The Perfect Knit Dress, and Cowly top

Behold the (now out of print) McCalls 5752, the perfect knit dress, in a spotty knit from the stash. It was a bit gapey at the neckline, so I sewed a deeper seam where the bodice attaches at the midriff and it worked out fine. I think I'll make this again, in a plain fabric. I like the 40s-by-way-of-the-70s thing it has going on. No? Just me?

I had enough of this rayon knit left over from making this frock to make New Look 6901, the cowl t-shirt. I've decided that I'm going to use any left over knit frock fabric to make tops.. Most of my stash bins are frock leftovers. They'll have to be easy tops though or else I'll never do it. Can't get much easier than this, no finishing of the cowl neckline required.

Vintage Butterick 9269

The latest frock, Butterick 9269, view b, the bodice in black linen/cotton blend and the skirt in stretch sateen snake, both fabrics are from Spotlight.
Purchased belt, as they say.

I scooped out the back and front necklines 1.5cm each, after looking at the pattern piece and thinking it looked as though they were too high. I think it was a good thing I did as it looks like the pattern illustration now. It would have been too high. I shortened the frock a lot. As drafted this frock would be nearly down to my ankles. After much pinning and photographing, I decided it looked best hemmed above the knee. I find it easier to decide hem length from photos rather than from looking in the mirror. Anyone else find that?

This is an unprinted pattern, and very fragile, so I traced it. Ugh. I hate tracing unmarked patterns. Trying to figure out which holes mean darts or are just grain line holes. No nice dark lines to trace over either. (I put sew-in interfacing over the pattern to trace).

Frankenstein Frock Frenzy 2012

During my time off over the festive season I have been very busy in the sewing room.

I bought some fab Shaheen tiki print quilting cotton from equilter last year. When it arrived it was sopping wet in the package, in an Australia Post plastic bag which said that is how they received it. It was like it had been at the bottom of the sea! Equilter were great about it when I notified them, and told me to give it a wash and see if I wanted to keep it, and if not they would refund me. It washed up fine, so I kept it and made it into my New Year's eve frock.

I used bodice D of New Look 6699, but rounded off the neckline a little, to make it a bit more like a vintage sarong dress. I only had 2 yards of this fabric, and equilter had no more, so I couldn't do a proper wrap skirt. Instead I attached the skirt from Butterick 5672, cut on the bias (as the pattern instructs you to do, which I don't really understand as it is designed for stretchy knits.) I cut on the bias because I was using a woven of course and thought it would give me some more wiggle room (haha!)

This means the striped motif is angled on the skirt, but I don't mind that, it makes it look more 'sarongy' to me. The side pleats on the skirt give it a bit of a wrap vibe.

Next I frankensteined Butterick 5672 again. I'm getting my money's worth out of this pattern! This time I used the bodice, but extended the shoulders for a more vintage look. I attached skirt D from New Look 6911, but decreased the pleats on the front from 6 to 4 (total) and left off the waistband.

The fabric is a linen/cotton blend I got at Spotlight. It's extremely red as you can see. Nice and cool and the skirt twirls nicely. I didn't line the frock, instead I used bias binding as facings. It's not especially sheer fabric, and I wanted to keep the lovely lightness and coolness of the fabric for summer wearing.

This frock was an experiment for the next fabric I had in the queue, but I ended up going with a different pattern for that in the end. I've finished that next frock now, and will show it in my next post. Now I have to get out of the sewing room and go somewhere to wear all these frocks!

Butterick 5672

I've been too busy sewing to post!
One frock I've made is Butterick 5672

The fabric is a tweedy wool blend knit, with about 30% stretch across the grain. Not enough stretch for this dress, so I did put the zip in. I went up a size due to my fabric not being stretchy enough, but the pleats are pulling a little too much so it's probably still a skootch too small. Still it's comfy and may become a tripfit once I've road tested it.

Initial tripfits

Hey, did we mention that we've booked a holiday? Kitty and I are venturing to Europe - it was a choice between that or the USA to explore the Smithsonians and other ports of call... but London, Paris and Rome and points in between won out.

We are going in the last week of March, coming back in the third week of April - so the weather is a bit unpredictable. The travel wardrobe I took this March to Belgium / France / London worked really well, although I hardly wore my coat at all.

But... what's a holiday without themed sewing in the lead up?

So we are in the middle of working out where those points may be, researching fabric districts, and of course thinking of said tripfits! I'm contemplating a black / blue / green theme. So far I've made a dress / pinafore from Simplicity retro 3673 in self-striped bengaline



A day bag from Butterick 5273 with the leftover bengaline, with an embroidered motif of  a sweet graveyard, tree and owl (from Emblibrary.com)

Oh, and did I mention that I caught the fever and got my own Singer Featherweight? It's a 221K rather than the 222K - the difference being that this one doesn't have the free arm.

It's so lovely to sew on!

Next things to attempt - shrugs, a cape, shirred or faux wrap skirt, and a couple of knit dresses...

Style 2323

Style 2323, made from the same lace print knit fabric Moggy used to make this frock.
I made view 1. I didn't put in the pockets. The pattern is for wovens and knits, hence it is extremely tent like before the waist elastic goes in. I still might take the bodice area sides in, as it takes a bit of fiddling to get it to sit nicely up top due to the low armholes and extra fabric.

A very straightforward pattern.
Bit obsessed with elastic-waist knit frocks lately, in case you'd not noticed.

