Saturday 28 January 2012

First finished piece!

This is the first finished piece I am posting here! It's not the first piece I've ever finished, that project I haven't gotten around to taking pictures of yet as it's currently hanging in my closet. I will get around to that ... eventually ... maybe next week when I'm on vacation.

For the first one I'm posting (I'm so excited!), I used Behind the Seams' DIY: Wrap Turned Scarf tutorial. I had this fabric I had originally bought to make Simplicity 1961 that was one of the very first patterns I bought. But then I found this gorgeous floral fabric with pink and green accents that I thought would look much better than the solid deep green fabric I had originally planned to use. So I had this extra fabric with no plans for it lying around, and figured why not use it for Behind the Seams' tutorial! Here's her version:





 And here's mine:
(My long-sleeved shirt is grey btw, even though it looks blue in the pictures.)


And please ignore the wrinkles, I took these pictures after having spent several hours at work sitting down. I didn't feel like ironing them out after my shift ...


And one with my cat Rupert. He deserves some credit after he helped me out while making it ... he chased the bias tape, and the measuring tape, and the fabric any time I moved it. Good thing he's cute.


I made a few alterations to the original pattern. I sewed on some extra wide single fold bias tape in bright yellow along all four edges (I love colour, and the fabric is so dark I thought it could use some brightening). I also used some normal single fold bias tape in the same bright yellow to line the arm holes cause I discovered that this fabric likes to fray. I don't know if bias tape stops fraying but I figured at least I couldn't accidentally pull a thread and have it all unfurl on me.

All in all I am very happy with it. It's longer than I was expecting, the corners end half way down my calves. But on cool days I can wear it wrapped around my shoulders to keep warm. Not as warm as something with sleeves, but every extra bit of warmth helps in winter, so it's not necessarily a bad thing. If I make it again I might also make the space between the armholes a little bigger. Maybe by an inch or so. I guess I have wide shoulders and it's a bit tight, nothing unwearable but a little small when I move certain ways. Thankfully the fabric has some stretch. I've also discovered that you can make your own bias tape, so I might make one out of a patterned fabric and make it a double fold around the edges so you see more of it.

So that's it. My first post that is actually what this blog is meant for! :)



Sunday 22 January 2012

First epic fail.

So I know I said I'd post pics of the finished projects this weekend, and I will. I'm taking those pics later this afternoon. Right now, I wanted to share my most epic mistake to date. I am trying to make One Avian Daemon's picnic dress. As I mentioned last time, I'm replacing the bodice with another to make the sleeves easier as I've never made sleeves before and apparently doing them wrong can make it next to impossible to move your arms. So unless your barbie and can't move them really anyways, it's probably better to play it safe.

However, I've had to completely trash my first attempt. I am now starting again. Here's hoping it works ... this time. The bodice pattern I followed was Vogue 8701, style B, the dress. I loved the top and with the fabric I have and the waist and skirt of the picnic dress, I thought it'd go very nicely.

I need to learn how to read instructions properly, because this is what I ended up with:


While it doesn't really look it in the photo, it is way to short to go over the girls. Granted, this is after I cut it short ... The pattern has two large darts along the bottom, and the pattern calls to cut out a large triangle to make the darts less bulky when you sew them in. So I cut out the triangles, and then couldn't get the dart to work for the life of me. I tried at least four times. So I said screw it, it's going to be shortened anyways to make space for the waist band, and cut it off right above the top corner of the dart cutout. At this length, it was way to short. Not to mention that the gathers I put in to make up for the lack of darts, didn't stick for some reason. They flattened out a bit when I sewed them in, even as I tried to guide/push them through.


Regardless of fit, there is also this problem. The above image is the bodice folded in half, showing the edge I cut. It is so far from straight it's laughable.


There is also this lovely piece of sewing error. It's the armpit. I didn't notice that the fabric had not quite made the seam and instead was sticking out and would fray horribly over time. Before I decided to just ditch this, I tried to run some thread over the frayed edges in the hopes of stopping any future fraying and camouflaging it with the green thread. Yeah. Didn't work. I know.


But, I didn't want to take out the arms and redo them cause they had already caused me strife. They were just a tad to small, so I added in a patch. But because the sleeves are lined, I had to make a full circle of fabric, and because I didn't want the seams on the outside, I had to hand sew in a part of it. This picture is from before I realized how to make the hand sewn stitches invisible. And it happens to be on the part of the arm you can see...






