The Geometry Dress

Last night was Sydney Frocktails 2019, where the sewing ladies of Sydney (and beyond) get together in our fancy handmade makes to have some drinks, some fun and feel each others' clothes without it being weird. This dress, the Geometry Dress - named for both the construction and the print - was started last weekend and finished at 4pm yesterday. In total there's probably around 20 hours of work in this dress.

The fabric is one I bought from Tessuti somewhere around 5 years ago, I think. It's a cotton sateen with a very high sheen. In fact, quite a few people at frocktails were surprised when I told them it was a cotton, thinking it was a satin or even an African wax print. It's surprisingly lightweight despite the look, and is wonderfully soft and smooth with a small amount of stretch.

I decided I wanted to use a fabric I already had for my frocktails dress, given I have a very large stash. I've had this fabric for a while and always thought it would make a great cocktail dress of some sort. Having two panels of the print, I figured I'd use one for the skirt and one for the bodice, but didn't have any ideas of how I'd actually do it. I looked through all the patterns I own but nothing grabbed me, so went to Spotlight to look through the pattern books. I still had no idea at all of what shape or style I wanted so came away empty handed. Then I saw a sundress pattern that was too casual but had a nice minimal bodice which inspired me to find something with some form of cut outs. So I went to Lincraft in my lunch hour a week and a half ago with a half-formed thought, searching for the pattern to complete the thought.

The pattern is a Vogue designer pattern by Rebecca Vallance, number V1545. I changed the pattern to a plain pleated skirt to show off the fabric print. I really should not have chosen to make something so difficult a week out from the event, but I never pay attention to the difficulty rating on patterns. My thoughts were simply the pieced bodice could work with the almost patchwork nature of the print, but without really considering how exactly that would work out.

Working out the pattern placement took about four hours to get right. The print is a panel, and I had two panels so figured I'd use one for the skirt and one for the bodice, using the different designs in the panel for the different pieces of the bodice. The print on the fabric isn't actually symmetrical, so I couldn't just fold it in half and cut the pieces together. Instead, I cut one of each bodice piece out with the fabric print side up, then laid it print side down on the fabric matching the lines as well as possible and cut out the opposite side. It was a laborious process, but the final result made it worthwhile.

The pattern is relatively difficult, but the biggest issue was how time-consuming it was. Obviously the four hours of pattern placement was the biggest single amount of time. The blue and red triangles and stripe on the edge of the panels were an obvious choice for the front overlay and the waistband. Then I kept changing my mind about whether to have the geometric shapes for the front or the back. In the end the back and side back pieces fitted better on the floral, and the finished diamond shape on the back is better than I could have planned. I also tried to get the skirt to pattern match, which worked pretty well at the top with the invisible zipper, but got slightly out of alignment near the hem. But the teal stripes match up, so the bit of unevenness in between doesn't really matter.

The bodice is fully lined and all seams bar the armscyes are understitched. I do love how understitching keeps the lining from peeking out, but it does significantly increase the amount of time it takes to sew. The lining, which is just a heavy cotton, gives the bodice much more structure than the cotton sateen alone, but the different weights of the fabric definitely benefited from the understitching.

All the finishings are done by hand, apart from the hem. But hand stitching a neckline, waist, and 15 inch metal zipper takes a long time. And zipper tape for a heavy metal zipper is not good on needles or fingers - my left pointer finger has a callus and also a bit of a hole where the needle pushed back into the skin when it didn't want to go through the tape and fabric. The waistband, in comparison, was a very easy sew. Although the hem ended up being sewn by machine, I luckily had a forest green that perfectly matched the narrow stripe between the teal and mint stripes so the stitch line is only visible when looked at closely.

As well as changing the skirt from the original pattern I reduced the front opening of the dress. In the original pattern the front is open all the way down to the waistband, but that's really not practical to wear, so I hand stitched in the back to keep them together. I also added a quick stitch where the overlay crossed the front bodice pieces to keep them from gaping apart. These were quick minor edits, but meant I could be comfortable and confident wearing the dress knowing it was going to stay where it was meant to.

