lizzardtears

Thursday, September 19, 2024

Rose dress

A while ago I took a memoir writing class and while it was interesting it was not really my thing. The course was ten weeks long and at the end of it everyone in the class did a public reading. (which was way out of my comfort zone. I will tell you that.) One of the things the class was instructed on for this public reading was “to dress your best.” so of course in my mind that means I need a new dress.

So I went home and checked out my stash and decided on making a dress using hollywood pattern #1154 as the main part of the dress but altering it to have cap sleeves which came from McCall’s pattern #4549 and were lengthened a bit. The fabric I had decided on is a stretch fabric and the pattern is for non stretch.I wasn’t sure how this would work out but I thought I could at least give it a try. I bought this pattern back in 2017 because it has a personal story involving a dress someone made my grandmother when she was thirteen. I was going to make this dress back in 2017, but stuff and not being able to find the right fabric and blah blah blah, I still have to make that version but that is still for a later date. Back to this dress. Since 2017 I have gone up a few sizes which was intentional but also means this pattern is now too small for me, but being that I was making this out of a stretchy fabric I decided to take the gamble and just cut it to size.

When I sew with knits I sew the seams using only my overlock lock machine, and that stitch is ⅜” wide and with all the seams on a princess cut dress I thought it would probably add the amount I needed, and it did. The dress was perfect. I have always loved this rose fabric, it stretches a little but not a lot so it's fairly stable. I lined it with a cream knit fabric, and since the dress has a stretch to it I opted to leave out the buttons on the side. I had thought about a zipper but it was not necessary. In the end I thought it was such a cute dress, it was fairly easy to make and I felt so cute as I read my story about seeing the northern lights as a small child. (I didn’t wear the hat at the reading just for the pictures)

The reading was a success. I had a good time and felt so proud to do something that made me so nervous like public reading, and wearing the dress actually did help to boost my confidence. Is a public reading something I will do again? Probably not, but I will wear the dress again, and again.

Monday, June 3, 2024

Mermaid dress

I wanted a fancy dress to welcome my next decade of life. I feel like humans should spend more time embracing aging as opposed to the negativity that goes along with it especially towards women. If you stop and think about it, if you don't age then you stop living, and what kind of life is that?

I was hoping to draft this dress somewhat on my own with franken-patterning, but that didn’t go so well. After hours of frustration I realized I needed to give up that idea and look for a ready-made pattern. By this point it was 17 days till the big day. I really liked Vogue Pattern V2931 but I was strapped for time and would have to order it, so I looked for and found a pdf pattern to buy. It wasn't perfect but should have worked. I printed it and was sorely disappointed. The pattern was lacking directions. The tiny bit it had was illegible English probably written using a very poor translator. With pieces that didn’t match the measurements provided with the pattern. I was not happy. I decided I just needed to cut my losses and buy the Vogue pattern. I know Vogue patterns are truly tested and work. By this time I had lost a full day. Fortunately I realized the first pattern was deficient before I cut my precious fabric! And so came the waiting game that comes with shipping. Finally the pattern arrived with 11 days to make a masterpiece.

Oh how I wanted to call out of work and be like “but I have this dress that I need to be sewing!!.” ha! like that would have gone over very well. I worked on the dress late every night and spent my weekends obsessing over the dress, and believe me I was obsessing. I had plenty of the taffeta but was very limited on the sequin fabric. The sequin fabric was a train cut off someone's dress some years back that I was able to snatch up, the crinoline was a cut off from a different dress and someone gave me the 8 yards of taffeta and I had the cute little fish decal , I ended up just having to buy thread, and some lining fabric.

The pattern was fairly straight forward. It has a lot of pieces so it took a long time to cut and sew. I did change up the bust since I wasn’t wanting a bow front. The pattern says to do the fashion fabric first but I thought it would be better to start out sewing the lining in case I had fit issues to figure out. I had a little bit of trouble with the structure piece because I tried to do some redesign which didn’t work and was a waste of time. Eventually I got it right even if it put me behind.

Finally I got to cutting out the taffeta which is always nerve racking. Especially since taffeta tends to be directional due to the sheen. I spent a lot of time placing the pattern pieces and figured a better way to cut it than the pattern suggested, I swear pattern makers waste more fabric on their cutting layouts. I ended up having two yards left over! Another thing I tried to do was a curly hem but the tulle I had wasn’t the right kind and it turned it instead of doing the cool flippy out thing. I attached that to the dress before discovering the problem though, and had to cut the hem off. I did learn though that you need a heavier tulle for that type of hem.

