By Hand London Charlotte Skirt

As mentioned in my last post, here is my By Hand London Charlotte Skirt.

It was inspired by this photo, and above I am wearing it with my Pin Tuck Alma.

This is Variation 3, and it says on the pattern that you need 2 1/4 yards of fabric.  I say - nonsense!!  I made mine with 60" wide fabric that was 83cm long: so there!  I did shorten it by 4.5 inches though.

This was really easy to make, and made even easier by the sewalong on the By Hand London web site, which even tells you how to add a lining.  The photo below is probably closest to the real colour.  I'm not sure what the fabric is because it came from my Granny, I'm guessing  it's gabardine.  Whatever it is, it's nice and heavy.

I love the double darts.

But my favourite bit is the invisible zip.  It really is invisible!  I used the tutorial here on the By Hand London website - this is how I will be doing invisible zips from now on.  In this tutorial you put the zip in first, using an invisible zipper foot, then sew up the back seam using a normal zipper foot.  This was a bit of a revelation for me, because I had always sewed the seam first, but then got a weird ripple where the seam meets the bottom of the zip.

Apologies for the creases, I'd been wearing it before I took the photos. 

My snazzy magenta purple lining is from Sew N Sew in Belfast, and I used some pop fasteners on the waistband.

The pattern suggests leaving a 4 inch split at the back, so you can actually walk in it.  I duly made a 4 inch split, but I heard the stitches pull as I was getting out of the car!  In the photo below the white arrow is pointing to the top of the 4 inches, and the black arrow is where it stopped coming apart.  So I'll have to fix it, and maybe do two rows of stitching to strengthen it a bit.

This is a lovely pattern, the shape is so flattering, and it's very easy to make.  I can definitely see more Charlottes in my wardrobe, I'm thinking red and green.

Pin-tuck Alma

This is Sewaholic Alma No 5, but who's counting?!

 

 

 

I was idly browsing some blogs back in March, and came across this photo here (forth one down - unfortunately there isn't a source on it).  I instantly thought, "Alma!  With pin tucks!!  Yes please." 

 

So after the success with the tucks on my Mathilde blouses, I got my Alma pattern, some paper and a scrap of fabric, and started work on the pin tucks.  I decided that all I needed to do was to add in the amount of fabric for each tuck.  I made the spaces between the tucks 5/8", and the tucks 1/8".  I ruled them out on a fabric scrap with marker pen to see what they looked like.

Then I sewed them up.  I really should have ironed the fabric first!

I pinned this to the front of my Wednesday Addams Alma to get an idea of what it would look like.

 

So then I got the tracing paper out, and re-traced my front pattern piece.  I ruled the lines where I wanted to insert the tucks,

then cut along the lines and filled the spaces in with pink paper.  Each space is 1/8" wide.

This is what the whole pattern piece looks like.  To mark the tucks on the fabric I cut a snip in the fabric, just a few millimetres long, at either side of each tuck.  Then I connected them up with a long ruler and some chalk.

 

I'm very pleased with how they turned out.

 

Here's a close-up so you can see how I pressed each tuck towards the centre.

And here it is in action.

 

The fabric is cotton that I bought recently in The Paragon on Donegall Pass in Belfast.  I've a feeling it may be quilting cotton, but I liked the pattern and it's comfortable to wear.  I can't remember how much it was, but it wouldn't have been anything more than £5 per metre.

 

I put the zip into the back, and I'm definitely getting better with the invisible zips.

 

My inspiration photo also inspired me to make a pencil skirt, the pattern being Charlotte by By Hand London.  But that's for another post. 

My Crepe dress is featured on Colette Patterns Blog!

I got an email at lunchtime from Sonia from Fabric and Flowers congratulating me on featuring on "5 favourites for April" on the Colette Patterns blog.  I was straight onto the internet to have a look, and here it is!  And I see Handmade Jane's gorgeous Juniper trousers are also there.  I am stupidly excited about this, and shall be immediately emailing the link to all everybody I know!! 

 

 

Thank you to Colette Patterns for featuring me, and to Sonia for letting me know.

 

Lynne :)

Victory Patterns Madeleine Skirt No 4

This seems to be becoming a TNT (tried and true) pattern for me.  It's Victory Patterns Madeleine skirt, and this is number four!  I just love the shape and sitty-out-ness of it.

 

 

I'd been planning this skirt for a while, it's to replace this much-loved skirt which has most definately seen better days.

 

 

I bought this skirt about maybe five years ago, and it's been worn/washed so many times that the black is faded and patchy.  I lifted it out of the cupboard this morning to throw into the recycling bag, but I think I will hold on to it because I like the shape (it's more of a wide A-line), and I might have a go at making a rub-off pattern of it.  I found this tutorial from A Fashionable Stitch on how to do a rub-off, but if anybody knows of any other good tutorials, or has any hints or tips, please let me know!

