Portuguese tiles Nettie dress

Pattern: Nettie Dress + Bodysuit Pattern by Closet Case Patterns
Fabric: 1.4 m ‘Portuguese tiles’ fabric, part polyester part viscose
Haberdasheries: None!

Making this dress was so little effort that I hardly understand why anyone would go shopping! What was also easy is that it could be sewed on a regular machine, since the fabric doesn’t fray. I don’t quite understand why knit fabric doesn’t fray whereas a knit sweater that hasn’t been finished properly would, but it’s certainly convenient. I had some serger problems a while ago and didn’t feel like doing lots of test runs now, so I just sewed this on my regular machine using a zigzag stitch. I also zigzagged the hem and sleeves, as the usual double needle stitching causes a tunnel, which I find a lot less professional looking than a nice flat zigzag!

I got the pattern in Closet Case Patterns’ thanksgiving sale. I didn’t want the dress to have the bodycon effect it’s supposed to have as I have high hips, so a looser fit is more flattering on me. Therefore I cut a size 16 (!), although I ended up sewing a 14 – and grading to 12 at the arm hole. I ended up using the sleeves from the Lady Skater Dress pattern by Kitschy Coo as I thought the Nettie sleeves were strangely off the shoulder. And I added a seam in the back piece as a swayback alteration. So in the end I guess I might as well have improvised this dress based on my tried and tested Lady Skater pattern, while I was trying to make things easier for myself by not improvising… However, this way I also have a bathing suit pattern for when I want to make a 1920s bathing suit.

I liked the colour and pattern of the fabric (and its name, as I love Portugal – although Portuguese tiles or azulejos are usually blue) but I’m certainly not going to buy fabrics with a high artificial fabric content anymore. When I buy clothes I always check the label first and don’t even try them on if they’re not made of natural fabrics, since those are so much more comfortable to wear and also more environmentally friendly (washing artificial fabrics causes microplastics to end up in the water!), and it’s rather silly to put in effort making my own clothes by a different standard.

The zigzag sleeve hem

Kitty testing the fabric :P. She liked it!

Miette jeans skirt

Pattern: Miette by Tilly and the Buttons

Fabric: thin denim

Haberdasheries: none!

A while ago I made a jeans wrap skirt using the Miette pattern from Tilly and the Buttons. Another fine example of sewing with kitty! :P She attacked my scissors while I was cutting the pattern paper, my pencil as I was tracing… She sneaked up on me and I noticed for the first time that I do not hear her walk! One moment she’d be three metres away, the next, two metres closer. Veeery relaxed sewing knowing that you might be jumped at any moment without hearing it coming! Needless to say sewing this skirt went very quickly, too.

Hehe, Juniper isn’t a terrorcat by any means, she just gets playful around sewing materials! And I have since learned that if I want to make things easy for myself the best time to cut my fabric is during her afternoon nap of four hours!

So, I did finish the skirt eventually. Apart from the feline intervention, the pattern (which is meant for beginners) was easy and quick to sew and the resulting skirt is very comfortable to wear, although it does freak me out a little that the overlapping flap at the back could be lifted by the wind when I’m outside, or accidentally be pushed aside when I move. As you can see from the foliage I took these photos very recently :P.

 

 

Almost Gordon 1940s Simplicity dress

Pattern: Vintage Simplicity 3417, bust 34”

Fabric: I had 3 metres; didn’t cut very economically because I pattern matched =)

Haberdasheries: Three buttons, a 30 cm zipper, a belt clasp and waist band

A few years ago I made a 1940s dress using this pattern and I wanted to use it again, but with some alterations. With hindsight, I find the bodice of that dress too long and baggy; even though it’s an authentic look for the 1940s, I just don’t like to look like I’ve got a roll of fat that I don’t! And since I don’t exactly follow today’s fashion, I hardly think I would have been without personal taste at the time ;).

I took 10 centimetres (!!!) out of the bodice width, despite this pattern being for a 34” bust, which should be slightly small for me. Simplicity patterns just had sooo much wearing ease! Because of the additional length in the bodice of my first dress, I expected that I’d have to take some length out as well, but I came to the conclusion that I must have added the additional length myself, which obviously I shouldn’t have done! So I only shortened the skirt, as I did for my first dress as well.

It took me a while to find a suitable fabric; most fabrics I saw in stores didn’t really have a ‘40s vibe for me. Until I read something about plaid (or tartan, as I prefer to call it ;)) fabrics being quite usual at the time, and I remembered this fabric that I’d seen at my local fabric store ages ago, but knowing their turnover rate, I suspected they’d still have. I like it because it’s almost Gordon dress tartan. The thin white lines should just have been yellow! And I already had a matching self-knitted cardigan.

According to the label the fabric was 80% cotton and 20% poly, but as I was working with it I thought: “yeah right!” Sadly, it doesn’t feel like cotton at all, although it can be ironed well without melting.

I pattern matched everything as well as I could, lining up the lines on the different pattern pieces by pinning them in place.

And of course, I had lots of feline sewing help! Thankfully she didn’t attack the fabric and make loops in it.

Because of the colour scheme of this fabric, for once I didn’t have difficulty finding a matchting zipper, buttons and belt fabric!

The buttons are vintage, from about the 1960s, and have a nice story to them. My grandfather was director of a button factory at the time, and my mother was sewing herself a green skirtsuit. So my grandfather had buttons made to match her fabric! I guess these were the surplus buttons; in any case, I liked using them on my dress.

 

I first wore this dress to an event in remembrance of Market Garden 1944. The re-enactment group War Department did a stunning and impressive portrayal of a field hospital, and I even got to depict a Dutch civilian helping there!

