Completed: New Look 1467 View A

Good morning!

Just in time for Me Made May I completed this NL 1467 top which I got free with Sew Magazine. I photographed this earlier in the summer - but summer got lost (and my camera died)! I managed to grab a few shots not long before we left our flat and have sourced them from the chaos of stuff :-D.

This pattern is a wardrobe pack with a few options for a skirt, trousers, top and peplum jacket. Whereas I wasn't all that fussed with the other options I was quite taken by the top - I really liked the yoke feature and it looked like it would work well when I was having a fat day as after the shoulders it is not fitted.

The top looks like it works well with drapey fabrics and so I made it up using this fabric from Remnant Kings . I think the fabric was a good choice as it gives the drape that I was after however I'm not entirely happy with the fit. Based on the provided sizing I cut a 12. As you can see in the pictures the top is really loose around the neckline where it should be fitted and too tight around the bustline where there should be a 1/2 inch ease. I think I need to cut the smaller size and perform my now usual FBA. As usual the instructions from New Look were spot on - although with only 4 pattern pieces I can't really see how they could muck them up :-)

Never the less I really like this top and I have had a lot of wear out of it around the house. I do find that this top likes to create a lot of static and I have to be really careful when wearing it! I think I will have another bash at this in the spring when all the nice drapey fabrics are back in the shops and with the identified changes and I will hopefully have a nice top I can wear to the office.

 I'm not all that happy with the fabric available at the moment and have had a few fruitless trips to my favourite haunts. Although I did pick up a really lovely black linnen which I'm hoping to make into some trousers - my last attempt at trousers went really wrong. I think this was because the fabric I used was too light - does this seem like it could be the cause? Hopefully I will have the trousers that my wardrobe requires or I will have to go on a spending spree in the next few weeks, before starting my new job, to next where the RTW seem to fit perfectly!

I hope everyone has had a fab summer - it seems that a good few of you have been jetting off places :-)

Take care
Jen xx

Complete: New Look 6020(2)

Hey guys! Iteration 2 of my New Look 6020 project is now completed :-D read - has been complete for quite some time... haha

I tried a few alterations from the first version that i made and I showed a few quick pictures of this during MMMay week 2 (and week 3) and even then I wasn't convinced that I had made the right changes - now after a ton of wear, I seem to have confirmed that while the changes helped they were not the right ones.

After many an hour trawling through the internets I'm pretty sure I need to size down to a 12 and perform an FBA. This should reduce the excess I'm still feeling in my shoulders and neckline. Also what is with the extra space before the pic below...(what can I say my laptop is pish!)

A lot of the gaping and excess is around the shoulders and the neckline as I cut a 14 based upon the 38.5 inch finished bust measurement. My high bust is a little over 36 inches and that puts me into the size 12 range. Next time I think I'll try the FBA as I have tried a few times recently to OK effect... :-)

This isn't to say that I don't have a wearable dress! It fits so much better than my last attempt and I love the fabric - it was another Mandors purchase and was around £6 per m.

Close up of the fabric

One thing I have decided upon with this version is that I'm happy with the length - previously I had toyed with the idea of making the dress full length but I now know I'm happy with this length.

you can see the excess on the right neckline - it has a weird curve

All in all I think two more iterations and I might have a dress that I'm 100 % happy with...It turned out that with the lack of time I ended up with, I didn't use this pattern for the wedding but I cant wait to make this up again. I love love love the neckline and it's great to have a TNT princess seam bodice! As for that crepe...I have a plan, but need to wait for the cooler weather so sleeves will be functional!

Hope everyone has a great week - 'm off to another festival on friday - the gentleman of the road tour with mumford and sons and primal scream. I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of either bands however looking forward to the break. It's about a two and a half hour drive for us but the scenery is breathtaking! I think this dress may also make an appearance!

Jen xx

Completed: New Look 6020

Hola!
After declaring that I had not much time for sewing, my production seemed to take an upturn! This dress came together relatively quickly once I had a spare few hours to actually sew it! I even managed to get my overlocker overlocking properly again - somehow the left needle thread had worked its way out of the tension disks :-s. oh well sorted it now is :-)

So with both of my machines fully working, making up this dress from scratch was actually a fairly painless experience :-D. Fairly. I want to make a dress for my cousins wedding at the end of June and have decided to use this pattern and make the necessary changes over a number of wearable muslins before making up the final version in some lovely red crepe I bought in Edinburgh fabrics. I'll share each iteration as I learn to get a perfect fit on this one.

