Sewing with a plan, fall 2013

After reading Sophie's  post yesterday morning it felt like she had been reading my mind! Sophie talks about the fact that it is just much more exciting to buy and sew with prints than with solid colours. The only issue, offcourse, is that you can only mix so much print items together. A good solid item on the other hand can be worn with a lot of other items.. 

Lining with a print doesn't count right?

Two weeks ago I went fabric shopping while on holiday in Italy and I already knew that I had to buy more solid colours for my fall sewing plans. So I made a list.. 

The patterns I want to sew this fall are:

• The Robson trenchcoat by Sewaholic
• The Minoru jacket by Sewaholic (maybe even two): finished!
• Archer shirts by Grainline Studio: check them out, here and here
• a shirt from Drape Drape
• two Victoria blazers from By Hand London

And before I start working on those, I want to:

• finish the Sew Bossy Challenge, succeeded!
• finish my Saltspring dress from Sewaholic in time for the sew-a-long, one of my favourite makes!
• make my Anna dress from By Hand London, done!

My Saltspring dress, it is actually black silk

 So when I went to the fabric store I had a plan! I even made my boyfriend pay attention that I didn't buy too many fabrics with print, only the lining was allowed to be busy (and fun).. From the outside the shop doesn't look too promising, but when you go inside, wow! It is my fabric heaven and I can easiliy spend hours there!

Here you can see a bit of the wool suiting collection on the left. The first fabrics on the right are polyester, but the rows after that are all silk. Also the complete right wall is all silk. They have a lot of designer silks ( I got silks from Missoni and Max Mara last year) and most of their silks are around 15 euro's per meter (around 15 dollars per yard)! Not bad at all right?

This was the 50% off stash 

Knits in all sorts and patterns

 So what did I get?

• Two fabrics for my Archer blouse, the blue one with the small purple dots is cotton, and the other one is a polyester. I don't usually like polyester fabrics, but this one felt super soft and was only 2 euro's per meter, so this will be my wearable muslin.

Cotton

Cotton and the polyester

• Water repellent fabric for my Robson trenchcoat. This coat needs a lot of fabric! Around 4.5 meters if I remember correctly.. That's why I chose this fabric, it is slightly grey with a hint of a denim look (but nothing too much, trust me!) and the best part, it was on sale so only 2.5 euro's per meter! The Robson coat is unlined, so no excuse for prints here. 

The Minoru jacket on the left and the Robson on the right

•  Fabric for my two Minoru jackets, one in water repellent fabric (camel colour) and the other one in wool! At first I only got the water repellent one, but when I arrived home I wished that I had also gotten some wool to make it. So two days later I went back to the fabric store and found some lovely wool, which absolutely made my day!

Lining, yay!

The water repellent fabric and it's lining.

Wool in close-up

Another lining with print!

•  For my Victoria blazer I got a silk linnen, I didn't get a lining, but I'm sure I have something suitable in my stash. I also have some fabric I got in Paris in March which I want to use for a Victoria blazer, it is a gorgeous fabric with some shimmer in it!

Silk linnen

 My Paris fabric!

•  And then I got some black jersey to make this shirt out of, it is from the book Drape Drape. I also got some other black thicker jersey to make a sweater of some sort.. 

Overall I'm really happy with my choices and can't wait to start sewing my Minoru jacket! I think that will be the first one on my to do list :)

What do you think about my fabric choices? Do you have a fall sewing plan?

Ciao bella, my first Belladone..

Update: I completely forgot to add the Sew Weekly Reunion facts for this post, so here we go!

The Facts

Fabric: Cotton with a little stretch from Schreuder in Rotterdam

Notions: Green invisible zipper, pink bias tape and fusible tape to prevent stretching

Pantone Challenge colors: Vivacious, Emarald and Mykonos Blue

Pantone colour chart

Pattern: Deer and Doe's Belladone

Year: 2012?

Time to complete: About 5 hours

First worn: To dinner with friends in Italy

Wear again? Yes! I already have twice :)

Total Cost: Around 30 euro's excluding the pattern

Some of you already guessed it, but I made a Belladone dress! This has only been my second Deer and Doe pattern which I made, but I’m amazed by how beautiful and easy to sew their patterns are! I finished my Belladone dress within a week, and it was mostly done in 15 minutes of sewing after work/while my bath was filling/before bedtime.. 

Small bits but I’ve been enjoying those more and more recently.

At the same time I was knitting like crazy trying to finish my sisters bday present, (I didn’t finish it in time, but it is finished now!). 

Knitting the sleeves..

And the Belladone sewing was proving to be very relaxing. The pattern instructions are very well written and I hardly had to use my seam ripper, Yay!

The fabric is cotton with a little bit of stretch, so I stabilised the edges of the dress. Offcourse I forgot to stabilise the back pieces and did so after I stitched them (not sure if this will hold up, but I don’t want an extra thick line of stitches on the back.. )

The armholes and the neckline are finished with bias tape, which I folded to the inside, so it isn’t visible from the outside. It still makes me very happy when I see it however :)

Since I got my new sewing machine in January my invisible zippers haven’t excactly been invisible. I was getting really fed up with this, so I invested in an invisible zipper foot for my Pfaff. I bought the foot after sewing this zipper however, so it is not super invisible, but good enough to be allowed to stay like it is.

