Burda 8511 Archives - Handmade by Carolyn

ivory lace; most definitely label-worthy *

26/10/2018 3:21 pm \ 34 Comments \ Carolyn

OK. Sooo, it’s early days, since this little sheath o’ my dreams is basically brand new, but I’m so in love with it already I’m just tentatively putting it out there… I think I’ve just managed to make a forever dress for myself. I just love love love ivory, as a colour, and lace as a texture, and ivory and lace combined together in one swathe of gloriously snow-dusted curlicues is just always a fabric that’s going to make me sigh with happiness.

Silk World Australia had contacted me to ask me if I would showcase one of their fabrics, and I chose one metre of this guipire lace, one metre being the minimum order; thinking I could make a little skirt. Silk World have up until recently been wholesalers, and now their beautiful laces and specialty fabrics are available for everyone! which of course is the best news for fabric lovers everywhere. I was blown away when my lace arrived.. it’s heavily and beautifully detailed, and luxuriously thick with that matte texture that whispers “quality” in hushed genteel notes. And when I shook out said one metre, well it was so so W I D E! I realised I could get not just a little skirt, but probably a whole dress out of it. And I did! Et voila!

One metre dictated a super pared-back, no frills, straight sheath silhouette, which is of course the best thing to show off the intricacies of the lace anyway. With something this exquisite, you only need a very little of it to make a big impact, in my opinion. I used an old favourite pattern, Burda 8511, and lined the dress with natural Irish linen, bought years ago at Calico & Ivy, when I had a voucher to burn and nothing in mind to particular spend it on… it’s really gorgeous stuff also and I’ve never really known exactly what to use it for. I love how the slightly rough ‘n rustic feel and muted stoney colour of the linen is a nice foil to the luxurious decadence of snow-dusted lace sitting on top… and now I feel like this is exactly the project what it was waiting for all along; a match made in heaven!

Cocktail dress for the season… sorted!

Aaaand, my new labels!! and oh my goodness can we just take a moment to appreciate how absolutely adorable ???

I got these from the Dutch Label Shop, and seriously, I struggled to choose a design, there were just so many cute options, and colours. I’m super super happy with these; I absolutely LOVE the sweetly funky design! and I’m also pretty impressed with the excellent quality. The labels are fabric, and the design is stitched, which is very nice; and you know how with a lot of fabric labels, you need to turn under the raw edges as you’re stitching them down, because of fraying? well these ones have all four edges nicely sealed so you don’t need to do that. They’re all ready to sew on! Also they are pleasantly substantial and sturdy, with no hint that they will buckle over time or in the wash, and the design is finely detailed and stitched tight and flat; so seems very unlikely it might snag or catch on anything, nor unravel. I am SO happy with them! 🙂

Also, I have amazing news! The Dutch Label Shop has very kindly and generously reached out and offered a discount to all my readers … enter handmadebycarolyn15 at the checkout and you will receive a 15% discount on any order.

FLOWERHEAD!!!

random tangent; do you know I’m looking at here? rhetorical question, I know, aren’t they the worst? actually there was a golden whistler sitting in the tree right by my head, whistling his little head off. I just had to rush over and grab my camera for a quick shot before he flew off… If you want to hear his lovely call, you can check it out here…

this next picture looks very loving doesn’t it? a tender mistress and puppy moment? actually Clara was having a “puppy mood” and was just really really keen to rip right into those flowers and zoom off through the garden with them.

LATER EDIT: Mary asked in the comments about the finishing and interior details, and thank you for reminding me, Mary! because I actually meant to post pictures of how I did this in my dress but forgot…

lace side seams; inside

the side seams of the lace shell I stitched along with a bias cut strip of thin, cream cotton, then trimmed the seam allowances of the lace and wrapped the cotton around to bind the edges in a Hong Kong-like seam, except I tucked the raw edge of the cotton under and hand-stitched it in place. This makes a nicely neat and tidy, cream-coloured roll; which might look like it could be seen on the right side but actually is kinda invisible when the dress is right side out.

lace side seams, outside

The linen lining; I finished the raw edges on my overlocker, and simply left them like that. The bottom edges of the zip tape I stitched down to the seam allowances like I usually do, in a short row of machine stitching.

