Email from Pati

After referring to Palmer Pletsch's book Fit for Real People back in my post about the muslin for Ellen's dress I received an email from Pati Palmer. How cool! You just never know who is reading....

She kindly thanked me for mentioning the book and gave me a link to the Palmer Pletsch free e-magazine. I actually met Pati way back in 1998 when she was here for the Melbourne Stitches and Craft show and she autographed my Fit for Real People book.

In the email she also mentioned Sue Neall from Sydney who does 4-day fit, pant and jacket classes in Australia. Sue is also co-author of the book Jackets for Real People. Of course any good Aussie sewing girl will know Sue from the Stitches and Craft fashion shows!

This week I have been sewing pajama bottoms for my niece's 11th birthday. Here is a picture of the magic ingredients. Tomorrow I will show the end result.

Sofie's skirt

Sofie, my younger daughter wanted a new dress to wear to Ellen's valedictory dinner. As she is studying textiles at school I suggested she design what she wanted and we could sew it together. This was a couple of months ago. Well nothing happened and last weekend she decided she needed something new and wanted to go shopping. Shopping can be "hard work" with Sofie because if she doesn't have any luck in finding something that fits and is flattering she gets depressed and grumpy and won't even look at anything. This happened last Friday night at the shops.

Unlike Ellen and myself Sofie is well endowed in the chest department. However she is fairly petite elsewhere. So it is difficult to find flattering clothes for her. She needs fitted clothes to show that she does have a figure. And it probably doesn't help with a mother that can point out how cheap the fabric is and how badly made the clothes are!

Anyway, on Saturday morning she was going to Brunswick Street with Ellen and her father, so I suggested she drop into Clear It (an outlet shop) and see if there were any Alannah Hill fabrics that she liked. She came home with two metres of silk chiffon!

Co-incidentally she was doing a school project on 2 designers - one current and one from the past. She chose Alannah Hill (of course) and Elsa Schiaparelli. I photographed her page on Alannah:

Unfortunately, we didn't get to making Sofie the skirt until the night before the dinner as Ellen's dress took much longer than I anticipated. She decided that she wanted a floaty skirt with layers. No problem!?

Making up as we went we used a basic skirt pattern. First we cut a lining out. Then cut 3 ruffles. We made the ruffles by cutting the skirt pattern (traced) into 3 and adding a couple of inches so that we could overlap. We then cut and spread to give volumn.

We hemmed the ruffles and stitched them to the skirt. We tried to use the overlocker/serger to roll hem but it the thread was cutting the silk. In the end it was all sewn on the sewing machine. I am surprised this did not turn out a disaster - we just about gave up at 10.00pm but I kept imagining Project Runway and Tim Gunn - "make it work". And make it work we did.

Getting desperate by 11.00pm we quickly decided to just add ribbon as a waist band.

Voila - a miracle - it actually looked pretty good! Thank goodness nobody will be inspecting it too closely. But for under $20 we have a very pretty silk skirt. The ruffles are not even (I really should learn more about bias) but that is the charm, isn't it? And certainly no worse than RTW!

BTW, Sofie did some of the sewing, all of the pressing and sat with me giving encouragement. And she looks pretty darn happy with herself too.

No new clothes for me. I wore my birthday frock.

Ellen's Valedictory Dress - photos and Dior rose

Frock:Burda WOF 08-2008-126
Socks: Alannah Hill
Shoes: Old ones from the wardrobe
Hair piece: Dior rose
Makeup: Aunty Cheryl

I made the rose following the instructions from Couture The Art of Fine Sewing by Roberta Carr.

And one more, just because I can (and she is smiling):

We all had a wonderful time!