Last but not least, there is this. Where the arm and the back piece attach. That one little jut of fabric. It's already got many layers in it, so folding it down is difficult, let alone sewing it down. I didn't want to see the stitches on the outside, so I tried sewing it to the lining only. I underestimated how hard that would be!

So those are the numerous errors on the bodice that made me decide to throw it out and start anew. Looking at the pattern, it calls for wool or knit. I was using cotton. Probably not the greatest idea. I should have looked at that first. It probably caused un-needed heartache, along with my own personal brand of sewing genius. So, this time I'm going to copy a bodice that uses cotton instead and hope to hell it goes more smoothly. I only have so much fabric to play with. These are the three I'm debating between:




They're all beautiful, and with the bright green fabric, they'd all be summery. For the Simplicity pattern, I'd follow C, the sweetheart neckline with the short sleeves. For McCall's, I'd probably follow D, E, or F as they're basically the same. I'll probably decide sometime soon so I can get the dress finished!

Here's hoping this time around works a whole lot better than the first.

Thursday 19 January 2012

Technology fail.

So my internet died. A very patchy slow death. It was spotty for a day or two. It only worked for a few minutes before cutting out and restarting. Then it just called it quits and hit the dust. Nothing. At all. I didn't think I used the internet that much till I didn't have it. I finally got it fixed last night, or I should say my amazing totally awesome boyfriend who is good with technology fixed it for me. <3  Thank you honey!

Either way, I spent half the day yesterday and have a few hours today to sew. I'm working on One Avian Daemon's picnic dress. I'm changing it a bit, mainly cause I've never sewn sleeves before and she says to err on the side of caution if unfamiliar with doing sleeves as doing them wrong will make the dress unwearable. I'm following a pattern I picked up during the 5.99$ Vogue sale at Fabricville, for the sleeves and bodice. I think it'll turn out nice. Hopefully anyways! I'm keeping my fingers crossed just in case.

I'm planning on getting the amazing totally awesome boyfriend who is good with technology to help me photograph what I've made so far this weekend so I can post the finished product here.

Monday 16 January 2012

The real first post. And becoming a master seamstress.

I am so excited to start this blog! I got a sewing machine for Christmas from my amazing parents, and have been on a sewing frenzy ever since. Granted, I'm very VERY new to this so I'm making a LOT of mistakes and have to spend ages undoing them. So although it's been almost a month now, I've got one finished item and two yet-to-be-finished things to show for it: a pair of satin pillowcases, an almost finished kaftan top, and a previously-finished-but-now-fixing-the-mistakes maxi dress. So a pretty good start to my mission for the next year! My new year's resolution for 2012, to make one item a week! Ambitious? Yes. But that's the best part. It's going to force me to master the basics, and learn new things as I go along and (hopefully) become a master seamstress.

I have been raiding Fabricville, both locations in HRM, pretty much weekly. Let's just say, the lovely and so very helpful staff are probably starting to get sick of my constant questions and non stop raiding of the clearance section. It's hard to pay 16+ dollars on a meter of fabric when there are some equally gorgeous ones for 2$! Although they are having their clearance sale until the end of the month, and a lot of regularly priced items are 50-75% off, or buy 1 meter and get 2 free, so I have been 'splurging' on a few fabrics. I've also gone raiding the pattern bins. Right now, Vogue patterns are 5.99 each so I picked up these 6 babies:

Between the awesome patterns and the even awesomer fabrics, I will have some beautiful new clothes at the end of this year! I also managed to score some iron on tags from today's teambuy: 100 iron on tags for 7$!


I also ordered some 2.99 Butterick patterns from sewingpatterns.com. I've never used them before (duh, just started this whole sewing thing), so hopefully they ship well. It was pretty cheap shipping, considering I'm in Canada and usually get ripped off on shipping when all it really has to do is cross the border north.  

Anyways, I always love looking at the fabrics various other bloggers have in their stash or have used, so here are some of mine! As I was taking out my fabric to photograph, I realized there was a much better storage solution than the under the bed basket I was using. Well-organized things make me very happy. Re-organizing is sadly, one of my favourite things to do. So I jumped at the chance to re-organize my fabric stash! So here is a much better shot of my new organization AND the fabric. All in one!


I still have several I have to wash before it can join the others on the shelf, including this adorable fleece I just picked up today that has giant pandas on it. Cute!

Tomorrow I'll post a few pics of the satin pillowcases I've finished, and once I finish the kaftan top and fixing the maxi-dress I'll make another post.

Until then!


Sunday 15 January 2012

Amazing First Post!!

This is a test post.

Check out this awesome site: Wonderful world of stuff

And that's all for now :)