The lace around the invisible zip on the outside; here I trimmed the lace while carefully hand stitching the raw edge securely right up to abut against the opening edge, while not obscuring it so I can still pull the zip up and down! You have to stitch every single little bit of lace down here so there are no loose bits to stick out, which would look very messy and also risk getting lace caught in the zip, so a stitch for like every 3mm or so.

At the top edge of the dress; I stitched the neckline and armscyes of the dress together, right side of linen lining to wrong side of lace shell, and added a linen facing, to hide the lace edges on the inside. This is under stitched so all edges roll to the inside of the dress. I handtacked the facing to the lining in a few key places along its edge too.

You can see in the above picture those bust darts shaping the front lining, and also (not seen) on the back lining I stitched long fish-eye darts to shape the small of the back. I lightly hand-tacked the lace shell to these back darts in a few places so the unshaped lace shell sits shaped to the curve of my back a little more than it would otherwise. I mean, without this tacking, the lace just hangs down dead straight, and I like it to curve into the small of my back just a little. The hand-tacking helps it to do this 🙂

Details:

Dress; Burda 8511, in this guipure lace and natural linen
Shoes; Zomp, from Zomp boutique
Flowers; were from the garden, I love these and they’re looking so beautiful at the moment! I actually picked them to decorate the kitchen. I was just aiming for “spring-y”, though now I think my pictures are veering just a little into bridal territory? though I do quite like the idea of this look for a modern and maybe, mature, bride! Anyway, Note to self; perhaps avoid carrying big bunches of flowers in my pictures from now on

Christmas party season? I am SO ready! though honestly, not just for Christmas, I am going to wear this dress for ever and EVER…

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8511, Clara, dress

all Aussie adventures

16/09/2015 12:54 pm \ 68 Comments \ Carolyn

MY OUTFIT IS FINISHED!!!
And I am showing it all together here for the first time. Can I just say right here; wooooohooooot!
The challenge, as laid out by Nicki of this is moonlight, should you choose to accept it, and I did! was to make for yourself an entire outfit using ONLY locally sourced materials. Sounds simple, right? It has been anything but!
I’m very grateful to Nicki for conceiving this brilliant and very thought-provoking challenge, and for inviting me to take part. This has been one exceedingly amazing ride, has blown my mind more than any other dressmaking challenge I’ve ever done, and really pushed my creativity to the limit. At the beginning of the year I seriously did not think I would be taking my outfit to the levels I did…. I thought for sure I would be giving myself a pass on some things, for example; thread, and allowing myself to use regular Gutermann’s thread. As time went on though I toughened up, embraced the idea of going the whole hog; and I’m very pleased that I did manage to rise to the challenge and make the maximum possible from locally sourced products!
In fact, I’m quite proud and extremely happy! :))
For the challenge, I made:
a knitted alpaca cardigan/jacket
a merino felt dress
merino felt and pine shoes
a merino fleece bag
merino fleece undies and bra
In a nutshell, every single blinking thing I have on here is made by myself, using pretty close to 100% south-west Australian sourced materials

Those of us in Western Australia; Sue, Megan, Nicki and myself, have had to be quite innovative in our approach, I think. I mean, forget zips, thread, elastic… there is not even any freaking fabric made in WA! This was our single biggest hurdle, I think!
However, we are extremely fortunate in that we have wool available to us; lots and lots of wool! Australia has the world’s biggest wool economy… did you know that 80% of the world’s apparel wool is from Australia? and Australian merino is the world’s best quality woollen fibre. 22% of the country’s wool production is here in Western Australia (source)

Hardly surprising then that all four of us have used wool as the majority component in our outfits.
My dress, bag, underwear and shoe tops are made from Western Australian merino fleece. I made my wool felt fabric from the fleece as outlined in this post. My dress is made from natural undyed merino fleece felt, and I hand-embroidered the fleece all over with locally handspun, undyed merino yarn.

Anigozanthos manglesii

The embroidery design is my own; a random arrangement of of kangaroo paw motif, for our Western Australian state floral emblem.

My underwear features the only “colour” in my entire outfit; I dyed the decorative yellow edging and ties using sour grass picked from my own garden, as posted here.
All the other fleece, yarn and wood in my outfit I left in its naturally coloured state.

My cardigan is alpaca yarn, from the Fibre of the Gods, a tiny mill operating on a farm in Toodyay. This establishment produces alpaca yarn on their own property, from the fleece of their very own alpaca herd. I bought some of their yarn directly from off the farm and knitted my cardigan, as posted here.