Ellen's Valedicatory dress - some details

The skirt. There is only one pattern piece for the skirt. Like the bodice overlay it goes from centre front to centre back without a side seam. We wanted the skirt to be fuller, so I cut and spread the pattern as shown here:

Well, let me say IT DID NOT WORK. All the fullness ended up somehow in the back like a fishtail and it dropped (due to the bias at work) a good 15-20cm. It was kinda cute but NO! And of course I had already sewed it to the bodice along with the lining. So I had to unpick and recut to take out the back fullness. I also had to recut the bottom of both the skirt and lining. And take out the zip, and unpick the ribbon trim on the lining.

For the hem of the skirt I used my rolled hem foot. Perhaps a hand rolled hem may have been more couture, but I was over it by then. I am happy with the outcome - looks pretty good.

The pattern has a zip going all the way up, but as I have such a contrast in colours I did not want to show a cream zip on the blue fabric nor a blue zip on the white fabric – so I opted for a blue zip up to the bodice and buttons on the bodice. I bought the buttons from a shop in Hong Kong. They come by the metre on lace. Very pretty. I did however have problems with the elastic loops - they stretched. My solution was to put hooks and eyes behind each button (and pray that it works).

Now to some questions and answers:

Caity said “I like that dress EXCEPT - don't you think having the straps coming out from the armpits is a bit weird? Maybe it will look ok on a small figure... I dunno, it just struck me as odd!” Yes, I agree that the photo does look a bit odd. I think they must have made a larger size and pinned it at the back or something. The pattern does not have it coming out quite so far back. It does suit Ellen however as she has a narrow chest and this helps to give her width. Also the ruffle front gives her an illusion of a bust.

Karen said “It does sound tricky, I hope it works out tonight. I have found that there is an awful lot of bust room in the BWOF patterns for my teenage daughter - the SBA for her is about 4cm in a straight dart(trial and error)even after scaling down to a 32 size, so maybe it is bodacious German busts on slim girls that the pattern is drafted for, not operator error?” Yes, it was my error (somewhere) as the bust fits perfectly after my adjustment. It is just the circumference that was iffy. The muslin was fine. The dress was not – first too small, then too large and now a tight squeeze. As she is small busted it gaped when she moved and to stop that I needed to make it really tight. But then it was pulling at the back. So I have put hooks and eyes there hoping that will solve the problem. I will let you know tomorrow if she faints from lack of breathing space or if someone gets hit in the eye from the closure popping

Lindsay had the answer - “I have the same problem with my small-busted daughter. I had to buy her some of that fashion emergency tape just to prevent the peekaboo that sometimes happens”.

Designdreamer had a problem with the Alannah Hill website. I did too, but if you just keep trying (type in the URL) you will be in for a treat. You should get a key to open the door and then you are in! I am not sure if you see much fashion but the site is really fun.

And Kristy said “And I trust you've been giving the gorgeous Cour Carre suit a workout in the meantime? It's too nice not to wear all the time”. Yes I have it on today! And I did buy another suit while in Hong Kong that I have been remiss in posting about. I will do that later when I get over this week.

Trena commented “So, pardon my ignorance, but do you have the same school year as us? Starting late summer/early fall and ending late spring/early summer? It never even occurred to me that our school years would be six months staggered!” Yes our school year is in a calendar year – from late Jan/early Feb to early/mid December. So we get to break up from school and chillax into the festive season. So January here is very much a quite time as many businesses close for annual leave. Then at the end of January we have Australia Day on the 26th. So it is party central from mid December to late January – swimming, relaxing, outside activities, lots of Champagne etc – I can’t wait!

And a sneak peek at what Sofie and I got up to last night.....look what is now hanging in her wardrobe:

Ellen's Valedictory Dress - finished

I know I said I was going to talk about the skirt next and answer some questions..well I will leave that till tomorrow as tonight I have pictures! Yes it is finished!

Never before have I unpicked, adjusted, recut.....as much as I did with this (simple) dress.
Close up of the bodice front:
Close up of the bodice back:
Inside:
I trimmed the middle and the lining hem with a really cute blue and white polka dot ribbon. I will take photos of Ellen all dolled up on Thursday night. Tomorrow I will tell you about all the silly things I did along the way...

