Amend: Vest Top Straps

I have a vest top that has ridiculously long straps. This is a really quick Anend, but despite that, the top has been sitting in my sewing box for about four years!

First, I unpicked one of the straps from the back of the main top.

Then I measured 2.5 inches from the end, which was how much I needed to shorten it by. I cut these spare inches off.

I then used white thread to sew the newly shortened straps back on to where they had originally been attached.

Repeat this process with the second  strap et voilà!

Make: Aldershot Booties

Earlier this year, I made a whole rainbow of baby booties for a charity sale at work. It seems my handiwork did not go unappreciated, as I had a request for some baby booties...in a football strip!

It turns out that while "big shots" like Arsenal may already provide appropriate-coloured clothing for their smaller supporters, the epic* Aldershot Town FC do not yet cater for their discerning newborn supporters.

Well... Time to address this!

Too cute!

*this according to my dad - I know less about UK football teams than I do about tidal patterns in the San Francisco Bay Area...

Amend: Green Dress

I bought this dress from H&M - doing my usual thing, of finding something I like and that **mostly** fit me...

The bit that didn't fit well was... The bust! It needed some darts in the side, to stop it gaping at the armhole.

As this dress had a lining, I would need to put darts in both the outer layer and the lining. I put two diamond-shaped darts on the inside, tacked them, tried it, then machined them.

It was a bit haphazardly done, but fortunately not too difficult to get them in the same position on either side.

M

And I'm very pleased with the finished product! It fits so much better with darts.

After a quick press, it was ready to wear!

You know you live with a crafter when...

Unless they have a dedicated crafty room (jealous much!), I find that crafters are often less than subtle in the distribution of arty artefacts.

You know you live with a crafter when...

...this is your living room:

...this is your sideboard:

...this is your dining room:

I can only say to my Boyf, that I am grateful for your patience. And please let me have a craft room - I PROMISE that if I did, it wouldn't still spill out into the rest of the house. Honest...

Make: Corset (1)

I decided to undertake a Contour Cutting workshop at The Fashion Box, where I did my make-a-dress-in-a-day course back in December. The idea was to create a structured garment that closely followed the contours of a body - in this case, a dress-making dummy.

If you have an adjustable dress-making dummy, then you would tweak the measurements until it was the size of your model (or yourself, if it’s a personal project!) This allows you to make a pattern that is 100% specifically designed for that body shape.

 

The first step was to play with something called “draping tape”, using it to “draw” the shape of the corset onto the dummy. There are a few rules for this – every section must be able to be cut from a flat piece of fabric, and you have to go over the fullest part of the bust, in order to cater for curves. Other than that, you can pretty much be as imaginative as you like!

Assembling all the different pieces will be tricky, as they are often very similar in shape. To assist, label each piece with numbers (working round the body) or in their relation to the position on the corset (e.g. top cup, inner/side cup)

 

Next step is to use iron-on interfacing to cut out each pattern piece from the dummy. This is the time to make sure that each piece will actually sit flat, and can be cut from a flat piece of fabric. You draw around the edge of each piece in turn, add lines for notches (which help identify which pieces fit together), add a grain line (down the body) and include the numbered labels for each piece.

Iron the interfacing onto pattern paper, lining up your grain-line arrows with the markings on the paper (in this case, it really did help to have real pattern paper, not just newspaper!)

Add a seam allowance – for normal seams (in this case, around the bust) it was a 1cm seam allowance, but for the vertical seams where the boning will go, it was a 1.5cm seam allowance that needed adding.

Cut out each pattern piece along the outer-most line. These paper pieces are what you need to cut out the fabric!

 

A corset will need two of each piece, so when cutting out the pattern pieces, it’s best to fold the fabric (right sides together) and you can pin and cut them out two at a time. First glimpse of my fabric - bright blue duchess satin!

For sturdy corsets, you need to create a “strength layer” – this is a Ronseal term, that just makes the corset stronger, and eliminates stretch. This is important, as it is the fabric which does the work of cinching everything in. We used an iron-on fusible  layer of fabric, to make the corset much sturdier – basically, fancy interfacing – which was ironed to the wrong side of the outer fabric.

 

Once you have all your pieces cut out, it’s a good idea to lay them out in order, to try and avoid confusion over order or grain direction.

 

Now, time for some sewing! It had to come round eventually.

 

Starting with the middle of the corset (in this case, pieces labelled #1), sew the vertical seams, keeping to a 1.5cm seam allowance and easing any curves into each other. Pinning isn’t really going to work here, as you will be constantly realigning the pieces as you sew them. I guess tacking **might** work, but I hate tacking, so I rarely recommend it! Iron each seam flat as you go.

Don’t forget to check the fit! It’s at this stage that you can make adjustments to the form, taking in seams a bit more where needed.

 

The next step is to create channels for the boning to sit inside. I used pale blue satin bias binding for this. After ironing the binding out flat, each piece was straight-stitched to the seam allowance at each vertical point.

Now the tricky job of sewing the cups in... This was a Major. Faff. Not only are you sewing a convex shape into a concave shape, there’s also the question of lining up the vertical seams at the bottom of each cup, and then also getting the seam for the “top cup” into matching positions on left and right.

Trimming the seam allowance and some hefty ironing was then required to eliminate “square boob” – but I think the final result works quite well?

I had some supportive cups to sew into the corset too, to help with the structure and support required.

 

Then I cut pieces of 12mm Rigilene boning to fit inside each vertical boning channel. These should be about 1cm shorter than the length of each channel, to allow for the top and bottom seams.