 

It took me a while to find the perfect fabric.  The original skirt is white and black linen/rayon mix, and the fabric I used is cream and black cotton poplin from Minerva Crafts.  They don't seem to have the cream and black on the web site any more, but here is a link to the red and ivory.  It's £7.99 per metre, I bought 3 metres and used 2, so the rest may become a top.

 

I used my self-altered pattern that I used for Madeleine No2 which has inside pockets, and added some black piping to below the waistband.

I also made friends with my invisible zipper foot, which definately makes a neater zip than the ordinary zipper foot.  Unfortunately I placed the zip a fraction too low below the seam allowance, and you can see the gap just above the zip pull; but I can live with it.  Also I did a frankly rubbish job of matching the fabric at the back seam.  My brain wasn't functioning properly on how to do this when I was cutting it out, but I can live with this too, and I don't think it's too noticable as the print is so bold. 

 

 

I had big problems with the automatic one-step buttonhole function on my Elna 520.  It worked perfectly on my test scrap, which was a cut-off of the waistband because I cut it too long.  But it wouldn't play at all when I tried it on the skirt, it kept making the buttonhole too short.  I was afraid of putting a hole in the fabric with the unpicking, so ended up making a buttonhole using zig-zag stitches - but that sort of defeats the purpose of having an automatic buttonhole function!  I think it was to do with the weight of the fabric in the skirt not letting the feed dogs pull it forward properly.  I know this is a common problem with automatic buttonholes because I've read about it on other blogs.  If this has happened to you, please let me know if you found a solution!

 

I emailed Elna using the form on the "contacts" page of their website, but the email bounced back undelivered.  The same thing happened with the "info" email address.  Has anybody else had problems emailing them?

 

This fabric is quite light-weight, so I underlined it with some white polycotton.  I edged the pockets and waistband join with cream bias tape, and the hem with cream ribbon.

I apologise for the lack of modelled photos.  I did take some, but I looked really tired in them (because I am!).  But I did get a good twirly action shot...

 

Lynne

Colette Patterns Polka Dot Crepe Dress

I took some extra days' leave at Easter, and was quite productive because I made this dress!  It's Colette Patterns Crepe Dress. I bought this pattern a couple of years ago, but have only just made it now. 

 

 

My fabric is cotton lawn from ebay here, on the selvedge edge it says "Great Flowers Designs 40 by 40s superfine cotton lawn".  It's £6.99 per metre, I ordered 4 metres (to be on the safe side!), and used 3 metres.  So I now have enough leftover for a top - yey!  I see they have it in red and white, so I may have to order that.  It's lovely fabric, note the back of the skirt in the photo below - I've been wearing this all day, then took my photos, and it's hardly creased.

 

 

I went with a size 0 at the shoulder and size 2 at the underarms, grading out to size 6 at the waist.  I probably could have got away with size 4 at the waist, but the waist tie pulls it in a bit.  I made a toile of the bodice, and was delighted to find that the bust fitted, therefore I didn't have to do a Full Bust Adjustment (FBA).  Colette Patterns draft a larger bust size than standard patterns, so this may explain why my FBA on my Peony dress made it too big.

 

In my excitement I failed to notice that the bust darts are a bit high, and only realised when I made the bodice in my polka dot fabric.  But I can live with it, and it's not like the sewing police are going to arrest me or anything!  I wonder if this is an issue with Colette Patterns because I was re-watching The Great British Sewing Bee last night (yes, re-watching :) ), and it was pointed out that the bust darts were high on Lauren's lovely Colette Macaron dress in the final challenge.

 

I shortened the bodice, and also the width of the waist tie by 3.3cm, and also widened the skirt.  One of the two things that made me a bit meh about this pattern is that the skirt isn't as sitty-out as I'd like.  I'd read about the slash and spread method of skirt altering in some of my sewing books, so I thought I'd give it a go. 

 

 

Above is the traced original pattern piece, I've marked the grainline with a red arrow (PicMonkey don't have doubled-headed arrows - sorry).  I ruled a line through the grainline right to the top and bottom of the pattern piece.

 

 

I cut along this line from the bottom to the top, but not cutting right to the top edge.  I left a little bit that will act as a "hinge".  Then I taped one side of my pattern piece to my cutting mat with some masking tape.  Did you know you can buy 4 rolls of masking tape in Poundland for £1?  Just saying.

 

 

At this point I dug out my Madeleine Skirt pattern pieces (might have been a bit easier if I'd ironed them first!).  Having made three versions of this skirt, I knew it was the width I wanted.  I placed this pattern piece on top of my Crepe skirt piece, lining up the corner of the waist and the side seam with the edge I had taped down.  I weighted this down with whatever was handy, and then gently moved out the un-taped side of the Crepe skirt piece until it lined up with the bottom edge of the Madeleine skirt piece, then taped the Crepe skirt piece so it wouldn't move about.  If you didn't have another pattern piece to measure off, you could just eyeball it until the gap is as wide apart as you would like.  

