Masked marauder

El Luchador loco! My first crochet project!
I used this pattern.

There's a few mistakes in there but I don't care! I love him!
This one's for a friend, but I've started another for me because I'm going to miss having the little guy around the house.

(Edited to add: sorry if the formatting is a bit whacky, blogged from my phone)

The look of love

...New Look love, that is...

I had a hankering for a bolero so I popped along to Cleg's pattern and remnant sale (half price patterns, not their fabulous twice-yearly or so $5 for all patterns sale). I wanted New Look ones anyway, so they ended up being not much over $5 each

One was New Look 6935. Cute little collared and collarless boleros, plus some cute empire line frocks (which I may make one day). I made it out of some leftover Ponti. As usual, the New Look pattern made up a treat. This is view D. It's shaped nicely with darts at the neck (hard to see on black, of course!)

I found more of the same Ponti in my stash and decided to make a matching frock. This pattern is New Look 6013 which I bought a while ago  - Kitty made this in leopard in May.

I cut out the front and embroidered a lovely bird from an Urban Threads giveaway (I removed the banner using the fabulous almost-free Stitch Era Universal embroidery software).

The sewing of the dress was super quick - I did the turn-and-sew thing with the neckline, sleeves and hem using the coverstitch. I love that Elna!

Not AGAIN!

As Kitty and I were having our usual online-chatting-while-sewing-or-otherwise-craftifying, we discussed how despite both having a metric heap of patterns, we do often sew the same ones over (and sometimes over and over) again.

That's exactly what I did this weekend.

Saturday was a leopard ponti version of the red buckle dress from way back last November - the vintage Simplicity Slenderette S.183 . I dug out a silver buckle from the haberstash and off she went!

Unfortunately I think the coverstitch on my Elna was going a bit weird so will have to wear it and see if it maintains Hem Stability. 

I'll see if I can get a better picture tomorrow where it's not looking quite so brick like.

Next is old favourite Butterick 6522, made Sunday afternoon after a lovely lunch at my sister's house to celebrate a couple of family birthdays. . 

 

I've now made this one from lace, halloween cats, lurid stretch cotton sateen, black knit with embroidery, tiki print (hmm, where is that frock?) and now goldfish:

As mentioned before, it's a pattern I've had for ages so was cut to a 14 - I now sew an 18 most of the time. So I added 2cm to each seam (side and back) and the centre front, and sewed the back dart 1cm smaller at the waist, tapering up to the existing dart at the top. I used the usual a line skirt from New Look 6557. This is such a quick sew, what with the cut on sleeves, dartless a-line skirt, faced sweetheart neckline and french dart. It's a great style for showing off the pattern of a fabric.

Note to self: trace a version with these additions onto interfacing so I don't have to mark it up every time and adjust the facing. Because we all know I'll make this one again.

Replacement frocking

I wanted to make a frock to replace this one, which I gave to my pregnant friend in New York when I was there several months ago. She tried it on, and when I saw her face I knew I couldn't take it back. She loved it, and her wardrobe was shrinking as her belly grew...my wardrobe on the other hand is ever-expanding. Hey, I can always make another one, right?

So I had making a replacement frock in mind when I was shopping in the NY garment district, and this is the only fabric I bought while I was there. The fabric is thick and warm and soft and lovely and I might just need more of it. I did look for other colours, but they only had this lovely stuff in black.

The front and back are New Look 6000 (Moggy made it in brown); chosen because the neckline was nice and wide, and the side gathers added a bit of interest to what is a very plain black frock. I extended the skirt into an A-line while tracing the pattern, and left off the rear vent. The sleeves are from the same vintage pattern as the original version, again with some of the volume removed. I overlocked and then turned and stitched the neckline instead of using the facings. The armscye and sleeve head were a pretty good fit without any mucking about, (luckily for lazy me) so I sewed the sleeves in flat, before sewing up the side and sleeve seams together.

I did some photo jiggery-pokery so the details stand out:

Back on the sewing horse (clothes horse?)

