Simplicity – Hopefully Creative

Edged in Grey

Remember the weird black stuff that was very warm and that has been used as a cover up and key-hole opening top? Well, I pulled out the fabric again the other day and created a thing! The pattern is from Simplicity Naaimode 27, pattern model 5-8, and it is effectively New Look 6417.

I’ve always been interested in this pattern since I bought the magazine, but was never interested enough to actually draw the enormous pattern pieces it required. So one day I sat down and actually got to work. Eventually laying them out on the fabric and cutting it all out. I put it together and as usual with this fabric, the sleeve heads look really wonky. Ah well, they also do that on the key-hole top, so I guess that is the nature of the fabric. Then I went looking through the hoard to find something to edge this thing with. I stumbled on something grey that I think was used before for either a dress or something larp. So I cut that up into bias strips, using a continuous bias tape tutorial. I put it on the vest (?) and chucked the whole thing in the laundry, hoping the shoulder seams would shrink a little.

An hour later and my washing machine revealed a horrible truth. Apparently, I hadn’t caught all of the edges enough when sewing on the grey. This meant that about half of it was.. sticking back out? I didn’t take a picture, it was a horror-sight. So back I went with mr. seam ripper, taking out the stitching on one side. I ironed the edging flat again and folded it over further, now making sure to catch that fold completely such that it wouldn’t ‘unfold’ in the wash again. This worked!

I’ve worn it a few times and it is quite comfortable. In contrast to the original, I put two snaps on the back for the pointy bits. The only annoying thing is that it does not cover too much of my back, so those areas are still quite cold. I’m going to continue to wear it as a cover up, because it does feel mostly good while on.

Plaid Jacket

At some point in the past I bought a coupon (between 1.5-2.0) meters of some form of loosely woven plaid stuff. I cannot remember fully why I did this, although I do remember thinking that I should make a jacket out of it. – Brainwave! After filling in the tags for this post, I figured out that I used ‘blue-purple’ once before, for the Double Duty dress, so I guess I bought it for that? – Fast forward a few.. months I think, and I finally pulled it out of the hoard to make a short jacket. The plaid is not balanced and attempting to match would be the death of so I just.. didn’t. I did of course try to mirror the pieces that needed to be cut twice, by choosing the purple line that runs through as the central line.

The pattern I chose was one in Simplicity Naaimode 24 – also known as most of the elements of Simplicity 1325. Very few pieces, unlined and I wanted to test out those bones for the future. I made only one flat pattern change and that was to lengthen the sleeves by 10 cm. I cannot deal with sleeves that are not either full length or short, I need to have control over whether they are halfway up my arms or not. So I cut out the pattern (which took forever) and started sewing. Since the jacket was unlined, I bound some of the seams to make it look somewhat pretty on the insides too, see pictures above.

The instructions were quite helpful this time and I followed them fairly closely. The one other change to the original pattern was that I created a little more of a waist by taking in some of the fabric of the front in the side seams after finishing the remainder of the jacket. When I put it on at the end, I discovered that from the front it looks as though I actually matched the sleeves along the bodice, so happy accidents! Now I only need to convince myself to put it on every now and again.

Graduation Dress Summer 2018

For the last graduation ceremony, I of course needed another outfit. This time I had just received some fabrics from a friend of mine who was not going to use them any more, and I chose those. Since the fabric has a interesting colourful pattern, I did not want to distract from that will all kinds of difficult pattern pieces or circular skirts. So I sought a dress pattern that had a skirt with a straight bottom. This did meant that I needed to gathering, which I usually hate, but the fabrics were quite thin so it worked out.

I chose pattern 41 from Simplicity Naaimode 16. I made a few small changes: added a lining, put the zipper in upside down, took in the shoulders a little (should have taken those in a little more), shortened the skirt a little, did not pay attention to the instructions for the pockets at all and I added some elastic to the sleeve hems. I probably need to just shorten those sleeves to balance this dress as it is not truly nice looking. The neckline is also way too deep so I need to wear a top underneath, which I luckily already always do. Still, it feels borderline uncomfortable being such a deep v.

It’s lined in a yellow stuff and I tried to have as few exposed edges as possible. Only the pocket will now fray, hopefully.

I think it was fitting for the occasion, but it requires some alterations before I would wear it regularly. The sleeves need adjusting, the shoulders should be taken in more.

Larp Shirt for Real Life

The larp shirt was finished and wearing it was quite agreeable, so I decided to make another version to wear in other situations. I used the bird fabric that I’d also used for multiple circle scarves. Since that fabric is extremely shifty, I used quite a lot of spray starch to get the pieces to cooperate. In contrast to the larp version, I did French seams throughout, which was a lot easier since this fabric was much thinner and did not fray as badly. I did not put elastic in the sleeves as of yet. I may decide that it needs it, but I first put it in the wash before trying to wear it out.