One of the best things about frocktails is seeing the great variety of styles people wear. Getting to make something that's just fun to dress up, rather than making practical clothes for work or everyday wear. Seeing women in velvet, sequins, brocades, circle skirts with petticoats and all sorts of colours and prints was great, and a great reminder that sewing is not only a practical skill, it can reflect each person's individuality. And it's a wonderful community to be part of. Ready to do it all again in September!

Faded Mosaic Top and Classic Grey Skirt

Two new makes today, a top and skirt to wear to work. Both are simple makes in classic styles, making them very wearable.

The top is the Betty Blouse which was in Simply Sewing magazine last July. I rarely buy sewing magazines, but I'd been looking for a non-button up short sleeved blouse pattern with no closures or complications. This pattern was pretty much exactly what I wanted. It's a simple woven blouse with just a front and back piece and pintucks.

The fabric is a viscose from Tessuti called Running Out Of Blue. The print is mosaic style and changes from peacock blue through to rust about every two feet. I hadn't realised the print changed colour when I picked the bolt up - I'd just liked the peacock blue - but when it was being rolled out to be cut I saw the rust colour emerge. This meant I had to decide how I was going to use the shifting colours in the blouse, basically which colour I wanted at the neckline and which at the hem. After holding it up against myself each way I decided the blue at the neckline was the way to go.

The fabric is beautiful with a lovely hand, but being a lightweight viscose it was a bit slippery to pin and cut out. Fortunately the print gave me handy lines to cut along to even out the hem and shoulders! The print was also very helpful for making sure my pintucks were nice and even - I could fold in the middle of the squares and stitch along the second outline and know that each pintuck would be exactly the same.

The skirt is an adjusted version of the straight skirt pattern in the Blouse Skirt and Pants Style Book. The fabric is a lightweight grey wool check from The Fabric Store, lined with some grey stretch woven cotton I'd bought for another project but found was the wrong weight. The zipper was stitched in by hand to try and keep it looking as neat as possible.

I used my French curve to slightly widen out from the waist to a more A-line shape. It was mostly an easy make, except that the two different fabrics do handle differently. I had measured them the same, but when I went to sew it up the shell was wider at the hem than the lining. To fix this I stitched in the side seams on the shell, It was still a little too wide when I sewed the hem, so I had to slightly fold it at the seams, but hopefully it isn't visible!

Because it's such a straightforward pattern and I'd used it once before I didn't look at the instructions, and so forgot that the pattern doesn't include seam or hem allowance. It didn't matter for the seam allowance given I'd already widened the skirt, but it did mean the hem was shorter than I initially planned. I had some fabric left and was going to put a flounce on for extra length, so I measured a curve, cut it out, and then realised I'd measured the outside rather than inside length of the curve, so the flounce was too narrow. So I folded the hems of the lining and shell in towards each other as narrowly as I could and stitched close to the edge. The length is actually fine, it's just not quite what I'd planned, but I'll get used to it.

Tessuti Cut Out Lace LBD

First post in a month! And this dress almost didn't even make it.
This dress was made as an entry for Tessuti's cut out lace competition. Even though I'd bought the fabric a day or two after the competition was announced (perks/dangers of working a less than ten minute walk from Tessuti's Surry Hills store) there were quite a few things that almost got in the way of the dress being made.

The first thing that delayed this dress was a holiday, and some holiday sewing of shorts and cargo pants to wear while bushwalking in Western Australian national parks. Because of this, I didn't have time to start on my competition entry until I got back from holiday a week and a half into September. But the bigger problem was that I just couldn't seem to get my make to look how I wanted it to look.

I'd decided as soon as I saw the lace in store that I wanted to do as little as possible to it, and just let the fabric speak for itself. I decided to buy a single panel so I wouldn't be tempted to do anything too fussy. I also wanted to use the half flower piece at the centre top of the panel as my neckline, so I thought a simple fitted sheath dress would be the go, and started pinning and draping on my mannequin.

It didn't quite go according to plan. First, I needed to do the centre pack seam and insert the zipper. I had been going to use an open ended zip, but when I got the black open ended zipper I had out, it wasn't long enough. Given this was last weekend and entries closed yesterday, I decided I didn't have time to go searching for a long enough open ended zip and instead searched through for other options. 

