Little Red Georgette

Remember this pattern that I showed you weeks and weeks ago, in fact, probably last year even?

Well I finally finished it! I seem to be a little slow at everything I do these days, so it took a bit longer than I had planned, but here it is.

I knew that I was pregnant when I chose the pattern back in December, and while it isn’t maybe something I would have chosen normally I thought the pleats would work really well with my expanding belly.

Thankfully I started the dress with making a toile.

I know I’ve moaned on about it before, but I’m finding sizing a bit tricky at the moment as my bust is quite out of proportion with the rest of me. Because of this I made the toile in the biggest size I had, a 14, as this was closest to my bust measurement at the time. By doing this my bust fitted perfectly. It meant that the rest of the dress was a little roomy, and I was able to slip the dress on with no closures (zips etc). The extra room is actually quite comfy at the moment so I decided to use a belt to give it more shape, and not having to put in a zip made the lazy in me very happy! The only alteration I did was to move the princess seams outwards a couple of centimetres so that they fell over the bust point and therefore looks like a much better fit.

I also decided not to have sleeves on the finished dress as I can then hopefully wear it for longer in to my pregnancy.

The georgette fabric I used was a bargainous £1 a metre from Saheed’s Fabric on Walthamstow High Street! All wonderful until it was hanging up to dry at home and I realised how see-through it is – not very appropriate for a preggers lady now is it?! This meant that I had to line it, which was a good learning experience for me as I had to work out how to attach the lining. The georgette was also the slippery-est (yes, am just making words up now I think) fabric I have used so far, and I did find it a bit tricky at times! The hems aren’t great because of this.

And here’s my little bump! It is a baby, promise, although I did eat rather a lot at the weekend so it could be mistaken for a food baby at the moment

Oh, and finally I kept some extra length at the front to allow for the bump to grow and keep the hemline even.

More of my drawings: 1920s & 1930s

On Fridays I have a class called Vintage Fashion: 20s and 30s. I love it!

What could be better than actually being allowed to spend a whole lesson in the library, just looking at beautiful dresses?

That’s what we did last week as research for our moodboards, which will then inspire our own designs, from which we will create patterns, toiles, and possibly finished garments for. Exciting!

For those who aren’t sure, here are a couple of 1920s dresses from this amazing website.

Think straight, angular silhouettes, a boyish figure with a flat bust and low hips, and the waistline dropped to the hip.

Embellishments such as beading, sequins, embroidery and applique were popular ways to adorn garments.

By the 1930s the silhouette was much more feminine, emphasizing the natural form of the woman’s body. The waistline moved back up to its natural position, and many dresses were cut on the bias. This meant that the fabric clung to the body, hanging in a smooth vertical drape.

Here are some stunning examples by Madeleine Vionnet.

So here is my moodboard:

And here are the drawings I have done so far from this inspiration. I was trying to think about what I wanted to learn about (bias-cutting), what I would actually wear (more likely a day dress), what would flatter my shape most (1930s), and what would look pretty (sparkles!).

Does anyone have any favourites – I’m only allowed to choose one!

Image sources
http://www.burdastyle.com/blog/pulling-from-the-past-wedding-gown-inspiration
http://www.coletterie.com/fashion-history/madeleine-vionnet-sculptural-modeling
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O74062/evening-dress/ 

V&A Fabric sale – whoopee!!

You’re either going to love me or hate me for today’s post, but thought you might like to know that the V&A Museum are having an up to 50% off fabric sale!!

Check out all the fabric lovliness on their shop website, and with payday hopefully coming up soon maybe you can treat yourself? 50% off is a bargain for normally far too expensive fabric!!

These are some of the ones I love:

There is also an info pack you can download to find out how to care for the fabric, and where some of the designs come from. Now you don’t get that kind of service on Walthamstow Market .

So far I have managed to fill a shopping basket of approximately £100 of fabric, best go back and delete some before I accidently press the checkout button hadn’t I Dave?!

Dear Lorna

We were very sorry not to see you at school yesterday. You can’t possibly imagine my reaction when I realised you weren’t going to make it…

I thought you might like to know what you missed though.

First we finished cutting out our adjusted pattern pieces. Then we lay on the floor to be photographed with them.

Then, we studiously pinned, cut and marked our fabrics.

The room was filled with my favourite sound in the world – scissors cutting though fabric.

Next week we are going to cut out the fusible interfacing (email me if you want to know what to get!), which caused great confusion to the lady in the black and pearls. A man even had to come and explain to her!

I very much hope you will be back at school next week! x

Image sources
http://sewessentiallysew.blogspot.com/2011_06_01_archive.html
http://wearinghistoryblog.com/category/blogs/
http://www.reuther.wayne.edu/node/3261
http://cotteyphile.com/equaltomen/

Run for your lives!!

