Latest wedding guest dress

Hello sewers! 

I'm here to show a dress I made for a friend's wedding yesterday, and then ended up not wearing in favour of my leopard dress, because it felt better when I tried it on yesterday! Sigh, best laid plans... 

Anyway, I'm really happy with this project! It is the tweaked pattern from my last dress, a copy of an & Other Stories number. I took a 1" wedge out of the back bodice, as suggested by super Julie at Sew Over It, and that solved the excess fabric around the bum and back issue. I didn't make any other changes except I had bought enough fabric to make it the length I wanted this time. I'm really happy with the fit now - it's pretty relaxed, but I think the nice shape stops it looking too frumpy.

The fabric is a silk noil from Classic Textiles on Goldhawk Road, and was £6 a metre. It's probably not the best quality stuff, but it's not see-through which was my biggest fear about it. I'll see how it holds up to washing. It had some grub on it too, now I think about it - it isn't the greatest. 

But it was perfect for this idea, which was painted dots on cream! I cut the fabric pieces out and then painted them with Speedball ink and a brush - all in all I reckon painting didn't take much longer than an hour or so (the dots may have become more slapdash as I went along!) The result is a lot like a Nani Iro that I bought when I first started sewing, but a LOT cheaper!

The pockets are my favourite feature about it. I think having failed to wear this to the wedding yesterday, it's going to have to be a slightly dressy casual dress instead! I'm sure it will manage.

Happy Sunday, sewers!

Cottoning on

Hello sewers!

It's started to warm up a little in London, which has meant it's time for some summer sewing! When I saw Katie's jumpsuit on Instagram I had an immediate desire to replicate it, and have rather unoriginally done so, almost down to the letter. I followed her tip to Indianstores on Etsy and bought a few different fabrics, both of which I've used here.

This is the Butterick 6312 pattern, made up in a size S thanks to Katie's observation of it running large. It should have been a quick and easy sew, but took me ages due to being my hopeless with putting the pockets in, and various other nonsense. But it came out fine in the end.

I used the reverse side of the dotted fabric to make it look a bit less pajama-y. But I dunno, it's a pretty silly thing once on, not nearly as nice as Katie's I don't think! Never mind, good jumpsuit-sewing practise!

My next thing to share is this dress, a wearable toile made from 2 metres of another Indianstores hand-blocked cotton. I bought this dress from & Other Stories a couple of weeks ago for a wedding:

It's made from lovely bright orange crepe. I really love its shape, so I made a pattern from tracing round it, and this is my first toile. The picture below is before hemming and closer to how it'll end up - actually I only had enough fabric to cut the front to the right length, and then it all had to be shortened. But next time this is the length I want, which I think make a much more interesting shape.

And after cutting and hemming:

For a first go I'm really thrilled with it, especially as I had to do a bit of origami with the pockets. I'd like them to stick out a bit more than they do here, but I think a stiffer fabric could have that effect anyway.

The top is a very simple shape with big kimono-style cut on sleeves. It's interfaced round the front and down the back, which is open and fastens at the top with a button or two (safety pin for now!) Then the skirt has an invisible zip at the back. 

You can see here that there is some excess fabric round the bottom of the back which I was puzzling over, but Julie who is teaching the Vintage Shirt Dress class that I'm taking at Sew Over It spotted that if I removed a 1" wedge from the length of the back bodice that'll be an easy fix. I felt very grateful as this wouldn't have occurred to me!

Unbelted!

I have some nice silk noil fabric in mind I've seen in Classic Textiles on Goldhawk Road, which I'm going to print on and hope that the next version will be ready for my friend's wedding in a week's time!

Until soon!