Never leave a project un-finished to too long

I have learned that leaving a project incomplete for too long does affect your satisfaction on completing it.  Or maybe it's because this garment has too many niggley errors.  Or maybe the errors crept in because of all the start-stop and distractions, and by the end I was all "Who cares, gerrit DONE."

A few months ago, I started this blue and white spotty dress.  The fabric was bought on my honeymoon, which was before I got a job/house/two children (so clearly a looooong time ago).  The pattern is self-drafted and closely related to my ruffle dress, but I couldn't be bothered to do much more than remove the ruffle and centre-front pleat.  I wanted my new dress FAST.  (Although, not so fast that it took less than almost 3 months, it turns out.)

I got most of the major seams done quite fast, and then my overlocker failed.  The clonking noise became unbearable, the tension went ape and I couldn't get a seam to look half decent.  Maddening!  I just wanted to finish that dress!

I fixed the overlocker.  Then the 2015 outfit-along started (see this post) and I started knitting.  Needless to say the outfit-along was not completed by the deadline, because I later decided to stop knitting and make the baby carrier.  Then I went back to my knitting, which had started to take me 3 nights to do a 12-row sleeve cuff because the children would not sleep with the light evenings and heat.  And I started a crochet space-rocket for a WI competition.

Whatevs, I had to finish the dress which by now only needed the lining hand-stitching around the zip, and a hem.  I finished up, and wore it for a morning before the gape at the neckline irritated me so much I took it off before lunch.  It then languished for a few more weeks (plus family holiday) before I unpicked and re-inserted the zipper.  I finally made it!!!

It's fully lined, except the sleeves which just have a tiny rolled hem.  There is a concealed zipper in the centre-front (breastfeeding necessity), and in-seam side pockets!  Yay pockets!

Bad things:

The neckline still does not sit flat against my chest.  Maybe this is a pattern error disguised by the floppy fabric and ruffles the last time I made this pattern, or maybe I over-stretched it when putting the zip in (I ought to have stay-stitched, hands up.)

Toddler channelling my dress-hate for this make.

One bust dart is inexplicably higher than the other by almost an inch, and I only just noticed (now I can't get to it to unpick).  HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?!  I swear gnomes came and did this error, I am usually so careful and this has never happened before.

The bust darts in general finish a little bit too high and close to my bust point.  I ought to change the pattern.  It's entirely possible my anatomy has changed ;-)

Is the bodice over-fitted?  I read in my new fitting book that this is a thing.  Should it be less fitted?  Or is it just that ready-to-wear are not correctly made for my bust size?  (Hee hee, busts!)

I forgot to stabilise around the neckline, zipper and especially pockets with fusible interfacing, so soon these areas may be as saggy as I am.  ;-)  I forgot to overlock the pocket edges and side-seams before I inserted them.  The bodge is not pretty so don't look too closely inside.

Most irritatingly, while it was hanging on my dress form waiting for the bias to drop before hemming, I realised that I don't like my grain/pattern positioning.  Not at all.  I tried to have central dots running up/down the centre-front and back, and matching the pattern over the seams here but but didn't work very well in my rush.   And it also looks rubbish.  I should have the straight grain running down the centre of each panel in the 4-gore skirt.  This is going to annoy me forever.

Finally, the lining rolled hem got mangled by overlocker which was up to it's old knocking-noise tricks for some inexplicable reason.  (I think it was a combination of bent needle needle, fine fabric and poor quality thread or something.)  I also couldn't be bothered to do make bias binding to try a nicer hem on the outside fabric than the old fold-fold-machine stitch.  Even though a faced hem would have been better.

"More photos mummy!  Mummy I want to see!"

On the plus side, sash!  It's the selvedge of my (still-not-finished) curtain lining in white polyester.  Excited about having a sash to cover my post-baby tummy and poor pattern matching.  Also makes a cheap rubbishy dress look a bit too posh for playgroup.  But it was for free.  So there's that.

Sorry 'bout the naff kitchen photos.  I have to use a self-timer on the worktop because I am too cheap to buy a camera tripod, and my toddler HAS to be in the photos shouting stuff.  Ahhh.

The ruffle dress: some happy statistics

 

I finished!  I'm delighted and I feel I can now conquer the dress world - I have freed myself from the tyranny of purchased patterns!  It's actually quicker for me to draft my own than to make the 2+ muslins required to bend the commercial pattern to my will (and stumpy frame).

