Colette's Peony Dress

I'm slowly awakening from my Christmas food coma and seeing as now I probably have to lose a gazillion pounds, baking's out of the question for a little while. But since the past week was actually the first week this year that I was on vacation from all my jobs at the same time, I thought I'd use the time to dust off my sewing machine and practice my (still pretty basic) sewing skills a little.

My fabric box was overflowing anyway, since I had bought at least 15 or 20 different kinds of fabric over the past 9 months or so, each with a specific project in mind at the time....that I had completely forgotten about by the time I opened the box a week ago. The only thing I remembered was that I wanted to finally sew Colette Pattern's Peony dress and I actually even remembered the fabric I had wanted to use for that. So that's what I did.

For my standards, I think it turned out pretty okay. I had some trouble with the instructions (they do some stuff a bit differently than I'm used to doing them, e.g. attach sleeves, and trying it out their way didn't work too well for me unfortunately), but I kind of prevailed at last. There are a few problems here and there (the gathering on the skirt and the sleeves isn't even for example, the fabric puckers between the darts on the bodice), but as I said - for something made by me, it's surprisingly wearable (I'm gonna show you a couple of skirts I've also sewn this week in the next few days where this is very, very different). For some reason, the neckline turned out very high for me, though, which always looks a little bit weird now since the fabric keeps bunching up around the top now. No idea what I did wrong there. But still: something I can live with.

What you can't see on the pictures is how beautiful that fabric actually is. It is extremely light and airy and has a very subtle shimmer to it that looks so pretty in the right light. Unfortunately, it was pretty grey and dark out when I took the pictures, so please excuse the horrible quality.

I'm planning on using the pattern again to make the dress with short sleeves and I have already cut out the fabric for it, however, my sewing machine seems to hate it and eats it the moment I put my foot on the pedal. So yeah, I guess I'm gonna try again with a different needle and yarn, because it'd be a shame to have that beautiful fabric just sitting there gathering dust now.

I proudly present...the Sailor Dress

People! Finally! Not only did I manage to find my tripod (....in the basement...in the bag with my flippers....and I will not ponder that longer than I have to), today my new dress form arrived! So I'm all set to finally post some of my sewing projects. And there's, like, half a dozen to show so far. Some better than others, some more complicated than others and some...well...for you to laugh at and feel better about yourself (cause I can manage to ruin everything if I set my mind to....doing something extra great).

Today, I'm going to start with my sailor dress. I know, I know, it doesn't exactly look like a sailor dress, but it reminded me of one because of the colors and it seemed fitting considering I live close to the sea with lakes and rivers and canals running through the whole city, so you're never far from water.

The dress was actually supposed to be a skirt, but somehow it had different ideas once I started it. I actually did this one without a pattern. I was actually only trying to practice darts and how to make a fitting skirt out of a rectangle of fabric. I loved the idea of the red piping between the blue and white fabric and since I had kinda botched my first attempt at adding piping in another project (which you will get to see soon), I wanted to try it again. This time, it turned out pretty well I think (Hey! So this is what happens when you take your time and you don't try to be done in record time!).

So while my skirt was still a rectangle, I was trying to figure out which way I wanted it to go. Did I want the white on top or on the bottom? While I was handling the fabric in front of the mirror I realized the color combination would also look really nice in a top...and that's when the whole "Hey, let's just make it a dress!" shenanigans started. For the top part, I used some parts of Tilly's Mathilde blouse pattern as a guideline because it looked pretty much like I wanted the top to look and as I had just finished the Mathilde blouse (including the botched piping), I kinda knew what to expect. Or at least that's what I thought. What I hadn't considered was that while the Mathilde blouse only has darts to the sides of the breasts, I needed 2 more darts down the front, so the top would be fitted. Aaaah! So yeah, those were two stressful hours. But: I prevailed!

What I also hadn't really thought through was the fact that I would have to sew in a zipper. (Are you starting to - no pun intended - see a pattern here?) Which I had never done before. And let me just tell you: I'm preeeeetty sure it would have been immensely helpful to just look up how to sew in a zipper before attempting it. However, as I can't be bothered with inconsequential details like that, I just did what I thought was right (I even bought the wrong zipper - who knew there were different types?). Emphasis on "thought". Cause as I learned last week: it totally wasn't right. But I have to say, considering I had no idea what I was doing....it could have been worse. Could also have been better, but I think I fared fairly well. It closes. It opens. It does its job. Did I botch it a little towards the butt? Yes. Does it look a little weird down there? Yes. But nobody ever looks at my butt anyway. (EDIT: Oops. I just took some pictures of the dress on the dress doll and holy sh**, the back looks worse than I actually thought. Now it's really a good thing nobody ever looks at my butt, because I still wanna wear it!)

The little red flower I had bought a week earlier on a whim, but it just fit so nicely with the dress that I'm only using it for that now. However, I spent my weekend trying to make all different kinds of flowers, so I think in the future I'll just do them myself. Or at least I'll try to.

♥ Nicole