Red New Girl Dress - Finished!

I finished my dress!  I actually completed it in time to wear it to the meal the day before the wedding I went to at Easter.  I didn't have enough time to make a dress for the wedding itself as I had intended but at least I got this one done.  Once I had put the skirt in I realised the weight of it meant the bodice fit was off.  Luckily I remedied this by pinching out a wedge of fabric at the neck to shoulder seam which pulled all the darts back into position as if by magic!  This did reduce the size of the neckhole though (which I didn't think about at the time) so it is a little snug to get on and off.  

 I am really happy with how it turned out.  I decided to make the capped sleeves in the end and now I am glad I did as I think they balance out the skirt portion.  The skirt itself is a half circle skirt that I drafted using a really useful tutorial on the Snug Bug Blog and she even has a handy dandy circle calculator!  I have lined the skirt too as I thought it would give it a bit of body and I really love the result.  I do need to take the lining hem up a little as it does occasionally peek out but that is no big deal.

Back view

 I had real trouble getting the side zip in this one.  The fabric and lining meant it was so thick that my zipper foot kept slipping off the guideline of the zip and stitching through the teeth.  Not good.  In the end I hand sewed the zip and it turned out much better than when I do them by machine!  I think this might be my new way forward.  I hate zips but love hand sewing so maybe I can combine the two.

You can't really see the bodice sections in these photos, but they do show up better in real life.  I had to adjust the brightness as it has rained ALL DAY today and I couldn't wait any longer to take pictures.  The actually dress I made is quite different than the New Girl one but I think my version is more wearable and the bright red has really cheered me up on such a miserable day.  I can see myself making this pattern up again, I really think it would look great with a contrasting colour fabric in the bodice side sections and with a pencil skirt.  Oh the possibilities!

Lovely Corners!

I have bitten the bullet and cut my fabric!  The cotton lawn lining was really lovely to cut but is a complete wrinkle-fest however much I iron, press and steam it.  At least it is the lining so I am the only one who will see it.  The moss crepe was pretty awful to cut, it has a bit of give to it and it likes to shift around all over the place.

Stay Tape on Seams

The Burda Style pattern calls for bias or stay tape on the neckline and armhole edges.  I must confess I didn't have a clue what this was!  After a bit of googling I found a great article on it over on Gertie's blog which explained it all clearly.  basically it is used for stabilising the curves on neck and armholes and is sewn on just inside the seam allowance.  I realise now that this is just a different technique to stay stitching which I have used on necklines before.  I thought I would give this a go though so see how it works in comparison   I would imagine it is a fair bit stronger than normal stay stitching.  I got some sew in stay tape on ebay as I couldn't find iron on and I wasn't really sure I would get iron on tape to behave.

Lining Front Sections

I had another go at the dreaded angled front pieces using this tutorial on the Burda Style website.  It is a really simple tutorial but it totally works!  My corners are crisp and lovely and although there is a little wrinkling in the lining fabric corners, the moss crepe corners are looking good!

Front of bodice

The moss crepe is harder to sew as it is a little slippery but it doesn't need pressing at all and doesn't crease or wrinkle at all!

Back bodice

I have sewn the back darts and the shoulder and side seam now so the bodice itself is all in one piece.  It is looking pretty good but I still don't  know what to do about the cap sleeves.  Sleeves or sleeveless?

Mocking it up!

Yikes!  It has been far too long since a blog post!  I am afraid I have had a bit of a sewing block recently, due to illness, too much work and just being tired all the time.  I am back now though as I have less hours over the next few weeks which may be bad for the bank balance but it has brought my Sewjo back!  Plus I am doing other things like house hunting and wedding planning eek!

So back to the red dress!  I have finally completed the muslin/toile for the bodice of this dress.  This took longer than expected purely because of my own stupidity.  Yes I have sewn with Burda Style patterns before.  Yes I know you have to add the seam allowance, everyone knows that right?  Yes I managed to trace and cut the pattern and forget to add it!  And I cut out the whole toile and also forgot to add it!  I sewed the first seam and the realisation came crashing down on me, this was never going to fit without that seam allowance.

DON'T FORGET THE SEAM ALLOWANCES!

After ignoring it for a few days *ahem* weeks I finally summoned up the energy and re-cut it and here I am wearing it!  I have used a cheapo cotton sheeting I had from a previous project but you get the idea.

Trying out the camera remote

Sewing the toile was really helpful as I discovered that I just didn't know how to sew those angled bodice sections correctly.  No matter how I clipped or manipulated the fabric I just couldn't get sharp corners and I have ended up with rounded edges.  I have now found a really helpful tutorial on the Burda Style website which I think will help me out.  I will give it another test run before using my actual fabric.

The bottom of the toile is sitting right on my waist line which is where I want the skirt to come so I will extend the pattern pieces on the bottom by another 1.5cm so that the waist is actually on my waist and not sitting above that.  I don't normally have to make this adjustment as I tend to have a short torso in Simplicity patterns so this is interesting.

There will be a bit more room in the arm once made up properly.  You can almost see those awful bust sections here.

This is horribly wrinkled and actually fits much better than the picture shows.  The darts in the back are pretty perfect though there does seem to be a bit of extra fabric high up on the neck, I often seem to get this with patterns but I am not really sure how to remedy it.  It is not as bad here as it has been in other patterns so I am not too worried.

The angled sections in the front may need moving slightly to accommodate my bust a little better but I am not really sure how to go about doing this.  Also I haven't mocked up the sleeves here, there are little cap sleeves included in the pattern but I am not sure if I wanted to use them or not as I quite like the look of the bodice as it is.  I think I will make up my mind once I have the actual fabric bodice cut out.

If anyone has any comments or feedback on improving my toile please let me know!  I would really value some feedback as I am basically self taught and half the time even if I know what needs changing I don't know how to go about it!

Planning my Little Red Dress

I have wanted to make a little red New Girl inspired dress for while now.  In fact this was going to be my Christmas dress, then my New Year dress but it is still laying uncut even now!  I just haven't had the time to work on anything sewing related.  This is starting to become a theme now! I have next week off however, and as well as visiting my parents and Sam's I should have a few days at home to really work on it.  If I am lucky I might even finish it!  That is the plan anyway.

Image from What Would Zooey Wear?

I love the program New Girl (so does nearly every other sewing blogger) possibly more for Zooey's perfect outfits than anything else.  Plus New Girl makes are springing up all over the blog world.  

Dance Bomb Fashion at Burda Style

Vicki at Sew Weekly

Sewingadicta even ran a New Girl Sewalong!

Sewingadicta

I am going to use a pattern from Burda Style August 2012, blogged about here, which has cap sleeves instead of elbow length sleeves which I think will look really sweet.  Plus it means I can wear layers underneath it which I will definitely need as it is ccccccolddddd here!  

Burda Style 08/12

I envisioned using a fabric with some texture so I have bought some moss crepe fabric (on the left) for the main fabric as I think it will add a bit of interest.  I am using cotton lawn for the lining (on the right) as I know a lot of sewers swear by it as a lining fabric and I really hate the cheapo staticy stuff you can get.  For something close of my skin I want it to feel nice and this lawn is really soft.  

After a my week away next week I am looking forward to getting stuck in to the project!