Spiral dress prototype.

Firstly, thank you for the supportive comments on my last post - I pretty much never share my opinions on controversial subjects on the internet, since it is a terrible place to try and have a reasoned and civil debate!  This was just one subject on which I wanted my support to be on the record.

So, back to sewing.  I saw this great idea on pinterest, as one does. (It comes originally from Fashion Incubator.) A spiral cut dress.  What a neat idea I thought, I'd love to try that for Isabella!  So I did.  Starting with a size 7 block, it was pretty straightforward drafting.

This shot gives a better idea of the shape, and shows how the panels spiral around with no side seams.

I'm a bit "eh" about it, which is fine, as it was intended to be a prototype.  Since I knew it would at least be wearable I finished it to be worn, and of course Isabella loves it!  I am going to have another crack at the skirt portion of the draft, this time with considerably more flare - this ended up more A line than twirly.

The twins turn five in a few weeks, and I'd like a better version of this to be Isabella's birthday dress.  Probably pink.  My girl loves her pink. There are six panels so it can be made with one, two, three or six colours!  I wonder how a rainbow would look?

Yay New Zealand!

Warning - potentially unpopular opinion follows.  Ok this is a sewing blog, and I usually (and should) keep my opinions on politics, religion and other contentious topics to myself, but DAMN I am so proud to be a New Zealander today - the 13th country in the world to legalize gay marriage as of last night!

This is a topic about which I feel strongly.  As a heterosexual atheist woman who got married recently enough to have a choice between marriage and a civil union (equal in law) I wanted to be married.  I see no reason that anyone else with the same level of commitment to their chosen partner should be denied the same status.  What will happen now?  Gay people will get married.  The rest of the world will continue exactly as before.  The end.

What used to be jeans

Recycling, upcycling, refashioning - call it what you will, I love turning clothes I won't wear into something that someone will wear.  This dress started life as a couple of pairs of jeans and a shirt which came in a bag of hand me downs, which sadly didn't quite fit me.  Since the jeans had wide legs I figured I'd harvest the fabric and make Isabella a dress.  This one is based on a size 7 (Aldrich, naturally) block, so is roomy and long, but wearable.

This shot shows the petal sleeve a bit better.

And the back.  I reused the pockets too.

I don't like to waste the unused bits of clothes I cut up, so the leftovers of this dress (and a few other rework projects) are destined for another life as various things.  I have so many pins on Pinterest of things I want to do one day.  Seriously, I'll have to live to be really really really old to do everything I've ever wanted to do!

And poor Isabella didn't get this dress till today because she was unable to wear dresses for a week and a half because of this.

She took a tumble from a four foot tall jumping box at kindy (thanks to a shove from an impatient class mate) and landed awkwardly on her foot.  An x ray showed no break, but apparently it can be hard to be sure in young children, and it was clearly badly sprained so they put this on - partly plaster, partly cotton wool and bandage.  She spent 12 days crawling, riding on her three wheeler and being carried.  No dress till she was walking again.  The cast came off on Tuesday and she is now limping around like a champ, and delighted to get a new dress.

Meeting the locals

Funny you should ask if I'm in Wellington Grace - I actually live in Dunedin (way down the east coast of the South Island), but just last week I was in Wellington, catching up with family.  The trip included the obligatory visit to Te Papa (Museum of New Zealand), where I met these guys.

Comments regarding the number of trolls in the picture invited! (J? K? M? - go on, you know you want to!) Phone pic courtesy of the sister I went with because I forgot to pack my camera.

That is my Alabama Chanin skirt I'm wearing.  It is really really really comfortable and I love it to bits.  I think I need about twelve more, but with pockets.

New Alabama Chanin Skirt

So I finished my slow skirt.  Made from the left over fabric from my epic hand stitched dress project this was kind of a filler project while I worked out what Alabama Chanin project to tackle next.  These things are great to take to craft nights or just have on hand to pick up and put down as the desire to hand work something takes me.  I thought I'd run out of enthusiasm for the time consuming process after making one project, but I've made myself three corset tops, a tank top, and a dress before this skirt, not to mention fingerless mitts for me and four Kindy teachers, and a corset top for my sister.  I've started the new dress for me, and seriously I LOVE working like this!  I love the process and I love wearing the garments when I'm done.  Anyway, here it is on my dummy.  (I've no idea why it's a bit lopsided.  I didn't notice till I put the photos on the computer, and just couldn't be bothered retaking them!)

