Floaty dress!

When in doubt, assume I'm squinting.    Thanks to my excellent timing, all the pictures were taken on the roof at sunset, facing full west.  (I know.  A master of logistics and planning am I.)

However, the floaty-dress lives!  It even survived my dropping a sandwich on it mere minutes before these pictures were taken.  The fabric is some sort of synthetic something which absorbs nothing!*

 I'm very happy with how the dress turned out, and am thinking this summer will need more full-length, floaty options.    The question becomes, out of what fabric -- I'm still technically on a fabric fast (and have been doing rather well - this counts as a double stash bust, for both the dress and the slip) so I need to dig through what I have and see if I can make anything work.

Slip! With bonus cat, for visual interest

The slip was remarkably simple.   I traced out a somewhat fitted tank top and then extended the hip line to my knees.   I serged the sides, but otherwise it is unfinished and I always seems to end up rippling my hems, and I wanted this to lay as flat as possible.

I need to fix the straps, as they are self fabric and far to stretchy, but, its stays in place and generally does its job, so for the moment, I am satisfied.  (I am thinking more and more of getting a coverstitch machine.   I don't currently have space for one.... but someday... someday...)

*not normally a bonus, but in this case, it worked out rather well.

Fixing the back of the floaty-frankendress

Not sure how, but in cutting out the fabric, I managed to royally screw up the back -- the original plan had it coming all the way up to my neck, making the whole thing solid and an excellent support for the neckline... somehow the pieces ended up too short and without the correct shaping (I must have not transferred something) so I chopped them off and started afresh.

I still needed to support the neckline somehow, so I drafted a yoke that would wrap around the back of my neck and hold everything together.   (I also ended up dropping the center back about an inch or so - with the round yoke, the square back really didn't work.

Resulting in my fancy pants new back yoke!   

All of the binding was done with strips of self fabric I made with masking tape.   I generally find floaty stuff impossible to cut properly (probably part of what happened to the original back) and using the tape stabilized it enough to let me cut it without frustration.

Full pictures of the dress when I hem it - also that whole making a slip thing.  The dress is... rather transparent.

prepping for the floaty franken-dress of summer

the resultant muslin

sources of the frankenpattern

For whatever reason, I fell back in love with floor-length skirts over the winter (possibly because I was cold) and particularly liked the fit of the mesh skirt.   I decided it was clearly also meant to be a dress and started going through my patterns for a top, when I realized the princess seam slip was actually a really good match.  The seams already lined up, and both already fit me.

So, I marked where on the slip the waistband of the skirt hit me, lay the patterns on top of each other and traced out a new set for a franken-dress.  With only a slight bit of adjustment, the muslin came out remarkably well.   The fit of the skirt wasn't quite as nice as that of the original skirt.... but, I was still happy enough with the result.   I made one major change (which, inevitably, doesn't show up in the picture) - instead of going straight back over my shoulders, the neckline is more triangular and wraps around my neck - leaving the back entirely covered.

I have it all cut out (and more or less put together -- it needs binding and hemming and an alteration at the neck I'll talk about when I've figured it out) of this sot of polka-splotched material.  The fiber content is a mystery (I never got around to a burn test) but my guess is polyester.  It frays like there is no tomorrow and is a bit of a pain, but I like the pattern and the floatyness, and I think it was all of a dollar a yard.  (AND! it is a stashbuster!)

Due to the totally transparent nature of the fabric, I'm also going to need a slip.  I dug through all the stretch materials I'd ordered back when I was trying to make my own arm braces, and grabbed this one. The picture doesn't do it justice, but its pretty close to the color of my skin and won't fight the pattern of the dress. (Double stashbust!)

Sewing Propaganda from the '40s

Glorious sewing propaganda from the '40s.

also, it's that time again:

 I, Allison of A Fabric Fixation, sign up as a participant of Me-made-May '13. 

I shall endeavor to wear at least one handmade garment each day for the duration of May 2013.

The opposite of bopping about

Well, so much for the wacky changes to the blog.    I think I'd need to spend more time actually playing with HTML to get what I want.

