floral petal dress

Did you think I forgot how to sew woven fabrics? Well, I did. Or at least I forgot that it's possible to hem a garment without inducing an anxiety attack.

Let's talk prints. In the past couple months on this blog, we've seen chevron prints. We've also seen plaids and stripes and dots, birdies and birdy feathers, blue checks and bigger blue checks. What's obviously missing are florals --the sure sign of summer/wedding season. I guess you could consider my Cambie fabric to be a floral, but I think of it as more of an... abstract weed.

I'm super picky about floral prints. It's a tricky design, as a certain combination of colors, design and scale can make it look either too sweet or too matronly. I've been trying to pin down what it is about certain floral prints that I find either agreeable or sickly, but it's a fairly unstable relationship we have. Generally speaking, the flowers need to be well-spaced, or oversized, or looks like they're drawn by a 5 year old. Like normally I'm more drawn to stuff like this:

source

source

source

and I'm obsessed with almost all Nani IRO fabric:

can't source the actual fabric, but photo is from here

So it's kinda weird that I went for this busy-ish small-scale floral. But, I LIKE it.

The fabric buying all happened within the span of two minutes max. I opened a promo e-mail from Denver Fabrics entitled "Huge Fabric Sale - Linen, Rayon and More," clicked through to the rayon challis section, saw this floral print at the top of the list for like $4.50/yd., tossed two yards in my virtual shopping cart, confirmed on PayPal, then made my morning coffee. I knew immediately what pattern I'd use: something for which I made a muslin so long ago that I've since lost it.

Hospital gown chic, you say? Luckily there's this thing called "Google" in which you type a pattern name and number -- in this case Vogue 8631 -- and up pops photographic evidence of bloggers posing in successful versions of the pattern. It actually makes a fine dress, despite what you may think of the waifs posing in weird muu-muus on the cover. Sizing is definitely an issue, though, so just be aware that you'll probably have to scale down. I made an 8 in the bodice and a 10 in the skirt (2 sizes smaller than the size I'm supposed to make and 1 size smaller than the size I normally make). 

If you're anything less than a Dolly Parton, you may have to adjust the bodice wrap accordingly. For me that meant taking wedges out of the shoulder seams so the top wouldn't droop as much. I also sewed deeper into the upper side seams to reduce the armhole gaps there. Even after tightening up the wrap, I would never ever wear this without a camisole underneath.

YES it's a real wrap dress. There's a tie on the inside so the underwrap stays attached to the sideseam, and there's a shoddily sewn hook and eye that attaches the overwrap to the exterior side seam.

I have to be pretty careful of how I stand or walk against the wind. The underwrap provides okay coverage but I think I flashed a nice (or naughty) bit of thigh to the grocery store parking lot. I like the dress design in a drapey fabric, but the pleats behave strangely without structure. Gravity works against them so they sort of fall open. I decided to stitch them down a couple inches so they'd permanently lay neat and flat instead of flop open at the waistline.

That's my hand in a side pocket, not a hip growth, btw. I nixed the bias-tape-finished hem and used Stitchy Witch's method of baby hemming it like she did on her version of the dress. Can't believe I never thought before of serging the raw edge first to mark an even line for folding and pressing. Doy. If I could move through the rest of my sewing life without using a seam gauge, I would. 

Maybe this is why I don't wear florals that often. Pollen allergies:

...or Paranormal Activity? You decide.

What's your preferred kind of floral, or do you love them all? Steer clear of them all?

cardi-gangbuster

I have an obsession with drapey and slightly oversized cardigans. My collection of them is reasonable right now, but I have plans to totally take over my closet and my life with them. This was my first attempt at making one and it has only fueled the cardi fire. It's one of those pieces I want to plan all my outfits around so I can wear it non-stop.

It's a Vogue pattern, oddly. I say "oddly" because I almost never buy nor make Vogue patterns. They're either weird or, as we've discussed, make it impossible to tell what the garment looks like because the sample is made up in crazy busy fabric or the model is crouching away from the camera in pain.

Luckily this Very Easy Vogue 8819 just featured some dead-eyed illustrated women on the cover so I didn't have to interpret too much. It has sleeveless and full-length sleeve options, too, but I went with the half-sleeves so I could cross over seasons.

As you can see, the main design features are all these bias-cut pieces that intersect at various seams. As you can also see, it's an OCD print-matcher's basic nightmare. If you are obsessive about your stripes, perhaps you shouldn't attempt this pattern in a striped fabric. Maybe I cut slightly off but I sometimes found it impossible to match the stripes all the way down certain seams, so I just had to focus on making it symmetrical instead of perfectly continual. I ain't mad. It's easier to get away with jaggedness in thin and narrowly-spaced stripes than in thicker stripes.

The back center seam is the one where print-matching is entirely possible AND crucial, however. The pattern actually has you cut two pieces for the lower back that you're supposed to stitch together at the C.B., but I straightened out the flare and cut it on the fold to save myself even more stripe-matching agony. This just meant I had to sew a V to an inverted V, but for me it was worth the technique swap. 

I made a Medium, and you can tell it's a little big because the seams dip off my shoulders, and I'm often tempted to push the sleeves up. I like my cardigans to be a bit slouchy, though, especially when I wear them over short or more fitted dresses like this one. Makes the coverage feel more balanced or something.

