Haunted Mansion Purse: Fabric and Purse Guts

Now that I have a pattern, I laid out all my purse goodies in preparation for purse making.

To add fanciness, I'm installing purse feet.  A good purse should always have some feet.  I'm also using magnetic snaps to close the outer pocket and the purse itself, as well as metal rings for the straps.

Hello voodoo friend!

Now, I've never made a real purse before so I did some research on what goes into a purse.  There are so many choices for interfacing and of course, many opinions on what should be used.  Luckily this purse is just for me so I have freedom for trial and error.

I chose to go with Thermolam and some fusible fleece.  Thermolam, I thought, is supposed to be stiffer than fusible fleece so I planned to interface my exterior with Thermolam and my interior with fusible fleece.  However, even though I bought 1 yard of each, the fusible fleece was much more narrow than the Thermolam.  I ended up interfacing my interior and exterior opposite how I planned, but I think it's going to work anyway.  The fusible fleece I bought actually seems stiffer than the Thermolam though there is not that much difference.  I also read that Thermolam is less likely to crinkle when fused.  I know there are people out there who could read this post and tell me that I'm totally wrong, but like I said, I'm ok with trial and error here.  Wish me luck!

Haunted Mansion Purse: Drafting a Pattern

Once I had my own little line drawing of my purse design, I needed to figure out how to translate that into a pattern.  I took my trusty ruler and figured out what dimensions I wanted my purse and all it's features.  I dissected the drawing and drew out examples of all the pieces I needed.  From there it was just a matter of measuring and drawing it out on Swedish Tracing Paper, adding seam allowance, and cutting it all out.

Don't forget to label each pattern piece and write how many pieces need to be cut, just like a normal pattern.
Next up, cutting the fabric!

Dooney & Burke Haunted Mansion Inspired Purse

It has been suggested to me that I make purses.  I've already made two little bags for the Renaissance Festival, why not keep at it?

So I did some googling research on it and drew up a design for a super cute purse for myself.  It was going to be grey corduroy and totally adorable.  I was looking at fabric to line it with when I had a sudden inspiration to imitate a purse that I.Am.In.Love. with.

The Dooney & Burke Haunted Mansion purse.

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Now, I've never been one for labels.  Especially ridiculously priced purses.  #sorrynotsorry.  Then came this one.  So dark.  So beautiful.  So unique.  I need it.  I need it despite the $330 price tag and likelihood of it always being sold out.

I started to draw up a design I knew I could make.  I googled how to do a few special things to up the oomph factor.  I had decided on a black on black damask print fabric for the interior of my grey corduroy purse when I realized it actually would be perfect for my own version of the Haunted Mansion purse.

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Yep.  That will do.  I picked a bright red broadcloth for the interior, and black sateen for the straps. (Leather straps are like, $20 for a set.)  The next step is to turn my drawing into pattern pieces on swedish tracing paper, then it's off to assembly!  SOEXCITED.

The Great Cape Adventure: Finished Product

The moment you've all been waiting for ..... the finished cape!

I had Hubs take some pictures of me with his fancy camera.  So warm and cozy!

It was a beautiful day too, probably one of the last lovely days of Fall this year.

The last couple of pictures are to show how the arm hole and interior pocket are one in the same.  It's pretty hard to visualize this with just the pattern description!  The coat is very warm and cozy, and I've received several compliments on it!  I just love how unique it is.  Maybe next year I will muster up the courage to make something like this:

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Hello, Adorable!!!  Can I do this?  HELLS YEAH I CAN DO IT!  Okay, ready to see some new stuff??  On to the next project!

The Great Cape Adventure: Drafting A Lining

I went into The Great Cape Adventure knowing I wanted to line it for extra warmth.  What I didn't expect was the desire for it to look so pretty from the inside too.  And let me tell you, boy, does it look pretty.

When I don't know how to do something I generally do a combination of winging it and seeing if people smarter than me have put instructions on the interwebs for me to follow.  Most of the time this combination works out pretty well.

My pattern didn't come with instructions for a lining, so I sort of followed the tutorial written by Tasia on Tilly and the Buttons.  Since my pattern doesn't have sleeves, and mine does have a collar, I modified the instructions to fit my needs.  Sewing is all about bending the rules, right?