I just know you love statistics as much as me (har har) so here are some handy facts relating to the dress.

50p
The price per metre of fabric (bargain basement).

4m & 6m
The quantity of fashion and lining fabrics respectively (and I have some fashion fabric left over).

4
The number of layers of fabric in this dress to guard against V(E)PL (visible ENTIRE panty line).

1:5
The inner to outer ratio of the ruffle lengths.

53
The number of components in this dress (16 bodice pieces, 20 skirt pieces, 2 sleeves, 10 ruffle sections, 4 fusible interfacing strips, 1 zip.  I must hate myself.

£8.30
The total cost of the dress, excluding thread.  (The zip was a pretty expensive addition, huh?)

4
The number of weeks to make this dress, spending only a few hours a week (life gets in the way of vital sewing time).

Sorry for the cheesy close-up, but look at the ruffles!

Next time I'll make my ruffles wider, or else use a cotton for the dress instead.  The ruffles don't look as much like the originals as I'd hoped, but probably because the material is much drapier and so they've flopped.  Spot the sleeve issue: one has fluted because I was having overlocker issues, while the other hasn't.  Bummer.  I'll just wear a cardigan.

I used a purchased ribbon as a belt because I ran out of patience to make the matching fabric belt.  If you're interested in the details, I put a concealed zipper in one of the side seams, which starts at the underarm.  Attaching the lining to the inside of the zipper tape was the only hand-stitching I did.  I used some cunning contortions to sew the lining around the neckline and armholes by machine, and again to sew the seam allowances of the lining and outer together along the waistline.  I thought the latter would be wise, otherwise the weight of the skirt could pull the stretchy bodice lining down and make my hem wonky in a weeks' time.  It also hides all my unfinished seams inside the bodice (overlocking would add too much bulk here).

If you're interested in further geekery, here's how I managed the four layers in the bodice:
1x stripes + 1x lining basted together and sewn as one for the outer
2x lining basted together and sewn as one for the lining
... meanwhile, I let all four layers hang freely for the skirt.  The skirt has french seams throughout, which were dull as hell to make.

I really want to knit or crochet a yellow cardigan to go with this dress.

Overall though, I think it's a dress win.  Not too bad for such difficult fabrics, and I've always wanted a dress like this.  Also, it's really comfortable and I've had a big lunch at a lovely party in it today, and I can still breathe!

My ruffle hell

It's been slow progress on my exciting knock-off ruffle dress.  It's been compounded by not being able to use my noisy machine during TButton's nap times, but being either out of the house or doing paid work at all other times.  I'm only snatching 5 minutes here and there.

I've managed to cut the dress out.  I've been worried about visible-entire-panties (never mind VPL), but I've managed to make the dress 4 layers thick.  I got 3 copies of every pattern piece out of the under-6m of light grey stuff, plus a single layer of the stripes.  Of the 4m of stripes I bought, I probably have over 1m left.

The fabric turns out to be 50p/m of pure hell to sew.  The light grey stuff I'm using as lining turns out to be quite stretchy and probably a knit, while the stripy stuff stretches like crazy on the bias.  Both fabrics are super drapey and slide all over the place.  Their only saving grace (apart from the price) is that neither fabric frays too much.

I've sewn all the bodice darts and the centre back and shoulder seams.  I then used the magic of inkscape to trace around the edge of the ruffles in a photo of the dress I'm copying, and compared the length of the ruffle-y edge to the length of the neckline.  It turns out the ruffles are probably 1:5 or 1:6 (wowzers), so I've gone for the 1:5 option.  I should probably do a tutorial on how to make these ruffles.

After much ruffle assembly, I've attached them to the neckline and sewn in the lining around the neckline.  My next plan is to top-stitch the lining down around the neck, but hiding the top-stitching under the ruffle.  I hope this will stop the neck gaping open, but who knows if it will work as the ruffles are so heavy.  I added a fusible interfacing strip around the neck too, but I'm not sure if it's enough to stop this dratted fabric stretching out of shape here too.

Ruffles!

Next I'm planning to install the cap sleeves and attach the armhole lining as per this timely tutorial posted on Elegance & Elephants yesterday, just as I was considering how to do it!  Then it's french-seam time on 4 layers of skirts *yawn* and the hell of an invisible zipper into 2 layers of this &^"£* fabric.  At least the edge finishes are quick with the overlocker rolled hem feature.

