a Winter Peony

When I went shopping for my Poncho-skirt, I found a gorgeous piece of green wintery bouclé on the remnants table for 10€. SCORE! I knew I had to make a dress out of this! And here it is.

 

My second Peony. After the crazy flamingo's, this one is a little more subdued, I would even dare to say it looks classy (untill I put it on, all class vanishes in an instant, because I am not frail and fragile, but firm).

But it still is a nice dress. 

I should have made an alteration to the front darts and taken out some excess fabric at the neck, but I didn't. For one obvious reason: Laziness, my favourite pastime.

I did make a few changes to the construction. 

1. I repositioned the zipper to the left side seam. I don't know why patterns call for zippers center back. I for one hate them.
When I lean back in a chair, the zipper starts to hurt and maybe I am not nimble enough, but I can't manage to open or close a zipper on the back on my own. It always ends with me in tears curled up the wrong way around on the bathroom floor in a very abnormal bodyspasm, trying to reach the tiny, tiny zipper pull on the back.

2. Because of the side zipper, I only have one pocket. One pocket is better than no pocket. I know I said last time that the pocket didn't do anything special for me, that I was impartial toward it, but since then, I have totally changed my mind - what can I say, I'm a girl! Pockets in all dresses PLEASE!

3. I made a full lining for this dress, because wool bouclé is itchy. Big time. The lining doesn't eliminate all the itchyness, but most of it.

I bought the lining in a little fabric store here in Santander. It cost me 15€ (yes, more than the bouclé) and it is some sort of cheap polyester that I really, really hate. But it gets the job done...

The dress was put to the test in Barcelona and it held up perfectly! Luscious breakfast, walking through the rain - a lot of rain, museum visit and flight home. I love this dress. I feel very ME in it. And that is always an important consideration.

And now because I think there are more interesting things than my dresses I give you Sun, Sea, Surfers and Palm Trees. The weather has been so great the last few weeks, I wanted to share... And because the above pictures are the only ones I have that are decent. Time for my photographer/husband to get back home from his trip.

 

 

Colette Peony - aka Stashbusting Flamingoes

I have had this pattern lying around for 3 months now, along with the fabric I bought especially for this.

A gorgeous yellow-pistachio silk jacquard.
I love yellow fabrics, there is just something about the bright vibrance that cheers me up instantly (not that I need a lot of cheering up, I am a pretty cheery person by nature).
But somehow, the foresight of letting my scissors have a go at this fabric left me with a feeling of gloom.

After reading a lot of reviews of this pattern (here, here and here amongst others) and the fitting issues, I felt even worse about starting this project.

When I finally did decide to go for it, I left ALL precaution behind and cut in the original pattern right away...

Yes I do!

While I was cutting away my pattern, I had an epiphany.

I still had this in my stash. A soft yellow, Michael Miller quilt cotton sporting crazy flamingoes.  Doesn't this just SCREAM summer?

Once I made the decision to change my fabric, I felt a huge weight being lifted of my shoulders and I was feeling enthusiastic about this project again.

I really wanted sleeves and pockets in this dress, I don't know exactly why, just an irrational desire I guess, so I omitted the belt part because I only had 2 yards of this fabric (don't know how much that is in metric, just that you can just, just, just fit a size 8 Peony without belt out of it). I can always add a belt later if I really want to, but I don't think that's likely as I'm not a belt-person. (Do those even exist?)

 I am really self-conscious when my picture is taken, I guess I have to get used to these photoshoots... This time we went to one of the twelve beaches of Santander to snap some photos, it was the first time in over a month that the sun was out, it was still pretty cold, 17º, and my legs are still awfully white, I haven't been to the beach yet this year to get a tan...

While perusing through my pattern-instructions (I always do that before starting, I think it's half the fun) I saw the suggestion of adding piping to the waist- and neckline. Lucky for me I had some white piping sitting in my stash so I could add that. I also added piping to the sleeves. I thought about adding piping to the hem as well, but I didn't have enough piping left (I'm on a very tight budget so buying piping wasn't going to happen) so I just did an invisible hem with bias-tape and using the special foot that came with my machine.

I love the effect of the piping, it gives such a retro-girly feeling to the dress.

I thought about inserting an exposed metalic zipper, but I really wanted this dress finished as soon as possible so I could pick up my husband from the airport in it (He went to the Canary Islands for work. How unfair is that?) so I used one from my huge zipper stash (last year I bought a surprise bag of 100 zippers on E-Bay). I found a really long, beige, invisible one, perfect for this dress.

