The Back and Forth dress

 It feels like I started this dress ages ago! At first I had a clear vision of what I was making. I would make the Simplicity 4491 with the wider skirt and that would be it. And I did, until it was time to hem the dress. Then I started second guessing my choice and started thinking of tearing the skirt down and making the wiggle view instead. In the end I went back and forth with the decision for weeks (hence the name) and finally went with the original idea. Isn't that always the case by the way? lol! I did take some construction photos when I worked with the bodice part but forgot to take any with the skirt part. I underlined the bodice with white cotton and did the skirt lining with the same cotton. The flower fabric is a polyester cotton blend sheet I thrifted for 2 euros from the Salvation Army and the white cotton is and old sheet I got from my mother. The only new thing I had to buy was the zipper, so in the end the dress cost about 4 euros, not bad!

I did the underlining my own way; pinned the two layers togethet and staystiched the edges.

The sheet had a tag that said the fabric was ironing free. It wasn't but still it's pretty!

The darts were worryingly pointy at this point.

I trimmed the darts and finished them with hand overcast.

Sewing the neckline facings. I added interfacing to all the facing pieces to stabilize them properly.

I didn't make any alterations to the bodice piece since I had done it once already. With the skirt part I had to make do of what I had. There wasn't enough fabric to make the skirt as wide as the pattern required. I ended up not using the skirt pattern pieces at all. I just took as big a piece of the fabric as I could and made a one-piece dirndl skirt. I did to the pleats in the front according to the pattern, but that was easily done even without the pattern pieces. I handpicked the backzipper, all 50 cm of it! And twice! I also added a waiststay to secure the skirt.

Finished!

The hat is a must on the 1st of May, but so uncomfy on!

Here's a peak of the 1st of May celebration in the 1940s:

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Sain vihdoin valmiiksi mekon, joka on lojunut keskeneräisenä viikkokausia. Nyt se on kuitenkin valmis ja istuu kuin unelma!

Candy stripes!

Hello you all! My break from the blog seems to have streched a bit longer then I meant it to. I started work again on Tuesday and the whole week has gone by so swiftly that my blog posts have been non-existent, I'm sorry for that and will mend my ways! I have a lot of great things for you; I got my hands on some old catalogues and will post about them as soon as I get them scanned. I also finished two garnments that had been hanging on my door for too long. The first you'll see today!

The candy striped fabric was a sale find and my plan was to make it in to a 60's summer dress. But then I found another fabric and decided to make the dress from that (I'll show you that tomorrow). So the candy striped fabric had to go back to my stash. Then one day I had a terrible urge to make something fast and simple, a circle skirt would be perfect I thought! I went to Casey's blog and read the instructions on her circle skirt and was up and ready to go. Until I found I didn't have enough of the candy striped fabric for it. Oh well, I changed my plans a bit. I took the back skirt pieces from the McCall 7686 pattern I had made a while ago and cut two skirt pieces on the fold. Then I only needed to cut a waist band and sew the whole thing together! I handsew the zipper as usual, but ended up machine stiching the hem. The skirt is unlined and perfect for summer! And for the First of May of course!

My trusted McCall.

Frills, stripes and some gold accents and I'm ready to go!

Close up on the fabric. I love!

I'll be back tomorrow with the 60's dress! And I'll be posting another Inspiration post on Monday. It's my favorite one so be sure to check it out!

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Hauskaa vapun attoa! Tein pikaisen hameen suloisesta karkkiraitaisesta puuvillakankaasta. Huomenna vuorossa on kukkakuosinen mekko 60-luvun kaavasta.

Friday indulgence

I've been hunting down a pair of nice spring shoes for a while now. I was hoping for a pair of  Chelsea Crew shoes, but they seem to have been sold out everywhere. I also got to thinking about the possible extra taxes I might be paying if I ordered them accross the sea, so I went to town to find a replacement. Lucky enough I did find a nice pair that have that 40's feel to them too, don't you think?

The shoes I wanted..

...and the shoes I found!

Since I was feeling like indulging myself a little more, I went to my favorite goodies shop and took home some new kitchen attire. And to accompany them I had to get this Karen Blixen book after I saw the cover. The film is one of my favorites and the Edwardian dresses as well, of course!

New coffee jar, hazelnut coffee and a breakfast cup to accompany the book.

My favorite outfit from the film.

Karen Blixen herself.

I do have something else for you to show too; pictures of a dress I finished earlier this week! This dress was meant to be a muslin for the real thing, but in the end I started to like the dress so much that I finished it. The bodice is of thin cotton, part of an old sheet, and the skirt is made from a thrifted children's duvet cover. I added a red satin band to give it some color. I was inspired by Sunni's wonderful use of colours. The thin cotton makes it a must to wear a slip under, but I wear them all the time anyway, so it doesn't matter so much. Because the dress is originally a muslin, it has some tucks and seams that the patterns doesn't. There's a seam in the front skirt piece, where I had to take it in some. And the weird pleats in the neckline are additions too. I actually sewed them right before taking the photos. The bodice didn't fit right and the neckline felt too big, so I simply sew a pleat on the front. The strange thing here is, that the dress I made after the muslin, don't have this problem at all. It doesn't have the sleeves either so maybe that's where the real problem is.

