Butterick 5147

At long last, I finally made up my version of B5147! I made the flare version, not the sheath dress version. The fabric is a nice cotton I bought on Saturday's trip to the Garment District in NYC.

The top of the dress is lined with a grey cotton voile.


I followed Marji's sleeveless dress construction method, except that I goofed. Here's my construction method:
1. sew all the darts
2. Decide I should put the invisible zip in while I just have two flat back pieces. Insert it. (cue ominous music here.... dum dum dum!)
3. Sew lining and dress together at the shoulders
4. Sew lining to dress at neckline and armholes
5. Go to pull the backs out through the shoulder seams..... aARRRGGH!

Well. I wasn't quite ready to take out the zipper, so I sat stumped for a moment, then decided I would just see what I could do. I took out the seam below the zipper (thankfully I hadn't finished it with a zig zag or anything), and the I cut off the end of the zipper and took off the zipper pull. That gave me two back pieces again that weren't joined.

Once I'd pulled the backs through the shoulders and pressed everything, I fiddled with the zipper until I had the zipper pull back on. It was a little hairy for a moment, but I forced it back on, and then stitched a new zipper stop & sewed up the bottom. Whew! It was close there but I ended up with a wearable dress!

Closeup picture


Cheesy picture


I need to fix the back so that I don't get so much pooling




This is a really nice pattern, and it goes together very quickly. Including my goofup, it took less than 4 hours from cutting out the pattern paper to wearing the dress. I only made a few modifications- I sewed the side seams a little deeper from my waist up to my underarm, and I took EIGHT inches off the bottom. Yikes I have short legs. :( And I decided to go with easy for the hem by using single fold bias tape.

So there is my entry in the Butterick 5147 sew along!

in the garment district

Saturday morning I woke up early, early and walked down the Hudson River Walkway from my apartment to the PATH. After all the muggy days we had, we'd had a week of very rainy and cold weather here. Yesterday was just perfect, though. Warm, but not hot, not muggy, and really gorgeous!



I met up with a bunch of sewing bloggers and Pattern Review members at Metro Textiles and Elliott Berman in the Garment District on a little trip organized by Elizabeth and Robyn. You can see the full plan for the day on Robyn's blog. Sadly I was only able to do the morning part, but it was SO MUCH FUN! After I left they went on to many more stores, and I went home to take some quick pictures of my purchases and go to a friend's 10th anniversary party.

Here's a lace swatch from Metro


A blue silk from Metro that's like a slightly opaque silk organza



From Elliott Berman, an ombre white-to-navy silk organza that was $10/yard... I need to figure out how to make one of the flower girl dresses for my wedding in June from this, it's awesome!



And a pussy willow embroidered silk organza, also $10. I'm thinking Ana's next Easter dress.



And finally, a light blue print cotton that I believe is going to be sewn up for the Butterick 4157 sew along.



Here's some pictures from the shopping. I'm terrible with names so I didn't get everyone's names who was there, but below we have Nancy K, Carolyn, Claudine, Karen, Elaray, and Noile. If I missed your blog, andd a comment! :-)






Here are a few more photos.

Some old wedding photos

Eight years ago, I photographed my little sister's wedding and had the film scanned to CDs. Then I gave them to her, and they got lost shortly afterwards. My mom recently turned them up, buried with some old photo albums and framed pictures, and it was lots of fun to look at the pictures again! So here's a little slideshow of some of my favorites. They had a very tiny, totally- DIY wedding which was lots of fun, and I had a grand time photographing it. Enjoy the pictures!

Burda 7561 Skirt in Blues

I made this skirt last week, but then never got a picture of it. It's Burda 7561, a straight skirt with a slight flare at the bottom and front and back darts. The fabric is a navy blue cotton eyelet from Mood over a robins egg blue silk habotai from Gorgeous Fabrics.

Here it is on my dressform:





Not much to say about the pattern beyond that it's a nice basic. I bought it in a petite size, so I didn't have to shorten the skirt lnegth, which was a nice change. Since the layers are only attached at the waistband, the two blues look kind of cool when you walk around because the eyelet moves around over the lining.

Simple sewing

This is about the level of sewing complexity my brain could handle this weekend. It's a few charm square packs of "Nautical and Nice" sewn together, also known as "head start on christmas sewing for my nephew since I can't handle dress patterns right now". ;)

It still needs a border, which will be more of the life ring fabric and some plain white, before getting quilted. But hey- December 25 is far, far away!

farewell July

Hello blog!

I haven't had a chance to sew at all in... well... a while. I did, however:

* Find our wedding location. A restaurant in the marina that's essentially our backyard. I can see the deck we'll be married on when I look out my bedroom or living room window.





* Buy a new car. I was driving an 11 year old car with no air conditioning. While I loved it, if you have been on the east coast this summer, you know that it's been rather warm. My sailor left right as we started looking at cars, and he encouraged me to keep looking and buy it myself. That was stressful. Very stressful. If you're a woman and you've shopped for cars alone, you know how much fun that can be. Here is a picture that isn't of my car, but it's the same model and color:



* Work, work, and more work swallowed me alive for most of the month. Also not conducive to sewing. I love my job but it gets crazy at times.


I'm ready to pick up some sewing, so I started small and hemmed three pairs of pants this morning. Yay! They've been sitting on a chair for months waiting for a few minutes of pinning and ironing and sewing.

Next up, I'm joining Elizabeth's Butterick 5147 sew along. I'll be making the a-line dress. The jacket looks neat too- I might try it out. We'll see.