Sewing Plans, Progress and Stuff

Not a poetic blog post title, but there we go!

I’ve started sewing – Simplicity 2588 in the Prince of Wales wool that I’d originally earmarked for New Look 6000.  Until of course that some lovely people pointed out that the plaid wouldn’t be square about the neckline due to the waist dart/pleat things!  On a plaid this size (2″ish) that would be really really noticeable and really really annoy me!

So, I opted to use it for a dress that I can make with no tracing, no fitting and just get on with!  Enter Simplicity 2588 that I made earlier this year.  I went for a circle skirt again as I had enough fabric left.  Although it’s not going to be a true circle as having sewn up one of the seams I was serging the seam allowances and cut a ruddy great hole in one of the panels.  So, it’ll be a nearly circle skirt and there will be no form of matching on the back seam at all.  But I wont have to look at that so I’m not going to stress it (although there was some choice language at the time…).

I need to insert the zip and then let it hang for a while whislt I construct the lining.  Much as I love wool, I don’t want it next to bare skin, so a full lining this will have.  Hopefully by the end of tomorrow, all I’ll need to do is hem…

So that’s the progress!

Now for the plans…  I managed to get a pre-loved copy of Simplicty 2444 from eBay and have also, thanks to Joanne, ordered some lovely fabric at the princely sum of £3.49 a metre.  What I can’t decide is which to use!  Do I go for the birds or the stars?

Fantasia Stars Navy from Fabricland

House Martins Black from Fabricland

Both fabrics are from Fabric Land in Brighton, who have a great selection at a great price.  The website isn’t my cup of tea and you need to ring to order.  I don’t mind the phone call (the person I spoke to was super helpful and really friendly) but I’m not a fan of the site design.  I’m more than willing to overlook it though for £3.49/m fabric – particularly when others are selling the exact same print at the best part of £12/m!

I’ll be going for the simple version of S2444 with short sleeves.  No collar or anything for my first go at the pattern.  If you want some inspiration there are some stunners out there in blog land!  Not only Joanne’s version, but Roisin at Dolly Clacket has made this pattern a number of times and Dibs, DapperDuds, Gemma and ElevenStitches have all made versions.  In fact, just google image search the pattern for a ton of inspiration instantly.

And now to the ‘stuff’!  Having sourced the perfect cotton sateen for my Peony in a gorgeous chocolate brown with a random cream polkadot pattern, I called the shop to order to only be told that someone had come in the day before and bought 9m of it and that there was only a meter left!  Aaarrgggghhhhh!

So I gave up on the interwebs and went to my local bricks and mortar store as I needed lining anyway.  For once my luck was in – they were having one of their completely unpredictable and unadvertised stock clearances where random (to me) bolts are reduced and sample lengths are sold.  I scored a beautiful milk chocolate wool with a duck egg blue stripe for £10/m rather than the £15/m it was before being put on sale.  I’ll admit that this is the top end of my price range, but it is gorgeous (and was the same price after discount as the sateen would have been)!

Nom Nom – Milk Chocolate Wool!

I also got other necessities such as 22″ invisible zips (how can they vary from £1.59 to £1.99 for a zip that is in effect identical apart from the colour?!), thread and lining for Simplicity 2588 that I’m currently making and more to match the duck egg blue stripes in the wool for the Peony.  I have enough lining fabric in my collection for the other wools I already posess (well apart from the grey wool for the Vogue 8280 – I want to line that in hot pink, but I’d spent enough for this month!).

I Love the Cadbury’s Purple and rich chocolate combination

I also got this gorgeous cotton print for £7/m.  I love the aubergine with the latte colour back ground.  It’s my idea of autumn!  I think I’ll use that on New Look 6070.  Which means the teal plaid will probably get used on New Look 6968?  New Look 6000 is going to be made from a beautiful navy wool that Annabelle swapped with me, if I can eak it out!

Making Plans

Thank you for your consideration regarding my last post.  Thank you too to those who took the time to email.  It means a lot.

Slowly, slowly I’m starting to try and resume some sort of normality.  I haven’t touched my sewing machine since finishing my V2903 and I know I still have yet to post any pictures of it!  I will though…

So, I’ve been distracting myself with a bit of autumn / winter planning of the sewing variety.  I have discovered that I feel a million more times attractive in a dress or skirt, so that’s the direction my sewing is going to go in.

My Beignet has been in heavy rotation and I have some dark blue moleskin type fabric that is destined to become mkII, although sized down a bit.

