Fabric stash inventory – part two

This is the second post in which I make in inventory of the fabrics in my stash. You can read the first one here.

Apart from the fabric I have a pronounced plan for I have a few fabrics that I not yet have decided what to do with.

Fabrics without a plan – wovens

This is a nice tropical weight bright blue wool fabric. I just can’t decide what to do with it because it has such a potential. I LOVE bright blues and could see this as a dress, a pant suit or even a tree piece suite. For some time I had decided to make the popular BurdaSyle 10/2012#118A cowl dress. But inspired by Marina at Frabjous Couture I reconsidered and probably want to make the cowl dress in a tweed fabric for winter instead. However, making a three or four piece base for a wardrobe capsule would have been great of yet time consuming. I believe I have about 2,5 meters but the fabric store still carry it so I might get some more to be able to make a whole collection out of it.

To match the bright blue wool fabric above I also have about one meter of this plaid fabric in which the same blue color is taken up again. This will probably be a straight skirt of some kind.

Talking about plaid fabrics I found this gorgeous green/blue plaid heavier wool fabric for a good price at a sewers expo I bought it because I have wanting to make a skirt like like this one I saw on Rachel Weisz in InStyle magazine (to the left below) quite a few years ago. It’s perfect for that. But I have more fabric than for a skirt so I have been thinking of maybe doing a jacket or cape or something like that as well. Maybe the cape from Butterick 5687, below on the right.

This is another beautiful wool in black and white with a slight sheen to it that I also got for a good price at the same sewing expo. I’ll probably make a dress for work/daytime or a skirt suite out if it.

Finally, this is another plaid wool fabric in black and white. It is actually a left over piece from a project I made in high school – a tailored jacket. I still have the jacket though I don’t use it as it was made when broader shoulders were still in. But this scrap piece is about 0,7 meters and could become a skirt or at least part of a skirt. I’ll hang on to it for a while longer.

Fabrics without a plan – knits

Hm, this is a sheer blue and white striped rayon knit fabric that I don’t know what to make of. The problem is that it is only one way stretch – in the directions of the stripes – which limits the possibilities. I used the same fabric but in purple and white for this top, which was a big mess. It made me realize I can’t make anything with a bias drape with this fabric – and be who looove bias drapes across the front of knit tops and dresses…

This is a thicker gray knit fabric with a mix of rayon, nylon and some polyester. I bought it for the Vogue 1341 Donna Karen dress, which in its RTW format has made an appearance on the TV-series Suits – there worn by the character Jessica Pearson. See below. However, after having felt the fabric some more I realized it will be too heavy for a dress like that. I might make a jacket instead.

Finally, I have these two plain cotton knits. 1,5 meter each, one in deep purple and one in mauve/rose. Might become tops or dresses for summer.

So, that is everything reviled. All the content of my fabric stash. Except from this I just have some lining and underlining fabric in a paper bag in my closet and some smaller scraps from previous projects collected in one drawer.

I don’t think my stash is overly large. But living in a small appartment with little space for storage makes even a small stash bulky. I need to keep it in control.

How are you all doing with your fabric stashes? Do you think you have too much? Or to little?

Happy sewing, everyone!

/Annika

Fabric stash inventory – part one

Tags

fabric stash, sewing

Above is my stash of fabric. It was never my intention to accumulate a large stash of fabric. However, those “now or never” opportunities when seeing a great fabric at the store tend to emerge quite frequently. Also patterns tend to inspire me to go find fabric for the next great project, even through there are other projects already in que to be executed. My fabric stash is not overly large, but it is growing and starting to slip out of control. There for I thought I would do an inventory of the fabric in my stash and make it officially in order to create accountability for myself not to buy any more fabric until at least a couple of my planed sewing projects with existing fabrics are completed.

In this post I will share my fabrics with a plan. In the next one I will share my fabrics with no definite plan.

Fabrics with a plan – knits

This is a pink rayon blend medium weight knit fabric which I bought on sale and therefore have a lot of. My plan for this fabric is to make the Vogue 1351 DKNY dress and a summer top from McCall 6752 (probably version A).

This is another pink knit fabric, but heavier and with nylon in it. From this fabric I want to do this Butterick 5672 dress, the view with a short sleeve.

I was looking for an interesting fabric for the Vogue 8825 dress and found this beautiful rayon blend blue, black and white print. I want to find a black lightweight knit fabric for a contrasting sash.

The print knit on the picture above I bought at a sewers fair and later had a hard time figuring out what to do with if. I only have about a meter or so. Then I found the Vogue 8787 pattern and thought of combining it with a black knit fabric skirt for a contrasting skirt and bodice as in view F.

