Monthly Archives: March 2016
Second Davie Dress – The Return
Hi, I was so impressed with the fit of my first Davie Dress that I have made another one, this one is in a stretch fabric bought from eBay it is thickish, and will be great for our holiday. It does have quite a big pattern on it and I was torn between thinking it was too big for the small panels, or because it was so big it wouldn’t matter. It turns out I was right the pattern is so big that it is not noticable on the dress.
I have made it in the shorter size, a straight 2 but I have changed the neckline. The problem I have with the neckline is it is a bit high and with having to take off an extra 1/4 inch off the shoulders makes it even higher.
So what I did was I made up the dress with a slightly lower neckline, this was still not low enough, so I put the dress on my dress form then put a t-shirt with the neckline I was going for over the top of it, then I drew it on the dress.
After I cut off the excess I had then had to decide how to finish it off. Too be honest I didn’t look at the instructions on the pattern at this point, and I didn’t when I made the first one. The Craftsy class I took had you fold the neck strip in half, stitch it to the neck line and topstitch it in place, I didn’t like the mess it left inside so I decided to do it a different way.
I measured the new neckline and took an inch off it then added the seam allowance, made it into a loop, trimmed the seam allowance and pinned it to the neckline, right side of the neckband to the wrong side of the dress, stretching it out slightly, as I had done in the Craftsy class. Then I stitched the neck band to the dress, timmed off half the seam allowance and folded it over to the front of the dress, and then folded it under on its self so that the neck edge was encased in the neckband, I then topstitched this round, it gives it a nice neat edge and I am thinking of undoing the previous Davie dress and changing the neckline on that.
There might be another Davie Dress on the horizon but I haven’t decided yet, I’ve just found out about the Deer&Doe free t-shirt pattern that can be made into a dress or the Anna top with a gathered skirt, this Florida holiday will be the year of the T-shirt dress if I’m not careful.
Back soon
2016 trip to Olympia
This year we went to Olympia by coach, we were picked up on time, and after driving round half of Essex for an hour and half, we then spent an hour trying to get from Tower Hill to Olympia due to the road works.
Once at Olympia we went straight for cup of tea, as it was 12:00 it was time for lunch. After lunch we started over in one corner and methodically worked up and down the stalls, Mum was looking for wool and I was looking to spend my birthday money on fabric.
We had been told that the show was smaller than in previous years and that was correct, also this year the show is mostly fabric and wool, over the last few years it has gradually moved from cross stitch and paper craft to knitting and patchwork/dressmaking.
For the first couple of hours I held on to my money, not wanting to run out before I got to the end of the show. But once my purse was opened the money just flew out.
Most of the fabric I bought was cotton and one bit of stretch jersey,
I could have bought a whole load of this fabric in all colourways but I picked just these two, I have enough of the blue/grey for a Cheyenne shirt and the red/blue for a dress. I’m not sure about the mauve yet.
This is for another shirt, this might be a Granville or depending on how the Cheyenne goes maybe another one.
I thought maybe a a couple of dresses.
I wasn’t sure about the jersey, until I realised that the lady on the stall was wearing a dress made of the fabric and it looked pretty good.
I also bought a pattern.
I bought the sew over it vintage shirt dress, to be fair I haven’t been overly impressed with the dresses on the Internet but after looking at the it on the sew over it stall I might even buy the 1940s tea dress.
Bye for now
Anna Dresses BHL
Here is the promised post on my Anna dresses, neither are completely finished but both are beautiful in their own way.
The first one is a viscose (rayon) which is very slippery and after the last time I worked with viscose I swore I would never do so again, but this was cheap and pretty…..
Those by Hand London girls sure draft for some very tall Ladies, I loped 7 inches off the skirt before I even started. The other changes I made was to do a small bust adjustment and to bring the neckline up an inch, I tend to find that deep V necklines do nothing for me and they gape something terrible.
I did French seams on the skirt and overlocked the top mainly because I wan’t 100% on french seaming the underarm.
It still needs ironing and hemming, over all I’m quite pleased with it. I will admit though I wimped out on the thigh high split.
I used a small bit of interfacing where the zip is, not my idea I read it somewhere when I was researching the Anna Dress.
The Second Anna is made out of a Robert Kauffman London Calling Lawn fabric, I bought in the Craftsy fabric sale before christmas, It is very nice and light and floaty.
here are the full length photos.
Stretch fabric
Now that I have spent some time with knits, I can now say that although I don’t love them, I do realise that they are not as scary as I first thought. Off the back of the stretch Craftsy class I have decided to try and replicate one of my tops, the result, while unwearable has a lot going for it.
I laid the top I wanted to copy out on my table and also traced off the t-shirt pattern from my class, my top has pintucks in it and a yoke at the back which means that the shoulder seams are forward.
To start with I modified the neck line to mimic the lower scoop of the original then I took 1 1/2 inch off the front and added it to the back piece, because of the pintucks I slashed my new front pattern piece and added in the extra for the pintucks. After redrawing the new front, I checked it against the original and added length and width.
I then moved on to the back piece, I sliced off the yoke and added the seam allowances on.
Fit wise it looks great, I had to take a bit off at the hips as they seemed to have a life of their own, and was standing out in a most ungainly way.
As I said it is unwearable, the unwearability of it is tied up in the front placket and the neck treatment, the fabric is too thick for for the front placket to four layers, if I had checked the original I would have realised this as they have replaced half of this with what looks like ribbon, and also I’ve rather messed up the curved edge of the neckline, however the basic shape is there I just need to tweak it.
Bye for now.
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 