Sea Fever

There has been holiday!  Sometimes I take a machine with me, and I almost did this year, but in the end I decided to leave it at home.

While on holiday I saw a beautiful dress - the Stay Sail from Seasalt.

It's a simple jersey dress with a slightly nautical vibe that looks very easy to wear.  I LOVED it, but it's £55!  And they didn't have my size anyway.













As I looked at it and thought about it I realised that it was quite similar to the Fancy Tiger Fen dress, a pattern I already own and have made twice.   I asked on their facebook page if anyone had made the Fen in a knit - it's intended for a woven - and while they didn't know of any they give me some very helpful tips.

Saturday saw me hitting the fabric shop for some striped jersey - and I struck very lucky with the sale as it was £3.50 a metre!  So yesterday I got to drafting and sewing...

Alterations to the pattern:

• Sized down by one size - you can do that when going from a woven to a knit to take account of the negative ease with a stretchy material
• Changed the pocket hole from curved inset to a slanted one
• Removed the bodice darts - I just cut them up the centre and overlapped the legs to remove them 
• Lengthened the skirt by about 3 inches - I felt the previous two were a tiny bit too short and while the jersey is heavier and would probably have pulled down enough I fancied a bit more knee coverage!

After that it was a relatively simple sew.  I stabilised the waistband with elastic - there's clear stuff you can use but I find it maddeningly scratchy (SUCH a princess!) so I normally just use normal narrow elastic which is softer.  I cut it to the width of the bodice and then sewed it to the skirt top with a stretch stitch.  it's done a really nice soft gather that is pretty evenly balanced.

Last of all I used a bit of bought stretch binding for a tiny bit of colour detail and twin stitched the cuffs and hem with a matching red.  You can't tell, but I know it's there and that's enough for me!

I think it would even be possible to size down a little more at the waist but that's a tiny detail.

All in all I'm really pleased with it, it's a close enough approximation of the dress I saw, it's SO comfortable, loose enough but not ridiculously baggy, wearable with gym shoes or sandals, cool, simple, pretty.

So, £55 or £9?  I know which one I prefer!

I'm going to call it a Fen-Sail!

Shoes - Ancient Skecher Go Walks
Hair - bouncy
Greengages - falling off the tree

A tale of two dresses. Or three. Or four...

Grab a cuppa and a snack, this post is L O N G and full of pictures!

Since I attended the bodice-drafting class at Makeplace in Norwich I have been doing a LOT of thinking and planning.  And worrying.  And buying books.  And reading blog posts.  And looking at my lovely fitted block!















And then I drafted a sort of sleeveless top for myself - a bit like a Colette Sorbetto but without the having to add a bust adjustment.  Well, that was a disaster!  Armholes down to the waist, hello bra straps, neckline wider than Gaping Gill...all mostly because I have NO IDEA how to add design ease! Let's just chuck the fabric into the scrap bag and call it a learning experience!  It scared me off for a while.

Then I started thinking about what a waste of a class it would be to not do anything else so I looked at the Winifred Aldrich book Metric Pattern Cutting For Women again and started to understand how to actually use it with my block.


I decided to make a button front dress with a swishy skirt.  I cut a half circle for the skirt using the calculator on Patti Brower's website - which is absolutely the best calculator there is!




Then it was time for pattern drafting.  First of all I rotated the dart to the armscye and added a button stand/placket to the centre front.  Those are two things I've never done before - but then I've never really designed something from scratch before anyway so...

I made a toile and the front was really nice - plenty of space, but the waist and bust dart points were ascloseasthis, so I decided to turn them into a princess seam. Oh yes, I know NOW that I need to shorten the dart points for actual wear!

Now, I've never even sewn a princess seam, let alone drafted one of my own, but I like a challenge.  Brave or foolhardy, you decide...

