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
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