 It seems absolutely ages since I posted, or indeed sewed. This weekend, aided by the lovely autumn weather, I remedied that terrible oversight.

Still haven't learnt to take a decent picture though.

On the right: New Look 6000 in brown ponti. I did the boat/scoop neck instead of the collar, and extended the shoulders to make cut-on cap sleeves instead of the ones in the pattern (much as I love the cuffed sleeves, I was being... lazy is the only way to say it).

I was pleased with the result. Although seeing Livebird's collared-and-cuffed version, i think I'll have to make the effort next time!

I also made a slip from Sew-knit-n-stretch #212:

This ended up being quite quick to make, and turned out rather nicely. I made it from lace and a stretch satin I had left over from a previous slip project:

New Look 6013

Sorry about the no-posting-for-yonks. We had a house guest for ages, so the sewing room was packed up. Bonus of no sewing - I taught myself to crochet so I can make amigurumi. I am compelled to make this!
I am partway through crocheting a robot right now. If all goes well, I will have a little luchador on the hook next.




Spotlight have had some fab ponte de roma lately, including this grey and black leopard print.
I made the New Look 6013 raglan sleeve dress today. I omitted the zip, and cut the back on the fold, placing the centre back over the edge of the fold to remove the seam allowances due to the no zip thing.
Very quick, everything went together smoothly, and I have yet another grey and black knit frock for winter.

I might be in a rut.

Infinite dress - burda 7352

I went to a wedding recently where the bridesmaids wore infinite dresses, in black, all tied differently. I thought it would be fun to make one.
As I do, I wanted to make it NOW so I downloaded Burda 7352 from sewing patterns.com.

Of course that meant spending a whole lot of time printing and taping the pattern, but at least I could make it the next day instead of waiting for the pattern to arrive in the mail, right?

Here's the result. So fun to figure out the different configurations! Apologies for the phone pics; I made this frock a few weeks ago and thought I'd wait and take proper pics but seems I'm too lazy!

It looks nice with a sparkly vintage brooch:

The dress was quick and easy to make; no finishing! Because the wrong side of the fabric is visible when you tie the straps you have to cut cleanly. I used a heavy poly jersey. This version has a bodice piece unlike other versions I've seen which are just the skirt with two straps. I like the bodice because it gives a little more coverage. If I made another one I would put the straps closer together; they're fine, but I would prefer them to be touching where they attach to the bodice.


I'd also make the straps longer by about 30 cm, even though they are already long! I used the videos at two birds bridesmaids dresses to tie the different styles and the straps are too short for some of the styles I'd like to try. The frocks the bridesmaids wore which made me want to make this were from two birds, and they looked gorgeous! Such a good idea! Mmm, might make a black one, with my modifications...

Imminent tripfits

It's only a week until my fortnight's jaunt to Europe, so I thought I'd post a couple of my new tripfits. According to the weather reports it will be around -1 to 11 Celsius across Brussels, France and London (22 - 51F for our non-metric friends). However, as previously mentioned I run a bit hot, so I'm going on the layering theory with some silk thermal undergarments for good measure...

First up is  the Simplicity 4789 Maggy London knot dress out of the giant orchid knit from my Spotlight Knit Shopping expedition:

Comfy, dressy, and rolls up into a nice small space.
I also made a plain black version of McCalls 6081 that can be used as a dress or a skirt. As a dress:

As a skirt, over the top of the orchid dress:

I also made a tiny happy over-the-shoulder bag for walking about the town. I put a zip in, which went in easily and sits rather nicely I am happy to say. It's big enough to fit the iPad in (I put a pocket in). I lined it with green ripstop nylon, but I neglected to take a pic of the lining...

I also bought some more shoes from Amazon. These are the Dansko Savanna which are already lovely and comfortable. Yay for good travel shoes!

I'm also taking the grey ponti pinafore, Citrine (doubleknit travel coat from a couple of years ago), a skirt from the scribble ponti that Kitty made her lovely frock from (it's a plain knit skirt so I haven't taken a pic), and one short sleeve and one long sleeved wrap top from Butterick 5101.