Well, I made a princess seam from the armscye and it worked pretty well.  I liked the look so I dug out a piece of weird vintage fabric I bought a couple of months ago at the Maker's Month thing.  I have NO idea what it is - some kind of nylon stuff - it's a pretty floral, 2.75m for £3.  Even if it went wrong it wouldn't be a massive waste of money.

Oh so slippery though.  It slid all over the table.  I managed to get it cut, but it was a challenge.  And then there wasn't enough for sleeves too, but there was enough to make some bias binding so that's what I've used to edge the arm-holes.

The button placket is quite narrow but I managed to find 10 matching buttons in my tin.  By the following day I only had 9 buttons.  I have no idea where the tenth went, I think the cat flicked it on to the floor - they were enticingly skittering all over the top of my sewing table...

Anyway, I like it, it needs a bit of taking in at the waist, but I like wearing it, weird fabric and all.

After that I decided to use a piece of Liberty-ish poplin from my stash - I've had it for ages and have already used a different colourway for a Fancy Tiger Fen, so I know it cuts and sews up really nicely.  It was from my local market and is pretty pricey at £10 a metre but it looks very like a combo of Liberty prints Pelagia and Ianthe.














Alterations this time round were to add pockets, draft the princess from the shoulder and add it to the back pieces too, face the neck, put in a back zip instead of front buttons and to scoop the neck.

What went wrong?  Oh a lot!  I put the pockets in too low - it's not a great look scrabbling around the knees!  So I took them out, opened up the seam and put them back in higher up.

I drafted a facing using this tutorial http://www.emmakespatterns.com/all-in-one-facing/ and then followed the instructions in the Gretchen Hirsch's Ultimate Dress Book for construction.  And having sewn it together I couldn't turn it through the shoulders.  So I unpicked the armholes, chopped it into just a neck facing and then made bias tape for the armholes.












The zip went in PERFECTLY!  My best zip EVAH!

But somewhere along the line the princess seam has gone a tiny bit too big - it's bagging a bit at the front.  It really was perfect on my toile.  And now it isn't.  I might unpick it and recut the lines, but I probably won't.  Or at least not now anyway.

The length after hemming is exactly where I wanted.  And the fit is smooth and has just enough ease to feel fitted but comfortable.  Pattern matching is a bit hit and miss, but in a busy pattern I don't think it's such an issue.














I think this fits the criteria for a spring/summer dress and I reckon I will be wearing it a lot!  If it's windy and you see me out you might want to avert your gaze, the half circle skirt is quite fluffy and prone to knicker-flashing in a stiff breeze!

I love the final look, and I think I shall be tinkering with this over the next couple of months, getting the seams right, maybe narrowing the skirt a little - that would make it less of a fabric-eater for sure and I have some lovely narrow vintage crepe that is just LONGING to be a pretty dress...

Note: I do have two legs in the usual run of things, one is propped on the wall.  It's a pose that doesn't really work in a dress does it!

Shoe(s) - Asda
Shoelaces - you can't see them, they have cherries on them
Necklace - pretty but weirdly scratchy
Hair - the less said the better TBH.

Still quite obsessed with Groove

I finally got some sewing time this weekend when The Girl has a playdate yesterday afternoon (thanks Katie!).

It was time to try my hand at drafting a flutter sleeve.  I found some simple instructions, drew a new short sleeve piece and proceeded to turn it into what I wanted.  And it's worked, pretty much.  It's nice and loose on the arm and drapes quite well in one version, less so in the cotton jersey as that's just thicker and less drapey overall.

As for construction, it all went together as expected - I think I'm getting to be a dab-hand at this dress now.

I'm pretty pleased overall.

The black/white flowers has a less dramatic high-low hem, even though I had 2.5m of stuff it was still a bit of a squeeze so I just cut it a bit shorter.

The blue snowflake is the cotton jersey, I was aiming for more of a tunic length for wearing with tights and boots, plus I only had 2.1m.  I might chop it a bit shorter and straight across to get the edge to roll as I don't want to hem it.

