GAAAAGGGHHH...

I have been sewing - but not much posting! I made a start on Burda 113 from the 8/2009 edition in some lovely silk. I have so far almost finished the top half - I used some of the gorgeous cerise silk I got on Goldhawk Road a few weeks ago. Frustratingly though, I must have added on too much seam allowance at the bottom of the back, because after sewing the side seams I realised that there is too much fabric i the back armhole - you might just be able to see from the pic how there is too much floatiness going on in the back of the sleeves? Also, again, REALLY frustratingly, I must have done something wrong on the ruched front self facing because it wasn't long enough to actually make a self facing for the inside front, so the seam is on the neckline. For some stupid reason, I sewed this with a zig zag stitch, which you can see peeking through the fabric.

So annoyed. Basically something must have went awry when I was copying the pattern.

Not sure the best way to fix this stuff - for the front perhaps I unpick the zig zag seam, and maybe sew another bit of the cerise silk long enough to fold to the inside and make the self facing? Notice how from the front the bottom edge is curved - I think it is supposed to be straight so maybe I have more fabric I can pull up and wrap over to form the self facing...? Another issue I think is that the silk is heavy so it pulls the inside lining up where the self facing is supposed to be (does that make sense?) - maybe once the lining is sewed at the waist it will be a bit better.

For the sleeve, think I am going to have to unpick the side seams and sew them again. Annoying. Any other ideas?? Have to say, totally NOT loving the brevity of the Burda instructions... next project is going to be from a PROPER PATTERN with, like, PAGES of instructions....

BTW, apart from these miscellaneous disasters, this silk is a JOY to sew with. So heavy and feels so lovely!

Now to find my seam ripper.....

Finished!

Over the bank holiday weekend I finally finished the Burda top I started here - I thought it very disciplined of me to finish it before moving on to the next project. Here are a few pics of it. I am generally happy with it, though I didn't bother making the button holes on the sleeves (just sewed on buttons as trimming) as I didn't need to be able to open and close the vents. Similarly I didn't bother with the tie side, just left it plain and sewed another button on there too. The finish on the neckline is a bit dull and I wish I had done something a bit more interesting or fun than the pattern directed - maybe just put the binding on so you could see it from the front too. I used french seams for all of the seams, after being inspired by the incredibly neat finish on all of Amanda's creations - I guess practice will eventually make somewhere closer to perfect for me..!

The fabric is a Rose & Hubble remnant I got from the most

amazing fabric shop - Shaukat - which is actually only ten minutes walk from me. I was down there at the weekend and got some amazing Liberty silk - more on that in another post! It is quite a sweet little top for the nicer weather we hope to be getting soon - in the picture I am wearing it with jeans post-work, but I actually wore it to the office today tucked in to a black skirt.

So I am starting to feel like I am a bit more in the sewing groove now, and ready to tackle a nice frock I think - especially given what happened when I went to Shaukat.....

Straight lines

So since my last post, I STILL haven't managed to do any sewing yet due to work / post wedding wedmin / housework. Today Husband (!) and I had yummy brunch and then went to see Clash of the Titans (meh) and this afternoon I have spent a couple of hours reorganising my sewing room our study - I thought it might inspire me further to break out the old sewing machine. I think the new layout is quite good - now two workstations (bottom left of room) and almost the full table for cutting out... we'll see.

Anyway, to get me back in the sewing groove I thought I'd start with (or really, continue with) the quilt I started months ago. Although I am primarily learning to sew to make clothes, I really love gorgeous bed linen and I thought it awesome to have some colourful quilts to chuck over plain white sheets (I buy almost exclusively plain white bed linen - looks so clean and fresh!) and a few months ago I bought this lovely book called Jelly Roll Quilts by Pam & Nicky Lintott and started a cool looking quilt called 'Sparkling Gemstones' (I know, bit lame) with some fat quarters I had bought for the purpose. Then the wedmin got me... so I picked it up today thinking I'll crack on with a few straight lines to get me warmed up before starting my next fashion proj. Though boring, sewing in a straight line is quite mindless and theraputic (in small doses!).

So for my next fashion proj, thinking the simple blouse no. 102 from this month's Burda. Do you think that would be ok in a silk? It does seem to have dreaded buttonholes though... gagh.

Has anyone made this yet?

PS for those of you who have asked, we went to the Maldives for our honeymoon - bliss!

Next up...

I have been talking about making some nice blouses and skirts for, like, AGES... so now is the time I think. There was a nice pattern for a blouse in this month's Burda which I am going to make up. I have been a subscriber to Burda for - wait for it - three WHOLE MONTHS now, and I haven't made anything from their patterns yet. I really like this blouse though - I think I am going to adapt the bottom slightly so that instead of tying with those long ties it just has a lapped band at the bottom with nice pearl buttons or snaps or something. That is much easier to tuck into a pencil skirt....

