Deckchair Dress

I hope those of you who celebrate Christmas have had fun over the last few days, and that you are all finding the time and inclination for sewing.  My Christmas was good - too much cleaning and shopping for my liking, and way too little sleep or sewing, BUT it was great to catch up with relatives on both my and Mr UpSewLate's sides of the family, and quite satisfying to plan and produce a festive meal for a big group :).

Anyway, I finally have some free time so I'm going to try to blog a few of the garments I made this year that I hadn't gotten around to documenting. I'll start with this one - I'll call it the Deckchair Dress because the fabric looks better suited to a deckchair - which I showed on Instagram a while ago.

I think it looks quite good in these photos, but in real life this dress is not a success.

I bought this fabric from the Home Dec area of Lincraft, but it's extremely soft and limp.  I ironed and starched it for a very long time to get it to look relatively good for photos, but it crumples very easily, frays like mad. and stretches out as you sew seams in it. It's such a wimpy fabric that I can't really imagine it suiting any kind of home dec project - actually any project at all.  So why did I buy it?  I loved the stripes, the price was good, and the fabric in the shop had been treated with something that made it feel sturdier. Lesson learnt! Next time I hanker after striped canvas I'll look for the real thing.  

Anyway, leaving aside the fabric fail, the whole point of this dress was to have a bit of fun playing with stripes. I started with the bodice part of Vogue 8815, making sure to align the waist darts exactly with the vertical stripes. The bodice was a bit short, so I added a "belt" with the lovely blue stripes on the horizontal before adding a simple long skirt - aiming for an old fashioned look. The skirt has pleats that line up with the waist darts, and also a funny little pleat over the side seam to address the fact that when I was working out the skirt shape I forgot I have a big difference between waist and hip measurements.

This dress was incredibly easy to sew, but it took my quite a while to decide which stripes I wanted where. And even then...  well if you look closely you'll see that although I've matched the location of the central blue stripes between the bodice front and skirt front, the stripes on either side of the centre front don't match.  I cut the skirt pieces out so the stripes would match, but the skirt front and back are just rectangles, and what I've obviously done is sewn the front skirt piece on upside down :(.

And speaking of mistakes, have a look at the back view: the centre back zip is an ugly mess, there's too much length in the lower back (hello wrinkles), and there's gaping in the upper back / shoulder area. Oh well, the dress is already at the op shop and will hopefully be bought by someone who doesn't notice the issues.

Oh well, they can't all be successes, can they!

I'll be back soon with more sewing.

See you soon

- Gabrielle x

Top 5 or so of 2013 - the Misses

I'm taking part in Gillian's 2013 "Top 5" for sewing bloggers link up. It's a great opportunity to review your sewing year - hits, misses, reflections, inspirations and goals - and frankly it's also going to help me avoid sewing a bag!

Let's start with the misses - much more clearcut than the hits (as I'll explain in a separate post).

I seem to have 4 categories of sewing fails:

1. Who am I?

If the Dot Fits (polka dot pussy bow top)

Nice top, but just not my style. I wanted to like it, but when I wore it to work it felt like I was dressed up as someone else!   I probably need to donate it, but I'm not yet ready.

Colourful Sarong Dress

Oops. I haven't worn this since making it - although it might seem good for the beach, it's not really the sort of thing I wear to the beach. Or anywhere. It looks better on that I'd remembered, so I might try to give this dress another chance when the summer heatwave returns.

2. Nigel no-friends jackets

Lil' Black Jacket

And this, on the other hand, is a make that I really like, but that I can't seem to place with the rest of my wardrobe. When I made it I thought it was going to fit in brilliantly, but it never seems to go with the things I want to wear it with. Maybe I need to sew something to help it out!!

Unreasonably Unseasonal: Summer Jacket

And I like this one too! This one goes nicely with a couple of dresses that remain a bit tight... which means it too never gets a wear. Very annoying! Do I need to start planning my sewing to get outfits that work together???

3. Franken-error

My Yellow Dress is Just All Wrong

I made this dress by mashing up a couple of patterns - modern and vintage - and made a bit of a mess of it. It was initially too small, then I added some narrow strips of fabric (yes, how amateur) to widen it. Now it's too big and I haven't worn it. I absolutely adore the fabric - even though it's a bit heavy for the dress - so I'm keeping it in case my weight goes up dramatically (which has been known to happen - my personal best is 10kg gained in 10 days. Thank you thyroid. )

4. Just. Plain. Boring. 

Denim + Stripes

God this is a boring outfit - so dowdy, so bulky - yuk! I tried to wear the top a couple of times but it's just too big for me, so I gave it to my mum who has much bigger shoulders than me. The skirt is sitting in the 'refashion' pile in my sewing room awaiting lots of work. Maybe I should just donate it - there could be someone out that it works on :)

The errors have been observed, I hope I can learn from them!

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I'm sure this will be my last post before Christmas, so I just wanted to finish up by wishing you all a terrific Christmas or holiday. Have a lovely day, and remember to leave out a treat for Santa!



See you soon

- Gabrielle x