It wasn't a Table Cloth - Truly It Wasn't!

I used the Njada Dress Pattern (free from Burda Style) as my base for these two dresses. Originally I was only going to make the one dress (the Bias & Buttons Dress - inspired by this tutorial for a little girl's dress) but seeing as it took two days to draft and fit the pattern how I wanted it, I figured I may as well make a couple dresses and well there's something about black and yellow that appeals to me at the moment and so the Table-Cloth Dress was born!

I started by modifying the paper pattern.

The blue line is my alteration from the first draft modification after making my first Toile. (Best thing I ever learned to do in sewing, make a Toile!)

Then I marked up further changes to the neck line, wrap line, hem and armscye while the Toile was on the manni.

Once I was happy with all the alterations to the pattern I took the Toile apart, cut along the stitch lines to neaten the edges and marked up the pattern information (darts, grainline, etc.). Ordinarily one would transfer all the information from the Toile to the paper pattern and recreate a new 'precise' pattern, I didn't because the fabric I used for the Toile (some sort of seriously cheap $1.80/mtr poly fabric) was a lot like paper, so I just went with it. It turned out great, even more stable than paper!

And the dresses were born (both have a lining and are finished with bias tape along the edges. I used zips (which I hand picked in) as closures.

I added clear press studs to keep the neckline in place.

Love me some hand picking zips (seriously - I do!)

I am really happy with the finished dresses - I can see them getting a lot of wear, they are really comfortable and should lend themselves to both our warmer and cooler seasons!

I found myself happily humming a particular Dolly Parton song whilst making the dress below - the bias strips are made up lots of left over pieces of fabric from a few different projects over the last few years. I sent an 'in progress'  pic to my friend who said she initially didn't like it but when she looked again she saw the 'stories' in the dress - she recognised many of the fabrics in the dress and and remembered the shared times we had as I was making each of those 'other projects'.

My best 'Posh' pose - haha!

Daisy Dress Reborn

I've been AWOL for quite awhile from my sewing blog - so I am just going to jump right in and share my first project of 2015 - The daisy dress reborn.

I loved this dress when I made (and still do) but since I made it I have lost 25kg (yay me - feel so much better). I really didn't want to give it away, I have given a few of my dress away to good homes since losing weight but there was just something about this dress that said keep me ... and this is why, a simple alteration has turned it into a beautiful skirt (I think)!

I have been wanting to try a couture waistband for a while - for some reason I have never been able to get a waistband to sit just right (could be my scoliosis)? The inspiration came when driving home from over east and reading The Dressmakers Handbook of Couture Techniques by Linda Maynard (great book), I was just flicking through the book and came across the instructions (very similar to Susan Khalje's instructions in Threads Magazine/website) for the couture waistband and the daisy dress came straight to mind. I have been considering the International Federation for Home Economics  2015 message of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle a lot lately in school planning and I thought I really should be carrying it over into my personal life! So I did!

The Daisy Dress

The Daisy Dress Reborn - as a skirt