Anyhow... sewing?  yeah.   So, I mentioned a little while ago that I screwed up my knee... well, its still not playing nice and it turns out I stand a *lot* when I sew (fittings, tracking things down, moving between surfaces, you name it) so there hasn't been much going on.   Most of my sewing is theoretical and revolves around how I could get away with flouncing about in things like this on a regular basis.

Sheer and white, with a train --- not sure how it could get more impractical.

On a slightly more practical note, I seem to have developed a thing for ruffles and layers.

seems to be from a Burda preview that has escaped

source

The Burda skirt really looks like a regular A-line with a rectangular layer plopped on top.   I've gotten it in my head that is *must* be dove gray cotton gauze, which of course I cannot find.  So, we shall see.   Perhaps light weight regular cotton....

The other skirt is actually a children's pattern from Violet Fields Threads, but I rather like the concept. It also looks fairly simple to create, with an A-line base with a few layers of ruffles (at least in front) and a cut-away wrap skirt on top.

source

As we all know, a crinoline is standard part of one's daily outfit these days.....   nonetheless, I love the layering of the colors, with the bright inside and the muted outer fabric.   Something like this may have to occur as well.

Mucking about with the blog

The old layout started to bug me, so I'm re-doing things, although I'm not sure I like this current set-up.  Comments and criticism would be most welcome. 

I find I like having all the other blogs I follow visible without extra clicking - both because I'm lazy and never set up a reader and because I like to see what other people follow to see what catches my interest....    Thoughts?

(Everything is on the side-bar, mouse over and it will pop up)

Adventures in Bra Fitting

Greetings!  Yes, its been a while.... I managed to thoroughly screw up my knee and was basically useless for a couple of weeks.   Anyhow, I return, although this post is being sabotaged by a certain fuzzy beast, who seems determined to help me type.  I'm fairly certain independent use of the keyboard offends him.

Anyhow, as the miscreant has finally settled down....  bra fitting!   Forever ago, I got the book 'Bare Essentials' by Matthews and Fairbanks and have been puttering around with it.    After getting my act together and acquiring the right under-wires, I took another stab at it this past week.

The basic pattern (included in the book) came together very easily, but produced a somewhat wedge-shaped cup  that just wasn't what I was going for.   Now, later chapters in the book discuss shaping the cup in multiple pieces (this is only two), how to draft your own, specialty types (nursing, mastectomy, strapless, etc)   However, being me, and being impatient and not being in the mood for math, I went for duct tape.

What?  Yes!  Duct Tape!   There is no problem it cannot solve!!!!!!!

Basically, the name of the game is to tape your breast in the position you want it (I made a masking tape shield first, so the adhesive wasn't on any of the tissue) and then use the form to make pattern pieces.

Rather than redo the entire bra pattern, I used the band pieces from the previous endeavor  as the cups were basically the same size - just a new shape.  

 As you can see, the result is much less pointy - however, when transferred back onto my body there was a bit to much fabric at the top , so I pinned it down in a demi-plunge (really name, anyone?).

The result is the most comfortable thing I have ever worn.   It is a smaller band size and larger cup size than my current bra, and lets the bridge sit right on my sternum and the band lies horizontally across my back, parallel to the floor.  I wore it all evening and it only pinched when I was hunched over in a rather ridiculous position - otherwise, it was fantastic.

I spent a lot of time fussing about under-wires, and contacted Norma of Orange Lingerie, who advised me to bend them around my rib cage - its amazing how much difference a small bend makes.  Instead of a single, almost fulcrum like pressure point, the wire distributed its pressure evenly.   (By the way - she has a book coming out next month on bra-making.    I'm pretty excited to see it.)

There are still some odd pulls in the fabric, and its not quite as supportive as I would like, so I am going to keep tinkering, but all in all the whole process was a lot easier than I'd anticipated and went together really quickly.

My current plan to so add length to the band all the way around - not to the point of a long-line bra, but about an inch, both for seam allowance and to give the band more space to be supportive.    (I swear, its like building a cantilever)