I have one of those plastic feet for invisible zippers, but I don't like using it, so I use my regular-zipperfoot for inserting invisible zippers. I think they end up looking better (or looking more invisible, in this case) than with the plastic foot.

I forgot to add the piping to the neckline, and thought about leaving it so, but 'lucky' for me I sewed the pieces for the facing together the wrong way so I ended up with an odd-looking standing-straight-up neckline. This meant unpicking the staystitches, the seam and the bias tape I used to finish the raw edge of the facing. Lucky me, indeed...

So, I redid the entire facing, WITH the piping this time (silver lining people!), but the neckline still does something weird, especially in the back. This could be due to an excess of fabric that many of you already commented about.

I hope it will be allright when the dress gets some wear or maybe when it has been in the washing machine. We'll see, I won't lie awake worrying about it.

And then there are the pockets so many of you love so much.

I am somewhat impartial as to the pockets (in dresses in general). I'll probably use them, but wouldn't be heartbroken if there were no pockets in this dress either. I really don't care about them. At all.

So my dread about the Peony and all it's fitting issues, proved to be unnecessary after all. This is an out-of-the-envelope-size-8 (I was feeling lazy) and I am really really really satisfied with the fit and outcome.

This goes right to my top-3-favourite-makes of all-times, along with my purple knit dress and my blue polkadot dress, and my husband loves it too, he even noticed the piping...

HOORAY for Colette Peony... and flamingoes...  and using the stuff you have in your stash!

This is me, imitating the crazy flamingo that is on the fabric.

XO 

Colette Eclair

My Colette Eclair is done! Yay! 

Another pattern chosen by my man for my birthday!

I will show you a few close-up pictures because I won't show the dress on me before the wedding it is made for. My first idea was to make this a maxi-dress but maxi-dresses aren't really my thing. I love them, and I always try one on, but they're just not meant for me. Just like jumpsuits - oh, how I want a jump suit...

The dress came together like a dream! I made a muslin first out of a sheet that had been left here, made a few alterations that were easily transfered to the real dress.

The fabric is the most gorgeous silk-poly blend I have ever laid eyes upon. It's the Violet's fabric big sister, with (almost) the same background color and big bright pink birds flying around. Cutting this fabric wasn't really easy because it really shifted around all over the place. And this fabric had a lot less issues with threads running and leaving little white stripes all over the place!

The lining is a simple purple polyester fabric, to which I added black knit fusible interfacing and I used the sew-in boning for the first time, and I am sold! Way easier than making tunnels to pass the boning through. Won't be doing that again!

I did use a piece of sturdy cotton on each end of the boning to prevent the boning tearing through the fabric, or my skin - that happened to me once with my favourite dress ever, my wedding dress... By the end of the night I had scratch marks all over my belly...

 

 

To make the inside pretty again after sewing in the boning, I added a strap of ribbon I had lying around - I think I used it to put a bow on gifts - over the stitches of the boning. No-one will see it, but I will know it's there. I love that about self-made things, the details are not all on the outside, you can have a little secret on the inside too if you want.

Then there was the zipper - how I do not like putting in zippers. 

I once bought 100 zippers for 30€ from e-bay and they came in quite the rainbow of colors and an enormous variety of lengths. I chose an invisible pink zipper and put it in with my regular zipper-foot. I have one of those plastic feet for invisible zippers but I don't like using it and I have noticed that putting in an invisible zipper with my regular zipper-foot works just as well.

I had a bit of trouble lining everything up, so right where my armpit is, there is a very small irregularity, but no-one will notice as it is up my armpit and I don't expect someone taking an interest in that...

I think it would be best if the instructions for the Colette were the other way around when it comes to inserting the zipper. Next time (and there will be a next time, summer is around the corner after all) I will first close the side seam of the skirt, then put in the zipper and then sew the lining and the shell together. I think that will make closing the side seam easier... 

All that is left now is to sew the waistlines of lining and shell together - I will do that last minute so if I have to make changes to the dress I won't need to separate the pieces first - and the hems. I'm thinking about inserting fishing line in the hem(s) so that I get this nice curly effect.

Image from this page - I don't particularly like this dress but you get the idea...

When I first showed it to my husband he wasn't quite convinced that it was festive enough. Maybe because I was wearing leggings and sneakers. So I put my glitter-shoes on and that gave me his stamp of approval too. Yeay!

