I’ve made this new dress! every year my dear friends give me a Fabulous Fabrics voucher for my birthday… it’s taken me a little while but I finally got around to spending it and making my birthday dress!
Pattern; Vogue 1351, this is my third version of this pattern, my first one is here and my second here. This time I cut the skirt a bit more flared and actually it was going to be a lot longer to start with too, it was going to be a midi-ankle length dress, but when I tried it on for hemming I decided this particular small-scale floral was not right for a midi-length. It felt like a big walking cliche, to be honest, as if it was the “before” dress in an op-shop refashion challenge, and I was about to lop a foot off the bottom and go “TA DA!!” LOOK HOW AMAZING IS THIS REFASHION GUYS!!! FRUMP TO FAB IN JUST FIVE MINUTES!!!
Actually, I think the longer the length of a dress, the bigger the scale and more overblown the print needs to be… and a smaller scale print really looks best in a shorter dress. Also Craig gave a big thumbs up to the shorter length, although that is pretty much ALWAYS his response, so much so that I don’t know why I bother asking… Anyway, I preferred the shorter length too, which I should say is of course the “right” length!
Fabric; floral chiffon, lined with a warm, peachy/pale-pink crepe, both from Fabulous Fabrics. I’d tried a few different colours underneath the floral – because it is completely sheer the colour of the lining made a huge difference; white, ivory, and even cream were all too “cold”… I almost went for pale yellow which was quite warm and nice but in the end I settled on this lovely pale peachy-pink. Pink gave an rosy warm glowing light to it; just exactly what I want for winter 🙂 I know a chiffon dress seems a strange thing to make for winter, but this dark rich floral just seemed to my mind to be very right for the season, and is what I want to wear right now.
I stitched French seams on all areas of the chiffon, and the seam allowances of the pink crepe lining are overlocked to finish…
triple-stitched baby-hems for both the shell and the lining… as described in my tutorial here
… the only difficult bit I had was putting the pale pink invisible zip into the chiffon. It is tissue thin, and so wouldn’t be able to provide any support for the zip, so I applied thin strips of iron-on interfacing along the stitching lines of the zip, extending it by about an inch either end and was super careful when stitching.
I thought I’d show my lining slip-stitched to the zip tape inside… I always stay-stitch a three-sided “box” at the lower edge of the seam where it will be sewn to the lower edge of the zip, snip into the corners, press the seam allowances under, and stitch along the stitches… this is something the patterns NEVER tell you, but I think they really should, because it’s so much better. The lining sits a lot flatter and smoother, the stay-stitching gives a little bit of reinforcement to the area, and the squared-off slit really does make a visible difference to how invisibly the zip seam appears in the finished garment, especially in a very thin fabric like this. Haha, I know that “visible difference to how invisibly etc” sounds like an oxymoron, but you know what I mean!
I wore it for the first time today! along with my scarlet Miette cardigan, to show it to my lovely girlfriends who had given me the voucher… 🙂
Details:
Dress; Vogue 1351, floral chiffon, crepe lining
Cardigan; the free Miette pattern by Andi Satterlund, all details on my yarn and alterations to the pattern here
Tights; voodoo
Shoes; Vitullimoda, bought in Melbourne during my holiday over there with Mum and Cassie 🙂
location; Kings Park, Perth, Western Australia
Oh hello, fellow needle-wielders!
Olá!
My pattern is very loosely the epaulette top from She Has a Mannish style, cut to flare out more in the body and sleeves… the lining is cut straighter in the sides. The shell and lining have separate side seams, but are sewn together at the shoulders and armscye. I pinned and stitched a square neckline, cut and overlocked the edge, and then stitched a length of white cotton bobbin lace around to edge it, part of a large stash that I’ve had for many, many (many, many) years. It’s funny, I kind of threw this together just for the costume, but you know what?? I actually love it and will definitely be wearing this again, in real life!
his costume inspiration… we’d bought red, blue, green and yellow feather boas from Spotlight to customise the black pants and black shirt that he already had in his wardrobe.. we also bought yellow satin for a sash and a yellow velour fedora from Spotlight too…
Pattern; the Sudley by Megan Nielsen patterns, I gathered up the sleeve hems with skinny elastic, like I had done for 
O hey!
A jeans-to-jean-jacket project has been a long-term “thing” in my little bucket list of refashions that I have in my head. and one of the reasons I’ve been collecting my children’s old jeans for only like, forever… recently I was asked to speak at the 20th anniversary celebrations of Australian Sewing Guild, a huge honour! and in the general chit-chat heard mention of their 
While I lurve a patchy aesthetic to my clothing, and of course the beauty of a thing like a jean jacket is that it’s supposed to look a bit beat up and NOT a work of beautifully tailored perfection… I still wanted it to look at least a little bit intentional and not too bunged together. There was plenty of colour variation even within each single pair of jeans as well as fashionable distressing effects everywhere too, so I carefully cut so as to make sure the colour variations were matched symmetrically all over the jacket, for example; the upper arms are cut from the same area of one pair, the side fronts also both from the same area of another pair, ditto the two side backs, etc etc, so as much as I possibly could the lighter blue areas are balanced out nicely and symmetrically with the darker blue areas on the jacket.
Thoughts on the pattern: description says a classic, unlined, button-down denim jacket with collar; short and loose-fitting design with flap pockets at the front; sleeve vents and wide button cuffs, wide band at the hem. Well, hmmm, I’m not going to start ranting about my pet hate; the incorrect use of the term “button-down”. Noooo, I’m not. Apart from that! everything else about the pattern is pretty awesome. A slight negative; it is a bit more loose-fitting than I anticipated. Not 80’s loose, but still pretty loose. I’m ok with it really… I will certainly wear it anyway! it’s so comfy and feels absolutely fantastic on! plus I’m only wearing it over a thin little Tshirt here and of course a bit of oversizedness is a good thing when I’ll want to wear it over cardigans or long-sleeved woolly tops in the winter. I think when I get a little time I might have a go at re-jigging the pattern to be a little more form-fitting, for the future. I still have plenty of pairs of jeans that need refashioning, so a second, differently styled jean jacket might even happen. One which even has bigger and better functioning hip pockets!
Now, remember how I mentioned pretty recently that I was looking out for this pattern?? Well, Evie, of 
Please note; I did receive this pattern gratis, however there are no affiliate links in this post. I will always notify my readers if there is an affiliate link in my posts. Also on a tangential yet related note, I read somewhere that people think bloggers are raking in the money through affiliate links, well! that may be true for some types of bloggers, like maybe fashion bloggers? but sewing bloggers… NO.
I used a contrasting white thread here because I found you could barely make out a single thing in my pictures with the matching thread! anyway:
Trim away the raw edge as close to the 2nd stitching as you can.