Instead of the foldover elastic at the waistline I added a separate casing with elastic, which I attached with a zig zag chain stitch.  I was nervous that this wouldn't stretch enough to get over my hips, but it's just fine.  Yay!

I hate taking photos of myself, but in the interests of showing how it looks on I put it on for some shots.  I wouldn't normally wear a T shirt tucked into it, and in fact I have some more of the peacock underlayer fabric and when I have time I'm going to make a plain corset top to wear with it.

Both twins got in this pic with me.  Can you spot Nicholas?

To close, I put myself on the Sewintists map.  Where I am currently the most southerly pin in the whole world.  There has GOT to be someone south of me who sews!

Trench coat from stash

I needed a new lightweight coat.  I'm going to Wellington for a few days with one of my sisters next month to visit family. (That reunion at Christmas has sparked a few more!) My other light coats are getting a bit tired, and while still serviceable, not nice enough for a trip away - you know how it is!

In the interest of having as much spending money as possible while away (ie, some) I figured I'd see what I could do using only stuff I had on hand.

As it turned out, without buying a single thing, I could do this.

The pattern is from one of my back collection of Burda magazines, 03/09 #119, with the pockets from #115 from the same issue. Everything I used to make this I already had - pattern, fabric, lining, bias binding (on the bottom of the lining), interfacing, thread, sleeve belt buckles.  The tiny lining inside is from leftover scraps from the wool/cashmere coat I made several years ago, so I give myself a bonus stashbusting point for that!  There are no buttons.  I didn't have any, so for now I'll wear it belted or open, and will add buttons when I get around to it.  (Although I did put a nice keyhole buttonhole onto the gun flap, just because I like how it looks. And it was a chance to use my beloved Greist buttonholer.)

Here's the inside.  I like the tiny partial lining.

The only problem I had was with my first attempt at binding.  I cut strips from fabric left over from a pair of rather funky pants I'd made for David once upon a time, and I could NOT get my machine to stitch on it no matter what I did.  It kept skipping stitches despite trying every type of needle I could think of (leather, stretch, regular [several weights], jeans, microtex,).  A walking foot didn't help, and neither did my usual fall back of stitching through paper.  Given that I had successfully topstitched the pants for David, that drove me NUTS! (Click on the pic for a bigger, clearer view)

So I ended up with this, and a massive dose of frustration.  

The fabric I ended up choosing for binding is a regular woven, and behaved perfectly.  I'd still like to have had that silver though.


Meanwhile my Alabama Chanin skirt is now being seamed!  All six panels have been stitched and snipped and I just have to join them together, add a waistband and rosebud stitch the hem.  Just in time for my trip.
( I was working on it on holiday, so my cousins want to see it done now!)

And because I MUST have the next Alabama Chanin project lined up for when one is finished, I have stenciled the pieces for another tank dress.  This is the Abbie's Flower stencil, fattened up a bit.  Um, yeah, stitching these is going to take a while.  I'm not snipping out the interior of the shapes, or beading on this dress, so it'll be a bit more wearable for every day.

OK girls, can we all guess what project is coming to every craft night for the next year?

Copying a RTW skirt

My lovely 83 year old bride-to-be brought me a skirt which she likes to copy for her wedding outfit.  It is one of the simplest garments to copy, being a simple six gore skirt - no darts, no gathers, no intricate details.  Here's how I like to do it.

Firstly I had to have an appropriate surface.  I need to poke pins through the garment into paper, so it has to be padded, but not so soft that I can't hold down garment sections with my hand without distortion.  Like this.  This is a blanket folded in four, and when I press down the paper distorts, which would make an accurate copy harder to achieve.

This is the blanket folded in two.  When I press down on the paper there is very little distortion. A carpeted floor is also good, but hard on the back to be hunched over!

To copy each section I placed pins vertically through the piece to be copied to hold it in place, then used another pin to poke through at intervals all along the seam lines all around the piece.  I couldn't get a photo of the the pricked holes unfortunately, but basically after pricking off the piece you connect the dots to reproduce your garment section.

