The Finished Butterick B5281

After many hours badgering my sister, I finally have a finished picture of the red dress, Butterick B5281.  It is a lovely dress but I am not sure it is very flattering on my body shape and the photo makes me look like I have very long arms and very short legs.  I also take hideous photos as I am very self-conscious and it is probably just as well I've cropped my head out!  Anyhow without further ado, see below for the true horror  look.

It looks better if I stand up straight too!

I hope to have more scintillating posts soon!

Zips and Linings

Finally my red dress is coming together.  Due to the material being very slippery there is a marked difference in the length of the bodice front and the lining front.  Unfortunately I did not realise this until after I had stitched the lining down on the inside.  The result was not overly pleasing.  Today I unpicked the stitching holding the lining down and the waistline seam and adjusted the fit.  Although rather time consuming I am much happier with it now.  I also stitched the press studs on the yoke and hand stitched the zip in.  Pictures below.

Zip pinned to dress from wrong side

The zip stitched in from the right side, the gathers are meant to be there!

The lining stitched over the zip tape on the wrong side.

Press studs on left yoke.

 I have been debating for a while which earrings to wear with this dress and I think I have settled for the earrings below, which I have borrowed from my Mother.

Tomorrow I will be tackling the hem on the dress.  I will also be working and going out to dinner so I may not get to post.  I will not post pictures of the finished dress until Thursday, as I will then be wearing and someone might remember to take some photos!

I noted with interest that Winston Churchill's birthday is today, along with Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, what is it about authors birthdays and today???

Skirting The Issue!

As predicted today was extremely hectic and I spent most of it at work and then walked the dog when  I got home.  Today was dedicated to assembly and attaching the skirt and skirt lining to the dress.  Pictures follow.

The corner on the skirt front seam, refer to envelope picture for a better idea!

Pinning the skirt and skirt lining together for basting.

The assemble skirt with lining basted inside.

Here the skirt is sewn to the outer bodice.  

Once the zip is in (next step) the inner bodice will be sewn over the waistline seam.  I am really hoping to have this thing finished tomorrow.

In other news I picked up two vintage handmade dresses from work today, both in my size (I hope).  More to follow!

A Day of Sleeves

I think I can honestly say that it took me as long to complete the sleeves and their eventual attachment to the bodice as it took to assemble the bodice.  The fact that I worked all afternoon and overslept probably did not help my perception.

With this dress, the capped sleeves are self lined, so you effectively cut four sleeves (prepares one for making a dog dress, I suppose), only two of them act as a lining to the other two.  The sleeves are eased and seamed together at the bottom.  You stitch the outer sleeve to the armhole in the dress, easing in fullness, then slipstitch the lining sleeve over the seam on the inside, if that makes any sense.  My sleeves were not all that cooperative but I am fairly pleased with the result.  Photographs of the procedure follow:

Completed sleeve, before attaching to bodice.

The sleeve lining pinned over the sleeve seam on the inside.

The bodice completed with sleeves attached.

Close up of yoke and overlap on left hand side of bodice.

Hopefully I will have the skirt attached by this time tomorrow, however I do not like my chances as I have been called into work early to cover for someone who is sick.

Today is November the 26th and it is apparently Tina Turner's birthday, my absolute favourite song of hers is 'Simply the Best'.

I also love the dress she is wearing in the picture above!

A New Dress!

"Just what she needs....", I hear you grumble to yourself.  I cannot blame you really, I very rarely (about, ahem, twice a year) wear the dresses I make, dresses are just not practical.  I also think that some part of my brain tells me that if I wish to be seen as 'good' as any man, I must dress like one.  However, it does not seem to work!

Anyhow, back to the topic of the new dress, I actually am making this with a particular occasion in mind.  I intend to wear it to an awards ceremony in a week.  There was a large number of potential dress patterns to choose from but for various reasons I managed to narrow it down to this one only: Butterick B5281, picture below:

I am making view B with the capped sleeves and I will not be putting shoulder pads in mine.  After a trip to Spotlight I settled on some lovely red self patterned drapey jacquard.  The lining is a red lawn to give the dress some body.

Today I managed (in between making a batch of grapefruit pickle with some mouldy grapefruits and taking the dog for a walk) to cut the dress out and assemble the bodice, except for the sleeves.  The dress is fully lined which gives a lovely neckline without the frustration of a facing that keeps jumping to the right side.  Below are some random pictures from the construction.

Tucks stitched into the right hand shoulder.

The assembled bodice without the lining.

The assembled bodice with lining, I am happy with it!

Close up of neckline.

I am using my Singer 306 to sew this dress.  So far it is behaving nicely and making a very nice stitch.  I decided to use the straight stitch throat-plate in a fit of inspiration and it seems to be really helping.

On another note, it was the 23rd (!) anniversary of Freddie Mercury's passing yesterday, I was going to listen to my Queen CD but my CD player has finally given up the ghost so that plan went out of the window.

More updates to follow!

New Garments

I am technically on holidays.  I'm actually still flat out, however I took a couple of days off and did some sewing.  First of all I finished off a purple shift I had.  I found this shift half finished at work and I was about to send it out as a rag when I thought that as it was my size I could finish it and wear it.  The previous owner had assembled the dress and put the zip in, really only the hem was left to do.  However, they hadn't under stitched the armhole facings and in finishing the outer edges of these facings had stretched them out of shape so that there was no way they were staying tucked into the garment.  I ended up topstitiching the facings to the dress.  It looks fine and there is no chance of them rolling out.  I also had to refinish the outer edge of the neckline facing as it had been hemmed by hand and was undoing.  I then hemmed it and I had a nice new shift dress.  I used the pretty silver Godfrey for this task.

The next project was a very pretty 1940's blouse with a peplum. It is a Simplicity reissue and extremely lovely!  I made it in a lightweight seersucker like fabric on my adorable 99K knee control machine.  This fabric has a line of damage running down its centre and is only approximately 90cm wide anyway, it makes cutting things out very difficult.  I got it (all 5 metres or so) free from work as it was only going to be thrown out and it was rather pretty.  I managed to find a piece that was fault free wide enough to cut the back out but it was difficult.  The buttonholes were made on a Singer 71-30 industrial buttonholer and came out very nicely, after about 20 trial buttonholes!  Although a size 8 I think it is still too big for me, the fact that it sits comfortably on the mannequin pictured below which is set to a size 12 probably backs me up.

In other news I have a gorgeous new machine, although unfortunately it is unusable at the moment.