Tag: Gossypium

Search for the perfect dress

McCalls M5924

 

Every now and then I get a bee in my bonnet about finding “the perfect dress”. Over the years it’s been vintage patterns that weren’t even remotely the same shape as my body, fiddly patterns that I hated to sew, or patterns that looked beautiful but turned out to be really uncomfortable to wear. I have dozens of these in my wardrobe, but it wasn’t until this morning that I realised the perfect dress is already amongst them.

McCalls 5924

This is McCalls 5924 (now out of print), and I’ve made two so far. The top one is a nice heavy cotton jersey, the one above is a lightweight drapey viscose knit, and the pattern works equally well in both. They’re empire line, which suits my shape, they have the all-important pockets, they layer well, and they’re really, really comfortable. I have enough fabric in the stash to make at least two more, and I don’t know what’s taken me so long!

While I was thinking about my wardrobe and the things I’d like to add to it, I added some more Gossypium yoga pants to my wish list. Then I realised that there’s almost certainly a yoga pants pattern out there somewhere, which is when I spotted New Look 6165. Not only yoga pants, but a skirt with the same fold-over waist! Ideal for wearing over leggings, and no elastic to dig in and give me a stomach ache. Perfect!

Of course, there’s always room for more than one “perfect dress” in any wardrobe. Which brings me to Vogue 8975. Another Marcy Tilton pattern (like the smocked silk dress), this time for knit fabrics and complete with a little jacket to wear over the top. Conveniently, my local fabric shop has a sale on both New Look and Vogue patterns at the moment, so I think a trip into town will be forthcoming early next week!

My next challenge will be to go through both my wardrobe and my pattern stash, and get rid of some things that I’m simply never going to wear or make. I’m the sort of person who will quite happily buy clothes in multiples if I find something that I like, so I have no problem at all with wearing the same few dresses over and over again. I’m trying not to think about how much money I must have spent over the years on patterns that didn’t suit me once they were made up, or fabric that turned out to be difficult to look after or uncomfortable to wear. All of that trial and error has brought me here – to the knowledge of which patterns I like to sew, and which clothes I like to wear. The photo above is an old one, but despite all the dressmaking I do, I basically live in a hoody, a stripy t-shirt, and a pair of ancient jeans that haven’t fit properly for a long time. Time for a bit of an overhaul, I think!

Regency dresses or summer tunics?

This is Vogue 8434, a pattern I added to my stash recently – partly because I was thinking about shirts for the summer, and partly because Vogue were having a sale.

In my giant fabric mountain I have nine metres of linen – three metres each of black, white and purple. I also have three metres each of matching cotton lawn. This was originally earmarked for making three lined Regency-ish dresses to wear on a three-day trip to London next month.

I’d been wondering what to wear underneath the Regency dresses (more bloomers? Long, loose trousers?) and then I remembered that I have these Gossypium yoga trousers in black, white and purple. The purple ones used to be pale pink, but I dyed them in the same wash as the purple cotton lawn, so now they’re a perfect match! I could make three of these tunics in linen… or in lawn… or in linen with floaty lawn sleeves…

Question is, which am I going to get more wear out of – three Regency-ish dresses, or three long linen tunics…?

(And more to the point, what shoes am I going to wear?!)

Yoga pants and psychic powers.

Last week I was looking at these lovely yoga pants from Gossypium, and lamenting that I didn’t have £35 to spend on a pair of trousers just at the moment.

Today I was finally able to reach into my pattern stash at the back of the Shed (which still has a great deal of kitchen piled up in front of it, as we gradually move everything back indoors) and pulled out Vogue 8396. I must have been hanging on to this pattern for a long while, as it’s now out of print, but version C has that fold-over waist that I was looking for.

I unfolded all the pieces and pulled out the ones I’d need to make the trousers in view C. Then I tried to figure out which size to cut. Unfortunately I didn’t bring my psychic powers out with me today, which means that I still don’t know.

The trouble with dressmaking is that the measurements given on the pattern envelope are almost never the same as the finished measurements of the garment that you’re making. That’s because each pattern has a certain amount of “ease” built in, to make sure that you can still breathe and eat and sit down and move around once your garment’s finished. So the pattern pieces usually tell you the actual measurements of the finished garment.

Except that this one doesn’t.

Given that they’re close-fitting trousers, made from stretchy fabric, it would be reasonable to assume that there isn’t any ease – that the measurements given on the envelope are the ones you’ll end up with. But then again, stretch garments (especially leggings) tend to have negative ease, so that they stretch when you put them on. That’s how they stay up.

Normally I’d cut out the pattern, pin it together and carefully try it on – but for a stretch garment that doesn’t really work. I can’t afford to waste either the time or the fabric to make a pair of trousers that don’t actually fit, so I guess I need to iron the pattern pieces, measure them carefully, subtract the seam allowances, and try to work it out that way.

Or, given that the Gossypium ones are now reduced to half price, I might just give in and buy a pair!