When you can't sew... crochet

No pattern used.  Totally winged it.

Love stories never end...

Mother's dress and veil redesigned into baby's christening gown.

You've come a long way, baby.

So check me out. I started draping a bathing suit for myself.  After I finished and cut the front bra top, I remembered a pattern in stash that I could adapt to the bottom I wanted.
Just out of curiosity I compared my draped pattern against their paper pattern for the top. They matched exactly :)

Like riding a Bike

Simplicity 2463.
Sort of.


From this:

to this:

Good things

It really is the little things that define the joy that is life.

Believe it or not, wedding stuff has been progressing (my lack of internet makes for lean blogging). At this point we are receiving responses back

and every single person has included a personal note written next to their check mark.

Some are simple, "so happy!", "can't wait", others are longer sentiments, but I eat up every single one. It brings a dang tear to me eye.

So in love.

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Pinterest-ish Menswear Idea Board

think irish immigrant/newsie/rock icon

The Dress 003: Labor

I'm a sucker for nostalgia. I can honestly say that I'm tearing up right now at the thought of wearing my mother's wedding gown for my big day. I'm also tickled that she said I can do anything I want to it.

My scanner is acting bloopy, otherwise I'd show you the sketch I have for Pettibonifying this dress, but here's a rough outline:

1. Detach tank straps and reshape bodice neckline to a wide scoop.

2. Remove alencon lace over bra area and cover with gathered silk.

3. Use alencon as flanges to shape bust line at outer seams and create cap sleeves.

4. Reshape skirt to a sheath.

5. Add alencon appliques to lower the waistline and obscure it.

I'm hoping to accomplish all that without ever removing the skirt from the bodice and keeping the zipper in tact. (insert incredulous "HA" here)

*****

What's in a name?

Monique Lhiullier. I can only imagine what popped into your head. There is a Monique Lhiuller silk ballgown at my favorite local thrift shop. On half price day, that puppy will be a whopping $95. It's covered in plastic, a floor sample castoff, pristine. All silk. And it fits me. I'm so tempted.

Do I love the dress? Not really. But it's a Monique.

I'm trying so hard not to be one of those girls.

I think I'm in Love

... with Claire Pettibone.
True story: They tell a newly engaged bride to tear out magazine pages. Keep a file of everything you like. I've been doing this with dresses for a while. Unbeknownst to me, over half of the dresses I kept filed in my Big Bridal Folder are from one designer: Claire Pettibone.

I always freak out when I sketch up a dress idea and then mysteriously find it in a designer's collection. Like this:




















Love love love these looks:





















I admit that I would secretly love to help support a family in China, rather than make the dress myself. Is that "Bad Sewist" ?




PS Blogger you are killing me with this spacing between paragraphs. ARG.

The Dress: 002 (aka: Why I still love Pattern Review)

I've been crushing on this pattern for a looooong time:

The Vogue 2880 Bellville Sassoon misses dress. It has that Spanish-princessy thang that appeals to my undercover Rican-ness. Its sassy, yet sweet. And it looks flamin' good on that pattern envelope. I bought the pattern over a year ago and stashed it, waiting for an event that would give me enough lead-time to get it done.

Fast-forward to wedding obsession. I've been digging through the stash, trying to frankenpattern a dream dress. And there is 2880. Hmmmm. Maybe with the right fabric this could be a great wedding dress...

Enter Pattern Review. I checked out the reviews other people have posted on this dress. The word is that 2880 is tedious: a billion pattern pieces, time consuming, notions out the wazoo, tricky fabric. Ok, Ok. I can deal with all that. But it was the pictures.

Let me begin by saying this is in no way a reflection on those PR members who have clearly accomplished a great thing by creating this dress. While the dresses I saw in the review photos were beautiful and obviously well crafted, the fact is that the pattern envelope lies. The real-life dress on real-life bodies is, imho, waaaaay different than the sassy red number worn by the Angelina-esque model Vogue used on the pattern envelope. Sigh.

On the flipside, could you imagine if we didn't have PR? Thanks again, Deepika.

The Dress: 001

Bias cut silk (crepe? charmeuse?) with illusion back (lace? french tulle?). Still theorizing bodice front. Butterflied sleeves.
It's reminiscent of my old ladybird design.

I knew it.

I just knew I would end up making this dress. For months now I've tried to kid myself into thinking I'd found the perfect off the rack dress. A friend at work assured me that in the Ukraine it is bad luck to make your own dress. I was just waiting for it to go on sale. It would be so nice to put my energy into everything else that planning a party for 200 people would require.

But there was always that nag of doubt. I knew what I wanted, and the only way I'd get it was to go handmade. Everything else in the wedding is going to be homemade chic, so why not just make the dress I want?

The Big Picture

The inspirations for this wedding are going to lend to some pretty awesome fashion moments, and I think it will help my sanity to record all this on blog. For instance:

I ask Darling what he envisions his attire for the wedding to be. He brings me this picture:

The one to the left, he says.


I smile.


I Google.


I counter with this picture:

(btw: sorry these photos are not credited, I googled them again and couldn't find the sites)

He smiles.

Ok.

This should be fun.


The opinions on my dress? We've found a few inspirations:

celebritybrideguide.com

Offbeatbride.com

fashionology.com

I am trying to imagine what kind of frankenpattern I can come up with. Any opinions and pattern suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


The girls' dresses will be silk painted at the bottom, all in white silk, each dress different for each girl.

Let the games begin.

Yup, It's gonna be one of THOSE blogs.

Elizabeth and Cornelius

September 7, 2012

Giving Thanks...

...for spanx.

Introducing McCall's M6433, the 2011 Thanksgiving Dress.

It was nice to keep the tradition alive. I even got the dress done in early November, despite getting lazy with the blogging.

