Thursday, April 27, 2017

Knock it off tour, Gucci inspired



Sprouting JubeJube and Lulu & Celeste again joined forces to bring you a tour. The theme of the tour is one that I have been wanting to be part of long, a "knock off tour". I personally love to see how one garment can inspire to make another. There are different takes in such a tour, making a sold out garment, or one in just your color, but I went for knocking of expensive. I was inspired by a Gucci dress of $1250 dollars.


First, I was planning to make an exact copy, but in the end I went with heavily inspired. Both my fabrics and pattern are not a copy of the original but I still feel it has the same essence. Let's start with talking about the pattern. For me, the pussy bow was screaming Laure dress from Straight Grain. I was planning to add two extra skirts, but I actually liked original Laura drop waist design better than the Gucci one, so it turned out to be a very easy knock off.



I did change a few things though. I left of the sleeves, but I did not do any redraftig there. The dress immediately was a very pretty sleeveless. I doubled the entire bodice for a pretty finish. The main layer is the lace and the "lining"is the dark blue uni colored fabric. The two fabrics are so dark and the lace is rather think, so you do not notice the seam allowance through the lace. I kept the back closure of the Laure and even the blind zipper does not obviously show through the lace.The lace skirt is doubled, so I did not have to finish the skirt at the bottom.



The original Gucci top layer was not lace but tulle. I love working with good quality soft tulle, I made these two dresses with it (one still unblogged), but unfortunately the Stoffenmadam did not have such dark blue tulle. Neither could I find anything similar at Textielstad, and tulle is one of those fabrics that I want to buy live and not online because the feel differs a lot. This lace was the best substitute and in the end I probably prefer it over tulle. It has a nice sturdy luxurious feel.



An advantage of using the think lace was that I could actually iron on flex foil. I fear that tulle would have melted, but I am not sure of course. I bought two colors of glitter flex at Plot4Fun, and cut a lot of small round with my Silhouette. I added the template here in case you ever would like to do something similar.I ended up with many more dots that I needed, but I am sure, I will be able to use the additional dots in the future on some nice Mosaic. My dots are bigger than the original and there are less of them, I felt it fitted better with the lace like this.



I am of course not alone in this tour. I am rather at the end, so there are many other beautiful makes that you can already check out.

Monday, April 24
Tuesday, April 25
Wednesday, April 26
Thursday, April 27
Friday, April 28



Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Karlotta dress



Annika released a new set of translated patterns in her shop, three tops and a dress. I am bravely battling my fear of woven dress pattern for women, I recently sewed myself this one and this one, so I signed up for sewing a Karlotta. The Karlotta has princess seams, both front and back to create a pretty silhouette. The dress closes with an invisible zipper on the back. I used the pattern to sew myself a little black dress.



Based on the size table, I saw that I needed a full bust adjustment and I followed the steps of this tutorial. I do not sew muslins (I know, another shocking revelation about my sewing laziness), so I initially sewed at 0.5 seam allowance to check fit (the pattern has seam allowance of 1 centimeter included). After the first fit, I saw that it would work out perfectly if I sewed all seams on 1 centimeter, so I did that. I did not have to make any other alterations besides the full bust adjustment, I am therefore super satisfied with the fit of this pattern, and my fear of patterns for woven is really diminishing.



I bought this drapey rayon fabric at Textielstad for this project. I wore a black and white polka dot dress on my brothers wedding (I must have been around 11) and I loved it! I have had a weak spot for that print ever since. When I spotted this fabric, I knew I had found the perfect fabric for my Karlotta. I intentionally kept the dress rather long (I made a narrow hem), but how long you want the dress is up to you of course.



This time it was me and my husband that had fun during the shoot when I was trying to find myself an color pop accessories. This time I picked the Lego bus that I build a few years ago (my husband's suggestion). I feel I quickly ran out of logical things to keep in my hands during a shoot. The Karlotta and other tops are now on sale until Friday in the Naeh-connection shop.


Monday, April 24, 2017

Nore dress and shirt



Today, Compagnie M* released the Nore dress and top*. Usually, Compagnie M patterns key words are "contrasting lines (color block)", pockets and woven fabrics. Two of those words are totally me, except the last one. My go to fabric is jersey, but for Compagnie M I love to make an exception. This time I did not have to comprise anything, because the newest pattern is for jersey fabrics.



During testing I made a Nore dress for my youngest. I am sure I probably had seen this obvious fabric combi somewhere else before, but I do not remember where. When I picked the stripes I did not immediately realize that they gave me an extra challenge. Having striped fabric for the sleeves meant stripe matching, but fortunately, I did realize before cutting. I bought the cats at Joyfits during the fall.




This is a surprisingly quick sew. It looks very sophisticated, I therefore feared that the color block would really slow me down, but it did not.  I think I can cut and sew one of these dresses in under an hour (keep in mind that I am a jersey junkie), which is really my kind of project. You will have to sew that color block with your sewing machine. Matching that up with a serger will be almost impossible. But the sides, neckband and sleeves can be finished with a serger, and you will need your regular machine for hemming anyway.



My test dress has color blocking on both the front and the back, but you can choose to have it only on one side or just go with a plain, super quick version. During testing, Marte came up with another type of color blocking. She did split back on the back, I really love it. You might not have noticed but the sleeves are finished with a band that is folded up. the the blog posts that Marte posted you can see more detailed pictures of the pretty finish.



