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.

White Silk Blouse

I desperately lack some basics in my wardrobe, like simple black and white tops with long sleeves. So when the November Burda arrived, I wanted to try the 109 model. As I have already sewn the skirt which goes with it, I can almost re-create their outfit.

The blouse is quite simple, I even sewed a muslin, but somehow on the fine silk, I ended up with too much fabric around the neckline. I played with it little bit and the result is quite OK, even though not perfect.

The fabric is a very flowy white silk which would have been quite easy to sew if it was not white. I was really afraid that all the mistakes and imperfections would be visible, co I was extremely careful with everything.

The neckline is finished with bias binding.

As for the sleeves finishes I omitted all closing, as the bias binding and some pleating was quite sufficient, I do not think the sleeve finish needs to be very close to your wrist.

I know the blouse is not perfectly ironed and it is even more visible with this photo lighting, but honestly, it is just too cold outside to dare taking pictures on our balcony.

Hello To Summer

When doing my yearly sum up I actually found pictures of this dress on my computer which never got to the blog and yet, I think it was quite a success. So here we go...

The dress is Burda 101B from April 2016. This number was just full of treasures, I must have sewn several pieces from it this year so I am totally getting my money worth of it. The Burda dress is a maxi which I am never sure of wearing: being on the short side (158cm), large maxi dress just seems a bad idea. I might be wrong as I see a lot of them on Japanese sewers but for me it just feels wrong. Also, the dress is supposed to be pretty large and I did not have so much fabric.

I call the fabric balloon viscose even though the motive is not quite balloon-y. Contrary to what I usually buy, it is a fine viscose with a very soft feel. Probably this dress would also be nice in some kind of silk chiffon, but the viscose weight keeps it properly in place which is not a bad idea at all.

I had already sewn with viscose in my early days and it often ended up in a disaster: gaping, stretching out etc. So for this dress I knew I had to be very careful and interface the maximum.

Actually, I used sewn-in interfacing on the whole top of the dress for several reasons:
- avoid any possible gaping on the cleavage (it is quite deep anyhow, so I wanted to make sure it remains in place)
- support the weight of the skirt part, as there is a lot of it - I even decreased the skirt volume little bit and remember, I shortened it, but still, that's a lot of fabric there

As you can see I did not bother with pattern matching, anyhow, the fabric is too busy and the folding in front of the dress would not allow me to do it properly. I only made sure the colours continued in the same way on the whole dress.

Not quite sure how this colour goes with my pale skin, but it is probably just a particular issue of this picture. I think it is a very cute and flowy summer dress which is extremely comfortably during the very hot days. Unfortunately, as our 2016 big vacation was a road trip, this beauty got out only a few times (it is quite inappropriate to wear to work), but hopefully I will be able to wear it more next year.

One Thousand and Two Nights

Just because one pair of shorts and one pair of trousers with two tops are not enough, and most importantly because I still had some fabric left, I decided to complete my home-wear collection.

As already said, I had three different but perfectly matching silk fabrics, completed with orange silk-cotton and I figured out nothing better would get sewn from the remnants than some other home-wear.
I need to say that the most orange fabric had already been used for a dress which is basically a copy of this one. However, even on the second try I did not get the fit right (wrap is slowly becoming my nightmare as I fail each and every time) and on the orange all errors were much more visible than on the black one, therefore no real-person pictures, only dress form ones.

It was kind of a pity as the fabric is nice and very comfortable and the sewing was nice and clean.

So I decided to recycle the dress into another pair of shorts for the home-wear collection. Using the same pattern as last time, I just put in elastic instead of a tie band and that's it.

To complete the batch, I used the rest of the orange cotton-silk to sew another Anna-based top.

And the chiffon pieces became little summer tops based on Burda 123-12/2014

The tops are sewn from quite small remnants of the silk chiffon, being careful with the pattern directions. As usual, all underlined with brown silk-cotton.
The colours and pattern being rather busy, I ommitted all other decorations suggested by the pattern and am quite happy with them as such.

I really like that none of the pieces are the same and yet, they match perfectly with each other.