Faux-Sureau

Have you seen the Sureau pattern by Deer and Doe? It's a lovely dress pattern with gathers either side of a little placket down the centre front. This dress is heavily inspired by the sureau pattern, except I altered my bodice block to make the pattern rather than using the actual sureau pattern, hence faux-sureau.

  

I have a confession however; I actually made 90% of this dress almost a year ago, but I didn't finish it off before the summer weather disappeared, so there didn't seem much point finishing it off then, when I wasn't going to be able to wear it for another 9-10 months. So I finished this off in my Christmas sewing binge, and what a satisfactory project it was, as all that was left was the zip and hem! I was finished before I knew it!

The pattern alteration was pretty simple. I rotated the bust dart to the centre front and converted it to gathers, subtracted the desired placket width, and changed the neckline to a v-neck. I may have been a little over-eager with this last alteration, and it's a little lower cut than I would normally make. If I were to make it again I would also move the gathers down a little so they're centered over my bust rather than being over the top half.

Rather than completely mimicking the sureau and adding a gathered skirt, I added the good old standby belladone skirt as I preferred an a-line skirt over a gathered one.

 

To correspond with the lightweight seersucker fabric and keep this a lightweight summer dress, I left the skirt unlined, and lined the bodice with a very light weight voile (principally to finish the edges rather than to 'line it'). I also found that some tiny prick stitches down the placket made the bodice front sit much nicer. Lastly I hand picked a dress zip into the back of the dress.



I'm fairly happy with the fit. I did some stupid alterations to take the waist in, which in hindsight I would have done differently (or ideally made the waist the right size to start with!). These alterations make the skirt sit a little funny, but not so much that it's a big issue. The bigger issue is that while the fit of the dress is pretty good when I'm stood up straight with my shoulders back (y'know, good posture we all like to think we have but don't really), as soon as relax and hunch over the neckline tends to gape a little.

Pattern: Self-drafted bodice, Skirt from Belladone by Deer and Doe
Fabric: Pear Print Seersucker from Spotlight
Notions: Thread, matching dress zip, voile for lining.

See also: Bimble and Pimble, Tybalt King of Cats, The Nerdy Seamstress

Strawberry Thief Belladone

Did you know that you can get Vans sneakers made from liberty fabric??! Back in mid-2013 there were 6 liberty prints available as Vans, however I only ever managed to find two of them in Australia, despite having decided that I must have the "Strawberry Thief" style. I also couldn't get them shipped to Australia easily, as supposedly they're imported here by a distributor.

Enormous thanks must go to the ever generous Poppykettle, who very kindly saved me a little bit of her precious luggage space from her trip to the US, to bring back these shoes for me (after I ordered them to be sent to her hotel).

Ever since achieving owning the shoes, I have also been plotting to make a coordinated outfit. Not a whole dress from the fabric, as that might be a bit too matchy-matchy, and also pretty pricey, but something using the liberty as a trim.

Just before Christmas, I bought this coordinating stretch sateen from Spotlight (although unimpressed with spotlight, 3 of the 5 pieces of fabric I bought that day had flaws in them, including this one. very unimpressed).

The liberty has so many colours in it that I had lots of different options for coordinating, but a lot of the possibles that I found didn't seem all that wearable. Bright pink? Too 'girly'. Pale Green? Too bright. Navy? No fun for summer. Then I spotted this steel-y blue. Yup, yup yup!

I chose to use the belladone pattern because it's perfectly suited to using bias binding as a feature. In addition to using bias on the back, and around the neckline and armholes, I also added a strip along each edge of the waistband, and along the opening of the pockets. I kept the bias binding as a thin line, making the visible width about 1/4".



I forgot to stitch down the top few inches of the pleats in the skirt, and may still go back and stitch them down by hand, as it really does make a big difference to the look of the skirt.

I was on a real hand sewing kick while making this dress. The first seam of the bias binding was done by machine, but the second side stitched down by hand. I also hand picked the zip up the back and did a hand stiched blind hem.

This dress has been a little while coming, but I'm thrilled with the end result. I'm expecting it to be great all year round, as I hope it'll be suitable to wear in colder weather with a long sleeved t-shirt and tights underneath.

Also, it turns out that it's pretty tricky to take photos that highlight that the dress and the shoes are coordinated, as the liberty on the dress is so far away from my feet!

 

Pattern: Belladone by Dear and Doe
Fabric: Stretch Sateen from Spotlight, "Strawberry Thief" Liberty Lawn from L'ucello
Notions: Thread, interfacing (for waistband), matching dress zip

 

See also: BusyLizzie, Millydodo, Tabatha Tweedie

So, dress coordinating with my shoes; Awesome or a little bit tacky?

Sewciedone Dress

This is the last piece of this gorgeous spotted cotton sateen that I bought back in April of 2011. I feel I have done it justice.

The rest of the 11m stack that I bought with this fabric became a Crescent Skirt, Portrait Dress and a brightly coloured quilt. Adding in this dress, each of the four are very different. It's interesting to see what varied potential just one type of fabric can have.

