The ongoing saga of the Liberty shirtdress, and a red skirt

Long time readers of my blog might remember my Third Time Lucky Blouse from last year. I had bought a vintage Liberty shirtdress that was several sizes too big. First round: Resize it, second round: remake it into a M6696 shirtdress with a straight skirt, forgetting I have hips, third round: blouse with a mandarin collar. As I said in the post at the time, I realized I should have tapered the placket at the neck to make the collar sit properly, but I was happy to wear it high buttoned. However, I only ever wore it the one time, and back to the pile it went. I had enough left over scraps to piece together the collar sections, and once I'd sewn it together, I unpicked the top seam on the collar stand, and sandwiched the collar in before hand stitching it in place. Two hours worth of work, and finally the blouse is wearable, and the saga of the liberty shirtdress comes to an end.

 Every year my grandmother's retirement village has a big spring fete. I al ways end up at the craft stall (when not at the books). Most of their stock is handmade items made by residents, but this year I was lucky on the sewing front. I bought a large amount of vintage zippers and bias binding, patchwork scraps for my hexagon quilt,  and this red fabric. It seems to be a wool, but it's light enough for summer.  I managed to just cut out  Simplicity 6862, the best ever skirt pattern and I
added in a side seam pocket out of some old red floral from my first dressmaking project. Nice and simple. It's going to go with a lot of my blouses.

That's all to say on that. I've been loving reading everyone's plans on sewing in 2017, so I'll be back in a few days to share mine. Needless to say, it's a lot of vintage florals!

The Spanish Dress

More unseasonably hot Sydney weather has lead to more UFO's being finished so I have something to wear! (My off season clothes are stored at my Mum's). I only started this dress a few weeks ago, but this burst of spring heat led me to madly finish it off last night to wear today.

The fabric for this dress is a special one. Last year, my best friend went to Spain and brought this back for me. I am making her a skirt, and I got the leftover yardage to play with. I decided to go with a dress, as the colour is not something I would usually wear, and I didn't think it would get too much wear as separates.

The pattern is a mash up of two of my favourites: Simplicity 2444 for the bodice, and Simplicity 6862 (the amazing one metre skirt pattern) for the bottom. The fabric is quite stiff, so I decided a flared skirt would do nicely; it certainly has a lot of body.

This was a very quick and simple make: the zip is handpicked, the neckline is faced, and the armholes and hem are finished with bias tape. I love the shape of this; it's definitely one I'd like to try again.

I've paired it up here with my white sandals and pearls thanks to some styling advice from Mum; it's such a good summery combination (even if it is meant to be winter).

So this is another successful dress which I will get a lot of wear out of come summer. I wore it today to my new job; I am teaching at the university's ancient history museum, so I had a fun morning grossing kids out with Egyptian mummies.

The Last of the Bridesmaid Dress Fabric: Smoothsailing Blouse

 I finished this blouse a few weeks ago, and am so excited to share it with you!

When I bough the fabric for my bridesmaid dresses, I bought ten metres of this great green and pink floral cotton, for $60. From it I managed to make three bridesmaid dresses, a full skirted M6696, and now this Wearing History Smooth sailing blouse. The fabric is now all used up, except for scraps, which will find their way into little projects. Five garments from one fabric purchase must be setting the record for frugal sewing!

The Smooth Sailing blouse is now my go to blouse pattern. My wearable muslin turned out so well, I didn't make any more alterations. For reference, I swapped out the sleeve for the one from M6696.

The buttons are a nice ivory colour I found at the local fabric shop, love how they blend in. I had a lot of trouble doing the buttonholes, til I realised I hadn't popped in any interfacing! It's easy to forget when there is no separate button band. After ripping out two or three wonky button holes Ijust put a little piece of interfacing behind each button hole, and then they went in perfectly. Was so relieved it wasn't my machine mucking up on me.


The skirt here is another recent make, but it doesn't deserve it's own blog post. The pattern is vintage Simplicity 6862, my perfect skirt pattern, and it's made from a nice black polyester like fabric. My RTW go to flared black skirt didn't sit on my waist, so this very simple skirt is now my most worn wardrobe piece. I bought a lot more of this fabric, and am going to make a basic black pencil skirt soon.

And how did I go with Me Made May? Not as well as I would have liked. The weather here in Sydney is unnaturally warm at the moment, so most of the month was my general mix of handmade dresses and blouses, a good few which I documented on Instagram. I didn't get to test out my winter wardrobe as I would have liked to. It was good to see though that my summer wardrobe is 90% me made. I also didn't get my winter sewing done due to time constraints, but hoping to get to that in the next few weeks.

I will hopefully have some more items to share in the coming days; I am using this small stint of warm weather to photograph some other finished summer items.

What have you been sewing lately? Have you ever made more than one item with the same fabric?

The best ever skirt pattern

I am quickly becoming of the opinion that Simplicity 6862 is the best skirt pattern:
1. It only takes one meter of fabric
2. No darts, pleats, tucks etc, it's incredibly quick to sew up
3. The shape is really flattering
4. If I wanted to, there are some fun pocket pieces and belt tabs
5. You could easily have a whole wardrobe of these, this was my Mum's main skirt pattern back in the 1970s
6. There's a few patterns on Etsy and Ebay, even if they'd be single size, it would be a really easy pattern to resize.

