Tag Archives: outfit

Pocketses and ribbony trim

June 25, 2013 peneloping

dress: self-made // shoes: Chelsea Crew // hair bow: F21

It’s a fairly torturous feeling when all you want to do in the world is curl up in front of your sewing machine and sew for hours but you can’t because of adulthood and responsibilities and silly things like that. Even worse when you have all the fabric and patterns and notions you need sitting at home twiddling their thumbs and gathering dust. It got so bad that I ended up scheduling a sewing date for myself in my calendar.

And oh my, it was glorious. I was actually surprised how quickly this one came together considering I didn’t actually have a pattern to work off of. To be fair, the construction is pretty basic, but it’s always scary cutting into nice fabric when you don’t quite know what you’re doing.

Yes yes, I know. Muslins and all that. I did cut out a muslin for the front piece but then I decided I hadn’t waited three weeks to sit in front of the machine to sew together a muslin. I live dangerously?

Anyway, luckily everything worked out! I’m in love with this dress. Everything I’ve made lately has been fitted and waist-flattering but sometimes a girl needs to be able to wear a dress out to dinner and then gorge herself, and flowy garments come in handy in those situations. I did use an elongated version of the sleeves from Burda 7739 to draft the 3/4 length sleeves but the rest of it was hand-drafted. I tried using Colette’s Sorbetto pattern for the top, but I ended up having to make so many alterations to the muslin that I wouldn’t recommend it unless you literally have zero concept of what a front piece of a tank top ought to look like.

If you haven’t seen the lovely inspiration for this dress, it’s the Porter dress by Dear Creatures. To be honest, I wasn’t totally in love with it when I first saw it. The collar was cute, and I loved the ribbon trim and the giant pockets, but the flowy-ness and waistless-ness of the dress seemed like it would hang awkwardly on me. But then I saw a bunch of photos online of other people wearing it and they all looked absolutely adorable so it went on my to-do list. When I went about making my own version, I ended up taking it in a bit more than I had intended to, but it ended up working out. I love how it’s still flowy without losing its shape. I also suspect that that’s at least partly due to my using a slightly thicker fabric than the original dress appears to be made of.

I used 1/4″ ivory satin ribbon for the trim, handsewn, and 1/2″ diameter buttons. They’re currently nonfunctional since I can easily get in and out of the dress without unbuttoning it and because of lazy. The pockets are sewn on at a slight angle and I keep thinking they’re uneven in the photos but on the dress they’re matched up so I think it’s just the way I’m standing.

I’m slightly bummed that it’s suddenly 90+ degrees every day because it’s waaay too hot for this dress. Boo.

The Impossible Dress

June 1, 2013 peneloping

dress: self-made // shoes: Clarks

Actually this dress was pretty simple to put together, despite the collar taking two tries. The post title refers to Clara Oswald, the Impossible Girl. Yes, I’m nerding out, Doctor Who style.

Sometimes when I watch TV shows or movies I admire costumes and whatnot and it’s not until later that I go back and think “Hmm that one would be nice to make someday if I run out of projects..” And then there’s the costumes that sort of kick you in the butt and cling to your creative centers whining “Make meee IMMEDIATELYYYY.” Ahem. This was one of the latter.

I’d been searching for a fabric for this dress (and one other one, which I FINALLY* found and is being shipped to me soon!) and couldn’t find a single thing remotely close to it anywhere.

The original dress looks like this:

It’s a Vaudeville and Burlesque dress with a collar added. But what the hell do you call that kind of a print?! I searched endless combinations of “red floral geo”, “red dotted geo”, “red floral abstract”, just “red” etc. on eBay, Etsy, fabric.com, and even Jo-ann and found absolutely nothing that looked remotely similar. Le frustration.

But then I went to my local fabric store last week and there it was! Just sitting there on the shelf waiting for me. I have absolutely no idea what this kind of fabric is called but it’s a slightly textured chiffon-esque fabric but it’s almost opaque and slightly thicker than chiffon would be. Crepe? No idea. Anyway, it had wide horizontal red and magenta stripes so I figured I could just cut the pieces I needed out of the red stripes and if I really needed to, I could dye the magenta bits redder.

I immediately knew I was going to use Burda 7309 for the top, but while the bodice turned out beautifully, the sleeves were a bit wonky. Note to self: B7309 has crappy sleeves. So I re-cut them in Burda 7739 and they turned out perfectly!

For the skirt, I cut out a 54″ wide by 20″ long rectangle and pleated it (using my standard math-idiot eyeballing method) to fit the width of the bodice. I lined the bodice, but decided not to line the skirt and just to wear a slip or another skirt under it because the fabric is so gorgeously flowy and I didn’t want to ruin that. Also because of lazy. I also hemmed it like 4″ so the skirt’s on the shorter side.

The collar was surprisingly simple, once I realized that I had to match the length of it to the circumference of the dress neckline. I used this tutorial and just added one snap closure to the back of the collar and one to the front bit (with the opposite snaps on the inside back of the dress and inside middle front of the dress respectively) so it would stay put. I’m contemplating just sewing the collar in because realistically I think the collar makes the dress and I don’t see myself wear the dress without it.

Basically, I want to live in this dress. Unfortunately, I wore it out last night and around today and it was in the high 80s and low 90s and I almost passed out several times. Totally worth it though. And now I have an outfit to wear whilst I watch the 50th anniversary episode. By myself. In bed. In November.

Whatever. Dresses are cool.

*Apologies for all the caps. I hate caps. I’m just that excited.

