Monday 30 November 2020

Viscose Leaf Dress

As I am working from home again full time, I am trying to adapt my sewing to my new lifestyle and sew more things which I would wear immediately. Since we were nearing the year end I was trying to stop buying fabric and just sew what I had in stash.  I am still motivated to hit that -10m target. However, I came across this leaf fabric on the Stof&Stil website and even saw a dress they presented and I figured out I just had to have it. 

The only hick was the fabric content, as I had some very bad experience in the past with really slinky and plasticky viscose jerseys and therefore avoid buying it. But this fabric was way too beautiful, so I risked it. And I was really surprised when the fabric arrived and was rather soft, almost like a peachskin. At this moment I knew that the fabric would not remain long in my stash and that the dress was going to be sewn quick.

I used a mashup of Moneta dress and my turtleneck block and it worked really well. Now, that I am using my serger/coverlocker, this kind of projects are extremely quick, even too quick, I would say. The dress was ready in one evening. As I am lately sewing a lot of jersey dresses, I must admit that I am missing having a long project with some handsewing. It is planned, though, to sew a winter coat, so I will hopefully get to it quickly and will enjoy making it as well.

Back to the leaf dress, even though there is not much to say about it: it is stretchy, comfy, yet class. I love it! I just need a large black cardigan to wear with it.



Monday 16 November 2020

Flight Attendant Dress

Ok, I know I should stop giving my dresses these names because I risk not wearing them later because of their names. This dress was actually my comeback to sewing after vacation and honestly, I was seriously procrastinating on it. I used Burda 102-08/2020 - a very recent pattern of which I totally loved the picture in the magazine, but this is largely due to the fabric they used. 

As I did not want to buy anymore fabric (huge fabric shopping haul in September which brought me back to the 2019 numbers, so I have to get sewing if I want to achieve my 2020 goal), I tried to find something suitable in my stash. 

In the end, I decided to use this dark blue cotton-wool which has a little texture so I thought it would be really nice. I quickly measured the dress against my dress block, adjusted the shoulders and started sewing without a proper muslin. Also, since I wanted to line the dress and hide the construction parts in the lining, I changed the construction steps. 

The project was just not going forward, as I was not much excited about it. Until the moment when I had the idea of adding a little caramel piping on a few seams and this was really a great idea because it instantly pimped up the dress and out of a sudden, it transformed from a blah dress to a cute one. Also, once the collar was installed, I really loved it, I like wearing high collars and turtlenecks in general, so this definitely helped. 

The only issue I had at this point was the excess wideness of the dress. I could still wear it with a belt, but in general, I do not like that so much, so I ended up taking it in a few centimeters on the sides (not much since I had added the side pockets) and then adding back darts. This changed the silhouette of the dress significantly, so the final result is up to my expectations.

I do not own many blue clothes so this might be a good addition to my wardrobe.



Sunday 8 November 2020

Outfit Sewing - Summer Edition

This will be a very quick post, as I have already talked about the skirt in my previous post. The fact is that the skirt is not lined and was meant to be worn and was worn in summer (the fact that it also works in autumn is a very nice coincidence), and so I needed something to go with it. 

As I have sewn the Nettie body about two years ago and loved it (it is actually really great for winter period and I am really happy that it is again in fashion), I figured out that I could use a remnant of a black jersey cotton to sew a summer edition.

The pattern is still the same, I just shorten the sleeves


And while we are at it, I also sewed a perfect copy of my black Nettie dress because the old one is starting to show some signs of fatigue, obviously, it is worn on a regular basis and I totally love the style.

This time, most of the work was done on the serger, the hems are coverlocked, only the neckline was sewn on my machine.

Now that I figured out how my super serger works, I am so happy to just be serging everything :o)


Sunday 1 November 2020

LinkedIn Inspiration

 A totally improbable post title, but completely true! 

The inspiration for this sewing project was exactly this picture I saw the other day on LinkedIn. 

This is when I realized that I already have exactly the right fabric - the same colour and the same weight. Back in 2019, I bought 2m of bright red ponte and sewed a dress from it which I still have yet to blog. I have somehow difficulties in wearing it because.... well it is a lot of bright red :)

Then I used a piece of the fabric to whip up a little boy t-shirt and I still had half a meter left. Just perfect for this project. Well, I almost did not have enough, so I had to cheat little bit on the length, but it all worked out in the end.

I used my turtleneck block (already used for the turtleneck dresses) and honestly, I really like the result. I think it will probably work much better than the red dress because it is just the amount of red and I can easily combine it with darker colours.

And since this autumn was definitely a separates' sewing season, I whipped up a little grey skirt. So ok, these are some pretty basics, but actually this is what gets most of wear in my wardrobe and basically, it goes with almost all tops I own.

I used a piece of dark grey wool flannel I was saving up for some winter trousers, but let's be honest, this is never gonna happen so I better use the fabric for something nice. I was afraid the fabric was not sturdy enough so I used some light interfacing to beef it up little bit and I am really happy I did.



I was really afraid the pockets would distort the shape of the skirt, as this happens quite often to me, so I stabilized the pocket openings and it seems to be working just OK.

The skirt is of course lined with some black silk.