I'm totally channelling Hugh Grant in this one, hehee..

Click the picture to get to the video!

Have a blissful weekend!

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Perjantain kunniaksi löysin uudet kevätkengät ja ihania posliineja keittiöön!

Inspiration week 1: Elsa Billgren

I thought I'd start a little series where I'll post about people who inspire my sewing someway. My first inspiration comes from Sweden; Elsa Billgren has a fashion blog where she posts about her outfits and daily activities. The blog has nothing to do with sewing per se, but I find Elsa's style totally inspiring. Why? Because she has a wonderful dress closet filled with vintage creations! Everytime I visit her blog I wish there was a magic wand that could take me straight way to Stockholm and those wonderful vintage stores. Next time that I'll visit Stockholm I'll definitely find all the stores Elsa has shared in her blog! Just take a look at all these lovelies, wouldn't you like to get your hands on these too?

 

 

All pictures from Elsa Billgren's blog.

My favorite is the blue and white one with stripes AND polka dots. I want that fabric!

You can find Elsa and her wonderful dresses at: http://elsa.elle.se/ The blog is in Swedish but the pictures aren't!


P.S. Doesn't she look a little like Joan Holloway?

Edit: I added some new features to the blog. I labelled all posts so you can find them more easily, and now you can share posts in Facebook or Twitter!

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Ajattelin aloittaa uuden viikkosarjan, jossa esittelen ihmisiä, jotka inspiroivat minua. Ensimmäisenä vuorossa on ruotsalainen muotibloggaaja Elsa Billgren.

The overly sweet Pink Dress

I finally succeeded in taking some pictures of yours truly! You can't believe how difficult that is in my supersunlit apartment! (Yes it's sunny today! Yay!) I started on the dress two weeks ago, and it's been on the verge of being ready. And now it is, finally! I ended up shortening the sleeves by 4 cm but otherwise the dress is pretty much like the pattern suggests. I think next time I'll lengthen the bodice by 2 cm though, just for a better fit. It turned out supersweet, and I started to worry that it might be a little too sweet for 26-old me. Luckily I had just the cure, a metallic Armadillo belt! So here it is, my new heatwave worthy dress:

This dress desperately needs to be worn during a heatwave.

I'm pulling the fabric, that's why it looks so funny at the back.

Shoes from H&M. I'm in love with these shoes, if only my feet shared that love, sigh..

Armadillo belt from Zara. It reminds me of those old westerns with John Wayne, although he propably never wore belts with flowers on..

I have another dress on the sewing table. It's actually the muslin for the wiggle dress from an earlier post. The muslin started to look so cute, that now I'm thinking of finishing it up.

 ***

Kesän helteitä on mukava odottaa, kun kaapista löytyy nyt ihanan kevyt ja suloinen puuvillamekko!

The thing that didn't swing

I was so exited when Casey announced that she was hosting a sew-along with the Sense and Sensibility Swing Dress since I had just ordered it and was anxious to make it. But as it turned out my first dress attempt wasn't a triumph. I made the dress, discovered all the mistakes I'd made, tossed it in to the fabric stash and tried to forget about it. After a few weeks (and another this time a successful dress) I braved myself to fix the dress. Here's all the mistakes I made and what I did to fix them.

I think everything that could've gone wrong with this dress did.

1. I didn't make a muslin. BIG mistake. I did do a kind of a muslin, but I should've made the whole dress into a muslin. Here my impatience got the hold of me. I was so exited about the dress that I just wanted to wear it allready. Therefore after I'd sewn the waist band to the front bodice it didn't fit right. So I undid that seam and fitted it again. Luckily it only needed a little adjustment, I just sew the center front part with a bigger seam allowance.

2. The fabric was way wrong for a First Project fabric. This was the first dress I'd ever made (again, why didn't I do the muslin?!) and I would've been wise to choose a simpler fabric, like some cotton blend. Instead I chose superthin 100 % polyester. Not good. I should've underlined the whole thing and not just the waist band, which worked perfectly by the way.

3. The sleeves. I'm pinning this to the fabric choice as well, because it didn'd have any strech to it. So when I'd finally attached the first sleeve I tried the dress on and you guessed it, I couldn't lift my arm one bit. I did the easy thing and decided to make it sleeveless, since I figured summer is right around the corner and I can always but a cardigan on it. I finished the sleeves with India tape, I just didn't want to touch the fabric more than I absolutely had to and therefore I chose no to make bias tape of it.

4. The skirt side seams. Now this seems like such an easy error, but I managed to do this too. I hadn't realised that when sewing the side seams you should strech the fabric a bit as you go a long so that it doesn't sag. I did all the skirt seams without streching the fabric and the result was hidious. So I undid all the skirt seams. And had to resew the zipper in place as well, yay.

Close-up on the fabric.

