A winning winter dress

Last year I made a lady skater/Renfrew mash up and I loved it.  I wore it so much last winter that this year I knew that I wanted another one.  This one was made from a vibrant jersey that I picked up in Classic textiles on Goldhawk road.

Construction wise, this was really easy.  Basically you just cut the Renfrew off at the waist, taper so that it matches the skirt pieces for the lady skater and construct as normal. Sometimes you just need a lovely, easy to put together, jersey project to make all seem right in the world.

There are some patterns that just keep on giving and are so worth repeating.  The lady skater pattern is one of these for me.  For extra ideas you can see my hack post here.  This dress is so easy to dress up with tights and boots and I'm good to go for another winter.

These photos were taken on a walk when I was back in Ireland for Christmas and as well as photos of the dress, I got a couple of the views for your enjoyment.  We had wonderful weather this Christmas and it made leaving the house a lot more enjoyable.

Hmmm, this all feels like a very long time ago!  I hope your return to reality has not been too grim and that you're squeezing in some sewing.

Fall essentials sewalong, how did I do?

Hello all.  I've actually spent quite a bit of time thinking about this post as once I started reviewing where I got to with creating my fall essentials, I got to thinking about the reasons for my successes, failures and excuses.  It's been a really interesting process and I think will be very helpful for forward planning.  So while this is a round up post, there are also some planning thoughts. So for those who don't know; the fall essentials sew along is the brainchild of Sarah and was running this year from the 12th September to the 14th November.

While I had a comprehensive list of makes I was realistic about not being able to get everything done and some things being longer term goals. Anyway what did I manage?  And where do I go from here?

Fashionable foundations

Pleather circle skirt: Done and I wear this a lot! The added bonus with this is that I never fail to get a complement on it when I wear it.

Culottes: not even in the priority pile yet. I have however almost finished a pair of black trousers which will be very useful. 

Chic chemises

I made my first Dolores top and a second one promptly followed and a third will shortly happen. This top is a win in my book!

I didn't make any of the other tops that I'd considered but have a couple of others as WIPs. Watch this space. I decided against an Agatha cardigan but I cast on an Aiken jumper when I was on holiday, although progress on this has slightly stalled as I've made a start on some knitted Christmas gifts. I'm ok with this, I know that I knit really slowly and that it's not realistic to expect my knitwear to be hand knitted at this point, it's something I do as a personal challenge and for the enjoyment of the process.

I am always desperate to make good tops as I feel it's a real gap in my wardrobe but this situation is slowly starting to improve.

Fabulous frocks

I managed my Renfrew/lady skater mash up dress and it may be love. I want one in a less synthetic fabric now.

I did not manage my vintage Style 3361 pattern, I still really want to make it but it's going to require a fair amount of fitting work and I'm feeling lazy. 

I started my Lou Lou dress as I thought it would make a lovely dress to take on holiday but I came a cropper somewhere in the process which was super demoralising. I was also really annoyed as it would have been perfect to float around in the Spanish sunshine in. 

Baby it's cold outside

I have a real tale of woe to tell about my chunky scarf. I made it and it was a thing of beauty and lovely and snuggly and warm and the first day I wore it I left it on a train. I honestly could have cried! I have some left over wool and I think I going to try making another one of these as I was really so in love with it.  Although I have to get over the psychological hurdles of having wasted such a lot of money on version number one and the time it's going to take me to recreate!

The weather has been really mild here in London so far this autumn so the mittens never became a priority for me to make but as temperatures have decreased this week, they have swiftly moved to the top of my list.

My vintage coat is still very early on in its development stage. I've made some paper pattern alterations and tissue fitted it to my mannequin but I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to have to make a muslin which I never do and so am procrastinating doing that. I want to do this properly so this may be one of those projects that drags on for a long time.  This is no bad thing as I should learn to pay more attention to details and this process should be a good learning curve.

