A silk/linen Victoria Blazer

After making my first Victoria Blazer I knew I would like to make another one, the full length version this time. I actually finished this the first week of april *shame on me for being such a lazy blogger*.. 

 

This fabric looks quite special, it is a silk/linen blend and it has a lot of different colour tones and textures. It is a bit scratchy in places, so I lined the sleeves with a small bit of the very soft fabric I won in Aleksandra's blogiversary give-away :) No scratchy arms for me!

Excuse my hair, don't know what happened there.. 

The Victoria Blazer is quite a fast make, I think I made it in about two days of lazy sewing in between other things.. I only had one big issue, when my serger ate my sleeve fabric and I hardly had enough to cut out another one on the same grainline.. AARGHH! Luckily I was able to get away with it by removing about 1 inch from the sleeve length.. I also stole a bit of length from the seam allowances on both sides, which made it work :)

I hand stitched the hem, just as the BHL girls tell you to do, and I really like the result. I think it looks super clean and it gave me something productive to do during my nightshifts :)

The only thing is that I'm not really a blazer kinda girl, I'm just not used to wearing them.. So I really need to make an effort to think about my blazers and make sure I start wearing them on regularly.  

Winter Anna and the giveaway winner!

My internal clock is lagging behind a bit.. When the spring crocuses start blooming I  I finally finish my winter Anna and a woolen sweater.. Hmm.. 

This dress was made from stash fabrics, I only had 1.4 meters of grey wool and knew that I would love a solid dress, so I could wear it with necklaces/belts etc. It was a super tight squeeze to get everything to fit, but in the end I even cut of another 10 cm of the skirt panels, so it worked out perfectly. 

 The By Hand London girls have a great tutorial in the Anna sew-a-long on how to add sleeves to your Anna and also how to fully line your dress. 

The lining is a silk coupon with a geometric print, which I liked, but not enough to wear it on the outside. I really like it as a lining, it makes the dress super soft and comfy when I wear it! 

Fully lining this dress is quite easy. Basically you cut out another dress from your lining fabric and then attach it by machine to the zipper and the neckline and by hand at the sleeve openings. 

 At first I had sewn the lining fabric to close to the zipper, so every time I zipped it, it got caught in the zipper teeth (pic on the left)..
To prevent this, I took everything apart again and first stitched the lining to the zipper (I put the zipper right side up on the right side of the lining), but I made sure to leave enough room for the zipper to work (about 1 cm).
You also have to make sure to leave about the same width of seam allowance on the other side, otherwise your lining will be bigger then your dress (right top in the pic).

Then I had to think for a while.. I couldn't really figure out how to sew the wool to the zipper and make it invisible.. I ended up lining up my wool (with the right side up) with the side of the zipper (wrong side up) and then using my invisible zipper foot to stitch it together (right bottom pic).
I started at the top, which was a bit of a struggle as you have to make sure not to stitch the front as well, but I'm happy with the result!

I'm not sure if this makes any sense, but it did work for me, so if you have any questions just let me know!

Also at first my darts didn't line up at all, but on the second try I paid more attention and now they line up perfectly!

Hmm doesn't line up at all!

Much better..

 And now, the winner of the giveaway is:

Kriston Lion! Do you go for indulgent of practical? I'm curious!

"ooh what an awesome giveaway ! The indulgent side of me would choose the Lakeside pajamas and the Kielo wrap dress. But I think the practical side of me would choose the Archer button down and the Jamie jeans"

 Thanks everyone who entered! I had a lot of fun reading all your pattern wishes, really want to make more from Named too!

 Tomorrow we're of to Zambia and Botswana for a two week safari trip, super excited! It's always a bit sad to leave our doggies behind, but my sis will take good care of them :)

See you in two weeks!

Oh Anna, you beautiful troubled one..

Tadaa, I present to you my finished Anna dress! I feel like I've been one of the last ones to make this super cool pattern, even though I've been sewing along with the sew-along.. I used my self dyed silk and I'm in love with how the colours turned out.  

I did have some issues with my dress, but those are completely my own fault.. First of all, my fabric was a bit too narrow and short, so I had to cut some skirt panels slightly off grain, which off course resulted in them stretching a bit while I was attaching the skirt to the top part.. So the darts don't really line up perfectly.

 Then.. I decided to use a shorter zipper because that was what I had in my stash.. After unpicking the zipper 4 times because the waist seamline didn't line up I got it perfectly alligned! But then, I tried to put the dress on and I couldn't get it to fit over my head! The zipper was too short.. So off I went to the store..

Thigh high split? Where?

When parking my bike close to the store I remembered my sister telling me something about bike-police  taking your bike when you don't park it in the right spot.. So I looked left and right, didn't see anyone and quickly bought the right zipper. When I came out of the store I saw three men and a pick up truck standing next to my bike! So I quickly ran there and they told me that they were about to take my bike cause I wasn't allowed to park there.. Luckily they were very kind and let my take my bike after I promised not to park there anymore.. Pfff!

Hand stitched split

All french seams

I used french seams throughout my dress, but at first I used a normal seam to attach the skirt to the top panel. When I had to unpick the zipper for the last time I decided to change the only normal seam to a french seam aswell. Glad I did that because it looks super neat now on the inside!

I hand stitched the split, which I'm quite happy with. My boss asked me if I could put on my deodorant using the split, since it's super high, haha! I wore this dress to a wedding and got a lot of compliments, even from the bride :) and some people told me that I could have been the bride.. I'll take that as a compliment too..

 And it looks great together with my Victoria blazer!

You can also follow me on Instagram now: @Revesmecanique, for more sewing/doggy pics!

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?

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