My wooden shoe soles are hand carved by me, using Western Australian pine. The pine is grown by Bunnings on their own pine plantations down south and milled by Bunnings in Manjimup. I made my shoes and my bag from my merino fleece as outlined here My bag and shoe tops are also merino fleece, with a grid pattern made of naturally black sheep yarn.

And that’s it, in a nutshell!
Well, typing it all out like this has kinda brought it home to me for the first time; I am wearing a pretty-close-to 100% homegrown outfit, top to toe, for maybe the first time in my life! I’m kinda amazed, even at myself. It’s a little mind-blowing to me.
Final thoughts: I’ve learnt a tonne doing this challenge. Firstly, our local industries are precious and need our support. That goes for everywhere, not just here in WA! I personally am going to put more effort into supporting our local products regularly. I mean, I’m definitely not giving up my more “regular” sewing, but I am going to do this challenge again.
Secondly, that if you really put your mind towards doing something, keep yourself focused on getting a project done, to overcoming obstacles, then you probably can do it. Sometimes you need to sleep on it, think outside the box a bit. I learnt a lot as I was going along, and several times had to improvise a solution to a problem. There were moments when I questioned my sanity in doing this, when I wondered if my ideas were even going to work… a felt dress? unlined? felt underwear? sounds like the vision of a lunatic, or at least a recipe for disaster, for sure… well OK even I can admit that felt underwear is not really a practical nor a workable thing! … do NOT recommend. 😉
Also, I had lots of fun!! I LOVE a challenge and this challenge really stretched my capabilities; which is the very best sort of challenge, in my opinion! I thought hard and long about each aspect of my outfut and tried very hard to honour the materials, to minimise my waste and to make something truly Western Australian in feel and flavour as well as provenance.
There were also moments when I realised I had to accept a small defeat; in the case of this outfit; the glue holding pieces of wood together in my shoes (from NSW, Australia), the nails holding the felt to the soles of my shoes (China) and the cotton jersey liner for my undies (China). They are very tiny elements so I’m not going to beat myself up over them too much.
I guess the important thing is that I gave everything careful consideration, and really thought about provenance and the possibility of substituting local products in as many instances as I was able. As well, I wanted to produce something stylish and lovely, that I knew I would love wearing and feel proud and happy in. I genuinely love my outfit, and feel pretty pleased with my efforts!
Lastly; maybe I’m on a bit of a post-challenge high, but I’m quite excited about attempting this again next year… in fact I already have ideas and plans!
Mad? maybe, but quite happy to be so!

Details:
Cardigan; the Caramel cardigan, in Fibre of the Gods natural alpaca, grown, shorn, washed, carded and spun in Toodyay, Western Australia and hand-knitted by me, details here
Dress; my own design based upon Burda 8511, made from merino felt made by me and hand embroidered with locally handspun merino yarn from Bilby Yarns, details here
Shoes; my own design, pine soles from Bunnings hand carved by me, felt tops made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Bag; my own design, in felt made by me from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here
Underwear; my own design, knickers derived from the Tried & True knickers pattern by the Makers Journal, in felt made from merino fleece bought at Bilby Yarns, details here

Posted in: fashion, knitting, sewing, shoes \ Tagged: accessories, bag, Burda 8511, caramel, cardigan, dress, felting, knitting, one year one outfit, own design, shoes, Sienna

an all Western Australian dress

30/08/2015 9:24 am \ 101 Comments \ Carolyn

OK; it’s done, the second and arguably the most time consuming component of my one year one outfit project!
Can I just interject right here… WOOOOHOOOOO!

Phew! so, just saying, but I’m tentatively predicting that this one piece could well be my piece de resistance for the year. I made the dress, and not only did I make the dress but I made the fabric too! previously post about making my fabric from Western Australian Merino fleece here.
And I hand-embroidered it, with a motif of my own design. Also the dress is of my own design. Is this a little insane? probably.
Ok, YES.