Only worn twice before, so still considered new shoes.

The wedding is July 5th, we are flying to Belgium on July 4th and are heading back home on the 7th. Very short trip, but it will be massive fun! Pictures of the dress in action will be posted fairly soon after that!

XOXO

Colette Violet

After a lot of hesitation I cut into my gorgeous fabric I got for my birthday...

I decided to make it into a Colette Violet, one of the patterns I got for my birthday.

I don't know where my head was at when I decided on the size to cut out, but it must have been lightyears away... I cut a size 12 while my actual size would be a 6... But I think I know where I went wrong.

You see, my actual bustsize is 32", which would be a size 6. But my RTW European size is 40, so I was looking at the table on the back of the pattern and I saw the number 40 and I must have thought "Oh, so I have to make a size 12". This didn't seem odd to me, because I have a Karen Millen dress that fits me perfectly and that dress is a UK size 12... Circumstancial confusion...

Fortunately I made a muslin first, something I usually never do, but because I love this fabric soooo much and I really didn't want to ruin it and because it cost a lot of money and because there were a lot of sheets left behind in the appartment we just bought, I decided to make a trial version first. I thought it was really big, but it didn't occur to me that it was not the pattern but me. So I replaced the darts, removed width from the front and removed width from the back, and on top of that I took in the side seams about 4 cm each... I guess there were enough signs there to know something was wrong... I just didn't see it...

The fabric is gorgeous but a real pain to sew. It is a silk-poly blend, but my machine handled it really really well. (I changed the needle to a 60, and tested different types of stitches to see what worked best. Did I mention I really didn't want to ruin this fabric?) The only thing that made it really nerve-wrecking was that when I put a pin in or when I was sewing my buttonholes, something happened to the threads of the fabric and I got tiny little white stripes. But you have to be really close by to see it, so it doesn't really matter.

Too bad for the little white stripes :-(

I inserted three times three buttonholes placed together and used buttons with 3 different shades of the same color. It's just a small detail, and maybe I'm the only one who notices, but I love it. I got the idea for the grouped buttonholes from the Colette-website, the ombre-effect buttons idea is all mine.

I like the result, it is not the best it could have been, but those who don't know about my stupidity confusion, won't notice...

Birthday Bounty

I LOVE my birthday... And this year was a big one. I turned 30 two weeks ago!
Weeks in advance I harassed Mr. Ogre about the plans he may or may not have made, give him not so subtle hints on what I want to do, and more importantly, what I want to get... This year I really outdid myself and sent him an email with a list of things I would like to get with the words: "This is just a guideline, if you had another idea, that's great too." That and a constant nagging that I wanted a fun day. This really freaked him out a bit, got him a bit nervous. He thought I expected fireworks and a flash mob, but all I really wanted was a nice day. just the two of us, no work, no phonecalls, no nothing.
And he delivered. It was one of the best birthdays, if not the best EVER!
In the end we had a great day in Bilbao. We had nice weather and Mr Ogre catered to all my desires: good food, thrift shops and fabric shopping. And I got 3 Colette Patterns as a present. LOVE him and his presents!

So now to the good part: my presents

First of all, my brand new gorgeous patterns. Colette Patterns Peony, Violet and Eclair. I especially can´t wait to finish my Eclair, although I am pretty nervous about these, because I have never ever before owned such beautiful patterns.

I am actually nervous about starting on these. I decided that Violet is going to be the first pattern to be made. I already traced every pattern piece (I really don´t want to cut into the original pattern) and tomorrow I´m heading to the market to buy some a whole lot of cheap fabric to make a trial version, because here is the fabric that I am going to use for the "real" version.

 A gorgeous lightweight poly/silk blend with little birds (they´re about 2.5 cm high each) bought on my birthday-outing in a fabulous fabric store in Bilbao, Rafael Matías (a store I discovered by perusing through this blog). The best fabric store in a 200 km radius (maybe even a bigger radius, I haven´t really investigated yet).

Other fabric I bought there:

 In real life colours, this uses the same palet as the fabric above, and this will be used for the Eclair.

This one is heavier than the other two, this will be used for the Peony, making the contrasting waste band with the "wrong" side of the fabric

Plaid shirting, soon to become a shirt for Mr Ogre, using this pattern McCalls 6044

All I have to find is some pearl snaps to use as buttons and I am good to go.



What projects are you working on right now, or what do you want to make next?

Check back soon, ´cause I will be posting some of my previous sewing adventures soon...

XXX