weird and now I don't know how to fix it again) reminds me of the sleeping bag I used to use as a duvet at my nan's house when I was seven. I don't even think that's a bad thing; it's just that the association is so strong that it's all I can think about when I wear this. I do LOVE the colour, though - this orange-yellow-gold needs a bigger place in my life. 

I'm super into this outfit. It's very "business casual Rainbow Brite" which is an aesthetic I could stand to explore a little more. I've been spending a bit of time on personal style forums lately and there's something tremendously appealing about the pithy little style phrases people come up with. I'm thinking about doing a short series on styling and wearing things differently, because I'm sure my wardrobe could be way more versatile than it is. 

I managed to get a couple of things finished and photographed this weekend, so up next: a dress that has nothing to do with anything I planned. Hooray!

Autumnal!

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. 

Concord pun goes here

(Couldn't immediately think of a pun, so generic pun placeholder it is. Sorry.)

I never thought I'd find myself paying £14 for a T-shirt pattern, but here we are.

When the Concord was first released, I took one look at it, scoffed quietly to myself," said "£14? I don't even spend that on actual T-shirts" and closed the tab. But then I started to see people (people who are often quite critical, at that) saying that they'd made it and it was the best T-shirt pattern they'd ever tried. I'd been wondering about my extreme lack of tops and whether the lack of a decent base was a problem. Sure, I could futz about with my Gertie cropped sweater pattern until it was a perfect fit, but a) that would take ages because I'm not very good at this yet, and b) I would probably end up not bothering because too much hassle. Over the course of a month or so, the prospect of spending £14 on a decent knit block that I could modify into other things seemed less and less outrageous until I finally gave in and bought it.

I used some fuchsia jersey that I bought on Goldhawk Road a little while ago. It was a massive pain in the bum to cut, which is especially irritating as I bought it in four different colours. It was also way narrower than any other jersey I've ever bought - it didn't occur to me to check because I've never seen jersey less than 140cm wide - so I don't have enough of the other three to make the things I was planning, and I am absolutely not going to buy any more of this. Ugh. I'll try to work something out.

My plan was to make the long-sleeved version, but as this jersey was unexpectedly super narrow I could only get the short sleeves out of it. Since the main purpose of this first one was to get a sense of the sizing and what else I could do with it, that didn't bother me too much. In most patterns I've made with a top part the necklines have been too wide and the backs have been too baggy, so I brought the neckline in a bit at the shoulder and took a wedge out at the upper back when cutting out. I cut the 12 E/F cup, which is my usual Cashmerette size. I was really short on fabric so the sleeves are hemmed rather than cuffed.

Cashmerette continues to produce some of the most user-friendly patterns I've ever worked with. They just... work. I knocked this up in about an hour while feeling sick, and it was fine. I made the cropped version, which is slightly longer than I expected, but then I am incredibly short in the waist. For use as a block, I'll need to shorten it a bit for the inevitable cropped sweaters that will be coming your way very soon. I'm so dull, I'm sorry. I keep looking for more interesting tops but I almost never see ones I would actually wear.

(Also tulip skirt, made it, is crepe, has orange zip, like it, made three at once because knee-length tulip skirts and black tights doesn't look right for autumn/winter, more to come, sorry about that also, won't have their own posts I promise.)

Shortly afterwards, I decided to have a go at adapting the pattern into a sweater. 

This fabric is a faux angora knit from The Textile Centre, which I recently discovered and is one of my new favourite places. I love browsing online but the fabric is usually much more expensive at places which offer that, so it's nice to be able to get stuff at Walthamstow Market prices without always having to drag myself up to Walthamstow. And they do sweater knit-type stuff, which I am currently obsessed with but can't find very much of.

Using a wider width fabric it was easy to get a long-sleeved top out of 1m of fabric, even with accidentally cutting the back piece the wrong way initially (though thanks to that I did end up having to make the sleeves a couple of inches shorter). I cut the high neck bodice, sized up and went up a cup size to give me room to wear things underneath, and cut a band for the waist as well as the neck and sleeves. It went together as easily as the T-shirt, though in future I'll take a bit more out of the back neckline and neckband as it has a tendency to stand slightly away from my body.

I am going to talk about this tulip skirt for a minute. This was what I planned for my third ever tulip skirt back in March - bright red stretch cotton, contrast pockets, added lining. I got it almost finished but then discovered it didn't fit, and I have never been able to work out why. All my other skirts have been fine, but the zip just would not close on that one. I got super frustrated, took it apart, made it up with a smaller seam allowance, still too small, got extra frustrated and threw it away. I picked up a piece of similar if not identical red stretch cotton in a remnant bin a little while ago, repurposed some lilac/mushroom polycotton from my stash into a lining, and my red skirt is finally a reality. Also it goes really nicely with this top.

