Made by Me File/OOTE: A Zara Inspired Birthday! Simplicity 1099 and New Look 6314.

Have you ever been fixated on a "look" and had to have it?  Well a few months ago Zara sold a beautiful sleeveless crop top and matching full skirt with pockets (photos are in the made by me portion towards the bottom) in a pretty African print fabric.  I was head over heels in love with the look.  So even though my normal sizes in Zara had sold out, I thought I would order the one size smaller and see if they fit, and of course they didn't (because Zara is teeny tiny sized).  I went to plan B afterwards and decided that if I couldn't have the exact Zara look, I could at least have a sewn by me version in a fabric just as pretty.

I didn't know when I would want it done by, but I figured if I could finish in time for my birthday (yesterday, yep, same as Canada Day/birthday of Gigi/Sufjan Stevens--he's even my exact freaking age), I could wear this beauty on a very special day.  Now admittedly I didn't finish it until 5:00 pm yesterday, but I took my time and didn't sweat over how long it was taking me, I just enjoyed it during the process.  I think I need to sew like that more in the future, it felt great instead of "OMG I AM NEVER EVER GOING TO FINISH!"

First up is the OOTE portion, followed by the Made by Me File.

Day: Wednesday, July 1, 2015.

Where: Winesday with my brother and our favorite Mexican restaurant for dinner.

Ease of Wear: (4.5 of 5 stars--5 being the most easy to wear.) Hey! I made it! For me! So it was very easy to wear.  I only put a 4.5 because the Winesday at Whole Foods and the restaurant were blasting the AC and I spent half of the time freezing my a$$ off.

I didn't even have to wear a bra, btw, since the crop top is lined and interfaced, and because I have no real "anything" up there, that's all the support I need.  So even more comfy than usual.  ;-)

Outfit Details:  Top, Simplicity 1099; Skirt, New Look 6314; Sandals, J. Crew here; Sunglasses, Anthropologie.

Anecdote of the Day:  Normally for my birthday dinner we head to sushi, but we took my dad there for Father's Day, and with our budget being so tight, I decided to make my birthday dinner be less expensive, so we went to the Mexican restaurant where we usually go for all birthdays.  It was fun to wear the sombrero.  Pictures are in this Instagram.

INSTAGRAM of the outfit HERE.

Above is the Zara outfit I fell in love with and so desperately wanted to be able to fit into, even though I am a reasonable person and *know* that a Zara size small top and size medium bottom would never ever fit me.  LOL.

After returning the above to the store, I kept in mind what I loved about the outfit, the length of the skirt, the pockets, the ease of two pieces working together, the silhouette, and the beautiful print.  I also decided to change a few things up on my version, including using a top pattern that was a touch longer overall, doing something different to the back of the top, and changing up the neckline.

Enter Simplicity 1099 for the Top and New Look 6314 for the skirt.  Initially I was planning on using the skirt from the 1099 pattern, but it required a whole lot of fabric, even in the shorter skirt, and I would prefer that my skirt not have that much volume, especially for summer.  I may try that skirt with a more formal fabric for winter, but for summer, the NL 6314 fits the bill quite nicely.

The basic idea of this look is close to the Zara images.  Obviously the fabric is very different, but graphically still very bold and colorful.  I bought this fabric from Fabric Mart (it is a Maggy London print--she used it this way in a different colorway), but it sold out.  However, Emma One Sock has a blue version for sale right now, but again, that one will likely sell out, too.

I appreciate that this top and skirt combo does appear to be a dress when worn *just so*.  By the end of the night, the fabric had loosened up a bit and the skirt was riding a touch lower, but only the barest amount of my belly was exposed, so it felt more retro 50s/60s than crazy 80s/90s crop tops.

The NL pattern wanted me to place my skirt pieces on the bias, and while that would have made for a cool print placement and a bit more drape, I didn't need the bias to help with stretch since this sateen fabric has a good amount of lycra in it.  Ultimately I decided to ignore the instructions on placing the pattern pieces on the bias and make the print properly line up with the top, whose pattern pieces said to place them on the straight grain.

I added pockets, using the ones from the Simplicity pattern.  They were fine, although I took off the extraneous bit at the top (it had extra fabric on it as it was supposed to be integrated with the waistband).  They could be a bit deeper, but otherwise I was happy with them as a design detail.

