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!

Quilts: 1700 - 2010 exhibition at the V & A

 Rajah Quilt, Made by convicts on board HMS Rajah, 1841

Quilts are everywhere at the moment, every time I open a paper or magazine there seems to be an article on the popularity of craft, surge of sewing machine sales and especially about how cool it is to quilt. With perfect timing, the V & A museum has a major exhibition running from 20th March to 4th July showing 65 quilts from 1700 through to present day. The majority of the quilts will be from the V & A's collection but there will also be some new works by contemporary artists such as such as Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin.

To celebrate the exhibition, the V&A Shop and Liberty fabrics have collaborated on a limited edition collection of printed cottons featuring designs from quilts in the V&A's collections. These are a few of my favourites, it's quite a reasonable way to acquire a few Liberty prints, they have fat quarter bundles too.  If you make it to the V & A, the gift shop there is really good, as is the book shop.