The reveal...

Finally after a long, long weekend of sewing, I finished my dress late on Monday night and handed it in at the end of my pattern cutting course last night. It's not the best photo, and my attempts to photograph my tired and grumpy self in it were hopeless. I will try and post another when I get it back from being assessed, with me in it.

Am I pleased with the dress? yes and no. I am really pleased with the way it is made, the neckline which was tricky, but the rest was fairly straightforward, it just all took a lot longer than I expected. However, I did take my time, and as a result I enjoyed it more than usual. The blind-stitched hem that I did by hand is a particular joy to me. It looks like one on a dress I bought from Jigsaw a few years back for a wedding, and that makes me feel quite proud.

I loved sewing with the voile, it's such a beautiful fabric to wear. I will definitely make something else from it, especially now I know how to work with it, the French seams and smaller needle turned out well. As did stay stitching the curves to stop any stretch.

I can see problems with the fit, the top and neckline look as I'd hoped, but the idea of having the dress gathering at the waist didn't really work out. There isn't enough gather for it to look pleated and the extra volume I created means that the fit wasn't as snug as I'd hoped from the bust down. I wonder if it was even possible, and maybe I should have created a separate top and skirt. But it is complete, my first garment, designed and made by me. My first evening course completed.

I would definitely recommend an evening course in pattern cutting or anything else for that matter. I really enjoyed the weekly escape to do my own thing, just for me, learning a new skill and meeting new people. Ordinarily being placed in the middle of a group of complete strangers most of whom were 10 years my junior wouldn't be my idea of fun, but guess what - it was! I was quite sad to leave the sewing room last night for the last time.

What next? it will be nice to free up some of my precious spare time, sew at my own pace, start a few new sewing projects that I can finish in less time. I'm collecting pictures of (mostly) dresses as inspiration for when I do decide to have a go at another pattern. As I am no clothes designer, I need an idea to work from, designing a dress from scratch was definitely the hardest part of the course for me.

Is any one else thinking of doing a course? do let me know. I am lucky in Brighton, there are so many to choose from, screen printing is in the back of my mind, maybe in the Autumn...

It's beginning to look a lot like a dress...

 

The end of my pattern cutting course is fast approaching and I have been making some progress on my dress. Cutting the pattern out in the fabric was quite time consuming. I loved this fabric and used it without thinking about the fact that it has a stripe in both directions which has complicated things somewhat.

Firstly, I naively assumed that the stripes would run parallel, but they didn't, So I had to sacrifice the vertical stripe in favour of having the horizontal one perfect. It took me ages to line up the stripes right for cutting, and one side of the fabric seemed less straight than the other so for that side I had to make a whole pattern piece for ease of lining up the stripes, rather than cut it on the fold. I got there in the end! I also had to try and join the pattern up on the neckline and sides, I won't bore you with the detail there.

I also had problems finding a suitable lining fabric. I wish I'd used coordinating fabric from this range, but left it too late. Proper lining fabrics in the shops felt horribly synthetic and heavier than the voile, so I ended up using some nice 100% cotton sheeting instead, not an ideal colour, but hopefully it won't show.

I have sewn up the outside of the dress now. Learning from past mistakes I have taken my time and tried to enjoy the process rather than rushing through and making mistakes, despite my looming deadline. And I have really enjoyed it, I feel more confident sewing now, also I have made this dress a few times over the last few months in draft form so have had a bit of practise.

The gathered neckline turned out well, I sewed it from the middle to the top on both sides so that I would have it all lined up perfectly in the middle when I joined it to the main dress. It is quite hard to tell the right from the wrong side on this fabric, and combined with doing a french seam, there were a number of panicky moments when I thought I had sewed it the wrong side up. But I don't think I have so far, fingers crossed.

On the advice of my tutor, I used a new smaller (size 70) needle for my sewing machine. I wanted to avoid that problem you sometimes get with lighter weight silky fabrics where you can pull a long thread when sewing. I can't remember the last time I changed the needle on my machine so it was probably quite blunt. Anyway, it worked, no snags.

Anyway, here it is so far, next I must do the same for the lining fabric, and then join them together. I am nervous as anything about trying the finished dress on!

Pockets

This week at college we made pockets. It was great fun, just making them on their own, no worries about it looking right in the garment. We made a patch pocket (above) like the kind you would find on the back of a pair of trousers.

We also made a front hip pocket or jean pocket (my favourite), it turned out really nicely and I enjoyed adding the top stitching to the edge of the pocket.

And finally we made an inseam pocket, this one is harder to see so I have a picture from the front and back. But I can imagine it in the side seams of a tunic style top, you can reinforce the opening with ribbon or tape which can also add a nice detail.