I traced my original pattern pieces onto Swedish Tracing Paper and used Tasia's instructions to draft the lining pieces.

I know.  This picture sucks.

The original pattern pieces are in blue, and where I made modifications to where I actually needed to cut are in pink.  I also made sure to transfer over other markings, like the circles for the pockets because I wouldn't want to cover up the pockets I worked so hard on!

The pockets were also a difference from Tasia's tutorial because I needed to use the same seams due to those pesky pockets.  So my lining had four pieces instead of her two.

I cut out my new pattern pieces, labeled them accordingly, and sewed up my lining.  For the hand/pocket holes, I cut into the fabric at the holes and did a turn and stitch approach to create the space and take care of the raw edge.  Also, since my jacket already has a pleat, I added an extra inch to Tasia's recommended 1" to make sure I have plenty of wingspan for hugs.

Once I had all my lining pieces attached at the proverbial hip, I lined up the collar and the top of my lining right sides together.  Oh wait!  This is where I added my hanging chain.  Tasia had used a tutorial that she linked to quite a while ago, but when I went to the link the blog was gone.  So, I winged it.

I picked up some grosgrain ribbon and a bracelet/necklace making kit.  I used two jump rings and a length of the bracelet, cut two pieces of ribbon about 2" long, folded them in half (for extra strength) and pinned them in place.  While sewing the lining in place, I made sure to go over the ribbon ends lots of times to make sure they don't pull out. 

Since my cape is kind of an awkward shape all around, the lining that attaches to the collar was the only part I could sew by machine.  I went down each side and methodically hand stitched the lining the the facings.  I slip stitched the pocket opening to the pocket holes and welt flaps.  Finally, I folded the bottom edge under and slip stitched to the seam line.  I did this to create vertical ease in the lining.  If you look at the inside of a lined jacket, you will see that the lining either has a fold at the bottom, or the lining hangs free and is tacked in at a couple select spots, like the seams. 

ITZSOPREEEETTYYYYOMG

And then .... drum roll please .... A FINISHED CAPE!!!!!!  Photos to come.

The Great Cape Adventure: An Almost Finished Cape

I've spent a large chunk of time avoiding chores sewing this lovely cape, and it's almost done!  Soon I'll be able to prance about in it while feeling snuggly warm.

I finished matching up all the pieces together.  This wasn't a particularly easy task.  My hang up was matching the sides together and eventually I gave up and hoped for the best.  I lined up the front and front side pieces, then the back and back side pieces.  When I put them all together they magically lined up on the sides too!  I guess I'm a pretty awesome plaid matcher.

My next step was putting in the facings, but I knew I wanted to try my hand at bound buttonholes so I needed to do that first.  I used Julia Bobbin's tutorial (she.is.awesome.) which was the most comprehensible bound buttonhole tutorial I've seen.  Seriously, why is everyone else making it so complicated??  Julia even included how to make facings with little matching windows for the buttonholes.  I did one practice buttonhole and it turned out pretty awesome.  So I made four more on my actual fabric.  Omg scary.  Cutting into my beautiful precious fabric!  What if I screwed up!  What if they are ugly!  Well, whatever.  Buttonholes are usually covered by buttons anyway.  But!  They turned out beautiful.  Now I'm looking at off the rack coats judging their quality on whether they have bound buttonholes or not.  (My gorgeous wool coat from Gap does.  Their current selection does not.)

I sewed on my collar and, of course, buttons, and TADAAAAAA!  My cape is ALMOST complete.  I just need to hem it and add the fleece backed satin lining, which is my own addition to the pattern.  I'm also going to add a hanging chain because if I'm going to be awesome then I need to go all the way awesome.

I am pretty sure the plaid isn't really crooked in the back.  Just call me Quasimodo.  Okay don't, because that would make me sad.  I also thought our living room was actually bright at the time I asked Hubs to take these pictures.  A fool I am!

***Bonus pug picture!***  Because she is just so cute.

My little snoring sewing friend.

The Great Cape Adventure: Stitch, Rip, Stitch.

