50's Red Flower Dress

This was just a quick make before attacking a big-blazer-project (finished now, but yet to be photographed).

This pattern appeared in the February issue of Burda and even though it seems simple, I kind of liked it. In the end, I only used the top from Burda and cut out a 3/4 circle skirt, which I drafted directly on the fabric.

The fabric is a very light cotton, pretty suitable for the almost circle skirt.
The top is self-lined, I very much like the V neckline and the little coverage of shoulders - this comes always handy to protect them from the sun and not to freeze at work. The skirt is sewn with French seams, all others are covered by the lining.

There is not much more to be said about this dress, it was extremely quick to be done. I might have taken it in a little more around the waist in order to accentuate the contrast between the full skirt and and the bodice. At worst it will be worn with a belt, we will see.

As there is not much to be said about this dress, I will at least show you my stash level evolution since the beginning of the year, as I am extremely proud of this.

Minus 10m since January, at this speed I will soon be entering the levels not seen since some time. Strangely though, it is less visible on my stash storage which seems to be full the still the same way. I will try to take some time to re-fold everything which might help as well.

My B-day Dress

Or... a Bathroom Dress. What a strange name for a dress. The story is when we found our new home last year, we were pretty excited by everything in it, except for the colors in the bathrooms - green and violet combination in one and turquoise and violet in the other. In the beginning, we wanted to repaint them or just DO something with it, but we ended up getting used to that and it is not a priority anymore. I even found bathroom rugs which go perfectly with the bathroom turquoise - thank you Ikea! And yes, this dress matches perfectly our bathroom.

I rarely sew for specific occasions. More often I just sew a dress and then the right occasion occurs for the first outing of the new dress. And this was exactly the case of my birthday dress. Basically I wanted to reproduce the same dress I made for mast x-mas, but in a lighter and more colorful fabric - it is a very comfy and versatile dress so I figured I needed one for spring.

The fabric comes from my Malaysian batch (which is getting thinner and thinner) and it is quite a change from my usual brown-red-orange color combination. It is a very fine silk which under some angle was even transparent. In addition, it has the terrible tendency to stick to your legs - not quite the needed effect for this kind of dress. I lined it with a very fine black silk which has exactly the same problem and it worked magic: the fabrics ended up sticking to each other so it is like they have become one "normal" fabric which behaves correctly.

As for the pattern - it is just a copy of this dress (which itself is a copy of an old RTW :o). I think this time I made the skirt slightly longer, just in case.. Apart from that, nothing special to add. I put a small elastic in the waist, as well as to the sleeve finish. I stabilized the neckline area with some silk organza which worked pretty well.

The dress is a quick make: the only challenge is not to overstretch the neckline and sew together both layers in order to form the waist casing for the elastic.

As already said, the dress was first worn on my birthday evening and we even had time to take some pictures. I must say that it was a very appropriate outfit since we went to an amazing Indian restaurant.

Non-Selfish Sewing - GBSB Dress II.

For the first time I did sew something for somebody else. When I created my GBSB dress, the first comment from my little sister was that this was not a dress for me, but for her. She had some ideas behind that reflexion, but actually she was right. I was ruminating too much about this dress and the truth is it was perfectly her style.

X-mas getting close, I decided to sew a copy of this dress for her as well, I still had some of the wool crepe, as well as the underlining cotton-silk.

My sister lives some 1000km far away, and I was not going to meet her before x-mas, so not fitting possibility. We are of a same height, but she is thinner than me, so I just figured out that if I take in 1-2 cm, the fit should be OK. Anyway, the dress is supposed to be large.

I was paying more attention to making sure the pocket opening is not too large and the dress hem is not too narrow - two little things I can see on my version.

Honestly, I do not know if she is wearing it but I would say the fit is pretty much OK here :o)

2016 X-mas Dress

Apparently, my sewing tradition for my x-mas dress is always the same:
- I have plenty of time to do that (like: almost one week sewcation before the day D),
- I finish it on that last minute (like 1 hour before leaving home)
- and I blog about it late (like in summer next year).

2016 was not different. The thing is I did not want to sew a special dress for this occasion this year, I have enough dresses to choose from, I wanted to concentrate my sewcation on other stuff. But then somehow, I came across the rest of this black wool crepe and thought that I could make a simple dress from it. It is actually inspired by an old RTW dress which was made of polyester crepe and which I liked the idea but it was always difficult to wear: it looked great with boots in winter but I was totally freezing in it.

So there we go: the pattern is vaguely based on Burda 115-07/2015 and the RTW dress which I threw away, it has not longer any reason to stay in my wardrobe.

