Olive Atomic dress

Yet another Sew over It Betty / Simplicity 3749 combo, and again, fabric from stash which I've had for at least five years.  I absolutely love this print and more recently bought it in its other colourway too.  That dress got made sooner than this one - I certainly don't sew fabric up in the order that I buy it!

When I came to cut it out I saw that there was some marking on part of the fabric, fortunately I had enough to cut round this.  Or at least I thought I had.  It was only when I had sewn the bodice and lining together and turned it right sides out to press that I noticed a dodgy bit near one of the shoulders.  I hummed and hah-ed for about 30 seconds whether to unpick, cut out another bodice front and resew and decided I couldn't be bothered.  It's not that noticeable and doesn't show at all if I wear a cardigan with it.  I am a bit miffed with myself that I missed it at the cutting out stage though...

When it goes in the wash I'll add a colour catcher sheet in the machine and hope for the best.  If that doesn't work I'll live with it.

Apart from that minor blip though, I'm very pleased with how this turned out.

Frida la Catrina dress

Here is another dress sewn from my fabric stash, I'm not sure how long ago I bought the fabric - maybe four years ago?  I now have one remaining dress length of Frida Kahlo fabric to make up, and it's been in my stash longer than this one!  Maybe that will get sewn next year...

I bought 3.2m and used all of it.  Apart from the time it took to cut out, this was a quick sew - a lined Sew Over It Betty bodice and a vintage Simplicity 3749 skirt with pockets from Simplicity 2444, a combination I've made several times now.

Beach dress - #OAL2019

At last I've got this fabric made up!  I bought it two years ago and I'm very pleased to have now got a dress from it as it's really only going to get worn in summer.

I first came across the fabric on instagram in July 2017 - someone I follow had made a fabulous dress from it - and a bit of googling tracked it down to an Etsy shop.  I bought two yards - not sure why a shop in Spain is selling in yards rather than metres? - it's a wide border print fabric and there was enough to enable me to do a bit of print placement.

I used the bodice from Butterick 5748 - a retro reprint, and the skirt from Simplicity 3749 - a vintage pattern both from the early '60s.

Because the fabric was a border print I used half-inch seam allowances on the bodice side and back seams rather than the usual 5/8", to give a little ease.

The cutting out took a bit of time, but the sewing together was straightforward.  I'm not sure whether I'll actually wear it with the cardigan I knitted for the outfit-along challenge though.  They go well together, but I'll probably only wear this dress when it's hot and sunny - when I won't be in need of a wool cardigan - unless I'm in an air-conned building or on a very windy beach!

Turquoise Atomic dress - me-made May dress no 5

I wanted to get this dress finished to wear today - I'm going to the 60s exhibition at the Fashion and Textile museum in London.

I bought the fabric at the first, and so far only, Great British Sewing Bee Live event in London a couple of years ago so it isn't from deep stash, but I love it and wanted to get it made into a dress, so it's leapfrogged older fabrics.  I also have a dress length of this in the olive colourway which I've had for much longer, so this year I'll get that sewn up too, ready for the autumn.

This is another Betty / Simplicity 3749 hybrid, the fifth in fact (the others are here, here and here), and the twelfth time I've used the Betty bodice.  The first, and in fact only, Betty I made straight from the pattern I've passed on, because the fit really wasn't great.  A shame, because I loved the fabric.  Subsequently I tweaked the bodice about four times I think, to get a fit that I'm happy with.

And now I must away and get ready to go!

Le tour Eiffel dresses 2 & 3

Well, I've now completed half of my me-made May challenge for this year with these two dresses.

I've had the fabric for both of these for some time - I bought the blue version in October 2014 and I've had the orange since at least August 2014, so I'm very pleased to have got them both made up as I love this print.  The orange one in particular is now one of my current top 10 favourite me-made dresses.  (The others are - not in any order, I don't have an absolute favourite, Happy Homemaker, Wing Song, Bobby dress, 50s print dress, Flamingolex, navy lemons, lime green roses, bluebird on the vine and Tropicanna.)

So, these two dresses - firstly the blue one.  This is a mash-up of the bodice from Butterick 5748 and the pleated skirt from New Look 6824.  I think this is the first combination of these two options (although I did make two dresses last year with the the straight skirt option from this pattern).  It came together pretty quickly, and there's not really any more I have to say about it!