I also chose to make the skirt close up in back, with a zip there, instead of at the side.  It meant adding a seam allowance to the back waistband and back skirt pieces, but that bit of extra work took very little time, but makes getting in and out the skirt a whole lot easier for me.  

The top was interesting in that it called for interfacing all of the lining pieces.  I mean every single one.  I think the decision is sound, though, since it gives the top a lot of structure, meaning if you are as small up top as I am, you can go without the bra (though the back is high enough that as long as you are in a strapless or convertible bra you can wear one, too).  In essence, I made two tops, sewed them up together, but cut out 12 total items (four main fabric, four lining, and four interfacing).  As I wanted to keep the fabric stretchy, I decided to use a stretch fusible interfacing that is meant for knits. It worked well with my cotton stretch lining.

The construction of the top was very precise.  I want to encourage you, if you try this pattern, to make sure to mark all the circles very well and the match points very well.  If you don't, it will be very hard to make the cross back straps work, and to make the princess seams properly line up together.  You also really do need to follow the directions as best you can, and in the right order.  They are involved, but worth the effort.  I still managed to do something wrong, though, and instead of having a clean, enclosed hem, I ended up having to fold under both the lining and main fabric together 5/8", press them, and then carefully topstitch them to create a hem. It is okay, but not nearly as nice as a hidden hem would have been.

I think I love the back as much as the front.  Look at those gorgeous cross back straps!  And sizing wise, they were exactly the right length on me instead of being too long (usually my issue in my upper body is that there--too long straps).

Sizing wise, I made both pieces in a size 12.  I really think I would have done better to make the top in a 10, because there is a bit of excess fabric around my bust and underarms, but I am not super stressed about it enough to go and purchase the next size of patterns down.  (However if Simplicity has another 1.00 per pattern sale at Joann's, I will likely pick it up.)  In a non-stretchy fabric, I would make the 12, though.  The skirt is fine in a 12, though I more closely measure to the 14 or 16.  The hips are free, so that helps, and my waist is smaller.  NL patterns run small in the waist.  In some companies I can wear a 10 in the skirts if the skirts are a-line, but not NL.  I saw this in the Easter dress I made from one of their patterns.

If you look closely at the skirt, you will see my hem has a stitched hem detail.  That is actually a serged edge.  I serge all my hems on my items that I sew, but this time, after finishing, I tried it on, loved the length on me, and also loved the way the serged hem looked, so I kept it.  I don't normally leaving serging visible, but this time it suited the design.  :-)

I am planning on writing these pieces up at Pattern Review, so I will update the links to their pages when I finish each of them.  That is so those of you who would like to learn more about the process can see what I did in greater detail.

Pattern Review of Simplicity 1099 Top.
Pattern Review of New Look 6314 Skirt.

Alrighty, you all have a great day!  Hope everyone's July is off to a great start!

OOTD/Made by Me File: Rosalyn's Easter. New Look 6262 and New Look 6335.

Day: Sunday, April 5, 2015.

Where:  Easter services and Easter lunch/supper.

Ease of Wear: (4.25 of 5 stars--5 being the most easy to wear.)  I had constructed the dress myself with my sizing in mind, so I was very comfortable.  The only thing that bugged a bit was the underarm portion, which makes me fear that I have even more of a square shoulder adjustment to do the next time I sew up this pattern.  (I don't have a lot of fluff up top, but my shoulders go up at the end instead of sloping down, and since the patterns are all drafted for a much more sloped shoulder than I have, I always have to do a "square shoulder adjustment."  I thought I had done enough of one here, but I must need another 1/8 to 1/4 inch to be truly comfortable.)

Outfit Details:  Dress, made from New Look 6262; Shoes, Target; Tilly Cardigan, J. Crew (available here); Necklace, J. Crew.

Anecdote of the Day:  So in Mississippi and apparently this part of Indiana, people say supper instead of lunch.  Or is it dinner at lunch and supper is what I call dinner?  I don't know, lol.  Here in Northern Virginia, and maybe the rest of the state, supper is dinner, if we say supper at all.  I find it all so fascinating. 

