Tag: Garden party

Graduation Combo

There is no clothing as fun as pants masquerading as a skirt!

A couple of weeks ago on Friday, the first in-person graduation at work took place. The first thing I made was a bit.. too much.. so with three or so days to spare, I set out on a new plan. On the original trip to the Rotterdam market, I’d purchased some plaid on white stretch something. I liked the colours and decided that would be the fabric for this outfit. The other decision I’d already made was that I wanted some sort of fake-pants. I’d made an attempt at the Petit Main Sauvage Culottes in 2018 and decided to give that a go again.

I followed the instructions for a knee length version and promptly went to cutting it out. While trying to get my pattern placement symmetrical, I determined that the fabric had the plaid printed, but that it was printed quite crookedly on one side of the fabric. That lead to some challenges with grain lines etc, but really, what did I expect from fabric that was probably 1-2 euro per meter. The culottes were cut from the ‘straighter’ side of the fabric while I waited for inspiration to strike about the top of the outfit I was trying to make.

In the end, I settled on a tried and mostly true pattern for the top. The Garden Party dress. I grabbed the tulip sleeve pieces that I used for the combo dress and got to work. A nice, somewhat scooped neckline, but not too low because of the 30℃ weather prediction, and no closures (I love stretch). The culottes had some added pockets because running a big event without pockets is not a good idea. The one thing I was left with was the waistband/s. I hadn’t made a plan for that yet. You see, I needed the culottes to be one piece as they needed to come off downwards and I wanted to be able to wear them by themselves. However, the total outfit needed to look like a dress, if possible.

I decided to draft a waistband with a point at the front for the culottes. After sewing it on, it gaped like no tomorrow. I hoped that the application of some laundry would help relax the stitches so I chucked it in the wash (it was Wednesday by now, 2 days to go). Thursday came, the outfit was dried and it hadn’t helped at all. So I unpicked the waistband from the skirt, turned it around and applied it to the top. That looked a lot better! I still had some black mesh laying around from the cover up attempt and made a thin waistband from that for the skirt with some added elastic to hopefully keep the skirt up.

All in all, for such an improvised project, I was very happy with how it turned out. I like the colours, I like plaid, I like how I managed to plaid match along the side seams of the culottes. The thing I should have done was applying snaps so that the top and the skirt could stay together, but I never got round to that, so on the day, I just tugged the culottes up and the top down whenever it felt like the gap was too large. I have no doubts that I will wear those culottes when the weather is good. They are comfortable, prevent chafing but allow a breeze. I’m definitely on team Secret Pants!

Graduation in Red

For last week’s graduation ceremony, I tried something new. I’d found a picture on Pinterest, links below, that I really liked. So I set out to recreate it. I didn’t want to use grey plaid from my hoard, so I chose something completely different. A red fabric with specks of different colours, including some light blue.

So, I set out to create something resembling the pictures. Since I knew that the top and sleeves needed to fit and the rest could be loose, I chose to use the top of the bodice up to the armholes and heavily altered sleeves of the Garden Party dress. Then I just extended the side seams out to create a giant tent shape. I added some pockets, because a dress without pockets is just a torture device, and cut out light blue leather strips. The fabric itched, so I added a brown lining for the sleeves up to the waist. The lining was the original Garden Party bodice, but now with the darts sewn as shallow pleats.

Once the dress was sewn up, I needed to get the leather strips on. In some long forgotten days, I apparently purchased 10 ‘book screws'(?), that seemed to work quite nice. I used a series of needles and knitting needles to make holes in the dress big enough for the screw to go through and then added the leather strips on. The pleats on the arms are not sewn down at all, and the ones on the waist are only tacked on the front. To make it easier to get in and out of, I found some leather laces to thread through the zipper. And that was that!

I did get some compliments on the day, so that was nice. I do want to wash it, but I’m not sure how the leather and screws will hold up, so we’ll see how that went in about an hour..

Double Duty

An old friend of mine notified us that she was getting married earlier this year. I knew that this would call for a brand new outfit. At some point in time I received the cutest wedding invitation card (it had bunnies!) which had a dress code on it: Tenue de Ville. I’d just bought a nice piece of fabric that could sort of fill that dress code. So I started work making a dress with a waterfall top and a skirt that could make use of the border print. At some point I put it on, and it just felt wrong. So, very, wrong – frumpy, not me, just terrible. So I chucked it in the corner (it’s still there) and set out on a plan B.

Plan B involved getting new fabric, since nothing I own is light-coloured or pastel or suitable to fit in Tenue de Ville. Of to the market on the next Thursday, and miraculously I found something that was relatively close to the mark. Light coloured, with green leaves and blue/purple flowers. It was some weird sort of stuff, almost like thin scuba. It didn’t fray at all, which made it really easy to work with.

As a tribute to the bride, I wanted a circle skirt, as she always wore them back when I met her. The fabric had some lettering, but the print wasn’t super directional, which allowed for that circle skirt. Then I needed to determine what to use for the top. I figured on the garden party top, as I know it fits without much hassle. But it needed something special, so I pinterested (is that a verb?) and found this pin. I liked the idea of the keyhole and the pointed waistband. In contrast to the inspiration I also incorporated binding and modified tulip sleeves.

This make felt so much better right out of the gates. It was super comfortable, it twirled so nicely and pockets. It was easy to dance in (queen of horrible dancing on the dance floor) and not too hot or cold. I was a fan.

It did have a test drive before the wedding. Two days before was convocation, a work event. I had this one finished in time (!), and I didn’t have the time or inclination to also make a dress for convocation so I wore this one instead. Therefore, this dress served double duty and will be put into regular rotation in my closet. It has been a super success!

Mondriaan Finish

I’ve had this fabric in my stash for years.. probably over a decade by now. I have always liked the Mondriaan-eque pattern on it, but I never really knew what to make from it. I finally decided to cut into it again. I used the garden party dress bodice by Honig designs again (used before on the riding jacket and a graduation dress). I re-printed the pattern this time. I used the second size, squared out the shoulders a little (downwards), increased the width of the back darts and lowered the neckline on both sides. I added a skirt from two widths of fabric with big pleats (about 10 cm). Also, pockets, of course.

I think this is the cleanest finished dress I have ever made. The skirt is two full widths so I could use the selvages. Along the skirt zipper, shoulders and bodice sides, the fabric was folded inwards, cut with pinkers and sewn. The waist seam was finished with some white bias tape, invisible from the outside (I think). The neckline and arms were finished with some home-made bias tape. I sewed the single-fold bias tape along the inside at around 5 mm from the fold, cut of the excess fabric, folded the bias tape over the cut edge and under again and stitched it down around 8 mm wide. This mimicked the width of the stripes on the fabric. I had white in the bobbin and black as the top thread, so it almost looks invisible on the inside!

There were some severe troubles getting the skirt to go on right. Since I have quite a bad swayback and effectively stick my butt out very far when standing normally, I had to accommodate for some extra length in the back. This turned out a lot harder than expected, but it did work in the end (I hope). I might wear this for convocation this year. It might be too bright, I’m not sure yet. We will see at the end of August, I guess.

Hopefully the next you’ll hear from me will be around September 1st, when I’ve finished a dress for a wedding with a Tenue de Ville dress code.