I had my first epic sewing fail on The Great Cape Adventure.  I was following my directions swimmingly, quite proud of my little pocket entry edging, had beautifully slip stitched the inside piece of my pocket bag to the pocket hole, basted it to my cape, then perfectly top stitched the pocket bag in place.  I basted my welt flap in place, sewed my front and side pieces together.... and bam!  Something felt wrong.  I went to work the next day googled on my own time pictures of welt pockets and other finished capes.  I learned my welt pockets are special and the general rules do not apply to my cape.  I studied pictures.  Then it dawned on me.

I put the pockets on the wrong piece.

Well.  Crap.  The pockets are to be attached to the front pieces, and I attached them to the side pieces.  I made my perfect pocket openings and cut into my beautiful fabric on the wrong side.  Now it makes sense that when I sewed the front and back pieces together with my welt flap in place, the hole and pocket didn't really flow.

Ahhhhhh.

Well, that's okay.  It had to come sometime.  So, I spent the next evening carefully ripping out my perfect stitches.  Since I had already cut into my fabric to make my pocket opening on the wrong side, I needed to improvise in order to fix it.  Luckily this turned out easier and lovelier than I could have hoped.  Maybe even better than the original instructions!

I sewed the welt flap under the original pocket opening that I had made.  I correctly installed the pocket bags on the front pieces.  Sewed together the front to the side front, and TADA!  Now the welt flap lies perfectly over the pocket hole, while also allowing one's arm out from the cape.  That might not make sense, let me explain.  The arm hole and pocket hole are one in the same.  But the pocket hole gets covered by the welt flap where the arm comes out.  Follow?  Okay.

So.  Lesson learned.  Don't watch Breaking Bad while trying to read weird pattern instructions.  You'll likely become BFF's with your seam ripper if you do.

The Great Cape Adventure: Plaid Matching & Interlining

Continuing on The Great Cape Adventure, I needed to figure out how to match plaid.  I bought extra fabric with this in mind.  It really kind of sucked seeing how much fabric is wasted because of the matching!  I need to get myself a plastic bin for all my fabric scraps.  Plus another for fabrics in waiting.  I can see how people start building up a stash... I also started to use a file folder with several slots to keep patterns in.  GENIUS.

Anyway, in order to start matching my plaids, I turned to the ever smart people at Coletterie and Sewaholic for their trusty tutorials.  They both have different approaches and sometimes one will speak more clearly to me than the other.  In this case it wasn't about which one was more clear, it was simply which one seemed easier!  I went with the tutorial from Coletterie which shows you to lay out your fabric flat, cut one piece, then flip it over and match it.  Cut, flip, match.  Then I switched to the tutorial on Sewaholic, and conveniently Tasia was making a cape too.  Score!  This helped me with my side pieces because they are curved and otherwise wonky.  I'm not entirely sure that my side seams will match beautifully, but the front, back and corresponding side pieces match to each other.  The back mirrors the front, the collar matches the back.  So, I'll look perfect from at least two sides instead of all four.  Also I decided to cut my welt pocket pieces on the bias right on top of a plaid square so I'll get cute little diagonal lines.  Adorbs.  I could tell when I had my pieces nicely matched because they practically became invisible on top of my fabric, as you can see here.

Once I had all of my pieces meticulously matched up, I matched them up with their corresponding pieces of interlining.  I basted them around all sides and like magic, two became one.  I can already tell this is going to be one cozy cape!

I apologize for the poor lighting.  My husband is a vampire.

Bonus!  I finished off my first spool of thread!  Go me!  That must mean I am really becoming an expert.

Once I started sewing together the pieces, I took more care to line up the plaid than to match notches and such.  I am pretty happy with how my matching is turning out!

IZSOPRETTY.

I may have stared at this for an entire night pleased as punch with myself for doing this. Woo!

The Great Cape Adventure

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I never thought I would be ready to make myself any sort of coat or jacket, but obviously in sewing I've been giving myself huge challenges and mostly coming out ahead.  So my next project was a cape coat jacket thing.  To make it even more challenging, I wanted to make it using the prettiest, softest plaid fabric in the universe.

ERMMYGAWD SO PRETTY (source)

This project's sewing challenges:

• Coats or jackets tend to have lots of complicated pieces
• Plaid requires matching up the lines
• Buttonholes!
• A collar
• Adding interlining (not in the pattern)
• Adding a lining (also not in the pattern) 

Whatevs.  I'll figure it out.

