Vogue 2900 Archives - Handmade by Carolyn

water lily dress, a raincoat, and a stripey shirt

05/04/2025 9:19 am \ 2 Comments \ Carolyn

hello!

I’ve been making a few more things lately…

first up; a dress! I bought this screen printed linen a few years ago from the Injalak Arts Centre, the design is Mandem (Water Lily) by the indigenous artist Eva Nganjmirra. The pattern I used is an old favourite by now, Vogue 2900.

Something charming about this screenprint, I discovered; was the designer’s “signature” of sorts…of course, I had to carefully cut around this and place it some where semi-prominent.

I decided the pieces had to be highlighted in some way more than just mere seamlines, and utilised a method I have written about previously here… namely this is a bias cut strip that is inlaid over the pieces before joining together. I had a small length of mustard linen, leftover from this dress, that I used for this purpose.

Unfortunately there wasn’t enough to do every single seam and edge like I have done in previous examples of this method but I just did as many of the more prominent bodice seams before I ran out of it.

I know I’ve used this pattern quite frequently but it really is such a beautiful dress design that I don’t see myself every tiring of it any time soon. Of course I really should branch out more and I’m resolving to try more new patterns this year and not fall back so often on the old favourites. In the meantime though, some of my recent as yet unblogged projects have failed this resolution already whoops.

I think my only, somewhat trivial criticism of this design is its lack of shape in the waist area. I have a pretty high waist to hip ratio that isn’t really suited to this drop-waist design however I still stubbornly persist in wearing it. Sometimes I think I should try to modify it to look less “boxy” but the bodice pieces are so beautifully proportioned in themselves I’m not really game to fiddle about with it.

I wore this along with my me-made mustard clogs out to a meeting with friends recently and managed to grab a quick street shot. I’ve always liked to get a real world photo the things I’ve made if possible, but it’s sometimes difficult. If the coast is clear, like this time, I can quickly prop my phone up against my bag on the footpath and take a sneaky timed photo!

My little grandson G randomly ran up to join my while I was taking my more staged photos, which was happily fortuitous since he happened to be wearing a little T-shirt I made for him recently using leftovers from another, s yet unblogged, project to appear here soon. Once I get my act together!

I used Butterick 5510, a great little pattern that I should probably buy in a bigger size now! The blue and white striped jersey was tossed out by my friend N during her fabric purge recently. It’s quite nice stuff, if you don’t mind the suffering that comes with matching stripes in cutting and piecing. Fortunately I don’t mind this toooooo much. Maybe just a little, but only if it’s just every now and then.

I lenthened the T-shirt considerably because it’s really way too short otherwise. I don’t know if all my kiddies are just super tall or not but I’ve always found commercial patterns to be ridiculously short and wide.

Please note careful stripe matching. Oh, another problem with this pattern was the rather small neckline. After cutting it and subsequently realising it was actually pretty tiny, I recut the neckline, cut some extra neckline edging and pieced it. One join is pretty good, the other less so… I’m pointing the two out here. Hopefully they’re not too terrible! I’m pretty sure G doesn’t mind though, and at least it fits over his head!

I also some leftover raincoat fabric from when I made my sister in law Sandi’s Mundering raincoat, back here; so I drafted and ran up a new raincoat for T. He’s grown out of his yellow one, blogged here, which will be passed on to G this year. I lined it with the breathable sporting fabric, a length of which I bought for raincoat vents years ago. The zip, cord and eyelets happened to be in my stash already too, hurrah.

The pockets are just patch pockets. All seams are sealed on the underside using seam sealing wax that I bought for this purpose years ago from the camping and outdoor outfitter store, BCF.

I think he likes it! He looks pretty cute in it anyway, and I think it turned out a pretty good fit considering I drafted it just using one of his T-shirts. Phew!

Posted in: sewing, Uncategorized \ Tagged: Butterick 5510, dress, Gilbert, own design, raincoat, t-shirt, Theo, Vogue 2900

check it out…

20/12/2023 3:10 pm \ 6 Comments \ Carolyn

I bought this beautiful, slightly crinkly linen gingham from Japan a few years ago, during our last visit there and it was always intended to be a Vogue 2900… I frequently jump and haa about a particular fabric and which one of the one million different designs it could better be suited to, so it’s pretty nice when a piece of fabric can actually get matched with a pattern and actually go through with it, and no agonising along the way!

There’s probably not much more to say… this Donna Karan design has been a favourite for years, I’ve made a few – this is my fourth! – and still wear and love all of them. I initially thought about putting in a contrasting bias-cut strip like I did with my first one but it actually looked way too busy. Painstakingly, I unpicked each one and saved the strips for a future project.

