There's nothing subtle about this

Hi folks, I hope you all had lovely bank holiday weekends and are not too blue at the return to work.  I spent a really lovely weekend with family in Wales and managed to persuade my sister to take some fun photos for this blog post.  A couple of months ago on a shopping trip to Walthamstow, I bought this royal blue and pink African wax print cotton.  I couldn't resist but as the colours were pretty vibrant I figured that it really could only be used as an item of summer clothing.

I've been wanting to make a sleeveless Vintage shirt dress since I made my sleeved version.  This fabric seemed like a good option for my next version.  From the last version I knew I needed to make certain alterations, I sized down in the bodice and lengthened it by 5cm.  I then took 5cm out of the skirt.  However, I seem to have lost more length in the skirt as this dress is considerably shorter than my last version!  I'm not quite sure how this happened.  I like it for this dress as it adds to the summery vibe but I must pay attention for the next version.

I used some plain black buttons that I had in my stash. I figured that I really needed to go as simple as possible with the buttons on this. Although I did sew them on with royal blue thread to match the dress! This is also one of those occasions where I should have paid attention to pattern placement as the slightly off placement of the circles on each side has slightly the effect of an optical illusion. As I don't have to spend much time looking at it, it's not a problem for my brain but if my friends start going cross eyed and throwing up around me, it may be a problem!

I watched the Great British Sewing Bee with a group of lovely ladies pulled together by Ana and Elena.  When international week happened, we all went a bit nuts for the fabulous dresses made from African wax fabric.  I'm so pleased to finally have my own version but there's no doubting you definitely stand out in fabric this vibrant.

I'm sure my aunt an uncle would have been delighted had they seen us taking these photos on their picnic table!  They also had a tree house which I happily climbed up!

Thanks so much to my lovely sister for taking the pictures and putting up with me as I danced round the garden in my dress and demanded that she take even more photos!  I really love this very summery dress which hopefully I can eek out a bit more wear from if the good weather holds but it will definitely form part of my holiday wardrobe for when I go to Lisbon in a few weeks.  

Flashing my shoulders

It's really rare that I get on board with something as obviously on trend as the off the shoulder look and for a long time I was steadfastly ignoring it.  Particularly as lots of the tops have ruffles round the top and I'm a bit allergic to ruffles!  However, when this off the shoulder top popped up on my radar, it was love and the refashion lightbulb went off in my head.

And to create the look, I had the perfect shirt in my refashion pile. It was fate! 

This shirt was a seriously nice quality Ted Baker shirt and I had a momentary feeling of guilt as I cut into it. This was one refashion that really needed to work or the waste gods would smite me. *Spoiler alert* it did!

Obviously mine has shorter sleeves than the inspiration garment.  I figured that if it was warm enough for bare shoulders, this also meant short sleeves.

Red detail binding on the tie sleeves plus bonus glimpse of a friends bike (I really must take better care to take photos in an area free of random objects)

I really love this top which surprises me as I didn't think it would suit me at all!  If the UK weather was only a bit better, I make a few more but unfortunately this is really not an item I need too many of.  However, I'm happy with just this one great one.

For those of you who fancy jumping on board the off the shoulder trend, I've put together a mini tutorial. 

Cut off the top, using the back yoke as a cutting line. 

I was planning on using the front of the shirt as the back of my top and so I unpicked the pocket. Portia did a post as part of the refashioners series last year about getting rid of the holes when you unpick a pocket.  Next I cut a length of 1" wide elastic to fit around my shoulders where I wanted the top to sit. Just a tip, this needs to be quite snug, it's the only thing holding up the top.  I speak from experience, I had to unpick my top and tighten it, trust me that's an annoyance you don't want to have.   Finish the top edge in your preferred way. Then there are a couple of ways to do the next step; you could create a channel for the elastic and feed it through and then sew the ends of the elastic together.  Or do what I did which was to sew the elastic together and fold over the top edge of the top over the elastic and create the channel with the elastic in place.

