I made a WEDDING dress!

Next in my catching up posts is the project that was taking up all my 'spare' time before Easter. I hinted at this in an earlier post:

I was making my sister's wedding dress!

no pressure or anything....

My sister, Holly, asked me if I would consider making her wedding dress probably around this time last year.  We had long discussions about styles and eventually types of fabric. I was keen to do it as long as the dress wasn't too complicated and the fabric was manageable - I didn't want to say yes and then not be able to deliver. We settled on a pattern:
 

and decided on the lace overlay of view B with the long drapes at the back of view C.

Towards the end of last summer I took her to Goldhawk Road and Soho to look at fabric, just to get an idea of what was available and what kind of thing she liked. There was much discussion about the samples that we picked - which lace looked best over which other fabric, differing tones of ivory, champagne and cappuccino, how to incorporate some features she had seen on dresses that she had tried on.... 

When she finally decided on the lace she wanted, the shop (in Goldhawk Road) had sold out.  A little bit of panic browsing in other shops didn't come up with anything else she fancied, however John Lewis turned up trumps - a beautiful embroidered silk organza in the perfect colour and half price!

I made a toile from a very cheap poly satin (£2 a metre), following the size indicated on the pattern envelope for her measurements.  It turned out to be enormous in all directions. I know pattern companies add quite a lot of ease to patterns but really...  Next I compared her measurements to mine as we are quite similar shapes. Most of her measurements were within a centimeter or two of mine, so I had a brainwave - we had not long completed paneled skirts in my pattern cutting class, so I pulled out my paneled skirt pieces, laid them on top of the pattern pieces and worked out I need to go down a couple of sizes and we'd be just right.  I started on the the dress at the beginning of February and the Wedding was in April - it didn't seem a long time but I spent every moment I could on it just to be sure I could get it  finished before Easter to the standard I wanted. I'm sure that I could have done it quicker, but the rest of my life had to be lived too!   

The rest of the post will be mostly pictures, so bear with me!

late night cutting out of main dress fabric

I had to cut out all the pieces three times - main dress fabric, the overlay and the lining - luckily I have quite a bit of floor space

making sure the overlay fabric matched on the bodice

lots of pinning...

...and hand basting of overlay to main fabric

After my sister had tried the dress on a few times I felt that it needed a bit of weight to help it hang well. My mother in law very kindly got some special hem weight cord from McCulloch and Wallis in London.

hem weights being sewn into the dress

When Holly had been looking at dress ideas she had seen one of a similar style that had layers of chiffon on the bodice to preserve modesty in that area. As this had quite a plunging neckline, she had asked me to come up with something similar.  I used two layers of a crinkly chiffon cut on the bias and of different widths. I was concerned about how to finish the edges, but on close inspection of the inspiration photo we concluded that the edges had been left raw - this is what I came up with:

bais cut chiffon strips

loop that held back drapes in place

In the run up to the wedding Holly had done the usual bride thing of losing a bit of weight, which meant on her final try on before I went on a skiing holiday (arriving home 4 days before the wedding!), I had to try and tweak the fit easily.  Luckily, the drapes at the back could be arranged in such a way that all I needed to do was add a small hook and eye at the back and no-one was any the wiser!

On the day itself, the forecast was not promising and ended up being pretty windy, wet and chilly. This meant that even in the official photos there are hardly any of Holly without warmer layers on top, making it pretty hard to see the dress:

Holly, my girls and me

lovely view of the drapes minus the cardi and fake fur bolero!

Probably the most important thing I have ever made and I'm super pleased with the way it turned out! She was a beautiful bride and I was proud to have been involved in her special day in such a special way.

The day the sun shone...

I have a lot to catch up on on here, but I am going to start with the most recent first... the amazing blogger meet-up arranged by Rachel of House of Pinheiro.

On Saturday 20th April Saturday, approximately 40 sewists descended on the entrance hall of the V&A in London. After lots of introductions we proceeded to the cafe where many more introductions were made, many coffees were drunk and a lot of chattering chattered! Rachel had arranged for a professional photographer to come and snap us all in our finery, and as we all got up to follow him outside, the cafe suddenly seemed a much quieter place.

Handmade Jane chatting in the sunshine

It was fantastic to see so many home sewn garments and very interesting to hear how people got on with different patterns.  Other peoples fabric choices always interest me, mostly because I often find it difficult to match fabrics to patterns. There were a number of Elisalex dresses out and about, which I have to say didn't grab me when I saw the pattern had been released, but the dresses looked fab in real life.

After our photo session, we were guided onto the underground and made our way to Goldhawk Road. I think one of my best bits of the day was all of us sewists pretty much filling up a whole tube carriage, chattering away nineteen to the dozen (what a strange phrase). The stunned silence from the remaining passengers as we all got off after one stop was noticeable - one doesn't chat on the tube you know!

one side of tube carriage

other side of carriage

On reaching Goldhawk Road we had a good hour and half of shopping time, during which I bought three lengths of fabric (all jersey) and admired many more, then it was  off for lunch.

bought fabric

Janene of Ooobop had arranged for us to have lunch at a Lebanese restaurant a short walk away, where again, we took over the entire place and enjoyed some pretty fab food.