Photo by Menno Bausch

Brasov wrap top

Pattern: Brasov wrap top by Itch To Stitch

Fabric: 1.6 m Modissimo from Textielstad (65% modal, 35% polyester)

Haberdasheries: none!

All credit to Welmode for this pattern+fabric combination. When I saw her Brasov I wanted to make one, too, and got the same fabric but in a different colour.

The pattern was quite easy to work with. Printing and assembling the digital pattern was especially easy, because of the option to print only your own size. It’s great that Itch To Stitch put that in! I didn’t always find the pictures in the guide very clear though, and I also had to alter the top a bit to fit properly, which I’m not too happy about. Why do so many patterns that are specifically for knit fabric put in so much wearing ease?! According to the size table, I should make a size 0 or 2, but luckily I read about this project and its sizing on another blog and decided to make the smallest size, 00, instead. And that fits great! Knit fabric is made for a little negative ease…

Besides making a different size, I also took about 2 cm off the shoulder because I don’t like the seam hanging off my shoulders, and to match the armhole of the Lady Skater pattern, as I wanted to use its sleeves instead. Finally, I made the shirt 3 cm shorter, which went fine using the instructions.

I sewed the shirt up in just an evening, after the cut out pattern pieces had been in my cupboard for about two months…

My Make Nine 2018 choices

A few years ago I took part in Lucky Lucille’s Sew For Victory and Spring For Cotton sewalongs. Here’s another one that seems nice to take part in, especially as her website states “This is a gentle challenge. It’s not one that you can fail. It’s meant to be flexible”! =) I’ve been trying my best not to stress myself by imposing deadlines on myself anymore, so a gentle challenge is the only thing I want to be going for…

Here are my choices, though in no particular making order!

Project #1: 1920s-40s knitted men’s slipover

I’d like for my husband to have a full civilian outfit for both the 1920s and 1940s, and this is the first part of it. This project’s already on the needles!

Project #2: Napoleonic short cloak

Last year I made a 17^th century cape for my husband, and I’ve got enough left of the wool fabric to make myself a short cloak for another era. Since I always borrow his Napoleonic cape, it would be nice for both of us if I had one of my own!

Project #3: A new 1940s dress

I’ve been (occasionally) doing World War 2 events for a few years now, but there aren’t that many clothes in my 1940s wardrobe yet, and even fewer that are a colour that actually suits me! So I want to make a new 1940s dress in a nice bright colour pattern. My husband and I have been taking 1910s-40s dancing lessons, and I'd like to go to a lindy hop party in full 1940s attire.

Project #4: 1920s party dress

Last year I went to a nice historical clothing exhibition at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht (well, actually it was both historical and more recent fashion, but I largely ignored the contemporary pieces! :P), where I saw, among other things, this lovely 1920s dress that I’d like to recreate. Probably in blue, though. I’d love to wear this dress to a 1920s party!

Project #5: The Drawers of Doom

(Imagine dramatic background music) These are the drawers of my fabric cupboard. There are four of them. And since they are full of UFOs and bought clothes needing alteration (yes, all four of them!) I call them the Drawers of Doom (D.o.D.). This year, one of the main sewing related things I’d like to do is to get the D.o.D. a lot emptier than they are now! Then I could do something nice and handy with these drawers, such as storing my yarn stash in them =).

Project #6: Brasov wrap top

I really like Welmode’s Brasov top, and would like to make one as well.

Project #7: Underwear!

For years now, I’ve had trouble finding nice underwear, so I thought I’d have a go at making it myself. It would be awesome, once I’ve got a good pattern, to never have to look for underwear that it exactly to my liking, again!

Project #8: WW2 QAIMNS uniform

I’ve got two World War 1 nurse uniforms, and a Boer War one, and since I already bought suitable fabric for a WW2 version a couple of years ago, and had a look at an original last year, why not make the WW2 one as well? I suppose this project has the lowest priority, though, as I haven’t got any WW2 nurse events planned yet.

Project #9: It Cannot Fail To Please sweater

As I said under #3, I’m hoping to add more deep winter colours to my 1940s wardrobe, so I’ll be making this in dark pink.

Colette Lady Grey summer coat

Pattern: Lady Grey by Colette, modified

Fabric: blue canvas-like fabric

Haberdasheries: two snap fasteners, grey fusible interfacing

Mid-November… Interesting time to post a summer (or inbetween seasons) coat. Actually, this coat has been finished for weeks and I’ve worn it lots of times already, but I didn’t get around to blogging lately. We had a 17^th century event in Groenlo in late October and I was busy making lots of things for that, and also we just got a kitten!

I found this pattern on the Colette website when I was looking to buy the Ceylon dress, and since there was a sale going on, I got both. They were a more reasonable price than usually, although having to print the pattern (78 pages…) and stick all the pages together is a task I could do well without. Having done this a couple of times now, I think I will actually save myself the trouble get myself more printed patterns in future!

I love the design of this coat, with the large collar and tie belt, although I hate the 3/4 length, wide sleeves – I can’t believe most people actually make them like that, rather than modifying them. I have absolutely no use for a coat without full-length sleeves in winter, but I also don’t want one in summer, as I wear a coat for warmth. And I’m not going to bother with gloves in summer, either. So I made the sleeves quite a bit narrower, and full length. And while I was about it, I decided to add cuffs as well, with the same height as the belt.

Other alterations I made are taking off about 3 cm at the pointy bits of the collar, because I think it was a bit too wide and thought it looked strange, and lengthening the coat by 20 cm. I had been wanting elegant, longer coats for a long time, but as usually, fashion did not comply, so I had to do it myself again.

I used large snap fasteners rather than buttons and buttonholes, because I thought it likely that the buttons would just be visible besides the tie belt, and we can’t have that!