 

Then I took away the Madeleine pattern piece, and filled in the gap with more paper.  The next thing was to draw in the grainline.  On this pattern the grainline runs down the centre of the pattern piece, rather than being parallel to the centre front/back.  I measured how much I moved the cut pattern piece apart (see below photo), and marked the middle of this.  I then drew a line from this point straight up to the hinge on the top of the pattern piece.  This then became my new grainline, which I have marked with the red arrow in the photo above.   I'm no expert on this, but all I can say is that it worked for me.  I hope that all make sense, because I'm not very good at explaining things. 

 

The red arrows mark the edges of where I cut the pattern, and the vertical pencil line is the bottom of the grainline.

 

And here's how wide it turned out!

 

 

Another new thing I learnt was the pick stitch.  I had been reading Gertie's Crepe Sewalong, and came across this post on attaching the armhole facings.  Because the capped sleeves are part of the bodice, the facing is a strange shape, and it would have been very tricky to understitch.  At the bottom of Gertie's facing post, she has added a video on how to pick stitch this facing.  It was so easy to do, that I did the same on the neck and back facings. 

 

I decided to underline the bodice, because I really didn't think this cotton lawn would be that warm for where I live.  I used some white cotton lawn for this.  Then I decided to underline the skirt because I was afraid that a renegade gust of wind could catch the wrap-a-round skirt, leading to much embarassment! I used white polycotton for this; and, yes, the underlining was very time consuming.

 

Then I got all fancy and finished the wrap skirt edge and hem with some white ribbon.

The second thing that made me a bit meh about this pattern was the waist tie.  I'm not a big fan of waist ties in general; in my experience they tend to come un-done, or get caught on things.  Plus the one on this dress made me think of a little girl's party dress, which was not the look I was going for!  But maybe I only think this because I'm small.  Anyway, I thought about it for quite some time, and came up with shortening the waist ties so they overlapped a bit at the centre back, then adding buttons to fasten.

 

 

Below are the front and back of both waist tie ends.  I made some bias tape, and made the buttonhole loops from instructions in my Simplicity Sewing Book that came from my Granny.

 

 

I absolutely love this dress, and can see more in my future.  It did take a lot of time to make, but it was definately worth it.  I wore it today with a green cardigan, and got lots of lovely compliments on it!

 

 

I'll leave you with an action shot of the skirt.  It had to be done, resistant was futile... :)

Ooo!  Twirly!!

Mathilde Blouse No2

Here's my second version of Tilly's Mathilde Blouse:

 

This one is made from some satin-like fabric my Granny gave me years ago.  I'd been saving it to make something lovely with, as, up until now, I was afraid I would just make a mess with it.

 

It's really lovely fabric, and it has a slight sheen.  As with my first one, I underlined it using white cotton lawn.

I had no major issues making this, but I had two minor ones.  1 - The bobbin thread ran out when I was sewing one of the two tucks that are closest to the centre front; yeah, the ones' where you can see the stitching.  And 2 - the electric went off when I was sewing in one of the sleeves on Friday evening.  I suppose it could have been worse - it could have been a buttonhole!  The power was only off for about 15 minutes, the whole of Belfast was off because of the snow. 

 

This is all I have to say about snow:

 

Yey to a snow day off work last Friday, boo to my car getting stuck at the bottom of the street last Friday morning, yey to lots of the neighbours digging the street out last weekend, boo to the 10 inches of snow in my garden last Saturday.  Go away snow!  This is suburban Belfast, not the North Pole!  Rant over...

 

I had 2 yards (not metres!) of fabric, and it was 44 inches wide.  This meant it wasn't wide enough to cut two sleeves out with the fabric folded (see photo below), and there wasn't enough length to cut out two sleeves separately.  So I had a brainwave to fold in those pesky pattern edges that were hanging over the edges of the fabric.

The pattern piece was about 5cm too wide on each side, so I measured 5cm in at the bottom edge of the sleeve, and ruled a line up to the underarm.

Then I folded along the line, and it fitted on my fabric perfectly. :) 

 

I used some red bias tape as facing on the neckline.

 

I love my buttons!  I got them here on ebay, I came across them when I was looking for red buttons for my first Mathilde, and thought they would look great with this fabric.

It was surprising difficult to take a photo of an individual button, so I added a PicMonkey effect to take the bad look of it!

 

 

I love how my blouse has turned out, and I shall be wearing it on Sunday when I go to my Mum's for my dinner.

 

On Tuesday night I will be watching The Great British Sewing Bee; I am stupidly excited about this!  It's wonderful to finally have sewing on television, and Tilly is on it!  I hope she wins.

 

Happy Easter,

 

Lynne