My Sencha gets worn a lot too, so there will probably be another couple of versions of that as well, again sized down a bit.

Then there comes the work wardrobe (thank you for the suggestions, twitterers!).  My office is weird in that it’s in an old 1960s building that is either boiling hot or freezing cold.  Comfortable happens for about an hour once a week if your lucky!  So I’m planning on dresses with 3/4 length or short sleeves as full length sleeves just annoy me.

So my pattern plans are:

New Look 6000 View C in a prince of wales plaid

Colette Peony with long sleeves in a navy wool I think (if I have enough!)

Simplicity 2724 (thank you Liz!) – the middle photo with the round neckline, 3/4 sleeves and slim skirt with a thick dark pinstripe cotton for the skirt and a japanese slubby cotton with a fireworks sort of pattern for the bodice.

Vogue 8280 with the sleeves and bodice of view B and the skirt of View C in a dark grey wool

New Look 6070 in a teal plaid

New Look 6968 View D, which is actually the photo as it has pockets and the tie collar  Fabric to be decided, but I like the idea of some sort of polkadot…

I’ve got nearly all the fabrics already in my ‘collection’.  I just need to get some sort of polkadot for NL6968.  And some colour catcher sheets for S2724!

Does anyone have any experience with any of these patterns (I’ll be referring to her Scruffyness’ posts for NL6000)?  Any suggestions or thoughts?  Have you planned your sewing, or are you winging it?  I know I often plan big and sew a much smaller number of garments, but hey dream sewing is fun too and if I actually manage even three of these I’ll be quite happy.

Vogue 2903 – Fabric

So, back to Vogue 2903!  As of Saturday just gone I’ve got three weeks…  Eek!

On the Wednesday after we’d returned from holiday I had a day off where I was by myself. Much as I love Husband and Boy, it’s nice to have some alone time where I can get things done and think clearly.  As this was all prior to the bombshell weekend, thinking revolved around fabric for V2903.

I knew that I agreed with you all that teal was the colour to go for, so armed with my swatch I went off notion shopping.  I’d intended on getting lining, underlining, thread and zipper, and then ordering the dress fabric.

In the end I ended up buying the fabric for the dress from a home-dec fabric store!  The sample above is the best representation of the colour…

This is what I chose.  It’s a teal dupion style fabric with a slight sheen/sparkle and a slubby texture.  It’s actually several shades darker in real life, but the bright sunshine has kinda bleached out the photo!  Like the taffeta I was originally looking at, it’s entirely man made (polyester) but has more weight than the taffeta.  It also drapes better, presses pretty well and basically I love it!  I hope you don’t mind me going off piste a little?

I also aquired some lightweight calico and dress net to underline with.

And some lining.  Both the lining and dress net were described on the bolt as ‘petrol blue’ but I love the tonal aspect as there’s wasn’t a perfect match to the dress fabric.

Gah, the flash has bleached the colour on the dress fabric AGAIN!  It’s three different colours in three different photos!

On the way home I also bought some fabric dye.  Looking in my bag of fabric on the way back to the car the natural calico fabric was just too jarring against my teals and petrol blues.  OK, it’s only an underlining and the dress will be lined so no-one’s really going to see it.  But I’d know.  And the more I thought about it, the more it was bugging me!

So, after pre-washing the calico I took my first foray into dying fabric.

Just as a note:  When they say wear gloves, wear them!  I stuck my hands in for about 30 seconds and the blue has only just (10 days later) come off my cuticles.  For several days it looked like I may have a slight circulation problem with my hands!

I also finished off my flat pattern adjustments.  Please be aware these are just to fit my body – the pattern its self is really well drafted and goes together well (it did at the toile stage, but I’m ahead of myself…).  Here’s what I changed:

Full Bust Adjustment
Sleeve width adjustment
Shortened the bodice by 2″
Took 8″ off the drafted length of the skirt

After the toile I also added more of a curve under the bust and at the waist.  I’m also going to use the narrower yoke, rather than the wider one.  I thought I’d prefer the wider yoke but I was wrong!  Heh, another good argument for the toile – you can check that you like the style decisions that you’ve made!

Tonight is fabric cutting and basting the dress fabric to the underlinings so that the dress fabric is on the outside, then the dyed calico and the dress net uppermost.

V2903 – Musings and Modifications

First up, thank you for your thoughts on the colour for this dress!  I think the Teal is going to be a clear winner!  Which makes me happy as on reflection its my favourite too!

