Wedding dresses!

Did you all wake up at the crack of dawn to watch the royal wedding? I LOVED her dress. It's such a pretty, updated variation on Grace Kelley's classic dress.


from the Globe & Mail

Here is Grace Kelly's dress:



Of course I LOVE that she chose this style since I'm kind of echoing Grace Kelly's bodice style in my dress as well. ;) It's a really flattering look for a lot of body shapes, I think, since you get some coverage but it still looks very elegant and fancy.

thread basting

This is only a practice dress, not the real thing.





I've cut the bodice pieces out of lace and silk organza, thread traced the darts, and basted the layers together. Next up, assembly.


The munchkins wore their easter outfits today, although they were so wiggly I didn't get great shots of the dresses. Here's my sister with her family:




Kate's dress is from Sewn with Love book and Ana's dress is the Oliver + S playdate dress. Both are made with Lisette for Joann fabric.



And here is Tommy in his cute little overalls. These are the Oliver + S tea party overalls.


and the girls in their dresses:


Happy easter everyone!

Ottobre!

Well, I received three sewing magazines this week in my mailbox, which was SO wonderful given that wedding + work + life in general have been crazy. I was not super impressed with this month's BWOF. That deeply saddens me, because circa 2008 I was head over heels in love with tons of outfits in every issue. However, I also received issues of Ottobre- one womens and one kids. I've just flipped through so far, but it seems pretty nice. Hmm... my BWOF is up for renewal this summer, and I may change to Ottobre or Knipmode instead. I know they are more expensive, but if I'm not making anything from BWOF, it's not worth saving money on patterns I won't really use.

In other news, our wedding invites are *mailed*. Finally. I had a whole adventure creating and shipping them. I ended up letterpressing the invite and RSVP card by myself at a letterpress studio over in Williamsburg. They came out SO beautiful. Here's a sneak peek at the card, with the amazing texture inbetween the ship's rigging in the ship in the bottle.



Was I crazy for letterpressing them? Yes. Was I crazy for chosing a square shape, which meant we paid extra postage? Yes. Did I end up at Staples at 9 AM on Sunday morning, buying a paper cutter to trim 1/8" inch off the invites because they wouldn't quite fit in the envelopes? Yes. Did I stamp all my rsvp postcards, only to find out that the postage rate was going up 1 cent on Monday? Yes. So. They are mailed though, and guests are beginning to tell us that they're appearing in their mailboxes, which is the important part!

For the curious, our paper was Crane Lettra 110, and I printed my plates at Boxcar Press. I wrote about my letterpress class back in November in a quiet weekend.

I was at my doctor's office the other day, and he gave me some advice I'm going to be taking to heart in the coming weeks. I haven't talked much about it, but I've suffered from migraines since I was in first grade. They kind of come and go, and the last three years have been particularly bad. I try to stay grounded, but dealing with severe migraines, with a fiance who is away on his ship most of the time, and wedding planning, plus my job has been... interesting. I've been cycling through various medications over the last year, and my current doctor has been godsend because he agrees with me that medication should not be your front line preventive care.

He was just married last year and so at this visit we were again talking about avoiding migraines on the big day. He said, "You have to ration out your emotional reaction and your glucose intake that week." Which cracked me up, but it's so true. (Yes, as you can tell from that, plummeting blood sugar is a big trigger for me). But especially when you get invested in projects like "Let's letterpress the invites!" or "Let's sew a wedding dress!" it can be hard not to let the projects ups and downs keep you from an even keel.

What do you think, when you put a lot of effort into a huge handmade project, do you feel that setbacks effect you deeply? Is the awesome result in the end worth putting weeks into one complicated project, or do you like smaller ones?

So how is that wedding dress sewing going here? I'm coming along on fitting, and I hope I'll have some great trial version photos to show here this weekend. As a reminder, this what the lace top will look like:



and here is the skirt & under-the-lace-top bodice:

easter sewing

Easter outfits are all sewn up!

Here are the cute Oliver + S overalls for Tom. The cotton on the top is a little bunnies-in-squares print.



Since I hadn't made this pattern for him in a few years, we did a sizing check. Yes, it fits, even over his sweatshirt. He was not so sure about this outfit- his comment was "my knees are cold." Ah, Thomas, stop growing up! Can I keep you a smidgen little guy forever? This might be the last Easter we can dress you like this!!



And here are sneak peeks of the girls dresses. Ana's is the Oliver + S playdate dress pattern.


Kate's uses the bodice of the Sewn With Love tulip dress and some bunny ribbon I found in my stash.