(This picture is a bit blurry and includes bonus husband-thumb shadow.)

Flip flops - ancient.

Apart from that I've made a couple of draught excluders this afternoon from some green and gold damask.  The house will be nice and cosy this winter!

Groove is in the Heart

After the joy of discovering on Sunday how wonderful the Groove Dress is, I just had to make another one.  I had some lovely green striped jersey that I bought a few months ago, 2.3m in length, a shade under the recommended fabric requirement but enough all the same.  

I love a horizontal stripe.  All that fashion 'advice' about stripes being widening on the larger figure is such nonsense, it's actually the case that it can slim the shape as it creates a weird illusion.  I saw it on a science programme, but you don't have to take my word for it, have a Google and see what you find!

Anyway, construction - I slightly shortened the back piece to make sure I got it all out of the length, and to be honest my pattern matching is DREADFUL!  But who is looking at my seams?!

I love how this has turned out, and I'm super proud of the neatness of the neck band.

It's just so...wearable.  Comfortable, still lovely and swingy, looks smart enough for work and casual enough for going out.  AND it's madly quick to make - 30 minutes cutting out, an hour to sew up, and that included swapping over my overlocker and regular machine twice!  I started sewing at about 10.20 and finished at 11,15.

Next I'm thinking about hacking the pattern to make a swingy t-shirt top and I've got a nice bit of blue jersey just begging to be sewn...

Shoes - LK Bennett (in a sale a long time ago!)
Necklace - made by me
Bedroom - needs tidying

Let's Groove Tonight!

I've seen this pattern around in the last few weeks, there are lots of lovely makes on Instagram, and it was Meg of Cookin' and Craftin' who really inspired me to have a closer look.

It's the Groove Dress from Madeit Patterns.  Look at it!  Isn't it gorgeous?!  So swingy and loose, and so many variations.  It was love at first sight, but still I didn't buy it immediately.

Normally I am quite impulsive (seriously, the husband has to talk me out of throwing caution to the wind All. The. Time.  Which is a bit rich considering he asked me to marry him the fourth time we met!).  Anyway, I really hum'd and hah'd about buying the pattern because 1) I wasn't sure it would suit me and 2) although it's a jersey dress I wasn't sure it would fit, even with the stretch, since I am outside the upper measurement.  But I loved it so much!  I really did, and every blog and picture I saw just made me love it more.  So I bought it and printed it but I still didn't get to making.

Then, oh happy day, last week I threw on a linen dress of mine and realised that the style was pretty similar.  And I knew I should JFDI.

This comes as a PDF pattern.  I have varying success with these, sometimes they print out perfectly and other times they just don't, even when the scaling square is right they go a bit askew, usually with two separate bits on one sheet.  I was pretty lucky with Groove though.

And then I got The Fear.  I was sure it wasn't going to fit.  So I did the sensible thing and asked for advice on Madeit's Facebook page and that was great because they replied really quickly.  And what they advised was to simply increase the pattern by tracing a new line around the existing pattern pieces.  "Ok" I said, blithely.  I HAVE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE!

Actually it's not so hard, and it's probably a good skill to have.  And jersey is very forgiving.  I did measure some of it, but I eyeballed a lot of it.  And I seem to have lucked out to be honest - the sleeves and the bodice seams, and the side seams were EXACTLY the same size.  This doesn't always happen with patterns I haven't altered!

I opted for the scoop neck, short sleeves and high-low hem - one combination of many.  I can't do the maths, but with 2 sleeves, 5 necklines and 2 hems there are a lot of variations to choose from.

I also only had 2m of the fabric I was using.  According to the instructions this was not enough.  I laid both pattern pieces out and it looked fine but as soon as I'd cut one it just wasn't.  So in my JFDI frame of mind I decided to piece the back.  I cut the back piece as a separate skirt and bodice and I also had to cut the back bodice as two halves. This means that the back is not one smooth sweep, but I don't think it's made too much of a problem overall and I'm quite pleased with myself for thinking of it as a solution.