So, the dress. As mentioned, it is fully embroidered with kangaroo paws. Why kangaroo paws, you may ask? Well, the kangaroo paw is our state floral emblem and my project is an all-Western Australian deal, so it seemed like a pretty appropriate choice. I sketched a stylised kangaroo paw design based upon one from one of my own photographs. I drew a few in different sizes and then for each section of the dress drew up separate, big all-over patterns. Some of the paws wrap around the side seams from front to back, which was planned since I wanted to kinda tie the design together as well as I could.

my muse; Anigozanthos manglesii

This style of all-over embroidery is obviously inspired by the Alabama Chanin style, but the design is all mine. I chose to incorporate embroidery for a few reasons; firstly to give some added strength to my felt, since the felt seemed just a touch fragile on its own.
Secondly, for decorative impact too, of course! My felt is quite textured already, but I really liked the idea of something more, and a white-on-white design. I embroidered the under-dress, below, in a regularly spaced and repeating pattern of identical kangaroo paws, while the overdress, above, has a more random appearance, with different sized kangaroo paws, placed non-regularly and more artfully; as if someone had taken a bouquet of kangaroo paws and scattered it across the piece.

For the embroidery: I used natural, undyed Western Australian Merino yarn, handspun here in Perth by a lady named Beverly. I bought this from Bilby Yarns.
The side seams are hand-stitched and hand-fellstitched in a thinner version of the same yarn. I left the lower edge of the dress with its naturally wobbly self-edge, just as how it came out from the felting.

As per the one year one outfit strict criteria, I could not use anything in my dress that was not locally sourced; meaning no thread or zips. So, I could have used buttons, since I still have some lovely ones made by my Dad using wood from my parent’s block… but I decided to go with a dress that I could just pull on over my head and with no closure required. I used my standby plainy-plain dress pattern, Burda 8511 and drew up a wide, midi-length, loose, A-line dress pattern; two layered and with slanting asymmetrical hemlines. The under layer is a full length dress; and the over layer is a shorter and briefer one, one-shouldered with a diagonal top edge disappearing into the side edge/armpit. I cut out “facings” for the top edge, and these are fused/felted to the inside of the dress, underneath the single layer part of the under-dress. Meaning, the dress has two layers of fabric all over, which I fused together by felting nearly all over after embroidering. The front has felted-together layers to waist level, while the back has the layers felted together to below bum level. The remaining lower portion of the overdress float free, and the only parts that are a completely single layer are the lower portion of the underdress.
Clear as mud? Yep, I thought so!

Also: it may superficially look like the dress has not a skerrick of shaping, with no visible darts or piecing, but actually that is not the case! It is shaped… with invisible darts!!! yes, really invisible 🙂 The shaping is not drastic since I needed some looseness to enable me to get the thing over my shoulders ok… but the shaping is there. I cut out the bust darts and back waist shaping darts, and closed them together by hand-felting the layers together with a felting needle. This is a clever little needle, long and with tiny serrated point. You jab it in through the layers of your felt and its serrations enable the wool fibres to meld and mesh together thanks to their own naturally barbed nature, albeit microscopic. This is how felting is even possible, of course! Thanks to this wonderful property exclusive to wool, my dress has a nice subtle shape but with no visible evidence of such shaping, such as darts or seams. It’s also how I felted together the two layers of the dress, all over.
It’s like magic, I’m telling you.

running stitch edging, and invisible bust dart

Once I had completed all my wool embroidery, I went over and painstakingly hand-felted those upper and underdresses together as described above. Then the very final step was to run a simple running stitch around the neckline and armholes. I wanted a nice subtle edging to these areas, not only for some strength, as the running stitch is almost like stay-stitching if you like, and stabilises these vulnerable areas that might otherwise get stretched out every time I pull the dress over my head and push my arms through those armholes. The edging also provide a nice visual border that that does not compete with my embroidery… and obviously I want my embroidery to have the biggest visual impact.

So! This is merely part two of my one year one outfit project, part numero uno was my knitted alpaca jacket/cardigan, posted here, and I have a couple more components still going in the works. What will they be? we shall see, we shall see… 🙂
I may have a few surprises still up my sleeve, mwahaha!

Details:
Dress; my own design based upon Burda 8511, of self-made wool felt with wool embroidery of my own design
Ugg boots; from some ugg boot shop, forgotten which one

Ahhh, the uggies. I know they’re pretty awful but I just could not resist! Seemed only fitting. I’m gahn the full Strine here, mate. 🙂

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8511, dress, embroidery, one year one outfit, own design, Sienna

reversible infinity, or twist, dress

15/08/2015 7:55 am \ 86 Comments \ Carolyn

I love working out convoluted construction puzzles in the process of sewing something and this new dress ticked that box very nicely.
It looks kinda plain upon first glance, but it’s actually based upon a very unusual twisted design by Anita, of Studio Faro.
And now I have to apologise right here because I’ve just searched forever for the design on Anita’s blog to link to it, and I find I did not even pin it… so I cannot. I’m sorry! but I’m pretty sure I saw the sketch for the pattern piece on either Anita’s blog, studio faro well-suited, or her Facebook page.

