Friday 12 December 2014

My first Megan dress...



After my victory of yesterday (still very excited!), I have found time to day to share my first attempt at the Megan dress by Tilly and the Buttons. This dress is from her 'Love at first stitch' book and is a fairly straight forward make. I decided to use some lovely balloon fabric that I bought from modes4u.com to make it, so it has a celebration theme - Hence the photograph with the Christmas tree again! 

The main skills that this dress teaches you is an invisible zip fastening (which I use on most of my makes, so not a learnt skill here), inserting sleeves (quite straight forward on this dress actually) and an open ended dart (a new one on me, but very easy - just don't sew into a point). The open ended dart is designed to give a softer look to the shaping than a traditional dart. Tilly gives great guidance on doing this in her instructions, so no problems there! I decided to add lining to the bodice pieces to avoid using a facing. This worked well and was joined in at the armholes when the sleeve was added.  

In regards to the finished article, it's certainly well made. I'm please with my pattern matching, zip and sleeves - three things that can be dodgy! However, i'm not convinced that this shape of dress suits me. I managed to fit the dress at the back neck as this was gaping, so the size is correct, I think it is just the silhouette that i'm unhappy with. I think my curves are just too prominent! I certainly think that i'm more of a Lilou girl (see here) and should stick with this shape as much as possible. Next task is to do a pattern hack involving the shape of the Lilou and the sleeves of the Megan; wish me luck! 

P.S. Ignore my disgruntled face, It's just an unfortunate photograph!

Thursday 11 December 2014

Winning with my festive Mortmain!



I woke up this morning to some super news. Last week I entered my festive Mortmain into the Gather Virtual Christmas Party competition (#gatherxmasparty). I had planned to make the dress anyway, but was alerted to the competition by the Gather team through Twitter. 

After the closing date on Friday, I had a few passing thoughts about the competition, but I never considered actually winning it. So to my surprise this morning, I received a personal message from @GatherKits saying that I've won the party dress category! I am so excited about this! There's a great page on their website (here) announcing the winner and there's a great prize haul too! Lovely vouchers, a sewing kit and some Gather patterns!  

To say that Santa has come early is an understatement!!!

Thursday 4 December 2014

My festive Mortmain!



It's finally finished! After a great battle with the sleeves, I am pleased to show you my Christmas dress. My festive Mortmain by Gather is actually a massive triumph. The fit of the bodice is better than my previous attempts at this pattern (see here and here). Also, the fabric was a delight to work with and I'm really pleased with the combination of plain black cotton and the Riley Blake Santa fabric. I can't wait to wear it on Christmas Day!

What can I say about the sleeves... They were actually fine to put in, but seemingly I have abnormally large upper arms, which meant that they were far too tight! I had to remove them and decreased the seam allowance on the sleeve, before inserting it again. They're still a little tight, but it should be fine for the occasion. Thankfully I don't do much dancing on Christmas Day!

I'd love to see your festive outfits!