My wardrobe has been suffering from a huge overdose of grey and black tops, so this is exactly what it needs. I hate winter slightly less in this jumper. I will make more colourful jumpers when I can find the right fabric (damn you, pretty coloured but rubbish jersey sitting in my stash). The search is on.

(I tried my best to look like I was okay standing outside without a coat in this bastard cold weather we're having, but it seems my best isn't good enough. Sorry about the misery faces.)

holiday sewing: dance party edition

I've been trying to build a habit of going through my wardrobe on a regular basis and being honest about things that don't work or don't get worn. My last clear out was a couple of weeks ago, and most of what I threw out were summer dresses (and jeans. I had five pairs. I barely even WEAR jeans). I wore a fairly limited wardrobe during the small amount of summer we did have, and I had to admit to myself that the woven zip-up dresses I'd made especially for hot weather were never going to get worn because they're not comfortable enough. So I kept my Centauree and threw out all the others.

This was a good decision, but it did leave me struggling to find things to take on my upcoming holiday. When I saw a metre and a half of tropical print fabric sitting on a remnant pile for £3, I decided to knock up something quick, easy, comfortable, and easy to repurpose as a dress to wear to dance events.

This is my second Anna/tulip skirt dress, and it's much simpler than the last one. Because it's a jersey fabric (something vaguely scuba-ish, I'm not sure what the technical term is) I didn't bother with a zip and cut both my back pieces on the fold, and obviously I didn't have to cut it out twice and mount the fabric this time either. 

Construction was pretty straightforward, except for the bit where I mistook my top piece for my skirt piece because I am SPECTACULARLY thick, and the only change I made was to put in a dart at the back of the neck because things always gape there on me. I think next time I might put two in. 

I cut my usual size, so because it's stretchy it's quite a bit looser. This is exactly what I wanted; if I'm going to be drinking rum and eating fish and tropical fruit in the Caribbean I don't want any of my clothes dictating what size portion I have. I was slightly worried about it because my jersey Anna really didn't go very well, but using a slightly heavier fabric and a slightly less fabric-y skirt works much better. 

Yeah, I don't know. This is some kind of vaguely tropical dance, I suppose.

At the moment I am simultaneously sewing up a holiday wardrobe and an autumn wardrobe, so my sewing corner is basically drowning in dissonance. I'm still hoping to make the swimsuit I keep talking about before we actually leave, and since there is no way in hell I'm standing in my back garden wearing a swimsuit in October, I'm hoping to get the pictures while we're away. Just to be properly infuriating. 

Confused end pose!

SSSHH review

I forgot to do this at the start of the month, so we're doing it now. May and June, several months later. I'm not including my grandmother's jacket because a) I don't have a photo and b) reviewing something I haven't seen since August is a bit pointless. She claims she still likes it, that's good enough.

Wedding guest dress (both versions)

[Anna/Butterick 4443] One of my favourite things I've ever made. I want to keep it as an occasion dress, but I wear it whenever there is an occasion. 

[Anna] This will definitely get less wear than the other dress because the material is so thin, but I still really like it. I might actually try and wear it to a christening this month.

Doris

This has gone already. I still like the idea of the dress, but I need to sort out the fit on the bodice and make it out of something less... annoying. Maybe if they release a sleeve add-on I'll try making one for winter. 

Shit-ton of stashbusting

[tulip skirt and cropped sweater] I still like and wear both of these, the skirt particularly. 

[cropped sweater] This has gone. The fabric was too much of a pain in the arse and it didn't go with anything. 

[tulip skirt] One of my current favourite things to wear. 

[cropped sweater, Jesus I was a one-trick pony this spring] Gone, because it's clearly a trainwreck. I had about two weeks of being obsessed with florals and I hated almost all of it when I came back to my senses. 

[bodice block adaptation] I still like this top, though I do wish it wasn't quite so short. 

Best: Anna/Butterick mash-up

Worst: Doris

Remake? Probably everything, if I can get some sleeves for a winter Doris

Biggest problem: Fabric choice

SPARKLES

I suppose it was inevitable that at some point I would take the Anna bodice I make all the goddamn time and the tulip skirt I make all the goddamn time and put them together into a dress. I'm not sure I would have predicted it would be this dress.

