MMM'16 week #3

It's time for our week #3 Me Made May 2016 round-up! 

Since I missed out on wearing any homemade outfits last week due to feeling poorly with a bug, I wanted to make the most of it this week. So here we are!

Tuesday (I worked at home on Monday in my PJs again!) -- first day back in the office, I needed a "feel good" dress. This TNT mash-up dress never fails to cheer me up :D

Wednesday daytime- in the office with my first version of Vintage Vogue 1137 

Wednesday evening - Back to Basics top

Thursday - attending an all-day conference in London in my new Bottle Green Liberty dress. I met a dear friend of mine afterwards in an amazing little Thai Cafe near Waterloo. Just about to sip my Thai ice tea here -- one of my favourite drinks of all times!

 Dress-down Friday - Cheap as Chips Alma Blouse

The weekend is going to be filled with decorating and other home improvements, so chances are, my home made wardrobe will be getting a little well-deserved break :) Whatever you will be up to this weekend (hopefully something a little more glamorous than what I've got planned), I hope you have a great one! 

TNT mash-up wedding guest dress

We seem to have hit the age now where there is a steady stream of weddings to attend each year. It's always lovely to see our friends tie the knot to their wonderful other halves, and it also gives me an excuse to sew up a little dress to wear (not that I need any excuses!). Remember the 2 wedding guest dresses I made last year? 1 and 2. 

We attended a fantastic wedding yesterday in Bristol, in glorious weather. The sun was shining, with not a trace of cloud in the sky. We celebrated the love of a couple who are clearly perfect for each other, caught up with friends and met new ones, ate delicious food and drank a little too much bubbly, and finished the day off with super fun Ceilidh dancing in the barn :D  

I wanted to make something special for the occasion, especially as the hubby was an usher for the wedding and did a reading, too, during the ceremony. Elisalex came to mind, but this time I wanted a less extravagant skirt - as lovely as the last version was, I think one tulip dress is quite enough for my wardrobe. What better pattern to team the Elisalex bodice with than McCalls 3830?     

The fabric I used was a beautiful floral stretch cotton purchased from C&H in Guildford, which reminded me of a dress Betty wore for an advert for Mad Men (picture below), and this was indeed what inspired me to mix and match two of my TNT patterns. I'm celebrating the return of the second half of the final season of Mad Men in my own way. Plus, what year would it be without me making a Betty-inspired garment? 

You are probably aware of my obsession with stretch cotton fabrics by now - for me, these fabrics combine the most awesome qualities of being well-behaved/super easy to sew with, having vibrant prints and the ability to stretch, accommodating a filling wedding breakfast as well as a lot of ceilidh dancing! 

One of the main reasons I love the Elisalex pattern is the low neckline at the back.  

In addition to the changes I made and construction notes from the last two versions, I made a couple more small changes:

1) This is the first time I made a short sleeves version - I chopped off quite a bit of length from the sleeve pattern, and hemmed the sleeves by hand with uneven running stitches. 

2) I didn't line the bodice this time, since the fabric is not see-through at all, which is hard to come by when it comes to medium weight white fabric. This was a relief, since I didn't have any stretch lining in my stash. What can I say, this fabric just keeps on giving! Instead, I finished the neckline with a pretty bias tape using my favourite method. 

Here are some sneaky peek photos for you: 

Sleeve:

Bias binding facing. I had this bias tape in my stash, but it was much too wide to be a facing, so I had to trim it down in half for this purpose. What a perfect match to the dress fabric, though?

Neckline on the outside:

Back neckline with a sage green invisible zipper. I'm very proud of how well the waist seams are lining up! 

 The dress hem, by hand with a blind catch stitch. 

So there you have it, yet another wedding guest dress! I absolutely adore this dress, and am so pleased with how it's turned out - I love the fabric, the shape, the comfort, and how well it's held up all day! I can't wait to wear it again! I enjoyed the process of sewing this little number, too. Mixing two of my TNT patterns is effortless - I'm happy with the fit of both in their own right, and adding them together is straight forward and very rewarding. 

How about you? Are you making any garments for special occasions this year? I have one more wedding to go to this year (unless any of our other friends feel spontaneous and have a last minute wedding before the year is out), which means one more special occasion dress to make. I think I'm going to attempt sewing with lace for that one! 

Floral Elisalex - wedding guest dress

Since my attempt at Sew Dolly Clackett, I have been meaning to make a "proper" version of the Elisalex, with its signature tulip skirt. 

I had the fabric all-along - a beautiful heavy cotton sateen from the home furnishing department of John Lewis. Not only it would make lovely curtains and blinds, I could see a floral Elisalex emerge before my eyes. Wouldn't it make the perfect wedding guest dress? It's lucky then I still have 2 weddings to go to this year. 

And here it is, just as I envisaged. 

I pulled out all the stops with this one. I fully lined it with a lighter weight cotton lawn in a similar colour palette, with a cloth allowance built in (don't know what it is? Sherry explained it in detail here), finished and pressed the seams as I went along, and handpicked my zipper (after umming and arring about an exposed zipper). As much as I'd like to think that I pay great attention to detail for all of my projects, this one got just that little bit more attention. 

This is the dress inside-out:

Isn't it a beautiful delicate pattern?Here's the lovely low back, and the handpicked zipper: 

I must admit, I wasn't sure about the shape of this dress, and in particular, how the tulip skirt might look on my petite frame. But after seeing all those great versions on the blogsphere, I decided to give it a go. I knew, though, that the tulip skirt will need to fall just above my knees to even give me a chance of pulling it off. So after measuring the pattern, I hacked 10.5 inches off the length from the bottom of the skirt front and back pieces. I did contemplate shortening it from the hip area, but decided that the tulip would be even more profound, more likely to drawn my legs in it. I think it worked well. If anything, it probably could've done with shortening even more. 