Initially I went for a normal black zip about 45 centimetres long. I pinned it in, folding the fabric in further as it got down to the waist. I stitched the zipper in, and then for the lower half of the seam eased the seam back out from the waist to the hip and then straight down to the bottom. I then folded in some double pointed darts to fit the bust and waist, putting in two long darts and four short darts - two near the centre front, two close to the sides. I made sure they fit my mannequin, sewed them up, trimmed out the neckline, stitched the shoulders together, and cut out some of the lace for armholes.

Then I tried it on and it looked terrible.

The darts sat too low, leaving a weird billowy gaping at the bust, and the zipper at the back didn't sit flat either. The neckline was the only thing I was fairly happy with. Even the lace at the armholes was droopy at the back. That was going to be an easy fix, it would just need the extra pieces cut out once everything else was done, but the rest required going right back to the start. 

The first change I made was to rip the zipper out and redo it. I decided that I'd just put the zip in straight, rather than playing around trying to get it to fit in to the waist. I also decided to change over to an invisible zip, although I'm not entirely sure why as it's a shorter zipper. So I unpicked all my darts from the front, put small shoulder pleats in at the back to make sure the neckline was even, and draped it back over my mannequin.

My thought then was maybe I could make the dress so it was fitted at the front but hung loose at the back. So I did a first run of pinning the front in again, and tried it on. Unsurprisingly, it didn't really work. I had pinned the front darts in higher so it was better fitted, but there wasn't enough fabric for it to give the loose effect I wanted at the back. And honestly, I'm not sure this idea could have worked, because trying to keep one half loose while the other half is tight is just too complicated. I'd contemplated using ribbon ties from the underarm to the back, but I really don't think it would have sat evenly at all.

I hadn't sewn anything for that second arrangement, so there wasn't any more unpicking to do, but by this stage it was Thursday night and I was a bit at a loss of what to do. My next thought was to make separates, with a cropped top and high waisted skirt. The lace at the bodice would be long enough to work as a cropped top, but I decided against this idea because I really don't think I'd wear the top. And given the neckline was the first decision I'd made when I saw the fabric and was the one element I was happy with, I didn't want to lose that on a garment I wouldn't wear. So I discarded that idea.

Then I finally worked out what to do.

It's an obvious realisation, but if your mannequin doesn't have the exact same measurements as you then pinning and draping a fitted dress completely on the mannequin isn't going to end up fitting properly. The answer, of course, was to pin the dress directly onto myself. So I put it on and folded in two darts for the front and two for the back and pinned them in place. I stitched them down, leaving them open at the bottom so they have a soft pleated effect. And after all of that messing around, mid-morning yesterday I finally had the dress I'd pictured in my head.

Then it was just a case of taking some pictures and sending them in as my entry. 

And so that's the saga of my lace LBD. With persistence, sometimes you can manage to pull of the image in your head. Now I just need a reason to wear it!

In Season Silk Comp: Boulanger Tea Dress

Another Tessuti competition, another entry. This time their In Season Silk Competition. Where the last competition was to make a version of their Kate Top, this time it was a make anything at all using one of two beautiful silk crepe de chines. Lucky for me (maybe not so much for my wallet) I work less than 10 minutes walk from Tessuti's Surry Hills store, so the day after the competition was announced on Instagram I walked over in my lunch hour to get my fabric. There were two fabric choices, I decided on 'Autumn Cluster', In Season Two. I chose it because I thought the floral print had more versatility on what to do.

It took me a long time to chose exactly what I wanted to make. Being a crepe de chine the fabric is soft and floaty, so a soft and floaty dress was what I needed. The colours are very autumnal, and also very 1930s, so I thought the 30s would be a good inspiration. I love Art Deco styles, so this fabric seemed perfect for something with that inspiration. But even with a chosen garment and time period it still took forever to choose exactly what to make. Pinterest was both a help and hindrance in deciding what to make. I have a Pinterest board of Art Deco gowns and they were all very inspiring, but a little too much - every time I had a look I wanted to choose a different dress as inspiration. But details like fairly open backs with some detail at the top and relatively simple skirts kept standing out.

