Tiger tiger (or, actually: leopard!)

So, two of my friends now owe me big time! I just spent 12 hours making two dresses for the dancers at their club, and all I got in return was free entrance to the club for me, my three friends had to pay (which might have to do with the fact that we got there waaaay too late since we had been busy sipping champagne in the compnay of five gentlemen in smoking, overlooked by a few centuries of family portraits, sometimes life takes you unexpected places). The place they do the club thing at is notoriously famous to have impossible bouncers, so I'll put the blame on them instead of me or my friends ;-).
Anyway, I'm never sewing for other people for free again, but I did learn a bit or two, although it's a shame I stayed at the club too short to actually see the girls wear them (blimey!).

But here they are without the girls in them. You can probably tell the girls had quite different figures, although they had about the same measurements (I might just say one of them was suspiciously curvy).

Process: Intend to make a bathing-suit-like costume similar to the one in the post before this one. Discover it’s impossible to find a suitable pattern. Find out the dancers are quite a lot bigger than me (not that surprising I guess) which meant winging it would be impossible. No pattern to be found. Realise I might have a vintage dress-pattern that could work for the top part. Make a simple waist/hip-length toile based on the dress and a bottom part toile based on the Alison bathing suit with approxiamtely the right measurements and a LOAD of ease. Find out at the fitting that they have found another dancer = two costumes (which WAS the initial plan but I had thought I’d get away with just one…). Try the toiles on the girls only to discover that the first dancer had gotten the measurements mixed up and the bottom toile in fact was almost 10 cm’s too small (I had been given a hip-measurement of 96cm’s and it was more like 106…). Bottom part useless. Scprap initial costume-idea and decide on making mini-dresses (very fortunate because of lack of time). Make two dress patterns based on their measurements and the toile from the fitting, sew until the eyes bleed but get finsihed JUST in time!
Lucky me the girls refused to wear hoods with little ears, so I didn't have to make any...

It was easier to place the pieces for the front than the back, so the back panel stands out a little bit, but I think it turned out ok!

The fabric is really quite gorgeous... fortunately I have quite a lot of scraps left, I do plan to put them to good use (if I can bear cutting in them!).























After a tough week of sewing and thoroughly cleaning and organising my apartment I had a great weekend with two nice dinners, two parties, visits at two clubs and a guided tour at an interesting museum that was topped off with skating on a lake today (sunday), in the sun followed by coffe at a cosy café at an old castle (Ulriksdal), just my cup of tea (sorry about the contradiction)!

I'll confess I'm a bit tired now... (the Kreativ-post will have to wait for a day!)

I am on a break!

Oh no, I haven't disappeared, but I am in the middle of an insanely busy week where I have to balance work, turning my sewing-hut of an appartment into a guestroom suitable for me + two guests (and organising the drawers while I'm at it) and sewing a little costume-number inspired by this babe:

More difficult than I had imagined, as it turns out. The material is a super nice one-way stretch fake leopard, so the Alison suit from Burdastyle is not good enough, as I had thought it would be. The size L is about 7cm's to small around the hips for tha M girl I'm making it for. So I've made a two-part toile to be fitted tomorrow from both Alison (the bottom part, graded up quite a bit) and a vintage evening dress (the fitted top of it). The girl (a dancer) who is to wear it is considerably larger than me so I can't fit it on me. It would have helped if could have... (I knew I should have kept that ajustable but too big dress-form!).

When I return I will make a Kreativ-award post to thank several nice ladies who gave it to me, I am very honored! And very much trying to think of which secrets I shall reveal, hm...

Be back soon (I hope, if I survive this week)!

Update: Watch the tiger-dance-video here!

A new treasure in the library, Vionnet

After a long wait... it's arrived! My christmas-parcel from Yesasia. I ordered it on the 26th of December, it arrived on the 21:st of January.

It contained: Drape-drape (a gift from my younger brother) and Vionnet (a gift from me, myself & I).

I love them both.

First up; Vionnet. 29 reproduced patterns, mainly dresses but also a couple of jackets, a coat and a simple neck-scarf.

For those of you who haven't heard of Madeleine Vionnet; she was one of a handful talented ladies who revolutionised fashion and the way women dressed in the 1920's and 1930's. Among the others were Madame Grès, Jeanne Lanvin, Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel.

