sewing Archives - Page 27 of 41 - Handmade by Carolyn

a chattering of cockatoos

06/06/2018 4:29 pm \ 29 Comments \ Carolyn

‘Ello, cocky!

First things first, I have some very exciting news! For one month starting now, Spoonflower are offering a 10% discount on purchasers of ANY Spoonflower fabric by using the code “carolyn10” at checkout. Pretty awesome, huh?! I’m beyond thrilled to be able to pass on such a cool offer to anyone who reads this blog!

Now, if there’s anyone still left reading who hasn’t raced off already to scroll through the millionty-and-one gorgeous prints on offer over there…. my new outfit; and how gorgeous is this particularly amaaaazing print, huh?

my PS tute for making your photos coloured/B&W like this is here

Fabric: cotton sateen, the gorgeous print designed by su_g on Spoonflower. I was contacted recently by Allie, of Spoonflower who asked me if I would like to be a part of their roundup of “makers of Australia”… would I?! well of course I was totally honoured to be invited! and immediately raced over to Spoonflower to check out the Aussie offerings, and discovered there were SO MANY really lovely designs, it was super hard to choose just one… however I just kept coming back to this one and in the end couldn’t resist its humour, its artistry, and of course its Aussie tongue-in-cheekiness.

The Andy Warhol-inspired portrait grid of the humble cocky, designed by by su_g on Spoonflower caught my eye and made me laugh straight away; subtly Aussie, artistic, and witty with a bonus irreverent swipe at the serious art world on the side! So fun and actually it’s rather fabulous too, yes? those lovely bright beautiful colours, I knew whatever I made with it I just couldn’t go wrong! but ultimately decided its amaaaazing eye-catchiness would be the best set off by the most basic of simple shapes, a plain little pencil skirt, and rather featureless top… yes all very plain, all the better to perfectly showcase that chatteringly gorgeous print!

So, did you know that the the collective noun for cockatoos is a chattering? other acceptables are a clattering, a cluttering, a crackle, and last and least excitingly, a family…. I like chattering, personally 😉 and did you also know the term for a group of seamstresses is a “scolding” haha! Hilarious!! NOT how we like to think of ourselves, usually! Unfortunately there isn’t one for bloggers, as yet; but writers have a “worship of writers”… which is weird, no?! But I digress… #yetagain

oh, I also added two new pairs of black tights to my current stable … boring? yes… most worn things in my winter wardrobe? also yes… I use black polyester stretch from Spotlight, the pattern is self-drafted. My tute for how to make your own pattern for tights is here

Patterns: the top is pattern 4, the epaulette top, sans the epaulettes; from the Japanese pattern book “she has a Mannish style” by Yuko Takada… I’ve made this top up five times previously so obviously I love it!! here, here, here, this one for Cassie and lastly here. The skirt; so I keep calling this Vogue 1247 but really I’ve adapted and fine-tuned to the point where it barely has any of its original lines so I feel a bit of a fraud describing it thus. It’s basically just a very plain, darted pencil skirt with a straight waistband and central back zip.

Thoughts… so it does look quite a simple project… deceptively so! she declares with a dramatic twirl of her moustache!! Just kidding, it really was; though I ended up deciding to take the annoying, time-consuming, but ultimately necessary step of tracing full size copies of all my pattern pieces; both sleeves and a full size front skirt piece, both back skirt pieces, and front and back blouse pieces… why? TO FACILITATE THE ALL IMPORTANT PATTERN MATCHING TETRIS, OF COURSE!!! Given the size of those cockatoo motifs, which are actually quite large, well it took a little bit of doing, that’s all I can say…

My plan, in a nutshell; the back has a white dividing line down the centre back of both top and skirt; I knew it would be basically impossible to pattern match around the zip any other way; and then the front of both skirt and top has the opposite, a panel of cockatoos centrally aligned down the centre front of both top and skirt. Little bit of a difference twixt front and back, not a very obvious one…

I also carefully arranged the pieces so there would be a full cockatoo square at the lower hem of both skirt and top… I didn’t want for a row of cockatoos to be chopped in half! Same with the sleeves, and I also managed to arrange the sleeves so my favourite two cocky-portraits were the placed centrally on each sleeve. Obviously I also wanted for the colours to be somewhat “random” and not have an obvious double-up between top and skirt, or either side of the skirt back… It was actually pretty fortuitous than I managed to get all this just how I wanted… super lucky actually… there lots of re-arranging of pattern pieces and sighing and brow-furrowing and even a short period of time when I thought I’d have to order more fabric in order to not completely stuff up *wipes sweat from brow * very fortunately I eventually got the layout I wanted!!

