In which we discuss colours and head sizes.

I hate pink. I'm SOOO not a floral person. And although I like yellow, I generally don't wear it. So then, you are thinking, WTF?

For the Dog lady sewing challenge, I wanted to make a wearable muslin. I had made a straight-up muslin, but I wanted a quick practice run of the make. I did not want to drop $70 on fabric only to have it wasted. Not cool.

Rewind to two years ago, when my very generous in-laws bought me a gift certificate for a local quilting store. It sat in our "gift card pile" for ages! Not that I didn't want to use it, but rather I got overwhelmed and wanted to make sure I used it wisely. Fast forward to a few weeks ago while the three of us were getting set up for the challenge and I had an opportunity to putter around the store for an hour while the hubs was in a meeting at school. I found this quilting cotton in the sale section and, even though, as I mentioned, I hate pink, dislike wearing florals, and dislike wearing yellow, I had to have it. It was $6 a metre, and it had fruit on it! FRUIT! Maybe this long ass winter made me want to buy something tropical too? So I picked it up, toted it home and got it in my head that if I was going to make a wearable muslin out of this, then I'm going all out and I'm going to make myself look like Malibu F*****g Barbie. :) Don't ask how my brain works. Just nod your head and smile.

What? Me? I'm not socially awkward!

I used Simplicity 1873, just like I did for my birthday dress, only I used the front bodice from view c, without the tabs. I changed the back bodice to be a big scoop because I tried it with my Lilou muslin (that never made it to be a real dress), and I liked the scoop back feature.

I graded out from an 8 at the bust to a 12 at the waist and I used a smaller side seam allowance (3/8" I think?), just to try and give myself more ease than normal. I usually give myself almost zero ease which, oh, I don't know, when I put on a little winter weight *ahem*, can lead to me not fitting into any of my damn clothes, so I figured I'd be kind and try to give myself some extra space. I ended up with just the right amount of ease in my opinion. The dress is fitted without being baggy, which is great! I also changed the skirt to just a plain old gathered one because I didn't have enough to make the skirt from the pattern. I'll probably do the same for my final dress. I also made the same dart changes that I made to my birthday dress, but that was just a matter of tracing off my last pattern.

I made the matching bow belt using Tilly's tutorial, only I made mine a bit wider and the bow a bit bigger. I also made Bluegingerdoll's pin up head scarf, but I have a large noggin and nothing ever fits it properly.  It would have looked pretty stupid if I had worn it for these pictures for you. I can get it to twist once but I can't knot it. I should have known too. I have to buy men's hats lest I get a huge headache, so I should have slashed the pattern. That scarf REALLY would have made me look like Malibu Barbie, so I guess that plan got quashed because of my giant skull. Oh well, what can you do? Next time.

This is the nicest thing I've made to date. I was very careful about pattern matching at the back zip, and due to the fabric width, I had to have a second seam running through the skirt, which I pattern matched really well.

I also added a patch pocket, matching the pattern there. It is just a wee pocket, just enough to stuff my keys into while at work.

Also: check out that kick ass invisible zipper! Amazing!

The bodice is lined with some Bemberg rayon from my stash (Remember how I said my fabric store closed up shop? Yeah, I made out like a bandit with a ton of lining.). 

I also used up some vintage lace hem tape for the hem of the skirt that my cousin gifted me ages ago. It is a little uneven on the inside but on the outside it is even and that is all that matters.

I didn't bother lining the skirt. Instead, at 6:30am the other day when I decided to wear this to work, I decided to make a half slip. Yeah. I figured it would save me from having to line all my future dresses, but clearly I could have planned that out a bit better.

For my final dress, I will try to add some inseam pockets, or if I'm too lazy, I will do a patch pocket, just this time a bigger one. I also need to change the arm holes to be bigger. After wearing this all day I couldn't wait to get it off because it was digging into my pits. But other than that I am really quite pleased with how this turned out. 

And sorry about the less-than-ideal pictures. The snow outside literally is higher than my fence. :| And ain't nobody got time to deal with that. So indoor photos it is. Womp womp.

Can you spot the fence post?

What about you? Have you started your Dog Lady Challenge piece yet?

{D'awwwww}

Sneak Peek

I'm nearing the end now, have a tiny peek at some of the work I've done!
 (Also, the sewing is why I am M.I.A., sorry, but when I get close to finishing a project, it consumes all of my time. It may even consume my SOUL! Muahahahahahaha........)

So FLIPPIN excited!

