Sunday 30 June 2019

Summer Dress Serie - The Red one

I have not posted for 2 weeks, but I have been sewing like mad. I have been in a real summer-dress-sewing period, producing sometimes even two dresses a week. Because: well, because is there some more fun than sewing cute little dresses? I can hardly think of anything else :)
Sooo, I just enjoyed myself and got my machine spitting dresses one after another. And today, when my photographer and myself finally got to taking pictures, there were like 9 of them to photograph. We got seven of them in the camera and then stopped by exhaustion. Brace yourself, my summer dress serie is starting.

The first dress is actually the last one made, directly hot off the machine, maybe 20 minutes before our picture session started. This dress is Burda 134-05/2013 pattern,

an old one, but a great one. I had already sewn this dress twice, in my early sewing years:
- one in a very cute viscose, which never got worn because the cleavage and the back V got desperately stretched out and the adjustments I did shifted the "under-the-bust-line" way too high.
- another one in black/violet silk crepe which still has a few flaws but is my favorite when the temperatures get over 30. The silk is just so light and the fit is pretty good so it feels like wearing nothing.

I did not plan sewing this dress again, it is not office-friendly, but then, I was going through my stashed pieces under one meter, desperately looking for ideas on what to sew with them and I found 80cm of this red silk crepe. I have sewn a cute top with it already, but since I wear trousers only rarely and the top only works with black, it was not the biggest success in terms of wears.
And the it clicked together: with a little chance, I could squeeze this dress from my remnant.

Well, in the end, I had more than enough to make this dress. I could even self-line the top part of the dress which makes a cleaner finish. This time, I actually retraced the pattern again, did my usual short-torso and narrow-shoulders adjustments and resewed a muslin to make sure the fit is fine this time.
I was really careful on the cleavage pattern pieces, I interfaced and stay-stitched all of them, just to be sure that nothing gets extended.

And bingo, I just love the result! The fabric makes me so happy when I see it, it goes so well with my complexion and feels amazing against my skin. It is exactly the same weight as the black-violet leopard, so a great one for a summer dress.

I am really happy that I could use up this remnant and that the result is so awesome! Did I say I love this dress?!?!

Tuesday 18 June 2019

False Chanel Jacket

Well, I still have a plan to buy some great bouclé and take the 100+ sewing hours needed to make a real Chanel jacket, but for the moment, I have at least sewn a little simple bouclé jacket and I like it a lot.

The bouclé fabric comes from sales at Coupons de St.Pierre, is quite simple, but I really like the style. In my new job, jackets are more of a norm than cardigans, so this one will work great with black dresses.
The pattern is Burda 108-02/2017 (oh, the February 2017 issue - I think I have already sewn at least 5 patterns from this issue). I did a few usual adjustments on the shoulder part, but I also narrowed the jacket to make it less boxy and more fitted.


The jacket is entirely interfaced, because the bouclé was very moving, and lined with some black light silk which makes it feel very luxurious.

Originally, I did not want to add any decorations, but when the jacket was almost ready, I tried to add some fringes and a black ribbon. And I am really happy I took the time (the ribbon was to fragile, so I had to sew it by hand) because it really finishes the jacket. 

I did not bother with any closing. At first, I wanted to add the little hooks, but it did not wok well and I figured out I would never wear the jacket closed, so why bother...

It is a little different style than what I usually sew and wear, but it will fit to my work wardrobe very well.

Sunday 9 June 2019

Another Episode of Baby Sewing

And again, it was great fun. This time, I wanted a gift for the two sons of my cousin: 6 months and a 2 years old. Which meant two big challenges :
- choose the right fabrics, as I do not have tons of really boy-fabrics in my remnants
- find cute boy patterns - I was rather surprised how very little there are. I went through all my Burdas (I might have 20 of them) and only found 1-2 patterns for boys of this age category.

Yes, I would also use the Burda body and trousers patterns I bought before X-mas (Burda 9347 and 9340). In the end, I bought a baby version of Ottobre to have some more choice.


I then spent an afternoon on whatsapp with my mum deciding on colour combinations. Originally, I wanted to make a body and pinafore trousers for the little one and a t-shirt and the same trousers for his big brother, but I did not have enough fabric for the second pair, so I switched to some normal ones from Ottobre.


Also, I wanted them to work as an ensemble. For the little one, I decided on this violet milano jersey for the body and a deep green linen for the trousers. I bought a cute green fat quarter for the "decorations" and bias binding and buttons with the similar pattern (the fabric has little dots, the buttons little stars).

I think the light green really makes it work together and I totally love the combination.

For the older one, we chose yellow milano for a t-shirt (decorated with some vichy binding) and grey trousers. I must say I really liked the details on this pattern: there is elastic on the waist, but you sew a faux fly anyhow, the braces and the braces' fix.
I used some vichy cotton remnant for the waist lining and for the trousers' hem.

So again, two cute sets of baby clothes, proving that even sewing for boys can be fun. When are the next coming?