ARGHHHH I don't even know if this dress is going to be wearable and it's taking forever!  Give me some nice non-stretchy cotton any day...

How now brown babydoll dress

I thwarted my machine to conquer twin needle stitching, and I have thwarted the fit of the "Sew-U home stretch" babydoll pattern.  See here for unfortunate fit issues and sad faces on my cheap toile (which I am actually still wearing as a dress even though it sucks apples*).

* I don't have that many clothes.

I made the following adjustments:

• Remove 3/4" from shoulder seams (yawn) as I always do
• Make front neckline less deep
• Make 1 1/4" full bust adjustment and rotate out the resulting dart (see here)
• Take in a tapered amount on the side seams from 1 3/8" at the waist up to nothing at the underarm on both front and back pattern pieces
• Add 1/4" elastic at the waist seam before gathering and attaching the skirt (it's a lot of weight and bulk for that seam to carry without stretching).
• Remove 2 1/2" from the height of the sleeve cap to (a) match my smaller armhole from lopping off height at the shoulder seams and (b) I hated the gathers on the sleeve cap, so they're gone
• Cut the sleeves down to cute cap sleeves for the summer

I had thought that £3/m was cheap for the first toile, and I splurged at £3.60/m for this brown interlock knit from myfabrics.co.uk.  I now know this to be expensive compared to the £1-£2/m I could have scored in Walthamstow.  Oh well.  I need another trip there to buy more jersey so that I can spend £12 to get another 6-12 dresses.

I have wet hair, not super greasy as this photo suggests: eugh!

I quite like brown, and I wanted to try sewing with interlock.  It's quite nice to handle: very drapey but quite stable and not particularly stretchy.  This fabric is a bit to shiny for my liking, but it was on sale and cheap.

Jersey dresses and cameras with self-timers balanced on clothes airers allow you room to swing your toddler around in his home-made shorts.

Despite the anger that the twin needle involved and the fixing of the machine and walking foot, it was totally worth it for the professional ready-to-wear look it gives!  Cheers for my birthday present, bro!  :-)

A birthday dress

Over the third week in April, I made a little dress for one of TButtons little friends, who's reaching the grand old age of 3.  I didn't know what to get her, but then I had a brainwave and realised she'd probably be getting big enough for a pattern from Burda Magazine.

This photo doesn't show the top-stitched box pleats all around the skirt: boo hoo.

I have a couple of issues kicking around from ye olde 2008 (that's 6 years ago, can you believe it?) when I bought them from W H Smiths if they had 2 or more patterns I liked in.  It was pretty hard to find a branch that stocked them.  Since then, the magazine is now called "Burda Style" and it's stocked in my local Tesco: hoorah for dressmaking returning to fashion!

The magazines are still pretty awesome: you get a good range of patterns for your £5-ish, although you have to trace them yourself and add seam allowances.  The instructions are pretty brief too (a few bullet points), so not too great for a beginner.  However, if you've made a few garments before, you'll probably be fine with that.

The dress I made was from the November 2008 issue, dress 139, in the smallest height 98 (roughly age 4).  The charmingly translated German copy next to a photograph of the dress in floral needlecord reads:

"For saucy girls flowers bloom in winter too, e.g. on this pinafore dress!"

With such a recommendation, I couldn't not make it!  I can't believe that this is the first garment from the magazine I've actually finished!  I've made toiles of a few, but never got further than the first fitting.

My mother-in-law acted as my sidekick while I traced and cut out the pattern and fabric and tailor-tacked, while Mr Button and his father put fitted carpets and wardrobes in the shed.  It was fun!  M-in-L suggested I cut the centre back on the selvedges so that I didn't have the bulk of extra overlocking down this seam, which is a top idea.

Buttons!  Hoorah!  More top-stitching!  ARGH!

I used some spotty needlecord and lining I had left from this skirt, and I used buttons from my trusty jar.  I even found a concealed zipper lying around; although black would have been better, at least the pink matches the fabric dots.

Pink zipper: quite cool, actually.  Plus, more top-stitching...

I did the whole double top-stitch thing, even on the lining.  It felt like construction took an age when every seam was stitched three times.  I can't believe I haven't put a zip in for the last 3 years (what on earth have I been up to?) but this one went in like a dream first time.  It helped that I remembered to use a couple of strips of fusible interfacing along the centre back before inserting the zip; I've had problems in the past where the fabric has stretched and looked baggy around the zip.