I used some Lisette fabric I'd found at Joann's for each, since it seemed like coordinating-but-not-matching would be a nice change from the matchy dresses we've done for easter in earlier years. It just didn't seem like a frilly lace kind of easter this year. Maybe I'm getting lace overload from the wedding dress.

another market blouse

I used some Little Folks voile by Anna Maria Horner to make up another Market blouse (simplicity 2211). No buttons on the placket yet, but I will likely sew some on at some point.





You can see the pattern on the Lisette site over here. I've been planning to make up the skirt, as well.





This is a really nice blouse to whip up since it has no buttonholes, zippers, or anything else, but is not too boxy and frumpy looking when it's done.

I also bought some really gorgeous lace for my wedding dress top...





I'm a bit worried about goofing so I bought 2 yards even though I could easily get away with only 1. I'd rather not find myself worrying about finding more!

Market Blouse

The Market Blouse by Lisette is Simplicity 2211. It's a really simple top with a fake placket and outside facing at the neck. I made up a version in a very lightweight silk/cotton border print voile I'd bought at Mood a year ago, and wore it to our family's memorial lunch for my grandparents today.

Here I am with a whole bunch of my cousins:


And here's a closeup, with my sailor. This was his first introduction to much of my extended family. Thankfully he survived, and he seems to think we're somewhat normal despite my warning him that he's marrying into a crazy family. ;) Well, he'll learn soon enough!



We had a VERY long day, since so many people had traveled pretty far but it was wonderful to see everyone and share silly stories of growing up over at the farm. Do you remember my run-in with the rat snake 2 years ago? That story got repeated a bit. We reminisced about the geese and chickens that used to run all over the farm... the fig and quince trees and making jelly from them... all the crazy things we used to get into all summer long.

So the pattern for this shirt was very easy to put together and went together in just about 2 hours, even accounting for how wiggly the fabric was. The placket and "collar" are interfaced with a lightweight woven interfacing from Pacific Trim, which worked pretty well.

I just ended up making two small alterations... lengthening the bodice and making the arm band a little wider. It's a very easy wearing shirt, and I can see myself making up a few more of these to wear to work.

2 bells into the dog watch

Dear sewing blog,
hello neglected blog! i haven't really been sewing recently... this little called "a wedding" has been sucking up my time. Perhaps you've seen my friend, the wacom tablet. He's been hogging my attention for AGES while I draw nautical flags and tall ships and maps.

Here's what we have at the moment for our invitation... it will be a little booklet, with a cover, then the main page (this) inside, and a map and some guest information, and our RSVP cards inside. Lots of little things to draw and lay out and get arranged!



Why yes, we do have the latitude and longitude of our reception site on there. And two bells into the dog watch.... I LOVE awesome nautical terminology. We're still sorting out what kinds of sailor speak we can put onto the RSVP cards. As you can tell, we're not taking this whole thing super seriously. I'm convinced that the only way to survive wedding planning is to keep a very dry sense of humor and read A Practical Wedding frequently. We found our marvelous DOC (Day of Coordinator for the non-wedding-immersed) indirectly via that site- it's such a breath of reality.

I did have one break today... I went to the taco truck in Hoboken with my friend who got married last October and we discussed the wedding crazy. And java performance analysis. ;) We're hopeless nerds like that.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Has anyone begun summer sewing yet, or is it still too cold?

A public service announcement for NYCers...

....today's Groupon is $15 for $30 fabric at Mood!


Valid instore only, so you have to be in NY or planning to visit in the next year. Definitely a great deal, though. I think mine is going towards some more blouse material, since I have my eye on the Market blouse from Sew Lisette for a spring top... ;)

purple flowers

I'm finally almost finished with taxes... which means, of course, that the kitchen is *sparkling*, the sewing room is somewhat more organized, and I sewed up something for myself. ;) Here's a little hint.



I stumbled over this fabric on Gorgeous Fabrics and fell in love with the really pretty flowers. It's cotton with a hint of stretch, and the surface has a slightly ribbed faille texture to it. SO pretty.

Here's another hint...



Yup... another Passport dress, since I had the pattern already out.





There may be a lot of dresses shown on my blog, but it's not really my normal clothes- I work in jeans and sneakers, and skirts with boots is really stretching the dresscode for my job. So I always feel a little like a kid playing dress up when I wear something fancy like this - right now it's slotted in for Easter brunch, when hopefully it will be warm enough to wear it without tights.

This one feels a little loose around the shoulders, which is weird because I didn't cut it any differently than the other one. I'm chalking it up to the bit of stretch in the fabric -it's not huge, just a bit loose around the neckline this time around. Other than than that, it's pretty much the same as the other dress. So for now it's getting tucked into the closet to wait for warmer weather!

Passport bliss

My passport dress is all finished! I L*O*V*E it, and I can't wait for warm weather to wear it, although I may try it out with some tights and a sweater soonish. This is Simplicity 2209, also known as the Sew Lisette Passport Dress.

Yesterday's post showed my bodice alterations, but it was too dark in the evening to get a picture of my muslin.

Not that it's any brighter today, but here is the muslin I'd made. One side has a dart pinned out for a SBA, the right side is unaltered. Unfortunately, the picture is not super in focus, so you may not see any difference.


When I made the actual dress, I ended up varying from the pattern and making several changes. I was a little wary of all the changes at first, because the instructions for this dress were excellent, and who am I to know how to properly sew a dress. My back alteration, though, made for a curved back seam so I could no longer cut the back bodice on the fold as in the original. At that point I figured I'd just do things my own way.

That led to making my own all-in-one neck and armhole facing, which let me use my favorite through-the-shoulder-seams sewing method. I learned that trick from Marji's old pattern review post on sewing a sleeveless dress lining.



Here's a view of the inside of the bodice front of the front angled darts and how they attach to the skirt:



I used an invisible zipper in the back. Here are my three necessities for invisible zipper insertion.... fusible interfacing in the seam allowance, a 3/8th inch seam allowance, and hand tacking the zipper in place.



I stitched the back facing down against the zipper to neaten the inside:



The hem is double folded and hand sewn down so that I could ease in the fullness.




So here is a headless shot of me in it. I unfortunately didn't quite manage the flower placement perfectly on the bodice. Ooops. And you can't really see the bodice darts with the busy print.




Another change I made was to put in a pocket in the right side seam. I envisioned wearing this dress to work, and I always want a pocket to hold chapstick or a few dollars for lunch or whatever. Excuse the silly face here... I always feel funny smiling for the camera when there's no one behind it. ;)



Here's the back, in need of a hook and eye above the zipper:



It came together really nicely and was a dream to sew up. There will definitely be more versions of this dress this summer, since it's nicely fitting without being too tight or too baggy. Especially with the pocket addition. ;)

Passport Dress - Simplicity 2209

I was so excited when the new Lisette patterns by the same designer as Oliver + S were announced last week that I bought two of them, and I made up a muslin of one today. :-) I picked the Passport dress, which has some very neat darts and tucks and a classic shape to it.



There's a Lisette blog which has a post which explains the dress and jacket in this pattern. I thought the dress darts were really neat looking, but I was wondering how difficult they would be to sew. Here's the bodice front pattern piece:



They are actually quite simple to sew, it turns out. I had to make two alterations to the bodice to fit a little better:



The overlapping from the armhole is a quick and dirty proto-SBA, since the muslin was kind of poofy in my upper chest area. Otherwise, it fit quite nicely. I'll be making this up in a purplish linen blend from the Valori Wells Jenaveve line.



My raincoat is mostly finished, although I'm likely to go in & add the waist drawstring to shape it. It fits OK, but it would be good to have a little shaping in there. And, of course, it needs me to go into the city with it at some point to have buttonholes made up for it.

our etsy wedding

I haven't had a chance to work on the raincoat this week, but I wanted to share a few wedding details. I'm leaning *very* heavily on etsy for these, and so far it's working out nicely.

Our escort cards (aka little cards that tell people where to sit- I never knew that word before) are from etsy by cuddlecreature. Imagine 100 of these set out on the table... it will like a sweet little regatta!



Our favors will be envelopes of wildflower seeds, and I had an etsy vendor, Toast and Laurel, make us stickers to put on the envelopes:



And, of course, I've been buying milkglass bowls from the site for the last few months to make our centerpieces, which will look like this:



My nieces, who will be flower girls, will be sporting little blue and white hair decorations from etsy as well:

from Lovely Gifts


from Sweet and Sassy

And finally, to save us from writing our address over and over and over, we bought a custom return address stamp from Paperfinger which looks like a calligrapher wrote our address. LOVE IT. This was easily the smartest purchase we made... it got used a lot for christmas cards and other things as well ;)

Last month, on a whim I picked up a new wedding crafts book by a Martha Stewart editor which has been fun to look through as well:



Handmade Weddings: More Than 50 Crafts to Personalize Your Big Day

It has some simple sewing projects, invitation designs, and fun stuff like that. I love flipping through it, althought I haven't really done any of the featured projects in it yet.

So there you are, a small wedding design update :)