Lacy skater

Pattern: Lady Skater dress by Kitschy Coo

Fabric: 3 m rayon or cotton/rayon knit

Haberdasheries: none!

So, when I didn’t have any trouble using my overlocker for my KittySkater shirt, I thought: this is going so well, let’s carry on with the next Lady Skater dress straight away! And as soon as I put this fabric under the machine, it started skipping stitches like mad, and driving me crazy as before. WHY?!

I wanted to take this dress on holiday with me so I was determined to finish it quickly, but don’t ask what it looked like on the inside… Or well, I’ll show you:

The only reason I got away with this and could actually wear the dress, is that the lace design hides the gaps in the seams. I have now fixed those by zigzagging the missing bits on my regular sewing machine.

I’ve got a lace print shirt I really like, so I was looking for a lace print fabric for a Lady Skater dress and found this:

I was happy to find something so close to what I was looking for (that doesn’t often happen!) but I didn’t like the border, as I think it looks too different from the rest of the print. So I bought three metres and hoped that would be enough to avoid using the border. When I came home I realised that unless I wanted a black lace band running down my front and back, I’d actually have to cut the fabric perpendicular to its grain! I had no idea whether that would be acceptable (the dress might start stretching too much lengthwise after repeated wearing), but as it had similar amounts of stretch in both directions, and I didn’t like the vertical print option, I just went for it.

Pattern matching this was a bit of a nightmare as all the lace patterns had different widths and their centres didn’t line up, but I think I did a nice job!

Halloween cushion covers

Pattern: None

Fabric: printed cotton, black cotton, cream cotton

Haberdasheries: 7 buttons, 4 black tassels

First: making cushion covers, making buttonholes on my own sewing machine, actually using the buttonhole foot!

Last month I visited my friend Nienke in the USA, and ended up buying lots of Halloween decoration materials. I also decided that I’d make some envelope cushion covers when I got home.

I bought the fabric for the first cushion cover specifically for that purpose, so I had enough for what I wanted to make, and decided to take it seriously and do French seams for a neat inside:

 

The second and third covers’ fabrics were gifts from Nienke/leftovers from her projects. I think they were fat quarters (weird name…) and this meant I had a bit too little fabric, so I couldn’t do French seams, and just made narrow regular seams and zigzagged them. I decided to add black tassels to the black cats one.

 

  

  

I like the black cats one so much I might actually leave it for the rest of the year as well!

Happy Halloween! – A Kitty skater shirt

Pattern: Drafted based on Kitchy Coo’s Lady Skater pattern

Fabric: 1.5 m organic cotton knit

Haberdasheries: none!

First: my serger not giving me ANY trouble! :P

I don’t think I’ll be making a habit of making basic shirts (it is handier, and even cheaper, to buy them) but I really liked this fabric, yet didn’t want an entire dress out of it. So I used the Lady Skater sleeves as they were, and the bodice with quite a bit added to the bottom.

In my enthusiasm about my serger cooperating, I forgot I was supposed to hem the sleeves and bottom before serging the side seam. So it was a bit of a tricky job to hem the sleeves, but I do think I prefer this method, because at least the seam lines up everywhere! I find it almost impossible to line up the seams when serging, even if I baste them first.

Happy Halloween everyone!

The Great British Sewing Bee inspiration

A couple of weeks ago the fourth season of BBC sewing show The Great British Sewing Bee ended. I started watching this show halfway through the third season. I’m not into reality or competitive shows at all, but two friends really liked it, and when I saw an ad for it which showed the contestants were going to make kilts, obviously I was intrigued and decided to give it a go!

The first time I watched I almost got stressed just watching! Imagine making a corset in only four hours… But I did like the show, and was pleasantly surprised that the judges were actually fair and not too negative. The purpose of this talent show, unlike so many others, certainly isn’t gloating. I did like former judge May better than the new judge, Esme, though; I am a bit afraid she was brought in because the producers found the show too positive… Also, did the contestants deliberately have too little time for the projects this time? I wondered at the skill level of most of the contestants, but too little time may have accounted for that. Pity.

The highlights of the fourth season, for me, were the made to measure dresses made of African style fabrics, and the alteration challenge ones made from a tuxedo.

Made to measure dresses using African style fabrics

These dresses are from episode 4, International Week. The photos aren’t great quality, sorry – I actually photographed my television screen here!

Angeline:

Charlotte:

 

The infuriating Joyce ;):

I think these fabrics are amazing; I would love to make a dress out of one of them. And the funny thing is, they’re actually made in The Netherlands! As we were informed on the show, Dutch companies started making cheaper imitation Indonesian batik to sell in Indonesia, but the fabrics ended up in West Africa and became hugely popular there. There’s only one Dutch company making this ‘wax hollandais’ now, Vlisco. Ironically, they now face competition from cheaper wax print production in China.

My absolute favourite was this dress by Jade. I would wear this exactly as it is!

To be honest, I thought Jade’s sewing was quite inaccurate, and I wouldn’t have agreed if she had won, but she did make some pretty cool designs.

Alteration challenge – tuxedo into little black dress

The final episode, Evening Wear Week, had the three remaining ladies (who, age wise, could have been daughter, mother and grandmother!) make men’s tuxedoes into little black dresses. I really liked Charlotte’s and Jade’s.