An Opening Night Dress

I have an opening night coming up and this usually means I sew a dress.  Lately, with my schedule being what it is, this means that I am frantically sewing a hem about an hour before curtain.  This time around I have a few hours to actually sew something more than a sheath dress.  I'm going to aim for the middle ground and pick a simple yet tailored dress.

The first coffee date dress I sewed

I'm going to sew another coffee date dress.  I made one about two and a half years ago and think that I can whip one up in an afternoon.  I am however going to sew one with out the front ruffle and in a printed fabric that I've had for ages.  

Wish me luck!  Hopefully I will have it done long before Saturday night!

Wedding Anniversary Dress

Mine and Simon's second wedding anniversary was yesterday and we both had to work so we've made plans to go out to a fancy pants dinner on Friday.  Of course this gives me a great excuse to sew something fab for our night out.  Here are my thoughts.

My gold Anda dress fit so well and looked so awesome on that I want to make another version of this dress.    I have just the fabric for it too. 

I bought this amazing floaty smoky blue crepe from a fabric store that was going out of buissness.  I was planning on using it for a fancy Sorbetto, but have changed my mind.  There are tiny vertical stripes of shiny threads running though the fabric that I am going to sew another Anda out of this material.  

There was one problem, what to wear under this shell.  The fabric is so transparent that I will need to wear a slip or an under dress.  That's exactly what I plan on doing, making a slip to wear under the Anda shell.  

I found the shiny silver rayon fabric at my local fabric store and thought it would look perfect under the smoky blue fabric.  

I was right they are the perfect combination.  The silver of the slip dress really accents the shimmery threads running through the crepe fabric.  

I'm planing on using the top piece from the Jane nighty set from Burda Style to make a customized slip dress.  Something simple that will really set off the great fabric and shape of the Anda.  I will have pics up as soon as we go out to our fancy pants dinner.  I better get sewing!   

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.

Wedding Guest Dress Part IV

I am in the home stretch of this dress project.  The midriff section is attached, gathers and all.

I tried a new way to sew my gathers and really liked it.  To accomplish this you sew two lines of basting stitches between your marks.  Then using your sewing machine set at the widest stitch setting, sew two parallel seams.  Then when it's time to gather the section you just pulled on the bobbin threads to pull the fabric in.

It needs a good pressing, but in time.  There is still much more to do before a final steam is in order.

I also basted the skirt and the lining together.  Mostly to make my life easier.  This fabric is slippery and slides around quite a bit using a ridiculous amount of pins help but so does basting.

Once everything was attached I pinned the midriff lining down to the skirt lining. There will be some serious blind stitch going on there.

All the pieces are sewn and now its just a lot of finishing work, but I have a few more days and not too much to do.  Here is what is left to do on the dress:
1. Blind stitch the midriff lining to the skirt lining
2. Set in the zipper
3. Slip Stitch the facing to the lining
4. Hem the skirts.

Not to bad.  I plan on sewing the midriff and the zipper today and that leaves me just the hem and the facing for tomorrow.

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!

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. 

Dress Making: Fatina

Fatina Pattern all taped together

 I was very productive this weekend, and managed to print and put together and cut out that pattern for the Fatina dress.  I am second guessing my fabric choice though.  Below are three differet silks.  The bright green and the bronzish one are duponi silk, very structure.  The gray is silk chine and unlike the duponi it is drape and floaty and I am not sure if it is right for the pattern. 

Some of my fabric choices.

I also need to find some cheapo cotton for a quick muslin.  The patten isn't difficult at all to make to I know I can whip my first on up in about an hour so now it's just deciding on which silk to use.