Seasonal Sew Wardrobe: Destination

The Sew Alongs and Sewing Contests Facebook group hosts regular Seasonal Sew Wardrobe challenges, and a new challenge started mid August, on the theme of  "Destinations."

I have been looking ahead recently, and realised that there is a gap in my wardrobe for dressy sort of clothes that could also be worn in an office environment.

A Purple Dress: Stashbusting Sewalong July 2016

I promise that I finished making this dress in July, as part of the Stashbusting Sewalong July theme of, you guessed it - Dresses! Although I scraped in finishing this dress on the last day of July, it took me a while to get some photos that didn't look washed out, and even longer to write this post.

Me Made May 2016 Roundup

Me Made May 2016 is an annual institution amongst home sewists, with Zoe of So Zo What Do You Know at the helm. This was my second year participating, but my pledge was the same as last year, to wear at least two me made items each day for the month of May.

Each day I wore a me made bra, and sometimes me made undies as well. That left a minimum of one me made item to wear each day. Links to all me-mades except underwear are in the round up below.

Stripe Knit Dress

Following on from how much I loved my first wrap top, half circle skirt knit dress aka Quik Knit Dress (maybe I should come up with a catchy name for my pattern?), I made another one, with a few much needed improvements. I was thinking of making the next one with a plain blue knit that's been in the stash for a few years, but The Husband thought it would look a bit boring all in one colour, so when I took the kids  to the recent sale at the Fabric Store (mentioned in this post), I came home with this striped knit.

The Pink Leopard Dress

When my daughter tells me what she wants in a new dress, I listen, usually. She has been known to come up with weird wacky ideas, but this time I think she was onto a winner. This is how Miss 6 described her newest dress to me, complete with hand gestures - straight across at the front with a halter neck, low at the back, and with a high-low skirt.

Stashbusting 2015: A Year in Review

So, another year has come to an end for the Stashbusting Sewalong.  To recap, my pledge for this year's Sewalong was

"I, Andrea, of Obsessive Creativeness, pledge to end the year with no more fabric in my personal stash than I started with"

So, I was aiming for a breakeven position with my stash. I made myself a little spreadsheet to track incoming and outgoing, and printed out some pages so I could just grab my folder and write everything down as it happened, without needing to wait until I had the computer on.

This year for stashbusting, we had guest hosts for each month, and I hosted May with the theme of lingerie. I tried my hardest to sew at least one item each month that was on theme, but for most months that had school holidays I wasn't always able to do this.

My totals for the year were

Fabric intake ........ 56.2 m
Outgoings ............ 58.49 m

Quick Knit Dress

Here's my last last-minute stash bust for the year - a fairly simple knit dress, with wrap top and half circle skirt. It is made from a knit fabric that a friend and fellow seamstress gave to me last year (I think that's when it was anyway) It used up 1.5m of stash.

Tutorial: Hemming a lined wedding dress with horsehair braid

I've altered my share of wedding dresses over the years that use horsehair braid in the hem, but have just finished my first wedding dress from scratch using it. I'm a convert. Horsehair braid, where have you been all my life? It gives a beautiful crisp finish to not only hems, but necklines too. (See Gertie's tutorial for adding horsehair braid to necklines. I followed it to put braid in the neckline of this same dress)

I only wish I had taken more notice of how the braid was sewn into the hems, and, you know, taken photos and stuff? I thought I remembered how they were done, but wasn't 100% sure, so turned to my friend Google to find an answer. Alas, the only instructions I could find either featured hand stitching the braid to the outer layer of the dress, or sewing the hem to the very edge of the braid (similar to how you would use ban-rol, without pulling it out), and either topstitching it down, or use handstitching at the top. Neither of these was the solution I was looking for.

Me Made May 2015 Round Up - Part I

May has been quite a busy month so far for me, with hosting the Stashbusting Sewalong, getting through work sewing, taking daily photos for MMM, and trying to fit in some sewing for myself. You may remember that my pledge for my inaugural Me-Made-May was to wear at least two me-made items of clothing every day during the month of May. Not such a challenge in itself, as that only equates to a bra and one other item. After looking at a few of my photos though, I decided to extend my challenge, to not wear the exact same outfit more than once during May.

The weather in Sydney during May tends to be starting the downward slide into winter. We started the month with a few rainy days, followed by a few warmer days before winter kicked into gear again. I've given you the weather highlights to go with my outfits. So far, so good. No duplicate outfits.