Later edit; thanks to Emily I found it, Anita’s original design is here.
Anyway. In making it, I realised it was just like an infinity scarf, but in dress form. Unique!

And, my dress is fully reversible! with all the seam allowances enclosed and tucked away neatly between the two layers of the dress. The construction technique to make it reversible is one that I worked out myself and not something I’ve ever seen in any pattern or design before. This was the part of it that kept me on my toes, brainstorming a way to make it happen. I’m super chuffed that it did work out. 🙂
In my initial plans; it was not going to be a reversible design and I wanted to use double-sided fabric for my dress, but the only ones I could find were kinda expensive, and much as I craved the actualisation of that idea I just couldn’t justify the cost… economy can often be the mother of invention, non? Eventually I settled with a double layered dress using two lightweight fabrics, and then while I was fiddling about with the two layers I realised I could actually make it a completely reversible dress, meaning I could wear it inside out just as easily … and ta da! this is the result!

Right way out; I wanted the white at the front and red at the back. The way the infinity twist goes; the dress is actually mostly open at the right side seam, but the way it crosses over there is a restriction in the drape of the hemline so that it sits with the opening closed quite securely; and there is absolutely no danger of the drape falling open and exposing your knickers at all. I tried to move and sit in it a few times to see if I could possibly get humiliated from any hint of exposure in the dress and am happy to say I could not make it happen.

The one single pattern piece looks like this, and you rotate the “upside-down” part around clockwise and up, to lie over on the “right-side up” part. This naturally forms an infinity-twisted drape at the side, and the wrong side of the fabric against the right side, front and back.
Any straight or sheath dress design could be used to get this pattern piece; I used my old standby Burda 8511 as my sheath dress sloper. It’s one I’ve made enough times over the years to have tweaked and fiddled with it enough to have fine-tuned the fit to my pear-shaped self just about perfectly.
By the way; if you’re at all interested in creating your own pattern manipulations like this one, and this goes for just about all the Pattern Magic designs too; my recommendation is make a sturdy, fabric sloper. It’s a good idea to have one for a sheath dress, a bodice and possibly a skirt too. You could use a well-fitting, tried and true pattern like this one, if you have one; in any case get a basic pattern and make up a few samples to fine-tune your fit. Once you’ve fiddled and diddled enough to discover the perfect adjustments for you; get some strong fabric that’s not going to rip or fray easily, like an old sheet… these often have the most fabulously high thread count making them super-tough! Then cut out your perfectly-fitting pattern pieces. Using a clear, easy-to-see marking pen of some sort, mark on the sloper pieces the waist line, hipline, bust points, back dart points, the straight grainline and the bias grainlines going both ways. I used bright red marking pen. This sloper can be kept rolled up with your patterns for whenever you have new ideas and want to play about with making new designs for yourself 🙂
Why fabric, not paper? well obviously so you can baste it together and put it on! wearing a paper version of a thing is absolutely nothing like the real fabric thing, we all know that! Paper has zero drape, plus it rips all too easily 😀

The middle, joining piece goes from the waist to the hemline. I left off all shaping darts, so the “dress” portion is a kinda shapeless sack, a base-point which I think is a good criteria for a double layered reversible design. I also cut it so that I can just slip the dress over my head, eliminating the need for a zip. Obviously that feature is essential in a reversible dress too!
I used a lovely rayon crepe from Fabulous Fabrics, in red and white, and needed 1.8m of 150cm wide fabric in each colour. Having the nice wide fabric meant I could cut my pieces on-grain and with no joining seams in the pieces.
The white is quite sheer, and just about all seam finishes except for French looked absolutely dreadful underneath it; so after a bit of experimenting I went with seam allowances done like this:

Firstly I stitched the seam allowances with a regular 1.5cm(5/8″) seam allowance. Pressed to set it, pressed open to get the crease set, then pressed back closed again. Secondly stitched a second pass of stitching just inside the seam allowance. Lastly, trimmed the seam allowance to an even narrow width. This should be pretty secure and stable with the double stitching. And the “ghost” of this seam allowance as it appears showing on the white outside looks quite nice, almost like a French seam.