Hehe, I realize now that was a rather looooooong nutshell! with probably a lot of introspective agonising that makes no sense at all, but well; it does to me. In a much more succinct nutshell; laying out the pattern pieces took almost as long as to make the outfit!!

Construction; I fully underlined the bodice and the skirt with pure white cotton voile; bought from Spotlight during one of their “buy the whole bolt and get 40% off sales” I find plain white voile to be one of the most useful fabrics to have on tap, so there was that time Spotlight announced this oft-repeated sale when I took the bull by the horns and just went for it! The cotton voile adds some structure and body to the sateen, which probably doesn’t have quite enough on its own to be a fitted skirt, really. The blouse could have gotten away without underlining, I think; but I opted to treat it the same for the sake of continuity, to give the top and skirt the same visual heft. The sleeves however, are not underlined. And if deep hems are a sign of quality, then yay! ‘cos my hems are DEEP!!

Lastly, because I love to be reminded of the provenance of things, if I can then I like to attach interesting selvedge info on the inside somewhere, in this case, the left side seam on my top…

And lastly lastly, because this bit of awesomeness is really worth repeating… for one month from now, Spoonflower are offering a 10% discount on purchasers of this, or in fact ANY Spoonflower fabric by using the code “carolyn10” at checkout. If you’ve ever been even a little bit tempted to try Spoonflower out then maybe this small incentive could be that time?!

I hope you enjoy looking through all the amazing and gorgeous designs over on Spoonflower as much as I, and thank you so much to Spoonflower for this very kind, generous opportunity and offer!

Details:

Top; pattern 4, the epaulette cut and sewn from the Japanese pattern book “she has a mannish style” by Yuko Takada, organic cotton sateen fromSpoonflower, in a print designed by su_g
Skirt; the vestiges of Vogue 1247, kinda. Actually just a plain pencil skirt… organic cotton sateen from Spoonflower, in a print designed by su_g
Tights; my own design, black stretchy polyester… my tute for making your own custom-fit tights pattern is here

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Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: daily outfit, own design, She Has a Mannish Style, She Wears the Pants, skirt, tights/leggings, top, Vogue 1247

high heeled black oxfords (shoes), plus some other stuff

28/05/2018 6:54 pm \ 37 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made some new shoes!

These have had a bit of a journey in the making, with a gap of about five months in the middle of it when I did absolutely nothing to them! Several things; feeling torn as to the colour I’d chosen, as well as a little overwhelmed with the thought of actually finishing them, when it was actually all pretty quick and simple and painless once I got over that…

So obviously, they’re black. However! my original plan back in December of last year was to make some two-tone saddle shoes. I cut out my pieces using the same beige upholstery suede that these shoes are made in, and dyed the pieces respectively caramel brown and “black”, though the latter turned out to be more of a deep charcoal really.

I thought the combo would be pretty cool… but once I’d formed them on the lasts and it came time to sole and add heels, I was starting to go off the saddle idea already.

I already suspected that what I really wanted was for some plain black heeled oxfords in my shoe collection… but it was summer at the time, too hot for winter shoes to be a tempting project anyway, and truthfully? Christmas had exhausted me a bit and it just all seemed too hard, so I just chucked the half-made shoes into a drawer and basically didn’t touch them again for the next five months…

Fastforward to last week; winter has started to creep in with cold, probing tentacles, and with it the need for warm shoes. I got the half-made saddles out of the drawer where they’d lain, idle and ignored, and re-assessed. Carving the heels was the next step, that had been such a stumbling block to me, and really? it’s not that hard of a one. I bought some wood from Bunnings, got Craig to help me set up the sander on the triton, and sanded myself some heels… hilariously to me, after all that procrastination it took about an hour, tops! Soled my shoes, glued and nailed on the heels.

oh hey Clara!! and NO, lovely girl…. these are NOT for eating!