Can you see the sneaky concealed zip?  No, thanks to Mr Fusible Interfacing!  Cheers, Vilene!

The lining hem is a rolled hem done on my overlocker, and I'm pretty pleased with the result.  I find any other sort of hem is really tricky on the slippery fabric as it stretches and wrinkles when you get to a bias section.

Tasty overlocking on me old hem.

The needlecord presses really nicely and the whole dress feels like it's got reasonable body.  The skirt looks really fun and swingy, so I hope little miss will enjoy wearing it.

I challenged myself to try and make this dress as robust as possible, and as much like a commercially purchased garment as I could.  To that end, I even added a label.

Who knows how well iron-on t-shirt transfer on cotton twill tape will wash?

Happy Birthday, Miss M!

Babydoll dress: a super-cheap toile.

I've never sewn with knits before.   As I blathered on about here, I've become all excited about filling my near-empty wardrobe with jersey dresses that are easy to wear while crawling after my son on the floor.  My stretch jersey arrived on Wednesday morning, and by Friday night I had a dress!  Thank you, CBeebies, for a Friday afternoon to sew (bad mother confession).

The fabric quality is fine, but its not the colour and print I'd have chosen.  It's also slinkier than I wanted.  Nevertheless, it was about £6 including postage.  This dress has not been finished to my usual standard; in fact, I can't believe how slap-dash I've been!  I couldn't be bothered to buy matching thread or a walking foot or a twin ballpoint needle for my first test.  So the hem is a bit wobbly, the neckline stretched a bit (letting some of the stabilising elastic pull out), and the threads used are light blue and dark grey.  Whoops.  But, time is precious, the fabric was only £6 and I really didn't believe it was going to fit.  It really is a toile.  As further evidence of my shoddy work:  I didn't even remove the left (un-threaded) needle from my overlocker when doing the seams, so there is a line of punched holes next to every seam.  Lazy or what?

I can't believe how weird it is to sew with Jersey after 14 years of sewing with wovens.  This Jersey had no body or structure and just pooled in a heap by my machine.  The edges curl up as you cut it out, and it's just so floppy!  I found it really hard to be neat when pinning.  However,  it probably hides all those little piecing inaccuracies pretty well with the stretch (just not errors like "wrong thread colour").

I've worn my £6 dress for a day while I decide which pattern modifications to make.  Sewing it up was pleasingly easy and quick, although "Sew U Home Stretch" was not brimming with correct directions:
1)  The exact cutting layout given was impossible on fabric of 60" or less, and I've not seen too many bolts over 60" wide.  Nevertheless, 2m is still ample for the babydoll from 60" wide fabric.
2)  The directions were missing for how to finish the neck when turned under (I went for zig-zag).
3)  The pattern instructs you to "gather sleeve caps", but the image shows gathering of the whole sleeve head.  Since the bottoms of sleeves are normally set in smoothly with minimal easing, I suspect you are actually just supposed to gather between the upper three dots on the sleeve head.

I'm sorry that these photos are taken in the kitchen while cooking dinner (I get childcare for this task).  My husband can't take a non-shaky photo for toffee, so I'm using the self-timer.  Note the slightly-stressed post-IKEA face.

Having worn my dress for 5 hours now, I'm already totally cross about the fit.  The waist is much too wide, meaning it hangs sadly underneath my bust.  I suspect I need a full-bust adjustment, as the dress is only tight in this area and it pulls the whole dress front up.

The waistline has also been pulled down at the back, I suspect by the weight of the skirt and because the bodice is not tight enough.  I think the whole back is a bit loose; it certainly is loose around the back neckline, which is also an inch too low for my liking.