The only problem when sewing the dress was the fact that the crepe is quite see-through. I decided to line the dress body properly with some silk, but left the sleeves as such. The original dress did not have any waist definition, I always wore it with a belt, for my version I encased some elastic between the fabric and the lining. The inside might not be 100% kosher, but the outside is OK so I an live with it.
I did stabilize the shoulder seams and the neckline with silk organza and it really worked magic.

As for the sleeves' finishes, I was hesitating between elastic and little cuffs. In the end, I just created two folds and it looks like a very clean finish.

This dress is definitely a winner, it is extremely comfy and yet, ensures a polished look. I might even be considering sewing another one in a different colour.

The Geisha Dress

Dress totally inspired by the fabric. I bought this fabric sometime last year when I was trying NOT to buy fabric and I promised myself that this one was so cute I would sew something from it immediately. Well, that did not work very well and 9 month later this fabric was still in my stash, even worse: becoming deeper stash. Something had to be done - a dress just imposed itself.

Originally I wanted a dress with little seams, as the geisha pattern needs to be aligned as much as possible. But when looking for a pattern to use, I found the Butterick B5603, something totally out of the initial requirements, but I decided I would go for that, even though I might get crazy with the pattern matching.

I used the yellow version, without the little band under the chest and the little bows, of course, as that would be just too much for the busy geishas. Also, I added pockets, just because it might be practical.

The fit was almost perfect from the beginning, I just did a slight adjustment for narrow shoulders, though when seeing the pictures, I might have done more. And I also took in about an inch in the waist area to make it more adjusted. The fabric is a rather stiff cotton which gives the dress quite some volume.

I did not line the dress, just bias bound all the seams, used again the fine cotton-silk.

I got very proud of my pattern matching in the end - I only managed it on the top, but on the rest of the dress the fabric is more busy.

New Anna dress

What do you do when the end of winter seems particularly long and the only thing you are craving is summer and its vacation.
First, you start planning the vacation, you book your flights and enjoy detailing the itinerary.
Second, you sew yourself a summer dress, or two. Or three, if that is what you need.

Actually, I do not think I really need a new colorful summer dress, I am more missing simple work-day dresses, but this is planned as well. However, I just needed this to kick start my sewing year.

Back in 2015 I discovered the Anna By Hand London pattern and sewn 3 of them, all quite different. I rarely sew from Indie designers, as I like that I take Burda of Big4 and instantly know what adjustments need to be done. Also, I often feel that Indie patterns try to be very original, while I tend to sew more classical or practical pieces. Nevertheless, the Anna dress is just an amazing pattern, and I still have the long version to try.

My first Anna dress was made of simple blue cotton, of a mediocre quality, but it became my "jogging" dress, the one you wear with Birkenstocks or sneakers, the one you wear wherever you go without being afraid of damaging it or staining it. And yet, it still is a dress so you look rather polished. It survived a few vacations, some tropical sun and many wash machine cycles. The cotton not being of a great quality I ended up throwing it away and regretting it almost instantly. So I just HAD to recreate it again.

There is not much to say about it, just that with these heels the dress seems quite short, but I can assure you it will never be worn like that, so no worries.

I used the same cotton, so the life of this dress will not be 10 years either, but I am really happy to have it back in my wardrobe.

And yes, I am starting to really love biais binding of all seams. I used a very sheer cotton-silk which worked magic here.

WInter-vacation dress

Soooo, I just realized that I am seriously behind blogging my sewing. There are even some projects from my super-productive December which still have not made it to the blog. Not talking about some 2017 makes. I took a few pictures today, so hopefully, I will catch up little bit.

Today, I am sharing a dress which was made specially for our x-mas vacation in Florence/Venice, Italy. We spent a week there, mostly visiting the cities, so I knew we were going to be cold and I needed a comfy and warm dress for that.

Fortunately, I still had some of the bordeaux wool I bought in my early sewing days. Back then I sewed this dress which saved me during some really cold days. The dress shrank too much in the end (I wash all my dresses in a machine, so this just happens from time to time), so I had to throw the dress away.

This time, I went for a simple shift dress and I cut it out large, in order to count with some shrinking in the future :o) Now, the dress seems little bit bigger, but not shocking and it feels like a pyjama when being worn.
I used a bit of the reverse colour on the hem, just to add something different to the simple shift.
The lining is some bright red silk which is the little fun only I know. I am trying to use up some colourful silks from my stash instead of constantly buying black lining, so this is a win.

The dress has pockets, but on the sewing side, this is pretty much it.

Sometimes you just need a quick and simple project which ends up a cosy and comfortable dress.