Fall for Cotton Final Project

After a but of fussing with Simplicity 1590, it has been determined that this body does not do well with peplums. I switched over to New Look 6945. It is not a vintage pattern, but I think it is generic enough that with the correct fabric it can look good in a wardrobe from any decade. Pants are vintage reprint  Simplicity 3688.

I did an FBA, Moved the darts about 1" toward the middle, then changed them to princess seams, shortened the bodice by 3/4" and had to grade between different sizes to get it to fit properly. I also widened the back by 1".

Fall for Cotton Inspiration

I am in love with the wide leg 1940's swing style trousers. I will use Simplicity 3688. I bought some milk chocolate colored 100% cotton twill at Jo-Ann's last week with my 60% off coupon. At that point it was only $4.00/yard!

I am also going to do Simplicity 1590 View A. I am using the pink, white and brown striped quilting cotton. I got it on sale for $1.85/yard. 

I already had both patterns in my stash so that worked out well!

Fall For Cotton Sew Along

I am going to join the Fall for Cotton Sew Along hosted by Lucky Lucille and By Gum, By Golly. I am really excited because I have absolutely a ton of inspiration at the moment and I ALWAYS use cotton. Yay! I will have an inspiration post up in a couple days.

Sunday Strategy 2/24/13

Last week recap:

1. Make my muslin for my Sew For Victory Dress.

• I got really far on my muslin and it fit really well. I decided to make it into an actual dress. I added a lining and some ric rac. I ran out before I was done so I have to pick up some more tomorrow so I can finish. 
2. Fitting adjustments made and transferred to pattern paper.
• Nothing much  to change. It fits really well. I might shorten the bodice at the waist 1/4 of an inch but I will decide that after wearing the dress for a day.
3. Choose fabric for my dress.
• I didn't get around to picking out my fabric. If my wearable muslin turns out as well as I think it will I don't have to pick out any more fabric anyway.

This week:

1. Finish up my wearable muslin for my Sew For Victory dress.
2. Finish putting trim on my Sweetheart Dress. I had this dress almost finished a few weeks ago. When I was putting the final strips of bias binding on the sleeves, it got all wrinkly and refused to lie flat. Turns out, the tape wasn't actually cut on the bias. I had to rip it all out. I got a new pack and should be able to finish in a few hours.

Sunday Strategy 2/17/13

Last week recap:

1. Find inspiration for the Sew For Victory Sew Along. I was originally just going to make the newly released Simplicity 1692. Then I saw all the Sew For Victory Inspiration posts popping up all over with glorious clothes. I think I want to try and make something a bit more exciting. If I have time and the inclination I can make the top too at a later time.
• Blogged here.
• Pinterest Sew for Victory Inspiration board here.
2. Start drafting up a pattern if I choose something that I don't have a pattern for. I really can't justify buying any new patterns and I have been reading a ton about pattern drafting lately. I should probably put that information to good use.
• Blogged here.

Next Week:

1. Make my muslin for my Sew For Victory Dress.
2. Fitting adjustments made and transferred to pattern paper.
3. Choose fabric for my dress.

       

Sew For Victory - Drafting the dress

I decided I would like to knock off the Du Barry 6542 pattern.

I have never made anything with a yoke so I will have to branch out a bit. I also have only made one dress where I use contrasting fabrics. I need to do more projects like this that help me move out of my comfort zone (aka rut.) I am not sure whether to make this from cotton or linen. I know that is not historically accurate since Nylon, Viscose and Rayon were the in thing. I love my cottons and linens not only for how they feel but also the amazing variety of prints available. I also think the cotton would be best to get the nice crisp pleats on the skirt.

I am not sure if I am going to do the yoke as 2 separate pieces (a bodice top and bottom) or just make a regular bodice front and then make an overlay for the yoke parts. I will try it one way on the muslin and if it doesn't work well I will try it the other way on the next go around.

I am using the new book I got for Christmas from my mother in law to help with drafting the pattern. It is called Practical Pattern Designing, originally published in 1947. I have a reprint from the 80's. It is a great resource filled with tons of useful information, diagrams and step by step instructions on how to recreate 1940's fashions from basic blocks.

This will be another dress for my 52 Dresses participation.

Sew for Victory Inspiration

Du Barry 5642 form the 1940's. I especially like the contrast yoke. I usually make everything with the same fabric for the whole project so I need to change it up a bit.

Image from etsy.com

 It seems that something similar to this would actually be a practical addition to my wardrobe.

