30's (inspired) blouse

I finally took out my sewing machine again, and made - a laundry bag. Not very exciting, I know, but I recently moved and needed one and it seemed like a quick and easy project to get back into sewing - remember, last time I did anything on my sewing machine was way back in january.

So after that was done, I felt confident enough to move on to a bigger project, one that has been on my wishlist for quite some time now: a blouse. I have quite a collection of plaid button-down shirts and always liked the idea of a simple, white blouse that would go as well with jeans as with skirts or more formal pants, I just never found one that I liked the fit and/or the fabric of. 

Also, over summer, I toyed with the idea of a shirtwaist-dress (not one that I've given up on just yet, either, it's just right now way too cold to be thinking of summer dresses ;) ), so the obvious solution was to get out my (mother's) trusted pattern-making book and make my own, basic blouse-pattern.

The town I moved to has quite an active Lindy Hop scene, so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and make my blouse the first part of a danceable outfit, hence the 30's (inspired) title.

I started by looking at a google-images search of 30's blouses (mostly pattern-envelopes, I think) and noting down which elements I liked and felt fit the theme. Then, and this is kinda new for me, I made a sketch I actually liked!

You can see the list of pattern-elements I wanted to include, an idea for fabric and the fact that I mean to pair it with a skirt that is still very much on my wish-/to-do-list. The elements are:

• A Yoke
• Puffed Sleeves
• Button-down closure
• Round collar (I think they're called Peter-Pan-Collars in English)

After rummaging the well-stocked fabric store here in town and getting excellent help from the employees, I decided on an off-white viscose fabric and square buttons. The viscose mostly was a dream to work with, and if I had a bigger table, I think I could scratch the word "mostly". As it is, I ripped the fabric into smaller rectangles according to the size of the pattern pieces to prevent it from slipping off my table all the time. It should also be noted that the viscose wrinkled very easily, but was just as easily ironed, even without steam (but on the highest heat setting).

I'm afraid I neither took pictures of the pattern making nor of the assembly, so I'll spare you the lenghty write-up. I did however use some new-to-me techniques, so here's a list of them:

• Button-down closure: the drafting, the construction, all new
• Drafting and attaching a collar (and, to be perfectly honest, I'll try a different way of attaching it next time)
• Drafting Sleeves and altering them to puffed sleeves

I also never worked with a yoke before, but I found the concept pretty straight-forward, so there's that. Here's the finished blouse on my dressform:

Final thoughts:

I'm pleasantly surprised at how well this project came together. Other than the fact that it's a bit too see-through for my liking and ended up shorter than intended, I really have nothing to complain about, and while the former is easily mended by wearing a top underneath, the latter doesn't signify much since it's still cute as hell when worn. The viscose feels amazing and is easily washable, so that's another plus.

I kinda wanna make another one, with some variations (long sleeves, puffed differently; lower hem; shaped sides instead of straight ones, maybe even waist darts or -gathering; collar attached differently) but I still have the fabric and pattern for a 60's style dress and I have to finish all my christmas presents before, you know, christmas. But I'm definitely glad my reintroduction to sewing went so smoothly and will keep you  updated on what I do next :)

Until then - 

Hello world

Look, I'm back! I'm sorry for being off the grid for so long, but I put myself under the obligation not to sew (or rather: bring out the sewing machine) until I had finished my thesis, and that (unexpectedly, I might add) took until the end of August. In order to stay sane during those long months, though, I did a lot of knitting (which did involve some handsewing for finishing, I admit). I still have the problem of getting things properly photographed, so here's a list (and sometimes, blurry photos) of things I worked on/finished in the last 9 months.

• finished the Ramona Mittens in January

• The green-metallic sweater spontaneously gained some lace sleeves (the medici pattern again, by now I can do it by heart) and was finished sometime in early April. Here's a not quite finished picture:

• Started and finished the Sofia Shawl, I'm pretty sure it took me less than a month or so and was finished in the middle of August. Here it is being blocked (excuse the beachtowel beneath, I didn't want to get my parent's couch wet)

• And, last but not least, I am working on a cardigan to go with my dirndl , using yet another of Nadelspiel's patterns - slightly modified to be worked in rows instead of rounds. It's only missing a sleeve, which is currently on the needles, and some kind of closure.

There's some more projects I'm still working on, or tried and abandoned, or simply didn't take any pictures of, but all in all this is my creative output over the last 9 months. Considering the struggles I had writing my thesis and the fact that I started a full-time internship in June, I still think it's pretty good. My life is slowly getting back to a more settled rhythm, so I think there'll be more time and energy to sew in the future - it's not like I haven't had any ideas in all this time ;) 

Well, it's been a while...

