New Look 6144

I can't believe I have been sewing so much!!!   Three dresses in three weeks.  It must be a record for me.  The weather in Melbourne has been so hot for the last few months and I just didn't have many dresses to wear to work.  There is only one thing bigger than my fabric stash and that is my pattern stash! I cannot believe how many patterns I have bought over the years and I never make most of them up.  Such a waste of money, as here in Australia sewing patterns are quite expensive.  It would be frightening to add the cost of them up :-/

Again I was looking for a dress that was easy to whip up for work but something that could also be worn with flatter more casual shoes when I was not working.   I really liked the style of New Look 6144 but had never made anything from a New Look pattern before as most of the time their sizing stops at size 16.  Why I had this pattern in my pattern stash is anyone's guess.   I liked the pleated detail on the front of the dress but was a bit worried it would make me look a bit 'booby'. This pattern is one of the few New Look patterns that do go up to a size 18 so I thought it wouldn't be too difficult to adjust it over the hips.  It was easy to fit this dress on myself also which is something I often struggle to do. I did worry that with just the two darts in the front and back  it may be hard to achieve a good fit but in the end it worked out OK.  I am pretty happy with the way this dress turned out.  I normally would wear something with this to cover my arms but the other day it was just so hot here I threw caution to the wind and just went out and bared my flabby arms. Very brave of me I think. 

I purchased this fabric from Spotlight.  It is cotton with a bit of stretch in which makes it really comfortable to wear.  This fabric was only $12 per meter so I managed to make this dress for the grand sum of $24 as I had the pattern and the zip already.

I know that everyone has made this ...

Yes I know that everyone has made Vogue 1250 but after the success of my Vogue 2988 jacket I wanted some thing that would be quick to sew and work out for me.   I noticed that a lot of my favourite sewing bloggers had made this dress and were really happy with it.  Although most of them were much slimmer than I was so I wasn't sure that it would suit my shape.   Also because this pattern has no side seams I was really struggling to work out how to make it larger over the hips.  A standard pattern adjustment for anything I make unfortunately.

Then I came across Carolyn's version of this dress.  Carolyn is always looking for stylish ways to adapt patterns to suit her shape.  I loved this dress on her!  I think she ended up making another 4 or 5 of them.  

So I chose a piece of material from my stash and started sewing.  I couldn't believe how quick this dress was to sew.  The worst part for me was working out how to increase it around my hips.  I love the way it turned out.  I am not one for wearing sleeveless dresses so I will  wear this with a cardigan.  I would normally not even consider making a fitted dress like this but after reading all the blog posts about this dress I thought it was worth a try.   I have had some nice compliments from people when I wear this so I am taking that as a good thing.  I have a feeling there could be a couple more Vogue 1250's in my wardrobe too ;-)

At the moment I am trying to work out how I could put a sleeve into this pattern.  As the weather is starting to cool down in Australia I need a winter version!

Yes I am back!

Well it's only taken me two years, but I have finally come back to trying to start my sewing blog.  The idea of creating a sewing blog to keep me accountable didn't work.   I had such good intentions when I entered those first two posts back in 2011 but I just couldn't get my sewing mojo back.

The problem was that every time I made something I just wasn't happy with how it turned out.  It never looked as good as I hoped it would and I felt I was wasting my expensive fabrics on wadders.  So I just stopped sewing.  I got it in my head that it just isn't possible to look good in anything if you aren't size 16 or below.  I know that is silly now but that was what my crazy mind was telling me.

Then out of a necessity I had to sew something for myself.   Out of necessity you ask!  Well Steve's gorgeous daughter Simone told us she was going to get married in Paris on the 4th January.  As usual I shopped around for an outfit to wear but could find nothing that really suited me or more importantly fitted me.  As it was already quite hot here in Australia our winter clothing was  already out of the stores.  I had never been to Europe in winter before but I knew it would be MUCH colder than a winter here in Australia could ever be. Possibly even snowing.  

What could I wear that was still a little classy but warm?  The wedding was just going to be for family and close friends.  Not a big affair.  Just 25 of us.

A year before I had started making Vogue 2988 (sorry OOP now) in the most beautiful fabric, which I purchased from Astratex here in Melbourne.  I paid an absolute bomb for the fabric. It was an imported European wool and cashmere blend that came in panels.  The colour of the panel started off as black at the bottom and graduated through to a animal print then up to a lovely taupe colour.   Because of my size I needed to purchase two of these panels and I think they were around $80 each!!!  I don't know what possessed me but they had made the jacket up as a sample in the shop and I just loved it. 

The problem was that the sample in the shop was a petite little size 10-12 and I needed to cut a size 20-22.   So when I cut mine out it looked nothing like I envisioned it would be on me.  So I did what I normally do and stuffed it into a plastic bag and put it away in the cupboard.  I was so angry at myself for wasting that beautiful fabric. 

While thinking of what kind of jacket/coat I could make for the wedding I remembered that beautiful expensive fabric and went searching for the bag.   When I pulled it out and looked at it again I thought it could look nice with a classic black wool crepe sheath style dress.   When I tried it on, to my delight it was too big :-)    Fortunately I had sewn this to the stage that all it needed was the lining attached and I was able to alter the fit of the jacket easily by just running it in through the side seams up through the arm. 

This isn't the black dress I wore to the wedding.  The black dress I made for the wedding is at the dry cleaners at the moment.  I will do a post on the fun and games I had making that shortly :-)