49 Comments costumes - sewing clara oswald - costume - doctor who - dress - impossible girl - outfit - replica - sewing

Me Made May // week 2

May 16, 2013 peneloping

8. Colette Sorbetto with added collar/lace.

9. Refashioned men’s sweatshirt in XL.

10-12. Colette mini-bloomers, too scandalous for photographing ;]

13. Fleetwood dress copycat.

14. Hand-knitted Georgia cardigan in Knit Picks Stroll basalt heather

This week was a bit lame, to be honest. I had a really long research paper due on the 13th, so I pretty much spent the 10th-12th in the same set of pajamas. By Saturday evening, I pretty much looked like a homeless person. Not cute.

This week I decided that I need some flowy tops and shorts. I have some stuff planned out and I need to sit down and make a list so I can tackle it all in the two weeks I have off.

Sew ALL the things! –except dresses.

4 Comments outfit memademay - mmm13 - outfit - sewing

I never want to see a pintuck again

May 14, 2013 peneloping

dress: self-made // shoes: Chelsea Crew

You guuys, the day has come. I’ve been drowning* under a mountain** of end-of-semester papers and assignments but it’s finally all done!! I celebrated on Sunday by spending literally all day working on a dress. I woke up at 9am and worked all the way until 11pm when I physically had to stop and sleep on a heating pad because spending all day hunched over your sewing machine is apparently not good for one’s back. Especially when one strangely prefers sewing on the floor. Yikes.

This dress has been on my Sewing Inspiration board for ages. It’s one of the first Dear Creatures dresses I fell in love with and I had a vague idea of how I wanted to recreate it. I even bought the fabric for it weeks ago but I knew it was going to be a long process because of all the pintucks***. It was very involved but turned out to be the perfect project for a sewing-starved maniac.

I started off with a muslin (even though I never make muslins– shhh!) because I was only 95% sure my idea would work. I used the bodice from M6646 as a template, and traced it onto a sheet of paper. I measured where I wanted the pleats to go, and then marked cutting lines for each pleat. I did 8 pleats 3/4″ apart on the bodice, 4 pleats 3/4″ apart on the straps, and 6 pleats 1/2″ apart on the skirt****. All the pleats are 1/4″ pleats (well, except the ones that went wibbly).

Then I pretty much just cut each “slice” off and taped it 1/2″ away. And then I remembered that this pattern has a seam down the front center which I didn’t want so I marked and cut off the seam allowance.

And this is what I ended up with.

Andd then I did the same for the other bodice pieces. I did rework the sweetheart shape a bit so I had to compensate for that in the adjoining pieces.

And voila! Each piece took ages. But once the bodice was done, the skirt was much easier since it was just a rectangle. I had two 22″ x 23″ rectangles so I used the longer side as the length. I think I would have needed another 6″ or so to make the full 12 pleats and not have this end up a peplum top.

But squee! It’s done!

*Ok, drowning’s a bit dramatic.

**And no, I have no idea how one would drown under a mountain.

***I literally spent an hour looking up types of pleats because I could not for the LIFE of me remember the word “pintuck” or how to do them properly. I read about accordion pleats, box pleats, pinch pleats, knife pleats, etc. and eventually gave up and just went with my gut (I’d done them once before but it was ages ago). And then I posted a photo of the dress on Flickr and someone commented on “all the pintucks” and I was like *facepalm*.

****I stopped at 6 because I was worried the skirt would be too short if I did the full 12 since I only bought 2 yards of fabric. I might go back and add at least two more.

50 Comments outfit copycat - dear creatures - dress - fleetwood - outfit - sewing

MeMadeMay’13 // day 2 & day 3

May 3, 2013 peneloping

Today was the slightly crazy kind of busy. It wasn’t that I had a million things to do, it was just that I had one really long time-consuming thing to be at, and then only about an hour to do about two sort of time-consuming things before heading over to Boyfriend’s house for birthday celebrations. I’m really excited though! I was feeling fancy yesterday so I put together some “samoas” and chocolate covered strawberries.

Funny story about the samoas: I made them for the first time about three years ago, and I remember thinking it was odd that the only ingredients the recipe called for were caramel, grated coconut, and chocolate. I hadn’t had real samoas in years but I vaguely remember an actual cookie part under all the coconut. But I went with it and they turned out a little gooey but delicious, and as long as they were stored in the freezer they were fine. When I looked again for the recipe, I couldn’t find it. Every thing I saw said something about making some sort of shortbready thing. So now I’m thinking I completely misread the recipe three years ago. Whoops. I went with my version anyway. You really can’t go wrong with coconut, caramel, and chocolate. They’re also kind of janky looking because I know literally nothing about cookie decorating and therefore used a fork.

Anyway, the point is that I kind of realized that while incorporating one me-made garment into my outfit every day isn’t going to be impossible, managing to go up to the roof every day for pictures is. So I’m allowing myself to be ok with the occasional iPhone photo.

MMM day 2: I was running late Thursday morning so I kind of threw together this quick outfit. The skirt is based on this Modcloth skirt which looked pretty basic and turned out to be really simple to put together.

MMM day 3: I had a little more time this morning to get ready so I got a little more creative. I had originally made this Sorbetto top in turquoise but didn’t like how girly it was so I thought I’d do it over in a black knit fabric. Now I feel like it looks a little too French maid-esque so I tried toning that part down with my mint Kelly skirt.

I’ve been wearing a bunch of dresses lately so I wanted to play around with separates but I think this weekend will be more dresses.

Also if you haven’t checked out the MMM Flickr group, you should. Super inspiring!

3 Comments outfit clothes - desserts - me made may - outfit - sewing