Tuesday 28 February 2012

Work in progress.


I'm currently working my way through Tasia's brilliant Lonsdale Sew-along. Now, this dress, to me, screams Summer so I chose a lovely summery cotton poplin with a pretty little yellow and orange rose print. I'm lining it with a sunshine yellow rayon. I own exactly one yellow item of clothing; an impulse but from H&M right at the end of the summer, I got so many compliments on it (the few times It was warm enough to wear it) that I have decided to add more sunny colours to my life! Here is a more detailed shot of that cute print.


I finished my muslin a few weeks ago and, hurrah, it fits, pretty much perfectly. However, after the high of actually making a real dress all by myself (albeit a dress not fit for actual wearing) I remembered that to have pattern pieces to sew together, I had to cut them out. I hate cutting out. This is most likely because I have little to no experience and not a lot of space to do it in and these two factors make it jolly time consuming! There isn't much room for error with cutting (if any) so I get extra stressed if it looks like it might all go wrong at any point (this happens a lot!). BUT, all this aside, after some serious procrastination I finally got the thing cut out (twice technically since almost the entire dress is lined!). I could finally sew. I basted the underling to the back bodice pieces and sewed them all together, so far so good. Then I went to iron my seams, with a super hot iron, on a SYNTHETIC fabric. Clearly sewing makes me stupid. Melted fabric happened. Bad times.

Oops!

Still, I persevered and sewed up the bodice front pieces and set to work on the halter tie loop thingys. I went looking for the loop position notches on the back bodice, they weren't there so, I scratched my head for a while, then I found the notches on the flaming side seams. I'd only gone and sewn the wrong edges together. After a little tantrum, me, my seam ripper and an episode of Desperate Housewives spent some quality time together. I even unpicked my burnt lining piece (which would be invisible once the dress is finished) and cut (hurray more cutting! Grrrr.) another one. After checking, and then checking again and then one more time for luck, I sewed it all back together and I have a pretty passable dress bodice.

Yay.

Join me soon for more disasters adventures in waistbands, pockets, skirts and zips.

Alice x

2 comments:

  1. I have definitely melted the lining of a dress before, it's all part of the learning curve! For synthetic fabrics I often use a scrap piece of muslin between the iron and my fabric and that usually prevents this sort of thing happening. That and a cooler iron! Looking forward to seeing the final dress :)

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  2. AHH Alice! I've just seen your name on my followers list and i thought.... could it beee? and it is! how exciting you have joined blog land and how lovely to see your little face! how have you been? good fabric choice up there, its gorgeous! xxx

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