I cut the pattern out one night earlier this week. I have to say, the whole tracing palaver wasn't as traumatic as I thought it was going to be. Though I guess this pattern only has five pieces... anyway, having my nice new expanse of table top certainly made the whole procedure easier, despite the kitties trying to 'help'. I am hoping to eventually make this up in the lovely blue silk I got from gorgeous fabrics (and loads of others depending on how I like the pattern), but first I am going to make it up in some nice flowery fabric I had in my stash, a piece of Rose & Hubble cotton which I bought from the shop just down the road from me which sells ex Liberty fabrics (it is like an Aladdin's cave in there). I really like the fabric so don't want to mess it up but I reckon the pattern is pretty straight forward so hopefully relatively low risk... and inspired by the AMZINGLY neat work of Amanda I think I might try French seams on the inside - no thread to fray, woo hoo!

Admin top

So I have finally managed to do some sewing this week, and have started putting together the top for work from the Burda pattern I talked about in my earlier post. I've called it 'Admin' as I reckon this one will be confined to wear in the office. So the fabric I'm making this from is a sort of creased stretchy crepe - the photo here isn't great but you can probably see it looks all wavy, sort of like stone. It has a LOT of stretch widthways (from selvedge to selvedge - is that widthways?!) and not much lengthways, which has made it really awkward to mark, cut pin and sew (more on that in a second). I have been using a lot of pins...

The pattern is made of four basic pieces - front (cut on the fold), back left, back right and a bit for the collar. The first thing to do was to sew the shoulder seams (ie front to back right and front to back left), which I did on my machine and then neatened the edges with my overlocker.

I should have thought ahead that of course the stretchiness of the fabric would likely mean some adjustments to the settings on the overlocker... after I'd done the first shoulder I realised, and twiddled one of the knobs on the side to try and stop it stretching the fabric out so much. You can see the first seam at the bottom of the pic, and the second at the top. The second seam is far from perfect but much better than the first. Practice makes perfect I guess! Once I'd done the shoulder seams, I neatened to edges of each centre back pieces and then sewed them together, pressing the seams open. The next tricky bit was the collar - mainly because of the floppy fabric.... it has rouleaux loops to fasten at the back and pinning and stitching those was really hard. It also requires hand finishing - the collar piece is an oblong folded over, with the rouleaux loops sandwiched between the short ends, and the inside of the collar stitched to the seam line of the front side of the fold (does that make sense?!). Anyway, I've pinned that and the hand sewing shall have to wait for another day...

I'll post more pictures when I'm done :-)

Happy birthday to me!

Today is my birthday! Another year older, not so sure about the wiser bit... Anyway, out for supper to my favourite restaurant tonight with my lovely finance which should be awesome.

What about the sewing, I hear you say. Well, I recently received in the post a Burda pattern I ordered ages ago but which was out of stock - pattern 7576. It has a simple top similar to those I mentioned in my previous posts here and here, but appeared to be a bit less complicated (and at the time I couldn't be bothered with tracing out the free Burda patters from the magazine...). It actually only has three main pattern pieces - woo hoo. I have cut it out in a sort of crinkle crepe in black which I got on sale in Peter Jones (mental note - crinkly fabrics = annoying to cut), with the idea of wearing it for work. Is it just me, or does getting the fabric ready, pinning the pattern and cutting it out take ages?! I think I might be particularly slow...

We are away this weekend for our first of two engagement parties so won't get to do any sewing, but am hoping to finish it next week; need to have done a bit of sewing before my course starts next Saturday! Speaking of which I need to make sure I have all the bits and pieces I am supposed to have on my first day - scissors, rulers, chalk... think I have most of it but might give me an excuse to buy some new sewing stuff. Really hope I'm not too out of my depth....

Fab fifties

It seems that fifties fashion is back - AWESOME! Maybe my most favourite fashion period. This month's Burda magazine has a feature on 50s inspired clothes, and I already have quite a few vintage patterns waiting to be made up... in fact Jackie was based on a 1950s stle pattern. I love the fitted bodice and wide skirt style - so flattering (as long as the skirt is the right length of course!), though I'm not sure I'd go FULL 50s and wear the full petticoat / crinoline, it looks gorgeous. Again, born fifty years too late (I reckon nicest to be in your early twenties in the fifties to make the most of the gorgeous clothes!). On that note, we have just started watching the first series of MadMen, the series from the US about advertising in 1950s Manhattan. It's AWESOME. Not least the clothes. Office politics in those days... wowzers. Anyway, work wardrobe then was great. Pencil skirts, silky blouses, tight tops, 3/4 jackets. So flattering. Which brings me onto my next project I think - the skirt and blouse from August's burda issue, and maybe a second frilly blouse. They both look fairly easy, and the blouses both have sleeves (eeek!) but as they're not set in they probably don't count for my Virgin Sleeve Challenge...