Madeleine Vionnet was one of the first fashion-designers to cut fabric on the bias, in order to achieve more comfortable and figure flattering clothes. She used a method of draping on the dress-form, and her designs have been known to be almost impossible to reproduce, so, naturally, a book with reproductions of her patterns is a tresure for those interested in pattern construction.

I've seen pictures of a few of the dresses floating around the internet, nice enough to make me want the book. I would have assumed they were the nicest ones, so it was a pleasant surprice to find that there are, in fact, quite a few dresses I like even better!

This is one of them. It's a bit hard to tell the exact design of the dress, as is the case with quite a few of the dresses, but other than that the pictures are clear and the instructions are quite easy to understand even for those of us who can't read japanese. Line-drawings of the dresses would have been a great help though (anyone up for sewing them all and posting pictures?).

These are the instructions for the dress above. The instructions are quite brief, but the letters and numbers are very instructive and makes the pictures easy to read. In most cases that is (one of the dresses seems impossible to decode, ah such a challenge!).

I made simple scetches of my favourite dresses to try to understand how they are constructed, posted below.

These dresses are SO on my to-sew list! The blue one on the left reminds me of the infinity-dress, was it in fact invented by Ms Vionnet? It wouldn't surprise me, after looking through this book a few times I am truly in awe by her skills.

The green dress on the right has a very sophisticated halter-neckline with a slight gather in the back and little folds on the neck-strap (it was hard to draw, it looks more wonky in my picture than it should).



I think I will make the blue dress on the right of this picture first of all. I love the simple lines and the sophisticated but still rather simple construction.

The green dress on the left is my attempt to dechifer the dress I posted photographs of above. It has a gathered front with a belt-buckle. I'm not quite sure how it's constructed... (so I guess I have to try to make it!).

The red dress on the left is actually a two-piece dress with a bare tummy. Would one expect that from a 1937-design? I love it! The skirt is very wide, cut on the bias like - I think - all other garments in the book.

The black dress has long, flowy sleeves way below the hands. It kind of reminds me of The Lord of the Rings... wonder if the costume-designer knew his (or her) Vionnet?






I love the red dress on the left. Even though it's completely assymetric, it's perfectly well balanced. I'm not sure I would pull it off though, I think I might look totally shapeless and very short in it.... (ah, the curse of the tiny women, but we do look good in jeans!).

The green dress on the right has a pearl-embroidery that emphasizes the cut. It's one of the dresses I had seen prior to buying the book, and although it's a typical 1920's-style, I really like it (I normally go for more curve-inducing styles, my shape needs it!).

I haven't quite figured out what size the patterns are made for, except that they fit a size 9AR, a japanese standard size S. The only indication I've found on how big that actually is was on E-bay, where a used blouse is size 9AR. The seller writes "fit S", and provides a chart where size S has the following measurements: Bust 76-81cm, waist 53-58cm and hips 81-86cm. Quite small, yes... I have to choose the most simple project of them all (a blouse I think) and make a toile to find out.
Update: I found a conversion table for clothing sizes that includes japanese sizes, and a 9 seems to equal a European 36, or an international S.  That means it's probably just a tad too big for me. We'll see.

The only thing that puts me off jumping into a project pronto (despite 40 hours of work a week + a red & pink dress to be sewn, first of all) is the fact that the patterns come as diagrams built around 10cm-squares. If I had a big table or floor I might pull off scaling them up, but I just don't. Hurdle too high.

But I do have access to an A1/A0-plotter, AutoCad and an A3 scanner at work. All that combined = a plan to scan the patterns, scale them up in AutoCad (a piece of cake) and plot them in A1 or A0. If you're lazy you must be clever. Just got to ask the boss for permisson to plot them first.... ;-).

For those of you near Paris, there's right now an exhibition of Vionnets designs at the Musée de la mode. But you've got to hurry, it's only on until the 31:st of january! Otherwise the catalogue looks interesting too, it's for sale at the museum for 55 Euro's.

Update: Here's a quite interesting article at Fashion Incubator about the Vionnet Moebius Scarf that can be found in both the Japanese Vionnet and the one writen by Betty Kirke (I think I want that one too..). And here's a comparison between the two books with the Japanese intro translated to English. Courtesy of the great Fashion Incubator!

