Cambie Dress No 3

My third Cambie dress is finished, and I already wore it out for dinner. Pictures of the other two versions are here and here.

The fabric is a buttery soft voile by Anna Maria Horner from her Little Folks collection. It's Baby Bouquet in Sweet. I just love her designs!!!

The construction of this dress was, as all Sewaholic patterns, very easy and straightforward. Did I mention that I am a big fan of Sewaholic patterns. I just finished the Lonsdale dress (blog post to follow) and have the Cordova Jacket pattern waiting in my pattern stash.

Here the back. Those wrinkles look weird, it must be the way I am standing. And the dress is a bit wrinkly because I had worn it once out and then it was hanging in my slightly stuffed closet.

I made a size 6 straight out of the envelope. No alterations needed.

My dress form modeling it. The fabric was a pleasure to work with. Especially thanks to my straight stitch needle plate and foot. 

Another back view.

I lined the dress with china silk which a bought at Dharma Trading. My new go to lining for about everything. 

I hand stitched the lining to the shell at the waistband with a slip stitch.

All seams of the skirt but the back seam are done in french seams. I bound the back seam which holds the zipper with Hug Snug rayon seam binding. This red is the only color I have. Gotta order other colors like black and white.

New Look 6244

I bought this pattern with a bunch of others a couple of weeks ago when Simplicity.com had a sale. For me this pattern falls in the category of "waste of money". The dress on the model looks so cute, and the technical drawing looks quite promising, but sewing this dress was a nightmare and the outcome not worth it.

I decided to make Front C with Back D. First mistake! Those two weren't meant to be together! I had my mind set on a piece of Voile I had in my stash. It's Anna Maria Horner's Little Folks Coloring Garden in Berry. Next mistake was to not put all pieces on the fabric before cutting. A mistake I never made before. Maybe I was too distracted by watching "Game of Thrones" while cutting fabric. 

 

Somehow I was able to fit all pattern pieces on the little bit of yardage I had. When I was finished I discovered that I had cut out the two front pieces in the same direction. I didn't have enough leftover fabric to correct that mistake, and it really isn't noticeable at all. But I know the right front piece is sewn with the left side showing, and it bothers me somewhat.

Since I was using this lightweight fabric I decided to use french seam throughout. Which turned out to be quite the task for those side inset pieces. The neckline and armholes are finished with a narrow hem. I should have made a muslin, because as it turned out I had to shorten the midsection by about 1 1/2 inch. Which I found out after sewing the bodice to the skirt with a french seam. Good times!!!

 

I don't like the loose sides around the waist, and how the fabric stands away in the back. How you can see in this side view picture. But I am done tweaking this dress. It will end up just being a casual summer dress. 

I am, however, very happy about the bias cut silk slip which is to be worn underneath the dress. It needs to be shortened a couple of inches, but that is a quick fix. I used 100% china silk. It was very easy to work with and feels amazing. The neckline stretched a bit, but since it will be worn under a dress who cares.

I was desperately looking for a fabric I could use as lining for all my lightweight and sheer fabrics, but couldn't really find anything affordable. In the past I lined my voile dresses with cotton lawn, but the two fabrics always cling together. And since I need a lot of yardage for lining I can't really afford buying white voile for $12/yard or other fancy silks. But then I discovered Dharma Trading online and they have a good selection of silk fabrics. I bought 15 yards of this lightweight china silk for a little over $6/yard. So far I have lined a couple of dresses with it and I absolutely love it.

More Crepe Dresses

 I will keep this short, since I already blogged about the pattern here. I made two more last weekend. It is just the perfect summer dress.

Here it is in Anna Maria Horner's Diamond Mine in Sky Voile. I just love the quality of her voile fabric.

 

Back view

The tie is Free Spirit Voile in Heather. The same quality as the print voile.

In this version I only lined the bodice part.

 Anna Maria Horner Innocent Crush Sixpence in Maybe

 Back view

This one is fully lined

Petticoat in action

First with my Circle Skirt. I love how much fullness the petticoat gives the skirt.

And I just realize that I don't have feet in these first pictures. Well, isn't that a bummer.

 Here is finally a picture with me wearing my last year creation of the Colette Crepe Dress. With the petticoat of course. It's cotton lawn lined with white cotton lawn and voile.

 This is my seersucker version of the Colette Crepe Dress, also from last year. This one isn't lined.

Thanks Hugo for walking through the picture!

Crepe Dress by Colette Patterns

I couldn't wait to finally get my hands on the Crepe dress pattern and make my own version. I had seen this dotted cotton lawn fabric online and knew instantly it would make a cute Crepe dress.

 

I call this dress the Confetti Crepe. The ties are from Cotton Voile.

I didn't have to make any alteration on the bodice muslin. I guess I just got lucky with my built :)

Because the Cotton Lawn was very sheer I fully lined the dress. The plan was to line the whole dress in the same white cotton lawn, but I had only enough for the bodice. So I lined the skirt with the same cotton voile as the ties are. 

I used these two tutorials for lining the Crepe dress: 

Sew Country Chick

Sew Mental Mama

Thank you guys for posting these helpful tutorials!

 

And because I love the dress so much and had this awesome cotton seersucker around I made another one (within a week). As you can see I do like pink!

 Here is a back view. The perfect summer dress. Fast and easy to make. More to follow :)

 

Two projects finally finished

This week I was able to finish two projects, that where lingering around here. First on is the Cabo Halter from Amy Butler. For the fabric I chose Cotton Sateen from the Lisette Fall 2011 collection. It's the same as the fabric from my Lisette Continental Dress, just another color.

Here is another closer look at the overlapping neckline. I decided to go with the more modest version and topstitched the two parts together to prevent gaping. Which it does anyway. I don't know what I could've made different to prevent it.

And here is my absolute favorite dress I've made so far. I soooo love the fabric. A very soft cotton voile with a white cotton lawn. The instructions call for 1/2 inch seam allowance and don't really say what to do in regards of how to finish the seam when sewing with such delicate fabric. I decided to go with french seams, although I forgot that for a moment and finished the shoulder seams with my serger, bad mistake! It isn't too bad, but still! For the waist seam and the armhole seams I decided to make bias binding out of the voile and enclose the raw seams with it. I finished it yesterday and it worked pretty well. I have to admit that I couldn't wait until I got time to enclose those last seams before wearing it and worn it already twice, ergo the wrinkles.

Close up of the front.

 Backview