Scary Homemade a.k.a. "Did You Make That?"

For a while I got away from sewing.  I had some bad experiences.  That horrible mu mu from that cute little Vogue pattern I loved.  The enormous amount of time I spent on the"Walk Away Dresses" (B4790) only to lose 45 pounds before I could finish the third one and wear the first two more than once.

The other dilemma that began to face me is I found that I didn't like it when someone said, "Did you make that?"  When I sewed that awesomely cute sack-type 90s dress with the farm animals on it and wore it everywhere I went.  People would make a comment such as "What a cute dress."  I could wait for the other shoe to drop and discovered that as proud as I was of my creation and as often as I loved to wear it, I didn't like how others would ask:

"Did you make that?"

I've decided I want to start sewing again, but I want to sew like a big girl.  I want to sew with beautiful fabrics that don't include farm animals, toasters, or treble clefs.  I want to fight that urge to add my "spin" on something that Vogue thought was good enough just the way it is.

For my tip of the day, for your take away:

Pay attention to the dress and what the designer was trying to accomplish.  There's a reason why they are a designer and you are not.  There's a reason why view A has longer sleeves and no ruffles while view B includes a ruffle and no sleeves.  Why only View C is above the knee.  It's about balance, proportion, and the purpose of the item.  Choose appropriate fabrics.  Unless you're an elementary school teacher or a TV character on Saturday morning.  Those really busy cotton fabrics on the "quilting" wall are best left to quilting.

M6030 Part 1 -- Picking the Dress

With the start of May, I'm going to begin a series on sewing the M6030 wedding gown as a bridesmaid dress.  It took some looking for a dress with as few pieces as possible because this dress was going to need to be size up quite a ways.  The skirt was not going to be a big deal, but fitting the bodice to fit a girl with measurements beyond any plus size measurements available, this wasn't going to be an easy feat, but it was surely going to be as fun as usual!  So we did a lot of looking at patterns.

The first consideration was the bride's dress.  It would be easy to pick a beautiful dress and put it together for a special occasion, but we had a bride to consider.  It was important not to over shadow her choice with our choice.  The bride had specified a color: a maroon more on the blue side than red and given all the bridesmaids a swatch of the fabric.  The bridesmaids could wear whatever they wanted.  To complicate things, the bride is extremely petite in height, but not so much in width. *wink*  Her dress looked very much like this M5321 example.

M5321 -- McCall's Stock Photo

M6030 Stock Photo

After much deliberation, we chose M6030.  The gathered sleeves, and  and straight skirt would be easy to alter.  The tough part proved to be the bodice as it had something like five pieces and connected to the sleeves in a unique way.  We did a lot of fittings for the bodice and I took a lot of measurements which I will talk about in Part 3.

The biggest thing I have discovered in a lot of looking at reviews and reading about other projects that have succeeded and failed, is the compulsion to go their own way.  I think I've stated this in other posts, but there's a reason why I'm not a pattern designer.  I really don't know what's best for the pattern.  I haven't always wanted to do what they ask for, but  I try to stick to the instructions and learn something along the way.

This was a very fun dress to sew.  I was please with the finished product and so was the bridesmaid.  I sewed the dress without expecting to get paid, but received two restaurant gift cards in the mail from her parents, so I imagine the dress was well received.

Next week: choosing fabric and starting to study the instructions.

Bags of Scraps

Finished Product!

The organization of my sewing room that started over a year ago has picked back up.  Last night, while watching TV, I went through a whole bunch of fabric that I'd stuffed in bags.

Each time I sew something, for some reason, I keep every tiny little scrap, put them in a plastic grocery bag and they ended up on a shelf in my sewing room.  The volume of scraps was overwhelming.  I didn't know what I had because on top of that, I'd done the same thing with little projects.  I picked fabric and notions and put the whole thing in--you guessed it--a plastic grocery bag.  Consequently, I had way too many bags on my shelves,, didn't know what I had and what to do with it, so I started emptying out those bags and going through them.  I separated everything back where it belonged and measured fabric out by yards.

So this brings us to last night when I brought all the scraps out to the TV.  I started going through the bags and reluctantly throwing out any piece that was less than 12".  I know.  That sounds like it's not a big deal, but I look at the beautiful fabric and I think about making crazy quilts, or hot pads, or, or, or . . .

The truth is, I could have made all those things and used up the fabric once and for all, and today I'm regretting my cut throat mentality last night, but ultimately, at best, it would have been an ugly quilt that I would have spent way too much time on trying to save fabric scraps I hadn't looked at in years.

