Dress and Coat Set – Harmonious Hues or Color Clash?

This dress is the oldest survivor of the black hole known as my UFO pile.

Partly sewn

I’ve said that about other items, but this is truly the oldest. I purchased the fabric in May 2011, and cut into it soon after that.

Painted, embroidered silk shantung

This was long before I had any knowledge of fitting techniques or even muslin making, so my attempts at adjusting the fit were made with the pieces pinned together. (Yes, it’s true. If I ever get this done, I may name it The Dress of A Thousand Mistakes. That’s worth an entire post in itself.) After a few frustrating sessions, I put the whole thing away for a very long time.

I always had the plan of making a coat to go with the dress – not in the same fabric, but a coordinate. I even mentioned it back in my early blog days when I was swooning over dress and coat ensembles. I won’t even get into my endless vacillations over the coat style, suffice it to say that there will be eventually be a coat!

Now that I’ve decided to finish this thing once and for all, my fabric hoard has thwarted my efforts in the most vexing way. I cannot find just the right fabric for a coat to coordinate with this dress!

Here’s the suiting I originally bought (online, of course) for this purpose. Even though the color is called “gold”, it’s obviously butter yellow, and putting it anywhere near the peachy gold silk is enough to make people ill.  



This is also a nice lesson in the effects of lighting as each fabric looks different in outdoor light (left) and indoor flash (right).

Here is a tan silk/linen that is just not quite the right color, plus the coarse texture looks wrong to me.

Here’s a peach rayon suiting that picks up the overall pink-gold hue of the silk, but is too… pale? flat? chalky? It seems to look better in the camera flash than in natural light, but it’s still not good.

In desperation I tried a contrasting color and was pleasantly surprised. This is a blue-gray cotton shantung, and it looks nice with the blue flowers. Then I started dithering again – maybe it was too much contrast.

Belatedly I realized that fabric shopping was my only option. I grabbed my scrap of embroidered silk and ran to the local SAS Fabrics Superstore, a sprawling warehouse without air conditioning where my physical stamina doesn’t always match my fabric enthusiasm. I was able to endure two hours of the heat, and even more amazing, I found a fabric that I think will work.

I really would not have imagined that a multicolored cotton basketweave suiting would be the answer to this problem, but I can’t argue with the evidence.

 
I definitely prefer this to the other options. But now I have to actually get to work and finish this project before I change my mind again!

 

Katrina

 

TGIF (Finished!)

This dress is finally finished! It only took me two months!

 

I had this partly sewn and pinned together in early May. It was on the sewing table all through the cleaning and decluttering upheaval. I refused to return it to the UFO pile, and so it sat there as a daily reminder of all my sewing projects that really needed to just get done.

Finally, an urgent need to get something else done is what finally pushed me to finish this and get it out of the way. As usual, when I finally put my mind to it, it went together quickly and left me wondering what all the procrastination was about.

It is a lovely pattern and I would definitely make it again if I didn’t have hundreds of others vying for my attention.

 

I simplified a couple of things and complicated a few others. The biggest complication was adding the piping along the seams of the bodice. Getting the lines to meet at a nice point in the center front took a lot of trial and error. The piping insertion is far from even, in spite of my patient basting and careful stitching.

However, I made sure that the piping matched at the back.

Notice that I was completely blind to the mismatched fabric pattern, but that piping looks solid!

A minor complication was my decision to convert from a one-piece dress to a top and skirt. It didn’t create a lot of extra work – I just cut a simple A-line and added an elastic waist – but it did use up every last iota of fabric. I would have made the top an inch or two longer if I had any extra, but I think it is wearable as is.

How did I simplify? By using this fabulous KNIT fabric! 

It’s a pique knit, the waffle-textured kind found in Polo and Lacoste shirts. I think this fabric came from Fashion Fabrics Club but it was so long ago I can’t be sure. All cotton, with just enough stretch to be comfortable, but it won’t pull out of shape. It is perfectly cool and comfortable for summer. I think this fabric came from Fashion Fabrics Club but it was so long ago I can’t be sure.

 

I thought I would still need the back zipper called for in the pattern because of the non-stretch piping, but I gave it the pull-over test, and sure enough, I was able to slip it on with the back seam stitched completely closed. Hooray for knits!

Now here is something amazing I found on Etsy the other day:

It looks like almost the same print, but it’s on a very different fabric. What a gorgeous dress! For sale here.

 

 

Well I’m glad I made mine and it fits nicely. And what a relief to finally get it off the sewing table and out of the way. Now, what’s next?

Katrina

Is It May Already?

Looks like two whole weeks flew by while I snoozed (actually sneezed, mostly).

There are a few things going on, but my daily activities don’t lend themselves to photography or blog updates. Examples:

I sat in a spot of shade on the patio, while a hummingbird visited the flowers on my bright red shorts.

Of course I did not have my camera at the time.

 

After two weeks of daily workouts and no pie (okay, minimal pie), this number refuses to get any smaller.

 The scale must be broken.
 

I pulled this dress out of a pile of UFOs from last year, made some progress on it, then ground to a halt again.

It should be cute though, if it ever gets finished.

We have hit our first 100-degree day already, so I’ll just use the summer sun as my excuse ... for everything.

 

Katrina

Finished Objects!

Dear Readers, this week I struck a blow for procrastinators everywhere by finally finishing four huge projects. See, we do get around to it eventually.