My dress (that I will start making next week) has no pockets, though I like the idea of inseam pockets on the sides, I always need a pocket.

Why the mouse? I originally used my hands in the photos, but let's just say the winter has not been kind to my hands.

Pattern cutting fatigue...

I have pattern cutting fatigue. Normally the idea of a weekend where I cram every spare moment with sewing would be a heavenly prospect, but as you can see from the many screwed up pieces of paper above, this has not been the case.

Last week I posted a picture of the first draft of my dress. It was way too big and the flare of the dress took out any shaping on the top half that couldn't be pulled in by a belt in the way I had hoped. I drew up a new pattern which included a slightly lower neckline, lower armholes (as they were just a bit too high) and nipped it in at the waist going down to a much less flared skirt. It took me a long time to do this, drafting the pattern takes up space and needs concentration, both hard with 2 children around. I found my brain could only concentrate on what I was doing for an hour at a go before getting completely befuddled and I ended up drawing lines in the wrong place. When it came to making up the dress, sewing curved necklines is really hard, especially with a gather in, and it took ages.

The new dress was a much better fit, the top tighter, the belt gathered it in nicely around the waist, and the arms were more comfortable, but the top was also now too low and didn't look quite right.

So redraft number 3 and I think I am there. I think you need to be quite a perfectionist when drafting a pattern. Its too easy to have pieces not quite matching up at the arm, shoulder or hem. The result wouldn't be such a good fit, so I was extra careful this last time (and it will be the last time as I don't have the will to do another version) and measured up so that everything matched up (hopefully) perfectly.

Despite the many frustrations, in the back of my mind, I think this will be a really useful pattern, in addition to the dress, I am imagining a shorter version like a tunic, and I could add patch pockets to the front. I am hoping all my hard work will be worth it in the end, but for now it's a good feeling to pack it all away finished and take a breather...

Pattern cutting day...

Today, armed with coffee and scissors, I made some progress on my draft dress for my pattern cutting course. Last time I wrote about this I had drafted my final block pattern and cut it out in card. Since then I have been using this block to turn it into a pattern for my dress. Here is a picture of my (intended) final design ...

Its quite a simple design, low scoop neck at the front and back, gathering at the middle of the neck at the front and a belt to shape the dress at the waist and provide some more gathering. If I make the dress out of plain fabric, I may add some layering detail at the bottom just above the hem, if it's patterned fabric, it won't look right.

The scoop neck took hours over Christmas to perfect. I made up 5 different versions of it, it was so hard to get the scoop wide or deep enough. It just wasn't possible to draw one one by eye, I had to put on my original toile and put on a top I had with a scoop neck that I liked, then draw the scoop onto the fabric and then trace this onto a paper pattern. Are you following this? no - I'm not suprised. It was a long frustrating process interspersed with Toblerone to dull the pain. I got there in the end and made up several crop top sized dress tops to see if they worked. It provided some amusement in the house when I modelled them, I like to multitask.

Other problems included how to add the extra fabric for the gathering effect at the neck line and how to join the dress onto the scoop neck. I won't bore you with the details, but I got there in the end.

Today, I cut the pattern out of toile, and started sewing it together. I have made a facing to go on the inside, here is a picture, its another crop top,

This will go inside the dress and hopefully provide a nice neat and stable finish to the neck and armholes. I made so many mistakes that I had to start writing then down in a long list for fear of making them again when I make the dress up properly. The gathering at the neckline was really hard to get right, infact sewing the neckline was altogether quite a challenge, getting it to meet the dress at the right place and sewing the curve. One neat trick my tutor told me which I think will help me with my problems using bias binding on armholes was to sew round the curve inside the seam allowance first to stop it from stretching when sewing it all together.

Is it a sack, hospital gown, ghost costume, work of genius? No silly, that's my dress I've been working on for months. Worth all the hard work I think you'll agree. I have to admit, I was a little disappointed when I turned it the right way round and took in it's sackiness. But it needs a belt, much lighter weight fabric (toile is more suited to a suit jacket than summer dress) and once I have attached the facing it will neaten up the neck and arms. It does fit really well around the top, the neckline is good, I will try and take a photo on when it is finished. But it's so hard to image what it will look like in a different fabric.

The neckline turned out ok after a few attempts, I sewed a line for the gather which was above the seam line, this smoothed out the effect of the gather (as with the wrap top that I just made) next time I will sew the gather line on the seam line.

It's quite exciting to finally see it, though I do have an underlying worry that after all this work it will end up looking rubbish. Think positive though, that's my motto, I'm sure it will make a fabulous 1950's style night gown if nothing else.

Pattern cutting progress

Its been a few weeks since I've written about my progress on pattern cutting. We've had a couple of weeks in the classroom learning techniques like moving darts around, using seams and yokes. We also learnt about adding flare to skirts and different kinds of pleats. It gave me a much better understanding of how pattern cutting really works, there was lots of cutting and pasting of pieces of paper to make half scale patterns, it was good fun.

