And so on to the mock up for the dress. made using a double and a king size quilt from a charity shop.

Both priced at £5.99 each. I took them apart ready to work on.

As my friend has a 2 size different I did not want to cut out the pattern. So I cut around the pieces for the bodice and photocopied them on my printer and taped them together.

First mock up bodice, the bust part fit but the waist did not. Second part of boice we got the waist to fit but it was a tad to big around the top part. On the third mock up I got the correct fitting. So making the skirt part was easy.

The mock up half hemmed.

I have learnt alot from this project.
Lining a dress.
Fitting issues.
Fitting a zip in the side of a dress that fits under the bodice band.
Lapped zip. (this was my third ever zip. the first was in a bag, went well. The second on a skirt, went horribly wrong.)
Attaching a skirt to a bodice. (my other dresses were all one piece, see here, here and here. )

Just I short post as I have started my next course. The dress is now finished I will post more later when I have the photographs sorted.

Happy weekend everyone, Sew Vala. x

I have been asked....?

What do you do when, or more likely in my case if, a friend asks you to make them something.

I know many bloggers swear never to do this. But for me I jumped at the chance, even though it is for a very special event.

My friends' only child is getting married. Now I can almost here you screaming at your computer "No this is a very special day, and its the mother of the groom." But hear me out please.

She is on an extremely tight buget and has been searching for months to find a dress. Coming across a problem that most of us do with store clothes, one size on top another size below. She has seen everything that I have made so she is aware of my skill level. Is she mad, lovely, generous, forgiving, we will find out later and hopefully she is all of them.

Ok so what are the benefits for me out of this you may be wondering. Firstly I will be learning alot, pattern grading, fitting, lots and lots off new techniques. I rarely if ever, stray from the pattern, unless it is shortening a pattern for me. I think I needed to shorten my plain pattern dress by 18 inches and it was still below the knee lenght. And yes a mock will be made of everything to check how we are getting on. She was prepared for lots of fittings and prodding and poking. See I knew I needed a friend to practice all that on first.

Here are the patterns she chose

Burda 7387. The bolero jacket. My first time working with Burda patterns too.

And Vogue 2902. I must admit I was rather daunted when she picked this dress. I read the reviews on sew direct and wondered 'what have I got myself into'.

And how are we getting along, so far so good. I will leave the details for my next post when I will share the bolero and then later the dress.

Oh by the way she has chosen a lovely cotton black with white poka dots fabric. Soft but crisp, should drape really nicely.

So your first reflections,
who is the maddest her for asking me or
me for offering?

And what would you do? Have you ever fitted an outfit for someone and how did the first time go (pardon the expression, )?

Love to all Vala x  

   

My second item of clothing, finally.

Well here it is ladies (and gentlemen) finally i have made a piece of clothing. Well sort of, it is more of a re-fashion perhaps.

From this a charity shop buy, I loved the bottom half of the dress, it has a net underskirt attached to help keep the fullness of the skirt but I personally am not comfortable wearing strappless tops.

And this a much loved Monsoon dress that no longer can be zipped over my hips.

However the top part of the dress still fits.

I wanted to revamp the colour as I thought the pale blue did not quite go with the black. I used dylon burlesque red to create purple

As you may remember from yesterday's blog, which can be found here,  I also dyed my hand in the process. Yep its still purple, I am begining to think its perminant.

Ok, so I cut off the top of the black dress. I then sewed it to the inside of the purple dress. Unpicked the bottom section of the zip on the purple dress and cut off all the fabric below the now attached
black dress. I added a satin ribbon to cover where the two dresses meet and then sewed the lower section of the zip to the black skirt.

It wasn't all plain sailing I had to unpick and sew the satin ribbon twice as I had missed a section of about 4cm right at the front. And the zip I also sewed twice first by hand but I have never used an invisible zip before and I stitched to close so that when the zip was pulled it caught on the stitches. So I then machine sewed the zip into place and unpicked the handstitching.

It's still not perfect but I don't know how to recify this problem. My first thought was to make a detachable bow to cover but then I figured when I sat down it would come off. So my second guess is make a sash that fastens in a bow at the back. But as the dress has a slight drop waist would this just add bulk over the hips. Mmmmm, sugestions please.

Anyway here is the finished project

 I am really happy in how this turned out. I hope you lovely people like it too.

Happy sewing Vala.