Monthly Archives: July 2015
Dress update
Hi, you might remember the Butterick 7556 and Butterick 7240
I managed to get out in garden this weekend and take a few photos, I gave you the dressmakers dummy photos but here are some full length photos.
Butterick 7556
The first two pictures look alright, the last two, I’m not sure if I’m standing but it looks like I have no waist.
Butterick 7240
here is a good look at the hip detail
The dress could have done with an iron but I didn’t want to miss the moment, the tripod does make a great deal of difference to the photos but I do have to try and get rid of the total look of concentration on my face while trying to use my iphone to remotely operate the camera.
Marathon Skirt making project
Don’t worry I havent forgotton my Haslam blouse, it is on the back burner at the moment, have you ever had a project that goes together fine in the testing stage but once you get to the actual putting it together what could go wrong will go wrong.
That is my Haslam blouse, first I made a hash of the corner trying to French seam it as per the instructions (got a small hole in the corner 😦 ) the second one I tried went together beautifully, then I noticed a small mark on the front of the section on the one of the fronts, normally I would have just swapped it out, but I’d just overlocked the whole lot, after deciding to give the french seams a miss.
This weekend I have made, or at least started 5 skirts, 3 are all the same pattern and for a friend, she has just had abdominal surgery, and her low waised ‘modern’ skirts and trousers rub in the wrong place, since going back to work she has practically lived in 2 skirts I made her for chistmas.
The pattern was created from the Lutterloh 70s book, I have already made another long skirt, but as she is about to go on a boating holiday they are not practical, so using the same pattern, but cutting it shorter here are three more skirts.
I have also made two skirts for me, one is an unblogged 70s skirt pattern from simplicity. The other is a Haslam skirt,
I made a mistake on my fabric choice for the Haslam skirt, the check doesn’t lead it self to darts and I’m not sure that it can hold the pleats.
The skirts are all put together and just need their waistbands and hemming, the Haslam skirt also needs its pleats.
Hopefully I can get some photos before my friend goes on holiday.
Haslam Blouse pt3
I came across an interesting piece of information while reading my haslam book of dressmaking, no wonder the sleeve looked a bit weird and pully across the front, apparently you don’t line up the under arm seam with the under sleeve seam.
I must admit after I removed the sleeve and reinserted it as per the instructions (which was also in the front of the drafting leaflet) it actually sat a lot better.
The facings and the collar have been inserted, the blouse is looking very good, I’m still not certain that I would wear in this coloured fabric but the blouse is wearable and the correct size.
Of course at this point I’m wishing I hadn’t done a shoulderectomy on my dressmaking dummy as the blouse was a bit droopy, but I soon fixed that with a couple of bits of card stuffed under the t-shirt.
The Collar looks a little bit wonky but I’m not sure if it is just the way that I have attached it or if the picture is off slightly.
The next step is to find a nice lightweight fabric and make one that will be nice to wear to work.
Dressmakers Dummys
I have quite a nice dress makers dummy it is one of the ones with the dials on it to make it bigger and smaller, and I bought the one you could do trouser fitting on it.
I got it last year, I’d always wanted one so I bought one, I quite quickly found the major downside to it, the shoulders, with the mainly 1950s dress I was making it was fine right up until I put in that pesky second side seam in, if the dress was big enough to go over the shoulders of the dummy it was too big in the chest for me, and even if it didn’t go over the shoulders it was more than likely to be too big in the chest.
It was then I found out about dummys with collapsible shoulders (drool) I searched the net, I found out about wolf (very expensive) and PGM (not quite so expensive) but still in America so even if they would export to the UK you were looking at adding another £200 for shipping and import duty.
Then I found out about Kennett and Linsell goody, I thought, they are in the UK not sure why my google searches didn’t find them, but it must be cheaper to buy from here than the States (wrong!!!!)as far as I can work out as they don’t have any prices listed it costs about £700 for one of these dummys. This is going by the Clearance list, and an auction on ebay.
So back to the drawing board, not so much, I got so fed up with the shoulders I sliced them off, not totally obviously, otherwise I’d have nothing to hang my shoulder seams on, I hacked about an inch off of both sides, hacked might even be too kind a word for it, I started off with a pair of scissors and ended up with a craft knife, it wasn’t pretty when I finished, and now there were sharp bits. 😦
So off to the back room where we had a few bags of clothes waiting to go to the charity shop, Simon had put a couple of t-shirts in there, ideal, they would be nice and long and I’d have some fabric to play with.
I stitched the sleeves up and took the t-shirt in using my overlocker, why not get a feel for knits at the same time as trying to make my dressmakers Dummy actually usable.
Here is the finished article it still has enough shoulder to hang a dress from, but it is missing just enough that I can get my 1950s dresses on it, still with a struggle but less chance of splitting the under arm seam.
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 