Sew Very Cheeky

Back in April, I was at Stitch Sew Shop in Alexandria and found a bolt of Nani Iro's Lei Nani Double Gauze in Navy, and fell desperately in love with the fabric. My friend was with me, ostensibly to control my mad fabric buying habits, and instead encouraged me to buy it. It didn't help that I already had a pattern in mind - the Magnolia, view A, by Deer and Doe. I'd been meaning to make it for a while, and this gave me the impetus. The lady at the cutting counter at Stitch was very helpful - the Nani Iro gauze is 43" wide, and doesn't have full even bleed bleed across the bolt, as you can see below. The shop had already cut the pattern out and had it on file, so we took the bolt, and laid out the pattern pieces  to estimate how much additional yardage I might need to fit the pattern on a smaller width fabric. I still somehow wound up with an extra couple of yards. I remember buying an extra yard for prudence, but at least my friend who was with me can now use the...

 I bought a length of a lovely sunshine colored, ombré striped seersucker last summer, planning on making myself a sundress with it. I finally used it last week. I thought the Centaurée Dress by Deer and Doe would work perfectly (spoiler alert! I was right!). I really love the details - the double straps made from the bias tape along the neckline, the triangle point bodice. I also knew it would be less than straightforward to do a bust adjustment - which is probably why I waited on it. There is a sew-along which gives you really, really good direction on how to assemble the dress. The two that I found the most helpful were the advice in the muslin , and the SBA .  The muslin pointed out that if you're doing a bodice mockup you really should baste on the zipper so you can get accurate sizing. Normally I make a line and struggle ridiculously to pin my muslins/mockups to myself. Adding the zipper is both genius and a no brainer. Also more difficult than I thought as I did only...

In May, I dropped by Finch to pickup something I had ordered that had arrived, and found that they had new fabric in, which is always dangerous. Does it matter that I have a backlog of sewing projects to complete when there's shiny new fabric to be had? No it does not.  The fabric to catch my eye was this lovely nearly sheer white, pink and grey striped light weight woven fabric. It has a lovely hand feel, and drapes very nicely. Because of how sheer it was, I worried about what pattern to make, and the lovely finchettes recommended the Elodie Dress by Closet Core , with a slip underneath. I don't know of a slip pattern out there, so we decided to lengthen and modify the Ogden Cami by True/Bias and make a slip out of a lovely grey fabric that was also in stock.  Closet core has written a guide for adjustments for the pattern. Closet core patterns are based on a B-cup, and instead of doing a true SBA for this pattern, I used the alternate method for a small SBA - using the si...

 Last fall, the lovely Afterblossom  allowed me to use her chibi Star Wars Kylo Ren and Rey with BB8 design to print fabric at Spoonflower. I ordered yardage of the organic cotton sateen. I was originally planning on doing a Gertie full circle skirt dress, but felt that the lovely neckline of Sew Over It's Rosie Dress would lend itself to the pattern more. Sew Over It drafts their patterns with a B/C cup in mind, so I had to do a small bust adjustment, and made a mockup of the bodice. The SBA was fairly straightforward, and I was able to adjust it easily. As the bodice is fully lined, the finial mockup became my bodice lining! The only other adjustment I made was to add pockets. The Rosie doesn't come drafted with any, and with such a full skirt, it doesn't ruin any lines. I used the pattern from the Deer and Doe Myosotis for the pockets. I think I was slightly manic in attempting to get this one finished before hoping on a flight to travel for work - I didn't quite ma...

In spring of 2020, I signed up for the Introduction to Garment Sewing class at  Finch Knitting and Sewing Studio  in Leesburg, one of my favorite local fabric and sewing spots. The class was once a month for several months, and it introduced me to such great things as Swedish Pattern Paper (honestly, at this point I should own stock in it), how to read a pattern, how to draft between sizes, how to transfer patterns, how to gather, how to sew darts, what a bust adjustment was, and many more skills. Honestly it was the best thing I've done for myself in a long time. In person learning and being able to ask questions is wonderful. Youtube tutorials can only take you so far, helpful as they may be. It was eventually indefinitely postponed and then canceled due to COVID-19, but before that happened, I had chosen my first pattern for the class - the Myosotis Dress by Deer and Doe . One of the things Sylvie, my instructor, had told me that I have since kept to heart was that a) you s...

The second dress I tackled turned out to be much more complicated than I realized it would be. I had found some lovely purple eyelet in the remnants bin at Finch Knitting and Sewing Studio  and knew it would make a lovely sundress, and so I decided to make the Hazel by Colette (now Seamwork).  There were two things I knew that would have to be modified on the dress for both the fabric, and my body time. First, I knew going into the make that I would need to do a small bust adjustment or SBA. I've realized that I will always need to do one as an A cup sewing in a C cup world - but there are worse problems to have. It just means more mockups. Second, the eyelet has large holes. I would have to line the dress. I decided to just line it with muslin, and as I was using muslin to do my mockup, I'd just repurpose it as lining. Instead of doing a separate lining, I decided to sew the muslin to the eyelet and treat the two pieces of fabric as one. When I made the Hazel, I'd only ev...

 The first dress I ever sewed was a knit fabric back in December of 2019. Though I'd made multiple quilts at that point, and even quilted a full size quilt on my tiny little Singer Fashion mate, I felt supremely confident in my ability to tackle the Gabrielle  Dress by Seamwork .  The pattern is listed as a beginner pattern, which also helped my confidence. I loved the princess seams, cap sleeves, and back detailing. It turned out surprisingly okay, considering I had never worked with knits, didn't know how to adjust patterns, how to do a bust adjustment, and I'm still not sure how to fix the fact that the back of the dress slightly gaps. I used an unfamiliar machine for this dress, as I sewed it mostly at my parents house, and borrowed my mom's machine.  My mother helped me view the fit issues on the back. The dress is intended to be made either with or without a serger. I assembled this dress with zig zag stitches and lots of seam tape for the top stitching. I had ...