I say yard sale instead of garage sale and every big road (interstates, freeways, etc.) are highways.  Other states round here do the same, but you go further west/north and the differences in terms are more pronounced.  Speaking of pronounced, if you really want to have some fun, ask a Virginian to pronounce either Fauquier county or Norfolk.  Trust me.

Do you have any local idioms that are a dead giveaway you are from somewhere? 

New Look 6262.  Without fail, I knew that I would likely be making the size 10 at the top bit (hey my absent flat-chested self), but because of the smaller waist measurement on the tissue, I decided it would be smart if I made the rest of the dress below the bust in a size 12.  It worked out great, and though I could have maybe squeezed into the 10 at the waist (the hips would have been fine, obviously), the 12 gave me a lovely amount of ease.

I specifically chose the fabrics because I really wanted to make the Rosalyn Dress from Boden since the debacle with my preview orders about two months back.  I didn't ever intend for this to be my Easter dress, but I was so fired up about the way Boden handled processing the credit that I CANCELED my order and got in my head that I could make something just as great as what I canceled.  The top bit is made from a cotton lace broderie fabric I bought from Fabric Mart last year, and the bottom is a home decor print from Waverly (Blossom Boutique Twill Aurora) I knew would look nice with the lace. 

I love how many options New Look 6262 gave me in terms of necklines, sleeves, etc.  I chose the cap sleeve with the scoopneck option, and made sure to follow the instructions for the lace version at least in the bodice.  It asked me to underline versus line my bodice, and so that is what I did.  It did feel a bit odd to underline (I used a stretchy cotton poplin fabric for that) and then use a facing, but the result was great, so I am not questioning it.  I clearly did not need to underline the skirt, but I did end up adding pockets, which I grabbed from Butterick 5211 (they were absolutely perfect as is).

Back view.  I didn't have any long white invisible zips at the house, but because they are invisible, except for the top pull, I just used a baby blue that matched the skirt perfectly.  It is fine!

The Rosalyn dress doesn't have a back zip and since I prefer back to side zips, AND I prefer this floral to the one they have on theirs, I am claiming sewing success on this dress.  I love it way more than the Rosalyn.  Rare for me to say this, but Dina 1--Boden 0.

Rosalyn Dress.  Still a very pretty dress, just not for me.  I think had all of the credit processing been more normal (or at least more timely in dropping the extra charges placed on my account), I would have gone with this one and not even been tempted to sew my own.  Ultimately I was glad I did since I also had enough fabric left over for my daughter's Easter dress, too.  If you do like this dress, it is on sale right now, for 20% off.

For CW's matching dress (which Boden has no version of for their mini line) I used New Look 6335 for sleeves and skirt, while rest is Simplicity 1211.  Since she is a wee girl with few curves, she is super easy to fit (and that makes this super easy to sew, too), but I did decide to make the skirt from one long rectangle rather than three rectangles (one for the front piece and two for the back pieces with a zip in the middle).  This means that her skirt has no side seams but does have a back seam that meets up with the middle back seam of the bodice.  I could have used a zip that went all the way down into her skirt, but again, girl with no curves, so I just added a small 7 inch zip at the top of the bodice and called it a day.  If she does get big enough that I need to add a longer zip, I have the infrastructure in place to do so.  I don't see any big difference between her skirt fullness and the one on the New Look 6335 package.  Hers is plenty full enough but uses far less fabric.  I tell you those girls dresses require SO much skirt fabric.  Ridiculous.  This is like the tenth time I have chosen not to use the full amount because I refuse to waste fabric if the end result will only look marginally different.

I do want to mention two things--

1. Gathering has always been a bit of a bear for me.  This time I did the proper three rows of gathering on the longest stitch length and then pulled them up to the length needed to match the bodice pieces.  In order to make sure the gathers didn't get folded down and smooshed by the presser foot, I made the *bold,* lol, decision to decrease my foot pressure on my machine.  Why in the world I hadn't done that before is beyond me, but wow, what a difference.  I still had to take it nice and slow and maneuver the gathered bits properly so they wouldn't get misshapen by the machine and the foot, but the gathers lie nice and prettily rather than skewing to one side as they want to do if I leave the presser foot pressure at the higher amount.  (They skew towards the opposite side that the presser foot is approaching from, so if the presser foot comes from the left on the wrong side, the gathers all skew to the right on the front, probably barely noticeable, but it drives me batty.)

