Victoria Beckham inspired pleated dress

There were several dresses I liked from the 'Victoria' by Victoria Beckham collection which was released in early 2012 (but is no longer on the VB website). I blogged about my favourites here and last month I made this dress, inspired by one of my top picks.

I had been thinking about the pleated dress (above) for a while and when I saw the RTW contest on Pattern Review, I thought I'd have a go at making it and enter my first ever sewing competition!

I bought the fabric for the top at Homecraft Textiles. I spent ages trying to find the spotted fabric and I finally discovered this one under a pile of other rolls on a bottom shelf. Then I chose the off-white fabric to match the background of the spotted fabric. The pleated fabric was an op shop find from ages ago.

The pattern was completely self drafted based on tops I already had. I made a v-neck as I prefer that shape on me. The panel of blue dots was sewn on to the front of the top. The neckline and sleeves were finished with ribbed stretch knit. I have never worked with pleated fabric before and it was a real challenge (I could insert a much stronger word here, but I won't!). I used a rectangular piece of fabric for the skirt, which should have been simple but I must have made the skirt about five times and unpicked it before I got this version, which is still far from perfect. I was initially trying to fold the fabric into its pleats and then sew it, which was next to impossible. In the end I went with a separate skirt and top, rather than a dress. I just couldn't attach the skirt to the top without it looking bulky and messy, even with the addition of elastic, which I sewed in and removed at least twice!

To create the separate skirt and top, I finished the hem of the top with a white ribbed band and that was done. Phew! I added a wide navy ribbed band to create the waistband of the skirt and stretched it as I sewed the 'flattened' pleated fabric to it. When the waistband is unstretched (as shown below right), or only stretched slightly, the pleats hang quite nicely. 

So there we go. Check out my entry on the Pattern Review RTW contest page and vote for your favourite (from 1st May 2012), or why not enter something you have made yourself! The more the merrier.

 

Chevron applique on a t-shirt

I recently pinned this idea from Sewing in no mans land and had to try it out as it looked so effective. I had this white t-shirt that I'd made with the Jalie 3132 pattern. It was looking a bit plain so I spruced it up a bit with the chevron applique. I love it.

 The tutorial I (kind of) followed has a downloadable chevron pattern, but I made my own as my printer is out of ink! I only had interfacing/webbing that was fusible on one side, rather than both sides, so I fused the taupe jersey knit fabric to the interfacing, then pinned that to the t-shirt and sewed it on. Easy.

Finished just in time to enjoy some late afternoon sun. Lovely.

P.S. I altered the Jalie pattern slightly by lowering the neckline and adding a fabric band around the hem.
 

Quick fixes: another fast pants update

Do you remember my recent Hip Hop pants, refashioned from an old pair of yoga pants? Well, I've used that same method on a pair of non-stretch casual jeans. I like them much better now.

I've had these jeans for a while. A few months ago I took them in to make them more fitted in the leg (pic above left), but I still didn't like them. So, a couple of days ago after trying them on and taking them off again, I decided to refashion them again.

I have a stash of ribbing that I got as a bundle in an op shop for $2 (score!) and luckily there was some in almost the right colour. I followed the tutorial for my hip hop pants refashion, although I didn't need to take in the leg seams as I'd already dome that previously. Once the ribbing was added, I topstitched it in brown thread to match the existing detailing on the pants.

The whole update was finished in about half an hour. I took the 'before' pictures, did the refashion in my undies and wore my new shorts that day! Yay. Tell me I'm not the only one who whips off an item of clothing to do a quick, semi-naked, adjustment on the sewing machine. Go on, fess up! One of these days there'll be a knock at the door and I'll have to yank it out of the machine and try to get into a half sewn, inside out t-shirt or something. Still, keeps life interesting :)

A new dress - StyleArc Milly

I recently bought the 'Milly' dress pattern from Aussie company StyleArc. The picture below is the pattern envelope. It's a bit confusing at first, but shows diagrams of the actual pattern on the left/bottom and pictures of celebrities wearing similar garments on the right/top. I would prefer to see photos of the actual dress as well as the diagrams.