The fabric was a 45" wide cotton from Mandors. I realised at the last minute that I didn't actually have any fabric that was appropriate for a first run of the dress so spent ages lurking all the new bolts which have recently appeared. I felt the flowers on this print stood out more than a regular floral.

This pattern called for facings and as I really dislike facings I decided that I would try and fully line this dress - skirt and all.

Partial fail on the white lining here...

For this I just made up two identical dresses. I had to think a bit about the construction order a little but it went together OK. I attached both dresses at the zip and then pressed the other armhole and neckline under by 5/8" and top stitched. Not the neatest finishing ever but the print hides it a bit. Next time round I am going to finish the armholes with a bias binding facing - much less lazy and a far better finish. I might actually just finish this version with a binding. Maybe. I altered the other half's jeans the other night and it wasn't actually all that bad...

I ended up with a fair amount of gape all around the neckline - I think this is something to do with both my requirement for a narrow shoulder adjustment and the fact it may have stretched while under construction as well as I get the inkling that I cut the size too big. (oh well that's why I didn't cut straight into my crepe....) So in the back I added two darts - which turned out a little too narrow and   took out 3/4" length out of the shoulders; on the front I am debating some front darts. I have already taken a wedge out the back paper pattern piece for my next run. Finally I removed quarter of an inch from the back length with another quarter inch marked onto the pattern pieces for next time.

I had no idea how to expression an extreme close up...

One thing that I liked about the dress is it is more like a tea dress than other styles I have tried. This dress sits under my knee and it took a while but I think i'm used to it! I'm kind of feeling the length right now however will no doubt loose some of it for version 2. Or lengthen it the jury is out on full length, I do love a maxi however the wedding is in the South of England....

I  also wore this as my birthday dress the other week (imperfections and all and as a result I'm almost set on trying the size down) - so that is item #2 off my 2015 plan scored off! yay!

Hope your all sewing up a storm :-)

Jen xx

Completed New Look 6144

You may remember that I made this pattern up about a year ago and the whole construction was riddled with errors as well as a considerable amount of head fuck. All in all this dress took me around 3 weeks to complete.

New Look 6144

So I thought that with another years worth of sewing experience under my belt I would try again!

I had to rake through my previous posts to determine what size I made the last time however they didn't really allude to much. Matching the old pieces against the pattern tissue, I had cut a 12. This time I cut a 14 and removed 1.5 cm of length from the waist and 1 inch from the hem and here's the results.

The fabric I used was a really nice Herringbone 59 inch poly cotton which I picked up from Mandors for £5.99 / m. the pattern suggested 1.6 m but I read the yard requirements like a dufus and now have an extra 60 cm of fabric which I have no idea what to do with! Any ideas? In any case it handles really well and didn't shrink much in the wash/dry.

Close up to see the slight stripe in the fabric

To add a fun twist to the pattern I decided to use some scraps of this snowman fabric for both the front and back facing.I would have a picture, but you know - if the garment I made am having a full blown war with ever surfaces on the blog, I'll link back!

The two half of the Raglan sleeves when laid out adjacent show how deep the dart of the dahlias sleeves should have been.

One thing which became really apparent while preparing the pattern pieces was the extent of the problem in the raglan sleeve of the dahlia. The curve at the top of the sleeve is significant and would make a deep dart in the 1 piece dahlia sleeve. The sleeve problem of Dahlia is one of the reasons I decided to revisit this pattern. I remember these sleeves coming together really easily and couldn't remember how they were constructed. It seems that the sleeves do work well in two piece, I may redraft the sleeves for dahlia based on these and try that one again.

The length of this dress is better too - I don't think I removed too much from the hem length this time

One of the changes I made to the dress was to remove the kickpleat from the back skirt. I ended up removing it the last time and this time after a fewdays wear i'm still not sure that i'm missing it? I think the next time I also need to remove a further inch fron the waist but the current adjustment means the dress sits almost right this was also revealed through a day's wear.

