Friday, December 28, 2007
Happy holidays
To all of you, my dear virtual friends, happy holidays. I wish you the happiest New Year ever, full of love and joy...
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
I've been sewing up a storm (pic-heavy)
I didn't vanish into thin air nor died, in case you worried about me not posting :) Just had a very very busy time at work and spend every spare second sewing. Florin was in Brussels for a week and I took advantage of it. But before I show you what I made in a week (looots of things), here is my Chanel style jacket "in action", at the conference. It looks rather interesting with the black pearls doesn't it?
Last night I had one of the happiest moments ever. Thanks to Sigrid, I've discovered Elingeria, an online shop in Germany, selling bra kits, bra notions, patterns and lots of great things (you'll see below what I ordered). I'm very happy with this shop and they provide great customer service. So here is my Christmas present for myself:
Two big cutting mats(90x60 cm). First time I have a mat and I can finally use my rotary cutters - have two and one of them even has that distance arm (how do you call it??) but I couldn't use them because I didn't have a mat!
Bra patterns (one of them by Beverly Johnson, author of the Bra-maker Manual), bra padding in various colors, bra kits: black/silver, chocolate/turquoise, emerald green/gold, hot pink/purple, dark red. Every kit has all the notions (except bra padding) and enough fabric and lace to make a bra and two pairs of panties.
And now, I proudly present you the result of a week's worth of sewing. Beware, I did nothing else this week but go to work and then go home and sew!
Coat, Burda 10/2007, 119
This is the best drafted coat pattern I've ever seen so far! I made it like it was (it is a petite pattern) and I didn't have to alter or change 1 mm of it! It's amazing! Look how elegant this side panel with pocket included is:
And I love the shape of the sleeve. It has a center seam and not cap ease - I think the pattern is cut down the center and all the cap ease is taken out in a dart. The shape is beautiful and as usual, I didn't even need to insert shoulder pads.
Back detail :
The coat is made out of the same wool knit that I used for my Chanel style jacket. The wool if you remember is very stretchy, therefore I underlined the entire coat with white cotton batiste. I love underlining, the coat is so soft and supple and so light!
Burda, 04/2007, blouse 114 with the sleeves of blouse 101 from Burda 09/2007. The original sleeves of the blouse were short and puffed. I copied the sleeve, measured from front (back) notch to the shoulder notch both on the bodice and the sleeve. The resulting difference (that allows for gathers in the sleeve) I took it out slashing the pattern and taking out 1 cm at each slash. The resulting cap sleeve was copied to the sleeve pattern of the other sleeve. The blouse is made in pure silk and I can wear it both with long ties or with a bow.
Burda 09/2007, dress 117
Dress unbelted
Dress belted
The dress is made out of two cuts (about 0.5 m each) of pure gorgeous wool. Those cuts were given to me by my mother, are at least 20 years old and come from a Romanian factory that used to make only wool fabrics.
See how gorgeous this fabric is, and it has the name of the factory (Libertatea Sibiu) woven in the selvage. "Lana pura" means "pure wool". Have no idea what "London shrunk" might mean. Christina reminded me that Carolyn describes in this post the London shrinking method. Thanks Christina! So this fabric was pre-shrunk in the factory. This amazes me.... I guess it means good quality, doesn't it? I also assume this fabric is wool crepe. I don't know the word in English, in Romanian we call it caşa (pronounced "kashà" - the word comes from German).
The dress is underlined with a great knit lining, silky and slippery (no static of any other problems over stockings, no wrinkling and practically inconspicuous). I used this tip on PR to underline and give a Hong Kong finish to the seams at the same time.
Jeans, Vogue 8202
These jeans are very low rise in the back and I noticed that good jeans are normally higher in the back. I therefore altered the waist seam of the yoke, raising it by 1.5 inches at the center and tapering to nothing at the sides.
