Dinner Date and a New Dress

Here it is!  The completed dinner date dress.  I love making the Anda because there are unlimited possibilities with this dress pattern.  The only down side is that you have to come up with a way to cinch your waist in or you can get lost in this dress.  I bought some pretty velvet ribbon and fastened it with one of my many vintage pins for an unexpected belted look.  Necxt time I wear this though I'm going to go for a contrasting color at the waist. 

Simon and went out for our second wedding anniversary this Friday and had the best meal we have both ever eaten.  We went to a restaurant in Queen Village call Cochon.  Let me say that this tiny eatery packs a punch.  It's built on a corner and is an odd shape and the kitchen is tiny.  The interior is decorated beautifully and all of these wonderful quirks really add to the places atmosphere.  

Cochon specializes in well pork and you would hope that they make a mean piece a pork with a name like Cochon (French for pig).  They have other items on their menu such as beef and sea scallops, but if a place is advertising what their good at through the name of the restaurant order something that has the token ingredient.   

The highlight of the dinner was the butternut squash soup that Simon and I both had.  It was absolutely amazing and had roasted gizzards sprinkled on top.  Another item that totally wowed us was the poor man's pudding.  It was a short bread pudding with a warm caramel sauce served with a scoop of bacon, yes bacon ice cream melting on top.

All in all it was a great place to celebrate our wedding anniversary.  Now I'm trying to figure out how to justify going again.  My birthday is coming up in less than a month.

A Dress for an Opening

There will be a lot of dresses for openings this year and by this year I really mean this theatre season.  This season I will be going to at least 4 openings and maybe more who knows so I get to really hone my dress making skills.  I used my Anda pattern to make this dress with many many tweeks.

First off the Anda directions are silly.  Ok not all the directions, but the one where you finish the neckline and sleeves before attatching the front and the back of the dress together.  Now that is silly.  I also used french seams.  I figured why not there are only 4 seams on this entire dress I might as well make them nice and pretty.

Finished the sequence, and started the embroidery. 

The piece de resistance is the waist detail.  I dilagently sequenced and embroided myself.  Lets be honest the Anda can be a great dress, but it's just a sack for a dress till you give it a little something to add intrest.  It is also highly recomended that you wear this style with a belt or add the drawstring waist or a tie.  You need something to show you've got a waist in this thing.  Over all I find that the Anda is a great canvas for a wonderful fabric, a fun detail, or even to try a new technique.

Finished waist detail. 

One thing I do LOVE about this dress pattern is that I only need a yard of 50" fabric to make one.  I am wearing mine to the opening of Theatre Exiles Edge of Our Bodies.  I'm only working the front of the house, but I'm going to look good doing it.

My Love Affair with Dresses

I love dresses.  My closet is filled with dresses, about 15 and counting.  Dresses are also one of my favorite things to sew.  Some may see this as a problem, but I think it's one of the best things ever.  Dresses are the perfect wardrobe staple, and I say this being a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl.  

They are easy, there is no figuring out what top to wear, you just throw a dress on and move on to picking out cute accessories.  You can dress them up or down.  They can be multi-seasonal, leggings and boots in the colder months, sandals and sunnies for the warmer ones.  The best part is that a good dress that fits you well can make you feel like a million bucks.  When you feel good in what you wear it instills a confidence in you like nothing else. 

This is why I am in love with dresses.  I enjoy being able to just throw one one, slip on my ballet flats and head out the door.  Do I feel guilty that I own close to 20 different dresses, no.  I plan on making a few more for the summer.  My job this summer will not require me to wear closed toe shoes everyday, or wear paint clothes so my dresses will get lots of use in the coming months.

Sewing My Me Made Wardrobe: Week 4

Remember this boring too big sweater? 

Now it's not boring or too big!  

I must confess that out of all of my MMM '12 sewing projects this was the biggest pain in the rear to sew.  All I had to do was turn the damn thing into a 3/4 length sleeved, v-neck cardi.  That can't be hard right? Well, I was wrong.  