{Something good}

Progress Part 2

I don't want to be doing this update. Really I don't.

Why?

Because I'd rather be sewing, of course!

But here it is, just for you, an update on my Mad Men Dress Challenge 2:

In the last progress post, I showed you what my muslin looked like after about a month of futzing around with my darts. I still wasn't happy with them. I tried using Gertie's method on changing the darts to be more flattering and I kept ending up very....nippley.

Y U NO WORK MUSLIN?

Well, I am happy to say that not only did I figure out the problem, but I have done A LOT.

After sorting out the nipple darts (which I may do a tutorial on another time), I had to futz around with the sizing by bringing the zipper in and out, again and again, and I had to fix the neck gape. When I was finally happy, I transferred everything to my pattern. Check it out:

See how many times I changed the zipper placement?

A new shoulder dart to get rid of neck gape.

The front

The back.

The alterations transferred to the front bodice.

I added the bust dart to get rid of my massive neck gape.

Check out all the alterations to the darts! And these are just the ones I put on the pattern. This doesn't include the ones I did on the muslin alone!

The alterations to the bodice back.

The new shoulder dart to deal with the back neck gape.

Well, after getting to this point, I did even MORE stuff. Though I did not take many process pictures. So here is a quick run down with a few final photos:

Next I traced my pattern pieces onto some kraft paper to make new pattern pieces. I extended the back bodice on the new pattern pieces along the centre seam by about a 1/4 of an inch to account for the zipper width which would no long be in the centre back of my Mad Men dress. Then, I extended the front centre seam by about an inch to account for the buttons and button placket. After that, I drafted the button placket and a collar, both on my own! (Well, okay, I was using my sister's pattern drafting book to guide me. But I have never taken any sort of pattern drafting course of anything, so this is a big deal for me!) Then I got to work!

The left side with the button placket sewn on.

The right side and the interfacing for the placket laying over top.

The back bodice.

And all together!

So that's all I have photos of for now. I've been trying to take more progress photos, but honestly, I just don't want to stop what I am doing to take photos! Ha!

Anyway, I can't wait to finish and show you my dress! So I am going to go work on it now. Right. Now. :)

{One day...}

Progress.

It's been forever since I've talked about sewing. Last time I mentioned that I was going to use Maddie's tutorial on making a sloper. I tried, got frustrated, and changed gears. I am still going to make a sloper, but I think I'll wait until the summer when I have more time. So instead I've been working on altering the Simplicity 2444 dress in preparation for the Mad Men Dress Challenge 2 and for the navy polka dotted dress I've been meaning to make for months now. Here is a quick peek at the muslin I've been working on. Although it looks pretty bad in this picture, I've actually made quite a bit of progress:

  

Now, you can see I've circled where I screwed up sewing in the sleeve. I know that on a muslin, you don't really have to sew in a sleeve, but I've never done it before so I thought it would be good practice. I found out that I cut the sleeves a size too small because they are so tight that I can't really move around in this bodice with the sleeves. Like, at all. They have since been removed, I figured I'll work on them later. I don't need sleeves for my Mad Men dress, so I'm not too concerned right now.

I am also pointing out some major sagginess under the bust. I've fixed most of this simply by bringing the bodice back in significantly, but there remains a little. I've tried to alter the darts the way that Gertie suggests, but I ALWAYS end up looking, as Trevor puts it, nippley. So I'm going to work on the darts a bit more and see if I can't figure it out with the pattern making book my sister lent me. And who knows, when I insert the button placket, it might completely change the fit again.

As for the Mad Men Dress Challenge 2, I actually chose my inspiration dress a while ago:

I don't even watch mad men, but I like this dress and I can see myself wearing something like this so, why not? I said I wanted to be more social this year, and this joining in this challenge would be a great way to do so, don't you think? I've been debating between making a real button up front, and making a fake button up front. I am leaning towards real, that way I can learn some new techniques, but again, we'll see when I make a muslin of the top with the collar and the buttons.

I've already started to look for fabric. I think the fabric is going to have to be inspired by this, but not exact. Which is fine. But I haven't been to Fabricland yet. Not that I have high expectations for finding a fabric that looks like this. Of course, I could try to make a fabric like this using different techniques, but hey, I've got a day job and a night job to hold down, so I don't think that is going to happen.

Thanks for reading this little update. I can't wait to get my muslin done and get started on my dress. Are you sewing in the Mad Men Dress Challenge 2?

{Somebody}