Ruched Black And White Stripe Dress

I have been working with the Drape Drape 2 book again.

 I am a bit of a bore here and sadly no new design to share. 

It's the same pattern with the altered top that I used for my first version in an awesome royal blue colour:  http://mycolourfultexture.blogspot.com/2015/02/royal-blue-draped-dress.html

Well I guess it's my favourite sewing pattern to use with stretch fabrics... ^_^

The hem of my new dress is slightly longer (about 2 cm), neckline simpler and the jersey fabric is a bit warmer. I fell in love with the fabric when I first saw it and since I don't have anything in stripes I really wanted to use it.

I was working on this dress when it was really warm and sunny and remember thinking to myself: 'Oh man, I'll have to wait until winter to wear this dress..'' with a sad face. 

How wrong was I! Be careful what you wish for as they say.. It suddenly got so cold that not only did I get to wear this striped dress now but I also took my green winter coat out again.

Note:  While sewing I experimented with a few stitches and machine feet and discovered that my Bernina can do a blind/ invisible stitch.  

 It's Bernina foot no 5 and looks like this:

Add caption

I was such a relief to learn that, from now on no more (or much less) hand stitching!^_^ 

When you try to achieve a minimalist look of your garment and don't want any top stitching then this blind stitch is perfect. I used it on the hem, sleeves and even to secure the interfacing around the neckline.

Malgosia

Revamp your wardrobe

Recently while decluttering my wardrobe, I found a lot of dresses that were pretty much new, I bought some of them on sale and others as impulse purchases.
I'd been reading a bit about body types and colour analysis and now I could see that the styles didn't fit my figure at all and the colours were completely wrong, no wonder these garments spent so much time just hanging in a wardrobe.
Unfortunately I worked through this project so fast that I forgot to take any before pictures..

You can see in my previous post that I've already revamped a shirt:  http://mycolourfultexture.blogspot.com/2015/04/revamp-your-clothes.html

This dress was made from below the knee pencil jersey skirt with side ruching and a loose tunic with a nice bra detail.

The ties look really nice crossed over the front:

Or can be tied at the back:

You can see the ruching here, it's a narrow hip friendly detail:

Revamp your clothes

This is a shirt I made for the military fashion project at college. I've always liked it but have never worn, it might have look good for a fashion show or a photo shoot but I found it too theatrical for a daily wear. Six years later I say it's time to revamp it!

Before:

Photograpy by Orange Lemur 

Photograpy by Orange Lemur 

Photograpy by Orange Lemur 

And today my shirt looks like this:

I added a zip closure and removed the military buttons and blue and gold cords. The stand up mandarin collar now turns down:

The sleeves  became much narrower and the long tight cuffs are turned up now with buttons:

And the back is plain now.

This is just a close up of my screen prints with hand embroidered french knots:

Malgosia

Royal Blue Isn't Only For Royal Family

This is my third garment that I have sewn from the Draped Draped book. The designs are really  something special, some of them with a very artistic, 'elaborate' look to them, one might struggle to find an occasion to wear them.


This is the lovely book:

I tend to use the patterns as a guidance and modify them to my liking or mix and match with my own patterns. I made this vest last summer with no changes though:

http://mycolourfultexture.blogspot.com/2014/04/sewing-from-drape-drape-2.html



The design from the Drape Drape 2 book, I've only used the skirt pattern and drafted my own close fitting top to go with it:

And finally this is my version:

Lovely royal blue medium weight cotton stretch fabric with ribbed neckline.

I made this purple tassel necklace to go with the dress:

I dyed my hair a couple days prior to the shoot. The red/ orange shade creates a nice contrast with the blue colour, doesn't it?

And lastly- what do you guys think about the dress?


Gosia xx

How To Brighten Up Your Days In Winter..

I always struggle with not only finding a coat/ jacket that fits me fine (the sleeves in my size are always too short in those store bought jackets and the fitting in general is just off!), there just aren't any styles and colours that appeal too me in affordable prices. In these kind of situations I feel extremely glad that I can not only draft my own sewing patterns but know how to use a sewing machine as well.^_^

How to brighten up long winter days? Sew/ wear a vibrant piece of clothing!
I've made my own jackets a few times, I altered existing ones by lengthening sleeves in the past.
However, designing and sewing a coat was a little bit more difficult.
I dreamt of a warm, woolen coat and planned to make one for myself for a couple of years. 
I couldn't afford to buy 100% wool fabrics, they are very expensive. I settled for a wool blend fabric instead which, when I think about it now, was a good choice for the design I came up with. 
The oversized collar wraps around the neck and I couldn't handle having prickly wool touching my bare neck! The fabric I chose turned out just perfect, soft and in a great colour too! 
Another thing is- it isn't as warm as wool which is a good thing, meaning the coat can be used in slightly warmer seasons too (here in Scotland it might even be safe to say- all year round ^_^), which, no doubt, makes my coat an investment (Yes, you can say that about clothes^_^ if something was pricey but you wear it often, that's an investment).

And finally here are the pictures...

The coat features:
- warm pockets (they are made of the same green fabric, not lining fabric)
-belt and belt loops ( sewing belt loops was a mission!)
-oversized collar
-lime green wool blend fabric
-fully lined

I hope you like it. ^_^

Malgosia

Global Talent Search 2014

Hello everyone!

Since signing up for Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search 2014, these past few weeks have been a mixture of every possible feeling.  A bit of excitement and frustration, learning new things about myself, experimenting and experimenting some more, feeling happy one moment and lacking confidence other times and now towards the end I am sitting on the edge of my seat! Four more days until the judges make up their minds.

Let me start from the beginning:  The assignment given for this competition was to design a wall art piece featuring ''Little Terrarium'' theme and including some kind of text relevant to our own interpretation of the assignment. 
There were 999 submissions. That is such a big number!  I can only imagine what a difficult task it must be for Lilla Rogers and her team to size down 999 to 50. That's right only the top 50. Now you can understand the pressure we are all under.
Anyways, all the stress and numbers aside I'd like to say that it's been a truly amazing journey. I've learnt so much about myself and I'm so glad I decided to join!

My GTS diary:  I had created three pieces. First one was so bad that ended up in the bin. For the second one, I followed the familiar path and created mixed media girl painting. With 3D flowers and merino wool hair. It was pretty obvious that this one couldn't be submitted and I had to create the third one. The assignment given features "Little Terrarium" theme and even though in this painting there're patterns inspired by succulents I called it "Little Geisha". ^_^

At the end I'd decided to leave my safety zone and try something different. 

I did a bit of painting and mixed media but my main focus was collage. 

Here it is, my entry for Global Talent Search 2014:

There is a lovely Pinterest board, you can see some other entries for Lilla Rogers' Global Talent Search 2014: http://www.pinterest.com/julier/gts-2014-entries/
Such beautiful pieces.  It's amazing how each one of us has interpreted the theme so differently. I love them!