Brocade McCalls 5349 (and another Heidi)

I am going to a wedding this week, on Thursday evening.
I was going to wear vintage Heidi, with a sparkly turquoise crystal necklace, but thinking about the dress code (which is "Fancy"), and seeing what my friends were planning on wearing (umm, Fancy!), I began to doubt myself and think vintage Heidi might be too 'daytime'. I went to the stash and found this chinese brocade I forgot had been given to me, and made McCall's 5349 which I have wanted to make for a long time. With some modifications, this is the result:
I made a plain sash out of the reverse of the brocade, instead of the cummerbund. I love the cummerbund, but the brocade was just too thick to sit properly. The pattern calls for an under-bodice (due to having the sheer overdress option) but I just made a panel and hand-stitched it to the bodice lining for a similar effect. I experimented with using the reverse side of the fabric for the panel, but the dark blue looked better. Here she is without the sash:
The sash has covered buttons and button loops. It's a bit sad that it falls down to my natural waist instead of sitting over the midriff band. Maybe I will tack it on and see how it looks.
A couple of weeks ago I made a quick modified Heidi out of red ponte de roma. Probably not a great idea because the fabric is thick so the pleats are a bit exaggerated, and overlocking and turning the neckline was a pain and didn't turn out so well. Oh and obviously I didn't press it before taking the photos, oops. It's wearable thankfully.

New Look 6968 version 2

Here is New Look 6968 again, in scribbly ponte. I made view B minus the welts, and with the sleeves from view D.
I wore her out to dinner tonight with these beads, which broke and scattered all over the restaurant floor. I can report the frock is very practical for scrambling under tables retrieving beads. Tested in the field!

And yes, I had strung the beads myself. Please note: blog is not called "I wanna bead and roll all night". That is all.

New Love and New Look 6968

I realised today I hadn't blogged about my new love. She's a mid 1960s Singer 348, in her own sweet table. I bought her at auction, got her serviced and have been sewing away for a couple of months now. She came with cute little matching blue tool and a dozen cams for decorative stitches. She handles all thicknesses of fabric and I love the adjustable presser foot pressure. I've always wanted that, and now I have it. Sweet!
My other machine has been relegated to buttonhole service. Fortunately all my Janome presser feet fit the Singer, yay!
Here she is:

Lovely isn't she?

I used her yesterday and today to make New Look 6968. The fabric is a stretch bengaline, shocking pink shot with black, for a dupioni-like two-tone effect. It photographs a wine colour, but it looks more interesting in real life I think.

It turned out okay, but this frock is in my bad books a little due to the horrific collar instructions. I'm a bit traumatised. Apart from that, I didn't cut the collar pieces on the bias because I'm a smartypants who thought the stretch fabric would negate the need for bias. Learn from my mistake...the collar really should be cut on the bias so it sits properly. Mine doesn't and it's annoying.

The collar instructions are still horrific. I stand by that.

I only did a 1cm hem on this frock, it was this length straight out of the envelope. If you want it longer, or you're tall, you will need to lengthen the skirt pattern pieces. I usually have to cut off at least 5cm in length on New Look, so this worked for me, but check first if it's right for you!

Look what I found at Spotlight! A dead ringer for scribbly knit, but in a nice thick ponte! I had to have it, and I've already cut out another New Look 6968, with the plain neckline this time!

I'm posting this from my iPhone, using blogger+, so apologies for the dodgy phone pics. If this works, I'm going to force Moggy to get it and to post about fabric shopping when she's in Europe next month.

Edited to add a clearer pic of the frock.

NYC

I'm back from New York. As the second photo suggests, I did go to the garment district. I spent a full morning there, and only bought one dress length of black wool double knit (from Chic fabrics on 39th St.) I really can't explain it, except nothing else took my fancy. The double knit is super nice though. I did go to Mood, which seemed to have everything, but nothing I particularly wanted. Had a fabulous time looking though!