In the background I have been slowly finishing my bodice block pattern. Last time I wrote about it, I'd had my toile fitted, since then I have drawn all the adjustments onto the toile, (places it was taken in and let out), then unpicked it all. I then transferred these changes back to my original pattern which was tricky, the adjustments weren't even on both sides so I had to average them out. The front pattern (on the right) had too much material so I had to put a tuck in it from top to bottom and re-do the darts.

Next I traced this pattern onto card to make my final block pattern, and here it is finished.

I can now use this as a basis to make any fitted garment (there is a separate pattern for a loose fitting bodice). As I'm making a dress, I have to extend the pattern down to make the skirt part. My dress will be quite flared so I may have to play with the angle that it comes out at the sides.

I have finally designed my dress after finding quite a lot of inspiration in the shops this week, there are some beautiful dresses around at the moment, albeit winter ones and I am making a dress for spring/summer. But there are some lovely details I have seen that I want to incorporate. I'll save that for another post though...

Pattern cutting - pins, pins and yet more pins...

Last week at pattern cutting we traced our patterns onto toile, cut them out and sewed them together to get a first glimpse of my fitted garment. This week we fitted them in pairs to eachother. My partner was making a coat so her toile had to be fairly loose fitting and all it really needed was a bit of tweaking to make the neck wider and some darts at the back to give it a little more shape. I think I maybe even took in the sides a bit, easy, no problems there.

Mine however took a little longer, when I'd tried it on before I thought it looked quite good, but on closer inspection the arm holes needed to be made a bit bigger, darts at the waist, took in the sides, added panels at the bottom where it was too narrow, darts at the back. It took forever! my feet where killing me after an hour of standing up, it had been a long day. It did look great by the end of it, but so many pins, I felt sorry for my poor partner who had made the fateful decision to sit next to me that day (I'll be interested to see where she sits next week!!).

Excuse the terrible photos, but here is the front view, not the almost continuous darts from top to bottom... 

 and a view of the back...

 

Whilst I wasn't profusely apologising to my partner, I did have time to look around the classroom while other people were having theirs fitted. There are a number of tall willowy young-uns on my course, and they were wafting around looking amazing in theirs as once all the pining was done, they did fit really well. If you could ignore the rough fabric, and oh, did I mention the pins?

So the idea is next that we transfer these alterations onto the final block pattern which is cut out of card, and hey presto! I will have a pattern exactly to fit me! so long as I don't hit the biscuits too much in the coming years. Apparently this one 'tight fitting bodice' block can be used for shirts, slips, tops, skirts, even a corset - ha! Over the next few months I think we will learn how to make changes to the basic pattern such as pleats and other details. But for now we have a week off for half term, phew.

Pattern Cutting - week 3

Last week on my pattern cutting course we took measurements, this week we started drafting the blocks. My measurements threw up a few interesting statistics. As a size 12 on average most of my measurements were coming out between the averages for size 10 - 14, all fine. My (neck) nape to waist measurement was off the scale, above a size 26, naturally I presumed it was wrong and asked my tutor to check. But no it was right, I am a long backed freak... this makes me wonder if I have unusually short legs to compensate, what a lovely image.

From these unusual measurements we drafted out the patterns which was good fun. Basically following a set of instructions to make half a pattern for the front and half one for the back. The other side being symmetrical. I am going to make a dress (see below) so you start with the 'tight fitting bodice' pattern block and extend it down to make the skirt. There are different blocks for jackets, trousers, and a loose fitting bodice, among others. So once you know how to make the pattern I guess you can make anything?!

Initially I was going to make a skirt, but having been inspired by the complicated ideas of my fellow students I am now going to make a dress. This also gives me the chance to construct a skirt and top at college so learn a bit more. The library is great and I found this amazing book of Chanel designs called 'Chanel the Metropolitan Museum of Art' by Yale University Press which has some beautiful dresses in. I was already thinking 1920's but this has made my mind up.


So, I have gone from unambitious A-line skirt to a 1920's Chanel inspired dress. Gulp.

I have also been looking at fabrics (of course!) Libertys have some beautiful new fabrics in, I love the bold prints, even though a lot of the Chanel dresses are plain.

I have also been researching Celia Birtwell after seeing a program ages ago where she talked about using big prints on her clothes and how she thought where to place the print.


Somehow I'd like to incorporate some ideas like this, but maybe tone it down a bit as these were from the 1970's.




So my blocks are all cut out apart from a few details I'll finish off next week at college. We will be using the sewing machines for the first time next week, learning techniques for seams, darts and other bits.