Tag Archives: Dress

gingham!! carrot cake!!

29/11/2021 6:35 am \ 2 Comments \

Hello!   I made a fun new frock…

I received 2m of this gorgeous blue gingham from Minerva; it’s very light and floaty and so I decided to make a little sun frock. I spent several hours laying different patterns down on the fabric to see which one would result in minimal leftovers; something that has become really common for me now when I’m deciding on a project for a piece of fabric .  The Deer and Doe Myosotis pattern “just” squeezed on with absolutely no leftovers at all!  and even then I had to cut the sleeve cuffs out on the cross instead of with grain.  Which is no hardship at all, of course…  Can you even tell?  The gingham squares are so regular and even … it’s hard to see if you don’t really check it out very carefully!

I’ve used the Myosotis pattern once before, for this favourite little sun frock, and this time I did a substantial small bust adjustment to the pattern.  Basically I rotated out the front waist darts completely and reduced the bust dart by about half, and the result is a really good fit for me!  I left the back waist darts unchanged, because I do have a small sway back and so this shaping suited me well.

it appears that the shoulder is altered in the right hand photo, but it hasn’t; it’s just that the paper is floating up a bit at that point

I used three small white buttons for my stash for closure, and all the raw edges inside the dress are overlocked with ivory thread to finish.

I submitted a long blog post to Minerva on the dress, here, which you can read if you like..

In baking news, and yes! I do seem to be doing a bit of baking lately!  I made a carrot cake for Dad’s birthday… to be clear, this was not THE birthday cake, which Mum made, but more of a consumable treat for Dad as a birthday present, since he’d stipulated absolutely NO birthday presents, please.

I did a bit of sleuthing to find out his favourite eatable treat, and lo! it is carrot cake (surprise!)  So I made one! I figured at least this is a present that will be consumed and then it’s gone, and doesn’t need storing or dusting or anything.

 I used this recipe from the cooking tree, yes she is my favourite thing to watch at the moment! and it was absolutely delicious.  We all liked that there was a much higher proportion of icing to cake than usual.

I really enjoyed decorating the cake!

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yellow Yallingup dress

09/10/2021 10:15 am \ 4 Comments \

So my niece is having a yellow themed birthday party! and since I currently have zero yellow garments in  my possession therefore I needed a new dress… obviously.

I needed to test something out for our Yallingup dress pattern… an add-on that Cassie really wants to introduce for it; but didn’t have any suitable fabric so I had to go out and actually BUY new fabric… imagine!  It’s been quite a while!  I found some suitable yellow linen in Spotlight.

Even though it’s our own pattern and maybe I shouldn’t play favourites like this, but I REALLY love this style… it’s really so comfy and fun to wear.

I made another youtube video on the process… it’s slower paced than my previous few.  Honestly not sure what is my motivation to keep making videos since they get very few views and even less “thumbs up”! so I guess they’re pretty bad but I’m going to keep going and try new things to hopefully improve.  I might try doing a voiceover next time because maybe that’s the problem and maybe the music is a little irritating?… but this is a scary thought.  What on earth am I going to say?

it’s here should you be be so curious…

https://youtu.be/IEkyycm_em8

btw, very pleasantly surprised that I managed to get Thing 1 and Thing 2 on the neckline binding like this.. total serendipitous!

 

also.. yallingup in action!

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another new nursing dress design

26/08/2021 7:12 pm \ 3 Comments \

… the last time I stayed with Mum and Dad; I helped Mum to clean out her fabric stash; AGAIN.  Mum now has small and beautifully curated collection of perfectly gorgeous fabrics in her possession, and I have… a much bigger pile of the less beautiful rejects, haha.  I know, I definitely did not need this! but *shrug*  I’m going to have to get a LOT better at throwing out fabric too, I think!

Anyway, I haven’t had the chance to go through it properly yet, but I did pluck out this one recently as something that would suit Cassie.  It’s a soft, very stretchy stuff, very pretty with a raspberry pink floral print… and Mum had partially made a sort of dress out of it already.  Thinking about it a bit, I realised I could make a really nice little nursing friendly dress for Cassie.