I knew I wanted a pretty simple design because a) that keeps things easy for me and b) the beauty of the style should be showcased in the design's simplicity.  Apparently although capes are becoming more mainstream, they're still not super common.  It took much searching to find this pattern:

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Even this pattern isn't perfect.  1) It has gun flaps.  Um, no.  Well, okay, that's about all that isn't perfect about it.  What it DOES have that I was looking for, besides the simplicity, are the arm holes.  I didn't like capes that used the sides as arm .. areas .. and sometimes they were pinched together to form a sort of sleeve.  Also, this pattern has hidden pockets.  Who doesn't like pockets?  The arm hole and pocket hole are actually one in the same.  This will take a little extra thinking during sewing, but after going through the instructions I think I get it.

Since the instructions don't call for a lining, this gives me creative freedom to make my own.  I don't anticipate this to be too complicated, but we'll see.  My plaid fabric is a bit thin so I picked up fleece backed satin for my lining for a little extra warmth.  After sitting on this for a while, I decided I still wanted a little extra warmth.  Basically because this should turn out too cute for words and I'll want to wear it as long as I can without freezing.  I did some googling on interlining but wasn't really finding what I wanted, so I just went to Joanns in search of inspiration.  40% of the wandering I do there is for inspiration, 40% is for drooling and imagining all the things I COULD do, and about 20% is actually getting what I went there for.  I wandered around touching things to see what might make a wonderful interlining for my little cape.  I found this stuff, which is absolutely freaking amazing.  It's so, so soft.  It's drapey.  It's glorious.  Okay, it's batting.  What is a cape but a glorified blanket, really?

And thus starts The Great Cape Adventure.  Stay tuned for more!

Renaissance Festival Outfit & Accessories (Round 2)

Renaissance outfits, as I mentioned before, are ever evolving.  When you go to the ren fest, there's no way you could afford every piece and every accessory that your heart desires all at once.  One thing I always notice when I go are the layers that are worn and how pretty every layer is.  At the ren fest an overskirt will set you back about $55.  I showed you before the double layered overskirt I made.  I also mentioned that I have another corset of my mom's.  This corset is deep purple lined with black (it's reversible, actually, but why would I ever choose black over purple?!).  We have a white blouse and skirt to go with it.  The white is kind of a stark contrast from the black and purple, so I decided to make another overskirt to go with this corset.

I started by doing some internet stalking research and checking out websites selling renaissance clothing.  I decided I wanted to do a lace overlay with gathers.  When I was having my wedding dress altered, I mentioned that I loved dresses that had swoopy gathers, so my seamstress took her needle and thread and gave me an immediate example.  The outcome was perfect.  Two years later, my brain churns up the memory of watching her do that and I figured I would apply the same technique to my overskirt.

I was worried that solid lace fabric would be expensive though.  So I checked out Joann's website and found crafter's lace which was only about $5/yard.  When I went there, I found BETTER lace for $13/yard.  Well, quality vs. quantity I guess.  Luckily I had a coupon (as always!) which brought it down to about $7.50/yard.  It was MUCH softer, drapier, and perfecter than the crafter's lace.  So I justified it figuring that I would use it for quite a long time so the quality was worth a couple extra bucks.

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I figured I would take home a couple yards but there was only 1 3/4 left on the bolt.  So I took that.  I wasn't entirely sure what my plan was but winging it usually works out for me.  I also picked up 1" wide elastic for the waist band.  

I brought it home and paraded in front of the mirror to figure out exactly what I wanted to do.  I was going for a simple dirndl style (which is a rectangle gathered at the top) skirt, but the 1 3/4 yards wasn't really wide enough to make a nice shape to go over the underskirt.  Luckily the fabric was 57" wide, which is reeeeeally wide.  So I cut it in half lengthwise and that created plenty of width!  Obviously since lace is see through, I used french seams on the sides to make it look nice and tidy.  I hadn't done french seams before because for some reason they just didn't make sense to me.  I used Tasia's tutorial found here.  Tasia always makes everything nice and straight forward.  Easy peasy, and nice and tidy!

