Here’s the first:

This lovely print fabric is viscose/rayon and from Fabrics galore in Battersea. I made this dress as a wearable toile, the bust darts are in the original position and too high for my bust but the floral print hides it well. I am also realising how ridiculously tall I am!!! Why did I not add extra inches??!! Sometimes I am definitely in height denial

I love shift dresses, they are my favourite dress to wear and are the perfect dress to wear to work. A couple of months ago, I spotted a lovely black and white version in Anthropologie in their sale. But at £65 or something like that, I still thought it was a bit steep so instead of buying it, I just thought to myself I’ll make one myself. Of course, if it hadn’t been for the competition, I probably would never have gotten round to making this version. It’s not exactly the same as the Anthropologie dress as that had Raglan Sleeves and I was too short on time to figure out changing set in sleeves to raglan sleeves.

For the black and white dress, I lowered the bust dart 6cm and omitted the zip. The black fabric is viscose/rayon and has a lovely drape and the white part is silk crepe de chine.

(It is plain white on the top, it’s just my dress form is wearing a mickey mouse t-shirt which I use to hide the bra that is underneath, don’t want to offend my housemate!)

From the back:

So my first and only entry for the Pattern Stash Contest over at Pattern Runway is a Tunic that has been modified into a dress jacket/coat thing. I made this for my mum who wanted something lightweight to go over a lovely dark blue dress that she has. It’s a linen in a bright lime green colour. To be honest, when my mum described what she wanted, my initial reaction was not the positive supportive good daughter response that she should have had. Instead, she was greeted with silence and a distinct lack of enthusiasm.  To which point my mum responded with: ‘You’re just like your great Aunt, she never wanted to make things for other people unless she liked it’. Too true…. It’s very hard making things for other people without some parts of your own personal taste their choices, don’t you think?

Pattern: Burdastyle 05/2012 – Tunic 116 A.

Anyway this is the story of the Tunic Jacket/Coat hybrid thing – I haven’t decided yet what it is! The only thing I care about is that my mum likes it and it made her happy .

It’s unlined, made from linen in a bright lime green colour. I took several pictures but couldn’t manage to capture the exact shade, but it is basically the same as Pantone Tender Shoots.

I started out thinking I would do a simple seam finish, the one where you stitch in a straight line and press under. However I wasn’t anticipating how super badly this fabric frays! And I’d already sewn it together, so it was too late to undo and French seam it. In the end I decided to put binding on the seams to cover the frayed edges.

And from the back:

Now you’re probably reading this and thinking well, what does this all have to do with sewing and fabric? Well, I am getting there I promise! Being a sewer, one stand in particular caught my eye and it was called Survival Arts. Survival Arts produce fabric that is inspired by endangered species in order to promote their endangered status’ to the public. I love the concept behind this and I am pretty enamoured of their designs – Mainly because I’ve been obsessed with bumblebees since I was little! Seriously, if I could have a bee hive in my garden on my roof or in my garden I would! Don’t you think this is a great idea? They’re only a start-up at the moment, so they’re not in shops yet but I think they are working on that!

Wouldn’t this one be great as a tea dress? (I’m really impressed that an 8 year old designed this fabric!)

They are also running a fabric design competition, so if you are interested, have a look over here.

Happy Easter Everybody and to those who don’t celebrate it, i hope you’re having a happy public holiday! For me, it’s time to come home and see my family, which is a good enough excuse in my book to celebrate it anyway. Oh and to eat lots of chocolate too  This year, my mum made me bake her a Simnel cake; which is a cake that is traditionally baked around Easter time and has balls of marzipan on top – 11 to mark the disciples minus Judas of course!

The funny thing is nobody in my family particularly likes marzipan, however my mum’s been watching the Baking Legend that is Mary Berry on TV this week, so hence the request.

