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Inspiration

Making Trousers

Continuing on with some of my new books, James knew exactly how much I loved David Page Coffin’s “Shirtmaking” book that I used when sewing his yellow linen dress shirt so when I asked for this followup book on sewing trousers, he jumped at the chance to buy it for my birthday. I think he might be eyeing up some custom trousers of his own, but no matter what the motivation, I’m glad he did!

One thing that surprised me, however, is that there’s no DVD in the UK edition of this book like there is in the US edition, but then again, our version is cheaper, and I can’t really see myself watching many sewing videos anyway (I have zero patience whatsoever for YouTube. Zero.). But I am kinda annoyed that there are some pdf patterns included that us UK readers miss out on!

David Page Coffin has a Trouser Making blog to accompany/promote the book but the patterns aren’t included there, either. But a lot of good discussion is there, and you can get a good feel for whether the book is right for you from reading it.

In a nutshell, this is a book for anyone who has their perfect basic trouser pattern but wants to make a bunch of variations from it so no one can tell you’re wearing the same trousers every day!

Inspiration

Bridal Couture

I’m in downtown Muslin City at the moment, between the bridesmaids dresses and the very belated birthday dress for my (future) sister in law. So far I’ve made the FSIL’s muslin, had her try it on, and altered the pattern pieces according to the two changes we’re making (which was a pleasant surprise – it fit really well!). And on the bridesmaid front, I’ve completed both bodices and attached one to the skirt in preparation for Pip to try it on this weekend. Since the skirt is so enormously long, I actually didn’t have enough muslin fabric to make a skirt for each muslin. So I’m just going to swap the skirt out and attach it to the other bodice after fitting the first one (it’s a very loose design so the fact that it’s 2 sizes off doesn’t matter much!).

Can you believe I’ve gone through 8m of white viscose knit muslin fabric, between a top, my birthday dress, the FSIL’s dress, and the two bridesmaids dresses?? Wowza.

Anyway, while I’m sewing up muslins, there isn’t much to show off (I don’t mind putting photos of myself up in little more than a bedsheet, but it’d something else to subject your friends to that!) but I’ve got a ton of good sewing books to report on, so you’ll be enjoying a few good books with me over the next week or so…

So to start things off, we’re going to stay on the wedding theme with Susan Khalje’s Bridal Couture, a book so amazing that it fetches RIDICULOUS prices online. It’s been out of print for years (also contributing to the resale value), but the copyright has just reverted back to Susan Khalje, and she is is self-publishing this on CD – you can preorder it here for delivery next month.

Inspiration, Magazine

Patrones 289

It’s Patrones Extra time, yay! Lots of spring fashions here and a larger-than usual Plus section, too. Patrones are back to the older (and better!) way of printing the layout and instructions back in the magazine pages and they’ve even added back a few of the designer names! Woop!

I bought this issue from a new (to me, anyway) German online shop that’s even cheaper than Stoff-Art (my usual Patrones supplier). This one worked out to be about 15 euros including shipping to the UK, and I was amazed to find it in my postbox on Thursday when I’d only ordered it on Monday afternoon! The only catch is that she prefers payment by European bank transfer, but will also accept Paypal if you email her first. Anyway she was very nice and super quick, so I’d definitely recommend her. She’s also got Ottobre, lots of Knippie (the kids version of KnipMode) and Onion patterns if you’re into those, too.

Here’s the overview (warning: the photo is very big so if you’d prefer to open it in its own window click here rather than on the thumbnail below)

My first “OOH!” went to this simple yet SO wearable linen dress with pleated hemline and very cool Japanese/batwing bolero jacket with sharp mitred corners:

Gallery

IKEA print Alexander dress

As soon as I saw BurdaStyle’s “Alexander” blouse I feel in love with the floaty gathered sleeves and the retro-styling, but I also knew this blouse was meant to be a dress!

I had some pretty IKEA “Josefin” fabric in my stash since last June that I’d bought for £3.99/m and was just waiting for the perfect pattern to come along. This seemed like a great match, and as a bonus, I probably only used a little over 2m of the 3 I bought here, so there’s enough left over for something else, too.