I painted the heels with a coat of black satin enamel paint. I probably should have just painted the whole shoes themselves at this point too, but I still had that tiny shred of uncertainty that I might still want saddles …? but nope. Seeing the heels painted a beautiful pure black made the dyed suede look quite muddily unattractive, banishing all doubt. I went right ahead and did a few more coats taking in the whole shoe, using the same black enamel paint. Bunged in a foam insert, covered with the same chocolate brown suedette that I’d used to line the uppers, and FINALLY FINITO.

I’ve worn them four days straight already! A coupla times they’ve got drenched in the pouring rain… in the past this would have filled me with horror but nowadays I have more confidence in the strength and durability, and importantly the waterproof-ness of my shoes! and of course they’ve held up beautifully. Seriously, I’m totally chuffed! could not be any happier with them!!

Having said that, well of course theoretically I could actually be happier… they’re not perfect and I can certainly see little bits that I could have done better. But with each and every pair of shoes I really do feel like I’m improving – to see my shoe-making journey, it’s all here under the tag “shoes” – and these ones are very satisfying to me. They are exactly what I want to wear right now!

This is how I wore them for their maiden voyage… out to lunch on Friday with my friend J, and then later on to book club with a larger group of my friends… I felt pretty cool and chic! No one asked me if I’d made my shoes! which means any one of three things; they look OK enough to pass for rtw (yay!) or SO bad that people are just too embarrassed to say anything (not-so yay). The third and most likely option is that no one actually noticed them. I’m ok with that option, to be honest 😉

Details:

Dress; V1351, floral chiffon, details here
Cardigan; the Miette, a free pattern by Andi Satterlund, all details here
Tights; my own pattern, details here, and my tutorial for making your own custom-fit tights pattern is here
Shoes… MADE BY ME!!!!!

SO, while I’m here and writing stuff… I’ve been making some other things lately too, that I haven’t got around to mentioning so far.

I discovered this pattern for little sockettes that you wear with ballerina flats; the Sytt & Prytt Florens Ballerina Socks, designed by Lena Lundvall. I found this through a mention from someone doing me-made May on instagram, though for the life of me I cannot remember who it was.. so if that person is reading this then I’m sorry not to give credit! Anyway, I looked up the Sytt & Prytt Etsy shop and bought the pattern.

This blue pair is made up exactly to the pattern; my toes are covered… JUST

It’s a super quick and extremely easy thing to make, though I altered the pattern somewhat to make them exactly what I wanted… specifically, the socks as they are quite “skimpy”. To be fair, I think this coverage is perfectly adequate if you’re wearing them with ballet flats, which is totally what they are designed for. However, for me personally, I’m really so not a ballet flat person, and I wanted to wear them with my oxford shoes, that have higher sides and cover the top of my foot too, and so I wanted my sockettes to have more foot coverage too.

I wanted EXTRAAAA!!!

Adding on a good inch nearly all the way around and reducing the elastic length gave me this! much better suited to the kind of shoes I wear.

my white oxford shoes, blogged here

I made nine pairs overall, including my trials runs, which I’m still going to wear, ‘cos it’s not like anyone can see the less-than wonderful ones in situ. With the exception of the white ones, which is fresh fabric, the others are all made from old Tshirts.

Thanks for helping me with my pictures, Clara!! xxx

And finally… !

I made a toiletries bag for a friend for her birthday, using the dopp kit pattern from the Grainline Portside Travel set… I’ve made quite a few of these, see my previous versions here. The cool crackle print is cotton canvas hand painted in Zambia, I bought it at the Fabric Store in Melbourne during my holiday there with Mum and Cassie, and made a skirt for Cassie for Christmas. This is the very last of it!

I lined it fully with plastic waterproof stuff from Spotlight, and made little zip pulls for fun, using beads and earring wires leftover from my jewellery making days. I think it turned out pretty cute, and my friend professed herself very happy with it too 🙂

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Posted in: sewing, shoes \ Tagged: Clara, daily outfit, florens ballerina socks, grainline studio, own design, portside travel set, shoes, socks, sytt & prytt, Wardrobe Refashion

white palm leaf lace

23/05/2018 1:22 pm \ 45 Comments \ Carolyn

So, we were going to Bali to attend our friends L&L’s wedding in early May… and I decided I wanted to make a special new ensemble to take away with me. Not to wear to the wedding, because, well … is ivory still a no-no for a wedding guest? I’ve always thought so, but then I did notice a few white-ish ensembles at the wedding anyway. So maybe times are a-changing… but I digress.