I have listed only the clothes for each day that I made. Where applicable, I have linked to the relevant blog post, or one that has better photos of the item. I had half this post written when I accidentally deleted the entire post (don't ask!), so I'm not sure what bra I was wearing every day, not that it really matters, so if I have just written "bra" without a link, that's why. I also decided after that incident, it might be safer to publish the first half of the post, and finish up the month after the end of May. Hence why this post is Part I.

May 1 - 5

Stashbusting Sewalong: April Theme "Vibrant Colour"!

When I started making this dress, I was looking out the window at the constant rain that Sydney had for three straight days, and kissed summer goodbye, while wondering why on earth I was making a sun dress, out of vibrant orange and yellow flowers no less. Easy. Because I bought this fabric on holidays a couple of weeks ago, specifically to make something on theme for the Stashbusting Sewalong for April. That might sound like an oxymoron, but it's souvenir sewing, so that doesn't make it stash adding, right? I will add my fabric to the "purchased" column on my spreadsheet, but I'm not really fussed if I miss out on my target for the year because of this purchase.

Alabama Chanin style dress

T'his dress has been in the planning stages for ever. Or so it feels. It's been just over a year since I finished my Alabama Chanin style shorts, and it's taken me since then to find fabric that I was happy to use for this dress. I was looking for 100% cotton stretch fabric, in two co-ordinating colours, of an equal weight with each other, that wasn't too thin. Not too much for a girl to ask for is it? When The Fabric Store was having a summer sale on knit fabrics in January, I went a little overboard with cotton knits. I only realised when I took a photo of my fabrics that they all go together really well. I bought five different coloured knits, ranging from a deep blue through to a light aqua, and a cream to round it all out.

I'm participating in Me Made May 2015!

For the first time, this year I thought I would participate in Me Made May.

I'm going to keep it pretty low key, I hope to try and take a photo of my outfits every day, but am already expecting that they will all be blurry, so I'll save them all up to show you at the end of May.

My pledge is as follows:

I, Andrea of www.obsessivecreativeness.blogspot.com.au, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I endeavour to wear at least two me-made garments each day for the duration of May 2015.

I have hesitated to participate in previous year, mainly because the weather in Sydney is so changeable during May. I have a stack more me-made clothes in my summer wardrobe than I do for winter, and it is usually getting quite chilly in May Last year, however, our summer weather decided to extend right up to the end of May, making me wonder why I hadn't signed up for Me-Made May.

So this year I decided to take the plunge. I have a few more winter clothes ready to go, and of course, I know I have a sufficient supply of bras to wear every day. I'm in! Who else is joining me?

Refashion: Beach Cover-up

I have a few sarongs that I have collected from various overseas holidays. They invariably then sit in the cupboard, never to be used again. I got the brilliant idea of using one of these sarongs to make a cover -up for my daughter to use after swimming.

I settled on this bright yellow sarong with turtles on it that I bought on my honeymoon in Hawaii. I wanted to use something with a fringe that I could put at the hem and sleeves, and my only other option in sarongs with a fringe, had the pattern running in the wrong direction.

UFO: Stripy Summer Dress

In my blog hop post,I mentioned four projects that I wanted to focus on finishing. Here is the first of them.

My husband started making this dress for me about 7 years ago. Yes, you heard right, my husband was making this for me.

Let's back up a bit. When I was studying fashion design (whilst pregnant with our first child - there's nothing like being a mature age student who's pregnant!), my husband decided that he would try his hand at a bit of sewing. He refused all my offers of help, saying that he wanted to work it all out for himself. He made me a few maternity tops (which was quite helpful, as I was up to my elbows in morning sickness and studying). He's also made himself a few pairs of pants and a shirt. In some ways it backfired on him though, as I frequently turn him away when he requests that I mend something for him. I know he's perfectly capable of doing it himself!

Back to this dress though. He decided that he wanted to make me a dress, and, using a block that we had made together to my measurements, he drafted his own pattern for this dress, to his own design.

He was doing OK til it came to finishing off a V shaped waist panel, and there it has stayed for the last 6 or 7 years. Until now!

Stashbusting May Theme: "Stretch Sewing": My Stripy Stretch Dress

This month's theme for the stashbusting sewalong is stretch sewing. Well, it happens that I have just the piece of fabric to fit the bill.