Semi invisible zipper..

 I’ve gotton loads of compliments on this dress, also in the fabric store in Italy they really liked it, which is always nice! My grandma said that she thinks that the armholes might be a little bit too tight, but when I look at the pictures I’m not sure I agree.. Also when wearing it, it doesn’t feel too tight all the time, only when I make strange arm movements..  

Yay! Pockets!

The only thing I will alter for a next make is to lenghten the bodice by 1-2 cm, now it ends just a bit above my natural waist, nothing too bad, but something I will fix next time.

This will also be my entry for the first Sew Weekly Reunion challenge, which is to use the Pantone fall 2013 colours. When I saw this fabric I thought the pink is like the Vivacious colour, the green resembles Emerald and the blue colour made me think of the Mykonos Blue.. Great fabric for this challenge!

Next up are some fall sewing plans which I’ve made (and I’m hoping to stick with them). For most of them I already bought fabric in Italy and I’m curious to see what you guys think!

What I've been up to: non-selfish sewing and knitting..

 Yay! This time tomorrow I will be chilling in Italy with my bf and family!

I have been knitting like crazy trying to finish the We Are Knitters Vito sweater which I'm making as a present for my sister ( her birthday is today).. I'm making it in the same colours as the photo. But after some trouble which involved late night knitting in bed and some rows that I messed up I didn't finish it in time :( 

Milo relaxing by the pool last year

Finished body and super fun label

The body is finished, but it still has no sleeves.. Hmm, luckily it's warm here in The Netherlands. I'm going to finish the sleeves next week while I'm on holiday! Promise! 

Happy birthday Mieke! Balloons veterinarian style :)

I also made a baby present for Manon, I made the Detour Diaper Bag which is a free pattern and I think it looks really cool for a diaper bag! I made it out of green cow leather and paired it with grey canvas. I also added a orange zipper (just because I could). It came together quite quick and I'm very happy with the result. 

Two big front pockets for bottles etc.

Happy zipper

I topstitched all the leather bits

And a back pocket with velcro

Manon, the mommy to be, was too, I even saw some tears! And Ray (the baby-daddy) thought I bought the bag (always a compliment!).  Ray painted the amazing painting which you see behind Manon in the picture.. Check out his other work, very cool stuff!

Not everything I made the last two weeks has been for others.. I finished two dresses and a pair of shorts, I just need to take photo's and then I'll show them to you! I'm hoping to take photo's while I'm in Italy and if our internet connection wants to cooperate with me, I'll blog about them next week.. For now, some close ups to keep you curious..

Bias tape from Purl Soho and some linnen

I'm in love with this pink binding

Linnen shorts

Victoria, the love child between Suede and Indigo

I completed my first By Hand London pattern, and I'm absolutely in love! First of all the packaging is gorgeous, the instructions have a lot of humour in them (made me laugh out loud!) and the best thing.. You get an awesome label to sew into your garment!

Last week as I was taking the train on my way to work I had a great idea, what if I made the Victoria blazer out of suede? I had been hoarding two beautiful pieces of suede for over a year, I had bought them with the intention to make a jacket. You know how it goes, I got distracted and the jacket got put on hold.

This weekend we had dyed some fabrics and I knew that one of those pieces would make a great lining.

On tuesday evening I was working on my Belladone dress when I took a look at the By Hand London website. When I saw the Sew-A-Long I thought: What am I doing working on my Belladone? I need to make my suede Victoria Blazer! So on wednesday night I cut out my pieces and sewed my lining together. Yesterday night I worked very hard to put the rest together and I finished in time for the party! Yay!

All the layers of suede got quite thick at some points so my machine was having some issues now and then. I was sewing outside because of the warm weather and it was very enjoyable.

Working hard in warm weather

But with a nice glass of wine

I also lined the sleeves, because I don't really like the feel of suede on my skin. The sleeves are very beautiful by the way, I really like the fit at the shoulders. 

My sleeve cuffs were a bit too small, so I cut them out again, but then they were still too small, maybe it has something to do with the thickness of the suede?

Too small..

Worked out well in the end

I had some other troubles because of the weight differences with the two fabrics, the suede was pulling the lining to the outside. The pattern is designed for a flat transition (no idea how you would call it otherwise) from lining to outside fabric, so I decided to sew an extra line of stitches which help my lining stay inside. This does give you a line of visible stitches on the lining, which doesn't look as clean as I had hoped, but what can you do?

The only thing I'm afraid of, is that the lining will stretch over time and become visible on the outside.. Hmm we'll see what the future brings I guess...

Happy horse face

My boyfriend thought it would be a good idea to take pictures with some horses, since it has a kind of cowboy meets indian style he says.. I don't know, but I just like horses to I'm happy :)

 I'm already thinking of more blazers I can make, I have some great fabric which I got in Paris, which I can see being made up in a longer Victoria blazer.. Now if only I could get more labels..

Stashbusting count: 2.5/15