One of the things I loved about my inspiration top was the sleeve detail.  To recreate these, I cut the sleeves into this kinda shape (I have no words for what this shape is):

The long thin bit is on the side of the sleeve furthest away from the body.

Slit down the middle, continuing to cut until your slit extends beyond the length of the other side of the sleeve.  This will give you nice long ties, maximising the decorative effect.

I got lucky with this shirt as it had some cute details like the contrasting yoke.  I made use of this by cutting it into binding to add detail to the sleeves.  

Sadly there was only enough to bind part of the sleeve but I made binding for the rest of the sleeve from other off-cuts from the shirt-maximising the refashioning!  However, you could use some other contrast binding if you felt like it.  Once the sleeve edges are bound, your shirt is pretty much done.

I tried the top on at this stage and I wanted it to be a bit less huge at the waist so I added some darts in the back but this is a matter of taste and personal preference.

Enjoy your new top!

Maxing out the 70s vibes

Hi All.  I'm on a bit of a 70s roll at the moment, it's one of my preferred decades for style, although I'm not a fan of the browns and oranges and synthetic fabrics that original 70s clothes were often made from.  So while I tend not to buy 70s clothes when I find them in charity/vintage shops, I have a lot 70s patterns and I'm currently working my way through them.

I've had this pattern on my to-make list for a while. The collar and the unusual V shaped side panels appealed to me. When I was thinking about doing some holiday sewing, I realised that I had the perfect fabric for it in my stash; a slightly psychedelic, rose print viscose that my mother had bought for me in Paris a few years ago.  I hadn't managed to find a use for it yet as the print is very bold and the fabric was super slinky I thought would be difficult to use.

Great combo, no?

As ever, I didn't make a muslin and I was scared of the dress being too small, so I added 1.5cm all over to pattern pieces.  While this was necessary at the hips, and in fact I could do with a touch more ease across the hips when I'm sitting down, the finished dress is a bit too big in the bodice.  It's still very wearable and the extra room made it nice and cool in the holiday sunshine but it's something for me to note for my next version.

In this photo you can just about see my 'tan' on my arms, of which I am inordinately happy with, but I still look stupidly pale beside your average person.  Damn you, pale Irish skin!

With the exception of the collar, the dress was a straightforward make.  Even the side panels, which I thought would be a nightmare, went in easily.  However, getting that collar in was a nightmare, I must have ripped it out at least three times.  It's still very far from perfect but at least the gap at the bottom looks (semi) deliberate now.  There were no instructions to interface the collar but I did as the fabric was super drapey and would have just flopped over without it.  Like a lot of vintage patterns this one provided no instructions about how to insert a zip, nor which kind of zip to use and in fact in this pattern the part where they tell you to put it in is so brief, you'd blink and miss it!  I used an invisible zipper, which gives a nice clean finish.

While the fabric didn't really pose many problems when I was sewing it together, however, it creases like crazy, as evidenced by this back shot.

You can just about see the side panel detail in this shot.  I think these side panels would look great in a contrasting fabric to make a feature of them and I have some plans brewing for another version of this dress with contrasting panels.

There were arm facings included in the pattern but firstly I'm not a fan of arm facings as I feel like they flick out too easily and secondly I didn't have enough of the fabric to cut them so I decided to make some bias binding from some orange cotton that I had in my stash.  It happened to match the orange roses on fabric perfectly which I found pleasing.  My binding could have done with being stretched a little more round the arm hole, although it sits flatter against my skin than it does against Rosie the mannequin!

This was a really lovely dress for floating around in the sun and the viscose felt lovely and cool against the skin.  I now really want to wear it again and I would love the UK weather to oblige (anyone bored of listening to me whinge about how miserable the weather is yet?)  There has been some distinctly spring like weather this week so you never know, I might get a chance to wear it again soon.

This is another make towards my vintage pattern pledge.  I'm doing pretty well towards my goal already, although, at this rate, there's a distinct chance that all my makes will be from the 70s!  I must see if I can use some of my patterns from other decades, I'm feeling very inspired by all the other makes on the Pinterest board.  How are you getting on with your vintage pattern pledges?