I cut out the front pieces twice, because the first time I was dissatisfied with how the centre front seam turned out. The second attempt, I carefully cut them so the pattern of the gingham meets up perfectly in the centre, as if there was no seam there at all. It looks so much better than my first attempt, which, although the checks matched, the overall colour pattern was not matched across the seam so it looked weird. My second attempt looks way better.

I also cut some pieces on the bias, for visual interest, and think this looks quite nice. I’m glad I did it! The armhole and back neckline are finished with bias cut strips. After understitching, I turned these under and hand stitched them back to the dress as invisibly as possible.

I’m going to enjoy wearing this dress over summer. I like wearing short dresses and skirts, but I also like this longer length too. It’s such a comfortable style, and quite chic too, imo.

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: daily outfit, dress, Vogue 2900

madder and madder…

30/11/2020 11:19 pm \ 13 Comments \ Carolyn

I made a dress, using this very precious piece of fabric that I have been too frightened to cut in to for years now … ok so I’ve just checked back and it first came into my life back in August 2015, FIVE YEARS AGO!! well it’s about well overdue that I made it up, hey…

So what is this, hmmm? well I did a fantastic one day, natural dyeing workshop with Niji iro Kitta during which I dyed a length of pure white linen with natural madder root. They had two options; you could either choose to dye with madder, or indigo. I (obviously) chose madder, the natural dyestuff from the root of rubia tinctoria and since I later got a chance to also dye with natural indigo too, I’m so glad I chose madder this time! I went along with Nicki (this is moonlight), Sue (fadanista) and Megan (meggipeg), and first posted about it here…

It was heaps of fun! I remember our fabric had been soaked in soya water and dried first, which apparently helps the dye “take” thoroughly. Before dyeing, we had to embroider our initials or something marking the fabric as “yours” in some way. I did mine in red thread; and when it came time to cut out my dress, I carefully made sure to cut around and save the corner with my initials. And rather than use one of my usual labels I stitched the little square of linen featuring my embroidery inside as a sort of reminder of the day.

I used Vogue 2900 to make my dress… I’ve used this pattern twice before and I really love it! I think it’s all of comfortable, elegant, classy and beautiful too… I mostly made it just about exactly as per the instructions, topstitching all the seams with matching thread. I think my only difference was leaving off the pocket facings because I had enough fabric to simply cut the pocket piece and lining also from the self-fabric linen. I also had enough fabric for a mask!

Hmmm, I wonder if we’ll ever need to wear these here? I could be making all these masks for nothing! I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I sure have nothing against wearing one. Also, I know I sound like a broken record, but again we are so lucky to have no community transmission of the virus here. So lucky! for now!

I finished all the raw edges inside with red overlocking thread, and used a red invisible zip in the CB seam. The natural madder root produces a colour that I would describe as more of a coppery pinky-orange rather that a red actually… and I really like the red inner workings inside against this colour, I think it’s a really pretty contrasting feature. Of course a pretty contrasting feature that no one is every going to see, haha. I mean, that’s ok, because who do we do this for but ourselves anyway, hmm? Exactly.

This is the eleventh thing in my list of 12 things I was going to make this year, from the 12 fabrics I nominated as well… hurrah!

I have just one thing left on the list, and I think I’m going to be able to manage it. And I love this dress! I adore the colour, and the style is right up my alley, so I’m so happy Yoshimi recommended the pattern to me all those years ago. 🙂

Details:

Dress; Vogue 2900, madder dyed linen
Mask; using this tutorial
Sandals; super old, from an oppy… I love these and really really need to replace them!

I propped up my phone in a tree and snapped a quick picture on our walk, even though it’s a bit blurry… oh well!

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: Clara, dress, dyeing, natural dyeing, Vogue 2900

a Japanese indigo dress

18/12/2015 10:19 am \ 41 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made another Yoshimi dress 🙂

Pattern: Vogue 2900. This pattern will always be in my head the

“Yoshimi dress” since her versions are all very inspiring to me, and as well, the lovely Yoshimi herself personally recommended it for me, so there you go.

Fabric; linen, which I bought as plain white from Potters Textiles and then dyed real indigo, by which I mean using a real live, actual Japanese indigo plant-based dye pot! Yup, how awesome is that? I feel so very fortunate to have been given the chance to use Japanese indigo dye, since it’s quite a rare beast in WA. Growing the plant itself is very difficult here, and yes, I have tried and experienced a personal fail myself in that area… *represses sob*

Anyway, a few months ago, Nicki got together a group of us Perth girlies to go on a fun day out… and what constitutes a fun day out for the likes of us self-dressmakers more that a sartorially related, hands-on, “doing” thing! And what’s more hands-on than dyeing your own fabric in a real indigo dye vat?! This dye-vat is the work of the ultra talented and creative Trudi Pollard of Pollard Design Studio. Visiting Trudi’s studio in Bedfordale and viewing her many amazing creations is quite the inspiring and very humbling experience. Some of her exquisite textile art can be viewed at the studio’s site here.