First, the Plum Pleather Purse.

Yeeesh. At some point, I must have found this textile appealing. Maybe I just liked saying “plum pleather purse.” I don’t really like the color that much now, but since it was all cut out and ready to sew, I decided to go ahead and put it together.

I used this pattern, view A. (Clearly it’s meant for quilted fabric, but I was never good at matching pattern to fabric, as we'll see below.)

Textured lavender chenille-like fabric for contrasting trim.

Lavender polka dot lining, with a couple of pockets.

The top opening has a magnetic snap closure. I got several packages of purse hardware last year during a sale at JoAnn’s.

The pattern suggests cardboard as an insert for the bottom of the bag. This seems odd, especially when the pattern is actually for a fabric bag. But since I don’t ever plan to put this in the washing machine, I went ahead with the cardboard.

Although this fabric is nice-looking (in the right light), I must say the quality is absolute crap. I don’t know where pleather falls on the faux continuum, but I’d previously thought it was a thick, plasticky substance for use in raincoats and handbags. This particular pleather should not be used for much of anything. It was like sewing with Swiss cheese. It is thin, floppy, mars easily, and cannot be folded, pinned or pressed. Sewing causes it to pucker, and creates a line of perforation which is highly susceptible to tearing.  

Well, it was an interesting experiment. On to the next one.

The Leopard and Antelope Bag.

The fabric came from a potential wadder/charity candidate. It’s upholstery-weight linen, but I fell in love with the print and just HAD to make myself a skirt about a year ago.

The skirt was way too stiff and scratchy so I never wore it. I just couldn’t give it up, so I decided a large, flat bag might make good use of the print.

I found some brown nylon for the lining and a heavy-duty zipper for the top. It has a bunny pocket inside! 

I used thin sheets of polyester batting to give some body to the sides of this bag.

You can sort of see from the top pictures where the sides of the bag are extended to make a loop to hold the D-ring. The brown shoulder strap is from another bag.

And finally, two Bird Pocket Totes.

You may remember this dress from October. I used a Marc Jacobs fabric, sort of denim/canvas weight.

It was cute and it fit well, for about a month. Then my lower torso expanded the dress shrank somehow and I could not get into it any longer. Good news though, it was a straight rectangle, so all I had to do was cut a tote bag-sized piece off the bottom.

The pockets are Premier Prints “Bird Sketch.” The two front pockets have magnetic snap closures.

The side pockets, for umbrella and water bottle, have elastic at the opening.

It's funny how this bag strongly resembles view D on the Butterick pattern, but I never noticed it until I was putting these photos together!

The front of the dress became the back of the bag.

Nylon lining with pockets.

The base and sides of this large tote are reinforced with buckram, which I happened to have for making belts.

D-rings and a luggage strap from an old computer bag.

The second, smaller tote is from leftover fabric.

The outside is the Marc Jacobs canvas.

The inside pockets are the bird fabric. I wanted this one to be more organizable, so it is divided into two sections by an inner zip pocket.  

The flap closes with a magnetic snap.

I used scraps of medium-weight sew-in interfacing to stabilize the fabric for this bag. You can tell that I was really digging through the stash: cardboard, interfacing, buckram, batting. I was grabbing everything I could find!

 And what happened to the top of the dress? It’s a bolero!

I opened up the front, put a pleat in the back, and wrapped the edge in bias trim.

This will be great with my black pique pants.

  

Here’s what I accomplished with the completion of this week’s projects:

• 4 unfinished objects (bags) finished, plus bonus bolero jacket
• 2 potential wadders (skirt & dress) rescued
• 4 yards fabric + 3 zippers + various trims, snaps, buttons, etc used from stash
• Vast amounts of storage space and work area reclaimed.

I also learned that my Singer 4423 Heavy Duty machine can plow through NINE layers of canvas plus buckram without a hiccup. I can’t say the same for my hands, which are sporting broken nails and bandaged wounds, but my fingers will have a long rest from heavy-duty sewing now.

I feel quite virtuous for finishing all these.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Katrina

Crafty Weekend

This weekend I actually crossed a few things off my list rather than adding more. Some great results, some okay results, lots of crafty fun.

First, I got my holiday cards done. I used to make a special card for each recipient, with a lot of stamping and painting on the cards. Now I'm not as inspired to do that kind of art, so these are just decorative papers with a greeting stamp, done assembly line style.

Bright!

Then I finished up a project that I started a loooong time ago: covered journals. The idea of the fabric-wrapped notebooks was born of necessity: I wanted to make fabric book covers but I didn’t have a working sewing machine at the time. I thought a permanent fabric cover on a plain notebook was almost as nice.


Sometime in the pre-holiday season last year, I had cut out dozens of notebook-sized fabric pieces and started gluing them onto plain composition books. Then something came up, I dropped the project, and the books have been sitting in a box with all the tools and supplies for almost a year. This may be a procrastination record for me.

Now they are all done!

inside covers in contrasting fabric

old jewelry, ribbon, and other baubles gild the lily

And now that I finally have a functional sewing machine, I will also make some of the slide-on book covers that I'd originally wanted so many months ago.

Next up on the craft scene: closet accessories. I'm thinking maybe an over-the-door shoe pocket thingy, and definitely some covered hangers. More great ways to use up those fabric pieces lying around the place.

How are your holiday projects going?

Katrina