By the way, I did consider trying to do actual French seams in this dress for about a hot minute, before I got sensible and realised in that way insanity lies and I would be tearing my hair out and frothing at the mouth in no time at all…. in any case, the reversibility of my construction technique means that all my seam allowances are enclosed with the two layers of the dress, so there’s no danger of any seam allowance coming out on view anyway. The ultimate in neat-looking insides, yay!
There are only three bits of almost invisible hand-stitching closing the layers: the two inside shoulder seams, and a short length on the inside hanging drape; through which I pulled the entire dress in the very last step before closing it up.

The drape can be adjusted to sit in different ways; like pulled completely through to the front as in the top picture. I also like it pull it back through on itself a little bit, and have it sitting more balanced. It does look nice like this, but it does eventually tend to slip naturally back into its default position, probably because my fabric is quite slithery and slippery. If it were made up in linen, which is more “grabby”, it would probably hold a different position better.

The dress does have a front and a back, the only way to tell them apart is by holding it up at the shoulders so you can see the lower scoop of the front neckline. However I can wear it with a red front and a white back if I like by pulling it inside out and wearing it with the lining side out… hello, reversibility for the win! Below is the dress worn in reverse; i.e., with the “lining” on the outside. It doesn’t look that different to if the dress was worn back to front, just in small details. Unless you looked closely at the shoulders and saw that they were hand-stitched closed, you probably couldn’t tell this was the inside of the dress!

Although I really like how the dress looks, I’m not completely happy with some of my construction in this one… I found to my cost that one majorly important aspect is to make sure that the two outer, left side-seam edges are exactly, and I mean exactly the same length!! This is the boo boo I made; mine were out by a mere 1cm, which was enough to put my side seam out by a touch, so it hangs a weeny bit too wibbly-wobbly for my taste. So I’m thinking of this one as a kind of prototype or wearable muslin, and want to make another “proper” one for myself, although I will wear this one a lot too.
Maybe if I make it again I’ll do a proper tute on how it all goes together, reversibly.
Maybe.

Details:
Dress; a variation on Burda 8511 and based upon a design idea of Anita from studio faro; in red and white rayon crepe
Sandals; Zomp, from Zomp shoes

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8511, dress, own design, seams, studio faro, tip

Cassie’s terracotta dress

28/02/2015 9:31 am \ 62 Comments \ Carolyn

I made this belated birthday present for Cassie; we recently went on a girly shopping expedition together for her birthday present and spent hours browsing, looking at pretty things, chatting, having hot chocolate and enjoying ourselves! we had lots of fun but she couldn’t decide on anything that she liked. Finally I suggested, hesitantly, would she like to go to Fabulous Fabrics to get some fabric of her choice and I could make her a dress of her choosing? and she delighted me by immediately agreeing. She’s so sweet 🙂 I say “hesitantly”, because while I love to sew things for my family I absolutely do not want to force the products of my sewing on them. And I often worry that my love of sewing is influencing them to ask for me to make something for them, just to make me happy; if you know what I mean.
Anyway, happily she says she loves the new dress, and plans to wear to work at her office with her black ballet flats as well as sometimes on the weekend with sandals. The pinky-brick/terracotta viscose from Fabulous Fabrics is a fabric Cassie has loved for “ages” and she chose the dress style based upon one we had seen in Morrison, with some minor design alterations to make it what she wanted in her birthday dress.

The result is quite plain, with its main feature being a wide front tuck emanating from the neckline and disappearing into the body of the dress. I started out with my standby, plain sheath dress pattern Burda 8511, and rotated out all darts, cut it with an 8cm tuck allowance in the front panel, i.e. an extra 16cm width at the neckline tapering off to nothing by the hemline. I scooped out and widened the neckline, added inseam side pockets, rouleau belt loops and a long self-fabric sash.

The side and pocket seams are French seamed, with a hand stitched, narrow hem.

