Sew weekly reunion: Colette 1001 Macaron dress

The Facts Fabric: Cotton sateen from Spotlight
Notions: None
Pantone Challenge colors: Emerald, Mykonos Blue and Turbulence
Pattern: Colette Macaron dress with a full circle skirt
Year: 2009
Time to complete: Way too long, about 18hours
First worn: Today
Wear again? When the weather warms up!
Total Cost: $20

I became interested in sewing through sewing blogs and read a lot before I actually dusted off my sewing machine. One of my favourite blogs was the Sew Weekly and it inspired me to sew something every week, regardless of how it turned out. I'm a big believer that the best way to get better at something is to do lots of it!

 

Having said that, this dress gave me the fits! This is the third bodice that's been sewn onto the skirt, the first was a NewLook 6048 (like my copy cat dress). The neckline stretched out and looked awful though and the waistband looked all crooked. So that was unpicked and chucked aside. Next version was the bodice from the Tiramisu dress, but I cut it out of a ponte which didn't stretch enough and fit way too tight. For the third and final version I unpicked the original bodice and managed to cut out the macaron top from it, the back is pieced a bit but otherwise it all worked.

 

I did the knit yoke again, like the last couple of versions (here and here ). The skirt is a basic full skirt with the pockets from Simplicity 2588. I do need to remember next time to add a little bit to the length of the front bodice though, I feel like its riding up slightly.
The colour in the pic underneath is more true as well, I've been on a steep learning curve with taking photos in manual and managed to make all my pics a bit too warm and underexposed. The dress is more muted in real life.

It feels like we have been stuck in winter for months lately, the weather is finally starting to warm up (even though its raining at the moment!), bring on spring so I can wear my dresses!

Vogue 1364: ponte jacket

 

I ordered a couple of patterns in the latest vogue sale and this was one of them. It didn't look that great on the pattern cover but I did like the line drawing and I do wear a couple of waterfall front cardigans a lot to work in the cooler weather.

The pattern does say its a loose fitting jacket and it really is. I cut a size F and graded in at the waist to a size E, which is 3 sizes smaller than I should have cut. I didn't make any bust adjustments and it looks ok, so it is pretty forgiving in the front. Material is a ponte knit from Lincraft

I really, really like the pockets, they are a single pattern piece which is sewn to the front of the jacket, you do see the stitching lines on the front but they sit beautifully flat and are a really neat idea, I will be using it again on casual jackets and I think they would work well on pants too.

I did shorten the length and the sleeves by a couple of inches. The collar was a bit of a pain, it sat beautifully before I did a rolled hem around it but then it just wouldn't sit smooth. I ended up stitching down the collar from shoulder seam to shoulder seam to make it sit properly.

However, I don't like the shape on me. It has no waist definition and I don't think the front drapes as nice as a basic waterfall front cardigan, it looks kind of bunchy where the darts release. The proportions are a bit off too, It needs to be a fair bit shorter I think, but then I would have to cut the pockets in half so this was as short as I could hem it. It was well drafted and sewed up really quick but I can't see myself making another one.

Geekly Chic triangle quilt

I have been hoarding this fabric range for a few months now, its one of my favourites for when I want to go all Gollum by stroking my stash and calling it my pretties.......
I finally caved and decided to make my daughter a quilt. I let her pick the design and the contrasting fabric and binding.
The main are from the Geekly Chic range and I bought them from lilybellafabric.com. The contrast is from Lincraft's quilting cotton, in Lilac and binding is from the stash.

 

It turned out to be a reasonable size quilt, 175cmx220cm. It fits really well on her king-single bed with a decent overhang. I like doing half square triangles, they go together really quickly and you get to see a nice big piece of the fabric. The only downfall of hst is if you are using a directional print which is why I decided to do them facing side to side rather than up and down, makes it a little less obvious that half are facing the opposite direction.
I pieced her name in the back, using the Refrigerator Magnets pattern again but I sized it up by nearly double to get it to fit the size of the back.

 

Its quilted all over in a stipple pattern using polyester thread. I have been having constant trouble with thread breakage, skipped stitches and tension troubles until I switched over from cotton thread. I read a great post about free motion quilting with poly thread and was a revolution, my machine has never run this smooth and its really sped up the process, took about 1.5hrs to quilt this entire quilt! I'm still using cotton thread to piece with so I can iron my seams open without it melting the thread. 

NewLook 6048 vs. Cake 0169

When we were in Brisbane I fell in love with a Hell Bunny dress. At the time it was too much money and I didn't have time to try it on so decided to copy cat it.

Its a real frankenpattern, the skirt is the pavlova circle skirt and the bodice started life as Newlook 6408. I'm not sure how much of that pattern is left though! I used my bodice block to adjust the princess seams, added a midriff band and shirred the back. I added on the bodice collar band too (is that what they are called?)

The fabric is from fabric.com its a little thicker than I would have liked, almost feels like a soft quilting cotton but it did sew up beautifully and has a nice drape on the skirt.

I self lined the bodice and left the skirt unlined

I cheated and got the piping from fabric.com too and the buttons are self cover ones.

I'm really happy with the fit, I did a couple of muslins for the bodice - I'm finally realising they take less time than fiddling with the fit later on! Its the first time I've really used the bodice block to adjust a dress and it worked surprisingly well and lots quicker than pin fitting and doing a FBA. The front could probably be dropped by a little but I've only tacked the straps at the back so I might loosen them slightly yet.

Twirly!