HP Cosmopolitan Dress with scarf sleeves May 2, 2008

So, here is the completed HP Cosmopolitan dress! I am currently looking for a job and this dress will work nicely in a professional environment. South Florida is very casual - even my best friend who is a senior partner in a law firm only wears suits for court. I plan on wearing it with these very comfortable, conservative Via Spiga pumps but to rock it out a little I added a beautiful mabe pearl necklace on a black leather choker. All-out conservative is just not me!

This weekend I will be posting a quickie tutorial on how to finish the neckline with bands - so easy! so fast!

You can see how easily this dress could also go out to dinner after work with a simple change of shoes! For more information about the fabrics I used, please visit my Behind The Seams blog.

Abject Failure March 2, 2008

It’s been  while since I’ve made a wadder, and maybe my sewing room needs one of those signs you see on construction sites: “This Job Site Has Gone _____ Days Without An Accident”. 

 So when I have one, as you can see below, it’s a doozy.  This thing looks like:

• A Girl Scout leader uniform
• I’m seriously channeling the 70’s, but not in a good way
• I’m on St. Patrick’s Day overload

Even with some styling, things don’t improve much:

This is the HotPatterns Plain and Simple Shirtdress, and my orginal version is one of my all time favorite garments.  The great thing about a great dress is that all you need to do put it on; you don’t need to think about coordinating other pieces  as with seaprates and there are no worries about having to constantly tuck in a top.  A dress just is.

Live and learn.  Wadders are part of sewing, and I just need to let go and toss this in the trash.

The Ghost of Christmas Past December 25, 2007

My mother sent me these vintage needle booklets for Christmas - aren’t they wonderful?  She said in her note that she found them at a “second hand sale” and as soon as I opened them I felt an immediate and powerful connection to the sewist who used them.

My favorite tools are always the ones I make myself.  I made the needle book below a few years ago when I was going through a bit of OCD while trying to embroider a proper bullion rose.  

The “cover” is filled with two pieces of plastic canvas zigzagged round the edges, then trimmed.  I added flannel pages and stitched a center “binding” between the pieces of plastic canvas.   I have a collection of vintage needles I that like to use for embroidery and hand sewing, so I store them in this booklet.

 

I have this fantasy that the woman who made the vintage needle books was just as pleased as I was when she finished hers.  The fronts and back are two colors of wool felt, and the pages are white flannel.  The butterfly is missing one antenna, but the simple silk floss embellishment is still bright.  The flower basket is embellished with posies stitched from french knots and lazy daisy stitches for leaves.  The handle of the basket folds down to show the needles.  Based on the shapes and colors I’d say both date from the late 1930’s to mid 1940’s.  I love the imagery from this era because it reminds me of my grandmother and my great aunts.

I doubt I’ll take the needles out - I’d rather leave them just as they are, as they were, the last time the unkown maker touched them.   A sewing moment frozen in time; a tangible link to the past and a respite from modern life.

A Diva Bows Out June 13, 2007

To my dear sewing friends,

I told the Sewing Divas earlier this week, but I want to announce it here as well. Many of you may be aware that I have signed on with BeSewStylish.com as Contributing Editor, which is a thrilling assignment, and I’m honored to have been offered the job. Because of that, I realized that I can only blog so much, and I have to give up something. Alas, my membership in The Sewing Divas is what I must curtail. I will still be blogging actively, both at Gorgeous Things, as well as BeSewStylish. But I will bid my sister Divas a fond adieu, and I will join the ranks of avid readers. Please, keep on sewing, and always chant to yourself, “La Sewing Diva, C’est Moi!”

Ann

It’s Not Super Triple Secret Any Longer April 26, 2007

I haven’t been posting much lately because of work loads and things competing for my time. But I did just get a notice that the project, which I have been calling the “Super Triple Secret Project” has just been put out for public consumption at Threads Magazine. You can see it in the current issue of Threads, and it is online (without all the photos) here.

The article started thanks to the striped dress, which I made for myself last year for a summer dress. The pattern is New Look 6557. I changed the waistband pattern, as well as the grain alignments on several of the pattern pieces. I love this dress, and in warm weather I wear it frequently. Of course, I’m sure they had to safety pin it to within an inch of it’s life to fit the model, but it looks pretty good, I think.

The “fun” part of the project, and the Super Triple Secret part that had me tearing my hair out, was the white jacket. Now, that is one gorgeous, gorgeous jacket! I based it on a D-Squared look from the spring 2006 RTW line. I used a McCalls pattern as the basis, and you can see the process I went through to convert the pattern on my blog. It’s made from two silk fabrics, a duppioni that has nubby 1 inch wide stripes woven into it, and a novelty silk ottoman-type, that was woven in such a way that it had a quilted effect. The fabric was double faced with uneven horizontal stripes woven through it. And there was silk batting between the layers. When I opened the package from Threads containing the fabrics, I gasped in surprise and pleasure, they were that lovely.

