Last Monday I wrote about my obsession with books. That I can sit down for hours browsing through craft books admiring the lovely photos and dreaming about my future garments. One downfall is that there is so much inspiration, that I sometimes am overwhelmed and instead of starting something I lose myself in crafting dreams. The second problem is always the dreaded fitting. On the slim and tall models in the books (perhaps with a lot of tape, pins and photoshop) all the presented garments look wonderful. Real life me – neither tall nor slim – and the garments look – ahem - differently. But not this time. No, I was victorious, and I even used my nemesis, the woven fabric.
But let’s start at the beginning.
Two weeks ago, I was for in Leipzig a short vacation (beware one day I will write about this and dumb the millions of architecture photos on you) and during this stay I bought a sewing book: Cottage dreams from Sabine Lorenz. A book full of romantic dresses with tiers, frills, and long skirts. I think I am in love with every single patten in this book. Sadly, the publisher made a mistake while printing the pattern sheets and so not all are garments of the book have a complete pattern (ahhhhhhh – but the publisher promised to send the corrected sheets soon).
After one week of intense rain, I dared to take the book into my hands and hoped that the one pattern I wanted to start with had a complete pattern sheet: and yes, I was lucky. My choice fell on the midi-length dress “Sarah” with ruffles on the sleeves which is completely new to me. The dress is one of the easier designs as it is only semi fitted (no zipper or buttons) which serves me well, as it is made from the unforgiving WOVEN fabric (I think I should be careful not to write this too often or I will conjure up a kind of fabric monster which haunt future sewist in their nightmares). And the body of the dress is very short, more like an empire waist, which also suits me well, as I in general must shorten the body of most normal waist patterns.
Cautious as I am, I have chosen a gifted curtain fabric to first make a muslin to test the sizes and the fit. By the way I just learned the English proverb “once bitten twice shy” which describes my state of mind regarding dressmaking with woven fabric. Funnily in German the proverb is much more brutal. It translate roughly “the burned child fears the fire” :-DDD
A lovely feature of the book is that it gives you not only a size chart but also spells out the measurements of the finished garments. I decided to use a size M for the whole dress although my waist and hip are a size L in the chart, but the finished measurements of the dress Sarah are very wide for hip and waist.
Cutting the fabric was easy because in contrary to my usual tiny scraps of bargain fabric I had two metres of this flower curtain. Sewing the dress was also no longer a hurdle for me, as I finally seem to understand how this type of dress is made. The only new part were the ruffles on the sleeves. But, dear reader-who-wants-to-replicate-this-and-and-has-never-done-it-before (wow, what a name :-D): ruffles are easy too. The sleeves consist out of three pieces, the sleeve cap with upper arm, the ruffle, and the forearm. First the upper part of the sleeve is gathered (it’s a puff sleeve) and attached flat to the body of the dress. Then the ruffle is gathered to the width of the upper sleeve and both, ruffles and bottom part of the sleeve are attached in one go. I tried to sketch it for you, but I am not sure if the schematic is understandable…?
Afterwards the side seams of the body and the sleeves are closed and the gathered skirt is attached (nothing new here, so I shortened the description).
Tada: Dress is nearly finished and I after trying it on I am kind of surprised that it fits well without major modifications.
As always, I think the shoulder seems could be higher up (or the back could be smaller, not sure which one, or if it is ok as it is). But the rest is really to my liking. So much, that I will right now (while I am writing this post) dye it dark blue, in the hope to get a wearable dress.
(Or you just read my next Mondays post :-DDD)If you are anxious to know if this worked out and if I now have a lovely deep blue dress, you have to join in on our Needleworkmonday Live Chat today 4 October 2021 at 7pm (BST) - more information in this post. You can find the link to the Live Chat pinned in the #general channel of the Needlework Monday Discord.
Thank you @crosheille for initiating and @marblely for hosting the #needleworkmonday and the community builder team @lauramica, @romeskie and @kattycrochet I am so glad to be part of. If you want to see more beautiful projects with yarn, fabric, and most of all needles, follow @needleworkmonday. Or even better grab your needles and keyboard and join the #needleworkmonday community.
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Read more about my art und upcoming exhibitions on neumannsalva or buy some of my digital artworks on NFT showroom.
Oh please show the deep blue version :p
No fear, I will write about next Monday :-D And I really have something to show, as it worked wonderfully (I was afraid, the farbic would not hold the dye, but all went well)
Yes! Yes! I love getting inspirations from books and magazines and in my head, there will be ideas, plans, dreams but they continue to stay as dreams :D Fitting, I was thinking of skirts, dreaming about them, semi circle and A-line skirts, but they remained in my dreams too haha. I love it that you made yours come true. You made it happen! And the dress is beautiful!!! I like how it fits you and the fabric too. Oooo did you get deep blue? Darnnnn I can't join live chat as I will be in bed already. Please, please write us an update ? :)
Why do we live so far away!!!?! I would so love to meet and convince you that sewing a semi circle skirt is much easier to sew than every replica blouse you ever made. Not sure if we really could try to find a date and time and try to do it on zoom someday (not that I am in any capacity skilled in fitting skirts, but I guess it could be really nice to tackle this together).
And so sad with the time zones… Perhaps we could try a special event on a weekend and try to find a time which suits you better.
With the dress: I absolutely will write about it. I showed it yesterday, but it was so wet it looked black :-DDD
This is lovely and the shoulders are a perfect fit! It will look so gorgeous dyed deep blue, I'm interested to see how the different colours turn out. I'm guessing there will be some green-blue, because of the yellow, but maybe it will be turquoise ... always so exciting to see what will happen to dyed fabric.
I find I start so many things, even now I am enticed by at least four projects. And I have a new diversion ... organising all my projects 😂
I am not convinced with the shoulders… i may have gotten an shoulder obsession :-DDDD And the dress transformed a bit overnight (ok, honestly it only got dry, no real magical transformation) and now the pattern is again visible and I love this effect a lot. I will try to make some photos with good light for next monday.
By the way I watched the dark academia thrift video and was surprised because I saw the video from Pretty pastel: the YouTube world is either small or we have a similar taste in YouTube videos :-) According to the dark academia style, I still dream about sewing corduroy trousers … sigh… trousers… double sigh (the burgundy trousers looked amazing on Cinzia)
Yesterday was more getting to know Monica better, but I still would love to have style meeting someday with us needleworkers …
I can hardly wait for your next post to see whether or not you've dyed it (and how you got on with the process).
Sew long and prosper
😁Hi @neumannsalva!
The dress came out lovely (only the idea to hem the whole fabric with white thread was - ahem - not clever) it turned dark blue but the pattern is still visible (you can see a glimpse of it in my insta story).
Seen it now and it looks really good. So the thread was polyester :D
I think I was waiting to see the dark blue dress 😂. Too bad I missed the video call, I'll have to wait until next Monday. Anyway, it looked great on you, I like this print, in my taste it is already a wearable dress ❤️.
With respect to the proverb, in Spanish we say 'who burns with milk sees a cow and cries'. I think the equivalents were more and more aggressive but the idea is clear 😂.
Oh honey, please it is fabulous, you are fabulous.