 Our Yallingup pattern wouldn’t do, because that really only suits a non-stretch woven fabric.  The previous, jersey maternity/nursingdress I had designed and twice made for Cassie was a possibility, but Cassie had mentioned how the boob tube under-top kind of snapped back up while she’s trying to feed the baby, which is annoying and not terribly user-friendly.  Anyway, I’ve dreamt up this design…

this is a sort of cowl-neck tank top, on a simple dress that is basically the same skirt as the one I’d previously designed for her.  The shoulder straps of the tank top aren’t joined to each other; the back one is stitched to the shoulder seam of the over top, and the front one snaps on to it; so all she has to do is reach up under the loose cropped top and unsnap the front strap.

Having a cowl neckline allows each front to come down comfortably without being too tight.  In short, it works really well!  I’m seriously thinking of making this a new pattern for our company!

I asked Cassie to lift up the front to show the cowl neck…  😀

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Cassie’s gum leaves

19/08/2021 9:29 pm \ 4 Comments \

I’m so happy with this new dress!  The fabric is actually very special… Cassie gave it to me last year, the print is one of a suite of designs she created for her wedding stationery and other wedding paraphernalia…  she has the designs up in her Spoonflower shop, and she gave some fabric of a different design to Mum (her Granny, obviously)

My piece is cotton denim; Cassie thought I could make a skirt from it, and yes I could have done that, but the piece was big enough that there would have been lots of leftovers.  So I wondered if I might be able to get a little dress out of it.  And I did!  Just!

It always feels like such a hugely satisfying achievement when I lay the pattern pieces down on a piece of fabric and they only just barely fit, so you have basically no leftovers at all.  Honestly, one of THE MOST satisfying things about making a thing, when you can manage it!

of course I had to keep this little piece of the selvedge and stitch it inside!!

This pattern is Burda style, 07/2018; 118; one I’ve made before here.  This is another great little pattern from Burda, they have long dry spells with boring patterns, but you get such a lot of good ones in there too so I always find it worth perusing the magazine when I see it.  Both of my versions of the dress do not have a lining.

I even made a little video of the making of it, just for fun; for myYouTube channel… the link is here if you’d like to watch it  🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10PmRka94GU

 

 

We even had a beautiful day of 25C last week, so I got to wear it for …   this picture is seated for “fashion-on-the-sofa Friday”

This is the 8th thing in my “use 12” challenge…  I’m really so please with how it’s all coming together  🙂

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sea-blue Ingrid dress

05/08/2021 11:25 am \ 8 Comments \

I made this dress months ago! like in April! … however because I made it to test the pattern I had to keep it a secret until its release, and it wasn’t released until the end of May.  And at that time, not only was it getting too cold for me to really wear it regularly, but I was getting overwhelmed with preparation and planning for the release of our own Yallingup pattern, and so although I did post about it on Instagram I didn’t get around to blogging my own version here.

 

This is the Ingrid dress/blouse pattern by Homer and Howell, and it’s a really interesting design.  Something to get you thinking a bit, which is always nice in a pattern.  It has several different views; a top and dress in two different lengths, and two sleeve versions.  I made view B; the mini dress with plain sleeves.

All views have an interesting central pleat on the bodice and the dress version has different skirt panels, some cut on a slant at the top, so you kind have to be on your toes to get them all cut out and dealt with in the right way.

I really enjoyed making mine, and I remember the instructions for gathering the skirt panels were really awesome and taught me something new about gathering things neatly and well.

One thing I noticed in other tester versions was that the split at the back of the neck tended to gape a bit, which looked like it was due to the split being a bit long, so I reduced the length of my own by about 1 ½”, or about 4ish cm, and accordingly shortened the facing piece too; and I think this turned out better.

