Print Charming

In the weeks leading up to Melbourne Frocktails I had grand delusions of sewing myself a whole new casual wardrobe to wear while in Melbourne - some denim culottes, a cool top, a skirt in a great print and a vintage swing jacket. Of course there wasn't time for all that sewing, but I did manage one thing on that list: a cool top which I wore all day on Saturday before the party.

I think the colours are pretty true in the above photo - I don't normally like butterflies but the flowers and lovely orange, teal and pink are right up my alley!

I bought this fabric from Tessuti's Chatswood store a couple of months ago, within about a day of seeing someone in Melbourne post their purchase of the fabric on Instagram. Instagram is just terrible for making you realise there's a fabric you need, but it can also get you on the case quickly before a fabric sells out :).  This fabric is a digital print ponti, and it came in two colourways - both sold out very quickly so unfortunately I doubt you'd still be able to get it anywhere.

I only bought about a metre as from memory it was quite expensive - I think it's an Italian fabric, and it is a beautiful quality, but I don't like spending too much on stretch fabrics for some reason! Anyway, I soon had buyer's remorse and wished I'd bought more - I would really have liked to be able to make something like Kirsty's dress.





Oh well, with my little metre it had to be a top or a skirt... I thought I'd get more wear from the fabric as a top, given I spend my weekends in jeans and weekdays in a fairly conservative office, plus the colours seemed pretty good on me when I held the fabric up against myself, so a top is what it became!

I can see in these close up shots that the top had wiggled to one side - oops :). When it's not moving off to the side the shoulders actually fit very nicely!

And what pattern is it, you ask? Well this is very boring, but for a basic top, these days I seem to be using the same pattern over and over... and that staple pattern is Vogue 8916. I've made the top pattern before both as a t-shirt (my Splat! top) and with lengthened sleeves as a sort of sweatshirt (this pink / striped top).  It's very simple, but I really like the fit - it's about a million times better than the Papercut's raglan-sleeve Undercover hood on me!


As usual I sewed a size 14 in this pattern as it runs a bit smaller than the Vogue designer patterns. I cut the body to hip length according to a bit of tape measurement work (shorter than the pattern) and lengthened the sleeves based on my arm length. The neck band is a simple addition; a rectangle of fabric folded in half lengthwise, and pinned to fit to the neckline with the excess length trimmed away at a small centre back seam.

I think I have the fabric at 90 degrees to the right way up, but the fabric stretches in both directions so this direction feels fine on. And this orientation allowed me to place the flowers and butterflies where I wanted - an orange flower with a starring role in the front, pink flowers on the shoulders, and butterflies positioned to be less noticeable on the front. I know there are butterflies up high on the back, but as I can't see them they won't creep me out :).

In terms of sewing techniques, this was dead simple - I used a straight stitch on all the seams (yes, heresy, I know, but I think a straight stitch works perfectly well on a stretch seam so long as that seam isn't under stress!) and then used the overlocker to tidy everything up. The hems are top stitched with a single line of coordinating teal straight stitching at a stitch length of 3. Easy peasy!

I've come back from Frocktails incredibly inspired to sew and blog - in terms of sewing, the denim culottes are still on my radar but they're now competing with some really fun fabrics from Darn Cheap Fabrics and a couple of Named pdf patterns I bought in their recent sale. Where to start!!! And blogging - well I still need to get photos of my frockails dress and cape (sorry, I had too much on this weekend!) but I've also got a bit of a backlog of basics to blog (maybe consolidated in a single post so I don't bore you to tears) and a new top made over a couple of evenings last week with some of that Darn Cheap Fabric...


See you soon!

- Gabrielle xx

PIA and PSA

source

Firstly for the PIA - let's get the bad news out of the way.

As you may have guessed from the photo above, this was supposed to be a post about the Sydney Sewists High Tea on Sunday.  I took heaps of photos: sewists at the table, Gail and Maria and I posing in our new frocks, tiers of food, several combinations of darling little cakes, a macaron and lemonade scones on a plate, Gail's first cup of tea whose only ingredient was hot water, Lizzie strutting her stuff at the second High Tea venue, my new DKNY dress and coat) - you can imagine it, right???

