Late summer Roses Dress, Plain Pattern Project 1

Wow its been over a week since I have had chance to get my hands on the laptop long enough to do more than check emails.
Alot has been done in that time.

 So before I get ahead of myself here is the finished Plain Pattern project dress 1. Hosted by newvintagelady
My choice was

Butterick 6747 from 1953. Which I bought from the lovely Tina at what-i-found.
With fabric chosen to be as close to the pattern image as possible. However after I had constructed most of the dress I realised I should have done a constrasting colar, ah well.

I wanted to do some proper outside pics so me and the lovely Mr S went to Letchworth  Garden City to do the shoot as its has some very cool art deco buildings.

The cinema in Letchworth, How wonderful are those windows.

Showing a bit of leg outside of the town hall, Oh my. I tried to dress with apropiate accessories, vintage gloves and a vintage handbag. Although I have to admit I can only go so far as my obession for wild shoes is always present (Biba shoes, I love you). As for the hair, well it has taken me many many years to accept I have what can only be described as side show bob hair, some days it looks great but mostly it dont. And on this day no way was it going to co-operate.

Ah yes back to the dress the only alteration I did was to the length, being under 5ft meant lots of shortening.

And as I would expect of any dress like this there's always going to be a Marilyn Moment.

On the whole I love this dress , I have already made dress 2, which I wore to my nephews wedding at the weekend. Pictures to follow shortly.

Happy sewing all you lovely people. Sew Vala

And so on to new projects

And so on to new projects.

Currently on the sewing table are

• Nepeta - cos play outfit for youngest daughter
• Captain Jack Harkness cos play outfit for eldest daughter
• and Loud shirt number 4

here's a sneek peak at progression so far

Nepeta- You may remember I have been asked to re-create this but with cat ears not horns.

I used this simplicity pattern, the cat woman hat for the pattern. I didn't know if it would work as its for synthectic leather and I was using fleace.

She was very pleased with the result, but similing for the camera is not 'cool'

The Captain Jack Harkness is still to be started

Thats it for the moment except to show off another shoe obsession, well botts actually they have everything, buckles, laces and zips.

My winter footwear is sorted, How about you.

Happy sewing you lovely people Sew Vala x

Debi's giveaway and my current projects.

In case you didn't know, the lovely Debi from over at my happy sewing place is having a fantasic giveaway for this gorgeous dress

hop on over to see her fanstic blog about the Gatsby picnic, which looks like a very cool day.

I have been a bit quiet on the blogging front this week, as my daughters laptop is poorly so she has been using mine. which has given me time to work on my current projects.

I have finally finished the

Dress one . Although I haven't taken any finished pictures yet. I want to do some 'proper posing' pics outside in a suitable place. They would be much better than taking them on Betsy which is my usual thing.

The other item under my sewing machine this week is finally started the cos play out fit for my daughter. 

No Problem i said. eek.

Luckly she wants the blue hat with cat ears and not horns.

So I'm back off to carry on with that and hopefully tonight I can 'remove' my laptop from her 'Nepeta' fingers (thats the charater above) and let you all know how I am getting on.

Sew Vala. x

Skipping stiches and 'what on earth?' instructions.

Ok so back to more on Butterick 6747 . When I picked up this dress this week and began to sew this happened

Looks like its time for a little machine maintance.Empty bobbin fluff, check tension, check stutch length/width etc. A few test pieces later

The unpicked stiches can clearly be seen but next to it looking good.

I also had problems with my overcasting so had to revert to zigzaging the edges.

 I think a service may be in order soon.

And then this is where the real problems started. And I felt like this

I could not at all understand the inerfacing for the colar and front, at all. So I bloged help, and  the lovely ShelleyJ over at New Vintage Lady sent me a link which descrided what I had to do way better than my instructions did. Thank you ShellyJ.
Basicly it was the same as the facings I did in my Loud Shirts, but the technique is very diferent. Once I had the hang of it the dress bagan to take shape

Although with that colar as it is I could audition for the next Flash Gordon movie

Any way back to reality. I am still not sure if I did the interfacing construction 'right' The instruction asked me to 'lap the interfacing, so I did this

??????.

And when I sewed the interling to the facing it all went wonky. But hey thats inside it did cause me minor irritation becasue I really want to do things right, I am not a perfectionist by any means, I just want to do well.

Before I go today

I have just realised I meant to do a contrasting colar. DOH.

SewVala.