Overalls image from SewCountryChick.com

This cute dress would be a great addition to my wardrobe. I think it would also be easy to draft. I like the button up back quite a lot. 

Image from http://filmfataleevents.blogspot.com

I absolutely love the gingham with the wide contrasting ric rac. Just adorable little feminine details. Image from http://www.liverpoolblitz70.co.uk/

To see more inspiration, visit my Pinterest board Sew For Victory Inspiration.

Sunday Strategy

I haven't written up a plan lately because I haven't had much crafting time to plan for. Hopefully, now that things have settled down, I can get back to a regular crafting schedule.

This week:

1. Find inspiration for the Sew For Victory Sew Along. I was originally just going to make the newly released Simplicity 1692. Then I saw all the Sew For Victory Inspiration posts popping up all over with glorious clothes. I think I want to try and make something a bit more exciting. If I have time and the inclination I can make the top too at a later time.
2. Start drafting up a pattern if I choose something that I don't have a pattern for. I really can't justify buying any new patterns and I have been reading a ton about pattern drafting lately. I should probably put that information to good use.

Sew for Victory - 1940's Sew Along

The Sew For Victory Sew Along is hosted by Lucky Lucille. I think I want to make Simplicity 1692. It looks like a fairly simple top to throw together. I make tons of dresses and I would like to make some more separates. This seems like as good a place to start as any. I need to look at some more photos of 40's fashion before I decide for sure what to make.

Sunday Strategy # 6

This week:

• The Thanksgiving dress. 

• I am using Vogue 8664 from my stash. 
• Both my main and lining fabrics are from my stash also! 
• Hooray for Stash Busting. 
• Also counts toward 52 Dresses Project. I am not sure what number it is, but I know I am not close to finished.

Last Week Recap:

1. Finish my dress for Rose's birthday party. 
• Blogged here.

       

Victorian Dress So Far

Rose is having a Victorian Musical Soiree to celebrate her 18th birthday. We are all supposed to come in costume. I am making a beautiful ball gown for myself! I have never done a project that has embellishments on it. I am not sure why I waited so long to try. They add such dimension to the piece.

Here is the basic dress before so you can see the silhouette. I have a 6 hoop underskirt underneath to give the dress volume. The pink fabric is a light weight home dec fabric that was given to me by a lady at a curtain shop in Philadelphia. They just throw all the fabric that people leave there in the trash so the woman loaded up a few trash bags and sent me on my way. This was about 5 years ago and I am still working my way through all of it. This counts towards my Stash Busting and also my 52 Dresses. I am so going to wear this dress after the party!

Front view (and Punkin.)

Back view

Front view with ribbon flowers pinned on. I am not sure I really like the flowers on the skirt. 

What do you think? Is it just to much?

I do like the flowers on the bodice though. Maybe I will just do this part with the embellishments.

The ribbon flowers and scallops around the bottom of the dress. 

Should I add some lace to the bottom hem?

     

Colette Peony Fitting!

I got all my fitting done on Peony last week. I was very lucky to have my friend Jean in from New York and he helped me make all my adjustments. Wow, did that take a lot of work! I will transfer everything to paper and then create another muslin. Hopefully some time this week!

Changes I made:

1. Square shoulder adjustment
2. Full bust adjustment
3. Lowered bust darts
4. Angled waist darts because they were to close together
5. Smaller waist
6. Widened neck darts
7. Removed gathering from skirt because it gave me poof where I don't need any.

At this point it looks like a different dress...

52 Dresses Project - Initial Analysis

Following a massive purge of my closet in which I got rid of 25ish dresses, I have 17 left. 9 are thrifted, 3 are bought new (Oh, Modcloth.com) and 5 are me made. I haven't managed to blog about them all yet though. I think for this challenge, I will try to have at least 1/2 of my dresses made by me and rest store bought. I love the Modcloth dresses but they are just so expensive. I will have to just look at them for inspiration. Maybe I can do a bunch of the Make This Look knock off's from the Sew Weekly.

Peony Muslin

I finished my Peony muslin for the Colette 2.0 Sew Along. Wow... A lot of fitting to fix this one. I am going to have to do a bicep adjustment,square shoulder adjustment, taper in the waist, shift the waist darts outward, shorten the bodice... maybe some more? oh dear...

Monday's Sunday Strategy

I need something to keep me focused so I decided to start doing a regular Sunday post titled "The Sunday Strategy." I would like to outline what I am going to do for the week. I can also recap what I did the previous week. I want to list just a couple things and then anything else I manage to do will just be great!

