My New Nightgown

As you know, I'm going to be moving back home soon, but a few weekends sleeping on the sofa has made me realize that I really don't have anything to wear during the night. When you're living alone you can pop to the kitchen for a snack just wearing a t-shirt and no one will ever know or care, but I'd rather not do that in a house with other people.

I decided to make myself a nightgown using Kwik Sew 3538, the first pattern I ever used and one of my favorites. I'm making it long with short sleeves using the rest of my blue gingham and I'm hoping to get it finished in time to move.

I've only got the cutting out done so far and it's going slowly because I've got a dozen other things to do but it's not very complicated.

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

Gingham Dress

I finally got my gingham dress finished! It's now too late to wear it outside the house but at least it's not weighing on my mind any more and it'll be hanging in my wardrobe ready for spring.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with this dress. I started it as a stash busting project because I had five meters of gingham and I'm really not a girl who wears gingham. I don't know if it's just a really nice wearable muslin or something I'll actually go out in, though.

Everything seemed to go wrong with this dress, especially the buttons and the elastic. I originally bought black elastic but I was afraid it would show through the gingham and went back for some white stuff. I think I was worried over nothing but it's too late now. Turns out the white elastic and the white bias binding where exactly the same size, making it pretty much impossible to sew along the edges of the binding and leave enough room inside.

I ended up sewing along the crease of one side and then wedging the elastic in as far as it would go and going along the other edge with my zipper foot to try and make it even. I think I did pretty well but since my bobbin tension's been acting up it doesn't look very good. Thank god it's hidden by the gathering.

This dress has put me off buttons for at least a year. I first bought both buttons and poppers planning to only have fake buttons, and then I got it into my head that I should at least try and make real button holes. You know what they say about good intentions.

I would have to sort out my sewing machine tension but I also needed a buttonhole foot. I got online and bought the cheapest one on Amazon. Big mistake. It didn't work quite right and the top layer of metal was flaking off when I got it out of the packet so now not only do I not have the buttonhole foot, I have the trouble of sending it back. I looked into hand sewn buttonholes but soon realised I didn't care enough about this dress to do them, I just wanted it to be over.

Then I cried a little.

Turns out I ended up doing exactly what I had planned in the beginning.

New Looks For Me!

I've been very good lately when it comes to buying fabric, especially since I live near a great sewing shop. That being said, I have been looking at the sewing patterns.

When I first bought a load of sewing patterns a while ago I went for what looked cool. The kind of thing I'd stick on my Pinterest inspiration board. I didn't really put too much thought into when I'd be sewing and wearing these complicated patterns.

Now that the New Look patterns at my local sewing shop have come on sale again I decided to stock up on simple patterns that I could try making again and again. It was pretty easy to narrow it down to these seven patterns but here's where it gets harder.

I like dresses even though I only own one, the 1940s one I made myself but that doesn't really look very good without a slip. I have loads of leggings to wear under them and a dress pattern that would work fine for a slip so now I just need to get making.

The top two dresses are simpler dresses with nothing cut on the bias, but they're different enough that I might consider getting both.

These two, though, I'm not too sure about. They're both okay, but I can't see myself getting both and I don't know which one to choose. The one on the left, New Look 6093, looks kinda cool but it's a bit more complicated and the inserts are cut on the bias. The other one looks kinda plain though.

I also want this top, even though it doesn't quite come under simple basics either. Wrap tops are one of those styles that seem to look good on almost any woman and I really like them.

And finally, the really basic stretch tops. The one with separate sleeves is a bit more my style, but it looks like it would look best in unpatterned fabric and that really isn't what I end up getting, especially in knit fabrics.

Okay, so I'm indecisive, but at £2.95 a pattern I can live with that.

A Long Overdo Goodbye

When I first started this blog I spent weeks cutting out a toile for a jacket from an old curtain I got from my
mum, and then put it aside after sewing one or two seams. All the parts are still in my spare room somewhere but they got lost in the mess.

Now I'm cleaning up my house so that it'll be easier to move back to my home town after Christmas, and I'm coming across the bits and bobs that I haven't payed attention to for months. I don't really know what I was thinking. Not only am I not really a toile person, I find it hard to sew things I AM going to be able to wear at the end. I don't want to spend ages sewing something that makes me bored. If I don't fit into it at the end I'll just have to find someone who does.

I have two other projects that need a decision as well, my bed-sheet dress and my gingham dress.

I only have two dresses in my wardrobe, neither of which I wear. It's not their fault, really. One's an airline hostess costume in quite horrible, stretchy fabric, and the other is my 40s dress that needs a summer event to shine and a petticoat (that I don't have) to hang right.

I'm afraid I'm chucking my bed-sheet dress. I know I was never going to wear it and the fabric was on it's last legs to begin with. It was dark from being used, like a carpet that's been walked on every day. It never would have coped with having butten holes put in it because of the weave, either. I'm kinda sad I didn't realize before I cut it up. Maybe I could have made some cushions by using the side that was on the inside, but it would have always looked weird. At least I learned something from this.

The gingham dress will get made, partly because my boyfriend helped me with it and that makes me think of him, and partly because there's a good chance it'll be wearable, at least in spring. If it's not then at least I can give it to the charity shop without feeling embarrassed..