Two days ago, I showed you the Kingsday dress that I sewed my eldest. Now, I can also show you want I sewed my son. I hacked the Nore shirt into a boy version. The original Nore has an apple shape, so it is round at the waist. I simply drew a straight line down from the armpit to take out the curve. If I would have followed the color block lines from the width size that I made, the color block would have been very narrow at the sides and the pockets would be too low. I therefore used the color block lines of a few sizes smaller, so I simply followed a different line (I used the pattern pieces without included seam allowance). I did re-drafted the pockets on the inside a bit, to make them a bit bigger (else they would have been the baby size (18m)




The Nore* is now available in the Compagnie M webshop*. With the code LETSDOTHENORE you get a 10% discount on the pattern. The code is valid till the 14th of May. Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian). If you buy anything through my affiliate links (*), I get a small commission (the price stays the same for you), I am very grateful for everything that feeds my fabric addiction.




Friday, April 21, 2017

Mantica release



Today, Sofilantjes* releases the Mantica* tunic and dress pattern. The pattern has two different skirt styles, either tight and short or gathered and knee length. The back has three different color block options, which I of course tried all. The front stands out because of the contrasting bands, they might remind you of backpack straps, which is where the name Mantica (meaning bag in Latin) comes from.



The short skirt has a secret feature, the entire front of the skirt is pocket. Yes, one gigantic pocket, my daughter did not realize it when we made pictures, or else she would have for sure filled it with Lego's just to see how much she was able to fit in there.  Two of these fabrics where bought at Joyfits (the Kersenpitje combi) and the blue triangles from Lillestoff were bought at Cas and Nina*.



On all my three Mantica's I used eyelets with a cord (only though the front), but you could also leave the eyelets off of course. Just having a contrasting waistband is also cool. On the pre-test version (the last one in this post), I used the 4 mm from Prym, but they are a bit too small. On the other two versions, I used the 8 mm from Prym and those are great. I bought them at textielstad. On this blue dress I blended with a bit too tall size, the back therefore has a wrinkle, I fixed that on the orange one.



The gathered skirt version also has pockets, side seam pockets. I made this orange version for Kingsday, which will be next week. My daughter already told me that she is not going to leave it in the closet until next year or some soccer occasion, she loves it and will wear it like any other dress, and I believe her. I bought these two fabrics at Textielstad. My son was the perfect accessories, I will show you next week what he is wearing in the picture.




For the pre-test, I sewed a dress for my youngest. The pattern turned out pretty perfect already, it only was a bit short for the smaller sizes. The pattern pieces were lengthened and I lengthened the dress with a contrasting band, now it is no longer a short skirt by the way, but this way she can wear it the entire summer. This fabric also came from Joyfits. I bought 2 meter and my girls where fighting over it, so you will see more of this one for sure.



Normally I would have much more to tell you. The pattern is great, fit is perfect and I already see many possibilities of matching it with other Sofilantjes patterns (the widths might be a bit different, so you will have to adjust that), but I keep it short today. When this post goes live, I am actually not in the country, my husband and me are on a trip, for the first time in 10 years, we are away together for two nights, and I still have to pack a bit.



As usual there is a sweet but short release deal, the pattern* is 5 dollar (excluding VAT) for 48 hours in the Sofilantjes* web shop. Feel free to leave a comment in the language you prefer (although Google translate might have to assist me if you choose something different than English, German, Dutch or Hungarian). If you buy anything through my affiliate links (*), I get a small commission (the price stays the same for you), I am very grateful for everything that feeds my fabric addiction.



Saturday, April 15, 2017

Kamaria top, dress and sunsuit



The woman who designed these dresses and these trousers has started her own pattern label and today I am showing you the first pattern released under Sansahash. With the Kamaria pattern you can sew a sunsuit, a dress and a top and you can have them with gathered waist or paperbag waist, so a pattern with many possibilities.




All variations in the pattern have the front pleat with a subtle V neckline and neck straps. During testing I sewed two sunsuits and a top. As usual, let's start with the  one I sewed last, the garment sewed with the final pattern, this blue with white flowers. This last version I made is without pockets, but the sunsuit has pockets that are perfect for color block, in the first sunsuit I did put pockets, but I did not use a contrasting fabric for them.




The pattern includes instructions how to make woven straps the easy way, so no pulling though a very small tube. For the top I used alternative straps, I used my crochet yarn to make a cord. The Soft Cactus remnant from making this dress was the perfect canvas for this quick sew. The pattern includes a dress option, one with elastic in the waist like the sunsuit. Simply lengthening the top pattern piece would also give a very nice dress I think.




For the first sunsuit that I sewed, I used two of my most treasured scraps, I still have a weak spot for gold elements. My daughter apparently had a growth spurt the last weeks because she turned out to be 2 centimeter taller than the last time I measured. This first version is therefore a size smaller than I should have used, and the pattern got lengthened during testing, so the trouser part of this version are much shorter than the final version. The pattern instructs you to first make the trousers and than sew it to the top. So, with just a little bit of creativity you can use this pattern to make a stand-alone bubble shorts.




So, besides the versions that I showed you, the pattern also includes instructions on the earlier mentioned dress option, a snap crotch and versions with a paper bag ruffle in the waist. The pattern is on sale for just $5 dollar up until Easter Sunday, so if you are still wondering how to spend that day, this is a nice filler.