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Inspiration, Magazine

KnipMode Spring 10 roundup

The flowers are out, the sun is shining, the geese have started nesting on our barges, and I’ve gone and bought the last few months of KnipMode magazines to see me through…

February 10

KnipMode often do celebrity style features, but this time it’s (squeal with me now—) Michelle Obama style!!

The first jacket/dress combo is a bit matronly for me, but I love the shirtwaister with the pleated hemline, as well as the layered skirt. Though, as NancyK learned with the Oprah celebrity-style dress, when Knip don’t sew up a sample themselves for the magazine, it’s always a good idea to make yourself a muslin first!

Ooh, look at this cute Plus jacket and jeans (yes, Burda, this is what Plus sized women look like. No, we are not afraid nor are we turned off the pattern because of it.)

In fact, this outfit totally reminds me of the jacket + jeans combo I liked in the November 09 issue:

Inspiration

Metric Pattern Cutting

It’s fitting that Neighbour Helen decided to buy me this book for my birthday, as she’s the one who got me interested in drafting recently, and she liked it so much she bought one for herself, too!

I’ve heard that this is one of the best pattern drafting books around (alongside the Armstrong book, but there’s a £60 price difference there, too!), and I can see why. It’s certainly not an easy book to get to grips with, but if you’re a visual learner like me, then you probably really only need the drawings to be getting on with anyway. The book is absolutely packed with different blocks and various sleeve, collar, skirt, dart, yoke, etc drafts, with precious little else included. It’s a book that doesn’t mess around and gets straight to the point, which is great as it doesn’t take up much space on the bookshelf, either (frankly, I’ve seen thicker magazines!!). There are no wasted pages here, and Winifred Aldrich certainly doesn’t mess around!

Inspiration

An IKEA sewing room

From last summer, just before my transplant… As Kristy pointed out last year, the Aneboda chest of drawers […]

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!