Month: December 2008

In love with a coat.

I blame Erin, of A Dress A Day. She frequently posts very beautiful things on her blog, and normally I manage to resist.

This time, however, I seem to have fallen madly in love.

These beauties are designed by Samiah.
They’re the Winterfield and the Bailey. 

I’m a sucker for coats, and I’m a sucker for heavy furnishing-style fabrics, so Samiah has me on both counts there. They’re available in a wide range of beautiful colours, and they can be made to your own measurements.

I think what I like about them most is that they’re fantastical and imaginative, without being too costumey. There’s no doubt that the Bailey is a coat fit for a pirate queen, but you could wear it for any occasion without feeling as though you’ve accidentally turned up in fancy dress.

(A feeling that I, sadly, know all too well!)

Slither

Last night I started knitting the Slither gloves, from Knitty.

Today I will mostly be unravelling them, and starting again. Wah!
(I made a mistake right at the beginning of the stripes, dammit.)

The pattern is marked as “tangy”, which is not really very complicated in the great scheme of things. The particular difficulty with this pattern is that you’re doing three things at the same time.

Decrease every sixth row; repeat twelve times.
Change colour every eighth row; repeat ten times.
Make a buttonhole on the third row of every colour change.

Given my current inability to remember what day it is, I can’t keep all of that lot in my brain and knit at the same time. So, I have made myself a handy chart, writing out the rows in blocks of two stripes at a time. I’ve simply numbered the rows, 1-16 in five columns, and I’ve written “dec” or “butt” on the appropriate row, to remind me that I have to do something other than just keep knitting.

Now I just need to keep track of which row I’m working on, and everything will be fine!

 

 

The pattern and the image above are © Veronica O’Neil. She also has some handy hints and comments about the pattern on her blog!

Paris Promenade Dress

I was invited to a 1920s Tea Dance, so of course I took the opportunity to make a 1920s dress!

Tea Dance, Rising Sun Tea Dance, Rising Sun

It’s Folkwear 261, the “Paris Promenade Dress”.
That’s front and back – you can tell the back by the tassels on the ends of the sash. (Look closely – they’re camouflaged, but they are there.)

Folkwear are apparently very accurate with their period sewing patterns, and this one assumed that you weren’t going to be using a sewing machine for anything but the long, straight seams. This meant that it was constructed in such a way that you couldn’t use a sewing machine for anything but the long, straight seams, and so I spent a Very Long Time doing a heck of a lot of hand sewing.

I’m very, very pleased with the work that’s gone into this dress. There was a lot of hand sewing, and the construction was like origami, but I’m (mostly) happy with the results.

Tea Dance, Rising Sun

I also made a last-minute hat which apparently made me look like some kind of demented floral sous-chef, which wasn’t quite the look I’d been going for. Pretend you didn’t see that, if you like. 😉

Tea Dance, Rising Sun

Here’s the dress, complete with bad hair moment after I’d decided that I couldn’t tolerate the stupid hat any longer.

That front apron part actually works as one truly ENORMOUS pocket, by the way. (Not all the way down to the point, there’s a seam about half way across the wide part, on the inside. That I sewed by hand. Aargh.)

That poofy bit at the hem is REALLY ANNOYING. Doesn’t do it on the dress form. Doesn’t do it on the coathanger. Doesn’t do it on the ironing board. Put the dress on? Poof. Grrrrr.
The hem is actually on a very deep fold of the fabric, so even though it’s been pressed into place, it’s draping differently because I’m not the same shape as my dress form. I think the best way to fix this is going to be to have someone else pin the hem into place while I’m wearing it, and then I can press the fold in the same place that it’s going to fall when the dress is being worn.

I have to say that the dress was absolutely FABULOUS to wear. I’m not usually a fan of synthetic fabrics, but the main body of the dress is a polyester crepe lightweight suiting, and it flows and drapes absolutely beautifully. Because the sash is also slippery (polyester georgette), you can lift your arms up very easily, and the dress just slides around. So floaty, so comfortable, and very glamorous-feeling.

Possibly also very comfortable because the narrowest part of the dress measures 68″ around, with the widest part clocking in at 84″. (That’s roughly twice as big as me.) I’d been a bit worried that all that fabric might make it look as though I’d gone to a party in a big beige sack, but thankfully that wasn’t the case at all!

I’m half considering making another one, perhaps in black. And without the silly hat.