In any case, I took a different dress to wear to the wedding.

So… this outfit. Craig and I were planning some special dinners while we were in Bali, because this was a meaningful holiday for us for a reason totally unrelated to our friends’ wedding… it’s our 30th wedding anniversary this year! and the last time we were in Bali was for our honeymoon. When we heard L & L were planning their wedding there, we decided we’d make this trip a kind of second honeymoon for ourselves. And I wanted something new for the occasion 🙂

I bought the very unusual lace fabric from Tessuti’s in Melbourne, during my girls’ trip over with Mum and Cassie. It’s quite a dramatic fabric, very stiff and with a “painted” feel to it… I will admit to a small “what was I thinking?” moment afterwards! but some of my favourite ensembles have come out of crazy, challenging fabrics, so I try not to let that impede the hurtling of the creative train~~wreck~~ at all…

I underlined throughout with a creamy cotton voile, that I bought from the Morrison fabric and clothing sale… honestly one of my favourite sales to go to here in Perth, though it is very much a lucky dip. You can get amaaaaaaazing bargains, at the same time there can be a lot of weird and horrible stuff too that you simply can’t believe Morrison would ever use for their beautiful clothing line! But it’s nearly always super cheap, so well worth a look in! This creamy-coloured voile was $10 for a whole roll. Awesome sauce!!

Patterns… the skirt is my regular ol’ standby Vogue 1247, lengthened, with the pieces spliced to eliminate the horizontal seams. btw, Sanni asked about this pattern and how it’s keeping, and the truth is that it is indeed getting pretty tatty!! I really should trace it on something tough to preserve it because it really is a winner and no doubt I will be using it, yet again!

The top is the Collins top, by Sydney designer In the Folds. Emily put out a call on IG for contributors to a kickstarter to help her to get a print run of her previously pdf only patterns, and since she had been kind enough to send me the Acton dress pattern a year ago I wanted to pay it forward … the reward was this pattern! which of course I am super thrilled about. It’s a pretty popular pattern, and I thought its exaggerated swing shape would sit out nicely in the stiffish lace, and make a cool counterpoint to a little fitted miniskirt underneath. I underlined both garments throughout, with the exception of the raglan sleeves, which are just the lace.

Neckline bound with self-made bias binding, from the same cream cotton voile as the underlining.

To keep things light, I just trimmed all the raw edges inside with my pinking shears

The lower edges of the lace are just trimmed evenly with my rotary cutter, the voile is hemmed with a narrow, 1cm hem.

Skirt waistband; cut from a different piece of thicker, naturally crinkle-y, cafe-au-lait cotton, also bought from the Morrison fabric and clothing sale. For closure on both skirt and top I used small mother-of-pearl buttons, found in Le Stash.

Do you wanna hear something funny? See that trapezoidal piece at the back, lower edge of the top? I cut that piece out upside down… with the palm leaves pointing UP instead of down like they are everywhere else… not once, but twice! Once was bad enough, but I couldn’t believe my own stupidity when I found myself doing the same thing, a second time! *facepalm and it was an absolute miracle I had a large enough piece leftover to cut it out a third time in one piece since I really had bought only just enough of the lace in the first place. It is very slightly off-grain… but hey! at least it’s the right way up!!

wot is this pose then, eh?

So that’s it! I really reeeeeally love it, but then again I’ve always had a predilection for white lace things. This one is not too sweet or “young” for me, but just nicely sophisticated enough, I think. I wore it to two separate dinners in Bali, and the tropical feel of the palm leaf motifs combined with the cool airy breeziness of lace and voile in the humidity of Bali made it the most perfect of perfect things to wear for our special outings.

Verdict; very happy 🙂

Oooh! before I forget! a post script/public service announcement… I recently received an email from the Great British Sewing Bee! *cue excited squeal when I had a split second of thinking they were having an Aussie version.. however sadly, NO…the email was to let me know that the next UK season is open to applications and asking me to spread the word. I mean, if we had one here I would love it if someone let me know about it! so I’m like, OK! Also, if we did have one here I would be SO onto that in a hot minute, and if you’re lucky enough to live somewhere where you do have these things, well what are you waiting for?!

