First Time Fitting!

Remember the disastrous shirt I made? Well I cleaned out the girls cage today and they'd made lace out of it. Even created an ombre effect that it's best not to think too hard about...

I went to my parents house for Sunday dinner and got to fit both my brothers for their shirts. They need the same changes to the waists and shoulders, just to different degrees.

Next step, get some tape from the supermarket and start fiddling with the paper patterns. :-)

Tea Dress Toile

I spent this morning sewing up the toile for my Tea Dress. I'm going to get my mum or my brother to pin me into it later today after I've fitted the shirt toils on my brothers. It feels nice to know that once this is done I'll be able to turn to these patterns any time and get a perfect fit. :-)

Mission Catwalk

I don't actually have any sewing to tell you about today, but it's been on my mind. I'm about halfway through To Die For and I'm really loving it. I am feeling kinda guilty about my fabric stash, though. It doesn't really count as fast fashion but it's certainly faster to buy fabric than to use it.

Reading about how textile fads can affect things in such a big way made me think of the alpaca farm near Dunchurch where I used to live. Since having another go at knitting is one of my goals for the near future I had a lot of fun window shopping on their website for yarn and patterns. :-)

And remember the fabric I was going to use to line the bodice of my tea dress? I pre-washed the whole 10 metre bolt yesterday and now it's hanging in my bedroom to dry. I'm just happy the washing machine coped.

This morning I went for a bike ride by the canal. It's nice and flat and I was feeling a bit guilty because I ate an entire cheesecake yesterday. :-P I made it 8 miles but the wind was so fierce I had to get up and push for a bit. Seriously, it was amazing!

I'll be spending the rest of the day in the relative warm of my flat watching a show called Mission Catwalk that I discovered on youtube. It's kinda like Project Runway but with a lot less bitching and drama. Plus, I love the idea of people from a different culture having an affect on our fashion, rather than just having their work used as 'inspiration,' (even though I still enjoy the fruits of that.)

Bridge Sewing

Just to be clear, I mean bridge sewing in the same way you'd talk about a bridge loan. I'm not sewing a bridge.

What's that saying, if you have to explain a joke...

Anyway, since I can't work on my shirts till I've had a chance to fit them I got started on my project for the Pattern Review competition I talked about earlier this week. I've cut out a sleeveless version in white cotton to test the fit, and I'm going to line the bodice with the black and off-white chevron cotton I got from the same place.

When I haven't been playing with that I've been reading 'To Die For' by Lucy Siegle. I'm only 70 pages in but it's really interesting so far.

The Toiles Are Finished!

This morning I finished putting together the two toiles for my brothers shirts. I've done all I can do till I see them at the weekend. Now, what to do till then?

There's a competition for this month over at the Pattern Review website to make something with a pattern from a company you haven't used before, so I was thinking of making the English Tea Dress by Simple Sew. I'm going to use the glow in the dark cobweb fabric I got as an option for the shirts. I'm hoping a picture in the dark will impress. :-D

Also, I just thought I'd share a few pictures of my disastrous first shirt being enjoyed. :-)

Sigh

 This white shirt has been a bit of a disaster from start to finish. Thank god I was using £1 a meter white cotton rather than my £12 a meter fashion fabric. That might have lead to more than just a bit of crying.

Today's update starts with trying to sew on sleeves in the flat. I had to fold down and press the top of the sleeve 1/4 inch and then sew it onto the armhole of the shirt growing from the middle to each end. The first one I did ended up not matching at all. The ends and the notches were shifted about 5 cm to one side. I cried a little and had a cup of tea, then had a closer look.

Turns out I'd sewn the left sleeve to the right arm hole.

I unpicked the sleeve and sewed it to the other armhole, then clipped the seam to make my flat felled seam, but then discovered I was supposed to match the fold I mad at the top of the sleeve head to the edge of the main shirt, rather than unfolding it and matching cut edge to cut edge. Since I'd already clipped the seam I just gave up on that since I've decided to make a fitting toile with just the front, back, one yoke and one sleeve and I'll have to attach a sleeve then.

I decided to give the cuff a try, not bothering with interfacing. I had to fold and press the edge again so I set my stitch length to its upper limit and just stitched with the stitching guide because I figured it would be easier than measuring it while ironing. It actually worked kinda well.

Getting the end of the sleeve and the cuff lined up was a bit hard but I did okay. Just half a cm off on one edge but it could be worse.

Once I was finished I was at a bit of a loss as to what to do with this shirt. It was never going to be wearable, but it was a bit big too waste. I ended up putting it on top of the rat cage and letting them have at it. Seemed fair, since I moved the cage so the curtains were out of reach. I went to take a picture of the shirt on the cage but it was already disappearing.

At least my sewing is appreciated. (While I was taking the second picture below and leaning over the cage, Serenity had a go at the hoody I was wearing.)

Shirt Progress

I'm getting there steadily. I finished the main body of my little brothers trial shirt last night and did the plackets this morning. I did them facing the wrong way, but this is only a trial so I'm learning a lot and it's okay if I get it wrong. :-)

It's starting to look like a shirt!