I'm a loser baby! or at least not a winner...

Ah man, I didn't win! This was the first sewing competition I have ever entered, so I can't be too sad to come second... but soooo close!!!

I have taken this defeat rather well considering how competitive I can be. I mean, how disappointed can you be to lose to someone like Miriam? She is a woman who remains so positive and retrospective about the trauma she has experienced. What an inspiration!

 Please go and read her story here. Congratulations Miriam!

Big Spring Frock - Complete!!!!

I made it! Here it is, my finished article...phew!

I can now confess that I was starting to doubt whether or not I was going to get this completed in time as the days were ticking by and I was struggling to find that elusive 'free' time to knuckle down to some serious sewing, but I somehow got there with days to spare!

I knew it needed to be completed by the weekend, as there was going to be very little/no oppurtunity for photos after this point. This is a wee photoshoot of the dress literally hot off the sewing machine. The weather has not been kind however and the day could not have been gloomier for such a springy dress. Booooo!

My gorgeous suede shoes started to suffer on the soggy grass, so had to be removed for their own safety.

By the way, it was my birthday yesterday and good tidings brought me this mannequin. It certainly makes photographing much easier...

Yes, that is a hand stitched zip you see before you!

I made some alterations to the pattern. Not too many, but see the dodgy seam in the below picture? It went right across the wrong part of my bust and this is without the addition of the band. Those crazy darts would have been visible by the way! I don't think the picture quite conveys how weird it actually looked, but trust me, it was a bit obscene.

I recut the lower bodice pieces extending them by 3.5 cm on top and chopped that much from the yoke. This was an easier pattern alteration than trying to get the seam to sit under my bust. I also added the bow to the front to make it a bit prettier, rather than on the back as the pattern states.

I love the pocket bags in the side panels. They look like the are as deep as the panel, but are in fact normal sized pockets.

When it came to construction, I ditched the provided instructions, which were fairly vague anyway, and did it my way.

Rather than line the bodice in the traditional sense I underlined each bodice piece with a plain white cotton lawn. This not only offers extra support to the seams of this very close fitting dress, but also gives a smoother exterior finish, making it less likely to crease.

 The 1.5cm seams were all folded in half and tucked under, so that the raw edges were contained and handstitched down.

I bound the neck and armholes with bias tape and handstitched this down too. The handstitching is concealed to the interior as it only goes through the underlining and not the main fabric.

I wish I'd covered the inside of the zip with a cotton tape facing. It looks a bit messy to me now that everything else is complete, but that's just picky as no-one else is going to see this.

I think the pocket bags were supposed to be french seamed, but I just sewed and overlocked the seam, as I did for the whole of the skirt construction. Time was running out, so I applied a less refined, but neat finish to the skirt.

I attached a cotton tape to the waist to act as a stay. This was stitched with a slip stitched along the bottom edge and herring bone along the top for a little bit of movement.

The fabric that was sent to me by Offset Warehouse is such a good match for this dress. It is drapey and wonderfully soft. It was such a good feeling to work with an organic fabric, as this is not something I normally consider when selecting fabric. It has a vintage, heirloom quality to it and has produced a garment that I will treasure and wear with pride for as long as I can fit into it.

I could gush all day long about the profound effect it's had on the way I work. I wanted to respect the fabric completely (as I should always) and put a lot more effort into the finish than I normally would. I've never even hand sewn a zip in before!

This dress has been sewn for the purposes of a competition, but I honestly feel like I've already won by being sent the fabric to make this dress in the first place. Thank you Offset Warehouse and thank you Scruffy Badger for selecting my design. This has been, dare I say it, great fun!

The Big Spring Contest - cutting

I finally finished cutting this beast!

There has been alot of work to do on this dress so far and none of it has been straight forward.

First was the task of putting together the paper pattern. This was made up of 50 something pieces of paper. I found the easiest way to do this was lay all of the pages on the floor, so that I could see the shapes and work through cutting and taping each piece at a time.

 So...with that completed then was the cutting of the fabric! Initially, I was confident that I could complete this in an evening. Notice I said initially...

The fabric is a handmade product and as such has an irregular weave, a feature I like very much.This does not however help at all when cutting a fancy fifties style dress whose design kind of depends on the grain running perfectly on each piece!

Normally I would fold the fabric in half, lay the pattern pieces and get cutting. This was not going to end well, so I resorted to cutting each piece individually in order get the grain as true as possible. I even cut each paper pattern piece in half if it was symmetrical, so that I could lay it on a fold to ensure that a stripe ran perfectly down the centre (if that makes sense). 26 pattern pieces later, this is what I have ended up with...

 Anyway, all that aside, I feel that I have broken the back of this and can now move forward. I just need to underline the bodice pieces to give them more strength and I can then start piecing stuff together. 

I think that the groundwork will be worthwhile and will produce a stunning end garment. I also fully appreciate that it is not the fault of the fabric itself, as the beauty of this product is that it has been produced by hand and that any irregularities are part of that beauty. I would choose to handle a product like this any day of the week! I am however looking forward to completing this dress!!!

Big Spring contest dress!

A few weeks ago I entered the 'Big Spring Contest' from Offset warehouse. Offset Warehouse has got a substantial selection of ethically produced, sustainable fabrics and four people have been selected to make a design in the fabric of their choosing from the collection.

Four blogs hosted the first stage of the competition, each with a different subject, and I entered 'Scruffy Badgers' category. I had an idea for 'the first frock for spring' and hoped that Winnie (blog owner) would like it as much as I did. Well, she did and I have now become a finalist in the competition!

The fabric arrived today, so I can now get cracking. Below is the design I want to make up. It is a free downloadable pattern of a 1950's inspired dress from the V&A website here.

I now need to turn this...

Into this...

It needs to be completed by the 9th April, so I have just pre-washed the fabric and have the pattern all printed out and ready to go. In the interests of remaining eco friendly for this challenge I am not going to make a toile, as this would, in theory, be wasteful of fabric.

The final part of the competition will rely on the public vote, so I'm going to need as much support as possible to win. Fingers crossed! xxx