Rachel explaining how lunch will work...

After lunch we had the swap to end all swaps. the restaurant had an amazing downstairs where the swap items were arranged into groups of fabrics, patterns and notions. Sew Busy Lizzy visiting from Tasmania had a huge bag of stuff from Abakhan Fabrics and Minerva Crafts had donated goody bags for us all.

preparing for the swap

I came away with three more pieces of jersey and two wovens, one being a cheese cloth-y type fabric and the other a white embroidery anglais with a sheen of gold sparkles (which you might be able to see in the photo):

sparkly fabric at bottom

 I also managed to pick up  couple of patterns:

It was so nice to catch up with people I've met before and to meet heaps of new people.  There was an ongoing discussion throughout the day on how do you greet someone you feel you know really well from their blog, when in actual fact you haven't met them before... There wasn't really an answer, but given we were all asking "is that a {insert pattern name/number}?" that seemed a pretty good opener!

Many thanks to Rachel for organizing everything - I was so exhausted, I can only imagine how she felt at the end of the day!

Photo's from the photographer  Digpal Singh are available to view here.

Rachel has a list of attendees and their blogs in her post of the day. There are quite a few that I haven't come across before so lots more reading for me!

Hello...

Hello, long time no see....

A quick post to show I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.

I did not finish the leopard tunic in time for Pretty Grievances Jungle January. It is in a heap in my sewing room waiting for a hem and a waist tie...

However I have been doing some very special sewing for my sister which I am very pleased with so far. I am about to cut out a second special item relating to the first.... and will show more in a later post.

rubbish late evening shot!

When I have finished these I have another purple Renfew to make for Eldest. She has, as predicted, grown out of her Christmas present already, but is not prepared to surrender it to Middlest until her replacement is ready! I also have my eye on a very popular top from the February Burda magazine for me.

Better crack on - I have been putting off cutting out for long enough!

Leopard Print

A little peek at what I'm working on.

Eldest chose the fabric from one of M Rosenberg fabric sales at Trumpington village hall. She didn't know what she wanted - she just liked the fabric.  I suggested a loose tunic-y type top and she seemed happy with that so I decided on the Burdastyle Anda pattern, mainly becuase I already had the pattern printed out.

I realised that the smallest size was much too big for Eldest, so had a fair crack at grading the pattern down a couple of sizes. It is a very simple pattern, I'm not sure I'd tackle anything more complicated!  I think I went down to a 34 or 32.


The pattern pieces were super long, and as we were thinking of a tunic, I must have cut off over 30cm off the pattern piece.  When it came to laying out, I realised that this shortening of the dress/tunic left me with just enough to make a top for me - yay!

 

I have gone for a Colette patterns Sorbetto, it's free and it fitted on the piece of fabric. Having made a couple of Sorbetto's last year, I decided to lower the bust point by about 2cms. I have inverted the pleat, just for a something a bit different.  I have bought some golden lace trim to possibley go around the neck, but I think less is more on this particular print! I have finished this and was planning to wear this at New Year. When I put it on, however, I felt that it made me look somewhat matronly - When I finish the tunic I will take some pictures of both tops and you can let me know what you think!
I started these both before New Year, but still have a lot to do on the tunic so hope that it will qualify for  Pretty Grievances Jungle January

FO: Purple Present Renfrew

This is a present for Eldest. She has a habit of taking a liking to most of the things that I make at the moment. She is currently still smaller than me, but it won't long before she is my size. In an effort to stave off the stealing from the wardrobe situation I made this top for her.

Another reason for this was that we bought her some jade ladies jeans a while ago that were reasonabley expensive. Part of the deal was that she could wear them, but they would be wrapped up for Christmas.  The nearer Christmas got the less happy she was with this arrangement, so in order to take the edge off her disappointment, the top was born. When I chose the fabric I very carefully put the trousers in a bag to take them with me and then left them at home... I was pretty sure it would go.  Eldest also has a number of other items of clothing that this will go with.

modelled with the jeans

I used Sewaholics Renfrew pattern in size 2 and I used the same type of fabric for this as my Renfrew, but in a different colourway. I think this fabric is double knit - I used this Christmas present to determine this. (There are several more colours in this fabric and I am sorely tempted by a beautiful petrol blue and a rather strident red.  The red might have to wait - it is just the wrong red to go with my hair colour!). The fabric is very wide and I found that Sewaholic's fabric recommendations were somewhat on the generous side. I bought 2.1m and ended up with over 1/2 a metre left.

I think that, given Eldest is growing like crazy at the moment, I really should have made it a couple of sizes bigger.  I've had this problem before when making stuff for her - you'd think I'd learn from that... this version fits perfectly, although seems a little tight under the arms to me. If she keeps growing at this current rate she will be passing it on to Middlest within a few weeks. 

slightly tight under the arm

For me, this was a super fast make - I started the day before Christmas Eve and it was all finished and wrapped before dinner on Christmas Eve - yay!