To copy the centre front I aligned and pinned the seam lines and lined up the CF along a ruler before following the same process.

After adding nice wide seam allowances, the pattern is ready to go.

The first fitting showed the skirt needed minor alterations at the waist, and the top a couple of tweaks, which show up nicely when drawn onto my toile with a sharpie.  The shoulders are too wide, the waist needs to come in a little, and the CB seam needs to be slightly more contoured.

The sleeve didn't hang well when moved into place, so for our second fitting I modified it to raise the sleeve cap and narrow the sleeve.  This is the altered pattern on top of the original sleeve. (The diagonal overlap is where I joined two pieces of paper to make the original sleeve pattern.  Ignore it).  The pattern has been slashed vertically and horizontally, with the vertical slash overlapping, and the horizontal one spread.

At our second fitting this was a big improvement, but I'm going to do the same thing again to get a bit more height and a bit less width.

And for myself I've started working on a trench jacket.  Progress post on that to follow!

Drafting a commission

I have been commissioned to make a two piece wedding dress for a lady in my MIL's knitting group.  This utterly delightful lady is 83, and such a pleasure to talk to - I LOVE old people who are still ALIVE!

Anyway, when she came around to discuss the style she wanted it became apparent that I would have to draft it, since she didn't have a pattern in mind.  This is always fine by me, and it got me thinking about a blog post on Fashion Incubator which refers to a blog post written by a hobby seamstress (Belinda - Sew4fun) describing her efforts to draft from scratch, only to ultimately end up modifying existing patterns.  I was really interested to read that (along with everything else Kathleen writes, I might add) because that is what I almost invariably do when making commissioned garments. (My childrens' designs are drafted from blocks I drafted from scratch.) I almost exclusively use Burda magazines, which I've been buying for over 20 years.  (Not every issue by any means, but I have a  l-a-r-g-e  pile)  I like how they fit, and the absence of seam allowances makes the modification process much simpler.  When making a pattern for someone from a picture or sketch I go through the magazines and find something which has the basic shape I am looking for, and modify it to add the details.  It works really really well, so I thought that just for fun I'd share the process I followed for this outfit as I make it.

First of all I had to find a pattern which had the right silhouette to modify.  The top of her outfit has a cowl neckline set into a seam from above the armhole notch on one armhole, down to the bust point, across to the other bust point and back up to the notch on the other armhole.  My sketching is terrible so I don't have that to show.

This is what I started with - a tunic from BWOF 05/56, #130.  Her bust measurement corresponds to a Burda 46, which this pattern includes.  It has horizontal bust darts, which can easily be pivoted into the neckline becoming part of the cowl draping.

I also considered this one, BWOF 03/12, #102 as it had the same attributes.  Flat pattern measuring showed both to be very similar in bust, waist and hip circumference, but this one had a much narrower sleeve (which was apparent in the photo as well) which I thought could bind on my lady's arm, look tight and not be comfortable.  (Another small vote in favour of the previous pattern was the fact that there were fewer designs printed on each page, making it easier to trace!)

In addition I added the back seam shaping and darts from this one, BWOF 06/06 ##130, to bring in the back so that it doesn't hang like a sack.  My lady has a bit of a rounded upper back, but not a real dowagers hump, so I'm anticipating that there may be some alteration needed to accommodate this, which our first toile should show.

So, first up is the front.  Here it is, unmodified.

First up I drew a style line from armhole to bust point to CF.  Closing the horizontal bust dart and opening it into the neck got me to this.

Then I further slashed and spread the piece to get a finished cowl depth to match a previously determined measurement.

See - easy!  After adding (wide) seam allowances the front pieces, back and sleeves are ready to go.  I just have to go back to the original pattern and trace off the upper front again for a stay to go under the cowl. I'll post progress once I make up the toile.

And to close, a gratuitous pic of Isabella, wearing the dress I made for Georgia to wear as our flower girl/ring bearer when we got married.

Georgia was 6 1/2.  Isabella is 4 1/2. It fits perfectly.

The Worst School Uniform Skirt Design In The World.