Still with me?  There are pictures at the end!

Then I sewed down a bit of the top to make a casing for the elastic.  On my other overskirt I didn't make a casing because I didn't have the length to spare.  The biggest challenge with this skirt was that the right and wrong side of the fabric was non-existent.  I used the seams to determine which side made it right/wrong and went from there.  Sometimes in sewing you just need to stop and think for a minute to make sure you're doing it right.  Then I sat back on the couch and proceeded to thread my elastic through the casing.  I put a safety pin on one end of the elastic to help do this.  It was slow work because the stretchy lace has lots of holes, so the edges of the elastic kept catching.  After about an hour I finally got it all the way through.  I tried it on to get the right length for the elastic, pinned it again, and cut the excess length.  I sewed the ends together, sewed down the hole I left in the casing for threading, and TADA!  I had a skirt.

Now for the gathers.  I went into the project thinking I wanted several gathers at different length, but I needed a model to figure out where the gathers would go.  Lily is too small, and I can't do it on myself, so I recruited Hubs.  Whatever, he was watching football anyway so be barely noticed.  I put the overskirt and underskirt on him and went to it.  I decided it might be nice just to have one gather like a slit in a dress.  I took my needle and thread and perfected the gather on him.  It really worked out nicely, I don't know how I would have got it so nice if it wasn't on a model.  He wouldn't let me take a picture of it so I had to model it myself.

pardon the crappy lighting

Looks pretty good!  Naturally I needed another matching purse to go with this outfit.  As I was wandering Joanns I found some satiny fabric that was shiny on one side and had a matte texture on the opposite side.  Since I bought 1/2 yard for my last purse and barely used any of it (1/4 of two different fabrics), I figured I could get a whole purse out of 1/4 yard of just one fabric and make use of the different sides.  It worked beautifully.  Since my fabric was a solid color I decided the purse needed to be fancied up.  I picked up some pretty black beaded trim and thought I would try my hand at adding trim.  I'm glad I did this on a tiny purse versus trying to add piping to an outfit.  It wasn't perfect.  This was partially due to the awkward angle and small space I had, plus my purse's opening wasn't wide enough to fit around my machine so I had to hand stitch it.  I didn't think I would like hand stitching, so tedious, but I do think it's pretty soothing.  I also get super proud because I did those stitches instead of some machine.

When I flipped the purse right side out I also decided to understitch the lining so it wouldn't poof out like my first purse.  I also used the understitching to help the beads lay on the outside of my purse.  Like my first purse, I also needed to hand stitch a channel for the drawstring ties to go through.  Once that was done I threaded my string through the channel, and TADA! a purse was born.

Now, finally, a couple pictures of the completed ensemble.

Wedding Reception Dress - Sewaholic Lonsdale Dress

One of my dear friends decided to get married on a beach, so she and her husband had a casual reception with family and friends after they came back.  She was over at my house and we were talking about clothes (surprised?) when she mentioned her search for a dress to her reception.  The gears in my head started to churn.  I didn't think I was quite to the point of making a dress for someone, plus I didn't want her to feel obligated to say yes and then hate the dress she ended up with.  I didn't put the offer out there until after she left because everything is easier by text message.  She said yes!  We chose the Lonsdale dress by Sewaholic Patterns. 

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The cool thing about this dress, besides the slash pockets, is that in the front it appears to be a halter but the straps go straight down through loops, then tie in the middle of your back.  This feature not only makes the dress perma-adjustable, it also is much more comfortable than a true halter neck in my opinion.

There were a few firsts for me in making this dress, which is to be expected since I'm still brand spanking new at sewing anyway.  First it had many more pieces than I'd worked with before.  It also had interfacing.  Pockets.  A waistband.  Luckily Tasia at Sewaholic had already done a sew-along for the Lonsdale dress.  All I had to do was follow the steps.  Between the awesome pattern instructions and the sew-along, I have to say this dress came out pretty freaking spectacular.  I even conquered understitching!  I just needed it to be explained in a way that made sense to me.  There are a lot of little features in this dress that I'm particularly proud of, and when I finished the dress I was pretty freaking happy.

