Dearest Needlework Monday community and Hive friends,
It’s early Monday morning, and I’m sitting by the roaring stove with a very rare mug of coffee, waiting for the water to get heated, and musing over the week’s successes in sewing.
I’ve had a beautifully active 7 days in needlework: I began a rather complex endeavour last week, which was based on a favourite waistcoat… I have never worn it, as I don’t like waistcoats per se, but I loved the fabric print and the fit of it. So it serves well as the core of a dress or jacket…
Firstly, I wanted to add something to the back of the waistcoat, to make it more robust; the old back of it was a naff buff silky thinness, which didn’t make for the top half of a new dress.
I cut the old back of it out, and thought of how to add the rest of a dress to the waistcoat front….
I had a pile of denim scraps, old jeans and suchlike, and wanted to keep the theme of stripes – I love stripes! I found an old miniskirt, cut it open and added one side of it to the other (vertically), to make the back. I liked how the kink in the skirt made a good shape for the final dress form.
The skirt was from old jeans, which I cut up and sewed together to make the wider form, and then attached to the waistcoat-and-miniskirt bodice. Most of this was fairly straightforward, and the sewing machine behaved relatively well, again.
I had to do quite a section of handsewing (again!) for the rest of the finishing though. I still haven’t figured out how to successfully attach a kind of ‘bias-binding’ border – large scale bias-binding, to finish the edges of a garment – in a way that doesn’t involve having to handsew the length of it at least once. This time was the same. I sewed the length of the skirt bottom, on the inside, having used the machine for the first length-attaching.
The fabric on the whole was nice to sew with, especially the denims – these jeans all have some stretch in them, which makes for very nice machine and hand sewing.
The final effect of the dress is rather fun and funky – just how I had hoped. Althouuuuuuuggghhh, the sleeveless kind-of-sleeves are not quite as right as I wanted them. And the overall fit is a bit clunky… But I always feel this way about the clothing I make, until I get used to its quirk!
I might alter the dress some more before I put it on show. I want it to be that little bit more smart, neat, clean-looking.
But perhaps, instead, I might begin doing a second version of a garment, if I don’t find it perfected enough. This way I could improve on my skills, knowing more beforehand about where each piece of fabric is going, or how well an edging will sit.
I finished the dress off by changing its fit, through the careful positioning of a large (visible) button and some (hidden) poppers/ snaps/ automatici - I love how a rightly-positioned button can change a whole garment!
I’d considered closing the bottom part of the dress and having the top part with the above-mentioned closures, but the final dress wanted to be more open and free, as it were. I can envisage this vestita being paraded with cute wee sandals or pumps (tennis kind of shoes) on a lake pier, on a cooling summer evening… The woman maybe sitting to take off her shoes and dip her feet into the lake and watch the sunset.
That’s my contribution to the community this week – many blessings on your creative work and happiness this week, dear friends!
With Love!
