Dress Sewing

There haven't been many wedding dress muslins around here lately because the plan for the dress has settled down to taking a week of in February to do the bulk of the sewing, and then have it completed by April or March timeframe. Our wedding photographer will take some pictures the nieces & I in our wedding outfits so that we don't have to stress about Ana on the day of the wedding. (As background for new readers of my blog, she's only 4 and she's handicapped, so the wedding day could be very exhausting for her.) I'm really looking forward to hanging a great picture of the three of us in our schmancy dresses in my sewing room, so this seems to be the best way to accomplish that. As a bonus, it forces me to finish all our outfits well before June. I still need to figure out which pattern I'll use by February, but that seems like plenty of time at the moment. ;)

Over the last few weeks I've been helping an old friend plan and make her wedding dress, which has kept me plenty busy with wedding sewing. While we were laying out the skirt pieces on the silk last night we had a few hours to chat about sewing, fabric layouts, grainlines, work (we used to be officemates years ago & have worked at the same companies over the years), wedding nonsense, programming, being oncall for a job, wedding bouquets, old friends, seam allowance sizes, website engineering, and more wedding nonsense. After fiddling with grainlines and layouts on the material for a few hours I left her late last night to mark the stitching lines and cut the fabric. It's been wonderful to see a dress come together, and it's so relaxing to sit around a table and work together. Her wedding is in just a few weeks so she's way ahead of me on the wedding planning and I've been making notes of everything I need to remember when it gets this close to our wedding. Her style is totally different from mine, so her dress is nothing like mine will be. We've had some good laughs over our personal styles affecting the dresses we're making & everything else about the weddings.

Anyway, as if I don't already have enough empire waist gown patterns to select from, I bought two more on etsy recently.

Isn't this one from 1967 just so beautiful? I love the square neckline and the back bow. I've been looking more closely at empire gowns with no gathering where the skirt attaches to the bodice, and this fits that.



Simplicity 7117

And another option:



McCall 9126 (reviews on patternreview)

blue morning light

Hello from pike place market, Seattle! I flew out for just a few days to see my best friend, who is going to be my "man of honor" in my wedding this summer.

I woke up insanely early this morning craving a real latte, so I walked myself down to the market with my camera to get some coffee. The flower vendors were just setting up:





I know it's such an over-photographed, iconic sign, but it says "home" to me.



The city is really beautiful before sunrise. I just meandered around taking lots of photos without really being awake.



I've been so homesick recently that it's good to come back even for just a short visit. It was great to see my friend and catch up and talk about wedding stuff and work. We both work for the same company, just on different coasts, so we had lots to go over and gossip about. On the wedding front, I've been lobbying for the boys to wear this sailboat patterened bow tie, but it's getting veto'd by him & my sailor so far. Apparently I need to work on being a bossy bride because I appear to have caved in and the current menswear on groom + the best man + my best friend will be tuxes with plain black bowties. ;)

New Look 6802, take 2

In October I made up New Look 6802 & really liked how it came out. I promptly pulled out another another knit to make it in, and then ended up packing it away in a box with the pattern. This morning I was looking for a quick dress to make to wear to my grandma's 90th birthday party & stumbled over the pattern & fabric.



Viola, new party dress! Just as easy to make as last time. :-) This is "French Dressing Knit - Grays/Pink" from gorgeousfabrics.com.

Anyway, My grandma's party was lots of fun. She's still in great health and as sassy as always. Here she is with my sister & Ana.



When she was growing up she actually lived very close to where I live now so we talked a lot about Jersey City in the 1930s vs today. It's growing on me... I still miss Seattle quite a bit, but we do have nice sunrises here. I took this yesterday morning on a walk around block.



That's a view of the World Financial Center and Battery Park from the Morris Canal inlet in the Paulus Hook part of Jersey City. The interesting morning clouds were about all of the hurricane that we really ended up getting!

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.

New Vogue Sewing Patterns - Fall 2010

Oooooh.... thanks to Erica for the link to the new Vogues!



DKNY Vogue 1194: I will absolutely be making this! I have a 3/4 sleeve black knit Ann Taylor dress which has similar lines that I wear to work quite a bit, and I was thinking recently how to make myself a copy. Here we go.




Tracy Reese Vogue 1190: I love the back of this dress. Not sure about the front shoulder ruffles, but they might be easy to skip, depending on the pattern piece shapes.

Voile 1950s dress in action and a new sundress

Words do not describe how grateful I am that I decided to make that vintage dress last month out of the Anna Maria Horner voile. The day of Dan's change of command ceremony was 104 F, so I decided to wear the lightest dress I possibly could. Even in this really light fabric, it was hot and sticky and rather uncomfortable outside in the midday sun and the heat, but we survived. Here we are in front of his new ship in Bayonne. I think the ship looks beautiful all decked out in the pennants for the ceremony.



Next up, I made up Simplicity 3744 in a light red and white cotton-silk from Paron's, but the dress is too wide at the top so the armholes gape quite a bit. I think I can pinch it in at the sideseam, essentially taking in a dart from the armhole down to the waist, but that will take a bit of tweaking. In the meantime, here it is on a hanger.



It has princess seams that run down the bodice into the skirt, and since the fabric is so light and thin the skirt was kind of bowing in at those seams no matter how much I pressed. When I stitched on the lace it seems to have sort of stabilized the seams, and the skirt doesn't bow in as much any more. So that was a quick hack to counter my choice of material! I think that really an A-line sundress like this needs a material with a bit of body, but it's been roasting hot here so I wanted something very light to wear.

