Hot Patterns: Weekender Sunshine Tops

photo credits: Hot Patterns


I just made a muslin for this top. It was supposed to be a wearable muslin, but I have some fitting issues with it, so it ended up being just a muslin.

The front view:


First of all, I had to sew the side seams 2cm wide (instead of 1cm), to eliminate the gaping at the armhole. That fixed it a bit, but unfortunately not entirely, as you can see from the photo.
Also, you can see that the neckband doesn't lay completely flat.

One even bigger issue I have, is the gaping at the back:



I think making it in size 6 should fix these issues. Even the gaping at the back, or should I make additional alterations. What do you think?

Burda 06/2007 #119 Skirt

There's a funny story behind this skirt. I made it yesterday and only today while I was writing my review on PR, I realized that the pattern was in fact a bubble hem skirt pattern. Well, I'll be darned..
However, there were some clues along the way, but I guess my mind was off yesterday. First clue should be that the pattern called for lining and that the lining was a lot shorter than the skirt. Then the fact that I had to shorten the skirt length by 20cm should be another.

However, I love my new skirt:


I wore it to lunch today and I got compliments on it; so it's all good.
Anyhow, lesson learned: it's ok not to read the instructions once in a while and that mistakes truly are design options.

Here's another photo where colours are more true:


For more information and more pictures check out my review on PR: click


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On a different note, there are a few sales going on: Sew Exciting is having an interfacing sale; then Ann at Gorgeous Fabrics is having one and also Hot Patterns have one.
Make sure to check them out :) Oh, And I'm not in any way affiliated with any of them

Cleaning Up

I finally had some time off to clean and organize my sewing room. I re-folded my stash and organized it according to fabric type:
top shelf: knits
bottom shelf: wovens


Here are my nicer and more expensive fabrics:
top shelf from left to right: knits, wovens and miscellaneous fabrics
bottom shelf: wools and coating fabrics and my mom's fabric

As you can see I don't really have much of a stash; at least not as large as I've seen them online.


As for the patterns, I do have many of them.
I keep my patterns in brown manila envelopes which are then placed in plastic bins: (these are not all the bins I have)


I store my magazines in these magazine holders from Ikea.
(from left: Japanese magazines, Patrones - 2 holders, Rundschau Damen magazines and Threads magazines)


I don't save Burda magazines as they take too much space. I cut out the fashion pictures of the patterns I like and store them in 4-ring binders according to pattern type:


These binders also hold my envelope patterns together with their traced versions:
(yes, I trace all my patterns)


Every binder is labelled according to the type of pattern it holds.


I do photocopy Styles at Glance pages and keep them in a separate binder and I mark the technical drawings I like:


Traced magazine patterns and self-drafted patterns are stored in sheet protectors with quick reference and pattern number:


This is how I organize my stash. It took me a few days to get it done, but I really like having all my patterns stored in binders. I tried different storage options before and this one takes up least space and is the cleanest, at least for my taste.

Belly Dance Costume - Skirt Finished

Just a quick note on my belly dancing skirt...

Here is the photo of the finished skirt:


The performance was great, it was loads of fun. I honestly cannot wait for the next season to start. I also got to see the other performances at the rehearsal, and I fell in love with bollywood and tribal fusion. Next year I'll be taking one of these classes as well.

After the rehearsal, we, the performers, had a small Arabic food dinner, and it was delicious.

Here's the link to my PR review where you can read more about the pattern and the construction of the skirt.

Belly Dance Costume - Skirt

I have a belly dancing performance on Friday (wish me luck). It's a production at the end of the course where every group will perform one dance to show what we have learned.

I drafted the pattern for the skirt following the instructions from the book Skirting the Issues. I made a full circle skirt with two panels. Usually it's three, but I bought the whole fabric from the bolt and there wasn't enough to make three panels.

This is the photo of the pattern piece, it's 1/2 of the circle and it's huge:


The skirt is made of two different layers, the darker one on the outside and the lighter one on the inside, to lessen the see-through quality of the fabric.



