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

This Post Is Brought To You By The Colour Blue

I subscribe to a stupid amount of blogs. Most of them are sewing blogs, but there are one or two others in there and Bored Panda is one of them. It's full of funny, inspirational, and down right cute pictures but I've never really been inspired to do more than share something to facebook before I go back to whatever it was I should have been doing.

They had a post about award winning photographs a little while ago and they were beautiful but it was the colour combinations in one of them that stuck with me.

(Amazing autumn fall landscapes)

I think it's already kind of obvious that I'm a fan of blue, but blue and orange is something you don't see that often so I never really thought of it. I couldn't even find anything on spoonflower.

I did think about trying it in one of my projects, but I don't know if I could pull it off. I like fun clothing, but I really can't tell what's good when it comes to colour.

I quickly realised the answer was shiny things! (It often is.) Silver, gold and copper are like black, they go with everything without looking ridiculous (as long as you don't overdo it) and even I can put something together without looking silly.

fotor.com

Top left: (Beautiful embroidery)

Top middle: (Beautiful crazy quilting)

Top right: (Dany Atrache 2012)

Bottom left: (Gilded paradise dress)

Bottom middle: (Dior)

Bottom right: (Copper and teal)

It's not really a big thing, but I kinda trace my terrible colour matching skills to my mum. It's not her fault, she's colour blind. The only way she could choose things that matched was to go for two things that were the same colour (usually purple) or rainbows. Even then it still went wrong sometimes. :-)

Looking Less Like A Theater Goer And More Like The Cast?

I've started trying to design clothes instead of just throw myself into them lately, and decide what kind of thing I want to wear with the help of Pinterest. I've come up against a hitch.

It seems like many amateur seamstresses, who's blogs I read for far to long each day, have an aversion to hand made clothes that look 'home made', 'home-ecy' or like some kind of costume, but I don't seem to have the same problem.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to wear poorly made or poorly fitting clothes, but looking a bit like I've just come from a street carnival doesn't set off the alarm bells that maybe it should.

The people I hang out with probably contributed to this. I've talked about my goal to make a cosplay costume, now even more important for going to video gaming conventions with my boyfriend, I've talked about going to goth festivals with my family, and I regularly go to parties where the dress below would be greeted with joy, complements, but not one weird look.

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I love ridiculous embellishments, frills, useless buttons and stylish embroidery and I went through a phase when I was a teen where I wore pink feather fake eyelashes and borrowed the glue from them to stick plastic gems to my face. I see feathers and gold and silly hats and I start thinking about how I could make one for myself.

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Maybe I have a not so deeply buried dream of being a costume designer. Maybe I just want to be an art instillation. Do you think it would be possible for a woman to make a bit of cash posing for pictures in ridiculous dresses like drag queens or people who impersonate superheros and celebrities?

Maybe I should have been born a drag queen. I'd have come out bright pink feathers and all.

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I've mostly decided just to live with my nutty side. Any friends I want to keep won't treat me any worse for it, it brings me incredible joy to dress up and hey, even if I get made fun of on the street I can just take a taxi.

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?