Rainbow Forest Fen Dress

I made this Fen dress back in May but wasn't entirely happy with it at the time so it hung unworn and unblogged at the back of my wardrobe. Sorting through clothes for autumn I tried it on again and felt entirely differently about it. This time round the thick linen/cotton mix fabric with it's bright print of rainbows, clouds and forests seemed to perfectly fit the season, and the cut and shape of the Fen dress felt comfortable and perfect for autumn layering.

The fabric is another purchase from Worthing's Eclectic Maker. It's by Momo for Moda Fabrics and is from her Rainbow Forest range.

The Fen's neckline and boxy fit had initially felt too wide and baggy across my small shoulders, but worn with a vest or t-shirt underneath feels comfortable. I love the dropped hemline and the gathered waist, and I adore the pockets.  

Fancy Tiger Crafts have made two gorgeous winter versions of their Fen pattern and I'm now tempted to make another, in cozy plaid flannel too.

Super Heroine Tendencies: Stylish Party Dresses - Dress O

This is Dress O from Yoshiko Tsukiori's latest English translation sewing title Stylish Party Dresses (published as Formal and Little Black Dress in Japan). 

There are several elegant dresses in this book that I'd like to make, but O: Dress with Pin Tucks was at the top of the list. The basic shape of this dress is similar to Dress E from Yoshiko Tsukiori's Stylish Dress Book - a frock I have made several times (see three of them here).

I used a shirt weight Italian cotton fabric bought from Ditto which has a bold rectangular colour block design. Tacking and sewing the pin tucks took some time as I had to work out to make the best of my fabric. I ended up making larger tucks (more like narrow pleats) to accommodate the print design. 

I also added some functional patch pockets to the front (essential in my opinion) but took care to match the fabric as best as possible so that they are almost invisible.

The finished frock has taken me by surprise and turned out to be much more striking than expected. As party going is a rare event for me these days (except for children's parties) I shall wear this as an everyday super-power dress – especially on dark winter days when I need a boost!

For a full review of the Stylish Party Dresses book see Very Kerry Berry's lovely blog.

Gudrun's Friends' Diary

I was invited to document my week in photographs for a new feature on Gudrun Sjödén's website, Gudrun's Friends Diary. I regularly photograph my world for Instagram so jumped at the chance to be involved in this project. However I must admit that my photo-diary week saw me paying extra attention to what I was wearing every day, and in a routine where many hours at the computer or sewing machine are my reality I was eager to capture the more sociable and varied aspects of my week.

The biggest thrill is seeing it all published online and translated into many languages for Gudrun's international sites.

My photo diary forms part of a series which started with author and graphic designer Maren El Gammal and I look forward to seeing the diaries of Gudrun's friends in the weeks and months to come!

You can read my photo diary in Swedish here.

The Fig Frock: Simplicity 1080 Dottie Angel Dress

Having resolved to cease blogging my dress makes (as documenting them often takes as long as making them), I will break this resolution to join in with the collective outpouring of joy at having finally got my hands on Dottie Angel's sewing pattern for Simplicity - released in the UK this month.

Deciding to make C (the dress version with contrast skirt band), this long awaited frock needed some celebratory fabric so I chose two bold fruity fig print cottons – both end-of-line quilting fabrics bought at Worthing's Sewing Machine Shop. These fabrics remind me of Adelle Lutz's Urban Camouflage costumes for David Byrne's film True Stories.

It's a quick dress to make and the pattern will lend itself well to modifications, but for my first attempt I faithfully followed the instructions. The insides are french seamed and sleeves and neckline finished with bias trim, so it's a garment that's beautiful inside and out. 

My finished frock is bold and lovely and a perfect starting piece for this year's handmade autumn wardrobe.

Ottobre Design: Art Teacher Dress

With four days left of October I am in time to blog a second seasonal make from Ottobre Design's Autumn/Winter 2014 edition. The Art Teacher Dress looked very appealing (and easy) and I had some suitable fabric in my pending box – a floral corduroy bought last winter in the Ditto Fabrics sale. This time my long-neglected tracing wheel sprung into action and wheeling out the pattern pieces onto a piece of tracing paper was a smooth process - there are just four pattern pieces to trace out (and a facing) for this dress.