This dress is my version of my favourite pattern, McCall 9043. It dates from 1936 and is designed by Louise Boulanger, a less well-known name but one of the most creative designers of the Art Deco period. As with a lot of spectacular 1930s dresses and patterns the back and shoulders are the focus. The open back was easy enough, just requiring the back pieces to be cut so they finish just past the shoulder blades. With the addition of the connecting strap at the base of the neck and the curved centre pieces at the lower back I was able to replicate the pattern.

The shoulders were harder to work out. I only had the picture of the final dress to go on, no idea of what the different pattern pieces were. They're curved so obviously part of a circle, and they fold back in around the front to join at the top of the shoulders. Finally I realised - it's a quarter circle! I tested with a scrap of fabric just to see if it would work and it did, so now I had a full plan for my dress.

Once I knew that I could design the shape of the dress it wasn't too difficult to make it. I drew up each pattern piece needed and set about making it. Where the original was a floor length gown I decided to shorten it to tea length so that I'd be more likely to have times to wear it. The contrasting fabric is just a soft polyester from Lincraft, but it was the right weight and colour.

The bodice is completely self-lined, but the skirt is unlined because I didn't want anything to affect the flow of the skirt. As the fabric is a light silk it does fray, so I covered the skirt seams in bias binding. The zipper is inserted by hand, and the lower edge of the bodice lining was also done by hand stitching in to the bottom of the contrast band. The sleeves have a rolled hem so they can flow as freely as possible, and the skirt has a 1cm hem.

The construction of the dress was relatively smooth. I did have to change what needle I used, though. Initially I used a size 9 needle as it's designed for delicate fabrics, and it worked alright for the silk bodice. But when I was stitching the silk to the contrast fabric the stitches were looking uneven and the thread broke three times. I dug out my machine's manual and it suggested using a blue tipped needle for fine fabrics if a small size didn't work. Once I swapped the needle over it all went much more smoothly.

 Because it took me so long to decide exactly what to make I didn't end up leaving myself a lot of time to actually sew this dress. The competition was announced back at the start of March, I cut into the fabric last weekend. Still, deadlines are a great motivator. I was also a little worried I woudn't be able to get good photos, because I don't have time in the mornings before work and by the time I get home it's dark and morning rain was predicted for today, but luckily the rain had cleared away early.

There are a few little things that aren't quite perfect, like the invisible zipper that is slightly visible, and where the contrast band meets the back bodice corners it doesn't sit quite flat, but they are only very minor. And I even have some fabric left over, so I can maybe make a small top or a matching 1930s capelet.

 Anyway, I have to say I'm extremely happy with the finished product. I hope you all like it as much as I do!

Silk Tessuti Kate Top aka Grown-Up Clothing Item #1

So I got offered a new job a couple of weeks back! I'd been looking for work for a while, in the meantime doing short-term projects, but nothing with any permanence or certainty. But I had an interview in mid-November and managed to be successful, so yay me! Anyway, all this has to do with sewing because this is a job in an office, where I'd previously been at a university/working from home. Although it's not a corporate or particularly formal office, I do still need to dress a bit differently to how I have been.

Tessuti released their Kate Top pattern in early November, at the same time as I made it through to the first round of the recruitment process for the job. It was a beautiful pattern, plus they had an Instagram competition for making it, so I was already tempted. When I got offered an interview I started really seriously thinking about buying the pattern. If I was successful, I'd need some more grown-up clothes, and a classic shell top is very versatile and grown-up.

The interview went well, and the offices are about a five minute walk from Tessuti's Surry Hills store, so I rewarded myself with a trip over there. Looking around for something that would be good for this pattern I spied this gorgeous silk. It's called Beautiful Spill and is wonderfully soft and vibrant and I just couldn't pass it up. I knew I had to get it and make the Kate Top with it.

Because the print is very bright I decided to make view A, with the lower neckline so that the colour wouldn't be completely overwhelming. I made size XXS, which fits very well. The top is designed to be a bit loose, and the drapey silk works really well with that bit of extra room from the bust to the waist. Being a slight build I probably could have left the bust darts off because they don't add any shaping for me, so in the future I might not include them. 

