Monday, November 14, 2016

McCall's M6800 Review


You might not know this but Penelope is my favourite movie on earth. When I saw this pattern last year on boxing day, it reminded me of Penelope's coat and I NEEDED it. 

Fun fact: Penelope is my style idol. 

As you may have noticed my coat looks nothing like Penelope's. The reason for that is that there were no good deals on purple heavy-weight fabrics. I spent a total of $87 that day (including a lifetime supply of interfacing, black thread and white thread) so I still felt pretty good about myself. Since my fabric didn't look like the one I wanted, I decided to make it an entirely different coat by choosing view D. Now, when I make the Penelope coat, it won't look like I have become one of those moms who buy the same shirt in all the available colours. 
When starting this project, I decided to add 5cm to the length of my coat. This proved to be more problematic than initially anticipated. The skirt of the coat is shaped like a circle skirt, so when I added length, I also added width. This caused all of my pattern pieces to overlap. Luckily, I had previously decided to omit the hood, allowing me to use that space to further spread out my layout. In the end, I only had to sacrifice some of the seam allowance in my sleeves.
In all, the construction of the garment was pretty straightforward. There were no moments during which I felt the dire need to rip apart my instruction pamphlet. The only time I got the urge to dump the entire project was while slip-stitching (so about 99% of the time?). If you don't know what slip-stitching is, it is a type of hand sewing where the stitching cannot be seen on the outside or inside of the garment. I wanted my garment to look as high end as possible, so naturally I chose to slip-stitch all of the hem on the sleeves and the skirt, AND the lining (why do I hate myself?). 
Note: the hem of the coat is roughly a kilometer long.   

Another feature I incorporated to add to the expensive look were the bound button holes. This was also me trying to avoid fights with Jeremiah, my school sewing machine (yes, I named him). It required somewhat more work, but in the end Jeremiah and I were happy, and my coat looks like a million dollars! 

"Would you sew this again?" When faced with this question my immediate reaction is NO. NEVER SLIP-STITCHING AGAIN. But then I remember what could be my Penelope jacket, and I remind myself that it will be different next time because I will use this method of lining meant for people who hate hand sewing, like me. 

In the end, this project has become the pride and joy of my existence.  I am looking forward to the really cold weather to kick in, not only because I genuinely enjoy it, but also because I get to wear this coat!!

XOXO

Zahira

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Butterick B5919 Review - Vintage Dress



Today I will talk about my favourite dress I've sewn in my life!! It is a gorgeous vintage dress with an open back and fun knee length gathered skirt. The collar is a funky sort of backwards peter pan collar. If I am to be totally honest, the pattern piece for the collar looked like one of those toilet seat tissue covers, so naturally, I hesitated to sew it into my dress. However, I have no regrets because I think the collar definitely adds a certain flare to the dress.


The back of this dress is the real seller, but I decided that I want to be able to wear a bra with this dress, so some alterations were in order. All I had to do was lengthen the back pattern pieces, and keep that in mind while sewing the rest of the bodice.


The overall construction of this dress was not at all particularly complicated. By following the instructions I was able to easily finish the dress without any major seam ripping hiatuses (is that the plural?).


It got somewhat complicated when sewing the back. I realized that I could no longer use the pattern markings to match the back pieces to the side pieces. In the end, I decided to just go for it, and thankfully it worked out. Being me, I wanted the dress to looks as professional as possible, so I fully lined the dress and slip-stitched the hem, which definitely was time consuming but worth it.


I am so happy with the way this dress turned out. It is by far my favourite dress that sits in my closet. I would for sure recommend EVERYONE makes this dress. However, it is probably wise to get some sort of sewing experience before sewing this. It was definitely not hard to make, but I don't think it's first project easy.

I am planning on making view A with the sleeves from C as soon as I have some time (maybe Christmas break?). I will for sure let you know how that goes.

XOXO,

Zahira

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

Butterick 6307 - Pattern Review

Hey everyone, Miranda here!
This past year I took a textiles course at my school, and for my final project I chose to sew a classy dress and overcoat from a retro butterick pattern that my teacher had in her classroom. The pattern and the instructions themselves were not overly complicated, however I ran into several problems while sewing this ensemble.  




Firstly, the fabric that I purchased for the dress was a very thin baby pink, which meant that I had my work cut out for me. Since it was so thin, I found that I had to do two layers of lining on certain pieces, such as the bodice, and every single stitch that I made showed on the fabric so seam ripping was difficult.



With that being said, the actual construction of the dress was fairly straightforward, except for the zipper due to the several layers of lining. Overall, the dress itself took much longer than I anticipated, so I had to work quickly in order to get my over coat finished before the deadline. 



The coat did not take that long for me to complete, and I am very satisfied with the way it turned out, as I only ran into one problem on it which had to do with an iron that I left on a setting that was much too high... oops?


In the end I am very pleased with the way that my pieces look together, however if I were to make it again there would be a few changes that I would make, including reducing the neckline measurements so that it would fit me better against my chest, as well as choosing a thicker fabric. With those aside, the actual dress itself is beautiful, and I absolutely love the sleeves which have amazing dart detailing. 


Thanks for reading! Write you later,
Miranda








Monday, October 10, 2016

DIY Peplum Skirt



This is a peplum skirt that I finished last Christmas. And when I say last Christmas, I mean I completed it just 5 minutes before our big Christmas dinner. 
"Why make the post now?" one may wonder. I'm making it now because I am just about done the matching top, of course! (...almost a year later) 


To start off, I grabbed a fitted dress of similar fabric that I know I like to make the pattern for the main skirt. For the peplum, I used a regular circle skirt pattern, but cut it so the final length would be around 9". The waistband is a 5" wide rectangle the length of my waist. Keep in mind seam allowances need to be added to these measurements. 

To put it all together, I first folded the waist rectangle in half (hot dog style) and sewed the short ends together. After sewing the sides of the main skirt together, I sandwiched the peplum between the waistband and the skirt. When you sew this together, you should be sewing over 4 layers of fabric.



Finally, I hemmed everything and voila! A beautiful peplum-skirt-soon-to-be-ensemble!



Shout out to my beloved aunt who brought this beautiful fabric all the way up to Canada from Venezuela :*

 XOXO,

 Zahira

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Black Velvet Refashion


Hi everybody, Miranda here!

This month is one of my best friends birthday, and for her present every year I always have a theme. This year, I chose to base my present around her being a "Dancing Queen," as it is her 17th birthday and that song is basically every 17 year old girls national anthem (at least where we live it is).



Because of this I decided to refashion an over sized black velvet dress that I picked up at the thrift store, and turn it into a two piece ensemble that she could wear at her school formal this year. After sewing the Butterick 6307 pattern for my final project at school, this project was super easy and fun, and it only took me a few hours to complete it. 

I simply cut the dress on its waistline, hemmed the bodice into a cute crop top length, and then added a elastic waistband to the skirt, leaving the original hem alone.

I hope that she enjoys being a dancing queen in this super cute and classy velvet ensemble. The pictures here are of me wearing the two piece, however my friend is much taller than me so the skirt is a little longer on me than it is intended to be on her.


Thanks for reading! Write you later,
Miranda




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