The Art Teacher is almost identical to the magazine's Miss Sporty dress, but with a much more charming name! It's a boxy straight seamed tunic with three-quarter length wide sleeves and two small kangaroo pouch pockets on the front. 

The pockets remind me of Dress N in Stylish Dress Book Volume 3 (another frock I must get round to making one of these days) and are inserted into a horizontal seam on the front. My material is a stretch corduroy so I cut out the back panel in one piece, dispensing with the need for a zip – the neckline leaves ample room to pull the dress on over the head.

I made two attempts at photographing the dress in my back yard and each time it clouded over enough to alter the stunning colours of this fabric. Only the close up shot of the pocket does the fabric justice, but you can get an idea of fit of the thing anyway! I love the easy shape of it. 

An October tunic from Ottobre magazine

Next to the latest edition of Angling Times in my local newsagent, I saw a copy of Ottobre Design. It's a title I'd not heard of before – a Finnish sewing magazine with bold, contemporary fashions for women. It looked positively other-worldly up there on the top shelf next to the mundane publications either side, a cheerful middle-aged woman with short white blond hair and trendy geek specs wearing a bright yellow zip-up jacket on the glossy front cover. A quick flick through and it went straight into my shopping basket.

 

I love that Ottobre's models are healthy-looking women of all ages and sizes. There are so many designs in this issue I'd like to make: the Art Teacher linen dress; Sammalikko printed leggings, Clean Lines techno jersey dress; but I started with the New Bohéme jersey tunic, mostly because I already had some suitable fabric so could get going straight away.

When I turned to the pull-out pattern sheet in the back I realised it was not going to be such a quick make. 

Confronted with an unfathomable mess of different coloured lines I did my best to follow and trace out the green line, while pausing to have a moan about it on Twitter. Angela came to my rescue for future pattern tracings directing me to Melissa Fehr's blog where she recommends using a tracing wheel with the pattern map placed on top of a piece of paper laid on a carpet or other soft surface so the tracing wheel has something to get its teeth into! This would've made the whole procedure easy-peasy and I'll be using this technique for future pattern tracings.

I used a knitted woolly textured fabric bought from the fabric stall at Worthing's Wednesday market, it has plenty of ease for this design and I wanted to make something that would be warm to wear. Ottobre's sewing instructions are clear and easy to follow and the tunic came together very quickly. It looked great on my mannequin but when I tried it on I could only just squeeze my arms into it. It looked and felt awful on me. I realised I must have followed one of the wrong lines in tracing the sleeve, so I lopped off the too-tight arms and just had enough fabric left to cut some wider sleeves (though a bit short of the required length). I unpicked the side seams then sewed on the re-cut sleeves Cappuccino dress style. I'm still annoyed that I drafted them out wrong but the finished dress is very wearable. Sleeve error apart it's a good looking garment and armed with a tracing wheel I will definitely attempt a second (third, fourth?) outfit from this ace magazine. 

Uptown Top Ranking: Favorite Things Uptown Coat

A lot of thought and Pinterest browsing went into looking for a sewing pattern for an autumn coat but I couldn't find a design I liked more than the Uptown Coat by Favorite Things. It has an empire line bodice which flatteringly flares out into a fuller skirt with front and back pleats (perfect for pear shaped humans), a mock double breasted front and dramatic stand up collar. 

I used a richly textured coating material called Heather Glen Rope Twist (£8.99 a metre from Fabricland, Brighton). It's made up of multicoloured strands of yarn and is jewel bright in daylight. For a complete contrast I lined the coat with a fruit and flower print cotton which feels nice and soft to the touch, as well as providing a riot of colour on the inside. The beautiful wooden buttons are from Otterly Beads at eBay.

Sewing instructions for the Uptown Coat are mercifully brief and straightforward to follow for any experienced dressmaker. The coat also has a shorter, jacket version and a suggestion to make up a fat-quarter version, which I'm tempted to try making with some of my many dressmaking remnants. For now though, I'm going to enjoy wearing this one!

In Glorious Technicolour: The Liesl + Co Cinema Dress

The hills are alive with the sound of my Cinema Dress! Notice of this eagerly awaited new design from Liesl + Co popped into my inbox with perfect timing. I'd just returned from a holiday in Germany with a bundle of precious folk print floral cottons and was wondering what to make with them... 