Warning - rant follows. (Like, the whole post is a rant)

Georgia is off to High School this year.  Her school changed its uniform two years ago, (so Cayden wasn't affected, thank goodness) which I dislike intensely.  It is (considerably) more expensive, and way less durable and practical.  And instead of one uniform for four years (with boys switching to long pants for the latter two) and mufti in their final year, it has become a whole different uniform for juniors and seniors.  I hated it as soon as I heard about it, and then I got my hands on it.

We were incredibly fortunate to be able to buy a second hand uniform (given how recently it was introduced, there aren't many around!) which saved around $300.  Not the size I would have bought for Georgia if I bought new, but once again I thank my lucky stars that not only can I sew, but I can sew WELL.

Here is her skirt (after I've operated on it).  Nice isn't it?

No, it isn't.  I swear whoever designed this item sat down one day and tried to think up ways to make it as unalterable as possible.  For girls who are 13-15 years old.  Right when most of them grow.  It is a faux wrap with the free hanging panel caught in the right side seam, topped off with a yoke.  There is no easy way to make reversible changes to the skirt - you can't buy one a bit too big and take it in and up till she grows.  If she does and you don't want to spend another $90 on a skirt for the last term of her junior years, you can't let it out or let down the hem.  Unless you are me, and prepared to spend the multiple hours required to do so, providing of course that you have at least my level of experience and know how to do it!  No false modesty here folks - I know my way around alterations.

Attractive yoke isn't it?  Shame it is invisible under the shirt designed to always be worn untucked.

This is how the right side seam looks now.  The little patch in the yoke was harvested from the inside.  Incidentally, the inseam zipped pocket in the only possible seam which could be altered didn't make it any easier.

I replaced the harvested bit inside the yoke with this patch.  Nobody can see it, it'll do.  You can just see the top of my added side panel under it.

To make the skirt bigger I snuck an extra panel of close-enough navy fabric under the flap, where you can't see it.  By the way - do you see the embroidered logo on the corner of the flap?

Yeah, it's stitched through the sewn hem, so you can't adjust the hem either.

I have never ever seen a school uniform design as flawed as this.  The girl who owned it before Georgia had clearly grown during the two years she had worn it (as one would expect of a girl her age), and the skirt lining has pulled so badly at the seams that it is unsalveageable.  The ONLY thing this skirt has in its favour is that the lining is sewn on as an afterthought to the yoke.  It was easy to remove, and will be easy to replace.

This skirt annoys me for so many reasons - it is so difficult to alter that for the vast majority of Mums (let's face it, it's mostly mums who repair and hem uniforms, if anyone does)that it would be well beyond their capabilities, and because what can be done is so time consuming it would be prohibitively expensive to pay someone to do it. So, you pay $90 for a skirt when your daughter is 13 and highly likely to grow, making it very possible that it won't fit her for the two years she needs it.  And pretty much your only option is to fork out another $90.

Since I don't like non-constructive criticism, I put a fair bit of thought into how this design could be improved.  (It is a lovely skirt, just wildly inappropriate for its intended use.)  Giving the left side seams wide allowances would be a huge improvement - the skirt could be taken in or let out there relatively simply.  Not embroidering the logo through the stitched up hem would also be good - then the hem could be adjusted!  I still wouldn't like it much, but those minor changes would make a vast difference to the longevity of the skirt.

Rant over.  Phew, I really needed to get that off my chest.

I'm baaaack....

Well it seems like a while since I was here, and I had a very prolific December sewing wise.  However after a fantastic holiday at Lake Rotoiti (in the Nelson Lakes district) for a family reunion (which included a visit to the World Of Wearable Art museum in Nelson, which was fantastic!) we returned home to a dead computer.  Blue screen of death, etc etc.  Fortunately we have a couple of IT experts in the family, and while one lot were (and still are) rescuing the un-backed-up (YES I KNOW!) contents of our old one (three or so years of photos most importantly) my SIL was able to procure a machine for us, due to be recycled, hence free!  While not the latest and flashest, it is a decent step up from our old one, and got us back online. We're currently working out how to use windows 8, which those of our acquaintance who do programming and such Do Not Like.  Since none of us do, we're quite happy with it.

