dressin up

I'm home from NYC, and with me I brought back many ideas and quite a bit of inspiration. Oh, and also $80 worth of fabric from Mood....! One kind of fabric that I got is this lightly striped linen. With it I decided to make a vintage-inspired dress. It was sort of ambitious, considering that I haven't sewn a whole lot lately, and I didn't even have a pattern. But that didn't stop me. I created my own pattern, based off one of my dresses from UO, and got sewing.

 It took me three days total to make it. That means three days of spending 80% of the day in my room sewing, pinning, cutting, accidentally stabbing myself with pins, throwing piles of thread onto the floor, and forgetting to eat lunch. But it was all worth it! I am in love with how it turned out. 

homemade

In my last post, I mentioned that I had sewn something new, so here it is! I used the Wiksten tank pattern again, as a base, but made some adjustments. I altered the length of the shirt, and added sleeves (!!!). I have never made anything with sleeves before, so this was kind of fun. I love figuring things out on my own, so I created my own sleeve pattern and sewed them on the way I thought made sense.

 I only had a yard and a half of fabric, and that made the process more difficult, since I messed up a few times. But in the end, I made it work (I've watched too much Project Runway) and I'm really happy with how it turned out. Also, I am started a right-side pocket revolution! I've never seen a shirt with the pocket on the right side, and this one is.

gettin' back into it

After the very long break I took from sewing, I have finally returned to it. 

I was sort of surprised by myself when I randomly got a craving to do it. I've been into sustainable living all year; local and organic stuff, handmade stuff. etc. This sort of just fit right in. Also, I was inspired when I heard about the slow fashion movement.(Read about it here) For Valentines day my mom got me the Wiksten dress/tank pattern, and some linen, and I got started right away. 

It was an adventure for me to make this after a few years of not touching the sewing machine, and I learned quite a bit. When I sewed before, I always just made my own patterns, and avoided all difficult neck bindings, or seams that were anything more complicated than just sewing one piece of fabric to another. Making this dress, I followed a pattern, and learned how to do bias binding, and french seams! Oh, and adding a pocket in a more professional way too. I'm so happy with how it turned out, and I want to make more clothes soon. I forgot how much I enjoyed sewing.