THE GREAT BRITISH SEWING BEE is looking for a new collection of brilliant amateur sewers for the fifth series of BBC Two’s The Great British Sewing Bee. For more information or to apply please go to: www.applyforsewingbee.co.uk

Closing Date: Midnight May 28^th 2018

Details:

Top; In the Folds Collins top, in a stiff lace underlined with cotton voile
Skirt; based on Vogue 1247
Sandals; (white) designed and made by me, details here
(turquoise) la Soffita di Gilde

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Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Collins top, daily outfit, in the folds, skirt, top, Vogue 1247

metallic silk damask skirt

15/04/2018 7:01 pm \ 21 Comments \ Carolyn

With less than 24 hours remaining until Tim and Kelly’s engagement party, I suddenly realised I really wanted to wear my new skirt. Only problem was, the new skirt was at that moment a flat, albeit lovely, piece of fabric with as yet unrealised dreams and mere aspirations to being a skirt. A potential skirt!

The fabric is really beautiful… Cassie and I had seen it in Fabulous Fabrics and mutually admired it… then she secretly took it up to the counter and bought a length of it for me for Christmas. Aah, my daughter is the most thoughtful sneaky fabric buyer, ever! I couldn’t have chosen better myself 🙂 It’s a metallic silk damask; in the loveliest sunset-over-the-ocean shades of coral pink, gold, metallic gold, navy blue and charcoal, and I absolutely love the slight wonkiness of the stripes! although it did make stripe matching a tiny bit of a challenge. I managed it, but!

I used an old favourite Vogue 8363, modified quite a lot as usual This is a hall-of-fame pattern for me, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I’ve ever made anything faithfully to the pattern, ever! but I’m totally ok with that. It’s got great bones and that’s enough.

My nearly-always modification is to cut one of the fronts of the pocketed view on the fold, and the back piece with an added seam allowance to the centre back so as to incorporate a zip, and insert the waistband so as to have corresponding closure at the centre back. Also, the shape is ever so slightly pegged, which I did not want for this skirt; so I cut the side seams to be straight below the hips.

Some other mods; well, I point them all out in my video below, but it is a non-speaking video, pretty boring maybe, sorry, because I’m just so awful at speaking, every time I started I’m immediately tongue tied… so I just didn’t. Maybe I’ll get better at this and next time actually speak. However, for those who like The Deets, they are, in the order shown:

I wanted for the skirt front to be unimpeded by the visual distraction of a dart, but at least one dart and/or pleat is actually necessary in this design for a good fit and so you can shove your hands down deep into those pockets without distorting the shape of the skirt… I moved the dart right over to adjacent to the pocket opening. Actually, I fiddled with darts and pleats SO MANY times over, this final arrangement was probably attempt number six, at least, but fortunately I am satisfied with this arrangement, at last! Pleats looked absolutely dreadful… “boinging” out over my tummy in a most unflattering way, but the single discreetly placed dart looks nice. It gives a nice flat front to the skirt, visually almost dart-less, while allowing the room for your hands when shoved in the pockets. Oh, please notice the perfect print placement on the pockets, as well as all the other seams too.
I kept the double darts on the skirt backs, and put my deep forest green invisible zip in the centre back opening. The skirt closes at the waistband with a bar hook and eye.
I added a navy blue polyacetate lining, cut using another old favourite Vogue 1247, and folding the darts in pleats rather than sewing them down. Zip and lining were both from my stash. I attached the lining to the zip tape by hand, and staystitched and cut the lining in a square “box” at the lower end… I’ve written before how I’ve found this has practically eliminated the lining ripping at the lower edge of the zip, something that used to happen a lot with my skirts until I figured out why.
The silk damask frays with all the speed of a raging bushfire, so first thing after cutting I hastily finished all the raw cut edges on my overlocker, using navy blue overlocking thread. I didn’t have enough of the silk to cut the pockets in one piece and still have the print matching at the waist, where the print shows in the pocket opening, so I pieced the pockets to have a self-fabric facing, and the rest is in the lining fabric.

