Simple jersey top

This will be a very quick one. It’s just a simple jersey top, but I’m loving it at the moment, so I thought I’d share a couple of pictures. Luckily the sun came out today and we were able to snap a couple of photos before having a picnic by the river.

After all the wedding dress sewing, I was in desperate need for a quick sew. I had ordered this viscose jersey on a whim from FC Fabrics without a clear plan of what to make from it. It’s like a leopard print in summery colours and while it’s not my usual type of print, it’s been the perfect feel-good pattern. The jersey has quite a lot of body, maybe a little bit too much for this shape but then again it made it super easy to handle. I’m not the biggest fan of sewing jersey. I’ve had bad experiences in the past, my machine eating up half the garments, but this one was a breeze to sew up. Instead of trying to use my twin needle (which I’ve never really managed to use successfully) I decided to hem everything with a triple zigzag stitch. The neck is finished with a band which I stitched down with a small stretch stitch.

Since I don’t really have any tried and true patterns for jersey tops, I decided to just copy an old H&M top which I’ve had for ages and wear to death. While tracing the shape I realised how ridiculously off grain the original was, an issue I have with many H&M tops. With this version I luckily could make sure that everything was cut perfectly on grain. The pattern of the top is quite simple. Three quarter raglan sleeves, a curved hem and a tiny pocket (which is practically invisible but makes me happy).

I really like how it turned out and have already worn it a lot. While I might have to tweak the upper sleeves a little bit next time, the fit everywhere else is great. It’s a flattering shape and goes well with my many Ginger jeans.

I’ll leave you with some sun-filled pictures, hoping that spring has finally decided to stay and we’ll get many more evenings like this.

The Wedding Dress

Let me tell you the story of THE dress…

My now husband and I got engaged in autumn last year and had a lovely private wedding (just the two of us and two witnesses that we borrowed from the hotel we were staying at) in beautiful Cornwall last week.

Like for many sewists, the question was to sew or not to sew my wedding dress. I was never sure if I wanted to sew my own dress. I thought it might be too much pressure to sew a wedding dress, which everyone will closely look at and which has to withstand a whole day of wedding activities. With everything else there is to organise for a wedding it might just be too much?Then however, we decided that we wanted to get married just the two of us, and since there was barely anything else we had to organise, I had plenty of time to sew a dress.

In terms of inspiration for the dress, I did my share of Pinterest browsing and wedding magazine reading. In the end though it came together quite organically without a concrete plan.

I knew that I didn’t want a wedding dress that I could only wear once and then would gather dust in a closet. I thought about doing a simple style dress and then dying it afterwards. I quickly realised though that I wanted to do separates, which I could wear individually and easily incorporate into my wardrobe.

Before settling on any patterns, I first went to buy some fabric. I find it easier to let the fabric inspire me rather than trying to find a fabric that matches my vision. While I didn’t think it was necessary to wear white at a wedding, I did decide to go with white, because I wanted to work with lace, and pretty lace is a lot easier to find in white than in colours. So off we went to Goldhawk Road on my birthday. I knew I wanted to work with nice quality fabrics. In the end I got some sand-washed silk, some dupion silk and some 3D floral lace. I had already ordered some lace swatches from a bridal fabric shop before our shopping trip and while they were gorgeous, they felt a little bit too fancy and formal. So when I came across this simple floral lace, I was immediately sold. All fabrics were in slightly different shades of natural white. I didn’t try to match the colours exactly to allow the dress a little bit of dimension.

The first element of the ensemble that I decided on was the slip dress in sand-washed silk. I had wanted to make a silk slip for ages to wear under some unlined dresses. For the pattern I used the Tessuti Sadie Slip Dress. It’s a simple bias-cut dress with a nice v neckline. I made a toile in some polyester lining in size S, graded out to an M at the hips. Overall it fit well, I only had some fabric pooling at the lower back. I tried to find out if there was such a thing as a sway back adjustment for bias cut dresses, but the only way I could remove the access was with darts (which the Sadie Dress pattern includes). As I knew that I would wear it under a skirt, I decided to leave them off and embrace the blousiness. I then moved on to my sandwashed silk. To make sure to not distort the fabric while cutting I used some spray starch to turn it less shifty. This worked reasonably well but was still quite a pain to cut out. To assemble it I used french seams. The neckline is finished with a facing which I cut with the pinking blade of my rotary cutter to avoid any hems showing through at the right side. Instead of the suggested spaghetti straps, I made slightly wider and less fiddly straps. Then I let it hang for some days before hemming it. To do this fabric justice, I did a hand-rolled hem for the first time and I must say it’s utterly satisfying. This might be my new favourite hand-sewing technique!

Next I had to decide on a skirt. I was contemplating different pleating and gathering versions, but in the end I realised that I wanted to keep the volume at the waist to a minimum. So the obvious choice was a half circle skirt. Funnily enough this was my first circle skirt ever. Luckily I found By Hand London’s Circle Skirt Calculator, which made it super easy. I finished the waistband with a white grosgrain ribbon which I stitched down by hand. The skirt is closed with an invisible zipper and hooks and eyes at the lapped waistband. Again I let the skirt hang for several days before levelling it. Originally I wanted to finish the hem with some gold bias binding to add a little sparkle. Half way through attaching it though I realised that the bias binding was too stiff and removed it again. To preserve as much length as possible I just serged the hem and folded it up once to attach it with invisible hand stitches.

