The Finished Postal Dress

I finally got the red dress finished and I photographed it when I got to my mums. Well, she photographed it. The hall of my parents house is quite dark so even though it was a sunny day the photo didn't come out well. I'm glad we got it done then because half an hour later we had hail and thunder.

It doesn't look that bad in this picture but I'm not happy with it. It has pointy bits at the end of the bust darts, I have trouble lifting my arms and my hips are too big to fit into the unaltered dress comfortably. It's also very unflattering unbelted, but with the belt it's kinda okay.

I get the feeling this dress, or a version of it, might be good for wearing under a corset with some tweaking to the sizing and the darts. It might even look quite pretty.

This was the first non stretch garment where I've tried to finish the seams with my overlocker and it was quite trial and error. For the seams between the main body and the sleeves I tried using it like one would do hongkong seams with them pressed open but the machine wasn't very happy and they don't look right, but for the side seams I just sewed it like normal and overlocked the two edges together. It looks a lot better. The facing is just pinked and invisibly handstitched to the seams. It's definitely the neatest garment inside yet.

So not my favorite, but not a disaster either. A learning experience.

Life And Laziness

I seriously need to get off my ass. I've gotten some work done on the red dress, just sewing together the four main pieces, but I thought I'd have it done by now. I also thought I'd have a lot more of my stuff packed up, so it's all systems go until I'm settled in Rugby.

I'll try and finish this today, and then I'll be sticking DVDs and books into boxes.

The Red Menace!

I'm a little sorry I didn't post yesterday, but mostly I'm annoyed with myself because I hadn't done anything worth showing. I realised when I went to cut my red fabric that I still needed to pre-wash it and I figured, before I pack everything away for the move I might as well pre-wash everything that needed washing. It'll save time down the road.

I did manage to get some cutting done this morning and it won't be very hard to put together so I should have a complete dress to show you next time. There's no instructions, but seriously, look at it.

I can't believe it's the 9th of the month and I'm about to start my sixth garment. Stash busting extreme!

I was hoping to make my trial run of this pattern out of a lovely white and grey striped fabric that I've had in my stash for a while, but when I got it out I found out I didn't have enough! There's probably enough for a nice shirt but I'm not up for that yet.

I went digging for something else that'd work and found this lovely red poly-cotton. I love red! It's probably my favorite colour to wear, even though purple is my favorite overall, and it fits into my wardrobe like a key in a lock.

If this dress comes out looking good I'm going to make a lovely white version, but I don't think it'll be done for the Little White Dress challenge over at Pattern Review. I'm just too into stash busting to get stuck into one long project. Oh, well. It's not like they won't have more competitions.

Holiday's Over

The fun of Christmas has kind of worn off, and I spent yesterday evening tracing my little white dress pattern. I didn't realise it was unprinted and not very well cut. God knows what it'll look like.

The longer seam lines down the body were wonky and the notches were all uneven depths like it had been used before by someone who wasn't used to using scissors but when I get it everything was folded up like it had just come from the factory. I don't know if it was like that originally or if someone used it and then folded it up and compressed it well enough to look new. If they did they didn't use pins, but maybe that explains the wonkiness?

Today I'm going to get to work on NewLook 6150 so I can use it on some of my bigger knit stash pieces. I'm actually excited about making the version illustrated in red. :-)

Little White Dress

I've tried taking part in Pattern Review's sewing competitions before but I didn't sew fast enough for the stash busting one and didn't even manage to start the others, just getting as far as planning. This year I want to actually have something in the running, even if I don't win it'll be a huge achievement.

The first one, from January 16th to February 15th, is for a little white dress because they've already done a little black dress. I don't have a LBD but there's always time for that later.

I've already chosen my pattern. It's an old mail order pattern that came with a newspaper/magazine. At least I think it is, I can't find anything via google. If it was a newspaper then it's gone out of business since then. Oh well, it doesn't really matter in the end.

I'm going to do it in white cotton, obviously, but I'm going to have a bit of fun with the embellishments. I've talked about blackwork before, but since the challenge is a reworking of black as white I figured I'd reimagine blackwork as whitework. Whitework is where you do embroidery in the same colour as the fabric you're sewing on (usually, you guessed it, white). I'm planning to do silver blackwork on the bodice neck and then use white thread and beads at the bodice and sleeve hems.

It may not win but I think I'll feel pretty wearing it. :-D