Helloooo! I can’t believe it’s been two weeks since my last post. Yeah, I should be ashamed. But I’ve been working hard, both at my job and at my creative space at home. I try and make several little projects at the moment that are not blog post-worthy yet. And I’ve been knitting. A lot. I finished a scarf, a beanie, one mitten and am now working on the second one.
Last weekend I decided to make something without a pattern. I had this very cool cotton jersey I scored at the fabric swap in August, so again a didn’t-cost-me-a-penny-dress.
It’s a super simple cut, only three seams and a simple hem. Some facing at the neckline and you’re done.
I wanted a simple, elegant cut and decided to use one of my old shirts as a template.
The shirt had batwing sleeves which I really liked. But apart from the sleeves, the fit was horrible:
So before starting on the actual dress, I did a five minute refashion on this old shirt.
I took another shirt that fits me well and used it to mark the lines of the side seams with chalk, keeping the batwing sleeves.I cut only one side and used the chopped off piece as a template for the other side.
Chop, chop! I sewed the side seams and ….done!
Much better, don’t you think?I placed the shirt on top of my spread out fabric and basically just cut around it. The sleeves were in two pieces, the shoulder seam ends somewhere mid upper arm.I folded the cut out front panel in half to make sure everything was symmetrical.
Pinned onto the dressform to figure out the neckline. Chop, chop!
I just used the front panel to cut out the back, making sure all the lines matched up.
For the sleeves I used two rectangular pieces and cut on fold using the shirt’s sleeves as template.
After figuring out and cutting the neckline, I cut out and sewed the facing for the neckline.Next, sewing the shoulder seams together. Then sewing the neckline facing onto the dress.Adding the sleeves (this version still had the full-length sleeves, but I decided to shorten them during the process).
Whirr!
Here the (final) version with shorter sleeves. Next, sewing the side seams – one long seam starting at the sleeves all the way down to the hem of the dress (no setting in of sleeves – yay!).
Finally, I shortened the hem – oooops – a bit too much. That’s why I decided to add another strip of fabric to the hem ( I had no other option). Since I had nothing of the jersey fabric left, I used a satin silk in a similar colour, which I also had brought home from the fabric swap. (Yeah, I forgot to take pictures of this step…)
To make the look more consistent, I also added some of the satin silk to the sleeves, as binding.
By the way, as I still don’t have an overlocker, I used my overlocker foot, a jersey needle and my stretch stitch setting and sewed and finished the seams in one step:
I love the batwing sleeves. They make the cut of the dress looks much more elegant and give you the hourglass shape pear-shaped ladies (like me) love.I wore the dress twice already, once on the plane while flying to Berlin last weekend. It’s super comfy and I can see it becoming one of my favourite dresses.
The secondhand store around the corner had a huge seasonal sale a few weeks ago and they sold EVERYTHING for 1pound only. I bought quite a few things without even trying them on (they all fit like a glove) and some plus-sized skirts for the occasional weekend refashion project.
In this sale I found this rather ugly and way too long beauty which screamed “refashion!”:
Not only was it way too long (mid-calf) but it also had the fly in the center front which certainly wasn’t very becoming. The original size was a size 20 (UK)/46 (Eur).
First, I used the seamripper to separate the waistband from the skirt. Then I used another fitted dress I got at the sale as a template:
Tracing the shape of the skirt with tailor’s chalk:
I decided to keep the pockets. I had to come up with a solution since I had to take out some fabric in the front from between the pockets. To avoid awkward center front seams I made the skirt a wrap skirt;
After cutting, I sewed the side seams and inserted the zipper.
I topstitched the overlapping parts in the front and added 4 parallel topstitched rows as embellishment.
I had to shorten the waistband and ended up having an awkward seam. Since I wanted to keep the fastener, I decided to cut out a bit from the middle. I matched the seam up with the topstitched part in the front to make it looked a bit more planned 🙂
Fake wrap skirt almost finished:
I really liked the skirt at this stage, but I still had quite a bit of fabric left which I really wanted to use, since it wouldn’t be enough for making another one.
I cut the bottom part of the original skirt in half (keeping the original hem). I gathered the two strips and pinned them onto the skirt, marking the seamlines.
I stitched the strips onto the skirt (right sides together) and hemmed them.
I made the mistake of putting the fastener on the wrong side of the skirt – this way the flap is facing to the front, which looks a bit weird. Well, lesson learned for next time.
Hello there! Finally! A sewing-related post :) It’s been a while!