Bodice

I got so little done on my dress since the 16th I feel ashamed. I cut out the bodice but nothing else and I still haven't started sewing yet.

I do have sort of a good excuse though. Those of you in England will know we've been having a bit of a heat wave lately, and I don't do well with heat. I've gotten used to getting all my liquids via having tea at home and just going without when I leave the house so I thought nothing of wandering into town for a slice of cake and wandering home (an hour each way) without a bottle of water. On one of the hottest days of the year.

To compound the problem I went to a party with my boyfriend that night and subsisted on rum and coke, i.e. alcohol and caffeine. I ended up seriously dehydrated and I'm only now getting over it.

I cut out the bodice for my Hawthorne dress and marked all the buttons and button holes. I did it by sticking a pin through the marks and drawing them on in pencil.

This fabric is slowly driving me nuts. Not only is the weave really loose, but it's taken a battering from being bedding for years. If it was on grain to begin with it certainly isn't now.

I promise I'll get more done for next time. Take care of yourselves and drink loads of water!

The Start Of My Hawthorn

That's right, I've finally cut into the "fashion fabric" for my dress. I'm putting fashion fabric in quotes because I'm making it out of an old duvet cover that I had back when I slept in a single bed at my parents house.

I decided to use it because not only can I not afford to go fabric shopping right now, I have far to much stash fabric that I bought when price mattered a lot more in comparison to quality.

Helps that it's pre-washed as well.

I only got the skirt portion cut out because I was down for a little while with heat stroke and the bedroom, the room where I sew, is literally the hottest room in the house. Fingers crossed The spare room will be usable soon, but the heat makes me much less excited about cleaning.

On a side note, any strong opinions about which side I should have on the outside? I'm leaning towards the one on the left that was on the outside on the duvet.

Sew, Sew, Sew!

I spent at least a couple of hours sewing together my toile for the Hawthorn dress. When I first tried it on, stressed from sewing in the sleeve and hot from the July weather, I saw that it was all weirdly bunched up on one side and started crying my eyes out.

Then I realized that I'd managed to twist the right front panel before sewing it. I had to unpick the shoulder seam and do it again and, what do you know, all the wrinkles went away.

It's not a perfect fit but it's good enough for what it is. I might make ones that fit slightly better in the future but I'm not too fussy.

On the other hand, I just finished the blue top and I am too fussy to wear that. It makes me look pregnant but the colour's okay. Chalk this on up to experience.

New Life For An Old Curtain

I cut out the pieces for my Hawthorn toile while my boyfriend was at work yesterday and I've got them laid out ready to sew together. The combination of attached and detached facings for the front confused me a bit but at least I know it'll be easier when I come to do the real thing.

The fabric is a curtain that used to hang in my bedroom at my parents house. The curtain rail broke before I even moved out so it worked it's way into my stash.

In tangentially related news, I finished reading The Handmade Marketplace and it's taught me a thing or two. I'm not at the point where I want to start selling but it's always going to be a dream to quit my current job and do this for a living.

I have learned a thing or two I want to put into practice right away. Firstly, expect to see the quality of the pictures on here slowly increase as I start taking all my pics during daylight hours (a bit easier in the summer), don't just make a little pile on the floor, and try to put more effort in when modelling.

Secondly, I'm hoping to put out more useful content including written and video tutorials when I have something to share and possibly some pattern reviews when I can.

I'm also going to work a bit harder at telling people about my blog. I can't just expect you all to come to me!

I hope you see an improvement! Do you have any other tips?

The Hawthorn Toile And A Question About Trousers

I finally got all the pieces cut out and drew over the pencil lines in pen so that they were easier to see but they still don't look like much. I am starting to feel intimidated by the amount of buttons though. I'm doing version two which has the most, clocking in at a whopping 15! Add to that the fact that I don't know how well my machine copes with doing button holes and we may be heading for a disaster.

At least I'll be able to say I tried, if nothing else.

As a side note, this is what I had to do so you didn't get a flash of my undies in the picture above. These trousers have a whole 5 extra inches of fabric which means I can't go outside in them without tying them up and that just makes me look like a slob.

The problem is, I'm still a bit nervous about getting rid of them. Not only do I not have a whole lot of money at the moment for buying more, I'm terrified I'm going to put all the weight back on and feel even worse. Over the last six months I've lost about two and a half stone (35 pounds), and most of my trousers don't fit. I'm in a bit of a bind really.

How long would you guys wait before getting rid of clothes that no longer fit? Do you hang on to them just in case or are you an out with the old, in with the new kind of person?

Return To Sewing, i.e. The Hawthorn Sewalong!

That's right, I'm finally getting back to my own sewing and yet another new sewing project. At least this one is going a bit faster. Yesterday I got the whole thing traced off in a size 6 and cut and went over three in pen before it was time to go to bed.

It may not look like much, but there are 9 pattern pieces on that folded up piece of paper.

Hawthorn Sewalong

I am officially jumping on the bandwagon. It's so fun and happy up here, though, so can you blame me?

