New Dress Alert!

It’s chilly at the moment. And heating is expensive. So warm cosy clothing is what we need right now.

I bought a lovely striped Ponte de Roma from Pound Fabrics before Christmas. It’s an absolute bargain. Only £3.75 per metre but the quality is excellent. It’s good and thick, with the stripe woven in, not printed. I can heartily recommend it. It was just what I needed to make a winter-wearable dress.

The white stripes are 4mm, the navy ones are 11mm

I wanted something plain and simple. I pulled out my trusty Simple Sew Batwing dress pattern. I’ve hacked this one before to give it a slashed boat neckline, with my navy #2 Sew Dots Dress. I thought I’d recreate a stripy version of that. It just means that instead of cutting the dress as a single piece where you fold the dress at the shoulder, I cut it as two pieces, so that I have to sew the shoulder seams. I put a very slight dip into the neckline, but kept it pretty horizontal in the grand scheme of things

I cut out the cuffs that go with the pattern, but I decided against adding them. With the maximum stretch of the fabric running along the length of the sleeve, they aren’t very stretchy around the armhole, and it just didn’t make sense to add a band to them. The sleeves were cut to be 3/4 length, and they’ll be fine without cuffs.

This isn’t my finest make. I didn’t really bother with stripe matching. But I’m not the world’s most critical garment-wearer, and I’ve worn crappier readymade clothing. The key things for me with this dress is that it’s warm, work-appropriate and ready for me to start wearing.

Nothing out of the ordinary, but that’s the way I roll…

Ready to wear tomorrow morning

A roundup of unblogged things

I’ve been such a bad blogger! Sometimes it’s been the case that I wrote about a Simple Sew make, and never got around to adding more details here, but mostly it’s been just not getting around to it…

So here’s a quick round up of all the things I made this year that didn’t get a full airing here.

It all started quite early on with a test-run Moneta dress. Everyone’s always raved about this pattern, and I’d had it for a couple of years, without getting around to making it. So when I signed myself up for a “Dress In a Day” workshop with Sheona of Sewisfaction, as a way of firing up my sewjo, this is what I plumped for. I used a ponte that I got from the Textile Centre in Walthamstow. I’d bought it because I could not resist the magnificently massive red floral pattern.

Look upon the massiveness of this floral – isn’t it brilliant?!

As it was my first Moneta, it’s basically my wearable toile. I do love this dress – it always gets compliments. However, on future makes, I think I’m going to be raising the back neckline, because it’s a bit draughty, and I’ll take the bodice & sleeves in a centimetre or so on each side, as I think it could use being a tad more fitted. And I’ll lengthen the sleeves to be more sure of elbow coverage if I’m going with the longer sleeves.

The Black & White Floral Trapeze dress:

This was a hack of the Simple Sew Stylish Shell Top, where I took the side line out on a tangent,  from under the armscye. Full details and photos are available on the Simple Sew Blog, where I showed all the hacking details. It was such a lovely cool, unclingy, airy dress to wear in the heat of the Summer of 2018!

It was so cool for the hot summer we had last year!

The OWOP Batwings:

I took part in One Week, One Pattern last year. I committed to wear the Simple Sew Batwing dress for the week, which was a bit brave, given I only had two of them at the time of pledging! I was seeing it as a way of galvanising me into making a couple more. Again the full details, including the hacks I used, are all on the Simple Sew Blog. I ended up making three new Batwings, a top and two dresses.

The Aqua Floral top

The Pink Poinsettia Dress

The Black & White Floral Batwing dress

I particularly liked the neckline treatment for the Pink Poinsettia dress, and I am still totally in love with the cowl of the b/w dress.

I’m not quite finished with this pattern, as I think I could possibly manage another couple of tops. Or more dresses. It’s a lovely quick make, in a flattering style, so what’s not to like?

 

Still here!

I admit it, there’s been precious little making going on around here for the last four months. But I got a burst of inspiration last night, as a result of having signed up for One Week One Pattern 2018, which starts today. Big thanks to Sheona of Sewisfaction for hosting this again.

I’m saying “inspiration”. What I mean is, I’ve only got two of the pattern I’ve picked, so I need to get something sorted out for the other five days left of the week – it’s more desperation than inspiration!

