I’m so excited to FINALLY post this, considering I finished it back in April! Last year’s mystery fabric contest was cocktail themed, and I ended up with some light blue cotton sateen and THE most horrendous crunchy aqua/teal lace that didn’t match at all. It was seriously awful.
At first I fell in love with this design and tried to emulate it.
Here are some variations I draped.
It kept looking too Renaissance Fair-esque and less ballet-y, so I abandoned that idea. Then I saw these dresses and ran off in an entirely different direction.
I tried dying the blues to go together a little better, which kind of helped. And then I kind of embraced the contrast. And THEN I started watching Gotham while I worked on the dress, which is why it kind of looks like something you’d wear to a cocktail party at Arkham. Oops? I feel like it needs a top hat to complete the look.
Brief breakdown of the construction process:
The bodice is comprised of a couple layers, including boning. All of the beading and 3D flowers were attached by hand, and I did most of it before I attached the skirt. The skirt is a top layer of my favorite dress up micronet (same stuff I used on my Cinderella dress), and then 3 skirt layers in the same colors of organza as my Cinderella dress. What can I say? I really like that iridescent look it gives off. I basically gathered the circle skirts and attached them to the bodice, and then kept the flowers/beading running down past the waist seam to mostly hide it.
The hilarious thing? ALL of those dressed I posted above are by Paolo Sebastian. A closer look at my main “pretty fancy dresses” board on Pinterest revealed that like 80% of it is Paolo Sebastian’s. And so is the design I fell in love with that I’m heavily basing my wedding dress on. Oops.
And no, I haven’t a clue when I’ll have a chance to wear this. But it was SO much fun to make (after the initial WHAT THE EFF AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS??@!!@!!1 panic).
Bonus: I won first place!
A couple months ago I got my hands on an old retired wool kilt, and made plans to rip it apart to make something out of it. I figured I’d have enough for jacket or skirt, and then realized that I would never wear a plaid jacket and dropped that plan. Then I actually ripped it apart and realized I had a pile of about six yards of fabric (albeit some very narrow yards).
Awesome — Christmas dress it is!
My inspiration on this one was this Alexander McQueen dress, except I wanted more of a cut-away armhole look. I drafted the bodice and then just pleated the skirt until I liked how the pleats sat.
The inside is fully lined with black poly satin, and I briefly considered making a black petticoat sort of thing like Emma Watson wears, but haven’t gotten around to it. Still might.
Sidenote: also made a matching tie!
Anyway, in my super limited sewing time this past year, I’ve managed to squeeze a couple projects in, including this Eliot sweater and these jeans.
YOU GUYS I’M SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS.
After years and years of wanting to start a pattern company, friend Sandra and I are finally doing it! We just launched our blog this morning, and will be releasing two patterns in the fall.
Check out our blog, and make sure to follow us on Instagram!
(And no, peneloping.com isn’t going anywhere, I’ll still be posting personal makes over here!)
jeans: self-drafted // sweater: hand-knitted
These are the jeans I drafted for my pants drafting class!
I’m so so thrilled with these jeans. The only jeans pattern I’d tried before were the Jamie jeans by Named, which I adored, but only after I made tons of changes to the fit, by which point the legs were totally offgrain and the inseam would be pointing outward. Plus, even though I now know how to fix the fit properly, it’s always nice to have a pattern for plain, simple jeans. They definitely worked, but not ideal. I now have a basic pant draft from which I made a basic jean draft (which has basically no ease because let’s be honest, I’m usually dressed like a sausage. Or a cupcake).
This is round 2 of tweaking this pattern and I’m pretty happy with the way these jeans turned out! I used the same book and same pants draft I used for my overalls: . Once I get everything properly tweaked, my plan is to make like three pairs of skinnies and then a pair or two of flares or bootcut jeans. So far for my wearable muslins I’ve been using a really shitty stretch denim I got at Sewfisticated in Boston. It’s just kind of crunchy-feeling and the recovery really doesn’t last that long. It’s only $2.50/yard though so it makes perfect muslins and then I can just wear them until they wear out a few months later.
For this nicer pair, I bought a scrumptious stretch denim at Stone Mountain and Daughter in Berkeley that took me like a week to build up the courage to cut into. It’s just so soft and buttery and makes me do a happy dance. I think I have enough for another pair of skinny jeans, or at least a pair of shorts, and I’m thinking I’ll need to go back and pick up some more for the flares.
All the jeans!