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Glastonbury meets IKEA

Back when I got the pillowcases for the famous IKEA skirt, I also bought a Tanja shower curtain that caught my eye from across the store and was conveniently marked down to a fiver.

It’s stayed in my fabric stash ever since, just waiting for the perfect project, which presented itself in the form of this Burda WOF 60s dress from the May 2007 issue. It turned out to be the perfect fabric for this dress, considering that Glastonbury is coming up in a few weeks and I’ve been wanting something special to wear (and let’s face it, if the famous downpours happen again this year, this dress is ready for them!!), and because the pink piping matches my hot pink wellies perfectly.

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.

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Gimme Galliano

The April 2007 issue of KnipMode magazine had a section where they took a bunch of catwalk looks and replicated them with one of their patterns. I loved the easy lines of the John Galliano dress, but so much of my wardrobe is already black and white and I thought I’d prefer a colourful dress for the summer.

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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Smock the boat (Don't smock the boat, baby)

Smocks have been in for the last few seasons now, but I finally got around to sewing this one up last week. I very happily used up some fabrics from my stash, a stripey polyester-rayon with a nice fluid drape, and the remains of an emerald raw silk that’s also been in a top for Gez and the lining of my Yamamoto jacket. The pattern was actually for a 34 inch bust (I’m 38”), but after deliberating whether to grade up the pattern or make a muslin, I did a very un-me thing and opted to throw all caution to the wind and just make it up as-is since it probably had a ton of ease in it anyway. And I’m glad I did, because my gamble paid off – I love the way it fits, and the only time it seems too small is squeezing my big head through the neck opening!

In Progress

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.


Inspiration

Happy birthday indeed!

Yesterday was my 28th birthday and I received quite possibly the best birthday gift possible, especially since I thought it would be impossible to deliver in time…

Yes, our new floating home is now in her new home, delivered actually on my birthday itself by my boyfriend and our hired crew. We’ve got a bunch of hard work to do this week before we can move in at the weekend, but it means I’ll be able to eventually have a dedicated sewing room for all things Fehrtrade and have a wide choice of cutting tables (since it used to be a hotel, we’ve got a breakfast room crammed full of tables and chairs!).

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A Tale Of Two Dresses

Once upon a time in London there were two girls suffering from sewing distress. The first girl loved to create and dreamt all day about creating beautiful garments. But alas, she was imprisoned in her true love’s family’s home and her sewing tools were all locked away in a dungeon of cardboard boxes. The other girl had all the tools imaginable, but lacked the experience to turn pieces of cloth into wearable gowns and the language to understand the foreign tongue of patterns. So one fair day the girls hatched a plan to combine forces and each create a dress using the resources of the other.