My pattern of choice was the Simple Sew Batwing Dress, of which I have two versions, both of them dotty, but which I always knew would be good for another couple of dresses and possibly two or three tops. This is my opportunity to get around to some of these. Last night I dug out two bits of jersey, and cut out a dress and a top. I can sew them up tonight, which should take me through to Thursday, and I’m pretty sure I can get another couple done by then. The dress is an easy make. I just want to get a bit creative on some of the necklines, so it doesn’t look quite so blatantly obvious that I’m basically wearing the same thing all week. So, one’s a roll neck, one’s a plain round neckline, and I’m going to try a slash neckline for later in the week. I’ll see how the fancy takes me…

Thankfully, I’ve acquired plenty of ponte/jersey in the last few months, so I’ve got an excellent range of fabrics to play with.

I’ll be posting the daily selfies on instagram, so you can see the results first there.

 

The Batwing dress #2

I went on a bit of a fabric buying spree last week.

My pretties!

Since I’m trying to keep my stash under control, I wanted to use at least part of my loot sooner rather than later. And I figured I still had a few days left of October in which to sew another #sewdots dress. So although the three other fabrics – blue floral jersey, pink/purple scuba, olive green and pink jersey (are we seeing a theme developing here?) now officially join the Stash, the navy polka dot jersey has been used.

I bought this knit fabric at a little shop in Shere, called Mad Jaks. Half the shop stocks fashion garments, the other half fabric and haberdashery goods. It’s a small selection of fabrics but some of them are gorgeous. This double knit Jersey drew my eye because it has an interesting texture, a little bit like ice cream, which I haven’t been able to photograph properly. It’s a synthetic fibre but I don’t know what it is exactly. It’s going to be toasty warm for the winter. However, I can’t help thinking of it as crimplene, which doesn’t make it sound very modern or stylish!

That texture is *really* hard to capture!

This is the second version I’ve made of the Simple Sew Batwing dress. Having had the experience of sewing it once already this month, and having already tweaked the pattern, I was quite confident this would be a quick sew. And so it proved.

Ahh, the glamour of office life!

I wanted to change it up a bit so I decided to do a slash neck instead of the roll neck. This involved changing the dress pattern from a one-piece to separate front and back pieces. I left out the head hole and kept the top line straight, at least until I had the chance to try the dress on. As it turned out I decided to create a slight dip for the neckline, slightly deeper at the front than the back. As it’s difficult to tell which is the back and which is the front I have added a small ribon inside at the back so that I know.

I also changed the way the cuff was attached because I prefer to keep the edges enclosed. As the cuffs were quite tight on my first version, I widened them by an extra half centimetre, and now I think they’re just right.

I think my spot matching worked better this time round. I did try to take care with this. The pattern is well centred and the lines match at the side.

This view really reminds me of my French grandmother, who had the same sort of build as me, or rather I have the same sort of build as her.

So a final #sewdots challenge garment makes it just in time for the end of the month.

Finally I should mention that the poppy brooch on my work lanyard was made by one of the members of our supported learning classes, to raise money for the Poppy Appeal. It’s lovely!

Isn’t that delightful?!

I’d like to get another of these fabric purchases used up in the near future.  The scuba fabric is going to be a first for me, and it’s calling to me. I’m trying to do a bit of Internet research, before I do anything rash and ruin it, but I suspect there may be a third Batwing dress in the offing.

#Sewdots

I posted the sewing details for my Sew Dots Simple Sew Batwing Dress on the Simple Sew Blog, which went live a few days ago. You can read all the making details there.

This was going to be a toile for the Batwing dress, but as it became clear that a) it would be wearable b) it was going to be awesome (though I say so myself!) c) I wanted to get the dress posted on social media for Rosie DIY Couture’s Sew Dots challenge, it became my official version. I wore it pretty much as soon as I could, to go out with friends, on Saturday evening, but I’ve also worn it to work this week , and here it is, presented in daylight!

The office selfie is not going away

 

The Sew Dots Challenge is running for the rest of October, and it’s helping to raise funds for the RNIB, as part of their Wear Dots, Raise Lots campaign, to help raise awareness of the importance of Braille. I’m very happy to boost the signal. All you need to do is sew something dotty in October, share a picture of it somewhere on social media with the hashtag #sewdots and make a donation at Rosie’s Just Giving Page for the RNIB. Don’t forget, if you are a UK taxpayer, you can increase your donation at *no extra cost* to yourself, by clicking on the Gift Aid option, so that they can claim tax back on your donation. Go on, you know it makes sense!
And having finished this dress, I realised that I *have* got a spotty fabric in one of my UFOs, so I need to get on and finish it, so I’ve got two dotty makes for October.

Rosie of DIY Couture has rounded up some amazing prizes for the lucky winner of the Sew Dots draw. What more do you need to get going with some dotty sewing?