Och aye! I’ve made this big, swirly tartan dress, and I absolutely LOVE it! I know it
‘s kinda crazy and huge-skirted and possibly a bit over the top, but you know what? it’s also extremely comfortable and cosy, and so swirly and swishy. The instant I finished it and put it on I immediately felt simultaneously relaxed, like I had put on a warm comfy dressing gown or something; but also a bit chic as well. The big feminine skirt with a nipped-in waist does that, but I really like how the volume below is balanced out by the mannish style shirt top with cargo pockets and flaps, and a notched collar.
Hehe, actually while I was making it I did worry a little bit that it was going to look exactly like a dressing gown! but once I put it on I was instead happily reminded of 80’s Ralph Lauren, and even Spandau Ballet. Remember To Cut a Long Story Short? big big fan here. HUGE fan. I still know all the words off by heart; and that film clip transports me right back into breathless, happy teenagehood all over again, and wearing this dress totally reminds me of that clip and that joyful time in my life; the over-the-top, big, blowsy, romantic 80’s era. So I”m very happy. And, can I say? there’s something about a big wide dramatic skirt that really brings out the poses in a person. Not to mention twirling… put a big skirt on a girl and just watch; you just can’t help it but break out into a coupla twirls.
#awkward!! Yes, well; obviously most of us don’t actually twirl very often. Twirling is something of a fashion blogger contrivance… although if I do want to get in a bit of highland flinging I am all set. 😉
More realistically, it still looks pretty awesome when you’re striding briskly along the street too, and this? I do a LOT.
When making this I had an image in my head of an actual dress like this from an 80’s or maybe 90’s editorial, I swear it was a Ralph Lauren… so of course I wasted many hours searching and searching and searching to link to it, and do you think I can find a picture anywhere of that maybe-Ralph Lauren dress??? NO. The closest thing I could find is this maxi-dress, which isn’t it.
Anyway: Fabric; soft, cotton flannelette, tartan shirting from Spotlight. The same stuff I used to line my Tosti jacket, in a different colourway. One side is slightly fluffy, the other side is smooth and flat. I put the fluffy side inside. This is the opposite of how I used it for my Tosti jacket, which has the fluffy side out! Or… since it’s the lining, is the fluffy side therefore in? hmmm, that’s a puzzle! Navy blue buttons from Fabulous Fabrics.
Pattern: Mum had given me some of her old patterns, including this great Vogue 1147 shirtdress with multiple variations, from 1993. I thought it perfect for that vision of the big skirted, maybe-Ralph Lauren, maybe-not dress in my head. It’s not in my size, but the three nested sizes made it fairly easy to downsize a bit. I made view B, at far left.
The skirt pieces, bodice pockets and flaps are all cut on the bias; bodice and sleeves on the grain. As much as possible, I matched the tartan. #madpatternmatcher This was easy in the bodice and sleeves, and the pockets which please note, are exact mirror images… however! That skirt.…! I love how the centre seams in the skirt have a nice, fairly even row of white diamonds and am fairly happy with how the lines join up at the side seams… this took some careful pinning and only a wee bit of fudging… 😉 Those side edges did not have the same profiles and combine that with an asymmetric tartan…! *hair-pulling stuff* Anyway, the matching turned out pretty good, spot on where it counts, and so is reasonably satisfying 🙂
I cut the sleeves long, then stitched an ultra-wide wide hem. This is then turned up once in a wide cuff, and secured with invisible hand stitching 1cm inside the fold. I did it this way because the underside of the fabric is different from the right side, quite fluffy! and I wanted the smooth side to be on the outside of the turned-up cuffs.
Because the skirt is on the bias, I let it hang up for a week to let the bias drop a bit, and it did! by quite a lot in some places. The hem is hand stitched.
I also made a sort of belt… this helps to pull the waist in. I only made this actually because of my year of totally handmade, meaning I can’t grab one of my nice leather ready-to-wear belts, and I really think the design NEEDS a belt. But now I’ve made it I LOVE how it blends invisibly into the dress so perfectly! It’s basically just an interfaced waistband, with an inside button and two buttonholes. One buttonhole is for the start of the evening, before dinner. The outer one is for when you decide you do want to have dessert after all. Comfort dressing, at its finest!
Details:
Dress; Vogue 1147 from 1993, tartan flannelette shirting
Tights; my own pattern black stretch, details here and my tutorial for making your own custom fit tights pattern is here
Shoes; made by me, details here
make another one!! Doh!! Clearly there’s something terribly wrong with me… #madvogue1247addict
aaaaaand, my week of exclusively wearing Vogue 1247 skirts, in a nutshell…!
Firstly, two sage green/pale coffee, checked tweed skirts. I inherited this beautiful quality piece of wool tweed from my grandmother’s stash after she passed away. Although I earmarked it straight away as two skirts for Cassie and myself I just hadn’t got around to it and have sat on it all this time. It was one of those fabrics I couldn’t bring myself to cut into… you know, inherited from Granny, plus exceptionally good quality, equals inevitable thoughts of sewing tragedy followed by eternal self-damnation…. but I’m making myself get over that nonsense nowadays. Make it! Enjoy it! Live dangerously! So, finally… it helps too that I think Cassie has now grown into fabric of this calibre 😉 not that she didn’t deserve high quality fabrics before, but you know what I mean! it’s very much a grown-up fabric and makes a very smart little work skirt for her now that she has a serious and professional career. The fabric really is beautiful stuff… fine and evenly woven, and there are flecks of all sorts of colours in with the sage green/coffee check… blue, red and gold, caramel brown, forest green, and a hint of purple and black. It has no identifier on it but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a fully English tweed. My grandmother was very much into that sort of thing 🙂
sie moved out of home she left this fabric behind and I almost started to factor it into my own plans mwahahahahaha… but of course she hadn’t forgotten it, o no! The reason she had deviously left it behind was so that I could make something for her with it! HA! She chose 
Details:
what’s with the ballet pose? I have no idea. Anyway… I have a 
I’ve kept the selvedge from off the fabric, and have sewn these inside one of the pockets! just because I love information like this… namely: this design is by prominent Finnish designer Maija Isola, and was created in 1964! out by a year but definitely still of my era, haha. “Pieni unikko” translates literally to “little poppy” I’m not sure what KI 2009 means yet, but I’m investigating…. Also, how cool is it that the laundering info is printed on the selvedge?! so classy and very considerate really, it’s been along long time since I’ve seen such consideration in a fabric. That information’s the kind of thing I usually forget the very minute I swan out of the shop with my new fabric tucked under my wing.
