Craft Christmas Club

If you love homemade gifts and you plan to craft something "with love" for your family and friends for Christmas (or any other time of the year) then this is a blog you should be reading.  Whether you know what you're making and you want to share your ideas and tutorials or you are looking for inspiration, join some of the craftiest members of the blogosphere at this great blog started by Tilly of Tilly and the Buttons.

For my own yuletide offerings I'm going to be making christmas cookies and gingerbread houses.  I've stocked up on christmas shaped cookie cutters which are on sale at very cheap prices at TK Maxx (who also have cutters for the gingerbread houses) and a set of star cookie cutters for just £1 from Tiger.  Of course, I'm going to have to do some test batches first to get the right recipe and practice icing, oh its tough but I'm sure Mango and I will cope ;-)

Pretty in Peach Petticoat

So a long time back I promised some pictures and have not yet posted them, my bad. Here are some pics of the petticoat I finished a few weeks ago. It is to go under my Butterick dress (still at a standstill) and is made from Simplicity 5006.

The peachy side...

The tiers are tulle in champagne and peach colours (a very subtle difference in shades, somehow adds luminence) and the yoke is made from the same fabrics as the dress, a peach crepe and apricot crepe-back satin, and is reversible in wearing (an adjustment to the pattern). I can't recall why I decided to use the crepe face of the satin, in hindsight I should have used the satin side for a lower friction surface.   It's not yet hemmed because I want to cut it to the right length for the dress.

In reverse ... apricot

 As you can see, I serged the seams of the tulle, I really wanted a quick and easy method, and I don't mind the lines, it is an undergarment after all!  It is supposed to be 4 panels per tier but I doubled up the fabric to cut it as 2 per tier, again to save effort.  Which I'm glad I did as the gathering was a mega pain. At around 8 yards of fabric gathering threads were just going to snap and cause tears, it couldn't be ruffled on the machine, more misery, and so I took my trusty cutting board, a box of 200 large-head pins and sat dividing the tulle lengths, folding and pinning which resulted in hundreds of neat, uniform, miniscule pleats which were very satisfying to the eye!

I finished off the seam between the peach tulle and crepe with some lovely handstitched trim I had in stash, haven't decided what to use on the other side, maybe some pale lace?

The waist band is elasticated with 28mm wide elastic and I stitched in the ditch at the side seams to help prevent it flipping and twisting in the channel.  TBH, I really dislike the elasticated waistband and if I use this pattern again I will switch it for a flat waistband which will look much smoother under a dress.  I may yet just undo the top of this one, dart and reband it, lets see how much it annoys me! 

Another thing I noticed when I tried on the finished garment was that the seam between yoke and tulle sits right across my "seat", a tad uncomfortable, especially when sitting!  Answer for this skirt is a cami-slip, which I intended to wear under the dress anyway. In future - extend yoke and add lining layer to petticoat. That said, I now have quite a choice of vintage petticoats patterns to try out, I have lemon tulle at the ready!

Favourite blogs: New Dress a Day

or 365 days - 365 dresses - $365 to spend....

If you havent already clocked onto this great blog it is absolutely worth a visit, the woman behind the blog (I want to call her a girl, she is so young looking) is a true inspiration and here's why...

Marissa was made redundant and ,concerned about depleting funds, she decided no more clothes buying for a year... but what woman can do that?  So she gave herself a budget of $365 and did some serious thrift store and estate sale scrounging.  The result for a dollar a dress starts off truly-horrendous-but-with-redeeming-quality frocks in most cases and Marissa does some sorcery with her magical seam-picker, magical scissors and magical sewing-machine and turns them into something beautiful and up-to-date fashionable...

    



 

 

Who'd have thought they had so much potential?  She's inspired me to look at Ugly Duckling dresses in a completely new light...

P.S. Sorry about the dodginess of the photos, blogger is giving me a headache posting these tonight!

Another fab centenarian giveaway at Debi's blog, My Happy Sewing Place.  Again she's offering patterns from ever decade between 30s and 50s, theyre gorgeous.

In the UK you have 3 hours left to ge an entry in, cousins in the states you have a few more hours, lucky you!

I'm a Mad Men Dress Up Doll!

So a current rage all my female friends (and a few males) are gossiping about is Mad Men. Now retrophile I may be but I have not succumbed to watching this program (it's probably very sensible that I don't, I'm way too impressionable) however I could not resist playing a little bit of animated dress up over at www.madmenyourself.com.

Like any avatar software, there are models for ladies and men in all shapes, sizes and skin tones, an awesome wardrobe to play with with many colour choices and a whole host of accessories plus the a host of backgrounds for your fantasy...

Here I am in a yellow, full skirted frock, so me. Dig those pearls, pretty brooch and ditzy glove!

And here am I, full screen, dining by moonlight with my own Mr Big. I've decided he's Tony Curtis, seems appropriate this week (not in his deceased state I might add, this is fantasy remember!).

