Tag Archives: sewing

Floppy donuts

Bust cut-out dress

Bust cut-out dress

Bust cut-out dress

Bust cut-out dress
dress: self-made // tights: Modcloth // shoes: Nine West (thrifted) // scarf: French flea market

Birthday dress was a success! It’s slightly difficult to type though because my fingers are frozen. Cannot wait for warmer weather!

I used this pattern along with a self-drafted circle skirt. I was going to include the sleeve caps but a combination of having nearly run out of time and deciding it looked better without them led to my leaving them off.

For the skirt, I folded a square piece of fabric over halfwise twice, and then measured a 10″ curve at the waistline. My waistline is 24″ so I wanted the skirt to be about 1.5″ wider than my actual waist so there would be pleating. Then I measured from the curve down to various points about 20″ (skirt length + hem) and cut both curves so that I was left with a large floppy donut shaped piece.

Sorry if that’s absolutely incomprehensible. I’m terrible at explaining things.

And yes, I totally caved and dyed my hair. Eek!

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Shimmer

Gold linen skirt

Gold linen skirt

Gold linen skirt

Gold linen skirt

Gold linen skirt
top: h&m // skirt: self-made // tights: F21 // shoes: Chelsea Crew // sweater: Modcloth

This might seem surprising but a year ago I owned about three dresses (like appropriate-for-public dresses, not counting the ones only appropriate in Middle Earth) and one skirt. And exactly one of those three dresses was not club-wear.

Then I bought a few patterns and started learning how to make dresses and pretty soon I had a whole closet-ful. But I still only had one skirt!

Anyway, this skirt was my first experiment with pattern-less skirt-making. To be fair, I made a few in high school but they were such ruffled low-rised monstrosities that it’s best to forget their existence and just back away quietly.

I think I might do a tutorial on this one, if anyone’s interested. It’s really simple and only involves the tiniest bit of math. Or, if you’re math-phobic like me, some minor trial and error. I used some kind of gold linen that has bits of sparkly gold woven in. It’s not the easiest thing to iron but it definitely creates a cool shimmery effect.

In other news, I just saw this video over at Maidae and I’m just itching to dye my hair red again.

In other other news, I finally figured out how to use my vintage non-auto-focusing lens for taking outfit pictures! It was actually stupidly easy and now I feel dumb for not having tried it before.

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Brainstorm

Birthday celebrations are happening this Friday and I’ve been doing that thing where I suddenly hate everything in my closet.

But today I got an idea!

I bought this pattern the other day:

And then I saw this on Pinterest.

So now I want to make the Burda dress in black, but with a shorter skirt and with horsetail braid in the hem to make it swishy.

And definitely with the bow!

*Neither of these images is mine, and they both link to the original owners.

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Chelsea collars and wearing things in public

Chelsea collar dress

Chelsea collar dress

Chelsea collar dress

Chelsea collar dress
dress: self-made // tights: Modcloth // shoes: Seychelles

This dress makes me super happy. It’s a replica of this one (why is making replicas so much fun? and why am I so obsessed with Dear Creatures???) and I made it entirely without a pattern, which I’m pretty rusty at, which is why it’s sort of wrinkly in a few places. I’m choosing to ignore them.

I used to pretty much only make costume replicas from historical or fantasy films (mostly Lord of the Rings, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Star Wars with some Lemony Snicket and Stardust thrown in) but it was kind of a bummer because I had these gorgeous dresses that I pretty much never wore, except to the occasional ren faire or Comic-Con. Although there was one occasion where my best friend and I walked to the grocery store dressed as Arwen and Padme. No one stared at all. Not a one.

Anyway, the point is this was a fun project. And I’ve already worn it out once! (There was no staring.)

*Note to self: learn to focus properly, kthx.

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More collar love

Navy collar dress

Navy collar dress

Navy collar dress

Navy collar dress

Navy collar dress

Navy collar dress
dress: self-made // tights: Modcloth // belt: Modcloth // boots: Boutique 9

Anyway, I think this might be my favorite of the Burda 7739 bunch I’ve made. I also think it might be safe to say that I’m a little obsessed with this pattern, considering I’ve already made it three times: this one, a gray one that I just realized I forgot to post oh no wait, I did post it!, and  a spring version I finished last week that I haven’t posted yet.

This one was heavily inspired by yet another Dear Creatures dress. Shocking, I know. I loved the original dress but I knew the lack of a waist would look terrible on me so Burda 7739 seemed the perfect pattern to use for it. As usual, I lengthened the waist by a few inches, and I used double fold bias tape for the white detailing. I also lengthened the sleeves past the elbow and made little cuffs. I’m thinking of ripping those and making new cuffs with buttons.

So far I’ve worn this on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I’m pretty much in love. I also have about six more dresses in my Sewing Inspiration board that this pattern would be absolutely perfect for recreating.

Do you have any patterns that you just can’t get enough of?

PS It was so great to hear about what everyone’s working on over the long weekend. I’m still hammering out a few pattern piecing-related issues, but so far so good! I hope all of your projects are going swimmingly.

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