I’m happy to annouce that I finally finished sewing up my first jacket. (#15 of my 27 Dresses Challenge, btw!)
I scored 3 metres of a pretty greenish/blueish cotton plaid at the last fabric swap in Goldhawk Road and went through my pile of Burda magazine looking for a jacket or blazer pattern.
I came across this leather puff sleeve jacket which I really loved and thought I’d give it a try. It’s from Burdastyle 8/2013, #113.
As the pattern is supposed to be used with leather I absolutely didn’t know if it would affect the fit of the jacket if I used it with my cotton/linen fabric. No risk, no fun!
Well, as soon as I started cutting out the fabric, I learnt that working with plaid is annoying as f***. You have to be so so soo careful if you want the pattern of the fabric to match up at all seams in the end.
After six hours (!) of cutting I took a break and didn’t start sewing until a few days later. Sewing the pieces together was not as easy as I thought, as you have to match up the pattern at the seamline, not the edge of the cut out pieces (otherwise the lines will be off by almost 1/4 inch or more).
Look! I made it! Phew. Sewing with plaid is nerve-wracking! I struggled a bit with the zipper because the left front panel was a bit off after sewing it in and I had to take out my BFF Mr Seamripper.
After two attempts, I finally succeeded and now it looks like this, still off by a millimetre:
By the way, as the zipper was from an old cardigan of Mr Thisblogisnotforyou and the fabric was from the fabric swap, this jacket basically didn’t cost a penny!
Here a few pics of the work in progress:
The lining:
Finished!
The jacket turned out pretty well, but I started hating the sleeves that I loved to much in the beginning as soon as I tried it on. The puff sleeves are ginormous! I don’t know what the Burda pattern people thought or if it’s a typical leather jacket thing, but these sleeves are huuuuge! I look like an American football player. Or as Mr Thisblogisnotforyou put it:
Elizabeth, queen of Puff Sleeve
Well, I’m still proud of the jacket. It’s the first time I sewed in a full lining and I doesn’t look too bad.
I embellished the facing with blue embroidery thred instead of edge-stitching it to the seam allowance.
Well, at least I now have an excuse to (finally!) get ticket to the Globe theatre to see some of Shakepeare’s finest.
Yes, I’m still alive. And yes, I’m still busy and need to figure out my new work schedule, sewing and blogging balance. To prove to you that I’m still working hard on my 27 Dresses Challenge, I even took some pics of my Work In Progress *spoiler alert*!
But first of all I wanted to share some of the stuff I admired (and bought) at the Crafty Fox Market in Brixton last Sunday. Daniela from Ela Sews And Doesn’t Sleep invited me to come with her, which was super sweet and if she hadn’t asked me I wouldn’t have known about the Crafty Fox Market in the first place. The location was absolutely wonderful, but I forgot to take pictures.
One of my absolute favourite traders was Kayleigh O’Mara, who sold (next to other things) super cute shrink plastic brooches. After standing in front of the brooches for almost 15 minutes I HAD to buy some. I picked a super cute polar bear and a badger (see pic above).
The polar bear now found its place on my new beanie and I love it!
And yes! You guessed right – my order of shrink plastic arrived this morning! Let’s make some fun jewelry this autumn.
*Blurry Pic Alarm*
One of the other traders, Forgotten Stitches, sold beautiful vintage-looking dolls. Aww! Unfortunately way out of my budget, but you can check them out here.
By the way, the Crafty Fox Autumn market exhibitors have been selected by guest curators, one of them being Tilly Walnes (you know her from Tilly and the Buttons).
Other traders I absolutely loved (actually I loved all of them, but these are the very best):
Jimbo Art had super cute and fun designs – plates, cups and art prints.
Ladybird Likes sold these cute pug and owl collar clips (amongst other things).
For a list of all traders, check out the Crafty Fox website. It’s absolutely worth it! Most of them have web or etsy shops, your chance to get your share of handmade froufrou if you missed the market last weekend!
Now, to prove to you that I’m not just hanging around being lazy and taking a break from blogging, here’s the chance to sneak a peek at my WIPs!
Currently I’m finishing a jacket, working on a dress and refashioning a skirt. Oh, and I started knitting a scarf. You can try and guess what is what in the pictures above. 🙂
Here is the promised tutorial for those of you who are interested in how I made my maxi dress. Warning! This post got way too long. I recommend reading through first, before starting to cut your fabric 🙂
As I mentioned in my last post, I always wanted to make a maxi dress. I’m not a big big fan of the slightly shapeless jersey versions you see everywhere, although I bet these are super comfy. I wanted to make something easy, yet a bit elegant and thought of something like this:
source: img.alibaba.com
What do you need to make it?