On a recent trip to the Fabric Store during the last school holidays, I was looking for some 100% cotton stretch fabric in two colours to start on my Alabama Chanin dress. Alas, I couldn't find two matching fabrics in 100% cotton in a fabric weight or colours that I liked. I was so sure that they would have the perfect fabric, so now I'm still stuck with nothing!

Stashbusting Sewalong: April theme "Colour": A Lego Friends Birthday Party

I have been working on a few things for my daughter's birthday party for a while, and realised quite by accident that it fit in with the April Stashbusting Sewalong theme of colour. I don't often manage to match my sewing to the theme of the month!

The theme of the birthday party was Lego Friends, and after coming up with all sorts of Lego themes for party favours, games and prizes, I thought that maybe we should tone it down a bit on the Lego, and pick a few key colours to stick with for everything else. I chose hot pink, cobalt blue, lime and purple. The hubby bought plastic plates, cups, tablecloths and napkins in these colours, and I set to work on some sewing.

My first idea was bunting! And lots of it. I made far too much to re-use it all in her room (but watch me try), but there was plenty to decorate the party. I actually only used two of the three lengths that I made (10 triangles each of three colours on each length). I kind of overestimated how much I would need!

Blue Knit T-Shirt Dress. Something For Me. Again.

The idea for this dress started out with the idea of making a T-shirt. I was mentally going through my stash, matching up leftover stretch fabrics with patterns I made for tops a couple of years ago. I knew I had a blue stretch fabric that would go really well as a this gathered neck shirt (below).

The original shirt

When I pulled it out to use though, I had more than enough for a dress, so rather than have leftover scraps, I re-drafted my pattern with a few centimetres of additional ease and some pockets, just because I could, and cut out a dress instead. I figured if I didn't like how it turned out I could just cut off the bottom and turn it into the shirt it was going to be at the start.

Stashbusting Sewalong: February theme "Let's Talk About Love"

For my February themed stashbust, I have once again made a dress for my daughter. Remember this dress that I made for her last February? This new dress is the first one that I have made for her since then. (I know, slack mummy). It is a twist front bodice dress with full circle skirt.

The fabric that I used I bought last year specifically to make a dress for her. I even justified it to myself as not adding to my stash because it wasn't for me. It was an absolute bargain though. From memory it was $5 per metre. Well, everything is fair game this year, and if the fabric was already in my house at the start of the year I'm counting it as stash.

Last year when I bought pattern magic, I picked out a few techniques to try ASAP. Better late than never, this is my first project using this book.

I think I told my daughter the day before that I was making something for her, and it came together quite quickly. I had the pattern drafted and dress sewn all in one day while she was at school. I didn't quite use the whole piece of fabric, but it did use up 1.4m of fabric (150cm wide!) Most of this is from the circular skirt, which I cut out in one piece. The bodice is all self lined, as the front needed to have the same fabric front and back for the twist.

Getting ready to......

Twirl!

She absolutely loves it. You'd be forgiven if you think that it looks a little large on her, that's because I made it a size bigger than she currently wears. Being near the end of summer she won't get to wear it much this season, especially now that she is at school 5 days a week wearing a uniform. I already have it earmarked to wear to her first piano concert which should be sometime in September. (But now that I've done that, my son will be needing a new shirt for his concert too!

I only noticed after I'd taken all the photos
that this lion has an Oreo perched on it's nose!
Can you see it?

Not bad for a first effort with Japanese pattern making techniques. I'm thinking of trying something like this for myself with a self stripe fabric that I have - there'll be lines going everywhere!

Made to Measure Dresses, What is Involved?

I make more dresses for others than I ever make for myself. When you sew a lot for yourself, you get used to the adjustments that you generally make on a garment to fit yourself. If this describes you, then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. To sew for someone else however, you have to take each body as it comes and fit and re-fit until the garment fits like a glove.

My last client for 2013, Gemma, agreed for me to share the process involved in making a made to measure bridesmaid dress for her.

A Dress For my Sister

Here's my first stash bust for the year. Unfortunately though, it isn't from my stash. My sister asked me late last year if I could make her a dress, copying one that she already had. She came to stay a short time later with the dress to be copied, but no fabric! At least I got to make the pattern and give the dress back before she went home again.

The Original dress