If you are wondering what the yellow mess is on top of the cake, well those are crystallised primroses. I’m not entirely convinced that they add that much to the decoration, I think I may need to practice some more with them…

View from the back:

Aside from my 5 minutes of fame in the window, I just want to point out the insane level of skills that some of the other students on these courses have (Morley is an adult community college and not a specialist college of fashion!) – take this boned ballet bodice  below:

And no, that is not a printed fabric, that is all hand embroidered….

…. And then look at this exquisite tailored man’s jacket with black ombre dyed evening gown!

I know Envy is supposed to be one of the seven deadly sins, but seriously how you can you not be envious!?

(This is the cat equivalent of how I feel after work )

Well, whatever the reason, I really want to increase my productivity and I have so much fabric and patterns that to be quite honest I don’t know what to do with half of it!  And I know I am absolutely useless at finishing things and working to a deadline, but I thought I might just try and see if I could enter something like the Pattern Review Pattern Stash contest or maybe get in a last minute entry into the Eva Dress competition – which I always think of doing and then never get round to doing… Well, that’s it, I’m publicly throwing my hat into the ring and to be honest, if I can get one entry into the PR contest, i’d be happy with that – let alone 35 items….

Any other interesting sewing challenges/sewalongs at the moment anyone would like to recommend?

I had less than 24 hours in New York, a quick break in my travels on my way back from a holiday in Costa Rica with friends and whilst my friends ran off to Times square and up the Empire state, I naturally ran off to the garment district. Is it wrong that I was more excited about visiting the shops made famous by bloggers such as Gertie and BurdaStyle than seeing any of the sights? (Ok, it wasn’t my first time in New York, but it was my first trip since I started sewing).

Seriously though, I think what impressed me the most about the garment district is that these shops are aimed at both trade and the home seamstress. The range of haberdashery that is available is astonishing. Something that we just do not have access to here in London unless you are in the trade. Places like Macculloch & Wallis and Klein’s really don’t compare…

So understandably, in the couple of hours that I had in the garment district, I went a bit mad… Guess which idiot got so caught up in the moment and bought a glue gun and then forgot about the different voltages in our countries?

I mostly stocked up on random haberdashery items that I know are cheaper in the US than in the UK, so nothing too exciting.

The only fabric I bought was a lovely Bemberg rayon lining from Paron’s annex and heavily discounted silk shantung from the shop next door. Rather restrained for me to be honest, but I’m running out of excuses to justify my fabric hoarding…

Here’s a shot of the inside:

The back of the corset features hook and eye tape.

This is the only shot of me wearing the corset and the bias binding was still unfinished at this point. I’ve not had a chance to wear and photograph it properly as when I finished it, I immediately lent it out to Morley college for a student exhibition they have going on at the moment. As I’ve been on holiday I haven’t had a chance to see if it has been exhibited, so fingers crossed! 

Anyway, it’s sunday evening and I am having the sunday evening blues – I have just spent a fantastic weekend with such lovely, inspiring ladies that share the same interest in making corsets as me and it is now all over. Back to reality and the 9 to 5 job in the morning. But to recap: here’s what I did this weekend – I did another toile this time with boning and adjusted the fit. Here’s me looking pretty happy about it:

And from the side on. You probably can’t see it here but my bust looks a little bit ‘Madonna-esque’ and by ‘Madonna-esque’, I mean pointy boobs as in the 1980s cone bras…. Don’t worry, it got sorted! Phew!  Because I really don’t want to be sued for having somebody’s eye out with my pointy boobs…

And from the back – so  we all sewed in the modesty panel at the CB and fitted it but it wasn’t till right at the end that I said to my teacher, so as I’m putting hooks and eyes in, why I have fitted panel 7 like that, I don’t have a CB seam. What can I say? I certainly have my dizzy moments! Anyway you live and you learn.

So, one way to sort that out is to split the panel and add that half to the next panel, making that one large panel. But of course, I never make things easy for myself. I had already cut out my pattern before I mentioned it and I have a minimal amount of fabric left to play with. So my only option is to split this back panel and then add seam allowance to that, so I will have two extra panels in the back compared to the original design. Well, I’ll just chalk that up to experience and call it a design modification shall I?

And the winning fabric combination for my corset is this lovely fabric remnant that I got from a remnants bin. I am very happy with how it’s looking at the moment! Seriously I cannot wait to finish it, tomorrow at work is going to be hard when I am daydreaming about this…

(Bonus points if you can spot my cat in this picture – cheeky little thing )

And you wake up to a place that looks like this:-

It sometimes a good thing to remind myself of the reasons that I am very lucky to live in London. One reason is the opportunities that I have to go to places like Morley College which I wouldn’t have if I was back home. Morley college is based in Lambeth North and is an adult education college which offers a massive amount of courses and has a really strong fashion department.

So off I took myself to Morley college at the weekend and completed week 1 of 2 (Saturday and Sunday) of 20th Century Corsetry. I’m really interested in this course because a) I’m obsessed with corsets – did I really need to state the obvious here?? b) I want to learn everything about corsets c) I want to learn more about fitting d) I really want to learn how to make ‘under’ corsets that fit under dresses and give structure to strapless dresses and dresses made from delicate fabrics – in my mind’s eyes, I am determined to still complete Vogue V1174 which to this day has remained a rather irritating UFO…

I was lucky enough to be fitted by our class tutor – who by the way is absolutely amazing! I have learnt so much from her already. I just want to keep doing more and more courses and I would if I didn’t have to pay my bills or need food survive too!

Anyway back to the pattern – We’re using a Simplicity pattern which is relatively easy and straightforward to alter for a large class of students. Simplicity 5006 in case you are wondering. This is my first toile and as the tutor fitted my corset, I am very happy with the fit! We then had to turn to our neighbours and fit their corsets which was great practice.

I should apologise now if you’re not keen on seeing me standing in a corset toile with my underwear on, but hey this is a sewing blog after all and we’re assessing fit!! I’m just glad I had a good bra on that day considering how much I bang on about lingerie

The basic alteration to this pattern for me is adding 2 cm in length near the waist point. This is based on measuring my actual arm pit to waist and waist to bust apex then comparing the measurements on the pattern pieces. Considering I am 5’10″ – a 2cm addition to me feels a bit minimal but it seems to be enough. However the pattern includes a 1.5cm seam allowance at the top and bottom, so I will probably have to add that on when I do toile number 2.

I have also added in a little bit more at the side of the bust to prevent the dreaded ‘side boob’.

The other thing you might notice is that my bra straps are tightened up to the max, the clasp at the back is on its smallest and the straps are even pinned at the top to lift my bust as much as I want it to look in the final corset. Interesting fact that my teacher told us was a lot of bras have straps that are too long.

Plan is for this weekend coming to make our corsets in our actual fabric. So there is lots to do this week and this weekend! I love a good project though, it just makes my heart sing Seriously, I can be so cheesy sometimes…

Thoughts on potential fabrics? I’m going to try to use something from my abundant stash and these are my current choices:-

1. A light cotton/silk mix voile bought from ditto fabrics last year

2.  A striped oranges and pinks natural silk (gifted from grandmother)

3. A rather cheeky cotton remnant for £2 from Fabrics Galore

3. Another sale item, this time I think it was from Sew Curvy or Vena Cava – Can’t remember. An orangeish satin backed coutil. It’s definitely more orange in natural light. So much so that I am often wondering how I could dye this to a more blush/ballet pink colour. (However as I am half Dutch, the thought of wearing anything brightly orange does not phase me in the slightest!)

5. Or for something completely different and a bit retro – A Cath Kidston piece I was given as a present – brushed cotton flannel. Although I wonder if I really would wear something like this as it really isn’t my style. So perhaps not a good choice.

At the moment I am leaning between number 1 and 4 the most but as always, I appreciate everyone’s opinions!