BRIGHT PURPLE SPARKLES.

I made this dress because I had a thorough sort through of my wardrobe and realised I was sorely lacking in professional-looking dresses to wear to the office. I planned for just the right colour and just the right silhouette for understated but still flattering workwear, then someone posted about a sparkle-themed birthday and I was suddenly in Walthamstow Market with no clear idea of how I got there.

There's a blues dance night at the end of every month here in London, and every September the event has a birthday. This September was its fourth, and I have been to every single one so far. Last year I was depressed and miserable, forced myself to go but couldn't muster the wherewithal to put on anything other than an old T-shirt and shorts, had a bit of a crap time and left early. I didn't want the same thing to happen again, so when the organisers posted a "suits and sparkles" theme I decided I was damn well going to give them sparkles.

In an odd way, this dress is exactly why I got into sewing. If this had happened two years ago, I would have spent multiple afternoons tearing apart shops trying to find a bright sparkly minidress. If the quick Google search I just did is to believed, I would have found several pastel bridesmaid dress-looking things and several terrifying glittery bodycon tubes. On day four or five I would have found something I hated slightly less than everything else I'd seen and debated long and hard over whether paying £95 for a one-night party dress could possibly be a thing. I would have decided that no, it wasn't, and I would have freaked out some more. Eventually, on the evening of the party, I would have gone to Claire's Accessories, dumped all the shiny stuff all over myself, then felt incredibly embarrassed when I saw the pictures. This has definitely never happened before.

But now? This was the simplest thing in the world. Pretty much every cheap fabric shop has colourful sparkly fabric for next to nothing. I spent £4 on sparkles, £2.50 on lining, and 40p on a zip. Sorted.

This fabric is a) extremely sparkly; b) not actual sequins so I didn't have to work out how to do that; c) entirely see-through; and d) itchy as fuck. Hence, lining. I mounted the sparkle fabric onto the lining rather than make two separate dresses because I haven't done that yet and wanted to see if I could. Answer: yes I can, but it has made me realise that my cutting out is terrible. I couldn't get the two sets of pieces to line up exactly and as a result there's a bit of weirdness at the waist seam. I need to get a new rotary cutter blade and a bigger mat. It wasn't exactly fun to sew this fabric, but it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, either. I think backing it with lining really helped.

The Anna and the tulip skirt went together almost exactly. At first I was considering shifting pleats around so that they lined up, but decided I couldn't be bothered. This dress wasn't meant to be a headache. Because of the aforementioned misaligned lining issue I lost a bit of width and the dress is consequently a tiny bit snug in the waist. If I were making a dinner dress that would be a problem. As it is, not so much.

The hem is SUPER obvious in this fabric, but again, for a quick fun cheap thing I wasn't going to spend hours doing it by hand.

(I got my hair cut on the day I took these photos, and my new terrifying Italian hairdresser informed me that I was going to have "cool hair" and gave me a flapper bob/undercut hybrid. I think it's completely amazing, but I now have this super short bit at the back that's all fuzzy and I can't stop touching it. I may be standing like this in a lot of photos. I'm sorry.)

I am not planning to make this my new default dress pattern. I think it looks great, but it does not lend itself to daywear. I've made a second version in stretch fabric as part of my holiday sewing, but my main focus for the rest of the season (i.e. however long autumn/winter lasts, so probably until July 2019 or something stupid) will be to find the right long-sleeved dress pattern. The underarm/shoulder/boob area is my absolute bete noire when it comes to fitting, and if someone would release a pattern or a class promising to sort that out, I would pay all the money for it. I'm looking hopefully at Cashmerette - I considered buying her fit and flare dress pattern to have a go at a specifically drafted F cup bodice, but the pattern is sleeveless and I do not like the way that kind of sleeveless dress looks on me at all. If she releases a dress with sleeves, or a sleeve extension pack, I will be buying it and giving it a go. Until then, experiments. I have a long-sleeved Very Easy Vogue pattern that I keep putting off making because it looks like a lot of work, but now may be the time.

PS: The dress was a huge hit at the dance, possibly because almost nobody else had bothered with the theme at all. I don't care, I looked good. 

Evidence, courtesy of the awesome Fred Lindbom:

Wine!

And because I can't not include it, one of the strangest photos I've ever been a part of: 

Why? Why any of this? Why do we look like we're in at least three different photos? What were we even going for here? Why did we take about a dozen pictures together and THIS was the only one coherent enough to be made public? It is batshit nuts and I love it.