It wasn't so much hard as infuriating.  First off some of this is on me (probably all of it).   The biggest thing being the fact that this sweater is striped and I insisted that the stripes match up at the button band and that when I shorten the sleeves everything lined up.  Lesson learned; knitting stripes is relative easy, sewing things with stripes is not. 

My second gripe was the button holes.  Again this is my own damn fault.  Lets use the smallest shank buttons ever and place one every inch.  While we're at it lets do this all on a knit that gets caught in the feed dogs of your machine.  Lesson learned; when sewing button holes in a knit that is fuzzy, face the back of the button band in something smooth that won't catch.  

Finally, damn was this sweater stretchy!  I figured it would be, you know being knit from wool and all.  But this sweater was stretched out to begin with and then add the pull of the machine and well it resulted in a lot of seam ripping.  This was especially true when it came to taking in the sleeves.  Lesson learned; zig zag is a life saver. 

All in all I am pleased  with how the sweater came out in the end, but you won't see me altering many more sweaters.  I'll stick to knitting them.  

Once that project was done I had one more thing on my sewing list, a dress sewn with some lovely batik fabric that I found at a hidden away fabric store in center city.  Here's the fabric:

And here's a close up of one of the motifs:

Teal and brown are one of my favorite color combinations.  I originally was going to make another Anda, but after spending time with this fabric I realized that it wanted to be made into a dress that had more structure.  Instead of the Anda I made this:

It was so much fun to play with the pattern placement on the print to come up with an interesting use of the motifs.  The dress is a simple gathered skirt attached to the bodice of the Danielle from Burda Style.  The Danielle has a great neckline that shows of your collar bones and a little bit of the girls with out being over the top.  I think I want to make 6 more versions of this dress so I have one for every day of the week.  

And with this I have completed my sewing for Me Made May '12.  Wow, I'm finished and still have a few days left.  Maybe I could squeeze in one more project.

Wedding Guest Dress Part III

I am making head way on my dress and have completed what I consider one of the hardest parts of the construction of this dress the bodice.  Now there are a lot more complicated bodices out there in the world, but this one is fully lined and I decided to sew in a facing so that the edges looked clean and were the same color fabric as the dress.  There is a great tutorial on Burda Style that shows you how to Sew an All-In-One Facing. This is the method I used to sew my bodice together.

First I hand basted my lining and my fashion fabric together.  This part allowed me to catch up on some TV on Hulu, but that's where the easy ended.

Next I sewed the facing to the bodice with right sides facing.  Following the directions on the tutorial from Burda Style I left about two inches un-stitched from the top of my straps. Trim your seam allowances to reduce bulk and under stitch the neckline and under the arms.  This will help the facing and the seam allowance stay to the inside.

This is the tricky part that involves you being very careful and aware of what is going on with your pattern.  You have to turn the front straps right side out while leaving the back straps inside out.  Make sure you read through the tutorial before you start and have it bookmarked or open in a window while you work so you can reference it.  But this is where the magic of this technique starts to happen. 

Following the tutorial I then sewed the back facing to the front facing and did the same with the bodice pieces.  This is a bit weird since one strap is inside our the other and I suggest taking your time and a quiet part of the day so you don't rush through this part.  

Once sewn your piece will look something like this.  Press the seam as best you can.  I had a bit of trouble with my facing not lining up right with the bodice piece.  I had too much fabric some how on the facing.  After some seam ripping and re-stitching I was able to get rid of the excess and get  my top shoulder seams to line up. 

During this section I had to be mindful of a few things:

1. Make sure not to sew through the strap that is inside.  I was only sewing through 3 layers of fabric at all times (fashion fabric, lining, and the facing).  Or this was going to end in disaster.

2. Make sure I started my seams about a 1/4 inch from before my first facing seams ended

3. Watch my seam allowance.

Here is the finished seam.  This is of the lining side as there is more contrast and you can see the seams better.  Press the seam allowances.  Now is the part with the magic!  Turn everything right side out!