The ‘string’ used for the neckline is stitched down at the front, such that it can never undo accidentally. Apart from that, no modifications were made. I am debating that it might have been nice to add some more shaping and/or bust darts in potential future versions. I will have to see how this one wears before deciding.

Short Sleeves for Larp

The weather forecast predicted degrees hovering just below 30 Celsius with no let up in sight. So on Wednesday evening, I went through the pattern magazines stash and found Simplicity 16 – Model 49-52, a blouse with a drawstring top. Traced the pieces, cut out the fabric (leftovers from the long sleeve top) and sewed the thing together.

I used French seams throughout most of it. The fabric frays so badly that this is needed. However, at some points doing that would have made seams so thick that it would not have been comfortable. The sleeve hems are not sown double and the facing is some black bias tape. All in all, the shirt worked quite well which is why there is now a second iteration.. Come back later to check that out.

Red Birds and Foxes

A year ago, I added a piece of light coloured fabric with grey leaf-ish things and little deer, birds, squirrels and foxes to the stash. On the hunt for a project, I re-discovered this fabric and decided to finally make (at least part of it) into a top of some sort.

Enter Simplicity 9, model 59 minus ruffle. This pattern came in size 38-40 at the smallest. In general, that tends to be too big. However, I hoped it would work anyway without resizing the pattern beforehand – spoiler alert: dumb choice.

In order to get it to fit, I made a 2 cm pleat at the back, ending at the small of my back. The shoulders were lowered 1.5 cm. I redrew the neckline at the front and back to correspond to the original size. So in total I probably managed to shave of more than 8 cm or so. I now like the fit a lot better. The fabric does crease like crazy and I don’t like ironing, so this is why you see it in all its wrinkly glory.

The fabric is super cute though and those five buttons also came from the stash. The original pattern had more buttons, but I was not going to let such a good match in buttons go to waste, so five it was. The button bands might have a little to much interfacing for the thickness of the fabric, but all in all, it wears well and it’s very cute. So far, so good!

Fire Playsuit

I have had a piece of stretchy stuff with a sort of fire-ish pattern on it, hanging on a hanger in my sewing room for a seriously long while now. Finding a pattern for it had never worked out so it was just hanging there. One day, I think a few weeks back? I figured I needed to get my act together and actually make something from it. I searched through my pattern magazines yet again and discovered an interesting looking playsuit-thing with a front zipper in Simplicity 27 – model 15. So I copied it onto pattern paper and got myself into gear.

I wanted the whole front to be firey and since the fabric was fire down the middle and black on the sides, this meant that the back of the suit would be completely black. Now, I’m not completely happy with this thing. The interfacing I used along the zipper is too stiff, the whole thing feels frumpy and the neckline is too low. I’m not sure of the length of the legs and overall just not really happy with it. Perhaps it will grow on my once I wear it a little, so I hope the good weather comes out to play and I can incorporate it into my Me-Made-May 18 pledge. If I figure I will not wear it, I might just donate it to someone else and/or goodwill.

Some items are just winners, some are losers but if you have some suggestions on how to make it look.. better, I’m all ears.

Leafy Graduation

After the fireworks and exhaustion from vacation and new years eve, I spent January 1 and 2 by myself. I took out an stashed piece of fabric that I’ve liked for a while and found a pattern with a design feature I wanted to explore and got to work. I wanted to make a dress to wear to the graduation of the first class of 2015. I was planning on this being it.

This is the pattern I chose. I went for a combination of view 4 and 5 with lengthened sleeves. What is so special, to me, about this pattern is that it has princess seams in front and back. However, it’s got only the one pattern piece to make both the center and side front/back. I wanted to see if and how that works. It turns out, it works!

I made the smallest size, 36-38 and made it from a stretch cotton fabric with giant leaves on it. I hoped it would fit because I’m generally not a size 38, but I figured, smaller is always possible and larger is difficult. The shell of the dress was put together and then I had to decide how to put in the sleeves, right or wrong side out. I pinned in both ways and decided I needed a twist and put in the sleeves wrong side out. I felt less like a giant couch that way.

When it was all together and I basted in the back seam, I found out I could get in and out of it without problems. I also found it was really big… So I took in the back seam a bit more. It should have been 1.5 cm, but it was as much as you can see in the left picture below. There were facings involved in the making of this, and they work perfectly fine!

All in all, it took me 2 days to finish basically everything. Then I took another day to hem. I hate hemming, so it took a while to get that done. I did invisible stitches and I’m quite proud of the way they turned out. On the right is a close up of the neckline. I think it looks nicely done!

Here’s the finished product. I really like it with the white belt.

Last Friday, during graduation, this dress did have its first outing and it performed splendidly. Definitely a keeper, especially with my old petticoat under it.

Tag: Simplicity