I don't know what happened when sewing the back - it seems to be pulling down?

So all in I think this dress worked OK. I'm not so happy with the pulling at the back or beneath the pleat at the front neckline I think this might need a slight FBA? The back neckline needs brought in a little as per my usual adjustment, but I can live with the back not being perfect. In contrast this dress took me about 8-9 hours including tracing, pinning and cutting as well as using tailors tacks to mark the darts compared with the previous 3 week marathon!

I'm still recovering from a kidney infection that absolutely flored me all of last weekend and the beginning of this week so for me the weekend can't come soon enough - on that note enjoy the rest of the week and heres to a great weekend!

Jen xx

FINISHED New Look 6144

Finally! After what seems like an eternity I have finally finished New Look 6144.
After a long and traumatic few weeks we finally got there!

 The dress is made from 45 " cotton poplin and instead of keeping the colours the same I decided to do some colour blocking with another cotton poplin.
The materials were really easy to work with but it would appear that my head was up my ass for the the first two weeks of the construction.

I decided to do view C - i'm not a huge fan of sleeves but i liked the 3/4 length so decided to mix things up a bit :-P.
After trying the dress on I had to cut about 4" off the bottom of the dress coz it must have been designed for a human giraffe. like serously. Although to be fair looking at the pictures im glad i didn't cut any more off the bottom....

I also reeeely should have measured my back length and waist length too. the waist length could do with having an inch removed. Its soo runkled. There was also meant to be a vent in teh back at the bottom - that got cut off but yeh the main issue is the waist of giraffe like proportions. :-\. Its also looking a little tight around the back however thats the result of a hen do last weekend, ahem...

So I thought on Tuesday the dress would be finished however who knows what I was thinking with the facings on the neck line and sewed them on wrong sides together. No matter 1/2 an hour with the stitch ripper and all is good. Double pointed dartmaintained and no further disasters!! *cue selfie*

Also side view

Bottom hem is even. I got some bad ass french seams going on inside.
I don't think ill be making this again in a hurry but to be fair I dont think it's a problem with the pattern just me. I think this may just languish in my wardrobe until I find a charity willing to take it!

So on to patterns new - got a few things planned which hopefully will not be such an epic adventure!!

JCS

New Look 6144 Progress

If there is one thing that this dress has taught me is that you 100 % need to be in the right mindset when undertaking a project or it's just going to be rife with problems!

Take for example this neckline I must have sat and tried to figure out this double pleat for like an hour and a half! The instructions i felt weren't the clearest - move the solid line to the dotted line (of which there were two dotted lines...) however I feel it was more a case of a distracted mind.

I think though that its looking right now! It just needs another press and im sure when the neckline is turned under it will lie like its supposed to!
The sleeves as well were a pain somehow i managed to sew two the same and as such had two right arms - GAH!! however it was unpicked, restitched and now they are both pinned in place notches matching so hopefully I will have a dress for the weekend!

I really think that next time I'm going to try and create something when my mind is busy and distracted with work (paper was approved by my industrial sponsor and didn't even scrape the edges YEAH!!) i will try an easy project - and one that is not so prone to disaster!

Also meet Diana, my form :-). She was a birthday present - one which I'm sure ill have a lot of use out of!

JCS

Progress on New Look 6144

Good Morning! Another week at an end and I cannot wait for the large glass of wine which is waiting for me at 6:30!!

This week has been terible in terms of my sewing productivity! This here is all I have completed in two weeks. Yes two weeks.

One single sleeve of my new look 6144 pattern which came free with sew last week. Also as the picture alludes to I forgot the seam allowance was 5/8" and I initially sewed it at 1/4". All I can do is congratulate myself on that at least the first seam was inside the seam allowance. *phew* however unpicking is in progress and hopefully the other seams will be an improvement!

I thought I would have a go at colour blocking with this pattern so whereas the sleeves will be this nice pinky purple, the main dress will be a much darker shade of purple and look a little like a uniform! haha. :-D

On the plus my research took a step in the right direction. Paper 1/2 was sent to my industrial partner and hopefully I'll get a stateside jolly in September :-D.

Roll on 6pm and hopefully a more productive weekend! Have a good weekend all!

JCS