Here are a couple of detail shots:

cuffs

cowl

 Eldest has decided she doesn't want her face in the pictures anymore, hence the chopped photos!

A little bit of Christmas sewing

Happy Seasons Greetings everyone!

One of the many things I have been sewing, but not posting, was a Christmas shirt for Husband.  I made him a wearable muslin for Christmas last year which he was very pleased with., using McCalls 6044:





Whilst we were in NewZealand, we bought some material from a fabric shop in Wellington (can't remember the name now) which was obviously bought with this shirt in mind. The picture below was taken in Novemnber 2010, andthe fabric has been sitting in my stash ever since:

Over the last year Husband has been slowly losing weight and getting fitter. He is very pleased with his progress, but is finding that many of his clothes don't fit so well any more. For example, a pair of jeans that he bought in the first week back from NZ in January 2011 that were a bit snug, he can now take off without undoing them!

The same applies to the shirt I made last year. I felt it was a bit on the voluminous side when I made it, but that is generally Husbands prefered style of shirt, however, since the weight loss it is even more so. I thought it prudent to take Husband's measurements before I started and it was a good thing I did... his chest has gone from 118cms down to 111cms and his neck from 44cms to 42cms. That meant that this time I made a XL instead of a XXXL - yay! Apart from changing the size, the only other thing I did was to make the whole shirt 5cms longer. Husband has a very long back and we noticed very quickly on his other shirt, that any further versions would need to be longer.

Again, no photo's of the construction as it happened.  I only decided to make this about 2 or 3 weeks before Christmas, so for me this was a speedy make, especially as I also decided to make something for Eldest as well (more in a later post).  As I was finishing up on the shirt, Carolyn posted about a shirt she had made for her Husband, in which she referred to a tutorial on flatfelling the sleeve seam. If only she had posted a few days earlier!

I struggled to find buttons initially, but these square ones caught my eye just as I was about to leave the shop and thought they were the perfect fit:

I am very happy with this shirt. It is much better put together than the previous version. The insides look considerably nicer too. I went for the view with contrasting collar stand and cuff and happily found a perfect piece of turquoise in an old pair of trousers that I had tried to butcher in the past.
 
I thought about trying to mimic the previous version with turquoise piping down the button band, but I couldn't work it out with the material I had in the trousers, so just stuck with the collar and cuffs.  

I put one pocket on the front:
 
and finally the completed shirt, donned for the day's festivities:
 

Meanwhile I recieved this from Eldest:

She made it all by herself on a little John Lewis sewing machine that I bought for her birthday!

FO: Green for Halloween - an Autumnal Renfrew

I have made a Sewaholic Renfrew!

Possibley the last person in the "sewosphere" to tackle it, I bought the pattern some months ago, I think from The Village Haberdashery. There have been many Renfrews around but the ones that I have liked most were by ScruffyBadger, Lladybird, and Marie from A Stitching Odyssey, Karen from Did you make that? was a pattern tester as was Handemade Jane.

I have to say  - I love this top! I love the colour, the length of the sleeves, the neck, and the variations available from the the pattern. I am thinking of making the scoop neck version next, but still with the long sleeves - practical for the winter months.
 



I bought the fabric from Cally Co in Cambridge at the beginning of the year, thinking that I might make a Burdastyle Lydia. It languished in the stash for sometime, then I got to thinking about the Renfrew. I had a brief play with the pattern pieces and layouts and came to the conclusion that I needed more fabric. By this time of course, Cally Co didn't have it anymore (or not on the day I went anyway) so it languished some more!  Quite by chance I went into our new craft shop (1 year old last week) and there was my fabric - hurrah! Of course I couldn't remember how much extra fabric I needed, but knew it was less than a metre so bought 70cms - it is very wide.

As noted by other sewists, it is a quick make.  I think it took me three evenings of not giving it my full attention, which is fast for me.  I'm sure if I knuckled down and stopped reading about other people's sewing, I would be able to make it much quicker. Tasia of Sewaholic puts a lot of effort into sew-alongs and tutorials to accompany her patterns, on her blog, and she is, at the time of writing, doing a series of posts about the Renfrew.  I made it all on my sewing machine with a zigzag stitch to maintain stretch, but when I make this again I will definately try it on my overlocker. It was finished in time for Halloween, so it first outing was at our Haloween Party. 

My friend's Witches hat matched perfectly!

This was the first time we have ever made an effort for Halloween, because it is also our wedding anniversary and Husband and I are normally enjoying a lovely evening out. We all had great fun carving pumpkins and the party was a huge success - phew!

There are a few wrinkles at the top of my bust, something that ScruffyBadger noticed in her first makes.  I'm not sure what to do about this - it may well be something to do with the vest/cami I am wearing underneath.  This may also be the cause of the wrinkles at my lower back, but I know (from my pattern cutting class) that I have a sway back.

wrinkley back

With a neck this big there is great potential for silliness: