Refashioning clothes

Pattern review is haveing a refashioning / recycling / re-constructuring competition. I love the idea of this and wanted to find all the wadders in my wardrobe and make them work for me...but sewing time is limited and I am a little bit absorbed in drafting knits at the moment (more about that later). However, I have found the time to complete one re-fashion.



I have only worn this dress once. It is a little frumpy. I wanted to turn it into a sleek dress, but decided that the shape of the top of the dress was not ideal. Then I thought about turning it into a 2-for-1 dress (to look like a skirt / dress combo), but I did not have a top that I was prepared to sacrifice to this project. So why not go down the easy route, and just make a skirt from it?

I am high-waisted. Normally, I try to dress to disguise this fact, but given that high-waisted garments are part of the current fashion cycle, I thought that I could just put a wide waist band on top of a waisted skirt and get the high waisted effect. Voila.


This is a self-drafted skirt pattern. Details on pattern review.

Dress like a star

I have been reading "Dress like a star" by Annebelle van Tongeren, which has had me drawing croquis again....that perfect dress still eludes me. Annebelle is an experienced stylist and has loads of tips for styles to play up our killer features and play down the not-so-good features...which is all very well if you can identify those. I have looked at my shape way more than anybody else's, so it all seems quite normal to me and I don't know what is out of proportion...though, I did hold my croquis over the top of a model in a fashion magazine...we matched head for head, neck, shoulders, waist, top of legs...and then the model's legs just kept on going. My feet lined up somewhere above her calves. So I guess I have short legs. Which would explain why my thighs stick out...if my legs were longer, all those leg cells would be distributed over a much greater area and would look slimmer.

Anyway, the nifty thing about Annebelle's book is that a lot of her line drawings match up with styles in the Vogue catalogue. So if you are a lover of Vogue patterns, which I am, you can get a bit of inside info on whether the style will suit you, before you make it up.

Here are my drawings...feel free to offer your opinions, because I do not have a very objective eye....

A is a pattern that I have bought to make a LBD.
I am trying to choose between B & E for a silk faille that I just bought.
I love pattern D, but it looks a bit brick-shaped on my croquis.



G is a Vogue pattern that I have been wondering whether or not to buy for a while now. I might be a little too old for it?
I like H, but have not found a pattern in this style yet.


O is a Marc Jacobs dress that I am thinking of copying, perhaps in denim.


P I have made already.
Q is a Vogue pattern that I love, but can't decide whether or not to buy.
R is in muslin stage.
S & T may be good give-away prizes.

Swimwear for children

Stuart is drawing up blocks for children's swimwear, but he needs more data on children's sizes. Now, we all love a pattern that fits, so if you can help out, please measure your children and input the data on this page.

Stuart's website www.patternschool.com has a lot of great info on making swimwear, drafting swimwear blocks and using these to make patterns. He provides all this info for free. He also provides free pattern downloads! This is a great resource and will be even greater if it is expanded to include children's swimwear.

Thanks, K.

Tailored skirt block & an A-line skirt

This skirt fits into the "simple style, gorgeous fabric" category. It is a 4-gored, A-line skirt made up in a Japanese cotton from Tessuti.

Originally, I was planning on generating the pattern using the Wild Ginger software program. I wanted to change the grain-line of the pattern and referred back to "Metric Pattern Cutting" by Winifred Aldrich. The skirt is cut with a CF and CB seam, with the grainline running down the centre of the panel, to give the skirt a better "hang". This is shown in the diagram below.



After reading through the chapter on skirts, I thought that their skirt block was different to the pattern that Wild Ginger was generating for me, so I decided to do a comparison of skirt blocks. This is what I found.

Comparing dart widths on different slopers
1. Wild ginger, my sloper, 4.8 cm back dart, 4.8 cm front dart
2. Winifred Aldrich, tailored skirt block, 4 cm back dart, 2 cm front dart
3. Helen Stanley, tailored skirt block, 6 cm back dart, 2.4 cm front dart
4. Vogue fitting shell (dress Sz 12), 4.8 cm back dart, 3.8 cm front dart
5. Vogue 1037, Badgley Mischka straight skirt, 3 cm back dart, 2.4 cm front dart (must be for small bums!)
6. My duct tape skirt sloper, 5.8 cm back dart, 2 cm front dart

The dart width does not change with size.

I have made a dress muslin using my Wild Ginger slopers. One of my problems is excess fabric at the front of the skirt. I don't know if the program can alter the width of the front dart, but I can't work out how to do it. I have used the Winifred Aldrich block, post pregnancy when I was a bigger size, and was happy with it. I want to move to computer aided design, but was not sure whether to use Winifred's block as-is, or modify it to accomodate the larger dart that I got developing a duct tape skirt sloper. After reviewing the photos of muslins made from my duct tape sloper, I can see that there is a problem in the back dart area, so first up, I went with Winifred's block as-is.

Now, because I wanted to sew a skirt quickly, and not mess about with muslins, I modified the block to an A-line skirt without making a straight skirt muslin...which is not too risky, given that I have used the block before (with a larger waist measurement) and I have done a lot of flat pattern measurement comparisons.

So a pretty simple pattern, but I think it fits well and it was satisfying to sew up a project in one day. I was tempted to add a hem band, but reminded myself that I am trying to "sew simple" for a bit.

Wrap denim skirt

I wanted to get a few clothes sewn quickly, but it seems everything takes me longer than I would like it to. This is my first completed project for the year, and I must confess, I don't actually like it very much. The pattern is Burda WOF 4/2006 113 mock wrap skirt. The zip / wrap bit at the front is mock, and the skirt opening is actually an invisible zipper in the CB seam. I added a front hip pocket and a back pocket, to give it a denim-skirt look. Somehow, I still have a very boring skirt.



I don't think the problem is the pattern, I think it is the fabric. It is a stretch denim from Knitwit, bought a few years ago. It is not really my colour, so it sat in my stash for a while, until I saw pictures of the following Chloe skirt on net-a-porter. I wasn't trying to reproduce the Chloe skirt, just go with the same sort of feel.





I think the fabric has too much elastane, which makes it hot and drapey...whoever heard of a VPL in a denim skirt?? I was wondering if I should try distressing the denim. My quick internet search shows that denim can be distressed by rubbing it with sandpaper. Sounds to me like it would be similar to plucking your eyebrows...it is important to know when to stop! Have any of you tried distressing your own denim projects?

I do like the buckle. I took it from my mother's sewing box a few years ago for a baby bag I was making. It has been in her box forever...I remember playing with it and a matching green buckle when I was a child. She has a beautiful wooden sewing box with hinged drawers that I used to love looking into.