Construction is nice and simple - without having the piece the back it's shoulder seams, neck band, sleeves, side seams.  I do love flat sleeves, it's so much easier!  In total it took me about half an hour to trim the pages, an hour or so to stick the pattern together, 90 minutes to re-draft it and then trace it off, an hour to cut, and about 3 hours sewing.

Would I make it again?  OH YES, 1000 TIMES YES! I love it.  It's comfortable, it's swingy, I love the high-low hem.  It's my new favourite thing.

I do not want to take it off!  I have some gorgeous green striped jersey which will be lovely and I'm already thinking about when I'll be able to make the time to put it together.

As a perk, if you buy the adult or children pattern for Groove you get the teen sizes chucked in free.  I would like it if one could choose whether to get the teen or the kid sizes, but a freebie is a freebie after all, and I am sure I know a teen or two that might like it!  I will have to buy the kids' pattern though because The Girl wants one.

I'm off to dance around my sitting room to some classic disco...

4 days later...

I can't remember what I wore on Saturday, it was me-made, possibly the Love Notions Laundry Day Tee...

Sunday was a pyjama day, while I was sewing up my next thing, Monday was my cherries sleeveless top.

Today!  Today I wore my new dress!

This is Simplicity 1080, the Dottie Angel dress.  You might have seen it around, I first spotted it in a magazine a few months ago and really loved it, but held off buying it for ages.  I finally stumped up for it a month or so ago, and bought the green fabric at the time.  You can't really tell, but the pattern is little diamond shapes of red purple and yellow dots.

Then I got the purple, which is a linen, a couple of weeks after that, it was only £3.95 a metre, and the pockets were from a fat quarter in my stash which by total fluke just fell right for the colour and pattern.

I traced it and made a muslin in some old sheeting to see if I needed a bust adjustment, and it seemed that I didn't so I cut the pieces on Saturday and started sewing on Sunday.

Now, I don't know whether you've read any reviews of this pattern, but they are a bit of a mixed bunch!  The pattern itself is lovely, but the instructions are completely faffy and madly inconsistent.

For about half of it you're being told to cover all the seams with bias tape and then all of a sudden you're chucked into french seam world.  And I have NO idea why it's like that, or why the pash for bias covered seams.  Essentially it's a simple construction tricked out to be quite labour intensive.  Which is great if you've got like a YEAR to make it.  Or fancy showing off your seams*.  But if, like me, you've got a couple of hours for 2 or 3 evenings, Nope, nopity nope.  No bias covering for me.

So I mostly ignored the bias stuff and did my own thing.

Ok.  So I joined the contrast panel with a regular seam and then pressed it downwards and top-stitched to catch it all.

The shoulders and sides are french seams, which I'm really glad I did because the fabrics turned out to have some serious fray-tendencies.  I made my own bias tapes for the pockets, neck and arm-holes.

And I hand did the hem - I was going to twin-needle it but the linen is one of those that ONLY CREASES WHEN YOU SIT ON IT!  Pressing it is largely ineffective so it needed pins in horizontally and a lot of stopping and hand-folding.  Again.  And again.  And again.

I also hand-finished the neck binding.

The side ties were a bit high so I moved them down.  I might put them back up again a little bit, if I can be bothered. (Clue: I probably can't be bothered).

However, it was worth all the faff, I absolutely LOVE the colour combination - SUFFRAGETTES! - and I really love the length.

I wore it to work today and felt great.

Also, POCKETS!  I love a dress with pockets.

Anyway, if you're thinking about making this pattern and being put off by the reviews or the instructions, pah, JUST DO IT!  But ignore the bias seam covering crazy-pants, unless that's totally your bag, in which case, y'know, knock yourself out!



*Disclaimer: I do like showing off my seams when I've done an especially nice one.  A french seam is thing of beauty.  Do those and show them off.