I serged the seams on the lining but I didn’t want to do that on the taffeta since taffeta is temperamental and things like serging stitches leave permanent marks on the outside of the fabric once the seams are pressed. I did french seams on the taffeta seams which take longer but look really nice. I ended up staying up till midnight the day before my birthday and still not finishing. I could tell though it was time to stop, my machine was throwing a fit and in my fatigued state (I’d been up since 5am that morning and worked a full shift) I decided it would go better if I got some sleep. I was back working on the dress by 7am. I finally finished around noon which was perfect. I was able to grab lunch before heading out for my photoshoot. I seriously wasn’t sure I was going to finish the dress on time but I did it! I was so proud of myself and it was so much fun to go galavanting all through the mountains to get wonderful shots of my beautiful dress.

Thursday, November 23, 2023

Banana dress

I was shopping for some new sheets and came across a set of banana sheets that screamed I need to be made into a dress! And so I ended up buying a queen size set since I wasn’t sure how much fabric I would need for a dress or what the dress I wanted to make would look like. I had thought about making a maxi length but then decided a shorter length would be easier to wear. Even though I could have made this dress with the twin sheet set I was glad I got the queen because I also made myself some PJ pants and those are so much fun!

Once I opened the sheets up and checked the drap I decided I wanted a simple easy to wear dress and started looking through my patterns. Of course nothing seemed right. So I decided I needed to just improvise.

I knew I wanted a twirly skirt but not quite a full circle skirt and decided on making it a ¾ skirt, I figured I could attach it whatever bodice struck my fancy and chose a few from my pattern stash that might work finally I decided on McCall’s #4549. The only problem with this bodice is it's a short bodice but I liked the square neck and it's the only pattern I have with a square neck so I opted to lengthen the bodice.

I had done this before on this pattern when I made a dress for my sister last year. The dress I was making this time though didn’t exactly lend well to the lengthening of the bodice. The dress I made for my sister had a straight panel skirt that was gathered onto the bodice which worked really well on her dress but the ¾ skirt drapes differently plus I’m a little taller with a longer torso so attaching the ¾ skirt on this bodice looked awkward and I ended up staring at the dress hanging on me for a while before deciding the problem was it needed darts. It was amazing the transformation that adding the darts at the waist did for the drape of the dress. And of course I had to add some amazing pockets, because what dress is complete without pockets big enough to hold all the necessities! I think it would also be really cute to wear a crinoline so I will have to do that at some point. In the end I love this dress. It's so easy to wear and it feels casual and fun at the same time.

Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Gold dress.

So it's been a while since I blogged. This year has been a bit strange, and I have been working through some things, but every once in a while I do decide I want to sit down and sew. What I have not been doing much of though is taking the time to do photos of what I make. I did however take the time to get some pictures of my Halloween costume!

This year I attended an event that was 1980’s fashion themed. When I first heard what the theme was I think I actually moaned. 1980’s is not really my style and I know very little about the time period, so I decided to think about what things I did like about the 1980's. I ran through a few ideas in my head before settling on Vanna White. When I was a child I wanted to be Vanna, I wanted to wear a new pretty dress everyday and turn letters and everything about Vanna was just so glamorous to a little kid. I mean seriously a new fancy dress everyday! Not to mention between Wheel of Fortune and Sesame street I was reading by the time I was four. So yes I have fondness for the show which was airing all the way back in the 1980’s and is still on today. And thus began my search online for dresses Vanna wore in the 1980’s. I chose a few I liked, saved the pictures then checked out my fabric stash. Ultimately I ended up choosing the gold dress because I had fabric for it.

The fabric was not actually from my fabric stash though, It was a tablecloth. Yep I am wearing a tablecloth! the tablecloth is from my sister's wedding several years back. I figured we would never use it again, its been sitting there for years untouched and it was the perfect color so it was time to transform the tablecloth into a dress.

Turning it into the dress was not quite as easy as I hoped it would be though. This was mostly because I was being stubborn about not putting any money into the dress,(I had to buy the shoes and didn't want to spend anymore on a costume). I don’t have a one shouldered dress pattern, so I was determined to save money and draft it myself. This turned out to be a little trickier than I had anticipated. And took a lot of sewing, trying on, tearing apart, resewing, pinning, and more tearing apart. I did all this on the lining fabric as I figured it wouldn’t matter that much if the lining looked a bit worn out, no one was going to see it. After several attempts and redos plus crying a few tears I finally had the fit I wanted and was able to cut the fashion fabric. Once I had the fashion fabric it went fairly smoothly.