What a mess!

Look at the shelves full of bags!

Scanning Patterns

Well, as much as I hate this kind of thing, tomorrow I will be spending the day working in my sewing room.  I brought home a bunch of  Corona boxes this weekend to start putting stuff in.  My aunt and uncle will be staying in the room this weekend for my son's going away party, so I have to get everything put away for them to sleep in there.  So, it's time to get organized and tomorrow is the day.  I will be scanning pattern packages and saving them on my computer.

I started scanning patterns as I bought them, but now I think it is time to start doing all of them and tomorrow is as good as day as any.  I will scan the pattern on the front and the back, save under the pattern number and then save to a file in categories such as dresses, pants, skirts, etc.  Looking forward to the finished product.  I will try to take a before, during and after photo to post with this.

Corona 18 Pack -- Free Pattern Storage

Well, I have some pretty good news.  I found the perfect shaped boxes for storing patterns.  The Corona Longneck 18 pack.  I was using business file boxes. What a mess!  The patterns slid all over the place, not to mention being a waste of space.  What I've decided to do with patterns that don't back into the pattern envelope, a file folder can be trimmed down to the width of the box.  There isn't any room for the patterns to slide around and mix with each other.  This has proven to be an awesome idea.  I am excited to transfer the patterns into the new boxes.  I will post pictures.

1960s Dresses - I Want to Be That Girl!

Butterick 4702

 

 

Butterick 4872  I like View A

This weekend I have been fixated on dress patterns of the sixties.  I found a few this week that I just love and would like to find in my new size.  I have some medium weight turquoise I think would be perfect.

It's true I went through a phase of loving the 50s dresses and even sewing a few.  Well, funny thing is, when I lost the 40+ pounds I did this year, my tastes are changing--again.  I really like those "mod" That Girl styles!  I was watching on Friday, she had the cutest little A-line dress on.  Bold geometrics, and solids.  Then when she put on a matching sleeveless dress coat, it was perfect!  So I spent some time this weekend looking at patterns and ideas from the early to mid sixties.  I found some patterns in my own stash that were obviously either my mother's or grandmothers.  Here are a few I found online that I will just have to find and put together.  The pieces look so easy to put together in a day.  I think when regular women sewed regular clothes, there were more patterns that could be put together in a weekend or even a day.

What It Costs To Be That Girl in 2013
One thing I am discovering, however, is some of these patterns--for some reason--are going to $15 and higher.  The Butterick 4702 pattern is going for $16.99 on eBay.  The Butterick 4872 is going for $10.00 on Etsy.  I haven't taken the time to see if they are actually getting $16.99 and $10.00 for their dried up 50 year-old patterns, but I will say this, some of these are rare in uncut condition.  The other thing is the ones that are there are relatively small.  Like 30 and 32 bust.  That's just a little more than my waist, so these are tiny patterns.  I supposed the right seamstress could alter the pattern to fit the size 16 and 18 customer, but having done that many times for other folks of unusual proportions, it is not fun and definitely became a labor of love that I knew I would never be compensated for.

Most of the dresses take about half the material as the 50s dresses I was so obsessed with last year.  I see most dresses taking 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 yard while the full skirted dresses from the 1950s sometimes called for over seven yards.  If I was lucky enough to find material for $5 to $7 dollars at WalMart or online, the dress was still going to get expensive for a novelty dress like a 1950s evening gown.  I'm looking this week for a dress to wear to my son's going away party the end of this month, so I will post some selections as the weeks go by--if I decide I even have time to sew a dress.

Getting Started: Again

It's been a year since I posted in any of my blogs, so I am getting a schedule made up and hope to begin posting regularly again beginning next week.  Sewing Retro has already been a Monday, staple, so I will more than likely keep that date.  There are a lot of projects I have sewed this year and hope to include.  Some Vogue, some Simplicity, I sewed a whole week of scrubs for an EMT and a bridesmaid's dress for a quaint little wedding for a girl that was over six feet tall!

Bridesmaid's dress McCall's 6030

I've had a lot of successes (M6030 above) and almost as many failures (that horrible purse debacle).  Definitely not a quickie project to try to throw together to impress a niece.

Discontinued? Vogue V7354

I'll be doing some follow-up posts from previous projects as well as posting some new ones and some product reviews and comparisons.  I am also returning to old projects such working on the quilt I started many years ago for my son, so it should be a great year for sewing and blogging and sewing and blogging . . .  See you Monday, March 3!