Gallery

Vintage flowered Alexander blouse

Before I jumped in with both feet in my quest to turn BurdaStyle’s “Alexander” blouse into a dress, I thought it wise to first make the pattern as intended – a cute blouse with flowy, gathered sleeves, front and back buttons, and a vintage-inspired peplum.

I had some vintage flower-print lightweight cotton in my stash that had been in my Granny’s stash for some time and she’d given it to me last time I was over in the States. As it turns out, she’s ill at the moment and in need of some cheering up, so I thought it fitting to send this blouse back to her since she liked the print so much and we’re roughly the same size!

Unfortunately this is one of those patterns that look SO much better on a real person than a dress form, but you’ll see that when we get to the dress!

Here’s a view of the collar , which I altered using Gertie’s “drafting a convertible collar” tutorial. This was a super easy way of lowering the quite high collar and adding a little something extra to the neckline:

Inspiration

Pre-birthday miscellania

Birthday dress!

My LMB draped birthday dress is finished, so thank you to everyone who commented on my muslin! I’ll be having the photoshoot tomorrow so you can see it on my big day itself on Thursday (no, not THAT big day, that’s in September!). I’m really happy with the way the final dress turned out, and the silk jersey is just so gorgeous to wear…

Labels!

My new labels also arrived this week (albeit with an eBay shipping mishap).

For some reason Cash’s aren’t offering the silver/black I had before, so I went with GB Nametapes for this lot. I’m not 100% convinced on the font I chose for “Fehr Trade”, but I love that I could get the URL printed smaller this time around. Considering that the last lot of 120-some lasted me just over two years, I have a feeling I’ll get used to this design soon enough.

BurdaStyle!

Looking beyond my birthday plans, I am super excited that BurdaStyle are coming to London next week, so I (of course!) need something new to wear to their mixer!

Inspiration

In hindsight…

We had a super cold winter here this year, and I’m so glad I took all the extra […]

In Progress

The LMB draped dress – muslin

As good as my word, I sewed up a muslin for my birthday dress (next week, birthday fans!), which will be the draped jersey dress from the Feb 2010 La Mia Boutique magazine, #6:

I sewed up the muslin in a viscose jersey, chosen for its very similar draping to silk jersey (with the bridesmaids’ dresses also in silk jersey, I bought TONS of this!), but it is pretty thin and see-through so it’s really only ever going to be good for muslins. After sewing a size 44 in the turtleneck and finding it quite roomy, I decided to go with a 44 here, too, even though I should be a 46 according to their size charts. This is sewn up exactly as per their paper pattern, with no alterations.

Here’s the front, side, and back views of the muslin:

In Progress

Mentally sewing the LMB draped dress

I’ve gotten as far as I can on my secret other project while I wait for supplies (mostly new labels – can you believe I’ve sewn through the last lot of 120-odd Fehr Trade labels in the past two years??), so I cut out my muslin pieces for my birthday dress. If you’ve got a good memory, it’s this luuuurrrrrvely draped number from the Feb 2010 La Mia Boutique magazine, #6:

What I normally do for foreign language patterns (La Mia Boutique is in Italian) is look at the pieces and get a brief order of construction in my head. Usually I work from the top down, starting with assembling the front bodice pieces then join to the back at the shoulders, then finish the neckline, then if it’s a knit, attach the sleeves at the armscye and sew up the side seams, or if it’s a woven, do the side seams first them attach the sleeve in the round. After sewing for a while, you begin to see that most pattern instructions have you sew things in roughly the same order, so you can just do those here to suit this particular pattern.

But for more complicated patterns like this one, I like to sit down with a pen and paper and mentally go through the whole process, visualising how the different pieces interact and the pros and cons of doing which seams in which order (like “if I do this first, is it going to make it awkward to serge that?”). It’s a great mental exercise in spatial thinking, and one of the most pleasurable aspects of sewing for me.

And it means I don’t have to type in every single word of the foreign instructions and figure out what the translator’s trying to tell me (sewing terms are not the best translated! )!

So since I was writing these out anyway, I thought my order of construction might help others who were eyeing up this pattern.