The Cinema Dress is the adult version of the Hide and Seek Dress for girls by Liesl's parent brand Oliver + S. The women's design is faithful to the Hide and Seek original but has narrower 3/4 length sleeves, shaping through the bust and is a much longer length. I'm pleased it has the same back button closure and pocket welts – lovely details.

I followed the sewing pattern instructions exactly but closed the V-notch neckline to make a plain curved shape as I thought it would better suit this gloriously busy fabric – there's enough going on here already. I also shortened the hem by a few inches as it's quite a long style of dress. I prefer skirts to land on or just below the knee, anything longer swamps me and hinders bicycling.

I love these three materials together. They're all soft organic cottons made by Soft Cactus and purchased from Handarbeitsstube in Traben-Trarbach, Germany. The buttons on the back of the dress get a special mention too. They're from Etsy super store Berry Nice Crafts, who have a fantastic range of colourful patterned wooden buttons at peppercorn prices. These arrived the very next day! 

Dresses with yokes present so many fabric choice possibilities. I can imagine this frock in many different fabric combinations and don't doubt there'll be more Cinema dresses appearing in my wardrobe this season.

Miyake Style: Burda 7220 - Version B

Following the success of Version A of Burda 7220 I was keen to have a go at making a Version B from this sewing pattern. B is a loose fit blouse with a cowl neck and asymmetrical pleat in the back. There are some beautiful blogged renditions of B, my favourites are at Valerie's Own Sewing Blog and Runamuck Weaving. Then I came across a 1990s Vogue sewing pattern for an Issey Miyake blouse with an almost identical neckline! With vintage Miyake sewing patterns costing a pretty penny, the Burda 7220 suddenly seemed like an absolute steal.

At the top of my stash was a piece of Hemingway Design tulip fabric in yellow – just enough to make this blouse. I've used Hemingway's tulip material before and can confirm that the wash and wear of this Makower fabric is as good as the excellent print design, it's quality stuff. I added a front patch pocket with a decorative wasp tag to the blouse and made the sleeves a few centimetres shorter, to finish just above the wrist.

The finished garment is part futuristic dentist's scrub and part intergalactic Lieutenant Commander's tunic. I love it.

I'm wearing it with a new pair of homemade baggy trousers, a second pair using McCall's M6514. I had a bit of a frenzy of trouser production this summer, clocking up more pairs than I had time to photograph and blog so they may appear here occasionally with future makes... These are in African wax print cotton with a design that looks like it has dozens of giant eels swimming in a river.

Yellow is flavour of the month as summer fades into autumn.

Painted Portrait Autumn Wonderland Dress

Anna Maria Horner's Painted Portrait Dress is a garment as beautiful as it sounds. Sold as a make-it-yourself dress and blouse sewing pattern it has become one of those oft-pinned items that this seamstress couldn't stop thinking about. Last week I succumbed and ordered the pattern from Backstitch as a Christmas treat (ahem).

Only the best fabric would do, hence a trip to Worthing's Eclectic Maker. I was excited to find they had Eloise Renouf's organic cotton Bark and Branch range and though I would've liked to buy some of each design in the collection, the Autumn Wonderland tree-print was my favourite. For the contrast yoke I chose a grey printed cotton designed by Rebekah Ginda for Birch Organic. The two fabrics look and feel great together. 

The Painted Portrait sewing pattern can be made up in several different variations. I decided to opt for a dress with solid yoke, sleeves and pockets this time. Before beginning I perused a few blogs for advice from expert makers. Fancy Tiger Crafts has blogged a parade of pleasing Painted Portraits, Lempo Bee gave good advice on the sizing (I adore her Melody Miller version) and on her recommendation I cut the dress out in a small size (I'm usually a medium but found this pattern rather roomy - if in doubt make a toile first). I followed Cookin' and Craftin's lead (see her superb blouses) in cutting the back yoke as one piece. I'll always choose a button-free dress if possible – easier to sew and more comfortable to wear.

The finished dress is much more lovely than these photos show as I took the pictures on one of the greyest days of the year and eventually resorted to using a flash outdoors in an attempt to capture the colours of Renouf's print. Here's to sunnier days and more Painted Portrait Dresses...