I’m extremely happy with how chic Cassie looks in the new dress 🙂

Details:
Dress; own design, using Burda 8511 as a starting point, terracotta viscose
Shoes; from Hobbs shoe boutique

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8511, Cassie, dress, own design

Oriental Bird

04/12/2014 11:32 pm \ 52 Comments \ Carolyn

I was tempted to call this my other Swedish dress, since I bought this fabric in Stockholm as one of my wearable souvenirs from our Scandinavian holiday, but actually the fabric is English! I bought it in Svenkst Tenn but “Oriental Bird” is a linen upholstery fabric by GP&J Baker, printed in England.
Yes, upholstery. I am wearing a couch. *womp womp*
😉
Y’know those upholstery adverts in magazines that showcase upholstery fabrics and even carpets by making “garments” from them and photographing them on a model, like a fashion spread? Well, I love that kind of thing. Fabric is fabric and honestly, I cannot see any reason why upholstery fabric cannot be worn just like any other fabric. I reckon if you like it then just go for it.
And the print is just beautiful. Just look at these colours! There are twenty three colours. Twenty flipping three… Meaning, twenty three separate screens were required to make the design. Having done some printing myself, I find that number of colours to be, quite simply, staggering. Think of the placement! Honestly, I cannot even comprehend. Consider my mind officially blown.

I used Burda 8511. I wanted a dress with minimum joins, seams and darts or any other fussy shaping details that would visually interfere with the large-scale print; and this fulfils all criteria. It’s a terrific little basic shift dress pattern. I’ve had mine for years and it is still in print and available today.
Speaking of the pattern… I’m gunning for Burda’s envelope pose here.

powning it

I shortened it slightly and, because I wanted a nice fit, went to the effort of a minor sway back adjustment. I also did my semi-regular FHA. Haven’t heard of the Full Hip Adjustment? well that’s probably because I just made it up, hehe. The FHA is enormously complicated, requiring one to grade out from the waist to a larger size at the hips.

Inner workings: my fabric has three main characteristics; A. it is quite thick and stiff, B. it frays and C. it was very expensive. Taking these into consideration, I decided to HongKong finish all the raw edges inside. This can be a time consuming finish, only visible to and appreciated by one person; you, the wearer. However imo it is a really beautiful inner finish, and I’m always secretly thrilled with the sight of it, even thought it’s only for my own private benefit. I used pale yellow cotton voile for the HongKong bias strips and raw silk for the neckline/armhole facings.

Details:
Dress; Burda 8511, upholstery linen
Sandals; Zomp, from Zomp shoes

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8511, daily outfit, dress

Pisces

21/02/2013 5:00 am \ 79 Comments \ Carolyn

… the fish. Look at my little silver tiddler!

So, a few years ago, at the annual Fabulous Fabrics
Christmas sale, I was moved by some mad irrational impulse to purchase 2m of silver sequined
stretchy fabric. Exactly why is mystery to me now… since silver sequins are completely unsuited to my colouring and just about everything in my wardrobe. Must have had a brief
“ooh, pretty shiny!!” moment,
compounding the alluring thrill of 50% off euphoria. But anywho I succumbed, and it has since been sitting in my
stash taking up shelf space for too too long. February’s stashbusting theme is to make something for
someone you love. So I made
something for my daughter.

Fortunately she looks utterly fabulous in silver. I must have unselfishly and subliminally planned it 😉

Now, I know it seems like I am making a lot for
Cassie lately, and not much for any of the boys in my life… well, I tried. I offered the sparkly silver fabric to
each of my boys, really I did.
Inexplicably they did not respond to its sparkly gorgeousness with much enthusiasm. I only
wish I could capture and show here the expression on Sam’s face, when I showed
him the fabric and straight-faced said I was planning to make him a silver sequinned hoodie …
priceless!!! You’ll just have to
imagine it for yourselves…. still giggling about it….

Anyhow; the only person in my family who leapt upon
it with cries of joy was Cassie.
So (shrug) it couldn’t be helped. I’ll have to make it up to the boys somehow 🙂

My lucky daughter has the ideal year ahead for her
to make good use of a sparkly silver cocktail dress. She has masses of 21st’s on the horizon. Word; she goes out a lot anyway, lucky little social butterfly that she is.

I adapted a pattern that is one of my oft-repeated standbys …
Burda 8511. This is a plain and
simple sheath dress pattern, with two bust darts in the front and two long
shaped vertical darts in the back.
I’ve found this an excellent style to adapt to individual shapes, just
by subtle alteration of the darts and side seams.

For Cassie’s dress; I sewed up the side seams and
left off any zip closure… the fabric is stretchy and doesn’t really need a
closure. The dress pulls over her
head quite easily, like a fitted Tshirt dress. It looks tight but it’s actually not at all, she really is quite tiny!