2. I have laundered these dresses on delicate, in a cold wash, and hung them to dry.  They came out great, even though the skirt fabric recommends dry cleaning.  Just a bit of a "go on and do it" for those of you wondering if you should.  ;-)

I wrote up a pattern review on my dress here at Pattern Review.  It has a bit more of the technical dealings for those of you that care.

I will write up the pattern review for CW's dress soon.  When I do that I will update this blog post.

Okay, you all have a great night!!!  

OOTD: It Matches!

Before I start the post, I wanted to congratulate Julie, she won the NOVICA $50 giveaway. Random.org gave me the result of #18 of 20 entries, and that was Julie's comment.  I will email Julie with more information.  Very excited Julie gets to enjoy some NOVICA shopping.  :-)

Day: Tuesday, March 31, 2015.

Where:  Substituting for the upper grade's Spanish teacher.

Ease of Wear: (4.25 of 5 stars--5 being the most easy to wear.)  Skirt was made by me back when (here is the original post on its construction), and I have lost a couple of pounds since then, so it fits very well now and is very comfortable.  The Tippi sweater from J. Crew is also amazing, I know there are lots of women who are fans (and own multiple colors) but I haven't really dipped into the Tippi pool, outside of a handful of versions from years past.  I am a fan, but I don't actively seek out having multiples of it. 

The only ding came from the loafers, which fit fine, but after standing all day in class and then walking to Harris Teeter on my break (in warmish weather), I found they felt really small and were rubbing against my feet uncomfortably.  So I went ahead and purchased those "half-socks" from the grocery store and that helped a bunch.

Outfit Details:  When I made this skirt, I was thinking I would have no problem matching tops to it, but I was surprised by how hard it was.  I either just don't buy these shades and can't get things to work with it, or the print has a very specific look and needs something especially unfussy for it to work with it.  I had tried regular white tee-shirts and blouses, but it was too plain, however anything with any amount of print or sequins or embellishments was too much.  The top I wore with it originally is fine, but I want to sell that one as I don't really love it.  I did not purchase the Tippi with the intent of matching the skirt (I just really loved the color), but found that it was exactly the right shade for my skirt.

Long story short, lol, is that you can find the Tippi here at J. Crew (this is the heather aqua shade).

Anecdote of the Day:  The big burly cashier at Harris Teeter really liked the old school J. Crew necklace and said it perfectly matched the skirt.  LOL.  I love it when people you don't expect to be into style are into it.  :-)

I am not 100% ready to reveal the dress on me yet, as I still have hemming of the skirt and sleeves to do, but I know that a lot of you are both fans of sewing and of Boden, so I kind of figured you would be into seeing my latest project, which is my Easter dress.  It is New Look 6262 and is supposed to be a close approximation of Boden's Rosalyn dress.  I had originally ordered the Rosalyn dress, but after the huge mess of the preorder and my card company having problems with the double charges showing up, I decided to cancel my order and just make the darn thing instead.

The floral fabric (called Waverly Blossom Boutique Twill Aurora) is actually a home decor fabric, but it is lightweight enough to work with this pattern.  I have to admit to preferring this floral pattern to the one Boden used.  And based upon the fact that I know the Boden version's bodice would have likely been too long for my short torso, I was glad to have creative control and a tape measure in my hands to ensure my version wasn't too long.  I also decided to add a back invisible zip instead of a side zip, so I won that way, too.

It's not that I don't love the Rosalyn version, in fact, seeing it on AudreyBella made me realize it is a very beautiful garment, but knowing I could make my own gave me fuel to just get it done.  I also had enough fabric left over to make my daughter a version, and so far so good.  Wish me luck on getting that one done in time.

If you would like to see the nearly finished version above on me, I gave the Instagram folks a sneak peek last night.
 

Here is a close-up of the fabrics.  The eyelet broderie fabric is from Fabric Mart last year and is definitely not around anymore.

Okay, that's it for now.  :-)

Real quickly, before I go, Boden has upped their mid-season sale to 50% off on some items, including a lot of the ones I have reviewed (Rainbow Knit sweater, French Knot sweater, etc.), so go on over to this post to learn more about the sale.  (The post says "up to 40%," but it was written earlier this week.)