I urge you all to go play and post about it up on your blog if you have one, would love to see your Mad Men alter ego!

Quick update

Petticoat is finished (bar needingg a bit of pretty ribbon to finish off the yoke). Will take pictures when I have daylight! I am quite pleased with it but I won't feel entirely happy until I've put it under its destined dress and seen that it does its job!

I have to sew the destined dress still, but my mojo is back and running so hope to bring more exciting updates and pics soon! :-)

What I found...

A thumbscrew YAY

A video tape of my dad taxiing a Lancashire bomber YAY

A little bit of my sewing mojo... I've had a depressing drought of not being able to face a pattern piece, fabric scissors or sewing machine, I've been busy with family stuff and I've been doing a costume design for Christmas panto which seems to have sated all my creative needs, but is it common to lose one's sewing mojo? 

Hopefully I will start to enjoy sewing again, and with that will come updates on the petticoat (Simplicity 5006), the Butterick 9265  dress and a Vogue inspired vintage repro. YAY!

For want of a nail... the rider was lost...

So I have two sewing deadlines this weekend, I have been suffering major lack of sewing mojo as well as distractions elsewhere and I have finally prepped everything for whizzing through the machine and finish off to discover my presser foot is unattached.  Why?  Because I'd been messing with the ruffler foot and had taken it off to show my visiting ma, and for some reason I didn't reattach it and left the thumb screw on the side (yeah sometimes I am a real idiot).  Of course the screw is not there now and a hunt online through UK sewing machine shops has been fruitless for finding a replacement for the missing part (as has scouring the sewing room but at least I did a much needed clean up!).  Guess who has the enviable job of sifting through the vaccum cleaner contents tomorrow with a magnet? (I'm not holding much hope but I gotta try!)

Oh, where art thou?

Its not been a good week for finding things.  One of our freeview boxes has almost given up the ghost so I dug out a spare one I got given a few years ago but the remote was missing.  "Ah!" I thought, I saw that and saved it a couple of weeks ago when I was clear a clear out.  Can I find it now? My dad gave me a hi-8 tape to try and download for him, he now needs it back.  I put it in a safe place where I knew where to find it.  When I looked in the safe place it wasn't there. Nor is it anywhere else I've looked, this worries me even more, I'm praying for my dad's tape to turn up!


If only I could remember where I left my memory...

Update on the Butterick 9265 Dress

 Ok, so two days before the wedding deadline, I brought out from my wardrobe a lovely homemade vintage 70s empire line dress in a cream and decided it needed an airing and the wedding would be perfect.  Last time I had worn was a year and a week before for a garden party.  I was around 35 weeks pregnant and had to deeply breath in to get the back zip done up but I was determined to wear it! It flowed over the bump beautifully anyway.

The following weekend, at another wedding I wore a modern 40s/50s look dress in a black lined cotton with purple, blue and white flowers.  I wouldn't normally wear black to a wedding but this dress just seemed to be right so I teamed it with purple tights and black shoes. When I got to the wedding I discovered it was themed with the same shade of purple! I shall add photos this week.

Any way, what has this got to do with the Butterick dress?  Well I supposed to be wearing it to the first wedding and, since I changed my mind, I didn't get on with finishing it.  To be honest I've made so many changes I've lost my impetus somewhat but I must must finish it.  My new deadline is 22nd August for Mango's first birthday!



The most adjusted bit is the bodice, here is the pattern view bodice:

Could I get it to look pretty like that?! The neckline came up too high and there just felt like there was too much fabric across my bust.




So I ended up reducing it pretty much to a deep V surplice although with enough fabric to preserve modesty! The tuck darts look pretty cute in the muslin too.

 

But I was still contemplating converting them to gathers to make like easier, I'd seen it on a few other patterns of the time and more modern.  These were my alternative inspiration pics for the surplice:

 

Then when I was fitting my lining before I cut out the outer dress layers I stumbled across a new alternative.  I tried on the lining inside to get a matt finish to  mimic the dress crepe and the neck flopped back into a satiny rever collar, "oooh pretty" I thought!  So here it is in its new design in lining and then with the actual crepe outer dress layer in place.  You can see I was toying with doing the midriff in the satin side too but decided it was overload.  The revers are interfaced now to give them structure and support as is the midriff because I wanted a super smooth stomach line to mimic the corsetted look.

  

It all needs sewing together now, its so close, just got to find my sewing mojo and get on with it.  The matching petticoat is also in mid-production, I wanted to try gathering the layers with my ruffling foot but that's proving to require so much thought and input it would probably be quicker to hand gather!  Since I intend to make more petticoats, I think its worth taking the time now to learn how to do the machine way and make the process quicker in future. That's the logic anyway haha.

Outside In

Before the dry, hot weather hit the garden was alive with multicolour borders stuffed with flowers.  Not getting outside as much as I would like, I decided to bring some of the garden inside to adorn our basement stairs. I could look at garden flowers all day (even through the hayfever sneezes!).