Once I had the base of the dress, I had to decide on the lace top. To figure out what would work best I played around with the skirt toile and some top ideas to figure out how the shapes would work together. In the end I went with a dart-less loose crop top with a boatneck and bracelet-length sleeves. The bodice is based on a top I had in my closet and after trying some different sleeves, I settled on the sleeves from Lotta Jansdotter’s Esme Top from her Everyday Style Book which I shortened to the right length. This lace has a lovely scalloped border which I used for the hem of the bodice and the sleeves. The seams are all french seams, for which I removed some of the appliques to make sure the french seams wouldn’t be too bulky. The trickiest part of the top was definitely the neckline. Originally I wanted to finish it with some bias tape cut from the sand-washed silk scraps but somehow it didn’t look right. So I decided to mimic the scalloped hem by sewing a dense zigzag stitch around the neckline. To stabilise the fabric I used tissue paper. It still turned out a little wonky but some hand sewing and some appliqued flowers fixed it.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the process of sewing this dress. It helped that I was working with simple shapes and not too complicated techniques. In the end a lot of hand sewing went into this dress, but I really liked that (it gave me the perfect excuse to watch Project Runway). Overall I probably spent 5 days working on this dress (including the toiling) which in hindsight seems quite short for a wedding dress. Then again I didn’t sew a princess dress like some others do.

The final dress was perfect for the occasion. It was fancy enough to say wedding dress but simple and practical enough for our low-key celebration. The fabrics were a joy to wear and the skirt was perfectly swishy. I love how the silk skirt looks different in each picture depending on where the wind came from (and wind there is plenty in Cornwall).

Here some of the details:

  • Fabrics: Sand-washed Silk (UK Textiles), Dupion silk (Goldbrick Fabrics), Lace (Classic textiles); all Goldhawk road; estimated costs £130
  • Haberdashery: Silk thread, zipper, hook and eyes, grosgrain ribbon; all Minerva Crafts, estimated cost £15
  • Shoes: Clarks
  • Dried Flowers: English Flower Farmer –> highly recommend them, they have gorgeous flowers and perfect service
  • Engagement and wedding ring: Goodman Morris

In the end we decided to take our own wedding pictures. My pictures were all taken by my lovely husband (who had lots of practice thanks to this blog). The couple pictures were taken with a tripod and self timer. I love how they turned out, this gorgeous yellow colour was everywhere in Cornwall and turned out to be the perfect back-drop.

Oh, and we had our own fluffy white wedding cat who wanted to be in all the pictures. So here is a picture of a cat. You’re welcome!

Handmades refashioned

I’ve always loved to refashion clothes. While I’m not doing it a lot anymore (making things from scratch is often less time consuming than refashioning them) I still love the process of turning something not quite perfect into a new favourite piece. This time the starting point are two handmades that I made last year but didn’t wear a lot.

First off the Megan Nielsen Dove blouse which I tested for Megan last year (here is the original post). While I was quite happy with the result and it got a decent amount of wear (even to a fun hen do) it never felt quite right. The pattern is lovely but for the testing I decided to follow the instructions to the dot, and some of the design features are just a little bit of a departure from my usual style.

First the sleeves; while I had a lot of fun experimenting with a new sleeve shape, I never really felt like they were me. This could have something to do with me being a little clumsy and having a tendency of dipping my clothes into food (just ask my boyfriend how often that happens, it’s a lot). So I decided I had to do something about them. Instead of taking them off completely I shortened them to around 12cm, gathered and re-attached them. And I have to say I love them. They are a lot more practical and the sleeve shape feels a lot more boho and less like a wizard shirt ;-)

Next the hem. The pattern has quite a pronounced high-low hem (I believe the tester version was more extreme than the final pattern). It felt kind of cool but a little bit awkward as well, so I decided to take off around 7cm at the back. I just used the same hem facing, which meant a little bit of butchering at the side seams, but nothing a little bit of hand sewing couldn’t fix. The back still is slightly longer than the front but it now feels more wearable.

The last thing was the neck facing. I originally hadn’t top-stitched it to keep the look cleaner (even though the pattern instructions give that as an option) and the facing just always kept peeking out. I hate having to re-adjust my clothes, so top-stitching it was and to be fair, with the print it isn’t even that visible.

So all in all, just some small changes that made a massive difference. I am absolutely in love with the blouse now, the light fabric and the loose cut are the perfect combination for a summer top. It perfectly matched my mood on the lovely spring weekend we just had. I am so ready for spring!

The second piece I refashioned was my jump-lotte experiment that I posted back in November. I wore it to a wedding of a friend and felt very cool in it. Still, the fit of the bodice wasn’t great, and in real life, how many occasions are there to wear a fancy culotte-jumpsuit? So I decided to cut off the top bit and make a pair of culottes out of them. Since the jumpsuit already had a waistband, this hack was super easy. I just shortened the invisible zip and finished the waistband with some grosgrain ribbon. I hope as a separate I might be able to incorporate them in my wardrobe a little bit better. I’m still not 100% sure about the shape, but who knows maybe this will be the summer of the culotte…

So that’s it. Half a day of work and two “new” pieces in the wardrobe. Not too bad right? Hope you are es excited as I am about spring and summer sewing!