Category: In Progress

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In Progress

Fascinating stuff

While I’m pretty much in love with every dress from the November Burda WOF cocktail collection, I found myself flipping back to the yellow dress, #105 more than the rest. It’s only 4 pattern pieces, but that 90 degree dart at the waist is just too cool, and I’m very much into sheath dresses this year. I still had some gold duchess satin leftover from the pirate jacket lining, so I lined up the pieces and was able to fit the dress out of the fabric with hardly any scraps to spare (I just love it when that happens!).

I’m still waiting on the invisible zipper I ordered online to be delivered, but as I was waiting I thought I’d try my hand at making a fascinator to match the dress!

In Progress

Tired of Tires update

I’ve been working away on my FW/07 Collection in every spare moment, but for the last week, my spare moments have been drastically reduced by boat duties. So rather than the glamorous woman you’ve come to know from this site, for the last week I’ve been looking more like this:

In Progress

Fehr Trade FW/07 Collection

I’ve avoided all talk of SWAP (Sewing With a Plan, roughly – sewing a bunch of garments in terms of a wardrobe instead of separate pieces here and there) even though everyone else around me was doing them. For the most part, it was because I bought fabric for specific projects and I created these as the feeling took me.

However, since I’ve lost weight, my wearable wardrobe has decreased considerably and I came to the realisation last week that I don’t own any trousers that aren’t jeans, period. I’m also doing more presentations at work that require me to dress a bit more nicely, so after 5 years of wearing teeshirts and jeans to work, I have a large hole in my wardrobe in that regard, too.

Going to America last month and the subsequent fabric and pattern buying orgy left me with the supplies for a wide variety of garments. So naturally my mind turned to the best ways I could see to use both patterns and fabrics to fill these holes in my wardrobe.

I’ve devised the following plan, though I realise it will more than likely take me the entire fall and winter to accomplish it.

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Nearly there…

Remember that velvet pirate jacket I was working on, ooh, two years ago? Well, as much as I hate that thing and all of the fabric choices associated with it, I have been slogging through and doing a few things to it here and there over the past few months.

In Progress

Spending Spree

For the past few months, I’ve been very disciplined about not buying any new fabric and working solely from my stash. I’ve been very good at reusing fabric leftover from old projects, but also in finally using up ones I just never got around to using after purchase. While this may seem rather angelic of me, it all hid a dark secret – I went on a veritable fabric buying orgy while in America on holiday. As much as I love Walthamstow Market, nothing in the UK compares to the price, quantity, and breadth of fabric available in America.

To give you an idea, here’s most of it laid out:

In Progress

Such a tease

The last few days’ time and spare thoughts have been devoted to my entry in BurdaStyle’s Design and Pattern competition. The last few nights I’ve spent cutting, pivoting, and taping pattern pieces, making quick and dirty muslins out of bedsheets, then repeating the process. I even had a burst of inspiration while I was waiting for Emma Pollock (her of the Delgados) to come on stage on Thursday night and scribbled some ideas into my notebook then and there.

In Progress

Rainy weekends

Yesterday I mostly finished my current project, dress #5 from the April 2007 edition of KnipMode (the John Galliano knockoff), but I lost my enthusiasm when it came to hemming it, seeing as how it’s been rainy and cold for the past week and this is a sleeveless summer dress. Ho hum. I’ll finish the hem at some point this week and brave the goosebumps for a photo shoot.

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A Room Of One Sewn

After a bit of hard labour with some power tools and brute force, I was able to clear three of the little hotel rooms on our boat two weekends ago. One became a walk-in wardrobe, one will very shortly become James’s office, and the third blossomed into my (temporary) sewing room (all the little hotel room walls will be ripped out to make way for our living room, two bedrooms, and two en-suites. The fate of a sewing room in the new plans is still unclear!).

But let’s move on to a tour of my sewing room, since this is probably the tidiest it’ll ever be…

Here’s the overview shot of the whole room. It’s about the size of two single beds side-by-side, with light coming from two halogen lamps and the porthole (which puts out a surprising amount of light during the day).

In Progress

Down with prints*

While scoping out what’s soon to be our local grocery store (though we’re hoping to go back to 90% market shopping, with only one monthly supermarket run) on Easter weekend, my boyfriend and I found a screenprinting kit in the kids’ arts & crafts aisle at Tesco, for a mere £7! As you’re well aware, I do loads of sewing, but I’ve never tried screenprinting before since the amount of startup materials always seemed so intimidating.