Catching up! Sewing news.

Hello all,

I have been super busy these last few weeks, but have still managed to get quite a lot of sewing done, and yet more sewing planned.

I made the melon dress as promised from my last post, here it is! Excuse my sweaty demeanour - this was at the end of a three-day psychobilly festival and I was a little worse for wear.

As you can see it's a little... bursty. The lining shrank when I steam ironed it, and I'd stupidly cut it out to my pre- Christmas measurements. I'm about 1" bigger all over now, but as it's such a close-fitting dress to start with, an inch unfortunately makes all the difference. I will be making efforts to rectify this situation over the next couple of months with copious amounts of exercise and salad.

I also made myself this black and red taffeta sarong dress, you can't see how gorgeous the fabric is here so I will get a better picture this week. The fabric was mainly left over from a commission dress I made for a friend to wear to the launch of the latest in the Style Me Vintage book series, and it's just lovely, so authentically 50s with its tiny flecks of shiny black and red on the black base.

I also joined the SewToday Club for £7.50 a quarter, for that price you get a magazine every month, any two patterns free when you join, plus 50% off all Butterick, McCall, Vogue and KwikSew patterns. They also regularly have buy 1 get 2 free events for their members, one of which started less than a week after I joined, so I have ordered five patterns so far.

So far I've been scooping up Gertie's patterns, and I can't wait to get started on them. Here's what I've ordered:

B5882. How could you not?! It's gorgeous... the shelf bust is such a nice feature. Apparently a lot of sewers (as in sow-ers, not suw-ers. Ewww.) are waiting with bated breath for Gertie to do a full bust adjustment for this one, so keep an eye on her blog if you're amply endowed up top. Tits ahoy!

  

B5895 - I got two of these, one for me and one for my sister Ginny over at Buttons and Bobbins. I've got a modern capris pattern but this one looks to have a more vintage-styled higher waist, and the simple retro blouse pattern will be really useful for Summer and would make some super cute Hawaiian print tops.

B5814 - I wasn't sure about this one, so I looked at some pictures online of other people's dressmaking efforts with it and decided that my misgivings are mainly down to the envelope photo - the dress itself is lovely but the styling isn't quite right, and the model, bless her, isn't really filling out such a bodacious garment. I think once you put someone with some bigger curves in there and add some more vintage accessories this dress will be a killer.

KwikSew 3491 - This one could look a bit dodgy at first glance, but disregard the hideous violet/greige ensemble the model is wearing, and look at the construction, and you have a perfect little 40s/50s Ike Jacket, a bit like this one:

Via the Vintage Pattern Wikia

This 1940s Hollywood pattern was the one that Tasha at By Gum, By Golly! used in the Sew For Victory challenge, and it looks great. I'm more of a 50s than a 40s girl though, so the later style knitted bottom band and zip front of the KwikSew pattern are just fine for me. I'm envisioning it in a yellow and black or red and black extra large check or tartan, and maybe a black twill version with a big back patch design for a more rockabilly look.

I've also got my beady eye on this brand new release of a 1951 pattern from Butterick, no. 5880. I'm hoping to buy this, Vogue's new mens suit pattern (for Aerospace Boyfriend now he has conferences and stuff to attend, and now Vogue have finally brought out a suit that doesn't look like something out of Miami Vice), and whatever else tickles my fancy before the 3-for-1 offer is up.

It's just lovely, and a bit easier to wear that my usual boob-bearing, boned, skintight affairs. So just to make sure it's still utterly unsuitable to wear in polite society, I've been utterly stubborn, or perhaps utterly stupid, and decided to attempt the fabric dyeing that failed so comically in my last post, and make it from that. I went into my usual fabric shop for trimmings, and lo and behold, sat on top of the bargain basket was another piece of the dreaded white leopard print fabric. I bought a shade lighter of the yellow iDye, and it is running on a 90C cycle in the washing machine RIGHT NOW. I don't know if I even dare look. To be continued...