At her request, I custom fit the dress to skim her
figure closely, and fully lined it with a sewn-in lining. I redrafted the pattern pieces to eliminate all darts in the lining, and used a soft, stretchy, grey marled
jersey knit, leftover from this drape drape dress that I made for myself. Note how the lining looks completely
skewiff??? That marle/stripe in the
fabric really is printed on that random slant.
The lining is cut perfectly on grain, I assure you!

The neckline, armscyes and the lower hem are turned
under and hemmed by hand.

Actually, a word on that. Remember my sparkly gold cardigan, that I stitched entirely by hand?? The thought of doing more of the same was inducing a slightly depressive status, so I consulted with a lady in Fabulous Fabrics who I recalled had made herself a skirt of similar stuff. She reckoned a denim needle worked fine. So I tried it out… and hehe, of course it was. (blushes) Not that I regret stitching that cardigan by hand …… much. No, really; I guess it does me good to slow down and spend loads of ~~unnecessary~~ meditative time on a project every now and again. Teaches one humility, yo.

Repeating that like a mantra to retain some shred of self respect.

So, stashbusting, yeah!! (air fist punch) Actually, the dress did not take up the entire 2m of the silver fabric… so there might be some more silver sparkliness to appear here, anon.

‘Til next time, lovelies!

Details:

Dress; Burda 8511 modified, silver sequinned stretch fabric

Sandals; Betts

Posted in: Uncategorized \ Tagged: Burda 8511, Cassie, dress, evening wear

Wave-y orange welts

26/10/2011 4:03 pm \ 35 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a little sundress.
First impressions are that this is just a very plain little thing with minimal detailing. Note … first impressions. The apparent plain-ness is intentional because I wanted for the one and only detail to stand out big-time; those wave-y pocket welts (my own added feature), which took a little bit of working out and of which I am inordinately proud. Why? well they are not just decorative, but functional; and happily situated over satisfyingly HUGE pockets.
I have to say, one of the (many) reasons I like to sew for myself is so that I can add pockets to things… silly? maybe, but a practical sort of silly, which is OK in my book.
I’m very pleased with how those wave-y welts turned out. I was directly inspired by this Christopher Kane dress (at right) with those wonderfully wave-y details. The pocket welts and collar on this dress are heat-sealed plastic filled with gel of a satisfyingly toxic shade of nuclear-waste green. Love it! However since gel-filled plastic is currently beyond the capabilities of my little sewing room I just tried to reproduce the look in fabric.
The dress is all made using leftover fabric scraps, and the wave-y welts were basically me experimenting and playing about which happily worked out just how I’d hoped. The dress fabric is sea-foam green linen, the leftover bit from the shirt I made for my husband here. I was sooo glad there was a little bit of leftover, since I had been such a good wife-y, making him a shirt and all. I thought I deserved to keep this little bit for my own devious purposes, mwahaha. And the pocket welts are of the leftover fabric from my burnt orange skirt, here. The facings and pocket linings are of baby blue cotton, a biggish piece from my stash that is not a colour beloved by nor even suited to anyone in my family; but has still been incredibly useful. It is getting eaten away slowly but surely for little things like this…

Later edit: I wrote a how-to on making those wave-y welt pockets here. Thank you for showing an interest!

Details:

Dress; based on Burda 8511, sea-foam green linen with burnt orange raw silk pocket welts

Shoes; Country Road

The dress is loosely based on an old favourite Burda 8511, and the pockets and welts are my own added feature. This dress pattern is a very useful one, that I have used several times, but it has a fairly form-fitting silhouette that cannot accommodate pockets. So I flared out the skirt part of the dress slightly, so that shoving my hands down deep into those pockets is both possible and comfortable. Just this small detail alone is deeply satisfying… I also altered the depth and length of the back darts to make the dress a more flattering fit to my shape. Namely, because I have a slight sway-back, I generally make the back darts deeper and lower, and because I also have a narrow torso I take in the side seams in the upper torso region as well. These are my standard fitting alterations for this pattern.
All the internal raw edges are finished with HongKong seaming and the lower hem is finished with a wider cut strip of bias. Little secret; that bias hem strip is not just there as a quality dressmaking finish, but pretty well necessary in this case… This dress was cut from such a small scrap, the amount of actual dress fabric in that hem is about 5mm!