Saturday, January 9

Work Wardrobe Part 1

Well as some of you know - Cherub No. 2 is flying the next to take up a teaching position in Central Queensland, where it's hot and steamy.  So a work wardrobe is in order.

We've been stockpiling fabric ... cause you know you never have the right fabric for your projects do you???

Anyways starting with a dress.

From the book Gertie Sew Vintage Casual Sarah decided on Summer dress with flared skirt, but she didn't want the cut out shoulder look - easier to wear bras and we didn't want the collar piece either.

So Sarah drafted off the pattern to her size and I sewed it up making an alteration to having a fully lined bodice. 

Now whilst I wasn't 100% happy with the way it turned out, I had to do some judicious trimming to make skirt and bodice fit together, I think perhaps this was our error rather than the pattern.  The bodice was wider than the skirt - the instructions do say to grade the bodice in, but we had to grade in a fair bit to fit the skirt, so I graded the bodice less and chopped the skirt down at the waist with the desired effect of the skirt fitting the bodice better.   

We've made a skirt from the book as well and it turned our great, so I think it was just this alteration that just wasn't what I was expecting.

It looks pretty cute on though.


 Next up Lekala 4452 - Blouse with Bow

This was our first endeavour with the Lekala patterns, reviews seem to be mixed, but Sarah is a fairly standard sizing, but we put in her measurements, paid for the pattern - which was on sale, I went with A0 for printing and added the seam allowance, it cost us AUD$6 for two patterns.

Toddled off to upload to office works to have printed and I ran into some hiccups - the Lekala patterns have more than one page to them, so you need to check which ones you actually need to upload.   In the end, I just took the USB to Officeworks and told them which page to print.   $4 well spent if you ask me, I really, really dislike taping A4 pages together and will avoid that pattern if I can.  Unless I absolutely adore it if it doesn't come in A0 for a grown up pattern you can forget it. 

So then we cut it out - and I'm looking at it going - eek where does it open??  No buttons, no zips.  As it turns out it fits very nicely over your head and doesn't need zip or buttons.

I made an oopsie with the collar in that I attached the undercollar to the blouse instead of the upper collar and so its not as neat as it should be.   

The instructions are pretty brief, but there are graininess and plenty of notches to help you match up - there isn't a notch for CB but the collar actually have two notches in the CB at both the outer and inner edge of the collar, so you can work it out - don't forget to do a mirror image cutting the collars out and decide which way you want the collar to sit - right or left.    

We made this one in quilting weight fabric and went with no bow - next version will have the bow.

It fits pretty well, it's looser around the waist that Sarah perhaps wanted, but she's going to tuck it in anyways and her skirts seem to sit a bit lower, than I myself like the wear them, and they aren't snug at the waist, which would pull the top in a bit if they were.  

It's pretty cute, the sleeves went in without a hiccup, but if you need detailed instructions, these probably aren't that patterns for you, but if you sew a lot and have a good understanding of garment construction, they are good.  



On the agenda for tomorrow, alterations to the hems of two pants, and the waist of a skirt, along with another blouse from Lekala and a skirt ...  Will I get everything finished by the 17th?????

 

2 comments:

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