I had to do two more fittings but that was easy alterations, nothing major. I also had to figure out how to make the sleeve ruffle since I needed it to stand up but not be overly stiff. I had thought about interfacing, but thought that might be to much and decided on some crinoline and that worked fairly well. For the skirt part I used Vogue pattern #1189 from the 1980’s, and that part went really fast comparatively speaking with the rest of the dress.

The Bodice has two linings, one is a structure lining which I interfaced each piece to give the dress stability, the other is just a normal lining. I added boning to also help with stability. It zips in the back and I actually had a gold colored zipper in my stash which I was pretty excited about, because it would match so perfectly. I was a little disappointed that I accidentally put the sleeve on the opposite side of the dress Vanna wore, but that's the trouble with working with fabrics that have no right and wrong side. In the end though I was really proud of the dress I made and I think it turned out really pretty.
I also made myself an oversized scrunchie, to match, because what is more 1980’s than that?
I had thought about wearing a blonde wig to more embrace the Vanna-ness, but decided I would rather be comfortable and it was all about the dress anyway, so I went with my natural hair. And for a little extra fun bonus and because I had a little extra time I dressed my kitties up as letters from the letter board. And I will say it is not easy to take pictures of three cats standing in an assigned order while using the self timer on the camera so I could be in the photo as well. But here we are. Ayla as the letter C, Astra as the letter A, B.W. as an unturned letter (in case you can't tell she is going to be the letter T), and myself as a brunette version of Vanna White. I had fun dressing up the cats and fun dressing myself up, and I had fun at the event as well. all in all it was a rather fun Halloween.

P.S If you want to see a picture of Vanna’s dress that I copied; google “Vanna White 1986 gold dress” it should come up.

Thursday, January 20, 2022

Elf Jacket

I started making this jacket for another project back in september. I was trying to put together a halloween costume, but was not really feeling it. It was something I did not choose and just really didn’t like, but I had been told it was the theme for what I was going to attend. I tried really hard to make myself like the idea but kept putting it off. It turned out that was a good thing because of scheduling I didn’t get to attend the halloween thing I was going to and at the last minute they changed the theme anyway so I would have felt totally stupid wearing a custume I hated. Actually I probably would have scrapped the whole thing and worn an old costume. That is how much I disliked the original theme.

What I did end up with was a white jacket ¾ of the way done. I probably would have gone ahead and finished the jacket regardless of not going to the halloween thing (without the embellishments that I had planned) but I ran into some issues with the fabric I had chosen. First I found out it was dry clean only. And how did I figure this out… I washed it. But there were no instructions on the bolt so I had no idea. I had bought the 30 yard bolt at a tag sale for $8, not even knowing it was 30 yards till I started this project. It just sat in my closet for a few years trying to tell me what it needed to be. When I started this project I went ahead and unrolled the entire bolt so I could see how much fabric it was. And I was actually pretty surprised to find out it was 30 yards. I was going to use the fabric as the liner in the jacket as well so I went ahead and cut off 9 yards and that is what I washed. When it came out of the washer I was very disappointed to see all the lovely sheen had washed away. I almost gave up then, but decided it didn't really matter that much and went ahead and cut out the pattern. I am glad I only washed the 9 yards though, if I do decide to use the 21 yards left on something I will know not to wash it first.

In any case I worked hard at getting this jacket done only to realize the fabric was much too heavy to use as the lining. The lining bagged out horribly and it looked sloppy. It was around this time I realized the scheduling issue and decided to just give up on the whole jacket. The fabric was ruined and it wouldn’t hang right. So I just left it on the mannequin for the next few months.

Now jump forward to december 3rd and I am going back and forth between wanting to dress like an elf or not for a thing I was attending. Some people were going dressed like an elf, while others were not. It was totally up to us. And one of the gals said something to me about how she expected me to dress as an elf and she was expecting something great. She was not being bossy or anything we were just joking around. But it got me thinking maybe I could turn the disaster of a jacket into something beautiful.

And so began the remake. First off I knew I had literally three weeks to get this done and no idea what I was going to do. So I started scheming that day. I still wouldn't commit to yes I was going to dress as an elf because I was scared I wouldn't have time to finish the project. And I have been struggling with sewing mentally ever since walking out of a bad situation that involved sewing last spring. I am not going to go into any of that just that it really messed with me and made me feel like I was incapable of sewing anymore. Which I hated, and I kept trying to get it back. I have struggled with several projects since then and spent a lot of crying and being upset that I couldn’t love the thing that always brought me joy, but I was also determined to get that joy back and refused to stop sewing.

