Tag: Marcy Tilton

Dr Seuss Cirque Dress

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No sooner had I blogged about Marcy Tilton’s new dresses than I found an online store with a sale, and bought both of the patterns! As you do…

I decided that I had just enough of my precious organic cotton Lorax fabric from eQuilter to make the Cirque dress (Vogue 9112), if I left off the collar. To be honest I would have left off the collar anyway, as it’s much easier to wear a necklace or a scarf with a flat neckline, and it was the shape of the rest of the dress that I was particularly drawn to.

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Unfortunately I faltered at the first hurdle, which was finding a space big enough to lay the fabric out flat in a single layer in order to cut it out! Because every single piece is a different shape, nothing’s cut on the fold and duplicated, so you really do need to be able to lay out the pieces as shown. I tried the bed, but it made my husband nervous (let us not mention the Snipping Of The Duvet Cover incident from a  few years ago) and it made my back hurt. Plus trying to cut on a squashy surface is very inaccurate, which is the last thing you need with a dress like this! I did eventually find success on the living room floor, but my back and knees were really not at all happy about it.

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Once I’d got it to a state where it was try-on-able, I could see that it’s going to be a really great summer dress! I went down a size, as I often do with patterns that are generous in the waist and hips, so this is a Vogue/Marcy Tilton size M. It’s the tiniest bit tight across the shoulders when worn with a t-shirt underneath, but I need to make some minor alterations to the centre back seam anyway, so I can easily fix that next time around.

I made very few alterations to the pattern, as it was my first time making this dress, and I wanted to make sure that I understood it before I started messing about with it! I left off the collar, but that was very straightforward. I also changed the construction order very slightly, to attach the four pocket pieces before joining the front and back of the dress at the shoulders. It was just easier to manoeuvre it through the machine that way, and it made no difference whatsoever to the outcome of the dress.

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The only other thing I did differently from the instructions was to sew the bottom hem and the neck and armhole bindings by hand, as I didn’t particularly fancy cream topstitching on this very multi-coloured fabric. It took a while, but the finish was worth it.

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I’m not 100% convinced that these pale colours actually suit me very well (a difficulty of buying fabric online!), but I plan to wear this dress with an obnoxiously bright green long sleeve t-shirt underneath it, so I think it’ll look fine. I’m very pleased with the fit, and only plan to make two alterations next time. The first will be to curve the centre back seam to match the curve of my spine, and the second will be to cut away the armholes just a tiny fraction more at the front, and also raise them a little bit as they’re quite deep.

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I wore this dress for a day of mooching about when my parents visited, and found it really comfortable to wear. The pockets are nice and big, I think the dress will be a great length to wear either with or without leggings underneath, and I have at least five pieces of fabric earmarked to make more! It seemed to fit together much more easily than the Marcy Tilton dresses I made last year, but it still has the lovely piecing and asymmetrical styling that I really like.

Top marks to this one, I can’t wait to sew it again!

Smart Casual

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I work in a museum where the dress code is “smart casual”. For many of the staff, this most often means jeans, converse, and a nice top of some description. Maybe a White Stuff or Boden dress. For the visitor services desk (where I work), it means probably not jeans, and primarily Something Warm. The museum’s temperature controlled, to look after the objects, and of course the front door’s opening all the time, so it’s largely freezing. As someone who’s pretty much always largely freezing myself, this has been presenting some sartorial challenges lately. There have been days where, despite the heater nestled under the desk, I simply haven’t taken my coat off, which doesn’t look terribly smart! (Normal rules don’t apply when you’re in the museum’s garden, holding a chicken. Obviously. I love my job.)

10414450_10153106962778829_244072257356306818_nTo try and overcome my chilliness I have been knitting a cardigan… but I’m a very slow knitter, and I’m still only a back and half a sleeve into this one. Once I get into the cables, it could be a fair while before this cardi sees the light of day. Sewing, of course is much quicker, so I’ve been on the lookout for a nice smart jacket pattern that I could whip up in lots of colours to match all my different trousers.

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This is Vogue 1435, a very smart suit by Tom & Linda Platt. I’ll never wear the dress (not least because I can no longer reach behind myself to do up a back zip – stupid fibromyalgia), but the draped jacket looks as though it would be interesting to sew, and easy to wear like a cardigan over lots of different tops. The collar would keep the back of my neck warm, and it wouldn’t look as though I’ve left my outdoor coat on indoors. The pattern recommends both tweed and linen, so that’s summer and winter covered right there!

