01 02 03 Miss Smartie's Sewing 04 05 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 24 21 24 21 24 21 24 25 26 27 28 29

Miss Smartie's Sewing

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Friday, 4 April 2014

Past projects part 3: the dinosaur dress

I picked up this cute and amazing fabric over a year ago on the fabric fair. It features cute dinosaurs in all colours and shapes. Soon after arriving home I realised that the pattern I planned doing in it would not do at all. It had lots of pleats and I loved the fabric to much to let that happen. Since I originally planed to do a sheath dress in this I didn't purchase a lot of fabric.

Butterick 5603 pattern illustration
I went looking for a pattern with big panels wherethe small and very busy print  wouldn't be overcrowding and I would be able to  make the dinosaurs shine. After surfing the Internet, my eye fell on Butterick 5603. A pattern I've seen incarnated a lot both in stylishly retro fashion and with awesome novelty prints. It were these projects that convinced me because the butterick version looks slightly horrendous. I realised I needed that pattern. Now!! So I bought it as my first PDF printable pattern, since I did not know where I would be able to pick up Butterick patterns here in Belgium.

That turned out to be a mistake. I found the printing facilities a bit weird. (you only get to print it 3 times ever in the same year you purchased it) this got me all worked up and worried since I tried to print it on my laptop, realised I had selected the wrong printer and ended up almost immediately ruining the times I could print. Eventually it worked, and I might just purchase a pattern like that again if I'm really in a hurry.

Taping up all of the pattern pieces isn't that difficult, but it takes some extra time. I'm pretty conflicted about printed patterns since they are usually on normal (stiff) paper. this makes them more durable, but can be anoying when you want to store (the original) pattern pieces away. I spend all of my allotted sewing time preparing the pattern and lost interest in it for a whole while, due to school and real live stuff.

After being on my to do list for more than a year I decided to start work on the dress again. In the middle of my exams, witch is usually the time when I get all sewing obsessed and start watching you tube technique videos. I started doodling design options for the dress. I quickly worked out that I did not want to make the dress plainly as it was, and I feared I didn't have enough of the Dino fabric to make a full skirt as it was anyway. (The first pattern I planned on making had a pencil skirt.)

I put together some of my stash fabrics with the Dino fabric and really liked how a bright green went with the Dino's. I paired this with a slightly stretchy black I had lying around for ages. I thought that it would look good to have some design accents in green and maybe some panels in black because the dress would otherwise look to crowded. I decided I wanted black side panels and I wanted them to continue into the bodice of the dress. The only problem was that the dress there are only six panels in the original dress and the bodice is made up out of one piece. I daringly set out to make my first design related pattern adjustments on an existing pattern.

I ended up drawing my own wide dramatic collar and added a wide strip of green to the hem of the dress to balance this out. I split up the side panels into halves at the darts in the front and the same distance in the back. One part would be black the other Dino! I had to redraw the font and back bodice pieces. The back was pretty easy. I just marked the line I wanted and cut it off. I then added seam allowance and notches. The front was a little bit more difficult. I had  decided on a princess seam and if possible I wanted to eliminate the front bodice gathers, so they would not disturb my dinosaurs. I drew the design line I wanted and then added 2 cm extra ease to the curve in the side. This made shure the dress would curve nicely. I walked the distance of the seam multiple times to make sure the fit would be correct. It all turned out pretty well, but I think I overdid the ease since the bodice fits a bit loosley.

I did do a muslin for this project, but nothing much surprising happened so I happily started sewing. The design lines didn't allign perfectly, but I thought I would be able to fix that later on in the real thing. A dangerous assumption.

While constructing the garment I realised the dino fabric was to sheer and would be see through. I added the green fabric as interfacing. this looked awesome and neat on the table, but the combined stiffness of these fabrics really made my dress a tad wild and poofy.

I used (my first) french seams on the seams in the skirt and lined the bodice. I added some bias band to the hem, but this added even more stiffness and made the dress look a bit weird. after wearing it a wile it the skirt usually settles down a bit so I decided to leave it as it was.

I love the inside of the dress.
Those polkadots and french seams always make me smile.
It was also my first time trying to match up a novelty fabric. I read about it on the Internet and decided to try to match the horizontal seams. I apparently did something wrong there, I think I didn't take the seam allowance of the seams on the sides into account. the dress ended up looking good, so I didn't really mind. Didn't have enough fabric for a second try either.

The most difficult part of the construction was the matching up of the horizontal seam between bodice and skirt. I ended up shifting the fabric around quite a bit. I had to take in some fabric in the black part of the dress, witch was unfortunate because it nearly eliminated all of the wearing ease I needed there, but fortunate since the black fabric turned out to be stretchy enough to accommodate movement and even a lot of eating.

In the end I'm really proud of this dress. I learnt tons of new techniques like french seams and tried out others like matching novelty fabrics at the seams. I used my first printable pattern and my first pattern with seam allowance included. (I can tell you what a revelation!!). I feel like I've learnt ton's (also first time to use interfacing, and invisible zip, purchased bias band) and I cannot wait to learn more.

I went to the (Antwerp) Zoo yesterday and my boyfriend took these absolutly adorable pictures. Thank you so much!



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posted by Copy Cat Craziness @ 20:44   1 Comments

Tuesday, 1 April 2014

The Joan dress



















It's finished!! I did a crazy day of deadline sewing today and made the dress all in one go. Unfortunately that did not leave a lot of room for tweaking and unpicking for better adjustments. I'm so happy with my dress! To bad it's nighttime now and I cannot make awesome sunlit pictures in the garden.