I bought this pattern to make a tunic top for my Mum. She mentioned that she liked this top/dress from Seed (pictured below) and I said I could make her one for a lot less than the $99 price tag!

So, I bought the pattern for $14 and some gorgeous bamboo stretch knit from Fabulous Fabrics for $20/m. The pattern says you need 2.2m of fabric but I'm sure I can get away with less and have some left over for a top for me!!

Now spending $20/m on fabric is something I never, ever usually do. I can generally be found perusing the $2 table at Textile Traders or the fabric rack in the op shop! But, it's for a birthday present so I splurged. This has now led to something else I never ever do - a muslin. I grabbed some coral knit fabric I'd got cheap and made up the Milly dress as a test run.

The pattern instructions are very minimal and it took me a little while to work out the pin tucks. I think I eventually got it right after seeing a helpful picture on Pattern Review. In case anyone is interested, I've added a couple of pictures of me sewing the pin tucks. Basically, each tuck is folded along the longest line to the point and stitched as shown to the lower point. The pin tucks do not overlap and actually have a small space between each one.

I wasn't happy with the end result of either the pin tucks or the neckline of this dress as neither was as neat as I would have liked. However, I am pretty sure that this was because of the cheap fabric I used. I wasn't able to iron the tucks as this fabric is too melty, so they didn't sit flat. Apart from these issues, I was happy with the overall look of the dress and it was easy to make after I'd worked out the pin tucks! 

I added five rows of shirring to the back to pull it in slightly (not in the pattern) and used the short sleeves. The sleeves don't look like the ones in the pattern diagram but I like them anyway.

  

The sleeves and hem were finished with a twin needle stitch.

I showed this dress to my sister yesterday and she said I should chop it off and make it into a tunic length top. I haven't decided yet. Thoughts anyone?

Boy bedroom makeover - Scout blanket with binding. A tutorial

My boys' bedrooms have been rather neglected for a long time and I've finally decided to do something about it. I'll show you bit by bit as I get things done in there.

Here are some 'before' pictures.

The first project is this old scout blanket. I found it at the op shop (thrift store) with all the badges already sewn on. As you can see, they date back to the early 80s and many of them are from the area of Perth where I grew up. I just had to have it. When I first bought it, the blanket had no edging and looked like this:

And here are some close-ups of some of the badges:

If something goes on the floor, Truffle has to try out lying on it.

I decided to edge the blanket with blue and white gingham fabric to finish it off. I had bought 1m of the fabric, so not enough to make bias trim. I decided to try making the trim by cutting straight strips of fabric and sewing them together. It worked! I'll show you how I did it.

To start, I cut strips the entire length of the fabric. Each strip was 15cm wide.

I sewed the strips together,

folded the edges over approximately 1cm on each side and ironed them.

Then I folded the long strip almost in half lengthwise, but with one 'half' slightly longer than the other.

That's the binding done. To begin attaching it I folded the ends inward to a point and pinned it to the side of the blanket. The central fold of the binding is right on the edge of the blanket. This picture shows the fold of the blanket pinned in place. The next few pictures will show how to sew neat corners.

With the shorter 'half' of the binding on top, sew zig-zag stitch along the side of the blanket across to the corner. The zig-zag should easily catch the slightly longer lower edge of the binding.

Keeping the fold of the binding at the edge of the blanket, wrap the binding around the corner of the blanket and pin in the position of the yellow pin below.

Neaten the corner fold so it is at 45 degrees from the corner of the blanket and pin in the position of the red pin below.

Starting at the outside corner, sew zig-zag down the fold (backstitch or do close-together stitches to start). Pivot at the inside edge and continue sewing down the next side of the blanket to the next corner.

When you reach the end, trim and fold the binding as shown below and stitch in place. Yay!

All done :)

I am really pleased with how this turned out. The badges add colour and interest. My son likes to relax and look at all the different badges. He's even started making his bed neatly!

If you can't find a scout blanket, maybe you can find scout badges on ebay, garage sales or op shops. Alternatively use patches of printed fabrics, buttons or other interesting embellishments. As always, I'd love to hear from you if you make one!

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