What made the sewing of the alterations even more gruesome was that my sewing machine kept messing and tangling up the thread (sigh). I finally realised where the trouble was (the thread had escaped one part of its route) and got the dress finished. I'm not completely satisfied with it, but its an okay dress. And to think that if I'd just followed Casey's instructions and timetable I would've had a finished and perfect dress a while ago! I'm already planning my next swing dress, this time from two different coloured fabrics and with sleeves (here's hoping anyway). This time I'm going to follow Casey's instructions meticulously.

P.S. Here's a collection of beautiful swing dresses from the sew-along, the way they should look like.

***

Tämän piti olla se ensimmäinen hieno mekko, jonka päätin tehdä. Eipä sitten ollut sitä, ei. Tein paljon virheitä valmistellessa, ommellessa ja jopa kankaan valinnassa, mutta pahin virhe oli, että annoin periksi kärsimättömyydelleni. Korjausten jälkeen mekko on nyt jokseenkin käyttökelpoinen, ainakin neuletakin kanssa. Seuraavalla kerralla aion tehdä kaiken niin kuin vintageompelun guru Casey opetti ja valita järkevän kankaan ompelun helpottamiseksi.

McCall's yellow summer dress

Truth be told I should've spent the weekend writing my master's thesis but instead I ended up finishing two dresses. The other a fix up kind of job that I'll post about later and the other the McCall's patterns sequal. I made the dress out of old cotton curtains that I found at the Salvation Army thrift store. Since I'd already done the dress once the sewing was pretty straight-forward. I kept the dress otherwise the same as the first time, except this time I took 10 cm (4 inches) of the lenght. The dress is still quite long but I think it suites me nonetheless.

 I have to say that this pattern was a dream to sew up especially to a novice like me. Everything fit right where it should and the instructions were easy to follow (given that English isn't my mothertongue). I did do a few things differently but that was basicly just sewing some seams in a different order. The pattern instructed to add the pockets last, which I feared would be difficult at that point. I simply added the pockets before I attached the skirt front to the skirt back. The pockets were the only tricky part about this dress, the topstiching was excruciating at times (don't look at those seams too carefully lol). I handsew the side zipper after Tasia's instructions and finished the hem by hand also. This took a bit of time, but for me not having to listen to the machine but only the needle working is worth it all.

This was one of  the good bits of topstiching I could find on the pockets. Oh well../ Lähikuvaa taskujen tikkauksesta.

Had to fumble around with some embroidery too. I sew this on the neck facing and clearly need practice with it./ Nimikointi kaipaa selkeästi lisää harjoitusta.

Close up on the lace.

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Täytyy sanoa, että tämä mekko oli helpoista helpoin ommella. Mekon kokoonpanoon meni ehkä yhden päivän verran ja helman viimeistelyyn noin tunnin verran (viimeistelin sen käsin ja koska helmaa riitti meni aikaakin hieman). Eniten pidän tässä mekossa siitä, että sain tehtyä koko mekon ostamatta uutta kangasta. Jonkun hylkäämät vanhat verhot tulivat uusiokäyttöön samoin kuin vanha pitsiliina. Ainoana uutena jouduin ostamaan vetoketjun, koska kirpparilta löytämäni oli muutaman sentin liian lyhyt.

First vintage dress success

I bought my first ever vintage dress pattern from shellmakeyouflip a while ago. And like other vintage patterns I thought this too would need a lot of alterations but for some reason it actually only needed a few. I shortened the bodice pieces by 2 cm (0.8 inches) and widened the hips by 8 cm (3.1 inches). Now the measurements shown on the pattern were really way too little for me but I decided to go ahead and make the first muslin with the original measurements (minus the length). And it fit! I then had to make the dress right away but didn't have the best fabric for it. I did however have a fabric that I wanted to make into a nighty. So I decided to test the pattern and make that into a nightgown. I made view B (without the pockets though) and it came out pretty nice! Now there are some nasty looking seams but I thought since this is only a dress I'll be wearing asleep it don't matter (lol). Instead of the side zipper I sew a couple of poppers on it. I didn't hem the dress (boo me!) because the fabric didn't really require it. And I like the way it flows around my ankles.

While thrifting yesterday I found a fabric to make this dress into a proper summer dress. The lace I'm planning to use is actually one of my grannys old doilies.

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Ostin ensimmäisen vintagekaavani vähän aikaa sitten Etsystä ja tein siitä koeversion yöpukuna. Vintagekaavoista varoitellaan usein, että niiden kokomerkinnät eivät ole nykykokojen mukaisia ja ne vaativat paljon muokkausta. No itse odotin ihan samaa. Kaava oli mitoiltaan pari kokoa liian pieni ja näin jo kauhukuvia siitä, mitä kaikkea joudunkaan siinä muokkaamaan. Tein kuitenkin koeversion muuttamalla vain pituutta, josta otin 2 cm pois. Ja se sopi! Täydellisesti jopa! Joten eikun tekemään toinen versio vähän kesäisemmästä kankaasta, jonka löysin Pelastusarmeijan kirppikseltä muutamalla eurolla. Saan samalla mummin vanhan pitsiliinan uusiokäyttöön mekon miehustassa.