I first made this skirt last year out of some tacky pink wool. I thought it would become a good wardrobe staple, but the waistband was never finished nicely, and Mum, who is thankfully always honest with me, told me she hated it. It was also a smidgen too tight. I wasn't prepared to give up on this pattern yet though. For a while I have been wanting some floral skirts, so found this small length of cotton in the stash. It has a deep brown background, so I think it's from the 1970's, and it's much too stiff for anything other than a skirt.

To fix the sizing I just let out the seams slightly. I sewed the centre front and side seams at 3/8 inch, and kept the back at 5/8. This is an incredibly quick sew, only complicated b the fact I had to redo the zip multiple times. I decided to finally try a tab on my waistband, which worked wonderfully after a few goes of aligning the zipper. I finished it off with tw small press studs. Only tip would be always cut the waistband much longer than you need.

I liked the length of the skirt as is; it falls just below my knee, so I finished with mauve bias tape.

I absolutely love this skirt. Even if it's a bit different from what I usually wear. At the moment it just goes with my white blouses, but I am hoping to soon fix the no plain blouses problem as well. The colour scheme will hopefully allow it to be worn through autumn as well.

An entirely handmade outfit

 My staple of handmade items to this point has been dresses, but I am beginning to dream of many summer separates. I am itching to hand in my thesis so I can have days of uninterrupted sewing. However, my days are currently more filled with referencing, and questions of twelfth century English identity through historiography.

Last Saturday night I decided to just sew something. I needed a break. I only had a metre of this absolutely beautiful floral fabric. It's Japanese, and the hand of it feels almost like Liberty lawn. I bought it at a fabric market last year. I wanted something simple, so I decided to modify the bodice of BHL's Anna dress, one of my TNT patterns.







I cut both front and back on the fold, and added about five inches to the length. This was dictated by the limited amount of fabric. I just extended down the pleats. It was a incredibly quick sew. I finished the neck with bias tape, and put in a side invisible zip. I always wear things tucked in, so the hem is actually the selvage. Very pleased with myself I then ran into a significant fitting problem. I hadn't graded out the hips. I am very much a pear shape, and the blouse no had hips narrower than my waist. There was no way this was fitting. I thought about adding a peplum, but in the end the fix was quite simple. I unpicked all the pleats and darts to their original lengths, creating enough room in the hips. I was incredibly relieved. I then also made a matching hair scarf. It's a little thinner than my previous ones, so it was a bit more a struggle to catch in all my thick hair, but it worked!

The skirt was made a few months ago. The pattern is Simplicity 6862, a one metre, four gore 1970's skirt pattern. This will certainly be a TNT. The fabric is a light weight pink wool. I didn't line it to make it a quicker make; I have a very large collection of slips as it is.

So there is the first of my summer sewing projects. I have a new outfit, and all the pieces will be able to be mixed and matched as well.

Dress from two vintage 1970's pattern

I am not exactly a fan of 1970's in general, but I do own a very large stash of 1970's sewing patterns that I inherited from my grandmother. Surprisingly most of them are good workable styles and shapes. Always pays to look beyond the decade, or the pattern styling. Back in March when I talked about my fabric plans  I flagged the purple and blue floral left over from my sister's graduation, as a Simplicity 2444/pencil skirt combination. I ended up changing this plan. I wanted to try another bodice style, so went through the stash and found Style 1917. It's a simple bodice with a square neckline and quite a full circle skirt. I started off with the blue version on the right. I didn't muslin the bodice, instead measuring it off my Simplicity 2444 pattern which was pretty spot on (it's anther thing I love about this pattern stash. Most are already in my size) I also made the sleeves. So far so good. The fabric was not wide enough to take the full skirt, so I substituted it for this fantastic four gore skirt, Simplicity 6862. They fitted together easily. This skirt will certainly ended up becoming a well used pattern in its own right. I didn't have any invisible zips, but had a normal one. So I read up on Tasia's tutorial and handpicked it in spot on the first go. I was rather proud of myself.
















Now came the trying it on moment. luckily I have a very honest husband, who informed me the sleeve head was much too puffy. I was inclined to agree. So the dress now went sleeveless. I finished off the armholes with bias. The sleeveless version of the pattern has an all in one facing I want to try at some point. I wore the dress last month on an unseasonably hot winter's day for a friend's wedding.
A few thoughts since wearing. Firstly the neck facing is not sitting well, though I under stitched it. I am thinking it needs to be top stitched as well. Secondly there is a smidge too much fabric in the bodice length. This is a common issue. But all in all it was a successful dress. Very wearable. I am looking forward to getting much more wear out of it in the summer, and even trying a new version of the pattern.
Does anyone have any good resources for redrafting sleeve heads. i have a few patterns where I have been trying to use different sleeve patterns, but the final result doesn't end up working.
What have you all been sewing lately? I have a good few projects that are almost finished, and cannot wait to share them with you in the coming weeks.