Butterick 7556
This is another Sewing post, I am in the middle of sewing a second version of this dress, this one was done just before our holiday. It went together so easily and looked really good, I decided to make another one.
This one was made with a Lawn Cotton, I bought at the Knitting and Stitching Show at Olympia earlier in the year, the stall said it was LIberty, but I haven’t been able to track down the print, it was a good price and the fabric is nice and soft, also cool to the touch, it irons beautifully (which I haven’t done to take these photos).
I wasn’t really sure about the neckline but it does look better on.
After marking everything out, you stitch the four skirt bits together, then baste the pleats in, the skirt closure is different, the dress has a short zip in the bodice but because of the pleats the skirt has a placket, the last pleat on the left side front folds over on to the side of the left side back and is held in place by a hook and eye and two press studs.
The first time I made the dress I didn’t look at the instructions close enough and didn’t realise there was a hook and eye, as I didn’t fancy relying on two press stud to keep my dress closed I put in a waist stay and a skirt hook and bar.
It is a surprisingly comfortable dress to wear, especially if you get the zipper tab in just the right place, and I got a couple of compliments on it while in the States.
Tracy’s Adventures in HaslamLand
Before Christmas I bought the Haslam dressmaking system from pinkemilyrose on ebay. This is a drafting system slightly different to Lutterloh, with this one you start by drafting a pattern block, then you draft your dress, blouse or Jacket over the top. like Lutterloh you end up with a pattern drafted to your measurements.
These are the three peices of the Haslam System of Dresscutting.
These are the extra tools I needed.
I thought I would go through the process and hope at the end of our ‘journey’ I will have a finished piece of clothing that I can wear.
I have decided to try some thing simple first, a blouse, I have decided on this one
It looks simple enough to not cause me many problems putting together but with a couple of nice details.
I started by drafting the front block, I used wallpaper lining paper to draft the block, and a pencil, I strongly advise using a pencil, the first time I attempted to do this, I used coloured pens for the different types of line and got my self into a right old mess. 🙂 this way if you make a mistake or get confused it is easy to erase it and start again.
you can just see the base block under the tissue paper I have layered over the top. After I finish the block I laid a sheet of the Burda tissue paper over the top so I can use the front block again and again.
Here is the first pattern piece I created, it is part of the front.
you can compare the collar pattern piece with the diagram in the photo above
Here are my pattern pieces all cut out.
The next post will be on how it easy it was to be put together and the fit.
Craftsy Class, The Weekend Duffle
I think out of the many Craftsy Classes I have bought this is the first ‘making something’ class I have completed. I did Adjust the bust but I have yet to complete an article of clothing using the patterns.
The trainer, Betz White is very likeable and obviously knows what she is doing, the other thing that I like is that a couple of times the stitching hasn’t go quite the way she wanted it to, but they didn’t re shoot it, showing that even if you have made loads of bags it doesn’t always go according to plan.
In the spirit of full disclosure, to be honest even without adding in the price of the class it would have been cheaper to go out and buy a good quality Weekend bag, some of that was to do with my fabric choices, and if I hadn’t used two pieces of quilting fabric from my stash for the lining it would have more expensive, but mostly the fusible fleece and fusible interfacing bumped the price right up.
Here are my fabric choices I think it is called ‘Allegra’ blue/Lime Lorient Decor Voyage Linen Cotton furnishing fabric (some of the colours won’t photograph correctly) I also bought a linen/rayon blend for the accents but decided that the colour and the weight wasn’t right, (I’ll make a skirt out of that later) these were both bought from eBay. As I wanted to start quickly I walked down to Kayes Textiles to see if they had anything I wanted, I found a heavy cotton but not quite in the right shade, (Simon will be rolling his eyes at this) it was a green/blue colour instead of a Blue/Green, but a packet of blue jean dylon and a very quick dip in it, no more than about 5 mins and a trip to the washing machine it was exactly the colour I wanted.
I cut all the pieces out, it is a mixture of templates and measurements, this is all provided for in the class materials.