For fabric, I used a piece of greyish/orange cotton voile that Mum had thrown out from her own stash … yes the colour sounds kind of hideous and I really didn’t like it, but was optimistic about being able to dye it a nice colour.  In preparation for this moment; I had used navy blue thread and also navy blue overlocking thread to finish the raw edges inside… and then boiled it up in a pot of half-strength iDye in deep blue, and I really love the resulting colour.  Much much nicer!

I’d also used a blue, love-heart shaped button … .btw, cute?!  A nice side effect to committing to using up my stash this year is that I get to be creative with fabrics and notions I’ve long ignored because “I don’t like it”.  And now I do really like this dress!  Every single thing for this was from Le Never-Ending Stash… which of course IS going to come to an end some day…

Because it was cold the day I finally got to show it; this is how I actually wore it for its debut during me-made May.  Apologies for the grainy iPhone photo, I’d accidentally deleted the original from my phone and had to screenshot this from my Instagram account which is why it looks so bad… I’m wearing it here with my suede leather “coatigan”/coat/jacket thing… and selfdrafted leggings.  btw these leggings used to be tights, but this year I took out the tights I’d made that had developed holes in the heels and/or toes from being worn hundreds of times, and cut off the toes, hemming the new edge with my twin needle.  So now they have a new lease on life as leggings.  I can wear them like this, with bare feet and my clogs, or I can still wear them with my boots on the coldest days of winter with a pair of my cosy hand-knit socks.  Win, win!

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little black dress

31/07/2021 5:02 pm \ 4 Comments \

I’m so behind on blogging! so this is part one in what I hope is a serious attempt to catch up… so I made this little black dress a little while ago… it’s light and floaty and breezy so really it’s a summer dress.  And I’m wearing it here on basically the coldest day of the year… ha!  But I do like it styled like this for winter! so I guess… good?

The fabric: which I appreciate you can’t see at all in any of my pictures, because of its matte-ness and it’s blackness, sorry! anyway; it is a lightweight crisp fabric that has a very slightly bumpy, seersucker-y quality to it… I’m not sure if it’s silk or cotton or linen but I’ve a feeling it is a combination of two of those components.  I bought it in Fabulous Fabrics quite a long time ago for another project, that I’ve completely forgotten what it was so I decided the fabric was fair game, eventually!  I’m seriously trying to use up my stash this year… yes I’ve probably said that million times before but I’m really serious this time.  I think I’m doing quite well! because I’ve bought just one piece of new fabric all year.  I really want to buy some more lovely fabric that I am really really keen on… but am trying so hard to be good about this!

Anyway, the lightness and crispness of this black fabric was perfect for this design, so I’m very happy I had it and it was pretty much the perfect size piece too… so it worked out really well.  Oh, the design!  Well, it’s the Fibremood Dolly pattern, which is big and floaty and has huge, gathered sleeves, so it’s very trendy, I think.  I do like it though!  I really like the neckline with a little tie to pull in a gathered V neck.  It was so cold on this day I actually wore it for real with my mustard cowl, and also my shearling coat as well as the usual underpinnings pictured, brrr.  I’m excited for when I can wear it all summer long!

Oh ok, so I’m just going to slip another extra thing in here…. did I mention our wonderful youngest son Sam has become engaged to his beautiful lady, Lainey?  We’re so happy and excited to welcome this lovely lady into our lives, she’s the most gorgeous girl and has willingly and happily acted as a model for our little pattern company a few times, so her face has definitely been seen around here before!  Anyway, they recently moved into their own house and asked if I would mind hemming their lounge room curtains.   Of course I hate hemming curtains, but it was absolutely lovely to go and hang out with them while I did it.  It took an entire morning basically and we chatted away and it was a really nice morning in the end.  So I didn’t hate it at all in the end.

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sewing tragedies

09/06/2021 11:45 am \ 8 Comments \

I’ve made this crazy new dress… isn’t this fabric hilarious?!  The very second I clapped eyes on I simply could not resist… it’s like a comic book – first point in its favour – except all sewing stuff – second point in its favour.  Almost an afterthought, but I was really drawn to its cool sharp black and white graphic artistry too- I don’t frequently gravitate to a lot of black-and-white prints but if it’s quirky I suddenly do – point three; and SOLD!