I would love to say that this jacket cured me but… not quite. I struggled through this and fought with it. I tried using the same fabric to make just a facing for the hem but that still fell too heavy and caused bagging. I knew I needed something lighter weight for the lining. Like lining material but I really didn't want to put the money into something that I was unsure I was going to finish. So I finally came up with a plan. I was not going to line it. Which meant I had to tear apart the entire thing and do french seams. I love French seams. They just make everything look nice, but I also dislike french seams because they are finicky and take a long time. I much prefer to overlock seams but that doesn’t look very nice if it shows, so I spent the next week redoing the jacket while I waited for the embroidery floss I ordered to arrive. I had just enough white lining fabric on hand I could cut into bias strips and used that for facing the hem and it worked YaY! I decided to make it short sleeves instead of long because this was an indoor thing and I knew it would be hot. I also spent time online searching for clip art I could turn into the embroidery for the jacket. I printed it and pinned the paper to the jacket. I hand embroidered right on the paper then tore away the paper when I was done.

In the end I did bite off more than I could chew and simplified the design a bit by leaving off the snowflake part of the design. But by that point my poor fingers were so raw from being poked I needed a break and I actually finished the jacket two days ahead of schedule. I decided it didn;t have to be absolutely perfect just absolutely done and I was okay with the simpler pattern. I received the embroidery floss on the 9th and by the 22nd I was done. I think I did pretty well for what time I had to work in and I love the jacket. I did a good job and people loved it. my favorite thing someone told me is "you look like you stepped out of a movie." I however did not get any pictures that day. Some people took my picture but I didn't take any. So when we got snow this week I was like oh yeah I am going to do some photos! Everything else is things I had, except the skirt I borrowed from my sister.

The jacket was made using Simplicity pattern #2172. And I did find myself enjoying making some parts of this jacket, and relaxing into sewing once more. I will rediscover the love, it may take a little while but I will.

Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Cute little Vaporeon

I wanted to make a little something for one of my sister’s birthdays. I had come across this pattern a few months before her birthday. I thought it would be something she liked, and to make it all the better I had everything I needed in my stash. Actually I looked at my stash before deciding on making this. But regardless I knew it was something she would like.

Pokemon has been one of our favorite things since we were kids and it's just one of those things that I think I will always love. My siblings and I used to play pokemon and would run around in the forest pretending to catch them. We watched the show and we all played the video games as well.

I used a pattern from Choly Knight..The pattern has several of Evie’s evolutions and Evie itself. It was easy to follow the pattern and well put together. I reduced the size of the pattern so it's only 40% of the original size. I wanted something small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. This took some math and figuring. I was going to only reduce it by 50% but after running through the math I thought that would be too big and decided on 40%, which turned out just the size I wanted! I will say though working on something so small is a bit more difficult than working on the bigger sized things but I was up for the challenge and glad I made it so small, I thought it turned out so adorably cute. And she really liked it. And for a nice change I actually got to give it to her in person! It was so nice to get a chance to see her and hang out for a while. We’ve had to go back into distancing again. But seeing her was a highlight of my year.

Sunday, August 15, 2021

Koi PJ's for my niece

Definitely late on posting this one. For my niece's birthday this year I decided I wanted to make her pajamas mainly because Pajamas don’t require a lot of measurements to make. Her birthday happened to be during a covid surge in the area and we were not able to get together. This was the first year I didn’t get to celebrate with her which was of course a huge disappointment, but that didn't mean I couldn’t make her something like I have every year since she was born. Because last year I didn’t get to see her a whole lot I was unsure of what exactly she was into these days. (Still not real sure about that one, but still hoping, maybe we are getting to the end of this pandemic and can start seeing eachother again.) one thing I do know is, everybody loves pajamas! So with some help from her mom I was able to get measurements. I told them what I needed and her mom measured and texted the measurement to me.

When I saw the fabric I fell in love with it. It reminded me of a place I used to take my niece a lot when she was younger, and before the prices skyrocketed to unaffordable. This place had the most wonderful, beautiful gardens and in the gardens they had koi ponds. After spending all day walking around the gardens we would always take time to sit by the ponds and watch the koi. Some of the koi were huge! And some were tiny, and of course everything in between. It was always neat to watch the beauty of them swimming and gliding effortlessly through the water. We went there so often we could even tell the fish apart from one another. Because visiting the koi was such a good memory I thought the fabric was perfect. And the feedback I got from her was, she loved them! I used McCall's pattern #6249 which is one I have made before for myself and Struggled with a bit on the collar. This time though it went right in, so not really sure what went wrong last time. This time I was dreading it and it just worked so that was also a pleasant surprise.

The only thing that makes me a bit sad though is I don’t think I will ever get to see her wear them, she is still growing like a weed and after a while kids grow out of things. Oh well I do know she loved them and wore them and really that is what matters.