The only annoyances for me are that it does not have spider solitaire on it, and our camera software is not compatible, meaning I have to get something else to edit photos.  Since mostly I just crop and rotate them that isn't a big deal, and I did these in Paint!

Right, onto a small sampling of what I've been sewing!


This dress is for the daughter of a friend of my dear friend J.  She gave me this fabric, which was big enough for two dresses - one for Isabella, and one for F.  In exchange for F's dress, I get the rest for Isabella.

Isabella is remarkably willing to model a dress which isn't for her.  This is a size 122 drafted from Aldrich.
Isabella is around 110cm tall, so this fits much as I expected, although it isn't as long as I would expect.

This dress IS for her.  She was very very willing to model it for me and this ended up being the best shot.  Given camera/computer dramas I'm not enthusiastic about another photo shoot.  It's the first thing I've made from one of the Enid Gilchrist books I received from a lovely reader quite a while ago.  I absolutely loved the books, and had plans for several things - either garments or details, but life seemed to get in the way rather a lot.  This is described as a school dress, and I assume is what school uniforms looked like in Australia in the 60s.  It's a size 6, which is great on my tall 4 1/2 year old.  The dots are stenciled on with freezer paper.

For myself I made this top from Pattern Magic 2.  It's called flip turn because of the way one of the pieces flips over the other to create the drape effect.  The drafting was pretty straight forward, and since I'd toiled the block when I first got the books I didn't have to start by doing that.  This is my second version.  After making my first (which I also wear happily) I skimmed in the sides and added a couple of cm to the length.  I've seen other peoples versions of this which are a snugger fit, and I'm thinking I might sneak a little more width off the front, which is wider than the back.

(I know cropped pants are not the most flattering look, but they are very comfy when you don't know whether the weather will be hot or cold.)

And last of all, this shrug.  It's McCalls 5398, now OOP.  This was another garment courtesy of J - I made one for her and one for me from a piece of fabric of hers. We've joked for a while that we're twins separated at birth because of our similarity of taste, and we now have several matching garments.  We'll have totally matching wardrobes before long.

I love shrugs - just enough warmth when it gets chilly, and they don't cover up the details on a pretty dress or top.

So there you go, a brief look at what I've been up to.  When kids return to school and kindy and I have a better idea of what I am doing computer wise I should be able to do a little better with photos.  The mojo seems to be in full swing, so there might even be some MORE SEWING!

How a 13 year old should dress.

Georgia is 13. (Scary thought).  Last Thursday her school held their year 8 social.  Naturally this required dressing up.  She wanted a mullet skirt, but to my eternal relief, not as short as the thigh high hemlines of the skirts in Supre.  She wanted to spend her birthday Spotlight voucher on fabric for her awesome Mum (her words, I swear!) to make one to her specifications.  We bought her new (flat) shoes, she borrowed a top from me and added a cardy she's had for ages, onto which she sewed purple buttons some time ago.  I put her hair into hot rollers for the occasion, and she painted her nails.  And that's it.  This is the only photo of her, (taken by her friend with an ipod or something) as I forgot to take one in the rush to get to the social!

I loved how she looked - like a 13 year old girl, not like a 20 year old hooker.  Most of the girls had new dresses, many a lot shorter than I would have liked Georgia to wear!  I wonder how long she and I will see eye to eye on appropriate clothing?  She LOVES the skirt, and was so thrilled to have me make her something exactly as she wanted.  It didn't hurt that some girls in her class came up to her and said how much they loved her skirt and said it didn't look like the ones in the shops (better), and where did she get it, and how lucky she is to have a Mum to make it.

As an aside, it felt very very different to be making her a pretty skirt to wear to a social - I've made plenty of things for her for special occasions, and plenty of dresses for other girls to wear to school dances, but it really hammered home that my little girl won't be for much longer.

I think this post is to mark a moment for me, in case my lovely Georgia turns into a horrible teenager who only wants label clothes approved by her peers, and sneers at the things I make her, and would rather have a trashy piece of (bought) rubbish for her formal than something her Mum made.

The least alike twins in the world

 I made this dress for Isabella. (BWOF 01/09, #136b) It's one I threw aside in disgust a little while ago when I realised that as drafted it wouldn't go over her head.  Thanks Burda. I ended up drafting the original strap arrangement into actual straps that cross over at the back.  Fortunately I had plenty of fabric to cut them.