Now, the orange one.  This is the bodice from Simplicity 2444 and the skirt from a vintage Simplicity pattern, 3749.  This is also a first combination of these two patterns and one I'll make again.  An easy sew and I'll almost certainly be taking this one to Paris with me next month.

I love orange and pink together, it's such a summery colour combination.

Two bird print dresses

These two dresses are sharing a post as I made them in quick succession and they are both sewn using the same pattern combo - a Sew Over It Betty bodice, the skirt from vintage Simplicity 3749 and pockets from Simplicity 2444.  I've made this twice before (here and here) and it will be cropping up again during May I'm sure.

The first is this turquoise beauty.

I absolutely love this print (Michael Miller Wing Song), I already have two rtw dresses in it - a straight skirted one in this colourway and a flared skirted one in a pink colourway, which sadly I've never found as fabric, otherwise I'd buy that too!

And this is dress number 2 - I've had this fabric since 2014 and finally got it sewn up.

I had a couple of setbacks with this dress, the first being an ironing incident with the bodice which meant ditching it and cutting another one, and the second was having to put the zip in twice because of a thread tension issue - I've no idea what caused it so I didn't do anything differently and the second time it went in fine.

Now I'm going to get some fabric cut out in preparation for me-made May, and I also have a cardigan I was hoping to finish by the end of the month, although that will be pushing it now I think since I still have one and a half sleeves to knit.  By the end of next week should be doable though.

#OAL2018 dresses x 3

This year, in the two-month time frame for the #OAL2018 challenge (June & July), I made three dresses, all from fabric which I'd had in my stash for a while.

The first dress was made with 2m of floral cotton which I bought in Fabricland.  This was my second iteration of modifying the SewOverIt Betty bodice, this time I moved the bust darts down by 1" (in addition to the changes made on the Daisy dress).

The skirt is from NewLook 6824 which, despite it Betty Draper wannabe styling and the dresses looking too big for the model, is actually a pattern I've used quite a bit (well the skirts anyway).

 
Dress no 2 is the same bodice / skirt combo as for my Daisy dress (SOI Betty / vintage Simplicity 3749), although this time in addition to previous bodice modifications I lowered the waist darts and moved the bust darts up a bit and I'm now done with the alterations.  Since I had enough fabric for pockets, I nabbed the pocket pieces from Christine Haynes' Emery pattern.

Finally, dress no 3 is a Simplicity 1801 maxi.

I modified the bodice of this - I took the shoulders in by half an inch at the armhole edge and tapered them at the back.  I didn't alter the front pieces, just increased the gathering into the yoke.  I redrew the v-neck to be 2" higher, however, once it was sewn up it was a bit gapey, so I increased the centre seam allowance by half an inch at the top, and tapered it down for 2".  It was a bit of a faff doing all this as I recall, but worth it - I love this fabric, which I bought on Goldhawk Road several years ago.

And those are the three dresses which I made for this year's outfit-a-long challenge and all of them got worn quite a bit this summer.  Slowly making inroads into my blogging backlog!

Teal Daisy dress

Well, summer has well and truly gone now and it's high time I caught up on here!

We actually had a proper, hot, summer this year which was wonderful.  As I write this it's grey and raining outside, but given that it's late November I guess that's to be expected.  Doesn't make it any easier to bear though.  I hate grey, damp, dark days.  Anyway, I don't want to dwell on that now - I have too many posts to catch up on to go off on a rant at the moment.

Firstly, some sewing - this dress I finished in early June.

I decided to use the bodice of SewOverIt Betty.  However, the first time I made this pattern (here) I found the bodice wasn't a great fit, and that, combined with the fact that I've decided that circle skirts aren't really great for my lifestyle, means that dress has now gone to the charity shop, which is a shame, becaused I loved the fabric.

So for this one the alterations I made were to lower the armholes by half an inch and redraw the shoulder straps to bring them further in to the centre back, also by half an inch.  It now fits much better, but is still not quite right.

The skirt is from a vintage pattern, Simplicity 3749 - I had to adjust the centre back and side front skirt pleats to fit the bodice waistline, but this is not a difficult change to make.

I used all of the 2.2m I had of this fabric which I bought in Barry's in Birmingham during the 2015 SewBrum meet up and I'm really pleased with how it turned out - I love this colour.