Like a bad episode of Dr Who, my worst sewing nightmare has come true! No, I didn’t break a needle, or cut out something wrong – it is far more sinister than that!

Last night as I quietly (apart from when it went wrong) sewed away at my machine, there were strange going’s on behind me…

I could hear cardboard ripping, sellotape un-sticking, wood and metal scraping. And in true Dr Who fashion I didn’t try escape from the unknown danger I was in. Oh no, instead I swiveled round in my chair armed with a seam ripper to confront the untold horrors and protect my unborn child.

What, I hear you cry, did I find? Remember the Weeping Angels?

It was worse than these. Much worse.

Attack of the Lady Valet’s!!!!!!!

OK, so I may have overplayed the whole thing, and it may have been that they sent me the wrong size, and I may have taken a few weeks to realise that I am not a large I am a small, and they may have sent me the right size, and I may be waiting for them to pick up the big size. But that’s not a very interesting story now it is?!

Scary image source
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Flesh_and_Stone

Basic Bodice Block

This term in my Pattern Cutting class we are working on the bodice. From what I’ve been led to believe, this is slightly trickier than skirt patterns that we were working on last term.

So far we have understood where all the measurements for the bodice come from, and then drafted a basic bodice block using a standard size 12.

Hopefully I won’t get in trouble for using these, but I thought it might be useful to see how a basic two-dart bodice comes together from a flat piece of fabric. It helps explain why we have darts where we have darts.

As far as I know, all images are from Basic Pattern Skills for Fashion Design by Jeanne Price and Bernard Zamkoff.

This first image shows a flat piece of fabric wrapped round the body to create a cylinder.

By creating cones of fabric, or darts, above the bust the fabric shapes to the body. These are called the shoulder darts.

The same is done for the waist. These darts are then turned inside and sewn. The flat version above is the pattern for the two-dart bodice. From this basic pattern or block you create different types of top.

I don’t think I’m quite up to explaining how to draft your own block, but if you’re interested then I found a Basic Bodice Block tutorial on the BurdaStyle website that looks quite good!

Pattern Adjustments

At the moment I seem to be following two schools of thought when it comes to clothes making from commercial patterns. However, as I sit here about to start typing I think I may have just come to the realisation that if I combine the two things will become much easier!

The first way I have been doing things is to take my measurements, find the nearest size that corresponds to those measurements on the pattern and then make a toile. From the toile I then have been making the adjustments I need, transferring them back to the pattern and then cutting out the proper fabric.

In my Clothes Making class it is done a bit differently, and no doubt more correctly! From the tight restrictions we have been given, this is the pattern that I have chosen (option D).

Rather than making a toile, we took all our body measurements and then worked directly with the pattern to make any alterations that are needed. This is what I had to do.

Make front larger than back

Unless I am very unfortunate, I am not anticipating my shoulders or back to grow at all while I’m pregnant! Therefore my measurements are a bit skewed as I will stay a size 12 everywhere except around my tummy.

On a commercial pattern you cut out along the line according to your size. Here you can see the four different options:

For everything except the front I cut out a 12. For the front I cut out a 14. If I just left them like this though, the front and back would not fit together as they are two different sizes. To overcome this the extra fabric from the size 14 front needs to be redistributed. As you can see from the picture, the top has pleats and these pleats can be made bigger to use the extra fabric. Lost?! I was for the first few explanations from my tutor!

Maybe some diagrams will help.

Here you can see the uncut front of the top, with the size 14 being the outer line.

The difference in size between the 12 and the 14 is 1.4cm, as shown in blue on the left.

This 1.4cm can be incorporated into the front of the top, by making the pleat bigger. The pleat is the boxy thing in the middle of the pattern piece, and the red lines show where I have made it bigger – 7mm on each side, which adds up to the 1.4cm difference between a 12 and a 14. This will mean that the front (size 14), and back (size 12) will now fit together in construction. I hope.

As additional bump accommodation, I have also made the middle pleat (here shown on the right of the pattern piece) bigger by extending it to the edge of the paper. Shown by the purple lines.

Shorten the top

I also made the top shorter than suggested by removing a section of the pattern using the double black lines on the front and back pattern pieces.

The distance between the double balck lines and purple line is what I need to remove by folding the pattern up.

New shorter top!

Check the shoulders

I then needed to check the shoulder position. Fortunately I didn’t need to adjust this. But I checked like this.

As you can just about make out on the pattern, the neckline is 6.5cm lower than the nape of your neck (nobbly bit at top of your spine). So I measured up 6.5cm from the neckline using the set square, then used a tape measure to measure across to the shoulder. Thankfully it came to 20.5cm which is just about near enough my measurement to be able to leave it as it is!

Bump room

Lastly I added one little extra, a half circle at the bottom of the front, which will mean that as my bump grows the hemline should stay level rather than lifting up!