Fabrics with a plan – for summer

I found this striped two-way cotton fabric at the store and just loved it for summer. I came up making a summer “suite” of it, with a pair of shorts and a jacket. For this I have chosen this seasons McCall 6756 patterns for the shorts (probably a longer legged version) and Silhouette Patterns GA’s Jacket, pattern 1913. I will use the red side for the jacket and the blue for the shorts and then add details with the contrast.

This is one of my latest purchases, a deep red cotton gabardine fabric. From this I will do another summer suite, that will hopefully work also with the separates in the striped fabrics. I will do the skirt and the jacket from Butterick 5619.

Fabrics with a plan – for winter

It is hard to see from the picture, but this is a luxurious feeling midnight blue winter wool from YSL that I will make into a shell dress with long sleeves for the winters.

This is a gray tropical wool fabric with white and yellow stripes. I will use this to make vogue 8648 dress, sleeveless, according to the methods tought in the Couture dress class at Craftsy.com.

Fabrics with a plan – the next project

These two fabrics I bought last week for a cocktail dress for a party in a couple of weeks. It is a blue pearl satin polyester and a black nylon and polyester lace which I will combine in Vogue’s 8766 pattern, view E. Hope to at least start making this dress this weekend.

So, those are the fabrics I have a more definite plan for and which I regard as queuing to me made up. In my next post I will share my other fabrics for which my plans are still open.

Hope you enjoyed.

/Annika

 

 

 

The amazing sewing community!

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the sewing community

I just wanted to pop in here and praise the amaizing international sewing community out there. Daily I enjoy following the sewing adventuers of other sewing bloggers out there and I keep finding new talented people to get inspired by. In addition, I feel overwhelmed when I in the page statistics see that I have had visitors form 65 different countries all over the world on my own blog. Who knew there even was so many countries in the world? (Well, of course I knew if I would have started counting…)

Thank you all for being a part of this community of ours! 

/Annika

Me Made Monday with some naughtyness

Today I wore my Simplicity 2145 dress to the office. I paired it with maryjane shoes a black jacket, that I had taken off.

After work I went to one of my favorite fabric stores in Stockholm, Söders Tyger. They had a special event and I was naugthy and got 3 meters of deep red cotton gabardine for a skirt and a jacket for summer. I also invested in a transparant presser foot, which I hope will be helpfull for seeing what I’m doing when I’m sewing.

Until next time

/Annika

Butterick patterns – new releases summer/fall 2013

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Butterick, sewing patterns

Butterick has some new pattern releases up on their website. I immediately fell in love with two of them.

B5917 is this cute dress with ruffles on the collar. It also comes with a short sleeve, a longer sleeve and/or with a flared skirt. But I like this view and can see it made in a tweed to wear over a long sleeved tee, shirt or sweater in the winter.

Butterick B5917

B5928 is a jacket with a drape in the fornt. The specifications calles for a woven fabric but I wonder if it could be made in a more stable knit instead.

Butterick B5928

Did you find anything you like among the new Butterick patterns?

/Annika

New Look 6097 for summer

Tags

New Look 6097, summer dress

Go figure. Instead of working on my skirt suite I made yet another jersey dress. We had a couple of days of warm weather which inspired me to make an outfit suitable for summer. I like the New Look 6097 pattern because of the wrapped bodice and the casual skirt with pockets. For me it gives a vibe of tropical glamour. I choose to make view A which have a collar and half length sleeves as it makes it more feel like a complete outfit. As the summer in Sweden is not very tropical – to say the least – sleeves will come in handy also in mid of July.

I also choose this busy animal-like print fabric from my stash. It is almost too busy for the camera to focus… Off white and brown is normally not colors I feel comfortable wearing, but the strokes of burgundy made me dare to try it.   

Below are some detail shot of the bodice, sleeves and the belt.

The sleeves have a flap from the inside to hold the edge of the sleeve up with a button. This was actually the first time I tried out the automatic buttonhole function on my Husqvarna Viking Opal sewing machine. You are supposed to be able to give the diameter of the button and then the buttonhole will be sewn automatically in accordance to that measurement. But this proved to be a challenge in stretchy knit fabrics as the fabric tended to stretch while sewing, making the buttonhole up to 5-6 mm longer. This even though I had a stable underlining to stiffen the flap. I did practice a number of times on a scrap but also had to  unpick the sewn buttonhole on the flap a couple of time before I could get it good enough.

I made the belt that goes with the dress as well even though I’m not actually sure I will be using it. However, i made the extra effort to go ti a speciallty shop for sewing notions to find a buckle with a retro feel and matching buttons.