I think the dress turned out fairly all right. It's the first woven fabric pattern I made from scratch and it's totally wearable! I can move! hurray! I really like the sunburst pleating I did in the back in hindsight and I love how the collar turned out. I did three muslins to get it that close so I'll stick with this result. The only thing I don't like all that much are the sleeves, I didn't really plan them to come out this way, and they don't fit 100 procent right. There is too much room on top and to little at the bottom. No idea weather this is because of the pattern or the sloper I made. I'll try to tweak them later on. I also added an extra belt. I felt that the waistband of the dress was not giving enough definition on it's own. Probably because I'm not Christina Hendricks. Too bad...

Full details on how I made this pattern and a tutorial to make your own can be found here construction drawing and design choises and here how to adjust a sloper to this pattern.

I love the fabric, it may be a bit bleak but it has a really nice texture and drape to it. I went looking for a fabric that looked warm and coat like but was fit to be worn as a dress. This was rather difficult since they mainly had summer fabrics at the fabric fair when I went and bought the fabric. I chose a natural looking green becouse it's still close in spirit to the rusty brown of the original dress but suits my wardrobe better. remains in the  I thought it would be hellishly difficult to sew since it was very slippery while cutting out the pieces but it came out alright. The real dealbraker today was the tread, it kept on breaking without any apparent reason!

I styled the dress with an awesome swarovski spider pin from my mom. The stone fell out just before the photo (nothing unfixable however), but I think it still looks nice. And red boots because red shoes are awesome.

The dress features French seams where possible and bias binding where it was not. The hem is finished with a blind hem machine stich.










 


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posted by Copy Cat Craziness @ 00:10   1 Comments

Tuesday, 4 March 2014

The Joan Dress construction drawing


When trying to get my head around how a dress or piece of clothing is pieced together I like to make some construction drawing sketches. These basically show the construction of the garment, where the seams are supposed to go, where the garment is tightly fitted and where it is flary, if there are any darts or other forms defining features.

The front of the dress is pretty straightforward. It features a pencil skirt, waistband and a shirt like bodice with a sculpted collar.


The bodice:
I can see two large bust darts, crossing the bust slightly right of the bust point and ending somewhere above that point. The bust point is the point in your bust that is the fullest, most protruding part.
The shoulder seams are not on top of the shoulder but at a slanting angle some cm down from the shoulder. This lets me to believe that there will be some form of yoke at the back of the dress. (a technique often seen in Safari shirts,...)
The bodice has arms that extend right to the elbow and are close fitting.
The most important part however is the crossing wrap like fabric. Which ends on the right side into a folded over collar and on the left side in a loose decorative flap.

The waistband:
seems to sit really snugly in the picture, bodice fabric seems to hang over it a bit. This feature accentuates the hourglass figure of the dress.

Skirt:
A rather regular pencil skirt with three slanting pleats in stead of darts at the top to give the skirt it's fullness. Pleats are all in the side quarters of the skirt.


back:
Since I have only one picture of the Joan dress, had to imagine / design the back myself.
As I said I expect the use of a yoke in the back, and of course two darts to match the design of the front body. I added an ornament to the waistband at the back for closure off the dress (I will explain in a moment). And added the same pleats as in the front. Realising then that there has to be some booty room in the back of the skirt I added some more, all slanted and getting progressively larger. I probably will change that in the future though.

Closing:
I suspect the dress on the picture is probably closed with a zipper from the side and the front is just a fake wrap dress with the front being stitched down invisibly by stitching a facing (dotted lines on the picture) for the front part to the back part. I might just do that but I got another crazy idea too. Use a zipper in that front seam and make the waistband wrap around and snap shut at the center back. That way it really is an easy step into wrap dress, without any risk of 'unwrapping'.

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posted by Copy Cat Craziness @ 23:32   1 Comments

Monday, 3 March 2014

plans for the summer

There are some iconic dresses we all wish we had a copy off, and replica patterns and dresses are enormously expensive, mostly won't fit right or need a lot of work to be turned into something wearable. It is my dream to have a wardrobe that is at the same time classy, vintage and thoroughly me, but that day is still a long long way off.

I recently finished my first really wearable dress and I am so proud of this achievement that I cannot wait until I do it again. I had so much fun tweaking the pattern to my liking and seeing all the pieces come together in the end. I started out from B5603 but ended up changing a whole lot. (Here's a picture of the dress in it's nearly finished state). I really love the multi-coloured dinosaur fabric!!



This however leaves me in the pleasant stage of picking out my future projects and that is what this post will be about. I will probably cover the making of these dresses (and certainly any pattern alterations or design) here on this blog.

I have recently been obsessed by the subway dress from Marilyn Monroe's classic movie the seven year itch. After hours of searching the Internet for clues as to the exact construction of the dress I gave in and watched it. I was also blown away by the simple sheath dress she is wearing in the beginning of the movie. I would love to have a version of both of those dresses!


One of the blogs I lurk around is Julia Bobbin's. She really has an extraordinary eye for potentially awesome patterns. She has inspired me to do two projects, firstly her awesome mad man challenge really gets me. I was planning to make this gorgeous faux wrap dress of Joan's. I also fell in love with the dress she did for the second week of project sewn, and I am dieing to get myself a version of that dress as well.


lastly I'm invited to the wedding of a fellow student of mine, and as this is the first real wedding I have received an invitation to, I want to make the dress myself. I fell in love with this gorgeous vogue, but I am totally afraid of overdressing for the event (so I will probably make the train a lot shorter). I certainly wouldn't want to outclass the bridesmaids. Butt still, what better excuse to wear something like this than a wedding?



Since I am buying all my fabric this Sunday I get to work out a lot of the design choices I want to make now. Wonderful! I will get back to you on that.

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posted by Copy Cat Craziness @ 13:38   0 Comments