Happy 4th!

I hope all the US folks are having a wonderful long weekend!

We did a bit of home dec work this morning- my grandmother gave us some dining chairs, but the chair covers, which were originally ivory, were not in such great shape. So we recovered them this morning. Let me tell you- I thought it would take 5 minutes per chair. It did not! By the last one, it took about 15 minutes per chair, but the first two were a bit painful. The chair back is woven cane, so I picked a Kaufman home dec weight print that would echo that.



And, fitting for the 4th, I'm sewing patches onto a few more uniform shirts before he leaves for a few months. Here they are heat-and-bonded (pins just bend trying to go through all the layers of thick ripstop), waiting to be sewn down. This is another job that looks like it would take 10 minutes but is sloooooooow going!! For one, you have to be incredibly precise. And my machine is not a straight stitch industrial, so I have a little trouble with all the thick layers and keeping everything lined up in a straight line. Slow and steady is the way to go.



So who is going to watch fireworks tonight, or heading out on picnics? :)

A pink birthday quilt

Just in the nick of time, I finished up the French Hatbox quilt for Kate's birthday. She had a bit of fun getting my dad to hold it up so that she could pose in front of it out on the lawn.







While I was quilting this, my sailor asked if the squiggly pattern of the quilting stitching was stored in the sewing machine, like the various zigzag and decorative stitches. He was quite amazed that you had to MOVE THE QUILT and make up the motion yourself to make the stipple pattern. ;) I thought that was hilarious... so I told my sister the story while we were sitting out on the lawn. And, of course, she says that she always assumed the same thing! Oh my. If only free motion quilting were so easy. ;) Kate adores the quilt... it was not a surprise for her, as she picked out the fabric and it's been in progress since March, so she's seen it plenty of times along the way. She did enjoy finally getting to hold it without all the pins in it at long last.

(The dress she's wearing is one I bought her 2 years ago, by Lucy Sykes. I love their dresses- so nicely made, and so classic!)

Liberty of London dress

Kate is turning 7 in a few days, so I've just finished up a birthday present dress for her... yet another Ice Cream dress. She really loves the teapot dress from this pattern, and it's gotten rave reviews apparently. My sister says Kate had to visit the school nurse last week, when she was wearing the dress for a tag day, and the nurse told her it was a pretty nifty dress. Hooray! So, for her birthday present I fished out a yard of Liberty fabric that I've had for a while, waiting for a "just right" project. This seemed to be a good use of it.

There was JUST enough fabric to cut the dress & yoke facing from the fabric. It's so light and soft, so I think it will make a good hot and sticky summer day dress. This is shaping up, so far, to be the summer of voile sundresses!!



And the back



I went into the garment district with a sewing friend last month and picked up two new Burda patterns. These might not get sewn up for a while, but they seemed really nice so I grabbed them anyway.



I haven't done too much sewing recently...we found out a few days ago that my sailor's ship is leaving very soon for a loooong deployment, so we are scrambling to get some wedding things lined up, household things in order, and all the other things that have to happen before an emergency deployment. Hopefully he'll be home for Thanksgiving, but we don't really know. We had a wonderful weekend last week in Rhode Island and Mystic Seaport- our whole summer vacation squeezed into a weekend, but it was lots of fun anyway.

I hope everyone is enjoying the Summer (or Winter in NZ & Australia) solstice!

And..... we have a dress!

Sorry for the quick photo, but by the time I figured out my sailor's tripod, I had to run to work. Here is my Simplicity 8640 dress though. Fabric is two different colors of "Diamond Mine" from Anna Maria Horner's little folks voile, which was soooooooo nice to sew with.



I didn't get a picture of it yet, but my zipper is a rainbow colored riri zipper which I found at Pacific Trim! You can't see it, but I love knowing it's there, and having a metal zipper makes it feel like a real vintage dress. The dress is unlined, so I'll wear it with a slip, and has a neckline facing. The very tip of the point where the bodice and skirt meet was sewn by hand. I got chicken about sewing that intersection on a machine.

This is the first non-muslin dress I've sewn in several months. I forgot what a nice feeling it is to end up with a garment you can wear. Between the light voile and the looser fit, this will be fantastic for the next 90F heatwave we get.

Simplicity 8640 muslin

Here's my new sewing setup. Nice and simple so far. I'm being goofy and again hanging my women's college degree above the sewing machine. It makes me smile. ;) The other half the room is my sailors desk and his bookcases, and there's a nice corner of windows that is currently holding a pile of boxes but might someday have a sitting chair. If we ever unpack.



So, here is the muslin. I didn't have any zippers here, so it's not closed in the back. And it was taken at an odd angle with a wide angle lens, so it's not the most flattering picture ever- but hey, are dress muslin photos ever all that flattering? ;)



I want to make a sleeveless version out of some blue voile from Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks line to wear as a sundress this summer, so I made the shorter length. I need to take in a little on the shoulders...other than that, maybe do a smidge of a SBA on the princess line. Anyone else see any adjustments I should make?

Again, here's the dress pattern:

sewing!

That's right... my sewing machine is hooked up, and actual sewing took place this weekend! I made a muslin for Simplicity 8640.


I do have a photo of me wearing it...and of my new little sewing nook... but now I can't find the camera cable. Isn't that always what happens with a move, you know you've seen something around but when you need it, then it's no where to be found? So instead, here's a little photo of the back of Kate's easter dress with a nice big purple bow. ;) Yes, I am not above distracting you all with adorable photos of my niece.