Plans and a Request

Today while I was trying to hem some RTW jeans, my machine got jammed, well actually the jeans and the thread got jammed, and while I was trying to save the jeans, I must have moved something inside the machine. My machine is a bit off now and doesn't sew nice stitches. I'm taking it to the shop on Monday morning.

Anyway, this leaves me time to do some planning. I made a promise to myself that I will try to sew as many summer fabrics as I can before the summer is over.
And the other promise I made myself is that I will try to incorporate more dresses and skirts into my wardrobe.

First thing on my list is the Vogue 8386 dress that I will be making in this brown and white knit fabric:


Then, I'll be making the Vogue 8489 using this off-white knit with red dots:


Then there are two fabrics I don't have patterns for yet. The white cotton eyelet will definitely become a skirt. I'm leaning towards wide gathered-at-the-waist style.



And then is this knit fabric:

This fabric has been in my stash for 2 years now and I love it. I'd love to make a dress, but I'm having issues with the print. The print is quite big, so I'd need a pattern with minimum seams, but a style that would complement this sort of tribal print. Any ideas for the pattern?


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As for the request: Would anyone be interested in making a swap? I have this Patrones Ninos magazine. It's spring/summer 2009 issue. I'd like to swap it for the new Vogue 1119 dress pattern.
Here are some photos of the magazine:




Anyone interested in a swap can contact me at: aikkam [at] gmail [dot] com

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.

Now I Know What Everyone's Talking About

Brocade, chiffon, double knit, satin, taffeta, organdy, poplin, seersucker, etc.
I've been reading these and many names of types of fabric for years, but never knew exactly what those were. Fabric stores here only label fabrics by their fiber content, so I never knew exactly what I was buying. I simply relied on the feel of the fabric. And, that's also one of the reasons why I was afraid to shop online.

I heard a lot about the All About series, and I decided to order the three books: All About Cotton, Silk and Wool from the Rain City Publishing. And let me tell you, this was the best decision I ever made.


(pics taken from the Rain City Publishing website)


Books come with numerous helpful information about different types of fabrics, their care, sewing guidelines and, my favourite part, fabric swatches. Now I can feel different types of fabrics with my hands and recognize the fabrics in my stash.

This was by all means one of the best purchases I ever made. These books are a treasure. And taping swatches into books was really fun.
I probably don't even have to mention what a Doh! moment feeling all those swatches was for me.

June Capsule Contest and Great Finds

I decided to join the June Capsule contest on Stitcher's Guild. One of the reasons being that I need a pair of nice summer pants and the second reason that I need garments that coordinate.

Here are the rules of the contest:
The contest will run June 1 - June 30.

Rules:

1. The capsule will consist of four garments and one accessory (purse, belt, headband, jewellery, etc). One of the garments must be a top, one must be a bottom, all the tops must co-ordinate with all the bottoms and the accessory must co-ordinate with them all.

2. One of the items can be purchased and one can be made before June.

3. All the other items must be sewn, knitted, crafted etc during June.

4. Twist: no black items.

5. Everyone who tells me they want to enter the contest and makes at least one item can vote on the winner.

6. At the end of the contest people can send me photos and I'll post them in sets on Flickr. We should have four photos - one showing all the garments (composite or hanging or whatever) and three of the wearer modelling the items. No flat photos of the clothes please.

Here's are my fabrics for the contest:



I'll be making pants (bottom fabric) from off-white stretch cotton; and 3 tops. I haven't chosen the patterns yet.

Click here for the official thread.



I did some unintentional fabric shopping this week. One of my favourite stores also sells bolt remnants by kilogram. These are usually plain knits wonderful for T-shirts, but sometimes dull and in strange colours.
Well this week, they had these wonderful prints and I bought a few.

These are small pieces from 60cm to 1m (0.6 yards to 1.1 yard):



But these ones are huge. The largest is about 3m (3.3 yards) and they were super cheap:




These will make wonderful dresses, won't they?

This weekend will be my last weekend studying; after that I'll be free. I can already hear my machines calling me.

Happy sewing everyone!

Progress on the Skirt and More Fabrics

I finally had some time off to start working on my skirt. I'm using this pattern:




It's pattern number 5 view B, from the Fall/Winter issue of Burda Quick and Easy.

Progress:
Pattern modification: The pattern has 4 pattern pieces: center-front, center-back (both cut on fold); and left and right sides cut 2 times each. Based on my muslin (sorry, no pic), the skirt was too long; so I lowered the waist by 6cm and shortened the skirt by 5cm. I didn't want to just shorten it, because that would cause the skirt to lose it's bell-shape. Plus, the waist was too high for my preference.
Since I lowered the waist by 6 cm, the skirt was too wide at the waist. To retain the ratio between the pattern pieces (the front pieces are wider than the side ones), I narrowed the side pieces by 6mm on each side, which gave me 4,8cm less on the whole circumference. I left the front pieces untouched. Clear as mud?

Here's a pic of the fabric and cut pattern pieces:



I would have assembled the skirt, but, unfortunately, I ran out of thread :-(


One more thing I did over the Easter holidays is I went through all my Burda WOF magazines. I photo-copied all the technical drawings, put them in a binder. Then I went through the WOF archive on the Burda web-site and marked all the interesting patterns based on the photo and technical drawing. I found lots of very nice patterns that fashion photos just don't do them justice. So many interesting details are lost when they make patterns in solid colours, especially in black.


And ... I also bought more fabrics:

knits:


shirt-fabric - I have no idea what it's called:


denim and striped-knit:


I apologize for the quality of the photos - they were taken with my mobile phone.

Fabric Shopping

I haven't done any sewing yet. I'm back to work and this week has been both physically and emotionally draining. To lift my spirits, I went fabric shopping. I brought home these three beauties:



I apologize for the poor quality of the photo. It was taken with my phone as my camera sadly died recently. The colours aren't 100% true, the reds are more vibrant and the true green is closer to the colours in the upper right corner.

All three are knits. I haven't chosen the patterns yet, but I know that both red ones will be tops. I love the red and white combo with jeans, or even white pants, for the summer. The green one will be a wrap-dress. Paired with brown leather bag and sandals, it will look perfect.

Thank God tomorrow is Friday and I'll be able to do some sewing during the weekend.