Decisions on Plain Pattern Project.

Well after yesterdays non starter on this sew-along. I used my time to play about with the settings on my blog. I hope you like the changes. To me it feels fresher and a bit brighter, just what was needed on such a gloomy day. It really lifted my mood and helped to get me ready to start the project again.

I went through my patterns looking for something plain pattern. I have chosen

Butterick 6747 from 1953

I have chosen view B. My fabric is similar to the floral on the cover so this will be covering part three.

the dress is plain only six pieces altogether (it would be 8 if making view A, for the pockets).

And I have never made a dress before.

The pattern pieces.

This is an orginal pattern from 1953 and the condiction of it fantasic, just take a look at the instruction sheet.



Now ok, the image shows to shorten / lengthen at the hem. Look closely at the lenght of the finished dress in the pictures. Now look at the pattern next to me,

I have had to shorten this by 8 inches. WOW. That feels like alot.

Am I surprised, not really. Thats why I wanted to learn how to make clothes.

Anyway I digress,

Pattern pieces cut out.

And here it is pinned to Betsy to get an idea of the lengh and fit.

Today I hope to finish this dress, apart from the 3 day hanging, before finishing the hem.

 I have heard this is very important , but I am not sure why,

Any ideas...?

SewVala.





 

Progress on Plain Pattern Project.

I am taking part in the plain pattern project over at new vintage lady. My choice was

Vogue 8146. I have previous made the jacket and never got around to making the dress because I decided the fabric I had chosen was just too boring. However I had already cut out the pattern and dress before I came to feel this dress is DULL.

So I was rather pleased when NVL hosted this sew-along, it would give me reason to finish it and then make it twice more with more interesting fabric and details.

However this was not to be. Yesterday I made the facings and started on the front darts, all was going well even though I realised that since cutting the dress out several months ago I have put on quite a bit of weight. This didn't matter as I knew I wasn't going to be wearing this dress anyway.

And this moring I did the back darts. And the sewed one part of the back to the front and was pinning on the other half back when I suddenly realised my mistake



I had sewn the other half back on to the wrong side of the fabric,

So I ended up with two left half backs. This happened because the fabric has no 'wrong side' and I wasn't paying attention to this when I drew out the darts.
Unfortunally due to the weave of the fabric I am unable to unpick the darts and to be honest I can't really be bothered.

So I think is more Earl Grey, while browsing my patterns and start again. With an all new plain patttern project.

Right then lets put the kettle on..

p.s I know the silly little pictures are not usually my style. But today I just kinda needed them. And I quite liked it, hope you did to.

Sew Vala.

It all starts with underwear...

Finally today I was able to start one of the blogger projects I have been aiming to do. After much procrastination and lots of tea I decided upon the underskirt for the walkaway dress. As I wanted something that I could complete in a day. I followed Edelweiss blog instructions on how to make the underskirt which can be found here.

I was finding it hard to find crinoline so in the end I chose to go with netting in a soft baby pink colour. My dress is mauve/purple so I figured this would complement nicely.

I won't go through all the instruction techniques individually but I will show you my construction pics.

Lots and lots of netting.What I didnt realise was the netting I bought was 44" wide whereas the pattern asked for 54". However luckly this fits just right, any bigger would have been way too much.

The top layer and the main body of the skirt attached.

Gathering the netting using embrodairy floss. It pulled back out really easy.

The lower part waiting to be stiched.

Front view of the finished piece.

And whats even better about this design is, it can also be used as a full underskirt. How cool is that.

After overcasting the edges. I changed the stitch width but forgot to change the actual stitch, but that was ok because I ended up with this really decorative stitch, which I then kept throughout.

Overall I am really happy with this.
I have never sewn with netting before, It's ok, I can see more flouncy underskirts appearing in my wardrobes.
I have never done gatherring stitches before. For a while I was rather bemused but once the image of pulling up pencil pleat curtains came to mind, I was fine.

Now I can't wait to start the actual dress. I think I am far behind as most are creating bindings now. But I know I am a slow sewer. This underskirt took the best part of 6 hours. Mainly because I no longer think 'that will do' when sewing for myself (which I used to, only when sewing my bags or for others do I make sure its perfect.) The most time consuming for me was the pinning and re-pinning and re-pinning of the gathers to get them 'just so' .

Today I feel I have actually acheived something. It's a good feeling. I hope you all out there are feeling fantasic too.
Sew Vala. x