The Little Black Work Dress

Its kinda windy out today.

Hey look, its another Vogue 8701! This one I made out of black rayon/wool gabardine from FabricMart. I made one modification from my previous plaid version, which was to take an extra dart at the neckline. I think I could honestly take this in a bit in the sides as gabardine has more give to it than silk dupioni. It has a wonderful drape and depth of color, though, which I love. And its perfect for a chilly office setting without being too hot when you have to drive home, except maybe during July and August.

I think I was giving the stray cat the stink eye, not sure.

 I just recently got this super cute bow hairband that I love to pieces. And this is a self made belt and vintage brooch.

This is me swishing from side to side. Like I said, its a great swishy fabric.

Here you kinda get a peek of the zipper. Its a vintage metal zipper I stole from my MIL stash and put in with a hand pick stitch.  And because of the way my waist is, the belt rides up above the dress waistline a bit.

Incidentally, it looks just fine un belted.

Side view. Side note: The shoes are Jeffrey Campbell. Two years and they are still my favorites.

So some stats:

Fabric: rayon/wool gabardine $5yd (bought during a super sale), 3 yards.  Bemberg rayon lining, I fussed with it and got it out of 2.5 yards (60" wide), $16 a yard. So $47 dollars.
Notions: Zipper and lace hem tape, both inherited from other people's stashes. 0 dollars
Time: If I hadn't put the sleeves in backwards, cut to finish would have been 8 hours (hand picked zipper, hand sewn invisible hem). But that added on an extra 2 hours. I started this last month and fussed with it off an on. 10 hours over about four weeks.

The Candy Plaid Dress

The description on Fabric Mart's site used words like "blueberry" and "strawberry" to describe this plaid. Its colorful, its lovely, its almost impossible to be sad while wearing it. I've pretty much written everything I can about this dress, so here's photos!

Some stats:
Time to make: Oh, given fitting about 40 hours, but a second one with no pattern matching would probably take about 10 or so.
Cost: The fabric and lining together set me back about 24 dollars.  For a silk dupioni fashion fabric and rayon lining. Notions were from my stash.
Make Again? Yes!

Check out that pattern matching.  I totally rule!

What's that, its not lined up on the side skirt but still looks right? How does that even happen?

This dress would totally rock a crinoline, too, but since its for work, that'd be kinda obnoxious.

Check out my matching belt! I used fabric cut on the bias with Sunni's Stella Kit. These are totally awesome, go buy some!

I decided not to do a hidden zipper. This fabric is so loud, how'd you notice anyway? Also, I'm proud of my belt loops.

And with a twirl and clicking of heals I say have a good day! I hope this cheers you as much as it did me.

Simply Complex - A Process Post

As I was working on this obnoxious plaid confection, I applied all of the knowledge of bodice fitting I've gained so far. It was hard because its just me, and trying to explain how to properly pin out wrinkles, place darts, and so on and so forth, to either of the men living in my house is, well, akin to explaining where the g-spot is.  I used a combination of full length mirror and camera with tripod. But before that I did a great deal of measuring of the flat patterns and made the adjustments I thought were needed first. The big issues were:

1)Large Arms
2)Rounded Shoulders
3)Full Bust
4)Waist

Now, all of these adjustments I've done before on a basic style bodice and an armhole princess seam. I had not done it on a two-piece raglan sleeve and a bodice with neckline and waist darts.

Full Bust

The very first thing I did was trace off a size 20 minus the seam allowance and then do a three inch (total, 1.5 inch pictured here, since it would equal 3" with both sides there) Full Bust Adjustment*. There are many many tutorials out there on how to do a Y-shaped FBA, and in this case I used the principle of moving darts (Here's a good diagram that explains that) to make the change, then close up the side dart and split the difference between the top and bottom dart.

Here's the front sleeve and adjustments made.  The thing about raglan sleeves is they usually have a dart at the shoulder if they are one piece, or effectively with a two piece sleeve as there is a curve, much like with a princess seam. Trying to move the seam line forward for rounded shoulders proved to be challenging. It was a bit of trial and error.

I swear I had made one of these with notes on the photo, but I can't find it.  In fact, it looks like I lost half my  carefully done photos and now I'm sad.  I will share what I do have, however, and try to go from memory.

Obviously, I had to do a bit of dart adjustment.  The waistline darts in the front needed to be shortened and curved in a bit to match my natural shape. I also gave myself a 1/4 inch more roof all around after pinching a dead dart in the back. Upon looking at some of these photos I realize that my right shoulder and hip are slightly higher than my left. This must be from my back injury as that is the side I normally favor (due to the nerve damage from my spinal injury/surgery my right leg will give out on me or cramp up, usually when very tired and often without warning). When I can finally convince (read: enable) a couple friends to sew more and be my fitting buddy, I will probably have a right/left pattern pieces in the future. The wrinkles with the back-fat are not noticeable in the fashion fabric, lining, and skirt weight pulling down the bodice. This is a good thing. Ok, more photos.

Ah, ok, here is the notes on muslin number one.  I didn't note it on the photo how I moved the neckline darts, see the second photo down from here.  

You can also see I actually pinched out a bunch of width in the waistline.  I did this for the first muslin, but then added in a 1/8 inch for each side seam, for a total of 1/2 an inch all around. It ended up being the perfect amount.