My general thoughts on moving on to winter sewing are; take time over the coat. I have some wonderful Donegal tweed for the coat that I don't want to ruin by rushing things, even if it means that I won't get much wear out of it until next winter.  Keep sewing everyday items which I want to wear and help me develop skills.  I wear these most and get real pleasure from wearing them and as they get constant use it makes me be thoughtful about fit and hat I can do to improve these items.  This being said I went on a night out last night wearing a RTW dress and it made me swear to myself that I am going to make some posh frocks for myself that work for me in the same way as my everyday clothes.  Watch this space for a sparkly Christmas dress!

Did you take part in the fall essentials sewalong? How did you get on?  What's on your winter sewing list?

Perfect autumn day

The perfect autumn day deserves the perfect autumn dress!  By perfect autumn day, what do I mean? Well not today for a start, I am so not a fan of this horrible rainy misty weather that we are getting.  However, just look at these pictures which I took on Sunday:

However, I'm not sure I'm equally correct in my statement about the dress, a scuba dress may not be perfect autumn wear, however I'm pleased with it.  I have a pretty new dress and it ticks off another item from my Fall essentials list.

This is my lady skater/Renfrew mash up dress in a gorgeous Scuba that I just could not resist from the Man Outside Sainsbury's in Walthamstow.  The mash-up really was so easy to do I just laid the lady skater bodice piece over the Renfrew bodice piece and graded between them for the waist.  The top bit is all Renfrew but the lady skater is more fitted at the waist and the bodice is a lot shorter.  After that I sewed up as normal.  I sewed it all on the sewing machine rather than using my overlocker as the scuba felt so thick that I didn't want to risk causing any problems to the poor overlocker.  My sewing machine has taken a lot of abuse over the years and I've learnt to handle it and judge what it can and can't do, I don't yet have the same relationship with my overlocker.

I made the cowl version of the Renfrew which I love, its like a scarf and dress all in one.  However, it means that this dress eats fabric, it would be a great stash buster (you know if I'd had something suitable in my stash and hadn't bought the fabric) as it used up almost 3m.  I would really like one of these now in a lovely wool jersey, something warm and snuggly (and breathable!)  

Right I'm off to stare at pictures of beaches and pretend that we are not hurtling towards months of rain and snow!

Boat necked lady skater-tutorial

Hi everyone, happy Sunday! I hope you're all having a good day.  I am suffering a little following a night out with a friend last night and am so not in the mood to do the work on my doctoral proposal that today was set aside for.  Instead I'm bringing you another lady skater!

Making my Bronte top reminded me that it had been a while since I had used my much loved lady skater pattern and on my recent trip to Birmingham, I picked up a lovely stripey jersey that was screaming out to be made up right now!  However my stripey jersey was whispering to me that it should be made into a boat neck-enter another hack!

 This was a really easy hack to achieve.  I traced off the front and back pieces.  On the front piece I measure and marked 15cm up from the middle of the neckline.  I then measured and marked 4cm across the shoulder.  I then used my french curve to join these two points (however, I've done this kind of thing just eyeballing the line between the two points so you don't need to worry if you don't have a french curve).

The only thing I did to the back piece was to measure 4cm across the shoulder piece and create a line from there to the centre back to create a new neckline.  

I then made up the dress as I normally would.  

The skirt is a little longer than I would like but it isn't actually hemmed yet.  I wanted to take advantage of the sun and a day out to photograph it and as jersey doesn't fray, I just went with it.

 The stripe matching worked pretty well but I discovered the stripes are not on grain which has made  for a strange optical illusion around the waist seam (hence the belt).

 The boat neck has turned out really well but on me it has a slight cowl effect as I appear to have a hollow chest (learning more about fitting has some knock on effects on the way you view your body!)  Next time if I want a boat neck that lies flatter against the collar bone I will angle the central neckline extension (the one in red) a bit more towards the shoulder seam. 

 Although spring is pretending that it has arrived in the UK, the wind when I was taking these pictures was fierce and I was so cold.  I was very happy to put my other layers back on to take some more silly photos with my sister. 

 Thanks for the photo skills Leonie!

We were out taking advantage of the sunshine by having a walk along the south bank and got a few good photos of London monuments:

 Tower of London

Tower Bridge

Overall I'm really pleased with my new stripey dress.  Anyone else in the market for a boat necked dress?  I think I have just enough scraps left over from this to make a stripey vest top which should be super useful for summer.