The pattern itself doesn’t call for a lining. However, I choose to put in a lining for the bodice and the skirt in a light weight off white rayon jersey. I did this for a couple of reasons. The pattern called for a quite thin neckline facing which i feared would flip and show. I,d then rather have something more pretty than the inside of the fabric to show. I also wanted to eliminate all risks of see through, both in the bodice and the skirt. But above all I just feel it more luxurious with the extra weight and substance of a lining. This is what the lining looks like.

I made the lining for the skirt as short as I thought practical as the lining tended to get too heavy. I think now it does the trick.

The dress has an elastic band in the waist wich I think feels comfortable and make the dress sit as it should. I finished all seams with a false overlock seam. With the extra layer of the lining , the pleats and the elastic I had to struggle to make the waistband not too bulky.

And this is what the dress look like on me, with and without the belt. At least I feel glamorous in it and can’t wait to get the opportunity to wear it.

Fining the right size when sewing garments in stretch I find to be a great challenge. I know I need to have negative ease if I want the garment to fit close. But how much negative ease is the question. For this dress I based my choice on the garments measurements given on the pattern pieces. I made a size 12 for the bodice and 14 for the skirt. According the given measurements a size 12 bodice is 9 cm smaller over the bust than my own measurements and it close to matches my measurements in the waist. The size 14 skirt is a couple of cm larger than my hip measurements which was good since I did not want the skirt to cling. For the skirt this turned out fine, but the bodice was first too large – which is not attractive or practical for a wrap neckline as it tends to make too much show. So I had to take in the sides first by sewing 1 cm inside the original seam and then another cm. This meant I ended up taking in the bodice about 8 cm (!). On the first picture above you can see that the wrap would be even a bit tighter in order for the lining not to show. I’ll experiment with putting in a hidden snap closure where the wrapping pieces meet in order to keep covered up.

To match the intake in the sleeves 4 cm which you can see was also good. So note to self is to try making a size 10 in New Look knit patterns next time.

Here are some more pictures of me posing in front of the mirror in my new dress.

I will make a review of this pattern on PatternReview.com which I hope you will be able to read here.

Until next time, happy sewing everyone!

/Annika

Me made monday – working from home

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Me Made Monday

Today I’m working from home, listening to some interviews I’ve conducted for a research project. A bit boring work so I amused myself by posing in the hallway on my way to lunch.

I’m wearing another BurdaStyle Magazine 10/2012 #119 wrap top, this time in mauve purple. this was my first less successful attempt with is pattern. I’m comvining it with my Levi’s jeans, ballet flats and a scarf from ETRO.

Me Made Monday – at the hair salon

Today I was wearing my blue Simplicity 2364 top with a pair of jeans and sneakers – as I got my hair cut. It was about time. This is the “after” picture if someone was wondering.

What I’m working on right now II

Tags

dress, knits, New Look 6097

My sewing has not been very focused lately. Spending more time planing future projects than actually sewing. I have so many ideas, the possibilities are endless but time is so limited. Yikes!

But today I cut into the fabric of another dress. We suddenly got a few days of (almost) summer here so I got inspired to make something a bit lighter for the spring. I’m making the three quarter length sleeved one, belt included.

New Look 9067. Images from http://www.simplicity.com.

And this is the fabric I’m using. A beige and burgundy and brown rayon jersey (my favorit) in a animal-like print (though it’s not).

I’m also including a lining in a plain beige rayon knit fabric, just to give the dress some extra weight and in order not to make things too easy for myself.

Now, fingers crossed I will be able to stay focused and that the sewing Gods may be with me.

Happy sewing!

Annika

Me Made Monday and three new patterns for my collection

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McCalls, McCalls 6752, McCalls 6756, Me Made Monday, New Look 6150, Vogue 1351, Vogue patterns

For Me Made Monday today I’m at work wearing my new New Look 6150 striped top paired with a pair of Levi’s jeans.

When I got home I had gotten a package from the McCall Pattern Company (again). It had three patterns from the new summer collections, one from Vogue Patterns and two from McCall’s.

The new Vogue Pattern I chose is the V1351. A cute knit dress with simple lines, designed my DKNY. I love the Vogue patterns from DKNY in general and this one looks so easy both to sew and to wear. It is lined and I have a chocking pink viscos knit to make it in.

From McCall’s I chose M6756, a pattern for shorts in varying lengths. I like these because they do not have the front pleat that many short patterns have and it ends on the waistline rather than on the hips.

The other McCall’s pattern is M6752, yet another pattern for a knit dress or top. But I like these because they are quite flowy in the design, but it still chinches in at the waist.  I feel a bit repetitive when writing about the need to define the waist, but I hate feeling boxy and shapeless in my clothes.

This was the last incoming pattern order I have for now….so may I put in some new orders now? I have had my eyes on some OOP patterns on Etsy.com.

/Annika