Wondering whether I need to bother making a toile of the top or whether it is easy enough for me to just crack on... hopefully the latter, although I don't have any chiffon-y type fabric (though I do have some spotty satin stuff which might pretty cool for the one without the frill). Wonder if chiffon-y fabric will be hard to sew with... and cut out... maybe I will try and get to Goldhawk Road on Saturday morning.

Roll on the weekend - maybe I might actually get some sewing done, wedmin appears to have taken over (churches booked: 0, venues booked: 0, guest lists finalised: 0, minutes spent awake in the dead of night worrying about foregoing lack of progress: too sleep deprived to remember).

It's been a while...

AWFULLY long time and no posting... or sewing. A lot has been happening here (including my getting engaged - hooray!), but this weekend is a bank holiday in the UK and I am planning on doing a lot of chilling out and some sewing. Also, most excitingly, I have enrolled for a short sewing course at the London College of Fashion – 'Home sewing with professional fit and finish'! Am very excited, the course is on Saturday mornings for nine weeks and starts on 26 September. I am really looking forward to it.

I have also subscribed to the Burda magazine and a few weeks ago received my first issue (issue 08/2009) – it is so awesome! There are so many things that I want to make from the August issue. I have some lovely wool fabric which I am going to use to make up the skirt in the picture and I also must get something nice to make the blouse. Maybe I will have to have a trip to Goldhawk Road this weekend.... Also totally LOVING this dress in velvet – perfect for autumn and winter and so luxe.

I will also post some pics of my most recent creation which has been hanging in the study waiting to be hemmed for about three weeks now - a black shift dress made in a lovely heavy black cotton drill type fabric, should be lovely for work. It is a little form-fitting, shall we say (I cut it out in a size 8 which is probably a tad too small - though now I am on WEDDING ANTI-FAT PLAN am hoping I will not forever need to be poured into it).

Spotty Marie skirt

I made this from the free pattern on Burdastyle and hemmed it to a more flattering length. It was actually a bit tricky to get the hem right as the original pattern has facings for the hem which is a sort of tulip shape. I cut and hemmed it shorter so it didn't have the balloon / tulip shape. I also lined it with the help of Connie Long's book 'Easy Guide to Sewing Linings' - basically the quick-lining technique. Lining really makes it a lot nicer to wear, and the whole skirt feels a lot more substantial. I did managed to prick my finger on a pin and bleed on the lining a bit which was slightly annoying. I am now deliberating whether to use this skirt shape for Jackie. The shape will probably be a bit fuller made from silk, but that might be quite nice... Hmmm. I will also need to move the zipper to the back, as the Jackie bodice opens at the back but that will probably make it neater to finish.

In the beginning...

It seemed like such a wonderful thing to be able to make up clothes that actually fit in gorgeous fabrics, and so I thought I would teach myself to sew. Plus I thought it was about time I had a hobby other than watching Hollyoaks and shopping. I have always had a creative streak, perhaps from my mother, so I thought I might as well try to put my money where my mouth is. Obviously however it was not going to be a speedy process...

There is something about my obsessive Virgoan personality which meant I was never going to just jump right in there and start cutting up old t-shirts. Oh no. I need order and method. I already had a sewing machine which I bought the last time I was on the precipice of actually learning to sew, but before I actually jumped right in. So the next step was to find the highest authority in the land on sewing techniques. Something traditional. During an afternoon spent perusing Amazon, I quickly came across what surely must be the bible of how to create fashion... Vogue Sewing... and it is. I ordered it quicksmart and started reading as soon as it arrived. It is awesome. It was first published in 1970, and it shows - though updated there are some brilliant references to what one should and should not wear if you are 'carrying a few extra pounds'. I ordered a couple of other general sewing reference books a little later - I found on occasion that the diagrams in VogueSewing can be a bit tricky to figure out (well, for a novice). The great thing about VogueSewing however is that it reads really well in conjunction with their patterns, which was a real plus when it came to making up my first garment. Though I still managed to get things the wrong way around... More on that later.

There is also an abundance of free information and know-how available on the interweb and it wasn't long before I had found the BurdaStyle website which has loads of awesome stuff on it, and caters for total beginners... There are some really talented people out there!

So after much reading and faffing and procrastinating, I went to John Lewis and had a flick through their 'Very Easy Vogue' section and tried to pick a pattern that looked easy but was slightly more advanced than a sack with armholes...