This week I plan to:

1. Make my Colette Peony muslin for the Colette 2.0 Sew Along.
2. Get my patterns and fabrics together for Kids Clothes Week Challenge for next week.
3. Finish fitting issues on Vogue 8615. I have already made this dress 3 times and still haven't gotten it quite right.

Kids Clothes Weeks Fall 2012

I am so excited to participate in Kids Clothes Week again! I find that it is so much more pleasant to work on clothes for Billy because I don't have so many fitting issues to worry about. I'll have to start searching for my patterns!

The 52 Dresses Project

The 52 Dresses Project. How could I resist? Of course I want to have 52 dresses in my wardrobe! At least this one gives me a very long time to participate. I will have to count up all my dresses and see where I stand. I have tons of patterns that I want to try. (And more that I want to buy and try but we don't really have to talk about that...)

Cherry and White Dress

I finished my dress for the Summer Spark Sew Along, Vogue 8615 a month ago but never got photos in time to post for the sew along. The construction didn't take long at all. I made the muslin in a day and the final dress in just 2 days (with many baby breaks.) This pattern is great because it comes with Custom Fit pattern pieces for A/B/C/D cup sizes. The only alteration I had to make to the pattern was to curve the darts a little at the apex to get rid of a bit of pointiness. Other than that, it fit perfectly right out of the envelope. I am so happy with this dress! It is a breeze to put together. Since it has french darts on the front, there are only 4 darts use to get this nice fitted bodice! (8 if you count the ones on the lining.)

The fabric is quilting cotton from JoAnn's. It drapes quite nicely. Since the fabric is just a tiny bit see through, I wear a nylon slip. I think I might buy a petticoat to give it more volume.

I lined the bodice but not the skirt as the pattern calls for. I don't want to use that much fabric =) I also   cut the front bodice pieces as 1 piece instead of 2 halves with a seam down the middle. They only drafted it that way to cut down on the length of fabric needed as the 2 half panels can be cut between all the skirt pieces. I finished the hem with bias tape instead of a regular hem because I wanted it to pop.

I bought the cherry print fabric specifically for this project. The white on white floral print lining fabric and the pattern were from my stash. The fabric I used for my muslin was also from my stash so this project definitely counts towards my Stash Busting Project. It also goes toward my 13 by 13 goal of using stuff from my stash. Apparently I really need to use stuff from my collection because I keep coming back to that...

Sewing Through The Decades

I have decided to join yet another sew along type thing. Now that I have finally discovered just how awesome they are, I just can't stop myself from joining in!

The premise as stated on Rhinestones and Telephones:

"The basic thought is to challenge yourself to explore different time periods (which can be three years in one decade—1943, 1944, 1945) or several patterns across several decades (50’s, 60’s, 70’s). You can sew blouses, skirts, dresses, trousers…whatever you want! It will be fun to share our experiences in sewing from different time periods. The patterns can span both vintage and modern years."

I want to work on some patterns from the 40's and 50's. I am going to use the vintage/retro reproduction patterns because they are already in my stash and that will help me with my Stash Busting Project and my 13 by 13 goal to use up lots of my stash. Here are my selections:

1. Vintage Vogue 8811
2. Vintage Vogue 8812
3. Retro Butterick 5209
4. Retro Butterick 5748

I haven't even looked at fabrics yet. I'll blog about that another day.

Summer Spark Sew Along

Hosted by The Wardrobe, Reimagined

The Premise:

1 MONTH: 
In the month of June, sew one fabulous garment that you plan on strutting all summer.

1 GARMENT: 

Your choice! What's the most wonderful thing you'd like to wear again and again this summer? A pair of linen palazzo pants? A shoulder-bearing sundress? A swishy skirt? A floaty top? Why not make it now and flaunt it 'til the days get shorter?

1 GREAT LIST: 

We'll be posting photos of our finished garments in a Flickr group and, at the end of the month, we'll tally up all the fabulous patterns in a list to serve as inspiration to all. One person's amazing garment could spark another's summer sewing—in July, the season's still young, after all! 

1 FABULOUS PRIZE: 

All folks who have uploaded a photo of their finished garment by July 4 (a few extra days for good measure!) will be entered into a giveaway for ONE INDIE SEWING PATTERN OF THEIR CHOICE, to be shipped worldwide. Can't resist those Colette Iris Shorts? That Sewaholic Cambie? The Christine Haynes Derby Dress? It's a thank you for sewing along with us. 

I am going to make Vogue 8615 in a white cherry print cotton! I already have the pattern and the lining in my stash so this counts toward my Stash Busting Project. Also counts towards 13 by 13: using things from my stash!