Let's talk about the cardigan flare, though. I narrowed the A-line of the bottom back pieces by about five inches overall. I like 'em slouchy but I don't like 'em boxy. I also didn't want it to look like I had an Oreo-themed curtain draped over my booty:

So that's that. A cardigan, just in time for the drippiest 103-degree death heat of summer. I'm just that kind of seamster. I make short-sleeve floral tops in January and elbow-length cardigans in July. 

Oh and don't think I forgot about our little agreement from my last post. I never break a blog promise, so here you go. I went with this McCalls model because our dresses were the same color:

You guys, this pose was surprisingly difficult to master. I almost popped my hip out of socket. Your feet are pointed completely sideways, in line, but your torso and head have to face directly forward, and you have to be able to touch your knee while your body is upright and not slouched forward at all. Not to mention the Tyra eye smoulder. That's BUSINESS. Who knew pattern modeling would take such quad strength? 

Keep it up, McCalls. Those girls got talent.

So who shares my cardigan obsession, even in summer? Or maybe I should ask who isn't a fan of cardigans, so I can squint at you (Tyra-style) through my computer screen and say, "...f'real?"

a possible & permissible pencil skirt for pears

Lately I've been feeling like a one-trick pony. A one-trick pear-shaped pony, that is. Wait.

To this point I've been highly dedicated to only sewing clothes that fit within the wardrobe "rules" for my particular body type. By most definitions I am a pear shape, in that my bust and waist are narrower than my fairly prominent hips. Maybe it's determined by a shoulder-to-waist-to-hip ratio, not a bust-to-waist-to-hip ratio, but whatever, I just know this baby got back. What I don't know is whose job it was to name the various female body types. I'm not sure how impressed I am by the resulting combination of fruit, geometry and mundane household objects.

source

Lovely. So here's basically what I know about how to dress to look my best (which, I guess they mean is to look my slimmest). According to YouLookFab's article "The Pretty Pear": "Strive to create an 'A-line' silhouette with your clothing. Choose styles that define your waist and show off your torso. Knee length A-line skirts with vertical panel seaming are best. Pants should make a straight line down from your widest point. Stay clear of bias-cut skirts and pencil skirts." 

Translation: "Keep that fat bum outta sight, ladies." C'mon now.

This is all relatively easy to abide by, except when it comes to casual wear. I break the rules with my skinny jeans, even though I know they look bad on me and I feel pretty awful in them all day. I just wanna fit in with the cool kids, you know? For my business casual work environment, though, I've happily built a wardrobe of dresses and skirts that are fitted at my natural waist and flare out over my "problem areas." Here's a sampling of how dedicated I am to the waist-defining A-line shape, in case you haven't noticed. And, no -- though it may appear this way, I'm not really an obsessive patriot who has intentionally created a wardrobe palette based on the colors of the American flag:

1 - Red Trench // 2 - Blue Burda // 3 - Colorblock

4 - Darling Ranges // 5 - Cardinal // 6 - Confetti 

Despite feeling most comfortable and confident in these kinds of clothes (USA theme aside), I'm also getting tired of this silhouette. I wouldn't be surprised if my friends, colleagues and blog readers are getting sick of it, too. Oh cool, Andrea, another tent-shaped sundress with a belt slapped around it. Good job, how fashionable. What a nice full skirt and tucked-in blouse you got there. You'd make a lovely 50s housewife, really.

So, folks, I've done the unthinkable, broken some rules, and decided to make myself a (gasp) pencil skirt. Truly scandalous!

OK it's not scandalous at all, really. I chose a tasteful one that still abides by other pear shape rules: emphasize the waist, use solid colors and structure on the bottom half, blah blah. After a Simplicity pattern fail and some additional research, I found a better pattern that looked like it could work for a pear shape: Vogue 8697. 

It looks a lot like Burda's Jenny Skirt with the high waist, but the key here is princess seams. Because I'm a princess. I mean, these seams are just much easier to fit around curves, and they help eliminate the horizontal pull marks across the thighs. The waistband is pieced and shaped -- not just a flat rectangle -- so the garment contours quite nicely to an actual human body.

The fabric is cotton twill with the color name "Tobacco." I'm instead calling it "Cappuccino," as caffeine is my preferred chemical addiction. This is my commitment to creating more basic items that I can pair with many things I already own (the whole cake vs. frosting thing -- but cake is still sweet on its own!). I do like this color despite its blandness - it has the practicality and matchability of khaki, but in a pretty golden hue. The fabric was 60" wide, so at 1 & 3/8 yards I was able to make this skirt and there's enough left to make a tote bag... in case I want to, you know, tote stuff. Like pencils.

I like the seaming quite a bit, and the pattern instructions were clear (surprising, since it's Vogue). Fair warning, though: all those small pieces meant a lottttt of cutting. There's a lining with the same seaming, and you are told to cut interfacing for both the waistband and waistband facing, so I must have had to cut like 450 pieces. That's when you realize Gingher scissors are kinda heavy, damn.

So if you, like me, have avoided pencil skirts forever but still want to try one out, maybe this is is your pattern! 

What are the "rules" for your body type, and have you ever broken them when it comes to sewing or shopping?