I made her a size 110.  She's recently been measured at 108cm tall, and as you can see, this barely hits her knee!  She is in the 75th percentile for height, and about 90th for weight, so sewing for her requires a little thought in the exact opposite direction from Nicholas!

Red and white gingham, fresh and pretty, and festive to boot.  She put the santa hat on, and willingly did a little dance for me to photograph.

I should have shown a picture of them together to really show the size disparity, but anyway here's Nicholas, also today.  Cute outfit isn't it?  His shorts are size 3-6months baby jeans, (bought for 50c from the kindy fair - bargain!) and his T shirt is a size 1.

Their personalities are also as different as can be. When I first found out I was having fraternal twins I thought it would be nice if they were different sexes so that they didn't necessarily go through their whole lives identified as "the twins" if they didn't want to.  I sure got what I wished for :-)

Home Sewn, the book

In response to interest shown, here is a peek at the book I mentioned in my last post, Home Sewn.

The ten designers who contributed patterns are listed on the back.

The book begins with 12 pages outlining the history of home sewing in New Zealand.  Who sewed and why they did it, along with examples from several.  As one with a keen interest in the history and evolution of dress, this fascinates me. (I mean "dress" in its broadest sense, encompassing all body modifications - everything a person does that alters their body from its natural state.  That includes the temporary, such as hair styling and make up, as well as the permanent, such as tattooing and scarification.  Hmm, does it show that I really really enjoyed my Social Psychology of Clothing lectures?)  Twelve pages is not a comprehensive account, but it gives a very good outline of how things were in New Zealand and how that affected the desire or need to sew for oneself.

Then come the patterns, each with a brief profile of the designer.  This is Cybele Wiren's profile and design.
(As an aside, I have finished my dress, but I am not going to photograph it until I have made a nice wide obi-style belt to wear with it.)

This skirt, from Papercut Patterns, is also available for sale here.  Katie Brown, the designer of Papercut, is also responsible for developing the patterns, lay plans and tutorials in the book.  The book is also available for sale on the Papercut website, here.

This versatile dress from Starfish is another one which caught my eye.  It can be worn like this:

Or one of these ways.  My apologies for the really crappy photos.  I gave up in the end trying to get anything better.

I was really attracted to the line drawing of the main pattern piece.  This will be made just as soon as the appropriate fabric presents itself.

As will this striped skirt by Vaughan Geeson.  Those stripes are pieced. And curved.  Can't wait!

At the back are several photo tutorials covering techniques used in the book.

Patterns are printed on pattern sheets, with each pattern in a different colour.  I did find while tracing my dress that the two very similar pieces were so close together that I had to keep checking that I didn't veer off into the other piece as I traced.  Not a big deal, but it did require care.  Some patterns are multisized, but most are given in a single size - NZ10, 12 or medium, so you either need to fit that size or know how to grade.

The only thing that has so far caught my eye as an inconsistency is the difference between the photo of the T shirt from World:

And the line drawing.

I tried a dozen times to get better photos than these but this was the best I could do.  It appears to me that the T shirt in the photo has attached sleeves, which would give a closer fit than the cut on sleeves of the pattern.  I don't THINK I'm wrong about the seam, but its always possible!

Those paying attention will have noticed that the pattern lays are for a single layer - yay!  Most of the patterns appear to be given as full pieces as well, rather than half patterns to be cut on the fold.  (I haven't checked all of them, but the two I have traced are full pieces, as is everything else I've noticed.  The exception seems to be the Swirler (multi-wear) dress by Starfish, which is given as a half pattern, probably because its pretty big.  The pattern lay is single layer though.)

As I mentioned in my last post, instructions are minimal, making some of the designs challenging for beginners to sew.  But what fun to have my own Cybele dress for the princely sum of NZ$15 for the pattern (based on NZ$45 for the book, used for three patterns, therefore $15 each) and $3 for the fabric.  I love this book, and I love that this book has been written, and I am grateful that ten New Zealand designers each contributed a pattern to celebrate the long history of home sewing, and to help keep it going.