Oh, the party? did I hear you ask? thank you for asking! Yes, so Tim and Kelly are engaged and we hosted a party for them last night. I cannot take any credit for a great evening though, since it turns out that Kelly is a Party Organiser Extraordinaire, and we had the most beautifully styled and decorated party I think this house has ever seen! and Kelly made the most spectacular cake imaginable. And look at this!

This has 150 balloons in it…! and is the brainchild of Kelly, and the combined handiwork of Kelly, Cassie, their friend Georgia and myself. We had great fun, and I feel so lucky that I’m the one who gets to enjoy it in my house!!

I’ve shared the below picture on instagram back in February, but have just realised I haven’t put it here yet, this was The Moment! it’s been such an exciting time for our family and we are sooooo thrilled for our darling Tim to have such a lovely lady as Kelly in his life. No doubt I will be sharing lots of wedding attire spam both here as well as on IG pretty soon…. fair warning!

I was pretty confident I’d have time to get a nice picture of my new skirt, and whole outfit at the party last night … BWAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! oh dear, *wipes tears of mirth from eyes* obviously when one is hosting a party you’re flat chat … we took precisely zero photos during the party! Kelly has already contacted me, asking if I took any, so we’re planning a little post-photoshoot of the two of them with the still beautiful balloon arch. But I’m totally happy, still on a successful party high; we had an absolutely fantastic time, and I’ve spent most of today cleaning the house and it is delightfully spick and span again. SO I’m even more happy! Craig wore this shirt, Cassie wore this dress. And this is what I wore!

Outfit details:

Skirt; Vogue 8363, heavily modified, silk damask, Vogue 1247 for the lining
Shirt; Burda 7767, white linen… originally made for Craig, it still lives on his side of the wardrobe but I tend to be the one wearing it nowadays! details here
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique

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Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, Kelly, skirt, Tim, Vogue 8363

skylines shirt for Craig

02/04/2018 1:18 pm \ 29 Comments \ Carolyn

So, I’d bought 4m of the skylines fabric from tessuti’s… remember I mentioned my early plans were graaaaand? anyway my dress only took up about half, even with all the fabric-hogging pattern matching, so I had a nice chunk leftover. Just enough for a shirt for Craig!

I used my current go-to mens’ shirt pattern, Burda 6874, with his usual fitting alterations. Of course I still pattern matched all over the shop, but other than that the shirt is a pretty simple one, with very little in the way of fanciful details. I only had enough fabric for a short-sleeved shirt but that’s ok. It’s very summery fabric after all.

features:

flat-felled seams throughout; my tutorial for regular flat-felling seams here and for flat-felling a curved sleeve-cap seam here

a little button tab on the sleeve ends. There is a real little buttonhole underneath the button, because I do not like fake details, however it’s not really ever meant to be undone
the bias cut thing underneath the side seams is part of the pattern… I really love this very easy and simple little feature

bias cut front button band and pocket. I spaced the buttonholes so they sit neatly and evenly in the ivory rectangle along the buttonband

breakfast burrito shirt!!

He seemed rather touched and pleased that I made a shirt for no reason in particular! I mean, not a birthday or Christmas. This made me feel a little guilty… do I really make things for him that infrequently?

Food for thought. Well, enough chit-chat… I’m off to make something NOT plaid now!

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Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Burda 6874, Craig, mens shirt

skylines dress

27/03/2018 10:41 pm \ 37 Comments \ Carolyn

For years I’ve avidly read about the Tessuti sewing competition and always wanted to enter.. this year I finally got myself organised into ordering some of the fabric in a timely fashion! Buying fabric online is always a leeetle bit scary but I trust fabric stores I’ve visited for real, and Tessuti’s is one of Australia’s best. This year the fabric is this rather lovely ivory/blue cotton/linen/viscose/1%elastane plaid. It’s satisfactorily thick and crisp, with a good hand, so the skirt of my dress sits out nicely in a softly stiff way, if that makes sense. The rules for the competition are kinda open, kinda restrictive… open, in that you can make whatever the heck you want… the sky’s the limit! Restrictive, in that all visible parts of the garment must be made entirely using of the competition fabric… no trims, no dyeing, no embellishments like beading, smocking or embroidery, no contrasting fabrics. Hmmm, a nice challenge!! *rubs hands together with glee*

I had some very grand ideas to start with, but after lots of mulling it over decided to just make something I wanted to wear, you know? and what I love to wear more than anything else is an interesting little frock. So that’s what I made! A lengthy but enjoyable perusal of my pattern stash followed, and I plucked out Simplicity 3745, a pattern I’ve used twice before, version one here and version two here; so I know how it works for me!