  

This dress is a mash up of the bodice from the sewcietea dress (without the contrast band), and the skirt from the Dear and Doe Belladone. This version of the belladone skirt incorporates the alteration I mentioned intending to do at the end of my post about my Roisin Dress, which I am calling a "Full Bum Adjustment", and I intend to talk about properly another time.

To add some interest to the dress, I decided to add piping. I also think that the miss-match of the spots with the waistband would have looked strange without anything defining the seam. I initially thought of flat piping, but decided to woman up and go for the real thing. This is the first time I've done "proper" piping, and as straight forward as the process was, I wouldn't want to do it on anything where I'm not sure of the fit.

As I wasn't sure about how to handle the piping and an invisible zip, I elected to hand-pick a dress zip into the centre back seam of the dress.

The dress is lined throughout with (I think) some white voile (I get the light weight cotton fabrics a bit confused), and has some interfacing (probably slightly heavier than ideal) in the waistband.

I couldn't be more happy with the construction, fit and overall look of this dress.

Pattern: Self-drafted 'sewcietea' bodice, Belladone by Dear and Doe skirt

Fabric: Cotton Sateen from Spotlight

Notions: Thread, interfacing (for waistband), matching dress zip, white voile for lining and piping fabric, smallest piping cord I could find.

The Roisin Dress

I have two weeks off work over Christmas and New Years, and I plan on spending as much of that time as possible sewing. This dress is the first (successful) outcome of that plan; I cut it out and stitched most of it together on Monday, and hemmed it and finished some hand stitching yesterday, in time to wear for Christmas.

The fabric is very special; it is a piece of stretch sateen that I went halvies on with Roisin (AKA Dolly Clackett) when in London earlier in the year. You see, we spied this fabric but the shop was bizarrely only selling it in 5m pieces, and 5m is an awful lot of fabric, even when it is as lovely as this. HOWEVER, 2.5m is a pretty perfect amount of fabric, and so Roisin and I shared the piece.

She already made an absolutely gorgeous gorgeous dress out of her fabric aaaaaages ago. Seriously, click on that link and check out her dress; stunning! I'm glad I didn't remind myself of what hers looked like before I made mine as I would have been intimidated as to how sophisticated and gorgeous her dress is and not wanted to make my own as it pales in comparison!

The pattern is another belladone, this time not reflective and as such has slightly less binding on it than the reflective version; just around the back cut-out, the neckline and arm holes. The binding however is really lovely, it's a pre-made satin binding that looks just lovely with the sateen. I did the binding nice and narrow too, so that it mirrors the width of the outlines of the flowers in the print.

I made no other alterations from my previous version, but have identified an alteration I will make to the skirt next time I use the pattern, as I get some minor drag lines over my bum as it is, but I think I know how to fix that so watch this space.

Reflective Belladone, aka the Tron dress

I have so many amazing things to say about this newest make that I don't know where to start...

The pattern is the fabulous Belladone by Deer and Doe. I have been eyeing off this pattern for a while, and now I've dipped my toe in the Belladone waters I anticipate there being lots more of this pattern in my future (sorry, not sorry!)

To sidetrack fitting issues I did what I normally do with new patterns for dresses with fitted bodices; I used my bodice block to make adjustments to the fit so it fits me. I used the darts and overall proportions from my block, and used the arm holes and neckline of the Belladone pattern.

Well that was the intent but somehow I messed up the front neckline and have ended up with more of a boat-neck neckline. Nevermind. The back is exactly as drafted and is FABULOUS.

I then used the waistband piece that matched up with the waist measurement of the resulting bodice piece, and used the skirt as drafted. Heads up though, this skirt length is the length as drafted, and since I bound the hem with bias tape it didn't loose any length from hemming, and it's a good length on me, but please note that I am 5'4" (which puts me firmly in the 'average' camp, despite some people calling me short).

The only other alteration I did was make the pockets bigger, as small pockets suck almost as much as no pockets, and I figured I could always make them smaller if I find they're too big.

And now, moving on from the pattern to the elephant in the room that is the FANTABULOUS binding on this dress. Incase you hadn't realised from the pictures; IT'S REFLECTIVE!!!!!!! (see the difference with and without the flash above and below)

Yup, this dress does border on novelty, but is going to be the most fantastic summer cycling dress in the world; I challenge any idiot Melbourne drivers to not see me!!

(PS: Expect my face in the below right picture to be what I will look like most of the time when wearing this dress, just a heads up)

 

I discovered a little while ago that I could buy reflective bias binding, and I have been scheming up this dress ever since. I even managed to recruit others into the scheme! (photographic evidence of the fact that I have friends so awesome they are also making their own reflective dresses to follow in another post)

I added bias trim everywhere I could think to, including the waistband, pocket edges and hem. All in the sake of being visible you see... honest... The skirt is fuller than I anticipated, and the bias trim on the hem has given the skirt a kind of Jetsons like feel to it...

So in conclusion: Novelty? Probably. Amazeballs? Definitely!