The loose front pieces also allows you to have these big loose comfortable pockets that you can shove your hands in, while still maintaing quite a slimline dress overall. As a result, the pattern uses very little fabric. I managed to squeeze my pattern pieces out of 1.5m, which is not too bad, not too bad at all, I think *preens oneself on an exceptionally economic layout* I had the merest of scraps left after cutting out my pieces, scraps, I tell you! The pattern has you line the dress, and after a bit of um-ing and aah-ing, I decided to not. Reason? summers here are very hot and I think the breeziness of this lovely cotton fabric is going to be perfect just as it is.
Press the pocket lining out, then turn it under the front piece and press, forming the 1/4″ (6mm) wide bound edge of the pocket.
from the right side (with some irrelevant (white) basting along the side edge… not really necessary for this method)
I’ve made a new dress using a bunch of my kids’ old jeans that I have 
been saving for this very purpose… and please note; yes, I am wearing 
Materials; obviously, all blue denim jeans. I used three pairs of children’s jeans, one pair of child’s long shorts and one pair of adult jeans. The adult jeans turned out to be necessary when I realised that the full-length panels at the back would look pretty terrible if pieced at the waist; it’s a very much piecemeal kind of a design anyway, and to have that nice long smooth length of fabric at the back is just a nice visual anchor in amongst all that busy patchworking, in my opinion. I decided it would be best to retain it; fortunately I had one pair of Craig’s old jeans in my refashioning bag and could cut the long back pieces from those.
My vision for this dress has always been to have lots of the existing jeans’ details retained in it, like the pockets with their decorative top-stitching, the coin pockets and belt loops and so forth; HOWEVER when it came down to it I retained very little of all that! The design was just so… busy; I ended up removing a lot of the little details I was going to put in. There’s still plenty of the jeans bits and pieces left in, I reckon just the right amount to keep that definite “jeans flavour” to it. There are a few original topstitched seams here and there, and the portion of a pocket left on the bodice. I also added tonnes of new topstitching in terracotta upholstery thread, in fact every seam is topstitched down in some cases doubly so.
Something I’ve managed to forget to blog about each time I’ve written about this dress… like all Vogue patterns, for a fitted design it’s a little blouse-y in the boob-al region for my figure; however the princess seamed bodice makes this a very easy fix. I simply pin and stitch to shave a bit off the inner curve of the central bodice piece (above), and this solves the problem for me. A very very easy small bust adjustment, and one I usually end up using for pretty much every fitted Vogue bodice with princess-seaming. I don’t have the same issues with Burda, but always with Vogue. I guess their “blocks” are a little different.
One pair of jeans, the very pale blue pair, was practically threadbare in places, but I still really wanted to have that pale blue as part of the lovely indigo-y mix… these pieces I reinforced with lightweight iron-on interfacing to the back to stabilise and strengthen these areas (below). Don’t want my new dress ripping in its first wear now, do I?!
Hello! just a few quick items for today… I’ve actually been sewing a few things for other people! Scary stuff, huh. I mean, it’s one thing that I can see all my own flaws in things I make for myself, and on a daily basis! but that’s kinda the rough with the smooth, you accept that because it’s all your own doing, all your own fault and you can tell yourself you’re “learning” and going to do better next time haha…. but to subject another person to those flaws … well that’s really exposing yourself. ok, you know what I mean…
Sure, they’re all near identical, but still. What’s not to love about that.
This is the first time I’ve put an exposed zip in a skirt with lining, and wasn’t totally sure how to do it; I put the zip in similarly to how you’d do a welt pocket, and then hand-stitched the lining to the zip tape on the inside. I cut the bottom edge of the pleather clean and straight with my rotary cutter and left it unhemmed; and hemmed the paisley portions in a deep 4cm hem by hand. The skirt is fully lined with raspberry polyacetate, itself a leftover from 
Item number two; a hoodie for my son’s girlfriend. I had made 
Hello!
I just adore jackets with tonnes of hardware and detailing, like zips and lots of different bits and bobs and interesting pockets. So set about planning for this one to be chockablock with loads of that sort of thing. I considered using the same Burda pattern I used for the previous one, but I had to make lots of additions/adjustments to that in order to make it the complex, feature-laden army-style jacket that I wanted, which is fine! but since making that one, lots of great patterns have popped up with all those features already incorporated into the pattern. Eventually I settled upon the 
There is tonnes of topstitching all over, so satisfied that part of me that adores precision sewing. I’m that weirdo that LOVES topstitching! and am pretty much totally and blissfully happy when I’m hunched over the machine, chugging along; churning out lines upon lines of precise, neatly and evenly spaced, stitching. The wonderful thing about this ripstop is that the little squares in the weave of the fabric make precision stitching and lining up pieces to be perfectly square very very easy.