I think it’s only fair to say that this blog is going to be a bit V2903 heavy for the next month or so.  This is a ‘project’ dress and I want to do the best I can with it.  I hope you guys are going to be OK with me talking about it incessantly and live through the process with me?  I am probably (make that definitely!) going to be asking for advice and help saving my sanity as we go along too!

So, on to the modifications and musings!

V2903 – Illustrations and Line Drawings

The dress is tea length, which looks gorgeous on tall willowy people.  I’m neither tall (5’4″) or willowy!  I have a suspicion that the tea length will drown me so I am highly likely to chop the skirt off around knee length.  I’ll probably toile the thing as per the pattern though just to see.  You can bet I’ll be asking your opinions on this aspect – sometimes you need someone a little more detached to make a more objective judgement!

I’m also going to remove quite a bit of ease.  Comparing  the body measurements with the garment measurements printed on the pattern shows that there’s 2 1/2″ ease at the bust and 3 1/2″ at the waist!  That seems like quite a lot to me.  I know I prefer much less ease in the bust so I’ll be taking this down to about 1″ and about 1 1/2″ at the waist.  I’m adding a little more to the waist as I really want the lines to be smooth there (and it’s also my biggest area of paranoia).

The only other modification is that I’m going to use the deeper yoke with the shorter sleeves.  Which isn’t really a modification, just messing with the pattern variations!  Then it’s just the usual fitting alterations (full bust adjustment, broad back and upper arms).

Stuck with me so far?  Ready for the musings?!

The fashion fabric is going to be poly taffeta (silk is so far out of my budget, sigh).  I intend to underline it to give it a bit more body and add some strength to the seams.  Originally I intended to stop there.

Then I started having a chat with Evie who blogs at pendlestitches.  She made V2903 for her wedding dress!  She underlined hers with lawn and dress net, with the lawn closest to the duchess satin so the net didn’t leave any marks when pressing.  She also lined it!

As a result I’ve been doing lots of research on underlining.  The first 10 minutes of chapter 6 of the Couture Dress class on Craftsy has loads of useful information.  Tasia and Gertie have both posted about the use of underlining too.

I’ve realised that I need to think about what I want the final dress to look like to make sure I make the right choices for the underlinings.  Ready for a list?

Smooth appearance on panels and seams
Strong smooth seams
Crisp edges at neck, yoke and sleeve hems
Strong, smooth as I can get it, zipper insertion
Invisible seam allowances and hems
Full skirt with some structure of its own (I will be wearing a petticoat/crinoline as well)
Crisp pleats

This has led me to think that underlining with a light weight cotton (lawn, batiste, muslin, calico) in all areas of the dress, and then adding a layer of dress net to the bodice and skirt pieces only.  I’d love to use this technique where the underlining also finishes the seams.  The princess seams will be just too curvy.  Sigh.

On the subject of curvy curvyness; my FBA is going to add bigger curves to the the already curved princess seams in the bodice.  Do you think adding some bias organza strips when sewing the seam is a good idea?  There’ll be a lot of notching and clipping in that area and I don’t want the seam to be weak.  I wouldn’t cut into the organza as there should be enough flexibility in the bias for it to be able to follow the curve without any help.  Do you think this would add some strength, or am I just making my life difficult for little to no gain?

Using the dress net will make a lining somewhat essential.  There isn’t a lining pattern included so I’ll have to draft that from the pattern.  I really want to hide the ‘guts’ of the dress though so would prefer the lining doesn’t hang free inside the skirt.

Should I bag the lining to the hem (like in a lined jacket, where the lining bags down a little) or should I just use french tacks to secure it at each non-pleated seam point (4 points)?

There’s a lot of pleats in the skirt and I can imagine that when they’re all flat, there’s a fair bit of yardage, so an exact replica in lining scares me a bit due to the amount of sewing that would go into attaching the lining at the hem.  But then  I’m also not sure that a french tacked lining would work great either!  I can’t really find an answer to this anywhere, so if anyone has any resource suggestions I’d be ever so grateful!

I’ll be leaving you all in peace for a short while as we’re going on holiday in the next day or so for a week or so (heh, Husband is busy with work, so whilst we’ve booked ten days, we may have to come back after a week!).  Once I’m back it’ll be toile time as I hope to get the pattern traced and the flat pattern adjustments done before we go.  I think you’ll like the toile – it’s going to be made out of a blue stripy duvet cover!