I've never taken part in a sew along before so I'm looking forward to talking to people about the pattern I'm using RIGHT NOW and taking part in an event.

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This dress looks like it'll work with my body and sewing skills but the sample ones that the amazing women at Collette Patterns aren't quite my thing. I'll need to do mine a bit different if I'm ever going to wear it and I have some ideas.

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In my humongous stash I've got a basic red poly-cotton that would look awesome as a shirt dress but that would still be a bit plain. How about some stamps? I've got a big square stamp chockablock with cogs that I've been just dying to use. I liked the idea but wouldn't it look a bit homemade (and not in the good way)?

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The answer! Foil that you apply to fabric by putting down glue, letting it dry and then pressing the sheet onto it. It's beautiful and washable, perfect for the lazy launderer, and I can't wait to try it out. The cogs will all be in gold but I'm definitely going to use some of the other ones for different projects.

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Have any of you ever tried putting foils on fabric? More importantly, did it work?

Embellishments

I've been thinking a lot about ways to personalize the clothes I make lately. I love what I've made but it's not the amazingly fantastical wardrobe that I dream of.

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I've been a little addicted to pinterest lately and I've been making an online inspiration board so that I can put some actual planning into my next project instead of doing the first thing that springs to mind.

It's actually helping me learn a lot about my tastes that I didn't know before and showing me things I didn't consider before (and some I still won't).

One of the first dresses I fell in love with was this one to the left. It's 125 years old and it was made for Ellen Terry, a famous Elizabethan actress, to wear when she played Lady Macbeth. It's covered in hundreds of jewel beetle shells, many of which had to be sewn back on or even fixed when it was restored.

I'd love to try using them on one of my own creations and I even have a plan in my mind. I'm going to make an old Butterick 5967 in green satin with the beetle wings as trim along the neck and edges.

It seems like not many home sewers try out beetle wings (yeah, I'm not surprised either) but the nice woman over at Needle n' Thread did a project with them and helpfully describes how to prepare and work with them. Now I just have to read the rest of her blog. :)

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If I do make this dress I'll definitely be make this embroidered beetle as a hair clip. It was designed by Michele Carragh for a costume for Game of Thrones using references from 'The Stumpwork, Goldwork and Surface Embroidery Beetle Collection' by Jane Nicholas.

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How fancy do you guys let your projects get?

A Busy Day But Not Much Sewing

Yesterday got off to a bad start when I slept in till noon. Chris stayed up to watch the live feed of the E3 announcements because he's a bit of a video game addict and it went on till 6am where we are so neither of us got much sleep.

I spent most of the day doing laundry and filling a huge bag with clothes I'm getting rid of. I think I've culled half my wardrobe since Chris moved in but it really needed doing. I've got some other items that need either working back into everyday wear or throwing out but I'm giving them a second chance. I'll be showing them to you over the next month or so.

I've finally got to the bottom of the pile of laundry that Chris brought with him when he moved but mine's built up in the mean time and now I have to do that and make sure anything from there that needs to go to the charity shop does. Sigh.

Going through my clothes put us in a silly mood so we messed around with Chris's top hat and cosplay wig. The hat is so big on me that it falls down over my eyes and I'm convinced the wig needs thinning out but it was fun. (I know I look ridiculous.)

That evening I cut the back of my gingham dress and pinned the front down while he sketched. It feels like I'm getting close to the finish line now. I've put up his sketch for posterity because he had a hissy fit and ripped it up shorty after the photo was taken. They've been messing him about a bit at work so he has his ups and downs.

Sleeves And My Charity Shop Adventures

Yesterday I finally cut my fabric for the gingham dress, and it's not even gingham! I cut out the white collar and sleeves but ironing the cloth is still a nightmare because my ironing board is still broken and I'm using an ironing board cover on top of foam on the floor.

Last week I started volunteering at the British Red Cross every Monday, and today was my second day. I officially filled in the paper work and I'm getting a name badge and everything!

The people I work with are great and I'm learning a lot. The thing I think my fellow thrifters will be most interested by is the fact that volunteers don't get first dibs on donations. At least in the red cross shops items have to be on the store floor 24 hours before we can buy them. It seems so cruel when you've been watching something since it came down and someone picks it up that same day but it's all for a good cause.

Personally, I've found that an awesome way to find interesting items is to wait till you're culling the stock (taking down items that have been there for too long and probably won't get bought). You end up looking at every garment leaving and noticing the pretty ones that might be your size then trying them on during slow periods (there always has to be 2 people on the shop floor to stop thieves).

I bought a Batman bed sheet from the shop I work in because I have a thing about Batman and I find if I'm meeting people off forums and need to identify myself a theme comes in handy. I'm planning to make it into a top or a simple dress.

You might have noticed my other picture as well. That's right, I got a treadle! When me and Chris were coming home from registering with the doctor I noticed a shop full of sewing machines. These weren't little home sewing machines, this was an entire building of old machines from factories and a sign offering fixes and tune ups. I went in and gorped for a while then Chris said his mum might have an old metal sewing machine. She brought it over when he moved in and it was a treadle! It's not quite in working condition, the belt is dry and crumbling, but it makes a nice ongoing project.