I’ve been waiting for a pattern sale to come along, because Vogue patterns at full price are out of my budget, so I almost always buy them in a sale. Except I obviously wasn’t paying enough attention, because the sale in my local fabric shop ended yesterday. Drat.

But!

The pattern sale also means new patterns, and Marcy Tilton blogged about two new dresses that she’s designed for Vogue, so I had to go and check them out.

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This is Vogue 9112, the “cirque” dress. It looks a bit short because the model’s extremely tall, but a centre back length of 35″ should bring it just about down to my knees. Again, the big collar should keep the back of my neck warm, the loose shape makes it perfect for wearing over trousers, and of course it has the all-important pockets, tucked away in the side seams. Unusually, this dress is shown in only one fabric, but I think the piecing means it would work well in different colours. As with all of Marcy’s patterns, the construction is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, but the resulting shape makes it worth the extra little bit of brain power required.

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This one’s Vogue 9108, the “apron” dress. Designed as a layering piece, it comes complete with patterns for leggings and a long-sleeved t-shirt to wear underneath. Like several of Marcy’s dresses it’s longer at the front than the back, though I think that could be easily altered on this one if you felt like it. It’s designed for stretch knits, so this would be an extremely comfortable summer dress. (There’s also a version with crossover straps at the back, which reminds me of a dress I wore constantly during the early 1990s.)

But!

I’ve made two Marcy Tilton dresses already, and I simply don’t wear them very much.

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I blogged about the construction of Vogue 8975, but I haven’t worn the resulting dress more than a few times, even though it’s extremely comfortable and I really like it. Firstly, I think I made a mistake with the neckline because no matter how much I iron it, it simply refuses to stay flat. Very irritating. So I think I need to unpick that and do it again. Secondly, I’m just not quite convinced that it’s smart enough to wear to work. I have done, and nobody’s complained… but it’s not quite on a par with the Tom & Linda Platt lady in her nice swingy jacket, is it?

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I made this one in January 2014, and despite being deeply in love with it, I don’t think I’ve worn it once. Okay, so the tea-dyed fabric was an experiment, and I like the way it looks, but honestly, I can’t go to work in a dress covered in (albeit deliberate) tea stains, no matter how comfortable it is. And given the colour, and the smocking, and the nature of the museum… it’s just going to look as though I’ve borrowed a 19th century smock straight out of the collection. Not ideal.

I could re-make it in a different fabric (I have plenty, and I had lots of ideas and enthusiasm once I’d finished making it!), but at the end of the day, will I ever actually put on the resulting dress and wear it? I don’t know.

I go through these phases every now and then, of deciding that I must dress more smartly for work. Sometimes it’s brogues and button-down shirts. Sometimes it’s a nice tweed jacket. Sometimes it’s vintage dresses, novelty print blouses, or lots of organic cotton chinos.

Is it time to grow up, smarten up, and become the sort of woman who wears a smart jacket to work? Or is it time to embrace my inherent need for comfort and desire for funny-shaped clothes, and just give in to the eccentric middle-aged art teacher look? And more to the point, how on earth do I decide?

Another piece of Marcy Tilton magic

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This is some organic cotton jersey, bought from the Organic Textile Company, oooh, ages ago. It was sold as seconds because it had been dried in a malfunctioning drier, and smelled terribly of exhaust fumes. Thankfully a quick trip through my own washer and dryer sorted that out, no problem at all. But it wasn’t until I came to iron the fabric before cutting into it that I spotted this perfect hand print! Fortunately it’s on the inside, but it did make me laugh to see it. Genuine evidence of the handmade nature of the fabric!

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The jersey has now been transformed into Vogue 8975, another Marcy Tilton pattern. That woman must be some kind of pattern drafting genius, because I’ve finished making this dress, and worn it a couple of times, and I still have absolutely no idea how all of the pattern pieces came together to make this shape.

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I used masking tape on all of the cut pieces, partly to identify the right and wrong sides of the fabric, and partly to make sure that I was sewing everything together the right way up. My diagonal seam across the back has ended up going in the opposite direction from the illustration on the pattern envelope, but other than that it all seems to have come together rather well!

