Two Afternoon Tea Tops (and a dress)

Having found the pattern for the Afternoon Tea Top on BurdaStyle, I have gone overboard and made a couple (and I plan on making more).

Here's the first two:

I'm going to enter the first one into the Spring Top week vote as I'm really pleased with the way it turned out.

I then realised that it would be fairly easy to modify the pattern into a dress. In order to do this I laid out all the pattern pieces as normal, with the exception of the main front and back bodice parts. These pieces I laid out with an existing skirt pattern I had lying around (the skirt from the Sew U book). I then drew around this smoothing out where there was any overlap, and I extended the dart from the bodice to go down to where the dart on the skirt finishes. Once I'd put it all together, the dress had quite a 50s effect, so to fit in with this, I made the straps into halter ties.

Here's the finished dress: The first time I wore it out, I was complimented on it and asked where they could buy one from, so I'm pretty happy with that!

Floral bag, twirly skirt

I have finally managed to finish off and photograph a couple of projects which I started quite a while ago.

The first one is a bag which I made from a tutorial on the Heart of Mary blog.
I'm quite pleased with the way it has turned out, but for myself I'd like a longer strap and different fabric. Due to this, I think I'll be listing it on my etsy site.

The next is a skirt that I mentioned in an earlier blog entry that I've done entirely from my own design. I based it on a skirt that I bought from Primark a while ago by just creating 8 identical panels, sewing them together and then creating a band to go around the top. I then hemmed it and put a zip in between 2 of the panels. It was kind of an experiment but I'm really pleased with the way it turned out and shall definitely make another at some point....and an action shot:

Ebay Disaster!

I bought a vintage shirt dress pattern on Ebay the other day with the intentions of making myself a nice black shirt dress to go with the lovely purple patent leather shoes I had just bought. In my excitement about this, I failed to actually look at the sizing of the pattern and when it arrived I discovered to my size 10 horror that it was for sizes 18 and 20.

With this in mind, I have now put it for sale in my Etsy shop. See below for a pic of the pattern.




Now I'm off to find myself a similar pattern that will actually fit me!

Tesco Sheet = Lovely New Dress

Having made a dress from this great tutorial over on craftster, i decided to make a similar dress by modifying it a bit. I took the basis for making the bottom and doing the measurements for the top, and made the top so that it had straps over the shoulders.

As it was my first attempt at drawing up my own pattern, things were bound to go wrong...and they did. I completely forgot about seam allowance and ended up with a tiny bodice. In order to fix this, I have added in panels at the back (I luckily noticed before I'd fitted the zip). These panels actually add to the effect of the top, so I'm pretty pleased it worked out that way.

Here's a picture of it on a hanger:


And one of me wearing it to get the effect of the bodice:
As the material came from a duvet cover, there's absolutely loads of it left. At present I'm making up a skirt out of some of the remainder (again from my own design, so who knows how it will turn out). I'll post up pictures once it's done.

...And after a long hiatus

Having not had the ability to put photos onto my computer for a while, I've neglected posting here. Last night however my cable for my camera miraculously appeared and I am able to put new photos up again.

I'll start by putting up pictures of a couple of the purses I have made from leftover bits of material. I used this great tutorial as a guide for making them.


And a felt owl purse which I made as a Christmas present for my friend Laura.
I shall be taking photos of a few recent projects and putting them up here over the course of the week.

Strawberry Skirt

I decided this needed a post all of it's own out of the first completed projects post. Having read through a book explaining how to follow a pattern to a finished product I attempted a skirt. I was all ready for this to be an absolute disaster, but I'm quite pleased with the end result:

Although the name for this blog had already been decided before embarking on this project, it gave it a whole new meaning. I managed to fit the zip on backwards not once, but twice. On the upside I've now got 3 times as much experience on zips than I would have done!

First couple of projects

A while ago I decided that I wanted to try making some of my own clothes. I got a sewing machine for my birthday, bought a few books had all the best intentions to get started. Then I left it all to sit there getting dusty. I have finally got past my fear of working out how to buy material, thread my sewing machine, general lazyness etc, etc and managed to produce some (in my biased opinion) okay looking stuff.



First proper knitting project since...well probably about 1989


This was actually loads easier than I had initially anticipated after having looked at the pattern and not understood a word on it. It was quite tricky to get the ribbing around the neck and arms (and took a bit of taking it apart and doing it again), but I'm pretty confident that I could do it without too much difficulty.





First time ever on a sewing machine


So, I braved the market, bought some material (after being shouted at for being indecisive) and got set to work on this. I had originally intended to make the outside using the material used for the pocket, make a lining using the spotty material and the pocket on the front was also going to be the spotty material. Unfortunately, the plain blue material was a bit thinner than I'd originally thought and the spots showed through. My lack of experience (and lack of knowledge on how to do hems) has made the pocket look a little ragged, but generally I'm fairly happy with this as a first attempt at the sewing machine. I made this a couple of months ago and it's served me fairly well ever since.