I was a little daunted about sewing with the silk. I have sewn with silk before, but only a few times, and with taffeta and dupion, not with something delicate and light like this. However it wasn't that bad in the end. I used a new size 8 machine needle, a lot more pins than normal, and went slowly, and I didn't have any issues. I also did French seams as the safest way to treat a delicate fabric, so that the raw edges would be hidden away. The only real problem I had with construction was sewing the bust darts on the wrong side of the fabric and having to redo them. There is a front and back to the fabric, but the colours are still very bright and you have to pay attention to notice the difference, which I obviously didn't do at first when doing the darts!

There were a few new techniques in making this. The side splits were something I'd never done before, and looking at the pattern pieces I had no idea how they can together. But the instructions given were really clear and easy to follow. I did stitch them down slightly differently to the instructions, doing each of the four side split sections individually, rather than doing them all in one with the hem. Although the silk did turn out to be easy to sew with, I thought it would be best to concentrate and get each edge done properly by themselves rather than run the risk of the whole thing going wrong. It might have been fine without my precautions, but better to be safe than sorry.

The other new-to-me techniques were using tearaway vilene and making self bias binding. The vilene on the neckline and armholes works to stabilise it, which is especially helpful on a light fabric like this silk. With it, I was able to hang the top as I went along, making it easier to pin things together and see if it was all coming together right. The bias binding was trickier. This silk doesn't really seem to crease - great for wearing the top, but not so good when trying to press a fold on the self bias. In the end I had to accept I wasn't going to get it pressed much at all, and just had to use a lot of pins and pay extra attention to make sure it was attached correctly. It isn't perfect, but for a first attempt and with a fabric that isn't really designed to be used as bias, I think it turned out pretty well.

So this is the first item for my (slightly) more grown-up work appropriate wardrobe. And I love it. I'm really happy I decided to use the silk and didn't avoid it because it's a scary fabric. The colours and the drape are both perfect for the pattern. And I think wearing this to an office I can pass as a real and responsible adult!

Cropped Nani Iro Top

There are a few fabric brands that are lovely but pricier, which daunt me a little from buying them. I buy some of my fabric and quite a few patterns and zippers from op shops, so expensive fabric is a bit scary. Nani Iro is one of those brands that have daunted me, because the fabrics are so nice and I don't want to screw it up. But when Tessuti Fabrics got some new Nani Iro in earlier in the year I just could resist buying a little bit. The fabric is the blue Sazanami Pocho, Tessuti still have the pink.

I didn't have much money to spend, so I only bought half a metre. I'm quite little, and I didn't want to make anything complicated anyway, just a simple top. Originally I'd been thinking of doing something sleeveless, a shell or tank top. But I wasn't really certain what I wanted to do, and it was winter, anyway, not really the time of year to be making light and airy tops. So I put my little piece of Nani Iro away in my stash for a later date when I had a better idea of what to do, and when the weather was right to wear it.

I was still thinking every so often about exactly what to make, taking in influences from what I saw on other blogs, Instagram, and even in shop catalogues. I decided that the top would be unstructured, and that to complement that I'd make it just slightly cropped. I'd also seen a bunch of tops with pompom trims on them and really liked the idea, so went to see if I could find a trim that would match some of the spots. Spotlight had this red pompom trim that seemed a perfect match.

I thought the pompom trim would look better on sleeves than on a sleeveless tank. I still didn't want to have multiple pieces to the pattern, so I simply started cutting two matching rectangles but added an extra inch of width at the top for all-in-one sleeves. Easy and lazy. For the neckline I just did trial and error, cutting the curves of both front and back pieces down. The back was right first time, but I lowered the front neckline slightly from where I first cut it. I did think about making it a deep scoop, but in the end decided I liked how it sat just below my collar bones.

After that, it was very fast to put together. Given it's just two pieces there wasn't much sewing at all. I used red threat to match both the red spots and the pompom trim. Normally I avoid visible stitching, but I thought it would complement this fabric and this top well.

This was an extremely fast make - about an hour, compared to the huge time and effort on my last make, the DuBarry dress. The attention to detail required for a long make is really rewarding when you get it done, but short and fast makes like this top are great because you have something to show off so soon after you started.