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I did annotate the pattern as I was going along. I found it very important to just throw out all of the things I thought I knew about dressmaking, and just follow the instructions. Where it says “stop stitching at small circle”, you stop stitching at the small circle, even if you have a weird triangle-y piece of fabric sticking out in an inexplicable manner, even if you think you know better, or want to try and take a shortcut. Just don’t. Trust the instructions, and it will all come out fine in the end!

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Ta-Daa! My only deviation from the instructions was in the binding of the armhole edges, and I wish I’d just followed the pattern. Instead of a smooth armscye, I now have slightly flanged minuscule cap sleeves, which I didn’t really want. This is what happens when you’re trying to finish sewing a dress at eleven o’clock at night because you really want to wear it to work the next day, and you decide that trimming away the seam allowances and binding them properly will “take too long”. (Note to self: It would have taken exactly the same amount of time, and looked much nicer. Next time: Do It Properly.)

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As with my previous Marcy Tilton patterns, I went down from my usual Vogue size and cut out a medium. This has given me a perfect fit across the top (where I’m smallest), and the shape of the pattern means that there’s plenty of room at the waist and hips. I think my only disappointment with this design (and it’s ever such a tiny one) is that the pockets aren’t actually as big as all that draping makes them look. They don’t need to be huge, but I think I will alter the pattern slightly to make them just an inch or so longer.

I’ve worn this dress a couple of times now, and I’m extremely tempted to make another identical one. It’s so comfortable to wear, and I’m so pleased with how it looks, I’m definitely going to need more than one of these in my wardrobe!

Search for the perfect dress

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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!

New Year, New Dress!

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First completed garment of 2014 – this is Marcy Tilton for Vogue, 8813. The fabric is silk noile, dyed in my tea urn with about six months’ worth of saved tea bags. I blogged about my failed attempt at dyeing the fabric and scalding my foot, but apparently I failed to mention the second attempt, which came out looking lovely! Well, I think so, anyway.

Paul doesn’t much like the black marks, which are iron stains from rusty nails. I’m slightly concerned that people will make “hilarious” jokes about tea stains, but I really love this fabric. I plan to over-dye it every six months or so with the tea bags that I’m still saving. I figure that each successive dye bath will add new stains and patches and colours, which will add lots of depth and texture.

Some of you have been following the progress of the smocking over on Facebook… ta-da!

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I’m slightly peeved about the wonky bit in the centre, caused by a dart that I added after the smocking rather than before. Note to self: read the instructions all the way through, especially if you’re making changes to the pattern.

Often when I’ve finished sewing something I’m so sick of the sight of it that I can’t even think about making another one. I enjoyed working on this dress so much that I’m already thinking about different colour combinations, and wondering how many I can get out of the fabrics I’ve already got in my stash. There’s a version suggested with contrasting colour panels, one with buttons on the enormous pockets… and I want to wear them all!

Vogue 8813

Notes on the pattern: BE CAREFUL. It’s not difficult by any means, but there are a few places where you need to be really accurate otherwise you’ll come unstuck. You also need to read the instructions properly *cough*, as the pocket construction in particular is a bit origami-like. The back, by way of contrast is completely plain and flat.

Fitting-wise, the only measurement you need to worry about is the full bust. If the dress is too tight across the front, it’ll be too tight under the arms and through the cap sleeves. I still went down a size from my usual Vogue Large to a Medium, and there’s plenty of room to breathe.

Vogue 8499

This, as you may be able to tell, is not another dress. It is another Marcy Tilton though, Vogue 8499. These trousers have a flat front and elasticated back, large pockets, and darts at the knees. They’re very wide at the hips, tapered at the ankle, and sit very high at the waist. Perfect!

My only complaint about this pattern is that there are no actual garment measurements given anywhere! If I’d sewn my usual Vogue size 18 or 20, these would have been phenomenally huge, even for a very baggy style like this. After reading a lot of reviews online, I took a gamble and made a size 14. This has turned out spot on, thank goodness. Any smaller and I wouldn’t have been able to pull them over my hips, but thankfully there’s still plenty of ease.

Once again, parts of the pattern require absolute accuracy. I ended up with a tiny hole in the waistband where I sewed past one of the small dots by a couple of stitches, though it was easily fixed.

This picture doesn’t really do them justice, although I think you can get an idea of the shape. I think they’ll also work well in lightweight corduroy, or maybe a nice drapey suit wool. They’re so comfortable that, like the dress, I want to make more already!