The other alterations I made was to remove some back gaping issues, which were identified in the toile previously, and an SBA. 

Have you seen the photos on the By Hand London website for this pattern? They are all fabulous, and more importantly the skirts all fall way above the knee. I know that I'm only 5'3'', but I could only imagine that Elisalex is a super tall lady with extremely long limbs in person. 

Now a few notes on the construction, and instructions. When I made this pattern (the bodice anyway) last time, I did not read the instructions, as I wasn't lining the bodice, or using the skirt, so it was really just a straightforward princess seamed bodice. But this time I paid more attention to the instructions. 

For a beginner/intermediate pattern, I think the instructions could do with more details and tips. I don't mean this to be a criticism, as I do think it's a well drafted pattern, but for people who might be sewing a princess seam or lining a bodice for the first time, here are a few things that I would expect especially from an Indie pattern, as they would no doubt help beginners develop their sewing techniques:

1) For a smoother finish of the princess seams, staystitching and clipping on the side front seams would help achieve a more professional finish. I use this article here on threads. 

2) There could be more blurb on how to finish the seams which will be hidden under the lining. Here's what I did:

Can you see it? For both the fashion fabric and lining, I sewed a parallel line close to the seam in the seam allowance, before trimming the excess and pressing the seams towards the side. 

3) After joining lining to bodice at the neckline and armholes, I think there's a crucial step missing -- grading, and understitching as far as you can. I referred back to my last (and only) fully lined dress before, my modest raspberry dress, and I looked at the instructions again (McCalls 5921) closely. Grading and understitching in my opinion is the key to make the lining or facing lie flat inside the dress, without riding up to be on shown on the outside. Here's another in-progress photo before I pulled the lining out of each shoulders. 

Can you see that I've trimmed the lining at the armhole, and have graded, clipped and understitched the neckline? 

4) Comparing to the detailed instructions on McCalls 5921, I was disappointed to find that for step 8, this pattern stated "this is a little fiddly and unfortunately impossible to clarify with a drawing so please read carefully", when I could clearly see a drawing done for the McCalls pattern. 

Other than the above, I do think that the pattern is well drafted, and overall the instructions are ok, albeit a little basic. It's lightheartedly written, with little tips for a couple of steps, and I liked that there's space for the notes to be made at the back of the instructions booklet. Although I don't think I am very much a By Hand London type of girl, I can see how this style could be appealing to a lot of people.  

I realise that I may have started off a bit negative about the instructions here (I'd like to think it's more constructive, as opposed to negative), so credit when it's due -- I would say that the somewhat basic instructions were made up by the detailed sew-along for this pattern. Although obviously I missed that by about a year and a half, a quick glance shows that it provided more details and pictures on the construction, as well as a platform for Q&As which is great. 

Anyhow, ignoring all that geeky talk, I am very happy with how this dress turned out - it's exactly as I envisaged when I purchased the pattern and fabric. I don't feel silly in the tulip skirt, and I would be very proud to wear this to the upcoming weddings! 

Paris dress -- Sew Dolly Clackett

Voila! Here's my (last minute) contribution to the Sew Dolly Clackett challenge, where all us stalkers of Roisin's (aka Dolly Clackett) wonderful sewing blog are making our own little item inspired by the amazing girl herself as a wedding gift to her and her husband to be, Nic from the online sewing community. This brilliant challenge was organised by Sarah, who I can only imagine is one of the most thoughtful friends that anyone can hope for! 

Having met Roisin in person (yep, I know!) at the Birmingham rag market meet-up, I had to take part. As you know I have recently moved house, so my life is currently filled with wonderful (cough) DIY tasks as soon as I get a spare minute, and fitting this project in under timing constraint has been a real challenge. That said, I am so pleased to have managed it before the deadline tomorrow, and being able to contribute to this wedding pressie. 

Without further ado, here is it!

Why is it Sew Dolly Clackett, I hear you ask? Isn't it obvious? But let me list it out for you anyway:

1. I made it in a novelty print fabric (need I say more?), called O La La Paris (more on that shortly). I picked this as Roisin and Nic's honeymoon is in Paris, not to mention her obsession with Eiffel Tower prints! 
2. For the bodice, I used the Elisalex Pattern from By Hand London, which is again one of Roisin's favourite. I must admit that I'm in love with the elegant back, and can completely see why Roisin loves the pattern so much;
3. For the skirt, I made a very full gathered skirt (I used 2 full widths of the fabric), in the true Roisin style ;)
4. I made the skirt finish just beneath my knees --  although I understand Roisin has recently started to experiment with shorter lengths, I believe this will still be her choice of skirt length;
5. I teamed it with dusty pink fabulous high heels (from Kurt Geiger) -- by this point (fabric, skirt length and high heels...) I don't think I need to tell you how far I am out of my comfort zone! 
6. Finally, I couldn't resist but posed in front of a door. Okay, I live on a busy road now and the newly planted hedges are growing really slowly, so I had to resort to the back patio doors. I managed to drag myself out of bed this morning and the weather was miserable, and naturally light was barely there! So sadly I only managed one reasonable overall photo, and had to take the back views this evening with artificial lighting. 

Now a bit more on the fabric. I can just imagine this question being asked - what are the first things that come into your head when I say Paris? Eiffel Tower, croissant, baguette, wine, tennis... then we are onto random French words.... and then non-French randomness... I think! If you know what "di si no di qui/oui" means, in any language, please get in touch!  

Finally, an inside out shot of the neckline binding facing, my favourite facing method:

 
 So that's it, my very own Dolly Clackett inspired garment! Now I'm going to spare some time checking out the other entries - it's going to be a blast!