Tag: Simplicity

Pirate Shirt

Simplicity 4923

Today, rather than sewing something I actually need, like a dress for work or a winter coat, I decided to make a pirate shirt. As you do. (If you’re me.)

The pattern is Simplicity 4923, view C. I made a size Medium.
The fabric is just a plain black polycotton, and the cuffs are trimmed with flat broderie anglais lace – all from my stash. The collar size and length are just right, but the sleeves are absolutely ridiculous – even by 18th century standards. I could easily shorten them by four or five inches and they’d still be enormous!

Next time I think I’d like to make one in a nice soft white linen. I’ve found the perfect linen buttons too – just like the ones on the smocks at MERL. In fact, I might employ a technique I saw on a number of the MERL smocks, and make some horizontal tucks in the sleeves to shorten them.

I also want to have a look at The Cut of Men’s Clothes by Norah Waugh, and see what I want to do about the front fastening. I don’t really want to add eyelets and ribbon, so I might go for thread loops and little buttons. I should have done that on the sleeves, but for the sake of convenience (and maybe a touch of laziness) I went for snap fasteners instead.

There’s another goth night in a couple of weeks, so I plan to wear this with Paul’s old leather trousers. If I have time, I might make a waistcoat to go over the top. I’ve still got a piece of black and silver brocade that should be just about big enough.

A dress to match the ties.

Simplicity 2307

Okay, so I did have an ulterior motive for making those last two ties. This is the dress version of Simplicity 2307, the same as the fish blouse I made a little while ago. Once I’d cut out the hem band, sleeve bands and neck facing I had plenty of fabric left over, so a couple of ties seemed like the way to go.

This dress isn’t supposed to fasten at the neck, but I find it a little low cut for my liking. I plan to add a hook and eye, or a little button and a thread loop, and I thought that a matching tie would be the perfect finishing touch.

Hopefully it will also help to disguise the fact that I just can’t seem to get the neck facing to sit nice and flat. I had the same problem on the fish blouse, but thought that it was to do with having too many layers of interfacing. I didn’t interface the neck facing this time, and the back piece just doesn’t want to stay put. I need to double check the pattern piece, because it seems as though there’s just too much fabric there.

I’m also a little bit uncertain about the proportions of this pattern. With the hem band it comes down to my knees, which is fine, but there’s something about the length of the dress or the depth of the band that just isn’t quite right. Maybe the band needs to be a little less deep. Maybe the dress needs to be a couple of inches shorter. Maybe the band stands out too much because of the contrasting fabric. I’m not sure.

I think I need to wear this one a couple of times, before I decide what alterations I need to make to the next version.

Dr Seuss Dress?

It has to be said that I’m well known for making ridiculous dresses from quilting fabrics with completely inappropriate prints. So when I discovered that eQuilter were stocking Dr Seuss fabrics, my heart leapt!

There are seventeen different prints, but I think that these two are the most suitable least inappropriate best ones for making a dress.

The sketch above is Simplicity 2307, the same as the fish blouse I made the other week. The version with the hem band provides the perfect opportunity for using a novelty print fabric without the garment being too overwhelming or “cartoony”. I hope.

I have a couple of fabric combinations already lined up for this dress, so I’ll make a version with the hem band and see how it looks. Then I need to decide whether a thirty-seven-year-old woman should really leave the house wearing a dress with a Dr Seuss print.

(I think we all know that the answer’s yes.)

Simplicity 2307

Simplicity 2307

This is Simplicity 2307, a brand new Project Runway pattern.
The fabric is a cute little goldfish print by Heather Ross, that I bought from Cia’s Palette a couple of years ago. It was a skirt, for a while.

I have to confess that I don’t always like Project Runway patterns. They tend to offer lots of variations, which I do like, but they seem to make things unnecessarily complicated, which I don’t.

Having said that, there are only two things that I struggled with a little bit on this one. The first was the pleats at the top of the sleeves. You have to make two little pleats and then overlap them at the top. This looks beautiful when you’ve done it, but the instructions on exactly what you needed to fold to where to make this happen didn’t seem very clear. The second was that by the time I’d interfaced both the collar and the facing there were six layers around the neck, which makes it a bit stiff. Next time I probably won’t stiffen the facing, and I’ll trim the seam allowances of the collar a bit more closely.

Despite the fiddly aspects of the pintucks and the pleats and the collar and the little tie belt at the back, this was actually a fairly straightforward pattern to put together though. You do have to be super accurate in your cutting and sewing though. Otherwise you’ll find little frustrations, such as the sleeve bands being a couple of millimetres too short, or the sleeve heads not fitting in quite right. This is definitely a precision piece.

The pattern doesn’t give a blouse length, but I was restricted by having such a small amount of cloth to play with. I ended up using every last inch of my fishy fabric – you have to promise not to notice that the fish are in fact swimming sideways around the sleeve bands!

Simplicity 5310

Simplicity 5310

This is Simplicity 5310, a blouse from 1972.

Skycarrots gave me the pattern a long time ago, and I’ve always liked the blouse, but my sewing machine hates making buttonholes. I’ve finally got around to making a version that doesn’t have buttons all the way up the front, and I’ll just put poppers on the collar and cuffs. Next I need to decide whether I’m going to make the super-long 1970s collar, or whether I’m going to make it a bit rounder or smaller.

I really like the basic shell of the blouse though, and I can’t wait to see what those enormous sleeves look like when they’re gathered into the cuffs!