Made by Me Files: New Look 6097/Almost a Starlet.

UPDATE: I wore the dress in Florida on our second evening of the vacation, and it was a hit.  Very easy to wear and exactly the right weight/color/pattern for the evening out at Downtown Disney.  I am eventually going to do an ootd post for the trip, but have decided to add two photos of me wearing this dress there to this post.  They are the first two photos you see below.

As you all know, I LOVE the Garnet Hill Starlet Knit dress.  Every year without fail I have purchased one or two of these dresses and anticipated yet another year of buying one.  Then I saw my choices and was a bit underwhelmed.

Fortunately for me, I learned to sew knits in the meantime and also happened upon a Reader Sew Along sponsored by one of my favorite fabric shops, Fabric Mart, so I decided to try to kill two birds with one stone, participate in my first ever sewalong and also make a dupe (as close as I could anyhow) of the Garnet Hill Starlet knit dress.

Here is the end result, all dolled up with a cute J. Crew cardigan.  It has many of the features of the starlet dress, including a crossover (surplice*) bodice, pockets, and a travel friendly knit that doesn't wrinkle.  It isn't perfect, but I am glad I made this one so the next one I make will be just like the Starlet knit dress.  I now know what I need to do to get it there, which will be outlined below in the other photos I share of this dress.

*The term surplice also refers to what priests wear.  Hmm.

But first I want to share the original I made of this pattern, which I knew was meant to be a muslin (or practice version), but secretly hoped would work out to be a wearable muslin.  In the end a few things kept it from being wearable, but I certainly learned a lot from the process of making it.  I actually made it a couple months ago, and was stoked when I learned about the sewalong since I had already done one version and had always had it in my mind to try again, so I appreciated the gentle nudge.

It looks *okay* above, but in reality it has issues. But first what I did right with this version...

1. The bodice is pretty well constructed.  The sides are on the correct sides (I reversed them by accident when I cut out the floral version), but in the end, and from what I see in my google searching, a whole lot of sewers out there do that too.

2. I also really dig how well my neckline was made on this version.  My floral version is not *quite* a hot mess, but I wasn't convinced that it was going to look good enough to wear until well after the process started.  I took a lot of time constructing this neckline, and I believe I did something better with this version to make it work better than the floral version.

3. Though hidden by the belt, the waistband was properly made.  I forgot this step in the construction of the floral version, which asked you to sew up the casing for the 1/4" elastic on the seam allowance from the waistband, but not onto the bodice.  It is so much cleaner looking.  To make sure your waistband stays up, you sew it up to the bodice at certain points (hand sewing).  On my floral version, I just sewed the casing with the seam allowance straight onto the bodice, and to make matters worse, the thread is very light, so if you look close you can see it.  Ugh.  At least it was on a patterned material, right?

4.  The sleeves look really good on this version.  I didn't add sleeves to the floral, but that was because I wanted it sleeveless, so it would look more like my Starlet dresses.

Here is what went wrong...

The skirt is a big huge mess.  The pockets turned out great, but I have had a lot of experience with these kind of pockets (pocket plus integrated yoke) that I can pretty much do these in my sleep now, which is pretty exciting.  The dang problem I faced with the skirt came from the fact that the bodice was cut at a 12 while I cut the skirt at a 16.  I could have cut a 12 skirt, but it would have been too fitted, and I really prefer something easier for summer.  In attempting to fit the skirt with the bodice, I added darts to the skirt, which did not work at all.  They look less messy from the front, but it is still bad in front.  Ugh.

OMG. So bad.  I am only showing you this photo so that if you have a different size on bottom than top...do not attempt darts in the skirt unless you really know what you are doing.  This mistake made the whole dress completely unwearable.  Sigh.  At least I was using a "freebie" fabric from Fabric Mart (it was in one of their "free" bundles they offer from time to time).  Lesson learned--sage green activewear knit fabric and darts do not mix unless you know what you are doing.