Ellen's Valedictory dress - the bodice

Burda 8-2008-126. Last week I made a muslin of just the bodice of the dress. The pattern starts as size 36 and Ellen's bust measures 78cm. I penciled in on the pattern sheet a size 34 and then traced that. This is the first time that I drafted the smaller size before tracing and I found it much easier to work around. You can see the pencil line on the blue piece.

I made the muslin in the size 34 even though she is smaller still. We pin fitted the muslin and found we needed to reduce the curve of the bust (not quite filling that out) and taking the side seams in a bit. I used the instructions in Palmer Pletsch Fit for Real People to do the small bust adjustment.

I reduced the curve in the side piece and also reduced the length in the centre front piece. This worked beautifully and the cups fit her just right.

Now that was the good bit. The not so good bit was with the overlay. It is in one piece that goes from centre back across the front and back to centre back. As there were are side seams I needed to take circumference length out.

Also note all those pleat markings? Just imagine trying to mark, pin, baste all those and then they don't fit the bodice? Hmmm. I unpicked all that and made my own pleats to fit ensuring they looked pleasing enough. Much easier option!

All was going well until the next fitting. Oh, no...it does not meet at centre back! I am sure I added the seam allowances when cutting, but something went wrong. So onto plan B or is that C or D by now? I added the extra width by adding some panels at the back (remember there are o side . I then sewed on the buttons, inserted the zip and attached the skirt. Time for the next fitting.

The skirt has issues but I will talk about that tomorrow! Back to the bodice - it is TOO BIG! The poor girl is exposing herself each time she moves. Now, I would like to blame Burda but it has to be operator error - just not sure what error(s) they were. Anyway, back to ripping and resewing. I managed to not have to take the zip out by just gathering the extra back width into the bodice. Now I am just too scared to get her to try it on again!

This morning before work I was back at it trying to get the V to sit nicely at centre front where the skirt meets the bodice. It is not co operating! Perhaps tonight it will be a bit nicer to me.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my last post and for welcoming me back! I have a few questions to answer but will attend to that in my next post. Wish me luck!

Posting again

Yes I have posted!!!

What can I say? I have been lazy. No sewing, my sewing room is in a mess and my mojo has well and truly departed.

I have decided that I just need to make a new mojo and the only way to do that is to get back to it and SEW SOMETHING. And what shall I make ? Ellen’s Valedictory dress of course! She is currently sitting her final ever maths exam and her final ever high school exam will be next Monday for media. She has been so busy studying that we haven’t bought any fabric yet. What we have decided upon is BWOF 08-2008-126.


The plan is to do the bodice in cream satin and the skirt in navy satin. We will make the skirt fuller to have a more flowing effect. And in true Alannah Hill style we will attempt to make flowers for her hair and her shoes. Alannah Hill ankle socks have been purchased (at the new Doncaster Shoppingtown – don’t you love that place?).

The pattern starts at size 36 and we will need to downsize considerably to fit my petite poppet. So the plan of action this week is to fit a muslin of the bodice and decide if we will insert bra cups or leave it as is. Then we will go fabric shopping – going to Spotlight as our first (and hopefully final) port of call. Then next weekend it will be made. The dinner is Thursday 20th so I need to get to it, mojo or not!

Now some thank yous. First to all of you who have been posting. Even though I have not been posting I have been around and enjoyed all your efforts and posts.

Next special thank yous to the following lovely ladies who have been kind enough to nominate me for awards:

Belinda who gave me a Premio blog award (way back on 13/9/08)
Birgitte who gave me Premio blog awards and Excellent blog award (on 15/9/08)
Robin who also gave me the Premio blog awards and Excellent blog award (on 25/9/09).

I am very honoured (but feeling guilty) in receiving these from you. You are on my list of favourite blogs that I go to first whenever I open up my Google Reader. Your projects always inspire me!