Sewing with them? Hmmmmm, that was another issue. The duppioni was just fine. I love duppioni because it sews up well and is very easy to manipulate. The quilted silk, on the other hand, was an unmitigated rhymes-with-witch. I have two sewing machines in my sewing room. One is a Pfaff with differential feed, the other is an industrial Juki. I decided right out of the gate that the Juki would not work with this fabric. So first I tried sewing a seam with the Pfaff. Because of the horizontal quilting, I was super, super careful cutting the fabric so the lines would match across the seams of this princess style pattern. When dealing with a fabric like this, always, always cut out your pattern pieces in a single-layer layout. I did so, and it gave me control over the placement of the design and grain lines.

Under the presser foot, though, this fabric took on a Bad Diva personality. It loved to shift and move around, even with the differential feed turned on. I hand basted all the seams, and I even ended up recutting some pattern pieces to compensate for the shifting. Gah! It still didn’t want to cooperate! I did finally beat it into submission, but it cost me dearly in the number of gray hairs I got from it.

Finally, I did finish the jacket, after crying “Uncle!” to my editor, Jennifer Sauer. You can see the front view of the jacket in the magazine article (not online). But for your previewing pleasure, here’s a picture of the jacket as it sat on my dress form before I sent it off (and before I did the final press):

Happy sewing!

They Got Me January 30, 2007

Lorna, that little minx, tagged me!  But I needed to vritually re-launch my blog anyway, so I really thank her.  So head over to Obsessed With Embellishment for more trivia about me that you never need to know.

And you might just see your name there too!

More Fashion Walk of Fame January 27, 2007

Let’s again start with one of my favorites!

One of the most important fashion designers of the 20th Century, Claire McCardell helped create “The American Look”. McCardell pioneered the American style of casual sportswear. Inspired by activewear and menswear, she made practical, comfortable and wearable clothes. She was dedicated to the democratization of fashion. As she once said, “I belong to a mass production country where any of us, all of us, deserve the right to good fashion”.

Bold, original and controversial, Gernreich was America’s first fashion futurist, a social commentator who worked in the medium of clothes. Best known for his body-baring creations such as the no-bra bra and topless bathing suit, he also designed colorful knits and mini-dresses with clear plastic insertions. His love of modern dance and his eternal youthfulness were themes that animated his designs.

Norman Norell demonstrated that clothes designed on Seventh Avenue could rival the most elegant creations from Paris. Norell was sometimes called “the American Balenciaga” because of the perfection of his tailoring. He also used the finest fabrics in the world and made sure that every detail, from button hole to hemline, was beautifully finished. This superb workmanship was all the more remarkable since he made ready-to-wear, not couture. His sequined mermaid dress epitomized glamour.

Mainbocher was known for the understated elegance of his couture clothing. Among his innovations were short evening dresses, jeweled sweaters, and a revivival of the corset that anticipated Dior’s New Look. Most famous for designing the Duchess of Windsor’w trousseau in 1937, he also designed uniforms for the WAVES, the Red Cross and the Girl Scouts.

Progress on the Laura Bennett Dress - design decisions January 1, 2007

After celebrating New Years with my family and Sewing Diva Phyllis and her brood at a local hotel, I got back to work on the Laura Bennett dress. Since the bulk of our New Years celebrating was spent by the indoor pool watching our kids swim, eating pizza and drinking wine out of plastic cups, I didn’t sweat finishing it for the countdown to 2007. But Diva Phyllis (and hopefully Diva Gigi) and I are converging on New York City later this month, and I need a fabulous dress for dinner on that trip. Plus, I’m going to a trade show in Las Vegas in April, and I want to bring this to that.

Back to the dress. The neckline on the dress as designed is quite wide:.

I don’t have any problem with that, but I would like to be able to wear a non-strapless bra underneath it. So I widened the front shoulder piece by 5/8 inch, and I thought that it might be nice to add some lace trim to the neckline as well. It can cover a multitude of sins, and gives a little more leeway for bra straps without weighting down the look of the dress. I had some really nice yardage of pleated black lace in my stash, so I cut a few galloons out and started playing.

Because I want this dress to be “just so”, I have been testing and basting almost everything before making any final design decisions. This is not a “fast to make” project, but it will be one that I have for many years, so it’s gotta be good. To test this neckline treatment, I did a few things. First, I hand-basted the seamline on the outside of the garment:
This would allow me to place the lace precisely. I wanted the motifs to be a certain height above the seamline when sewn, and this gives me that control. I was able to place the lace so the bottoms of the scallops hit right at the seamline:.
Notice that you can see the white basting thread along the seamline through the lace. This allowed me to place the scallops precisely. Next, I basted the layers together using a long running stitch, and put the dress on my (way smaller than me) dress form to see how I liked the result.

Bammmmffff! I didn’t like it. I pulled all the basting out and removed the lace. Then I sewed the neckline to the lining without any embellishment. I like it much better. I’ll post a picture of it later on after I attach the sleeves.

Now, some of you may be thinking that it was a frustrating waste of time. It wasn’t. It was time very well spent. I’d rather spend the extra 20 minutes prototyping and basting the parts together to get an idea of how the finished garment will look. It beats not prototyping, then hating the results when everything is sewn and pressed. And it eliminates the possibilities of a very costly fabric turning into a very, very costly wadder.

I’ll post more when I have the garment closer to being done: either tomorrow or the day after.
Happy sewing!