And there you have it!  An all in one facing!  This is a great technique and the tutorial on Burda style explains  it wonderfully with lots of pictures and descriptions.  I'll be putting this one in my sewing tool box.   

Me vs. The Bridesmaid Dress

That's right me vs. the bridesmaid dress.  My friend Jo is a bridesmaid in the wedding this upcoming Sunday (you know the one I just decided to sew a dress for) and she needed her dress hemmed.  She was very luck that this was the only alteration she needed for her dress.  It fits her great everywhere except in the length.  Like me Jo isn't short but we are by no means tall.  I was confident I could hem this dress.  I mean it's just a hem and so what if its a full skirt that's no big deal.  Then I saw the dress.

Here is said dress, here is the link to the dress on David's Bridle, just in case you wanted a better look.  From the photos online I thought this was going to be a straight forward baby hem.  I even brushed up and practiced baby hems.  There is a great baby hem tutorial on Burda Style.

I went over to do a fitting with Jo and found out that not only is there an underskirt there is a crinoline attached and the dresses skirt was a weird funky hem in the back so that all the gathers fall just so.  Even with heels on I still needed to take about 2 inches off the bottom of the dress and address the weird hemline.

Here's the crinoline, I only had to take one inch of the underskirt.  The Tulle was fine where it was.  The underskirt also behaved very well no problem there as the fabric and hem on that wasn't cut and hemmed in weird petal point looking things.

See easy peasy.  I sewed a quick hem and then trimmed the excess off of the under skirt folded the hem up again pressed and stitched the baby hem in place.  I finished the two under skirts in about an hour and a half.  Not to shabby for the skirt bring about 6 feet in diameter.  Here is where I took a break decided it was better to finish the dress after some lunch and a cup of coffee.

 This shot I took you can see the mound of dress sitting in the chair next to the table I was sewing on.  

So after my second cup of coffee and some tasty lunch I was ready.  In my head I was thinking "this will be easy I just spent the last hour and a half perfecting my baby hem on the underskirts I totally got this."  Well the dress had other ideas.  The dress is sewn in panels and the front panels behaved well and gave me no trouble.  When I got to the back of the dress where the weird petally hem was the dress decided it would have none of my hemming business.  It took me 45 minuets just to get the hem to lay right so I could press and pin for the first hem.  

 Here in this shot you can see the how the hem wouldn't lay right I had to iron and re-iron the hem so many times to get the creases out.  I finally won that battle and sewed around the skirt, trimmed the excess and started to fold and press the final baby hem in place.  The dress still was putting up a fight and it took another 30 minuets to just get the baby hem to lay flat, but once the dress realized there was no alternative but to be hemmed it finally succumbed to my sewing machine.  

The total time spent on hemming the dress: 3 hours and 15 min. 

The total time spent on just the skirt: 1 hour and 30 min (the same amount of time it took to do both underskirts).  

Injuries: One pin stab in the left index finger. 

I did get a very nice bottle of red wine for my battle, which was an unexpected reward.  

Wedding Guest Dress Part II

After much deliberation and back and forth I decided to make the facing.  It's a bit more work, but I think the result will look a lot better than my original idea.  Thanks goodness for Coletterie's post on How to Draft a Facing.

It's actually quite simple just a bit time consuming. A lot of tracing and measuring.

The back facing was pretty straight forward.  Nothing too crazy here.  But the front piece was a different story.

I had to deal with pleats that I did not want to have to sew into my facing, but I think I got a handle on it.

I marked my pleats on to the facing piece and "pleated" my facing.  I used tape to hold down the pleats and voila a facing for the neckline of the dress that doesn't require pleating.

This technique was pretty easy to execute, and I am pretty happy with my results.

I even got the facings cut out and I started work on my dress's bodice.  The pleats are complete and I even staystitched the neckline of the bodice.

I started on the bodice lining, but I realized that I forgot to get hot pink thread at the fabric store, so the lining only got as far as getting pined.