The body of the bag is interface with fusible fleece, which I didn’t know existed the lining is interface with a medium weight fusible cotton interfacing, towards the end the bag does tend to get a bit bulky.
Betz takes you through creating the inside pockets, one of which is a zip up pocket the other is a row of three pockets, she mentions how you could customise these pockets by making thin pockets for paintbrushes and such like.
we then go through we then make the bellows pockets for the front and back of the bag and how to put the hardware on.
The next step is to put the accent fabric onto the front and sides of your fabric, and putting on the handle rings. (I bought all the hardware from eBay most of it arrived in a timely manner but one shop in Swansea took longer to to send out my stuff than it took for something to be sent and arrive from China)
The next step is to attach the zip facing and zipper tabs, then you start to assemble the bag. The zipper is sandwiched between the lining and bag front, then some top stitching, then do the same to the back pieces.
You then baste the end panels on, this is where my new sewing machine started to protest, it was not happy to stitch through bag fabric, fusible fleece and zipper tabs, the cotton kept breaking, in the end I went up into the loft and got down my old sewing machine which I knew could cope with this no problems (I stitched a leather handbag on it, it had no problem with three layers of leather this should be a doddle) It breezed through the basting, then it breezed though stitching it all together with the lining added.
Then we get to putting the base in, remembering to open the zip first, otherwise we will be very sad :-(.
now that is left is to add the handle and the straps
A lot of these classes seem to be common sense when you actually look at them, but because you have the class you get to put it together in the most convenient order and there are little tricks that take your bag from looking home made to something you can be very proud of.
Sunday, Kennedy
This post has been a while coming, we hadn’t been planning to go to Kennedy, when we booked the Holiday at the end of last year, Simon asked about tickets for Kennedy, but we decided that we wouldn’t have time. To be honest if we had done more of the rides, we probably wouldn’t have had enough time, but we didn’t so Simon got his wish.
It was the last Sunday of the Holiday, we took the hour 20 minute drive, along a very straight road, waited while the bridge opened and closed for a couple of small masted boats, and there it was.
I want to make this clear, Kennedy would not have been my first choice or even my second choice for a day out, from my point of view once you have seen one rocket that went into space, you don’t need to see any more. 🙂
I thought the ‘grounds’ looked quite run down, the staff seemed happier than the staff at SeaWorld (always a bonus)and it wasn’t as clean as Disney and Universal.
From Simon’s point of view, he was happy in the knowledge that because I wasn’t that interested I would spend the whole trip taking photos, and he could concentrate on taking in the whole experience.
I will admit that when you see these things on the TV it doesn’t convey the size and scope of them, we saw the Gemini capsule and you wonder how one man could sit in it let alone two, on the other side of the scale, you go into the Atlantis exhibit underneath a replica Space Shuttle Stack.
We started off by going into the Early Space Exploration exhibition, which goes right from Dr. Robert Goddard’s Liquid Fuel Rocket to Saturn V. There was also, oddly the Robot from Lost in Space.
After Early Space we went to see the Space Shuttle Atlantis (which was huge. Before we actually got to see Atlantis you go through watching a simulated shuttle launch, then they take you through to another room where you have stars all around and bring up a solid screen so that you see Atlantic through a screen of stars (which is very effective)
After Atlantis you can get on a bus which will take you around the launch pads and passed the Vehicle Assemble Building,
which is the largest single storey building in the world each of the stars on the side are 6 ft wide, then over to the
Apollo Saturn V center where you get to see Launch Control and you sit through a launch of one of the Apollo rockets, and you get to see a video of Jim Lovell talking about his flight (not Apollo 13) after that you go through into a very large hanger that houses the Saturn V rocket, which is split up into it’s pieces.
I appear to have missed the board for Apollo 15
Over all it was a good day out, the quality of the merchandise seemed a bit iffy compared to Disney and Universal which was disappointing as I don’t believe the t-shirts and such like were a lot cheaper and apparently they weren’t the right shade of NASA blue.
If you are into this sort of stuff it is unmissable and even if you like a bit of history go and see it.