Puffy sleeve test-run tee (30's style)

I've been testing my new overlock-machine for nearly a week now, and after sewing a bunch of scraps I began to itch to make something real. So here it is, my first serged t-shirt. A proper trial and error-project!

I based it loosely on a short sleeved cardigan that I like a lot, but since I didn't use a pattern and really wasn't as careful as I usually am it was a pleasant surprise that it actually came out wearable! Though I'm not sure how long it will be, 90-needles are not good for thin jersey, as I learned the hard way; the flatlock-seams in the center front and center back are lined with little holes (apparently that's what happens when you use a too thick needle in an overlock).

Hopefully I can mend it if it becomes too bad...

Like I mentioned, I made a rough copy of the puffy sleeves on the cardigan above. I can really recommend those of you who like puffy sleeves to try the method used in that cardigan to keep the puff high enough. As you can see below, high puffs are not a problem in this t-shirt!

 There's a strip of elastic sewn into the sleeve, on the wrong side of the fabric, that ruffles it in the middle as well as on the sides (where all the ruffles would be normally).

It was very easy to sew, I simply pinned the elastic ends and middle to the sleeve cap and to the part of the sleeve that I wanted to ruffle and stretched it as I sewed a narrow zig-zag along the elastic on my "normal sewing machine (a Pfaff Select 3.0, you can see its top-feed-dog in the picture right behind the presser-foot, it's such a great feature!). It ruffled up nicely as I went.

I think that this elastic-method would be especially helpful in drapey fabrics, that may not have body enough to create a puff otherwise.

The sleeve from the front and side, and the sleeve-pattern. I shortened the sleeve (below the armpit that is) to about half of what's shown in the pattern, I liked it better that way.

I made pleats rather than ruffles around the sleeve-cap, like I learned to when I made a toile for a 1930's dress-pattern before christmas.

So, what seams did I try for this test-run-project (the purpose of which was to try out different kind of seams)? Well, I did pretty well with the overlock side-and shoulder-seams, not so good on the flatlock middle front and back-seams (the fat needle punched holes along it), the coverstitch hem could have been a bit more elastic and the rolled hem around the neckl-line is a bit too rough for this particular style, but all in all... I'm pleased! The machine (a Baby Lock Evolve) is a dream to work on, and really really easy to use, even to change between coverstitch and overlock-seams, and it's no hassle at all to re-thread it (which I did quite a bit to try out the different seams).

And how many threads do I use (you can use up to eight)? Well.... three. It's a magic number, right (it's not that I'm lazy)?

I'm not the only one...

...who was inspired by the Lanvin dress with a twist on the shoulder. I think. This one (I LOVE it):

I made a dress for christmas that was much inspired by it (but not as elaborate, one step at a time...).

Roberto Rodriguez made a top that looks like it's related to both my dress and to the Lanvin dress for his fall 09-line. I found it when reading Project Rungay (I love the name of that blog, it's hilarious, esp. since it's run by two gay men from what I gather) about a recent spread in Elle Canada with a "normal"-size model. Or plus-size, or whatever. She's neither skinny nor fat, and she's absolutely beautiful. So is the spread.
I hope in the future models of her kind will be a more common sight in fashion magazines (but I also want to see thin models). Check it out here.

This is the Roberto Rodriguez top, I think the picture is from the original presentation of the collection (I knicked the picture from Project Rungay).

And here it is in the Elle spread. I like this picture so much more than the "original" one above... but I guess that's part of the point with fashion-spreads, to fill the pictures with magic rather than to simply show the clothes, and I do like magic...

Makes me think of trying my pattern in a more silky kind of fabric, maybe as a top, in powder or pink... (ie just like in the Elle-picture!). We'll see.

In case you haven't seen it, here's my dress again:

The drape on the shoulder is an actual twist, which will be much easier to handle now that I've got an overlock-sewing machine to sew neat rolled hems (rather than to hand-sew a bias-strip all around the neck-opening...).

Speaking of magic, the world was covered in frost earlier this week, all of it! We happened to test lighting up a couple of big trees in a project right then, and it was pure magic. The trees sparkled with the light, almost like they came to life, even with very weak lamps. Of course, it said nothing about the reality, so we still don't know whether to choose 35 or 70w lamps, but it's ok. We'll just have to do it again, with less magic...

Now that was a fun day at work, but my toes were happy to get home afterwards (and jump into thick, warm wool-socks)!