• The bodice is self lined, and the lining is understitched.  As I already said, I finally was able to understand understitching and the finished product is nothing short of exceptional.  I heart understitching.
• The waistband also has it's own back side, which is slip stitched into place covering the seam between the front waistband and the skirt.  Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of it, but the inside of the dress looks pretty freaking nice.
• Stay tape is magical.  Tasia used stay tape in her tutorial so I used it too, and it really is wonderful.  I think I'll use stay tape in some other things going forward.
• Hand-picked zipper.  The dress has a 16" zipper and I installed it by hand-picking it.  Seriously, I'm not sure why I should ever need to install a zipper with topstitching.  Hand-picking is awesome, and a beautiful hand made feature.  I used Tasia's tutorial here.
  
• Blind hem.  I meant to hand sew the hem, but I ran out of time.  I still wanted her to have a beautiful dress so I pulled out my sewing machine's manual and figured out how to use my blind stitch feature.  I'm in love with it.  Seriously, this is genius and it looked pretty awesome.

The bride looked beautiful in her finished dress.  I used a lovely moss green linen blend which was supersoft and matched her eye color perfectly.  We added a little fabric flower on the side for fun.

 

I shortened the bodice more than I've seen anyone else across the interwebs shorten it.  This was my friend's smallest point.  That's the beauty of sewing though, it's totally customized to your body.  None of this trying to fit your body into clothes.  Now the clothes are made to fit YOU!  It's awesome.

Overall, I'm pretty proud and ecstatic with how the dress turned out.  It fits her beautifully, looks beautiful on her, and is a high quality made dress.  That ****I**** made.   There you have it.  The joy of sewing.

Renaissance Festival Outfit

One of my favorite events of the year runs late August through September; the Minnesota Renaissance Festival. *squeeeee*  When I was a kid we would go and dress up and have a blast.  As an adult I've learned to be much more boring and stopped dressing up.  A few years ago my friend finally convinced me to start dressing up again and it's amazeballs.  Whenever Judgey McJudger, it's awesome.  Over the years I've now accumulated a small collection of Ren Fest gear, this year I bought a new cheapy underbust corset from eBay.

It's actually not that bad.  Steel busk, supposed steel flexible boning.  And it came with a matching g-string!  So, there's that.

Anyway, because of my new-found sewing skillz, obviously I needed to amp up the ensemble.  At the Ren Fest they sell gorgeous petal skirts to lay over your basic chemise.

Okay, if you don't know anything about renaissance fancy dress, you wear a basic solid color chemise or a blouse and matching skirt. (Well, they don't have to match, but we're talking the basics here.)  Then you would wear either an under or over bust corset (self-explanatory) or you might wear a thing that's like a vest/corset with a skirt attached which would cover part of your basic skirt.  There are lots of options.  Then you can pile on the accessories from there.  Accessories tend to be expensive so you get a couple pieces a year and mix n match.  One of the pieces being a petal skirt, made of a circle of several pieces of fabric with a pointed end.

So, I wanted to make myself an overskirt to match my new corset.  I have a nice, quality fancy corset that I took borrowed from my mom, but I recently wore it for boudoir photos ("wait, wha?") so I wanted to mix it up a bit.  I found a SUPEREASY tutorial on making a square circle skirt here.  AND THEN!  Then I found another square circle skirt tutorial that showed it with a solid layer on the bottom and an organza on top.  SOLD!  I decided to make the bottom layer a solid baby blue linen, then a light purple organza top layer.  The problem was that my um circumference is a bit...circumference-y... so the skirt doesn't quite work out perfectly, but it worked fine enough.

AND THEN!  One of the recurring dilemmas I have when going to the renaissance festival is the purse issue.  I don't want to bring a modern purse because a) that totally clashes with my outfit; b) i don't want to carry a stupid purse; c) stupid purse.  Hubs doesn't want to carry around my crap either.  He has and we get our money all mixed up and everything, it's a mess.  I do have a little purse with embroidery, but it's not quite big enough.  So, handy dandy new skillz came into play.  This time I drafted my own pattern.  YEP!  I'm already that genius.  I even lined it.  It's kind of awesome.  I made myself a little drawstring pouch type purse in a navy blue rose print brocade, lined with iridescent blue/purple dupioni.  The drawstring is navy rope.  It perfectly fits my phone, keys, hand sanitizer, and money.  YAY ME!  I think I could have understitched the lining but I still hadn't grasped how to do that yet.  I wasn't planning on blogging about this so I didn't take pictures of each item, but here is a picture of yours truly at the ren fest:

I got a lot of compliments on my outfit that day.  Go me!  Another alteration I had made was to my shirt.  Last year I wore this shirt and it was all sorts of unruly.  This year I figured I would "fix" the neckline by adding a running stitch where the elastic had been and gathering it just a bit.  Well.  I don't like the outcome.  I actually really don't like how I look in any of the pictures taken of me that day.  Whatever.  Live and learn.  I think my friend will be wearing this next and she'll rock it!  I also put together Hubs' outfit who is seen in the left corner over my shoulder.  It came out super awesome!  I put it together that day.  Yeah.  That's how I roll.  For the next time I go I have some new plans in mind for myself....... stay tuned!

The Birthday Dress

So I knew that I wanted to make myself a bright, loud, fun, tropical print dress as my first big project.  I picked out this lovely hibiscus tropical shirting at Joanns:

um, yes please. source

You should know that hibiscus is my absolute favoritest flower ever ever ever.  I would wear tropical hibiscus print all year if I could.

When looking for a pattern I knew I wanted it simple enough to look doable for me, but I also wanted a nice full skirt.  I finally landed on this one:

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Butterick B5748.  This dress features a low scoop back, side zip, and full circle skirt.  I did view B, which is the dress without the notches and bows.  However I did alter the neckline to be a V neck instead of scoop.  V necklines just flatter me better.  I actually really like the low scoop back feature of this dress, which I did not expect.  Once I finally bought my fabric, I brought it home to pre-treat.  After washing it Lily promptly found it a great place to nap.

Well, whatever.  All my clothes are covered in animal fur anyway.

I made a muslin of the bodice to make sure it was everything I wanted (and more!) and made the alterations I wanted.  Mostly the ones as expected.  Widened the waist, shortened the straps, changed the neckline.

There were some challenges while making this dress.  The biggest one was that I could not for the life of me figure out understitching, so my lining isn't sewn down.  Then when I put it on, I realized I needed to shorten the bodice.  A lot.  Also, since I was planning on wearing a slip with this dress, I didn't fully line the skirt according to the instructions.  So I kind of winged it.  It worked fine, except where it came to the zipper.  I had trouble getting all nice and neat and where everything was supposed to be.  Eventually I made it work.  Also since I didn't line the dress according to the instructions, my lining was free flowing.  I decided to just hem it and tack it in place at the seams.  When I've worn the dress I haven't had any issues with it, so that method worked just fine for me.  Finally when it came to hemming the dress, I wasn't sure how to best hem a circle skirt.  My friend came over and helped me measure the hem from the floor up.  Google gave me a few different options so I decided to use a bias binding and hand sew the hem.  This worked perfectly.  It took me a couple nights in front of the TV to finish, and Lily kept trying to climb into my lap full of fabric, pins and a sharp needle.  But we made it work.  Here is the finished dress with my hand made crinoline underneath:

Plus a bonus shot of the back.  Pardon the crappy pictures.

It's not perfect but I certainly love it.  If I made this again I would add stay tape to the neckline to stabilize it, I think it has already stretched out a bit.  I meant to add lingerie guards to the straps but I never got around to it.  (I love dresses with lingerie guards.)  I also meant to add pockets to the side seams but I never did that either.  Now it is Fall and there are other things to sew!

My First Finished Project - Colette Patterns Sorbetto

Gertie's blog also introduced me to some awesome indie pattern companies, like Colette Patterns and Sewaholic Patterns.  Colette Patterns has some suuuuuper cute stuff, so I thought I might first make the Crepe dress.  This is where I found out that fabric is expensive.  It could also have something to do with my love of dresses with full skirts (full skirt = lots of yardage), but I wanted to start sewing now and I didn't have the funds to back up my desire.  So I started with a free pattern, the Sorbetto top.

 source

Super easy, downloadable PDF.  Instant gratification!  However, just because I wanted do sew now didn't mean I was willing to give up quality.  Why sew beautiful clothes out of crappy polyester material?  Apparently anything better than polyester is hard to find at Joann Fabrics.  But hard to find doesn't mean impossible, so I checked out their website and found a nice cotton lawn to make my very first top out of.