Friday, SeaWorld
Today was SeaWorld I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, obviously fish and Dolphins but there were also Whales, turtles and Sea lions.
The initial impression of SeaWorld is it isn’t nearly as clean as Disney and Universal, and it looks like it needs a bit of TLC.
There are a few aquariums in the park, the first one was very god, the second one we saw which appeared to be attached to a gift shop, smelled disgusting, and had a tank in a Glass floor, there was a separate tank with jelly fish which I assume had a light that changed colour.
We went to see the Dolphin Show, which was alright but left a faint umm I’m not sure about this, It was weird, bearing in mind at the beginning of the week we had spent time in a small cove playing with Dolphins, that hadn’t bothered me, but this 8 or 9 Dolphins all going through tricks together left me with a feeling of distaste, it could of course just been that I hadn’t taken to SeaWorld at all, of the fact that the Discovery Cove Dolphins were in a more natural setting.
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 we didn’t go to the Shamu show as there were only two showing available to us 14:00 and 18:00 and we didn’t want to hang around until 18:00. We did however see some whales swimming around in a group which was amazing.
The highlight of the day came just as we were leaving, we came across the nursery pool, which had a few young Dolphins who were ‘playing’ with the spectators, one of them though it good fun to swim up to the pool wall and pop its head up and making us jump.
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 An experience that I’m glad we did but I don’t think we would go back
Wednesday, Harry Potter
Today we got to see do the Harry Potter stuff we should have done on Monday, we were up early though not as early as Simon would have liked, but as our early ticket actually got us in an hour early not an hour and a half, it worked out alright. Â 
 You had to start off at the Hogsmeade side first, Harry Potter is spread out over the two Universal Parks, you have Hogsmeade and Hogwarts in Universals Islands of Adventure (UIA) and Kings Cross station and Diagon Alley in Universal Studios Florida (USF) We went into Hogwarts which is setup quite very well, they have finger print ID lockers free for the duration of the ride. Harry Potter and the forbidden Journey, Simon (who suffers from motion sickness), spent some time debating with himself about whether or not to go on this ride, unfortunately it turned out that hs shoulders were too big for the harness thingy and he wasn’t allowed on it any way. I did go on it and it was great fun, it is mostly done with video,  and shaking you about in the chair.  
 First you go into the castle and you have lots of things to look at, they have the moving paintings on the wall which talk, there is one of Dawn French as the picture that guards the entrance of the gryffindor common room. We get a talk from Dumbledore, also Harry, Ron and Hermione suggest that we don’t hang around for Professor Binns class. Then once we finished the tour, Simon went to wait for me and I joined the ‘singles’ row, because the ride is done in sets of four, if a family of 3 get on they like to have a 1 to make up the four, this is quite handy as it enables the single riders to get through quicker.  
  
  
 For some reason it is alway snowing in Hogsmeade.  We then caught the train from Hogsmeade station to Kings Cross  
 Well for some reason I don’t appear to have a clear picture of kings cross station but here are some more photos.
 
  
  
 The building at the far end is Kings cross the next (red) building is surprisingly Leicester Square tube station.
You get to Diagon Alley through the tube station, once in there you have Weasley’s Wheezes, Gringotts bank and Florean fortescues’s Ice-cream parlour, to name a few.
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 We had ice-cream which was absolutely gorgeous, I had salted caramel blondie and chocolate chili, and Simon had salted caramel blondie and sticky toffee pudding (I think)
Also no trip to Diagon Alley would be complete without going to Ollivanders for wands.
In Universal you can get interactive wands, after you work out the instructions you find the little brass plates to stand on then wave your wand in the required configuration and the spell happens, you switch lights on, make it rain and put a suit of armour together, amongstt other things.
All in all we had a very enjoyable day
Tuesday, Discovery Cove
Tuesday was another early start, not as early as the aborted Harry Potter morning but still early enough, check in started at 7:15 Â we arrived about 7:45 had our photo taken and given our tickets. Our slot with the Dolphins was 9:30.