I used two spools of topstitching thread threaded in the same jeans needle, as I didn't have any dark blue jeans thread. I'm not sure that I like that tone on tone topstitching, maybe I would have liked a rusty jeans thread better, but I wanted a pair of jeans to be worn with dressier jackets and thought that dark blue thread would be better.
Detail of the decorative stitching on the back pocket
Simplicity 4020
Last night I had one of the happiest moments ever. Thanks to Sigrid, I've discovered Elingeria, an online shop in Germany, selling bra kits, bra notions, patterns and lots of great things (you'll see below what I ordered). I'm very happy with this shop and they provide great customer service. So here is my Christmas present for myself:
Two big cutting mats(90x60 cm). First time I have a mat and I can finally use my rotary cutters - have two and one of them even has that distance arm (how do you call it??) but I couldn't use them because I didn't have a mat!
Bra patterns (one of them by Beverly Johnson, author of the Bra-maker Manual), bra padding in various colors, bra kits: black/silver, chocolate/turquoise, emerald green/gold, hot pink/purple, dark red. Every kit has all the notions (except bra padding) and enough fabric and lace to make a bra and two pairs of panties.
And now, I proudly present you the result of a week's worth of sewing. Beware, I did nothing else this week but go to work and then go home and sew!
Coat, Burda 10/2007, 119
This is the best drafted coat pattern I've ever seen so far! I made it like it was (it is a petite pattern) and I didn't have to alter or change 1 mm of it! It's amazing! Look how elegant this side panel with pocket included is:
And I love the shape of the sleeve. It has a center seam and not cap ease - I think the pattern is cut down the center and all the cap ease is taken out in a dart. The shape is beautiful and as usual, I didn't even need to insert shoulder pads.
Back detail :
The coat is made out of the same wool knit that I used for my Chanel style jacket. The wool if you remember is very stretchy, therefore I underlined the entire coat with white cotton batiste. I love underlining, the coat is so soft and supple and so light!
Burda, 04/2007, blouse 114 with the sleeves of blouse 101 from Burda 09/2007. The original sleeves of the blouse were short and puffed. I copied the sleeve, measured from front (back) notch to the shoulder notch both on the bodice and the sleeve. The resulting difference (that allows for gathers in the sleeve) I took it out slashing the pattern and taking out 1 cm at each slash. The resulting cap sleeve was copied to the sleeve pattern of the other sleeve. The blouse is made in pure silk and I can wear it both with long ties or with a bow.
Burda 09/2007, dress 117
Dress unbelted
Dress belted
The dress is made out of two cuts (about 0.5 m each) of pure gorgeous wool. Those cuts were given to me by my mother, are at least 20 years old and come from a Romanian factory that used to make only wool fabrics.
See how gorgeous this fabric is, and it has the name of the factory (Libertatea Sibiu) woven in the selvage. "Lana pura" means "pure wool". Have no idea what "London shrunk" might mean. Christina reminded me that Carolyn describes in this post the London shrinking method. Thanks Christina! So this fabric was pre-shrunk in the factory. This amazes me.... I guess it means good quality, doesn't it? I also assume this fabric is wool crepe. I don't know the word in English, in Romanian we call it caşa (pronounced "kashà" - the word comes from German).
The dress is underlined with a great knit lining, silky and slippery (no static of any other problems over stockings, no wrinkling and practically inconspicuous). I used this tip on PR to underline and give a Hong Kong finish to the seams at the same time.
Jeans, Vogue 8202
These jeans are very low rise in the back and I noticed that good jeans are normally higher in the back. I therefore altered the waist seam of the yoke, raising it by 1.5 inches at the center and tapering to nothing at the sides.
I used two spools of topstitching thread threaded in the same jeans needle, as I didn't have any dark blue jeans thread. I'm not sure that I like that tone on tone topstitching, maybe I would have liked a rusty jeans thread better, but I wanted a pair of jeans to be worn with dressier jackets and thought that dark blue thread would be better.
Detail of the decorative stitching on the back pocket
Simplicity 4020
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