Thank you to the chief organiser, Kristy, and also to Christy, whose blog post alerted me to the get together in the first place (and it only took me about 4 weeks to RSVP, sorry Kristy). We had so much fun - cakes, champagne, great company, inspirational sewing in all directions, a pattern / fabric swap, then a second venue when the first kicked us out - that I wish I could show you some of it here.

After so much photo taking my hardworking little camera's battery needed to recharge, so I took the equally hardworking smartcard out, popped it into its reader, plugged them into the computer and started transferring photos. And... drum roll....  disaster struck. Card, reader, USB port - I don't know which is to blame. But ALL of those photos have been corrupted.  All those high tea photos, plus a couple of special birthday girl photos that I hadn't yet moved to the computer.

I'm so sorry Maria, Gail and Lizzie too that I can't email you the photos I took of you.

I've now spent hours testing demo versions of different photo recovery tools (RescuePRO, Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery, and PhotoRescue PC) and while I seem to have been able to "recover" some files using RescuePRO, they're so badly corrupted I can't see the images, which feels kind of pointless. I've messed around with file repair software too, but the results are looking hopeless - mixed up strips of photos combined with large expanses of grey - and I still can't see any of the photos I wanted to share.

-----

And now the PSA.  If you still subscribe to this blog through Google Reader, you might want to quickly look into some other options before Google Reader disappears in a few days time! If you search on Blog Readers you'll see there are a lot of options, but I've chosen to follow the herd and have signed up with BlogLovin'.  My blog subscriptions were all automatically copied over and it's been completely smooth: everything is just there :).  Bloglovin' is quite different to Google Reader in the way it shows your unread items, but it turns out I really like seeing a preview photo for each new unread post - it helps me prioritise what to read next!  

Sydney Sewing Social ...

On Saturday I went to my first Sewing Social... oh, the anticipation; I was so excited!

Here are a group of us in Tessuti's (and I forget our photographer's name, but thank you for the photos and sorry I'm so useless with names!) - quite a few people to meet, and this is not even everyone there:

Do you recognise everyone? Names and links are listed on Christy's post. And Renee I have to apologise to you too as I thought your name was Annie - sorry for calling you the wrong name. I'm really terrible with names!


I was initially kind of overwhelmed to meet all these interesting sewing voices in the flesh, so I didn't buy much at Tessuti's: just an irrestistible Liberty Tana Lawn remnant and some gorgeous embroidered blue cotton that happened to be lingering on the counter while I was being served.

I was originally thinking to make a Sorbetto with the Liberty cotton, but there's 0.85 metres of decent width which means I have the option of something more frivolous.  So I'm thinking instead of the top part of V1308, lengthened, with the front ruffle only. That's the tech drawing to the right, and I am unlikely to be able to wear a jumpsuit to work in the near future.


The blue cotton may end up becoing a pleated summery skirt :-). There's 1.5 metres - what do you think? I don't have a specific pattern in mind.


We then walked down to the Fabric Shop, where I went slightly nuts lugging heavy bolts around the shop (but it was the last day of their 50% off sale, so it wasn't an expensive kind of nuts). I bought some DKNY denim, stripey stretch cotton,silk for a dress, and some t-shirt fabric. I also bought upholstery fabric for an overdue chair fix and black jersey for an equally overdue Ninja mask. Everything except the Ninja fabric has been photographed:



That's a t-shirt and jeans, right? Probably a simple kimono sleeve t-shirt and trousers rather than jeans as it's a thin denim with no stretch. I'd like to try some interesting pockets but I don't have a pattern in mind - might have to spend some time going through my BurdaStyle magazine "collection".

These colours have come up looking more muted than they really are. The upper fabric is silk - dark blue with a gold-brown brocade-like pattern on it - for which I'm thinking along the lines of either V1122 (tech drawing on the right) or something from the 60s.


The lower fabric is a charcoal / blackcotton upholstery fabric, intended for a small chair repair job at home. Maria thought it looked good for a jacket and I agree (wish I'd bought more than 1 metre!).

And finally a nice sturdy stretch cotton, intended for some mid-length shorts. Jillian also has some of this fabric for shorts; I think she had a pattern in mind so I expect she'll get to it before I do!


When everyone had what they wanted - and had gone back for anything they'd forgotten - we ambled up to The Clock Hotel for drinks, sewing goss and wedges. Yum!

 Christy got us all wedges!

I had a smile plastered on my face all the way home :-).

Thank you Christy, I'm so looking forward to the next meetup!