Having learned my lesson from the first version, this time I made sure to carefully pleat the bodice bits and to take care with the neckline (even though I thought I had screwed it up, I did better than I had thought).  I definitely made sure to GATHER the skirt waistband instead of darting the skirt to properly fit the bodice.  That was far more successful, and this time the skirt portion looks really good.  The pockets were still super easy.  :-)

From the side you can see it fits well, just skimming over my curves, but because of the pleating in the bodice, I have a little something something extra up top that I don't normally get.  :-)

The length is a bit short, honestly, and I need to remember to mark the pattern to increase the length of the skirt by two inches to make up for the extra length I need.  It looks fine this length, and is great for summer, but I prefer a bit more coverage usually.

The back views definitely looks better here than in the green version.  YAY!

There are a few things I am going to point out, though.  The back waist is still too long, and as usual with me I have just a touch of wrinkling above the waist.  The only way I can adjust for that is to do a swayback adjustment, but I need to practice that first before I try it on something I want to wear in real life.  I also *know* there is a better way to hem the sleeveless armscye.  Here I stitched 5/8" from the raw edge (with a zig-zag setting) which gathered the fabric a bit causing it to turn under a bit.  After that I placed stay tape in the seam allowance of the hem and pinned it all down and proceeded to stitch the stay tape and armscye hem all at the same time (3/8") with a straight stitch. Again, it looks fine, but I could have used the fabric from the sleeves that I had cut out (when I was cutting I wasn't sure if I really was going to go for the Starlet dress) and made binding from it which would have probably worked better to finish off this edge.  Oh, well, it works.

Here is a photo of the bodice before I sewed it all together.  I put the beginnings on Triple D (Dressmaker Dummy Dina) to make sure it looked okay.  Looking at this photo, I really wish I had been more careful with the neckline facing and the armhole bit.

Thankfully the pleats still look this good in the finished version.  Those pleats are awesome!  (Secret--I kind of hated them on the solid version, they look so cool in this floral version.)

Testing the bodice out on me.  I knew it would fit, but you are never supposed to rely just upon the mannequin, even if you are 99.9% sure everything will be fine.

For those of you wondering, I think investing in a dressmaker dummy is smart.  I rarely have big fitting issues since I have a static, objective body that looks just like mine in front of me.  I always can tell from her if something is just not going to fit, no matter how much I want it to.  Very sobering to put a few pins and some fabric or pattern paper on her and see that the seams are just too small to make it work.  That said, I can adjust for the changes needed before I start sewing, and that feels pretty good.  It is really hard to tissue fit on your own body without someone else there, and as much as I adore Angus, he would make a terrible assistant.

I nearly had the setting correct for the ITY knit fabric I used.  The bit in the middle shows how the seam is supposed to look.  To the right it is a bit loose, that is because I fed the fabric in at a different rate than I should have.

Oh, I should mention that sewing up the muslin of this pattern pretty much convinced me that getting a serger (overlocker) would be a great investment since sewing up the muslin with the sewing machine's knit stretch stitch (called the lightning bolt stitch) was a BEAR.  It took so long.  I still had to sew up parts of this floral dress with the sewing machine, but the seams on the bodice and the skirt were done on the serger and it took so little time.  Seriously it was like an hour less total time using the serger for that step.  (The serger sews very fast, has a very secure, stretchy stitch, and cuts and finishes the seams all at once.)  Now that I am more confident in the serger and what it can do, I might try to do more of my future projects on the serger to make them even easier.  For those of you wondering, I bought a Brother 1034D, which is pretty much what every sewer starting out buys when they go serger shopping the first time.  It is as good as all the reviews on Amazon make it out to be.  (I bought mine on ebay for a screaming deal, though, nearly $30 less than what it was on Amazon.)

Notes on this project:

1. Pattern: New Look 6097.

2. Fabric: ITY Knit from Fabric Mart (Brushwork Floral).

3. Changes made: Made it sleeveless, encased the waistband elastic by sewing the waistband to the bodice (not supposed to do that, though, so don't follow my example), and gathered the skirt to properly fit it into the smaller bodice size.

4. Changes I will make on the next project: Lengthen skirt by two inches, properly encase the waistband elastic the way I did in the muslin, face the armscye instead of turning the fabric and stitching, and be more careful with the neckline.

5. This project is part of the Fabric Mart Reader's Pick Sew Along.  I finished early, but you will know why when you read the next few sentences. 

Okay, that's it for now.  I hope everyone is ready for Easter weekend.  :-)  We are headed to Florida on Sunday night and guess what I am wearing Monday?  Yep, this dress!!!