The sweater knit was an idea I got from the pattern cover, but it had a weird fit in the middle, kinda matronly. I remedied it with a cute little belt. The clasp was from the button section at JoAnn. I found it impossible to find a suitable belt buckle.

I got a billion compliments on the shoulder detailing.

Those little pleats really spice things up.

Nifty

Has anyone else hung a retractable clothesline in their work area?

How do I love mine? Let me count the ways...

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My first commission and The Ultimate Snoop story.

Story of E Couture is now official.

An artist who lives in my town (who also happens to be nationally recognized, award winning, and has great genes; art lovers check this out) has commissioned me to create two dresses for his models to wear. He sent me some inspirational photos and described the looks he wanted. The goal for me was to get the look right, but also create a garment that can fit many body types and be versatile enough to be used in future paintings.

I knew instantly that dress number one would evolve from Butterick 5224, which was in-stash.

I would lengthen the lower panels and have the front criss cross and close like a bathrobe. Unfortunately, the gathering along with the liner in the skirt created way too much bulk at the front when it overlapped. Take-two had me going conventional with a back seam. I left the back open where a zipper would have been and attached ties so the dress is adjustable. Moving the opening to the back allowed me to add a long tie at the center front which can be wrapped around a number of ways.

I wanted alot of fabric folds coming from the shoulder seam, so I added 6 inches on each bodice piece at the bustline and gathered the entire sleeve taught to the neckline. I left the bodice unlined. I personally like to see a little nipplage in my paintings. Classic.

Dress number 2 is waiting for Simplicity patterns to go on sale Thursday at JoAnn. There is a costume pattern that will be juuuuuuust right.

******************

The Ultimate Snoop

Ok, so if you know anything about mE, you know I'm a sucker for formal wear. While trying on dresses at David's Bridal for my sister's wedding, of course I was checking out the construction and detailing. I found myself wondering how they were going to do the alterations for my sister's gown (ohhh, I bet they open it at the waist!). Then I found myself looking at their alterations price list. Then I found myself wondering if they were hiring seamstresses.

Yup, that's right folks. The only two problems were 1) I have no experience, and 2) I have never even looked at an industrial machine, and anyone who's ever watched Project Runway knows how that goes... So two days before my interview I tracked down a sewing machine dealer who happened to have an industrial machine for sale and was nice enough to sit down with me for half an hour and school me in the art. And schooled I was. I went into the interview and knew the machine inside and out. Unfortunately my lack of experience made the endeavor an epic FAIL, but they offered me a job at the store anyway (just far, far away from the scissors). I wonder if they'll let me try on dresses during lunch?

B+

I am still battling it out with this dress, but we're in negotiations for a treaty. Hopefully you'll have photos soon.

Do you ever feel like no matter how great the outside looks, that the inside of your garment still looks like a school project? What does it take to make a pretty wrong side?

The Puppy from heDoubleL*

*Or: why this is a photoless blog.

About 6 months ago we adopted an adorable puppy. Since then, she has destroyed thousands of dollars in ipod, phone, and computer cables, not to mention clothes, shoes, fabric, woodburners, furniture and just about anything else she can get her grubby little paws on. The cable connecting my printer and my computer was one of the more recent casualties, rendering my photo memory card temporarily useless.

And if you only knew what goodies are locked on that photo card!!

After the Christmas rush, when the kiddies were tucked away nicely at school again, I kinda taught myself to drape (!). Yup, I just threw some muslin on the form and pinched away. (Imagine photos here). It started with a great article in Threads (photo) that illustrated a pretty straightforward way to pinch out a top. I'm still tweaking the bodice, which has been revised about 5 times. I decided to drape the skirt directly in my fabric. Ooops I lied, I have a stored photo of the fabric here:

Some things I've discovered in this process.

1- It's really hard to drape on a duct tape dressform (if you're like me and left your duct tape form unpadded and uncovered). You can't pin to the form itself, and the fabric is slippery against the surface of the tape and shifts crazily. I had a real problem keeping fabric edges parallel to the floor, and I'd finish pinching out darts and seams on the back just to turn it around and realize the center front line had been drinking heavily.

2- The thing I had most trouble with was the armhole, mostly because it's not clearly defined on my form. I winged it with my french curve a few times before I stopped being lazy and looked up some sleeve fitting techniques. I'm hoping this is my last revision.

3- It's a good thing sharpies come in so many colors. (photo). I used sharpies to mark my seam lines and could keep track of which line was current because I used a different color sharpie for each revised fitting.

4- At regular intervals throughout the process I really had to resist throwing in the towel (and still do). This is tedious stuff. And let's face it folks, we all know that no matter what kind of look we want, we can find a pattern to fit it- or at least come close enough that we can work with it. Why was I going through all this trouble to drape a sleeveless, ballet neckline, princess seamed bodice when I knew for a fact I could just dig into my pattern stash and find exactly what I wanted? I don't know. But now that I've invested all this time and effort and about 20 yards of muslin I'm hooked.

So hopefully my completion of this gown will coincide with a trip to Best Buy, and I'll be able to share my first draped project with you! Don't hold your breath though, because I've been in bed for three days with the flu. I'm thinking end of month, so I can get busy on something scandalous for valentine's day ;)

Somebody stop me

I'm seriously considering Etsy.

'tis the season

Another silk scarf.

paint love

These are silk scarves from Dharma Trading (over there -->) fancied up a bit with their silk painting kit. It's the gutta resist version.

I'm loving this. It's quick - each scarf takes only a day, and 90% of that is drying time. I think they are pretty, and will make good gifts. And creating them feels good :)

These scarves are only about 10 inches accross. I plan to do this on a larger scale someday, worked into formal gowns. Ahh, someday...