What should then happen is that you use lining fabric and repeat the cutting-out-and-sewing-together bit, giving you (essentially) two identical corset-shaped articles (one in lining fabric, one in the sturdy, boned outer). These are then sewn together along the top edge, a line of stay-stitching is used to hold it down, and you (hand-)sew the bottom up. But that’s something for another day – this is as much as I got done in 7hrs!

I’ll finish it later on a future post...

Make: Little Red Dress

I love to sit and doodle dress designs, and since I got an overlocker, I'd been dying to try it out on something, so I decided to turn a doodle into reality. I wanted a summer dress with a full skirt, and straps thick enough to hide bra straps.

I started with the skirt. I cut out four rectangular panels (same size as a n Evening Standard, as that was my pattern piece!) and four triangles.

The triangles would form "godets" in the skirt, adding volume and boosting the swishiness factor. They are inserted between the rectangles.

The fabric is the same I used on my curtain-making last year, and it frays quite a lot. I used the overlocker to oversew all the raw edges inside the skirt. This was my first time using the overlocker, so it took me a while (c.2hrs!) to get it thread up properly with the right tension.

Once all the pieces were together, I had to deal with the uneven bottom edge (think Pythagoras and hypotenuses...) but after that, the skirt was pretty much complete. Anything non-fitted is pretty much always easier to put together.

As such, the rest of the blog is pretty much dedicated to the fitted bodice of the dress.

I knew I wanted a pleated, decorative waistband, so I cut a rectangle that was taller than the final band would be, and then pinned it, ironed it and sewed it into pleated horizontal lines. I then overlocked all four edges. Because overlocking is cool.

I used an existing dress with a similarly shaped bodice and traced round the parts onto my "pattern paper" - yes, it does look a lot like newspaper... I dedicate most of my pattern pieces to London's free papers.

Then I cut out enough of these for the outer and lining of the bodice - two of the large pieces, and four of each of the smaller ones. You could use a different colour or type of fabric for the lining, if you wanted, but I had enough red fabric to do it all in the same colour.

Stage 1 of bodice assembly was to stop the edges from fraying... More overlocking action required! I had the hang of it better by now, so this was thankfully much neater and quicker.

First, I straight-stitched the central piece to the sides. In the above picture, that is the lined-up, overlocked edges. This involved carefully easing the pieces together, especially around the curves. Sewing curves isn't quite as simple as straight lines, but a good press afterwards really helps smooth out the seams. You do this for the outer and lining pieces, too.

I made the straps next. I cut two long, thin rectangles of red fabric. First, I straight-stitched then overlocked the long edge. Then I turned it the other way out (so the seam was on the inside) before ironing it flat. Then I added some edge stitching and decorative centre stitching.

Here's the Before and the After versions...

I lined up the top of the bodices for the outer and lining, and pinned the straps into place between the two pieces.

This is where we're at with all the different pieces of the bodice...

I stitched the neckline's of the outer and lining together next, and the attached the waistband to the outer piece. Turned out the right way and given a good press, it's starting to look like a real top!

This is the front of the bodice complete. The back was going to be made of two side panels, and a central piece of stretchy stocking done with shirring elastic (so it wouldn't need a zip).

I attached the side panels next, sewing them all together on their short edges, to make each side into one three-piece long, thin line, before sewing that to the main bodice. That's quite a clumsy description, and I didn't really take any photos of that part either, so all I have to show is the inside of the bodice once the side pieces had been attached and the seams overlocked. I do enjoy the neat symmetry...

This is what it looks like when turned the right way out (and pressed, of course!)

Now for the shirred elastic back! Smocking always takes a lot of time and patience, but at least with shirring elastic, it's fairly pain free, even if it is time costly.

I used shirring elastic in a few of my previous projects, to create waistbands. It's a great way of creating a "fitted" garment, without needing to put in a zip, or measure everything super-precisely. Or if you're the kind of person whose body shape changes, this has a degree of flexibility in fit.

First, you take a flat panel that is say... Twice the width that you want the final piece to be? Ish. Straight-stitch across the top like a hem, to create both a neat top edge, and also a channel through the which you will later feed some elastic.

Wind shirring elastic by hand onto your bobbin. Don't pull it too tight when doing this. Thread your top thread with thread that matches your fabric (yes, three "threads" in one sentence, but it does make sense...!)

Starting at one end of the piece of fabric, sew straight lines across the fabric. You have to pull it tight as you go, stretching out the stitching you've already sewn.

Keep going until you have done the whole piece! Mine involved about 38 horizontal lines of stitching!

Feed elastic into the top channel, cut it to length and sew down at the edges. I used the overlocker to trim all the edges of the elastic and thread ends in one go.

Then attach this back piece to the rest of the bodice by straight-stitching down the sides. Bring the straps over and sew them down.

I needed to add some last-minute darts on the front, to improve the fit around the bust.

The top of the skirt was (purposely!) bigger than the bottom of the bodice. This was so I could make it pleated. To attach the skirt, I sewed two lines of stitching around the top of the skirt, to create elasticated pleats. To make sure it was evenly spread around the bodice, I then pinned the skirt to the bodice at the sides, then middle of the front and back, then halfway between each of those points. This created eight even divisions of skirt around the bodice. I then straight-stitched this around, making sure to stretch out across the shirred elastic back! Then I attempted a blind hem on the bottom edge, which wasn't 100% invisible but...meh.

And here is the final dress!

I'm particularly pleased with the fitted bodice!

It took me an entire weekend to make this dress, but I am really pleased with the result! I'd like to experiment with different necklines and maybe a circle skirt next. But for now, I'm just going to swoosh around in this one!