Here I show how I ended up re-drawing the sleeve shoulder darts. This was also to keep the neckline from gaping and to prevent bra-strap showing. This is still a slight problem but fixable if I wear the right bra. In the next one I make I'm going to add a second neckline dart.   I kept the width for the bottom of the sleeves, which was lengthened 1 inch from the original to hide some of the jiggly.

Here is the aforementioned moving of neckline dart.  As I said, I'm going to add a second dart. Really, I'm going to add 1/4 inch to this one and then split it into two darts. That would give ma a total of another 1/2 inch taken in at the neckline and successfully give me regular bra strap coverage.

Though I don't have a photo of it, I did add an inch to the waistline of the skirt and to the length.  I marked the hem by measuring 24" from the waistline, then sewed lace hem tap to the bottom and trimmed. Also, I pinked the seam allowances. I did to a second row of stitching in the bodice seams for strength and then pinked.  This is a dry-clean only dress so I'm not terribly worried about fraying.  As for finishing the hem, I did a blind stitch by hand for the fashion fabric and a rolled hem on the serger for the lining.

That's all I can think of at the moment. Felicity is suppose to help me take photos in the morning, so hopefully I'll have those edited and up this week. Let me know if you have any questions! Hope your week is going well.

It Is Done

Vogue 8701

And by "IT" I mean 2012 and my latest dress.  Happy New Year,  we shall see what it has in store for us. I must admit that I've been doing a great deal of inner reflection lately*. And doing a lot of it while hand stitching on this dress.  I have a very long process post and a photo shoot of me in it to do, for sure.  However, since I've been so quiet recently I just wanted to show you what I've been working on.

Vogue 8701 View B, with a slight lengthening of the sleeve. I also added belt loops and made a matching belt. Its a silk dupioni I got on sale from Fabric Mart Fabrics for a steal. Its the bestest most obnoxious plaid ever and while it looks shiny in all the photos, its not really in real life. I'm totally wearing it to work.

I actually put a lot of my work in progress up on Instagram, but as I already stated I am planning on giving you more in depth on what I had to do to get it to fit.  Mom once told me that the simplest looking designs are the hardest to make look good.  Mom was very wise.


*A lot of it has to do with work and blogging about my sewing. I work in the I.T. industry and sewing is a completely mystifying hobby to most of my coworkers. Because I managed to teach ONE class before I had to do a lot of damage control for friends I've had multiple people at work ask "So are you going into business for yourself now?".  Trying to explain to them that making the kind of money I do in I.T. would be almost impossible and I'm not exactly in a position to strike out on my own on a hope and a whim was frustrating. My husband pointed out that its a way that men (and I mostly work with men) compliment you, by pointing out that you are good enough at said skill to be marketable.

But anywho, all that to say that I've been trying to find a way continue my education for work and have the skill apply to both blogging and my "day" job.  Can't really go into more detail than that, other than 2013 is going to be a very interesting year. Hopefully a good interesting. Wish me luck!

New Projects

First of all, thank you everyone for your lovely and kind compliments on my outfit posts. It just goes to show that we're our own worst critics, right? I love y'all, and that's a fact.

So! New project!  I'm turning the raglan sleeve dress from Vogue 8701 into a TNT dress.  Its marked as "easy", which I guess it  is, once you get past the million and one modifications needed for proper fit. These are all common for me modifications: rounded shoulders, large arms, lengthened waist, full bust adjustment... The problems is I've never done it for this type of bodice.

I decided to go with the advice from a class I took at the Sewing Expo some times ago and make all the modifications to the back and shoulders first.  I have found this to be good advice, actually, since once that fits the FBA becomes much easier.  Here is a somewhat fuzzy photo of all those pieces:

I will be taking higher quality photos with details on how the changes worked later, probably next week.  I tried doing some searches for tutorials on how to make these changes and um... didn't find much. I had to turn to my text book on fitting, which had nothing for rounded shoulder adjustments on raglan sleeves.  I kinda made it up as I went.

This was my next big puzzle.  I needed an FBA of a total of about two inches after I made my modifications to the back and sleeves. I decided to start with the basic y-bust alteration and then use the "law of dart rotation".  I'm not sure either of these things are actual THINGS,  I know that many a book and blog have talked about them, though I think I may take my own crack at it here. In any case, I tried to make sure that the dart tips were at least 1.5 inches away from the bust point* so that I'm not sporting Madonna Bra Cones.

Next up I traced the pattern pieces for the "Roxy Royal" hoodie in the Autumn 2012 Ottobre' magazine. I'm pretty sold on this magazine so far and think I'm going to get a year's subscription. They have the best selection for boys anywhere that I've found. So.. YAY!  The hoodie is actually for a friend's daughter.  She loves pink and My Little Ponies, and I have some polar fleece of the original ponies kicking around in my stash. In fact, its been kicking there for about a decade now. Originally it was intended for Felicity but she is currently anti-pink.

But back to this magazine, its got that crazy migraine-inducing pattern sheets you trace. I've taken to highlighting the one I want with a similar colored highlighter. Makes a huge difference.  Also, those huge wax sheets save my life when it comes to this. Best haberdashery purchase ever!

In conclusion, here's Wanderer (aka Monkey Butt,  cause that's what Felicity started calling him after he got 'fixed' and came home with his butt shaved) helping me with my projects.

What are you working on?

* Another nice tip I read recently is to think of the bust as the tip of a cone in relation to the garment you are wearing.  You have to shape the fabric to mold around your bust in a pleasing manner.