Reversible gifts

This morning I made 2 reversible pursibles, for Christmas presents for work colleagues:

Excitingly made up on one of my new Featherweight 222Ks!

Umm, one of, yes. I recently developed a bit of an obsession with these tiny machines after seeing one in a pawn shop (not for sale sadly). I bought one on eBay and then two more came up at the auction house near where I live. I put in low absentee bids on both for a laugh, and was unexpectedly successful on one of them and now I have two almost identical machines. Oops.

They do sew beautifully. Such fun, and so little! Here's one next to my regular sized Singer 348:

Aww.

Another McCalls 6069

Yup, made another one.

Snake print ITY knit from fabric.com, bought when it was on clearance a few months back.
No pockets this time.
I forgot to mention, this dress is quite short as drafted, so if you don't want to show your knees, you will have to add length. I sewed the teensiest hem ever on this.
Here's a slightly clearer pic on Betty:

I made a narrow sash for this one as well, as you can see.

Latest projects

Latest sewing: A shirred cotton frock for a 4 year old friend and McCalls 6069, in a poly knit from Spotlight.

No pattern for the shirred frock, just a large rectangle with 12 lines of shirring and 4 straps, one seam down the back, hem top and bottom and done.
The fabric is a quilting cotton (the design is called floragraphix III.) I didn't notice I had shirred the wrong end until I had done all 12 rows, so the swallows are flying upside down. Sigh. I couldn't bring myself to waste all that shirring elastic by unpicking and starting again. I'm trying to decide if I point it out to the young one's mother or keep quiet and see if they notice. Maybe I can claim it is to make the design more abstract. We'll see.

The McCalls dress has several reviews on Patternreview.com.
Like some other sewists, I used the square neck front bodice for the back, because I didn't fancy a cowl back on this. I rounded off the back neckline as you can see in the photo.
Some reviewers also noted that the skirt seemed quite tight, which wasn't a look I wanted in an elastic waisted frock, so I added a few centimetres width to the skirt. I did the side seam pockets too, but I think I'd leave them out if I made this again, they don't sit neatly in this drapey fabric and give a bit of a harem skirt look around the hips. If I don't end up liking the pockets after wearing, I might sew up the sides and take the pockets off, easy enough to do. Shame, as I love pockets in a frock. I made a thin self-fabric tie belt too, although it's barely visible on the busy print.
Here are the pics:

Easy stitch 'n save is Easy

At the end of last week, Kitty made a quick visit to Melbourne. Do you think we might've snuck in a bit of fabric shopping? Why, yes we did...

We both bought some poly (I think) knit with a lace print from Spotlight ($5/m knits MUST be bought you know) and also McCall's 6308 - one of their Easy Stitch 'n Save patterns (Clegs was having a half price sale, so we got 'em for $4).

This looks a bit similar to the Out Of Print McCall's 6070, but with a different back and the midriff band doesn't go all the way around.

So, they seemed like a great match. Today is Melbourne Cup Day, so Melbourne gets a public holiday (for a horse race... hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth!). So I sewed her up today.

I made a few minor changes - added 3cm to the front band to make it more like a midriff band (an added the same to the back of course) and 10cm to the bottom. It was a very quick - under two hours. It would have been even quicker, apart from having to rethread the overlocker from coverstitch to overlocking to rolled hem back to overlocking... phew! I coverstitched the neck instead of using the suggested neck binding.

I also changed the back neckline from a v back to a shallow scoop - it ended up a bit raised, which is a nice effect:

It ended up a little low in the neckline, so I've tacked it closed so it's decent for work...

New New Look... pleatorama

As soon as I saw New Look 6067 in the catalogue, I knew it must be mine! Front pleats? Check! Tulipy skirt? check! Little cap sleeves? Check again!

I liked it so much I couldn't wait for it to come out in Australia so I bought it from sewingpatterns.com, along with a few other patterns that no doubt will be revealed in coming weeks  (hint: New Look 6069 is one of them).

I made it out of some lovely shot orange/red bengaline I bought at Remnant Warehouse last time I was in Sydney with Kitty. It's the same fabric as New Look 6000 in pink (which I now realise I didn't blog - here she is:

I've also got some in sky blue - I still need to decide what dress to make out of it.

One thing I keep trying to get to stick in my head is that Bengaline stretches across the grain (almost 50% I reckon) and not at all down the length - so it's important to remember to check the stretch.

Anyway, back to 6067...
For some reason in the first picture she looks like she has Tyrannosaurus Rex arms - she doesn't really, honest!

Here's the detail of the bodice.

I had a peasant weekend

I found this splodgy voile at Spotlight, and decided it wanted to be a peasant blouse. The pattern is a frock with a midriff, but I just traced the top and extended it straight down. No need for a zip. I cut self fabric bias to make casings for the sleeves and neckline. I'm a convert to cutting my own bias, when I have enough fabric.

I shirred the waist for a bit of shape.

I recently made 2 skirts out of frock remnants. Both are double- knittish fabrics. The slimmer skirt is the Burda wool skirt pattern again, with heaps cut off the pattern because the pattern runs big. The flared skirt is New Look 6977, view C, but I added side seam pockets. I managed to sew a twist in the waistband of the flared skirt, which you may be able to see in the (blurry, sorry!) photo. Rather than unpick overlocking, I'm calling it a design feature, as you do.