Sooo: how to use the fabric creatively to add some visual interest to the garment??

Obviously, being a plaid one could play with on-grain vs bias cutting… I made a little mud map of the areas of my pattern, they numbered six, divided them into three each of bias and straight-cut sections, with the straight cut being the predominant look and treating bias-cut sections like a sort of “contrast”, of sorts; and I arranged my 3 bias-cut areas and 3 on-grain-cut areas so as to alternate. Plaid orientation proved a little tricker than first anticipated when I realised the ivory “square” wasn’t a square at all, but measures 2cm x 1.75cm. Meaning I had to choose between “true” bias-cut, which would have been a little off-kilter as far as the appearance of the plaid goes… or slightly off bias, and having the folds/seams going neatly through each of those little white centre points at each junction. I chose slightly off-bias, and having the plaid-matching arrangements looking sharp.

As another point of visual interest to my dress; I turned to my tried and true method (my tutorial for “framing” in a pieced garment with an inset strip is here) of inserting an inset strip to define the design and seam lines of the garment. I cut strips from the fabric, and sewed them in so the bluest, most solid-in-colour part of the plaid design made the dividing line. Ususally I would cut my inset strips on the bias, in this case of course to get a nice solid-ish blue line they had to be cut on-grain.

I was a little worried it wouldn’t work out, that they would pucker and not lie flat and smooth around the curved seamlines, but fortunately the on-grain strips went in perfectly nicely! Must be thanks to that little bit of elastane…! I used this inset strip technique to outline the neckline band, the two sleeve bands, the bodice band, and also the upper edge of the lower edge band.

As another way to add a little bit of visual punch: I sewed strips of the fluffy-edged selvedge along the lower hemline of the dress. I’d experimented with cutting bias strips and shredding them a bit to get a bit of a fringe… something I’d seen on the hemline of a white linen dress made by Tessuti’s once upon a time. However the skylines fabric is so densely woven that it just wouldn’t fringe up at all! Then I noticed the selvedge… aha!!! It had that perfectly fluffy little fringe all along each edge already! I cut strips of the selvedge, including a blue line of the plaid, and stitched this to the bottom edge of the dress. Initially I had thought to use this finish on the edge of the sleeve bands as well, but it was visually a little bit too busy and I ended up removing the selvedge off the sleeves. I do like how it looks along the bottom edge though!

Closure: I used a 46cm, ivory invisible zip. and yep! busted a gut getting this thing sewn in as invisibly as possible!!

This degree of pattern-matching took extremely careful pinning and slow sewing, and just one or two unpicking sessions when some bits weren’t as perfectly lined up as I wanted. I’m super happy with how it turned out in the end though!

Oh! pockets! of course I added inseam pockets. well, obviously, that’s practically a given, if I can possibly wrangle it – in anything – then I do!

Innards; I overlocked all raw edges using ivory thread in my overlocker… and look, tessuti’s sent out one of their labels for us to put in our garments… #feelssoprofessional!!!

Les Innards…

NOT les innards…

So that’s it! done and dust-eeeerd!! I love wearing this thing! It feels so feminine and… girly, is the only word I can think. Girly, in a good way, I mean. Hehe, I asked my husband’s opinion…he replied, “Swiss milk maid” ummm… okaaaay? Would not have come up with that on my own, but I’ll take it!

Details:

Dress; Simplicity 3745, in a cotton/linen/viscose plaid
Shoes; akiel, found in an op shop many years ago

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Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, dress, Simplicity 3745

Perth dresses and a blouse; a tester roundup!

26/03/2018 10:24 pm \ 19 Comments \ Carolyn

One of the most exciting things for me lately is seeing pictures popping up of everyone’s Perth dresses, it’s been absolutely wonderful seeing it work and how everyone makes it look even more amazing than I could have dreamed! … I personally think it looks fab on everyone but then maybe I’m a wee bit biased? 😉 By the way; by far the most oft-repeated feedback I have received has been requests for a greater size range… I promise this is being worked on right now, as we speak! type? read? well, right now, anyway. And will be on offer pretty soon.