... although I assure you, that has nothing to do with my unproductivity (considering I have a Bachelor's thesis to work on, I've been way too productive textile-wise recently), but with the fact that I can never seem to find the time, inclination or help to photograph my projects. So here's what you won't get to see properly until I get the time, inclination or help to properly photograph it:

• Nadelspiel's Medici-Socks in white, knee-high, already wrapped and given away because I might not see the person they're intended for again before Christmas. Once she's got them, I'll ask her to photograph them, though.
• White and blue Ramona mittens in double face, with a beautiful slow colour change in the blue. The white is what's left over from my first pair of knitted socks. (I also just realized that I'm talking about the exact same mittens in the post just linked to. I've gotten a lot further ;) )

• A sweater made out of some shiny green metallic yarn that I bought using a gift-card I had gotten for my birthday. Pattern self-drafted (cross your fingers ;) ). I'm thinking about going back and buying a ball of the same yarn in silver to knit in some patterns. We'll see.

• And, last but not least, I tried out VeraVenus's skirt drafting tutorial (if you follow that link, scroll down a bit) to make a pencil skirt. Ever since watching Suits for a couple of seasons I fell in love with the pencil skirt and wanted to have/make one, and since I had some black denim left and another rockabilly concert coming up, I drafted the pattern and made it up. Pro-tip: forget what you were taught and don't measure with ease (the pattern has you add two centimeters to the hip measurement anyway), especially when your fabric is a bit stretchy. I ended up taking in the sides for about 3cm each, which absolutely nixed my plans for pockets. Ah well, next time, I suppose. At least all the darts fit pretty much right away :)

I know it's blurry, but it shows best what I ended up wearing. If you wonder about the sneakers and t-shirt, I knew that there'd be a lot of dancing, and dancing jive is a full workout. Happy to report though that dancing (excepting one jumping figure where you kind of have to straddle your partner for a moment) works surprisingly well in such a tight skirt. Only don't wear tights. They're only gonna shift and move downwards as soon as you take a step. Stockings work perfectly, though :)

For now, there's a Masquerade coming up on New Years Eve, dresscode Cocktaildress or Eveninggown and I'm considering giving VeraVenus Little Bias Dress a try. Have to see if I have enough fabric, though... Until then! 

Spontaneous Dirndl

Alternate title: Hey Look, I feel like I'm wearing a candywrapper!

My entire family is asleep, so this is what you get for photos of me wearing it.
Now for the title: I recently (last week of September) visited my brother living in Munich. And what do you do if you're in Munich for the last two weeks of september? You go to Oktoberfest, of course! (Or flee the city and rent out your apartment for hundreds of Euros to visitors. It's crazy, really.)
But we went, I wore my store-bought Dirndl, and we had a lot of fun. If you ever go, I really recommend the historical Wiesn: you pay an entrance fee of 3€, but every ride inside is 1€, you don't have any trouble finding a table inside the tents and they have brass bands instead of electrical guitars. And a dancefloor! But as I said, we did both, the historical and the modern Wiesn, and had a lot of fun. Part of that fun for me was ogling all the girls/women in their pretty dresses and wishing I had one for myself (my old dirndl is just not that fancy - black cotton dress, black cotton blouse... I like it, but I don't feel like a candy-wrapper ;) )
So, browsing reddit some day last week, I came across Burda 7057, and it was just perfect for what I had envisioned for myself. I got really excited, bought and downloaded it on friday, left Munich for my hometown and planned to go shopping for fabric on Saturday. You can imagine my face when my mother reminded me that stores would be closed on saturday - Day of German Unity, our national holiday. Damn. Also, stores are always closed on Sunday, so that meant two days delay until I could start! Luckily I recently bought a white cotton Ikea bedsheet to use for fabric, so I could get started on the blouse. That part was pretty straight forward, I ignored most of the instructions and flatfelled all my seams. Just seemed neater this way, plus it goes so much quicker when you do it by machine!
I didn't take any pictures, but I can show you my setup, because I think it's pretty neat:

That's my mother's Pfaff sewing machine on my desk, my new tiny iron and ironing surface on the fold-away workspace of my (currently out of order) 1943 Singer sewing machine and my laptop for music and the instructions.
On monday I could finally get the fabric. I found some beautiful turqouise synthetic taffeta, but at 10€ per meter (and this amazing shine!) I really didn't care about the fibre content. Finding proper fabric for the apron was a bit trickier and took me some time running around in the store, checking colours against each other, but in the end I opted for some silver - well, to be honest, I forgot what the fabric was called, but it's also synthetic. Add half a meter of lining fabric (cotton), some fusible interfacing and several metres of ribbon in two different widths, and you get 70€. Ouch. But then again, a good dirndl generally costs 100-150€, so since I don't pay myself hourly wages, I'm still coming out on top.
Not wanting to tape/glue more than I had to, I only printed out the bodice pattern pieces and just used squares and rectangles for the skirt and apron. I used piping (my favourite!) on the bodice to set out the front panel with the lacing and around the neck- and armholes, cutting bias strips out of the silver apron fabric.

The lady at the shop must have given me a pretty strong interfacing, my lining was stiff as cardboard when I finished fusing!

While I more or less followed the pattern instructions for the dress, I didn't gather the skirt to fit the waist (which probably wouldnt have worked anyway, seeing as I had 3m of skirt - I just never learn ;) ) but pleated it. That's the way I've seen it on pretty much every dirndl at the Wiesn, at last.

So much pleating! Thank god for my new tiny iron. You can see the the cardboard templates I cut out to make my job a little easier ;)
I put in a pocket again, this time on my front right side so that it's hidden under the apron. I wanted to make it accessible through one of the pleats, messed up my calculations, had to fix the slit (very crudely, I'm afraid) and redo the pocket where it belonged. It was a stupid mistake and cost me some time to work around, but now it's not even very visible without the apron - or can you find it?

My only other mistake: I ignored the fact that this pattern is meant for short people. They assume you're 168cm, but give you convenient lines on which to lengthen yor pattern - which I didn't do, despite that fact that at 175cm, I'm a lot taller than their average. Well, since I liked the fit of the bodice in general (and went through a lot of work before doublechecking the shoulders), I had to lengthen the shoulderstraps. After I put in the lining. And piping. Suffice to say, that was some more work that could have been avoided, but the join is barely visible now unless you're looking for it, so I don't mind anymore ;)

A very unlikely perspective for anyone to look at me.
What else? Oh yeah, I fixed the lacing hooks by machine, removing the presser foot and keeping the hooks in place by hand because that was the only way that worked, and I didn't break a single needle! Also it went much quicker than by hand ;)

I know it's blurry, my phone doesn't like closeups.
The apron was again pretty straight forward, I didn't even look at the directions here, so I can't tell you if I technically followed them, but I don't think I could have deviated much. I'm thinking of maybe putting some trim on it, but I'll decide that tomorrow. In hindsight, it's gathered into a pretty short strip (25cm), but I'm not sure if I'll ever fix it. Just something to keep in mind for next time.

All in all, sewing the dress took me about 10 hours over two days, and that could have been shorter if I hadn't made it more complicated for myself and hadn't made those mistakes. The blouse probably also took a couple of hours, but I honestly don't remember already... :D

Anyway, I love my Candywrapper Dirndl and will wear it on friday to the Wasn (same as Oktoberfest, but in Stuttgart*)

 See you there! :D



*please don't tell anyone from Stuttgart I said that, though. They might run me out of the city >.<

50's Style Petticoat

Back when I was planning my 50's style dress I knew I also had to have a petticoat to get the look right. I got some tulle out of my mother's stash (in there because we had used it as part of a salt & pepper costume for the both of us some years ago), around 2m x 1,60m. I didn't use any specific tutorial because petticoats are pretty straightforward, but cut the tulle into nine 160cm long strips of around 20cm width and sewed them into tubes (one strip, two strips, and four strips). I gathered these tubes by sewing some yarn to the top edge via zig-zag stitch and tried to sew the gathered biggest tube to the ungathered middle tube - and that's where I ran into trouble. See, getting tulle that has been gathered to half its original lenght to cooperate with a sewing machine can be rather frustrasting - and so into the box the whole thing went. Until last weekend, when I knew I needed a petticoat for my now finished dress!
If you read my previous post, you know that I was already well-adjusted to hand-sewing by then (I watched the documentary "Canada - A People's History" troughout sewing on the dress and petticoat and am currently at episode 13 of 17, with each episode being just short of two hours), plus I really wasn't prepared to give the tulle another try on the machine, so I made myself comfortable on my floor with a blunt needle:

Okay, not watching any movies here, but I got through 3 albums of The Tallest Man On Earth before the biggest tube was connected to the middle!
I useds backstitches to sew all tubes together, using a blunt needle when it was just tulle (why risk stabbing yourself when the fabric you're working with is already full of holes?) and a pointy one to connect the tulle to the linen/cotton top part.
That top part was actually a petticoat I'd made for a halloween costume years ago and that has been sitting in my closet ever since, only once in a blue moon being used underneath a pretty see-through white rtw skirt. It's basically a 1m tube of fabric with two ruffles, but had the perfect length and width (plus was already assembled... I'm lazy, did I already tell you that?), so I attached the tulle right above the lower ruffle - I kinda like the effect it gives.