I pre-washed my linen twice before the day but was hoping/aiming for just a touch-but-not-too-much blotchiness/unevenness; that lovely natural patina, you know. It worked out just spot-on how I wanted!

Construction notes: the seam lines in this pattern are lovely and interesting to my eyes and I wanted to highlight them somehow… the first time I made it up I made black cotton edging strips and this time I wanted to do something a bit different, to differentiate it from that dress in my wardrobe. Now, what does one think of when you think of indigo cotton? well for me Levi jeans are pretty high on the list. And Levi jeans have that very distinctive double orange topstitching allover, so I went with that as inspiration. It’s a lot more visually subtle than the black edging, but it’s there, and I really like it!

I had a look online to learn more about the origin of that orange topstitching, and interestingly enough, the reason for it was to go with the copper rivets that were used to strengthen jeans! Hmmm no copper rivets on my dress, whoops. Oh well!

I took great care to make sure those diagonal seam lines ended on the exact point and also put in a few little orange bar tacks on other random sewing junctions, for fun. I know, you can barely see them on the far-away pictures, but up close and personal I think they add a bit of interest to the dress.

The invisible zip saga… to sum it up, there was not a colour match even halfway acceptable! I chose a light blue and after inserting, just very carefully touched up the more visible bits of the zip tape with a felt-tip pen. This may or may not wash out over time, in which case I can always just touch it up again.

Then the pale blue zip pull was still too glaringly pale for my liking too; so I painted it coppery-orange with nail varnish, custom mixed using a few different colours from the small army of nail varnish bottles that live in my bathroom drawer. I knew all those funny colours would come in handy again some day!

Insides; all raw edges were overlocked with white thread, and I used white thread in the bobbin too, for continuity. I know; it’s not like anyone will ever see inside the dress, but to have it all looking cohesive is still a very satisfying sight to me.

So, that’s it, done and dusted! Now to continue with the small mountain of Christmas-related tasks I’ve lined up for myself and been busily and secretively working away on like a squirrel. I feel like I’ve been racing around like a crazy scatterbrained whirlwind lately. Crisis point not yet reached, but getting there…

Later dudes!

Details:
Dress; Vogue 2900, in indigo dyed linen, with orange top-stitching

Sandals; from the oppie, yonks ago

Sunnies; ma RayBan wayfarers

in twirlerrific action

Posted in: sewing \ Tagged: dress, dyeing, tip, Vogue 2900

“Swedish” dress

12/09/2014 11:57 pm \ 96 Comments \ Carolyn

I’ve made my Swedish souvenir 🙂
I bought this linen-mix with a Swedish designed print in Stockholm during our Scandinavian holiday. I fell in love with the bold and yet delicate print in orange, soft greeny-browns and black on a creamy background. Bold and delicate?! sounds like an oxymoron but I think this design does magically manage to fit into both categories somehow! The pattern is Vogue 2900 and I “framed” each piece in the design with a skinny strip of black cotton to highlight the piecing in this quietly interesting dress design.
I chose to do this because I felt the broad sweeps of a bold – yet delicate! – print like this could lose much of its impact upon being cut up into small pieces… I think the black framing successfully highlights the piecing of the pattern as a feature of the dress, while still being subtle enough to allow the print to hold its own and shine equally as a feature of the dress as well.
In its own way, the black framing is a bold and delicate thing, too!

I’ve long admired all the many beautiful versions of this pattern made by Yoshimi. Beth recently wrote about the concept of a “pattern whisperer”; and in fact, during Yoshimi’s stay with me she recommended this pattern to me, saying that she thought it would suit me. I have very high regard for Yoshimi’s taste and style and so paid careful attention to her “pattern whisper”. And I am glad I did because I love it! Thanks Yoshimi!

I took my time with this dress, cutting and precision-stitching the bias cut strips of black cotton and lining up all the black corners and edges just exactly right. All the seams are highlighted in this way, except for the bodice centre front seam; I couldn’t see it working in neatly with the edging on the centre front split at the top, and the centre back seam, which again, having the black edging would not have worked successfully with the white invisible zip closure. All the edges; the armhole edges, neckline edge, pocket edges and the lower edge of the dress, are similarly edged with the same black cotton.

It’s funny; I’ve had a large piece of this black cotton on a big cardboard roll for so many years, and it’s come in so very handy for so many little touches to about a zillion projects, to the point where I felt that it was like a never ending supply. With this project I suddenly realised I’m down to the last half a metre! Panic! I’m going to have to buy more!!