The dresses

I now have only two days to complete my graduation dresses. Dress 1 for the ceremony, and Dress 2 for the ball.

Dress 1: Looking on course to be fine. I just need to readjust the lining (too tight), complete the back edges (still haven't quite worked out how yet) and hem it (no probs - nobs). Hopefully I'll look smashing in the photo with the daft hat.

Dress 2: Ah how thee mocks me. Serves me right for not properly looking at the fit when I botched together the lining. On friday I popped it on, to see what tweaks needed to be made, looked in the mirror and realised that actually, it would have looked more flattering on a sack of potatoes. It was too big EVERYWHERE. The waist was in the wrong place, the neckline hung too low (very not good on a one shoulder dress), it didn't go in enough at the waist, and I'd miss read the instructions on the pleats. After much tweaking, the taking in of all seams, and the addition of some new darts, its looking a little better, although sadly not in one piece.

If I were a proper, responsible sewer, I would have made a muslin weeks ago, and wouldn't be having last minute issues such as these. But I'm not, I'm a botch sewer. I cut corners, and leave it too late. I only pre-washed the fabric because the blue started coming off on everything, including the tablecloth and my face. I hadn't noticed until my mum pointed out that my cheek was really quite blue.

Here is the outside sunshiney cutting out process which turned me blue

I fear I may not have time to make handbags. Sad times.

The week that ran away

Ok a bit more than a week, but I’m sure I’ll be forgiven, as I have been moving house! Uni has finally finished and I’ve had to pack up and ship out of Guildford, back to the countryside.

Before the move, I spent a couple of days up in London for T’s birthday... which leads me nicely to my latest sewing completion! It's my first forray into menswear, and T’s birthday present. (Apologies, I forgot to get T to model it himself, so I had to take a few dashed pics after he’d toddled off to work)

I am immensely proud of it as I think it’s one of my best looking pieces yet. I used pattern 132 from BWOF 03/09, and the only change was to add a front bit where the buttons go. I topstitched all the seams, I put the little contrast stripe at the bottom of the side seams, everything!! And it took me flipping ages!!

Mostly my problems arose because of my rubbishness at sleeves. I re-sewed and topstitched them twice before I noticed they were on the wrong way around and had to take them off and swap them over. Also the fabric had a definite, but non-obvious-in-the-half-light right side, resulting in a few things being initially stitched with the wrong side out. Grr.

Anyway, he was presented with the finished project, and it fitted and looked lovely, so I’m pretty chuffed!

Purple flower dress

What a lovely weekend that was! Very, very beautiful sunshine all weekend! I was a bit dead though. I was brimming with pride as I got the news about my degree score on Friday (a 2:1 as I’d hoped) and it was the end of term so there was much celebrating to be done. I didn’t get to bed until 7am and T came to visit me at 1 so there wasn’t a great deal of sleeping, but I was very happy (especially when I realised that I’d managed to wear something homemade to the last 3 nights at uni) and it was so beautiful and sunny I had to go out in it!!

Sunday was quite relaxed too, as we went down to the river to take some photos. However we were idiots and forgot to take cameras. So we just had a picnic, went for a row down the river and read our books before going to a friend’s for a barbeque.

Anyway, as we were lametastic with cameras at the weekend, here are the photos from my last completed dress.

It’s New Look 6864, and is made from some purplely auberginey mystery fabric from a remnants bin. It was easy to sew (only took slow old me a couple of days), and the only changes I made were to take the hem up by about 4 inches (as I do with most dresses) and add a bust dart on the armhole to avoid some major gape.

I even made the pretty flower accessory to go with it. They instructed me to sew it on, but I just sewed it to a safety pin to make it optional. It’s a perfect party dress, as the flower and other accessories make it a bit more versatile.

The photos were taken a bit hurriedly, several weeks ago, before we dashed out for my birthday meal. The dress was a bit tighter by the time I got home!!