Fabric used: 100% polyester
The fabric gave me lots of problems. I had so much puckering, I managed to get it almost to none at the end, but still... I was so mad. I tried using starch on the fabric, but it didn't wash off completely, so I decided not to use it.
Using the sharp microtex needle helped. I let all the seams dry and cool off flat after pressing, which also made the difference.

Construction: I used the French seam on the side seams. The skirt is not finished yet. I will let it hang over night, add the elastic at the waist and hem it with rolled hem.

I'll post the pictures of the finished skirt tomorrow.

Harem Pants - Self-drafted

This is the final trial version of the harem pants for my belly dancing class before I cut into the pretty fabric. These pants are wearable, I already wore them to a class last week and everyone absolutely loved them. I already received a request from another girl.

I followed the instructions from the Pants for the Dance book I wrote about in my previous post. I started with a pattern for yoga pants, morphed together both, front and back, sides to eliminate the side seam, widened the pants and dropped the crotch. The book encourages you to start with a commercial pattern so there are no actual measurements, except recommendations for widening the pant leg. Which means that everything I did was pretty much an educated guess.
Two days later I found this diagram on the internet:

credits: http://www.zilltech.com/FAQCostumeHP.html

I measured my version of the pattern and realized I was off by mere 0.5cm = 0.2in. (Sweet!)

The pants really simple to put together. There are 2 inside seams and a crotch seam. For the waistband and the ankles I folded the fabric and inserted the elastic and voila! my own custom-made harem pants. It took me less than an hour to put together.

Fabric: I used a gauze-like cotton fabric I had in my stash for a while.

Here are a few extra pictures:
front:

back:


Here you can see the width of the pant leg:


Detail of the elastic at the ankle. You can also see the fabric here:


I'm planning on making the same pants from this polyester fabric:


The darker fabric will be on the outside and the lighter will be used as lining.
Construction wise, these pants will be more challenging because of the see-through quality of the fabric. Although I have seen the seams on the store-bought pants simply serged together, I'm leaning more towards the French seams... I'll try and see which will work best.

Books and Sewing Plans

First of all, I took some pictures from the All About Silk book I wrote about here. I cannot tell you enough how pleased I am with these books. They are worth every penny IMHO.

Here are 2 pages from the book. Click on the pics for the larger image.




Also, I bought the Adele Margolis' The Complete Book on Tailoring. It's a wonderful book and I deeply recommend it to everyone. I bought it over eBay and I found a wonderful surprise inside. I found an article on suede written by Sandra Betzina. It's from a newspaper, the bottom of the page says: 1982 Chronicle Publishing. I was 2 years old when it was published. Finding it was such a wonderful surprise, for some reason it seems I own a piece of sewing history - hehe I'm such a nerd sometimes.



Now for my sewing plans:
My sister is begging me to make this kind of a maxi skirt Nicole Richie is wearing on this picture:

credits: NicoleRichie.org

The pattern for the skirt is pretty straight forward, long wide A-line. I'll be using some mid-weight black viscose knit I have in my stash. I think with this kind of skirts it's all about the drape and weight of the fabric.


Since I started belly dancing, I'm in desperate need for some costumes. So, second on my plan are a long circle skirt and a pair of harem pants. My class is having an end-of year show in July and I need a skirt to wear. I wanted to buy one, but everything I found locally was a rip-off. Everything was made of cheap, and I mean really cheap, polyester, poorly made and over-priced. Plus all the colourful skirts had black lining, which killed the vivid colours of the over-skirt.

I bought two belly dance costume booklets online: Skirting the Issues and Pants for the Dance. They cover a variety of belly dance skirt and pant styles used for costumes; as well as pattern drafting diagrams, sewing techniques, embellishment ideas, etc. They are wonderful additions to my sewing library and I'm sure I'll be using them a lot.
Here's the photo of the booklets:


So, off to sewing. I'll post pics of my fabrics tomorrow when lighting is better.