The sleeve tops are too baggy for my taste.  I'm sad (see photo).  I already added 1/2" to the shoulder length toward the neck and removed 1" from the scoop neck at the front.  Here's a list of my likely further pattern adjustments:

• Reduce waist size by at least 2" from current size; potentially by a combination of side-seams and sloping centre-front, leaving the same bust size.  I need to check my textbook to decide the best route.
• Take 1/2 - 1" off the top of the shoulders, making the armholes slightly smaller and bringing the neckline higher.  (This is an adjustment I make for my figure in almost every pattern, normally by 2" or more.  It's why I can't buy any ready-to-wear dresses in woven fabric.)
• Re-draft the sleeve cap to reduce the height and also remove some fullness, making it tighter at the arm top (because I prefer it) and to match the reduced armhole.
• Potentially make a full-bust adjustment, but start with a smaller bodice pattern to do this on.
• Make the back neckline 1" higher and make whole back piece narrower at centre back.
• Lop another inch off the adjusted bodice and move it to the skirt, so the seam sits more underneath my bust.  I like the current front waist position, but I suspect that's not where the pattern would normally have it on a smaller bust.

Hopefully this will fix the pulling down on the back waist, but if it's still sad in that department then I'll have to think of something to fix that.  Are you a super-pattern-drafter and do you disagree with my pattern fix list above?  Let me know!  I'll probably change my mind in an hour anyway, after a bit more time looking at full busts (har har) with Mr Google.

Next time I make it up I'll add 1/4" elastic into the waist seam too (as for the neckline), because I think it needs stabilising here: it's all loose and stretchy from the weight of the skirt and all the gathers.  For the full works, I'd probably underline the whole bodice in a light knit.

I think that's it for now.  I'll zip down the side-seams on this dress to fudge the worst fitting problem and make it a little more liveable with.  I've got enough jersey to make the bodice again without sleeves to test my pattern adjustments, and then I'll probably order more jersey to do another toile.  I might splash out at £5/metre this time: whoa!  I hope my adjustments will still be good if the new jersey has less stretch: fingers crossed.  Until this pattern is fixed to my shape, I'll just have to continue longingly looking at the £10/m star-print jersey on my computer screen.

Little dress for a little friend

Baby Button has a little friend who is a very cute little lady.  We got to give her a gift in a "Secret Santa".  Even though it won't end up being that secret, I couldn't resist the chance to make her a little dress myself.  Plus, all I had to buy were the buttons.  THE AMAZING SPARKLY BUTTONS!  Behold:

Whoa there, buttons!

I used up some of the purple linen I had lying around from making one of my first dresses ever (so that makes it about 12 years old, eerrrp).  Then I made some hot pink piping from a ribbon I found, and used some bright pink lining fabric left over from a prom dress I made.

The pattern the Vivienne Toddler Jumper and it's free, see here at BurdaStyle.

I hope she'll enjoy wearing it!

The walkaway dress

Re-posted from 1st August 2008:

The trouble with finding an awesome hat in the sale is that it is very difficult to find a matching dress. Of course, I ended up making one. The wonderful Mr B spotted the perfect heavyweight cotton in a shop, and I decided to make up the "walkaway dress". Butterick 6015 from 1952, re-issued as Butterick 4690.

So simple, just a few seams and darts, I thought. Only take an evening, I thought. But no. Unless you are the exact size on the pattern packet, this dress is extremely difficult to fit. My lovely dressmakers' bust, Persephone, was still wearing my wedding dress back in Sussex. Result: the long-suffering Mr B had to help me spend an evening pinning in seams and re-stitching repeatedly as I tried to remove the fullness from the back. Even so, with such a bizarre wrap-around construction, it was hard to know which seams to take in to remove the wrinkles in the back.

I have a short bust-shoulder distance to I ended up taking a few inches off the shoulders. I also had to make a new seam right down the back to remove the fullness, and re-cut the back neckline to restore the round shape.

I even tried to make a toile of the bodice before I started, but without the weight of the huge circular skirt, it is hard to know how it will hang.

To top it all off, I had bought the wrong width bias binding (too wide), and there is an absolutely huge distance round the circular skirt to cover with hand stitched blind hemming. I estimate 3 hours of hemming while watching gutter-tv.

I found a small covered button was fine to secure the dress at the back, and not visible through the heavy cotton. Instead of snaps at the front, I made loops and covered buttons with spare bias-binding to secure the front. I was worrying that poppers would pop-off during dancing and expose me to the world! Also, if you wear the dress with tights the inside front tends to ride up a bit and you have to keep pulling it down. Perhaps a slinky slip underneath would cure this.

The moral of the story is:
This pattern is probably not great for beginners because it can be so hard to fit. I would recommend re-drafting the bodice pattern completely to your own measurements before you start. Otherwise, it's a pretty fun unusual pattern, and gets a lot of comments.

For photos, see my BurdaStyle profile.