Blogs have also taught me different types of fabric!  Cotton lawn is nice and light, perfect for a summer top.  The Sorbetto pattern only has two pattern pieces, no closures, and is finished with bias binding on the edges.  There is room for plenty of embellishments on this nice simple pattern!  Since it's the first thing I've really made, per a real pattern, I decided to make a muslin to make sure the finished product would fit me properly.

**A muslin is a test garment made with super cheap fabric (mine was a sheet from the thrift store) with just the very basic pieces sewn together enough to get an idea of fit and whether any alterations are needed.**

Knowing my measurements didn't exactly line up with the pattern sizing, I took what I learned from the blogosphere and graded between the sizes I needed.  I also added a little extra where I knew my measurements exceeded the pattern sizing.  Ah, the magic of the internet!  Learning all this nifty stuff right away.  So I altered the pattern as needed and made up my muslin.  I don't have a picture of it, but I'm definitely glad I made it.  It was entirely too big in the sides and I wanted the scoop neckline to come down lower.  I made the changes needed and proceeded to cut out my REAL fabric.  As I was adding the bias binding, it's like the fabric was magically turning into an actual top!

squeee!  i made a shirt!

Yay!!!!  I would definitely make this top again, except I need to curve the side seams a bit better so it is more flattering than boxy.  I've worn this top plenty of times for the sake of hot weather and desire for comfort.  Seriously, I feel naked when I wear this.  It is so light and airy.  I also meant to take down the hem and finish it with more bias binding because once I hemmed it the top felt too short.

In any case, I think my first "real" wearable project turned out pretty freaking okay.  Woop woop!

Sewing Studying

Now that I have my new friend, I needed to do some hard core studying.  Somehow I stumbled upon Gertie's blog: Blog For Better Sewing.  I proceeded to read it, in it's entirety, from Gertie's very first blog post until the current post.  I was hooked.  Gertie's blog started by working her way through the original 1952 book Vogue's New Book for Better Sewing.  The book taught her all sorts of vintage styles of sewing, and her blog includes a lot of information and background on sewing/clothing from the 50s and 60s.  True to my old soul, I immediately fell in love with everything to do with her blog.  I learned a ton from reading it "back to front", things I can pride myself in that I do in a vintage technique.  I also learned plenty of sewing lingo and know that there is a great resource ready and waiting for when my skills are in line with some of Gertie's tutorials.

When I decided to learn how to sew, I knew if I went about making pillowcases that I would get bored and give up.  So I hit the ground running with a plan to make a dress.  A GORGEOUS dress.  I decided maybe to get myself familiar with my precious new machine I would first make a petticoat for my dress.  Gertie has a tutorial for a modern crinoline, which is an every day wearable petticoat just fluffy enough to give a dress a nice shape, but not so fluffy that it's costume-y.  I have to say, this was kind of cool being my first project just because it's essentially a self drafted pattern.  Working with organza wasn't, by any means, easy though.  My petticoat has since mostly fallen apart due to some "gentle" pug assistance, particularly with claws against the lace on my hem.  I'll fix it at some point.  Anyway, I made the slip piece with pink rayon, which I later also used to line the bodice of the corresponding dress.  The layers are hot pink organza trimmed with hot pink lace.  It actually wasn't my first completed project.  When I added the second layer and put it on, it was more tea length on me than knee length.  So I set it aside for a while.  Like, until my dress was done, basically.  Here is an odd picture of the slip in process:

looks kinda like lady bits

I do love the feel of rayon, and making the fluffy parts out of organza definitely help make it comfortable to wear all day and sit on.  The blogosphere has told me that tulle is itchy.  Well, no one wants that now do they?  The slip definitely makes me feel superfeminine and swingy when I wear it.  So much fun.  I think there will be more of these in my future, and probably even fluffier versions.  Here is the slip finished, before I brought up the length:

ignore the fabric on the left. that was my next project.

So there you have it.  My first project, but not my first finished project.