Here you can see all the layers. Of course the effect on the overall look is greater when I'm actually wearing it, because then it can stand out against my legs instead of a thin wooden collumn... ^^
After wearing it, though, I realized I'd have to make another cotton petticoat to wear underneath that one, because gathered tulle is just - so - itchy! I already have some suitable fabric for that, but haven't started cutting yet. Ah well, if I procrastinate for too long, I'm gonna have to survive an itchy evening, because the next Rockabilly concert is in October! Yay :)

50's Style dress

With summer pretty much over, I just finished a summer dress. Well, it's bound to be warm again next year, and until then, I'm planning to wear it to at least one Rockabilly concert!

The finished dress, complete with crocheted gloves and a tulle petticoat. I didn't take any usefull in-progress pictures and I haven't gotten dressed up yet to take proper pictures either, so this is what you get ;)
I think I started this dress sometime last year when I got the idea that I wanted a strapless 50's dress, held up by bones connected to a waist-tape - in theory that should work a lot better than modern strapless dresses, that rely way too much on elastic fabric and always slip! I'm happy to report that the dress actually stays where it's supposed to when the tape is closed, it's just hard to sit for a longer period of time because - me wearing no girdle - the tape tends to cut into the waist when sitting.

Waist-tape and unfinished insides. Come on, the outside is gorgeous, what more do you want? :D
The fabric is a thin cotton with a floral print that I bought way too much of for another (maxi-) summer dress that didn't happen and so I used the fabric to mock up a top out of my usual bodice-block and then cut off the shoulders at a point where I was sure my strapless bra wouldn't show. I don't remember why I didn't (flat-)line the bodice, but knowing me I'd say a mixture of laziness and the lack of a proper white fabric. All of that combined with impatience (I didn't doublecheck the fit on my dressform) led to some weird wrinkling across the chest when I put in the boning (cable-ties for the win!). Not feeling like taking the thing apart again, especially since I had put in the zipper by hand, it disappeared into a box until this summer when I took it to my parents', where my dressform is. When I told my mother of my plight, she suggested simply pleating the excess fabric "away" and after some trying (first on the dressform, then on me) I found a way that not only reduced the wrinkling considerably, but also gives some nice detailing to the bodice, so I call that a win!

Pleating detail. I promise, the dress wrinkles a lot less on my squishy, non-standardized body than it does on my hard dressform!
Since the dress is meant for dancing and I had a whole lot of fabric (and still do), I made a full circle skirt (a decision I came to regret when it came to hemming). Oh, and of course, because it's a dress by me, it has pockets!

They've got zippers (remember, dancing!), are located on both hips and are big enough to hold my cellphone, although I'm not sure putting it in there would be the smartest idea (kinda heavy).
Both top and bottom hem of the dress are piped (because I simply love piping). And here's where it gets kinda crazy: putting up the sewing machine here is kind of a hassle, as is getting out the ironing board, plus I wouldn't be able to watch anything while sewing on the machine, so I did it by hand. All 5,20m of skirt hem. Twice, actually, since I had to fix the folded up raw edge to the skirt! But alas, that last part I couldn't have done by machine anyway (at least not invisibly) plus I don't think I could have done either step on machine for the top edge of the bodice, so I had some practice in piping and the whole process made the dress even more dear to me, so I'm gonna count that as another win ;)

Here's what the dress looked like on me at that point (sorry for the quality, it's an antique mirror). As you can see way above, I made some accessories to go with it, but I'm gona write them up in seperate posts so as not to let this one get too long ;)

Current Works in Progress

Just so you don't wonder why I'm not posting anything, here's what I'm working on right now:

• Piping a ~5m circumference full circle skirt by hand because I didn't feel like putting up the sewing machine:

 

• These doubleface mittens:

•  And, to knit something other than doubleface for a change, I'm starting a blanket with this pattern:

I also recently finished some things:

• Socks!!! I've been knitting for years, but this is my first ever pair of socks!

• And, of course, more doubleface blocks:

I'll make another post once any of the above is finished, I promise ;)