Some lightweight fabric, matching thread, stretch satin or jersey for an underdress and some bias binding for the straps (you can make this from the fabric you use for your underdress by cutting strips at a 45 degree angle). Make sure the underdress has a bit of stretch, so that you can skip the zipper.
I used a chiffon (150x2m/60inx80in) and a stretch satin slip dress.
Of course you can make a fitted underdress/slip dress yourself, if you want to go all the way. Here are some pattern suggestions:
Burdastyle.com Cami Dress 09/2013 #114BBurdastyle.com Slip 07/2013 #116
I was super lazy and used a stretch satin slip dress from a Zara lace dress I bought years ago. Who would do that to a lovely Zara dress?? Well, me. In a minute you will know why!
This is the dress without the underdress. Looks lovely, eh? It wasn’t.
So I bought this lovely lace dress during a Zara sale for just 6 Euro. I must have worn sunglasses when trying it on, because it turned out that the dress is super duper ill-fitting. I actually bought this to have something chic to wear for special occaisons, but um, no. Ill-fitting, wayyy too short and I really couldn’t tell what was the front and what was the back.
I wore this little number only once. This is a picture of that evening:
Where were we? Ah, making a maxi dress!
no, it’s not super wide. it’s just super short.
So this is the slip dress. It has only two side seams and two darts at the bust. You could easily make this dress using your bust, waist and hip measurements, creating two hourglass shaped panels. If you want to do that, please use stretch fabric. Otherwise it might not fit.
The bias binding/straps were made with the same stretch satin fabric. I decided to re-use them for my maxi dress.
Time to dig out my seam ripper!
If you’re making your own slip dress – just skip the bias binding and strap part!
Before continuing with the next step – make sure to turn the slip inside out.
If you do not have a dress form, that’s fine. I think it’s much easier to have one when draping and pinning, but this dress you can definitely make without one.
I loosely pinned the fabric (left side facing me) onto the dress form to see where the print would look best.
In the picture above you can see that I started pinning the fabric starting with the selvedge (see right side) pinned a few inches behind where the side seam would be. You just want to make sure to have enough seam allowance in the end. I just pinned the fabric flat onto the dress form, leaving enough seam allowance. I cut the fabric a few inches behind the left side seam.
I decided to make the waist fitted and the bodice part a bit longer, so that it would cover the shirred waist and would loosely hang, looking almost like a separate part.
To get the perfect length I just used my hand to push up some of the fabric at the waist, adjusting until the fabric part that fell over it was was long enough to cover a waistband of about 10cm/4in length. (see picture above. Hope I don’t confuse you too much.)
Mark the fabric length were the waistband would start, e.g. in the picture above this would be were my fingertips are. Don’t cut the fabric in the loosely hanging fold, since you want to create that “overhanging” part.
If you’re competely confused by now – just add about 15-20cm length at your bodice piece’s waistline.
Chop, chop! I acutally prefer clipping and then tearing – makes a much straighter edge!
Now cut around the shapeof the neckline of your slip dress, leaving enough seam allowance.
Since I couldn’t really pin the chiffon (the pins would keep falling out), I hand-basted the fabric to the slip dress neckline. I’d recommend doing that anyway, to make sure everything stays in place.
I laid everything flat on the ground to make the side seam allowance more even. I made them straight (as compared to the fitted slip) so everything would fall a bit more loosely.
If your fabric does not have any stretch (like mine) I’d strongly recommend cutting the side seams straight anyway. Otherwise you will have problem getting the dress over your unmentionables.
Creating the back panel is super easy. Just line up a piece of fabric, leaving enough seam allowance at the top and using the egdes of your front panel at the side and bottom as a template for the back panel.
If you are using a print like I did, make sure everything is symmetrical. (You can easily forget that when you are super concentrated watching Project Runway, ask me how I know this)
I forgot to make pictures of the next steps, naughty me.
1. Sew the side seams first. Since I was working with chiffon, I used my favourite baby seams technique.
2. Stitch the fabric onto the slip dress neckline. I only had 0.5cm/0.2inch seam allowance on the slip dress, since I had removed the bias binding before. If you’re making your own slip, you can use more seam allowance.
3. Turn everything inside out and try it on. Make a happy dance.
I pressed the turned dress (now right side facing you) and pinned the bias binding back onto the neckline. You need two strips of bias binding. One that goes all the way around the back and ends at the pointed corners at the bust, and one that goes along the neckline and the ends are used as straps.