I think comic book art is a highly unappreciated art form and its taken way too long for the style to finally come out from the cold… I’ve always loved it but it’s always teetered on being Not Taken Seriously, which is such a shame.

I wanted a style of dress that kept the boxes fairly intact and not cut across like you would for a regular A-line skirt, so I drafted my own idea.  It’s kinda wacky, but I actually love how comfy and nice it is to wear so I’m thinking of making this into our next pattern… I mean, it needs some work because this is a sort of prototype but I think it has promise!

Because the print tickled me pink I went with a pink linen for the bias bound neckline and armholes…! hmmm, a tenuous little link?!   In reality it just happened to be sitting on the sidelines, so I grabbed it…. this was leftover bias binding from the Yallingup top I made for Cassie, in the previous post.

just because, cute pattern weight… #notstagedatall

I put on some patch pockets, and employed weapons-grade pattern matching skills here… hehe.  Ok, definitely tongue in cheek there since only one pocket could be pattern matched!  I only had enough fabric to do one… but you know.  The other pocket is not even vaguely pattern matched sadly.  I probably should have matched neither, to be consistent, but…  I didn’t.  Pattern-matching… missed chance for another sewing themed tragedy comic there, haha?

Details:

Dress; designed by me, cool comic book fabric from Minerva, available here
Sandals;  Zomp, old favourites

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the Yallingup dress/blouse

23/05/2021 4:34 pm \ 12 Comments \

I can finally reveal the main thing I’ve been working on for the past few months… our new pattern!

Please allow me to introduce the Yallingup dress/blouse!
This is a loose summery piece that can be made as either a regular item or alternatively as a nursing friendly version for nursing mothers… both versions appear superficially the same at a glance but of course are constructed quite differently on the inside!

The design features a scoop neckline, single breast pocket, and an overlaying wrap top that can be worn either loose or tied at the back… for the nursing version the wrap can also function as a modesty cloth for when you are feeding your baby… the dress version also has deep inseam side pockets, of course!

Cassie conceived the design after the delivery of her baby and then I converted the idea into a regular one for “not nursing” people too😁

So technically, the pattern has four views:

A, the regular blouse; B, the nursing friendly blouse; C, the regular dress and D, the nursing friendly dress…  and because the construction method for the regular version and the nursing friendly version are quite different I ended up deciding to write two different instruction booklets, for the two different methods.  I know, that sounds complicated but honestly it was nowhere near as complicated as when I had them combined in one single instruction booklet!  Separating the two methods completely has simplified things considerably so I hope you’ll forgive the extra file that comes with it.

I’ve been making tonnes of these lately, for basically everyone in our family, including the new Mums … it’s super comfy and easy to wear and we hope you like it too!

The Yallingup pattern is available right now in our Etsy shop, here, or you can click the Yallingup illustration in my right hand side-bar over there ->

Pictured here are just a small sample of the Yallingup’s I have made:

btw; I opted to not go the call-out for tester route this time.. this is because there has been a bit of negativity around the “doing testing work for free” in the sewing community lately and I even ran into this a little bit during the testing for my last pattern, the Mundaring raincoat.

It’s funny because I personally love testing patterns and I’ve been doing it for many years for other pattern companies, happily, and with no expectation or even thought of getting paid.  Nowadays a lot of sewing peeps feel like they should be paid.  This is not necessarily a criticism by the way, just an observation into how attitudes are a-changing.

This time we did all the testing in-house and through personal contacts.  I mean, I’ve always personally tested each and every size in all our patterns anyway, so I know they work as they should; and this time we did the same thing.  I think maybe part of the pattern-testing negativity I mentioned earlier is because pattern testers feeling like they’re doing work for free and then being treated like free publicity for the pattern company; and so I decided I did not want to be associated with that perception of exploitation.

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