We went and got fitted for our vests, I borrowed a prescription Scuba mask, then we had breakfast.
Luckily our Dolphin swim was quite early, so after a quick safety review we went out in our groups to meet our Dolphins we saw Sindy, Finn and Lester. Sindy and Lester were both very old Dolphins at 50+ and Finn was a youngster at 2.
These Dolphin pictures were all taken later in the day
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We got to stroke a dolphin as it swam in front of us, watched it to a few tricks, be photographed with it, then we were towed back to shore and had a dolphin kiss, the trainer gave us lots of information on dolphins and the time went quite quickly, I would highly recommend the experience.
After playing with the dolphins we went for a swim in the shallow pool and attempted to do some snorkling, we both decided that it wasn’t for us.
They had an aviary with loads of very tame birds that would come and sit on your arm if you fed them.
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 After the aviary we saw otters
 then we saw the fish
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During all the walking about we stopped to have lunch, which like breakfast was included in the price of the day.
The day was very tiring there was a lot to see, obviously the highlight was the Dolphin swim.
Monday, Downtown Disney
Yes, you can guess by the title we didn’t get to the Harry Potter experience today, we had early passes, for Harry Potter, which meant, apparently getting up at 5:30, I was up at 5:30, Simon not so much. Simon didn’t feel well, or up to doing an early morning, anyone who knows him, knows that he doesn’t do mornings at the best of time.
We moved Harry to wednesday and had another lazy morning, and decided to go to Downtown Disney instead.
Dennys for breakfast, and then Downtown Disney, which is in the process of being upgraded to Disney Springs (or something similar) it had the added bonus of having free parking, not sure how long that will last after the upgrade.
Downtown Disney is basically a shopping center with a Disney influence.
It appears I didn’t take any photos so this is going to be a pretty short post.
We bought some ‘stuff’ Simon got a shaving kit and I bought some T-Shirts.
Tomorrow Discovery Cove and Swimming with Dolphins..
Sunday, Universal Studios
After doing a lot more walking than anticpated the day before, due to having to walk up to Thunder Mountain twice because of it being closed the first time, we had another quite morning.
In the Afternoon we went to Universal and had a walk around there.
Universal isn’t quite as slick an operation as Disney, which came as a bit of a surprise, you would have thought that being in the same place that they could have taken tips from Disney, they had one carpark ticket taker for two lanes in several places and instead of a first come first served, it was a right lane then left lane scenario, it would have been better to just close one lane.
The directions for the carpark which was a multi storey were also a bit sketchy, there were also no helpful little trams to pick you up and drop you off, but a 5 -15 minute walk from the car to the ticket gate depending on where you parked.
We saw Dr Seuss landing, which unsuprisingly looked just like the books.
We had lunch at Universal, we both had lobster rolls at Lombards Landing, looking across the water I thought that looks like the statue from the Simpsons, and it was.
Then there was the Back to the Future train and car.
Can’t remember what this exibit is called.
Every where you looked there were, larger than life super heroes and Super Villians
There are two parts to Universal, and I’m not sure if I haven’t got them mixed up.
There is a lot to see and I haven’t put any photos of Harry Potter in this post as we are going to do the Harry Potter Experience tomorrow
Saturday, Magic Kingdom
We decided to have a lazy morning before heading out to The Magic Kingdom in the afternoon.
The two rides we had Fast passes for were, Pirates of the Caribbean and Thunder Mountain rail road.
Pirates of the Carribean, was another animatronics ride, before we got on the boat we were warned that we would get wet, we did get slightly damp but nothing as to what I expected.
The other ride was Big Thunder Mountain which was a roller coaster type ride, which was brilliant, we went up there first time to discover it was closed for some reason, the man on the rope line was very helpful, and said it shouldn’t be out for more than about 2 hours and our fast passes would work up until the park closed.
We went off to kill some time by having an ice cream, by the time we had queued up for that and eaten it the ride was open and we hiked all the way back up there.
It was Worth the wait and Simon enjoyed it as well.
Musings of a Craft Enthusiast 