But in the meantime… behold, my lovely testers! all totally rocking their Perth creations… and I should just mention that the sleeves have been shortened by 5cm in the final version of the pattern.

@happylat

Vesna of @kelerabeus ; blog: kelerabeus

SaSa of @paisleypirouette ; blog: Alles neu macht der Mai!

Sue of @acolourfulcanvas blog: A Colourful Canvas

@pdxsquared

Ylenia of @len.blueskystitch

Nancy of @notfancynancy

Megan of @meggipeg blog: Create with Wild Abandon

Evie of @indiestitches

… and last but not least; Mum!

Now for a little story… I have to confess that I made Mum’s dress here! Mum did print out the pattern and made a dress, but it was a little small and oddly shaped, which was very confusing. It took me quite a while to work out WHAT the heck was going on … she’d sent me photos of her pattern which had some weird anomalies. It was during the lead up to our release, and it was all quite stressful actually, totally doing our heads in. Finally she had the opportunity to bring her pattern itself up to my place, I made a few measurements and worked out that their printer must have been set to “fit to scale” for parts of it, meaning the pattern was partially printed out of whack. It was miraculous that she’d managed to make the dress at all, really.

A timely reminder… when printing the pattern at home, check that the printer is set to ACTUAL SIZE!!!!

I didn’t want to make poor Mum make another dress, and I can practically make them in my sleep now, so I resolved to make one for her myself, a little surprise, to make up for all the stress the mis-printed pattern put her through. I whizzed up to Fabulous Fabrics, bought some of this lovely charcoal grey linen and a purple-y/grey pearly button that I think looks absolutely beautiful with it! and quickly whipped one up. I think it looks absolutely beautiful on her, she loves it! and it fits perfectly too, yay! so all is well that ends well.

At Mum’s request, I made the sleeves longer, and she decided she likes them rolled up to make a faux cuff.

I’m showing it twice… but really, that button?!! I LOVE it!!

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Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Carolyn & Cassie Pattern Co, Perth, perth dress

… a couple of pairs of pants for Cassie…

10/03/2018 6:03 pm \ 18 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made two new pairs of pants for Cassie! Sarah of french navy now asked for me to test her newest pattern, the Calyer pants and I instantly saw they would fit a need in Cassie’s wardrobe very nicely… since they encompass the criteria for pants that are both smart and classy enough for the office, as well as comfortable enough for her to wear about at home too. They’re pretty much perfect for her lifestyle! btw, the bones of this post has been sitting in my drafts box for a few weeks now… time has just got away from me!

The pants have a slightly dropped crotch, a roomy seat, tapered legs, and a flat front waistband combined with an elasticated back waistband. Elasticated waistbands are normally an anathema to me, but these ones actually look pretty nice, since the band is a. very wide and b. has a pretty, almost shirred appearance, which in turn c. gives visual interest at the back. The back would be pretty plain without it, I think. They also have nice little hip pockets, and the pattern caters for two front views, a pleated front and a flat front. I made both! On different pants, I mean. So, I just got a visual of a pair of pants with one pleated front and one plain front. LOL! Although now I’m wondering how that would go… hmmm… maybe a bit too out there. But now I’m curious. Honestly I don’t know how these things pop into my head sometimes…

The black pair has the pleated front, obviously. For these, I used a heavy, silk-like stuff that was inexplicably on the $4 table at Fabulous Fabrics… back when they actually had a $4 table that is. They don’t have it any more *sad face* Anyway, it’s absolutely GORGEOUS stuff. Upon discovery, ah what a joyous moment that was! – I bought quite a lot of it, stashed it, and have heroically and selflessly given up some to make these pants for Cassie. I could be heroic and selfless because I still have a small mountain of the stuff left for me 😉

When she tried them on, she immediately said how much she’d like them in dusky pink too. Say no more!! Pink is so hot right now!!! I hopped in my car just about immediately and zoomed off to Fabulous Fabrics to buy something pink. Well, seemed like a pretty good excuse, yeah? The dusky peach colour of this slight stretchy ponte is utterly divine. I initially cut out another pair of the pleated front in the pink too, but ended up unpicking and altering them to be the flat front version. Cassie loves them, and says she’ll be wearing them, like 24/7 as the weather cools down. That’s what I like to hear!!