Sew the one around the back and sides first, so you can cover the end with the one you use for the straps.
The straps are creating by simply stitching the binding together at the open side.
The ends of the straps are sewn onto the left side of the binding in the back. You can orientate yourself at your bra straps.
Now the skirt panels:
The length is really up to you. I made 3 tiers, each about 40 cm long since I wanted to gather the pieces like a petticoat. I didn’t do that in the end and now have two weird-looking seams that were absolutely unnecessary. If you just want to have a straight skirt, measure the length from waistband to your feet.
(Make sure to make the panels wide enough, so you can walk properly. Everything less than 150cm in cirumference might be problematic and you’ll walk like a geisha. My panels are 70cm each, that’s just about fine, but I’m thinking about altering that. I can’t run in this dress!)
Now comes the fun part. We want the skirt panels to be shirred at the waist. (Alternatively, you can insert a wide elastic band, if you want to avoid the shirring)
To determine the width of the skirt panels, measure your waist. Shirring will make the fabric shrink in width so you need to add some extra width. As a rule of thumb you need to multiply your measurements with 1,5/2. The more lightweight the fabric is, the more width you need to add (because it will shir easier). I used chiffon and multiplied by 2.
Cut the fabric in half, so you have a front and back panel.
I left some seam allowance and then sewed 9 rows of elastic shirring, each about 0.7cm/0.3inch apart (orienting myself by the edge of my straight stitch presser foot).
Here’s a quick tutorial on shirring, if you don’t know how to do it. Try! It’s not hard at all. There are millions of other tutorials on shirring out there. Google it and make yourself familiar with the technique before you start.
For sewing the 9 rows I used 2 complete bobbins of elastic thread.
Sew the shirred panels together at the sides. In the pic above you can see the baby seams. The shirred part I simply stitch together and finished with a zig zag stitch.
Sew the shirred skirt onto your bodice piece, right sides together. You will need to carefully pin everything in place first. With both pieces pinned together, you will need to gently stretch the shirred part as you are sewing so that it is the same length as the bodice fabric.
By pressing the shirred fabric, the shirring will pull in nice and tight. Don’t pull the fabric, just press the iron down lightly.
Looking good!
If you made one long skirt panel, you can skip the next part.
If you made tiers (I recommend gathering them to create more width on the bottom), sew the tiers together. Then sew the side seams.
Pin the tiered part onto the bottom of the shirred panel and sew together.
I hemmed the dress using my narrow hem presser foot. It’s the perfect way to finish a chiffon hemline:
Phew! Are we done? I think so!
If this was way too confusing, don’t hesitate to ask questions in the comments.
When you’re done, please share our creation in the comments. I’d love to see it!
So before starting on the actual dress, I did a five minute refashion on this old shirt.
I took another shirt that fits me well and used it to mark the lines of the side seams with chalk, keeping the batwing sleeves.
I cut only one side and used the chopped off piece as a template for the other side.
Chop, chop! I sewed the side seams and ….done!
Much better, don’t you think?
I placed the shirt on top of my spread out fabric and basically just cut around it. The sleeves were in two pieces, the shoulder seam ends somewhere mid upper arm.
I folded the cut out front panel in half to make sure everything was symmetrical.
Pinned onto the dressform to figure out the neckline. Chop, chop!
I just used the front panel to cut out the back, making sure all the lines matched up.
For the sleeves I used two rectangular pieces and cut on fold using the shirt’s sleeves as template.
After figuring out and cutting the neckline, I cut out and sewed the facing for the neckline.
Next, sewing the shoulder seams together. Then sewing the neckline facing onto the dress.
Adding the sleeves (this version still had the full-length sleeves, but I decided to shorten them during the process).
Here the (final) version with shorter sleeves. Next, sewing the side seams – one long seam starting at the sleeves all the way down to the hem of the dress (no setting in of sleeves – yay!).
I wore the dress twice already, once on the plane while flying to Berlin last weekend. It’s super comfy and I can see it becoming one of my favourite dresses.
Hello there! Finally! A sewing-related post :) It’s been a while!
I embellished the facing with blue embroidery thred instead of edge-stitching it to the seam allowance.
*Blurry Pic Alarm*
I loosely pinned the fabric (left side facing me) onto the dress form to see where the print would look best.
I decided to make the waist fitted and the bodice part a bit longer, so that it would cover the shirred waist and would loosely hang, looking almost like a separate part.