Phew, I hope that made sense!

Back to my initial break through at the start of this post… I’m thinking now that if I start by making alterations to the pattern using my measurements, and then make a toile, and then make further alterations from that, I should have a very long-winded but fail safe way of making clothes that fit me perfectly, no? We shall see!

The last little dresses

But by no means the least little dresses!

Thank you to Anne from Petty Grievances who sent eight dresses all the way from the US, and to one of my Clothes Making classmates for the ninth dress.

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Another big thank you to Emma who owns the Cragg Sisters tea rooms in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. Emma held a pillowcase dress making party there recently where they made 37 dresses!

I can now reveal that the total number of dresses made for the challenge has reached a whopping…

Just for clarity, that was…

dresses !!!!!

WOW-EEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In a nutshell, inspired by an article I read about the charity Dress A Girl Around The World in October, I set myself the challenge of making 52 pillowcase dresses (one for every dress I own myself, yes, embarrassing, and yes, I am trying to curb this dress addiction). You can read more about why I did the challenge here. Back in the olden days of 2011 I thought 52 dresses was being ambitious.

But that was when I thought it was just going to be billy-no-mates me stuck in my sewing room for days on end. What I didn’t anticipate was how much the challenge and more importantly Dress A Girl Around The World, would capture all of your imaginations.

Within a few weeks the first target of 52 was smashed! It wasn’t just people who have been sewing for a while that wanted to get involved, people who had never used a machine before were just as eager to help.

Without all of the dresses that were sent to me from around the world, the pillowcases that were collected, and the parties that everyone came to, I would probably still be chained to the sewing machine on dress 52!

Over the course of the challenge I have met lots of lovely people, and been in contact with even more lovely people – I hope it continues long after the end of the challenge.

So far 70 of the dresses are on their way to Kenya with Chance to Grow, and 50 are already being worn in Ghana. As soon as I have some photos I will share them – then we can play ‘Spot my pillowcase dress’!

Here are the links again to the five different parties that were held:

The Mindshare Pillowcase Party
The Haywards Heath Pillowcase Party
The Walthamstow Pillowcase Party
The Drink, Shop & Do Pillowcase Party
The Cragg Sisters Pillowcase Party (see above)

All that remains is for me to say from myself and I’m sure all of the girls wearing our dresses, one last very very big…

…to you all!

I love a good list!

The other day I had a bit of a sort through all of the blog posts I’ve done so far, and was really surprised at how much I have learnt in the four months I have been sewing.

However, everything was all over the place with no easy way of finding things. While I’m sure this isn’t a problem for any of you, for me the main reason I started this blog was to record everything I do. I don’t want to have to trawl through all past posts to try and find how to insert a pocket, so I made some new pages at the top of my home page.

This first is Made by Me where I have listed everything I have made in date order, and shown a photo with a link to the relevant blog post. Pretty self explanatory really!

The second page is Techniques & Tutorials, where I have created two lists (yay for lists!). The first list is tutorials or how-to’s of things I have been taught such as transferring pattern markings or creating a skirt block. Each how-to links to the blog post where I have explained how to do it.

The second list is of decorative techniques I have learnt such as pintucks and trapunto. As before, each technique links to the blog post I have written explaining how to do the technique.

Hopefully for me at least that makes things easier to find. If you do happen to use either page and can suggest improvements then please do.

Now, as this has been a wholly text based post here is a little something to drool over – enjoy.

Dior 1955-1956 Evening Dress
V&A Collection

 

Pleats Please

It seems that pleats and pregnancy are bestest buddies. Combine with some jersey and you’ve got three BFF’s for sure.

Pre-pregnancy I didn’t own anything made of jersey (a stretchy knit fabric that t-shirts are most often made from). I then made the Vogue V1179, a super comfy stretchy dress. And I’m sure I will be making many more jersey dresses to see me through.

I tried this one on in Topshop the other day:

Apart from my current lack of bump it fitted really nicely, but is costs 40 squids!! I know I’m a beginner, but I’m sure with a little help from somewhere I could make something very similar for a fraction of the cost. It’s only made of four pieces of fabric if that, how hard can it be? (Feel free to point and laugh when I find this impossibly difficult later on!)

I like the Topshop dress because apart from having space to expand at the front, overall the dress is still quite fitted which is much more in keeping with my usual taste.

I started this post meaning to show you the latest dress I’m working on, but seem to have got a bit distracted! I am making Vogue V8509, version B. It uses pleats to the max, hence the title of this post, and will hopefully accomodate my tummy as it grows, while still having a relatively fitted bust.

So far I have made the toile, and as predicted I need to increase the bust, and reduce the shoulder width. Luckily I have a copy of The Perfect Fit which I think will be able to guide me through these adjustments.

I have also overcome my fear of the dress form and am putting it to good use!