The wedding is on the 15th and if I do a chunk of the dress every day I should be done with more than enough time to spare.  The next few days will be the easy stuff like sewing a lot of straight seams.  I'll post the more interesting stuff when I get to it.

Wedding Guest Dress Part I

Here it is the dress I am making for the Wedding I am attending in about two weeks.  I've made this dress before, but this time I am going to be making view A.  When I made it the first time I made version C, but with out sleeves.

I went Fabric shopping before the holidays and fell in love with this amazing navy low sheen satin.  I went back before the new year and bought enough to make this dress.

I had one small problem, the lining.  This dress is fully lined, but I couldn't find a lining fabric that matched the purple blue color of the satin.  To remedy this I decided to line the dress in a contrasting color and I found one that made the blue pop, even if no one will see it I'll know that my dress is lined in Hot Pink.

I am considering making a facing in the blue so that the pink doesn't poke out from the top of the bodice.  All my pieces are cut and ready to go.  Now it's time to get sewing!

What to Sew Next

I have a wedding coming up in January and I want to sew something fabulous for this event, but I can't decided on what I want to wear/sew.  Here are my top runners for dress options.  Any feed back would be welcome. 

I have been drooling over this dress for months.

Bustier Dress Burda Style

But I also like these patterns on burda style.

Bustier Cocktail Dress with Long Sleeves

Or

V-neck Cocktail Dress with Starburst

This one is totally different that the others.

Printed 70s Wrap Dress

 I have also been eyeballing this dress from Colette.

Peony by Colette

There is also a dress in the new Collete book that I am absolutely in love with, and although I've asked for the book for Christmas I feel I should start sewing this dress ASAP.  I only have about a month to complete it and I want to give myself plenty of time to do it right.

Dress Making: Completing the Fatina

Ugh, the finishing on this dress makes me want to wear a potato sack to this wedding...ok I wouldn't actually, but I was about two stitches short of just wearing my LBD.  Here's the break down of what happened.  If you read Monday's post I was finishing up the neckline which when I was finished sewing it looked like I had sewn it with out my contacts in.  So my one day of finishing turned into two days of hand sewing. 

On Monday I finished the arm holes and the neck line.  At first I had resigned myself to hand sewing these, but then I thought the actual pattern calls for it to be machine sewed it will be faster and look just fine.  I was incorrect in this thinking.

Here's the "wrong side of the neckline"

A shot of the right side of the dress

On Tuesday I finished the Obi belt and am extremly happy with how this came out.  I think this part of the project has inspired a tutorial for latter either this month or the next.  The duponi silk was a dream to sew!

This belt is super long.  It measures about 134 inches

And now with one day left I am on to my second round of hand knitting the hem. I am so close to being done I can taste it.  The dress is about 50% hand sewn.  I don;t see that as a bad thing as all of the hand sewing was for the finishing. 

 Here's my hem line all pinned and ready for hand sewing.

But after that I will be finished.  No more alterations, no more seam ripping and resewing.  I tried the dress on with out the belt yesterday, to get the right hem line and I am in love with this dress.  I am going to make a second in a wool for the winter, and maybe even one in a cotton for the spring!

Dress Making: The Fatina, Muslin & New Fabric

I finally finished the muslin for the Fatina shift dress.  It was a bit of a pain.  First of my fabric choice sucked but that's what I should have expected from cheapo fabric.  Second the way the pattern is graded from the waist to the hips was a bit comical.  This photo above is the finished muslin after all the alterations I had to do after I sewed it the first time.  I was going to keep this as a fun shimmery silver dress, but it would be more of a headache to finish the damn thing.  I am however thinking of turning it into a pencil skirt. 

I have finally decided on the fabric for the finished dress that I will be wearing to the wedding.

While I was at the fabric store searching for something to make that muslin out of I found this beautiful eggplant purple cotton stretch.  It's gorgeous and the photo doesn't do it justice, but the green obi belt will really stand out against the purple of the dress.  I'm planning on started today by cutting out the fabric.