May is here. I have been absent. Since it is extremely personal and this is a sewing blog, I will refrain from writing about it. Just know that the month of April contained not only the highest joys of my life, but also my deepest lows. Pia the doll has been with me since the very beginning. I bought her before […]
It’s been gray and raining all week. It’s making me blue and I’ve been longing for the sun. Pia’s been lifting my spirits though by her blank stare. Honestly I don’t know if I sew for her out of love or out of fear, LOL. I’m not as afraid of her as when I first got her but sometimes it […]
The Sewing Bee contest is currently in full swing on Pattern Review. What is the Sewing Bee contest? Similar to Project Runway, the Sewing Bee is a sewing competition with 4 rounds. There is a theme. You don’t know the theme until DAY OF and then you have a whole week to execute your vision. There are judges who decide […]
Woo hoo! My Kermes dress is complete! I’m really glad I decided to focus more attention on self-drafting because this dress is my favorite one yet. I like it so much I want to make another version. I’m really pleased with the successful draping and also the last minute decision to install boning. Kermes has a lot of heft and […]
Lili’s hair was a matted mess after I took her out of the box. I fixed it…and it was a strange soothing feeling doing so. Feelings of being a kid flooded my entire being and the trance-like urge to make her new clothes set in. I made Simplicity 1484 View A without the belt. The first thing I noticed is that […]
Since I’ve been practicing darts on the quarter scale it had me thinking. How about I try sewing on a smaller scale? It’d be a good way to practice ideas and techniques without wasting fabric. Plus then I can use up scraps! I did some research and all the half scale body forms were about $100+, which is out of […]
Lol, the title of this post seems so sinister, doesn’t it?! Well that’s what I did! Manipulate the darts. The bodice sloper class is still fresh on my mind so I was eager to play and experiment with dart manipulation. Other than the SBA I did on the Monet Dress, I haven’t really done much with darts. I’ve mostly been […]
Hi hello! I am back from a mini getaway/sewing weekend in Lexington, Virginia. I had so much fun! So nice to get away since it seems like it’s been forever since we’ve been able to travel. Continuing on my quest to learn pattern drafting, I took a 3 day bodice block/sloper class at Make it Sew in historic Lexington, VA. […]
One really awesome thing about sewing is that you can build upon existing skills. Over the holidays I was lucky enough to score three Gertie books secondhand for the price of one, patterns included! I’ve been absorbing so much info that I am so curious by her techniques. In true form, I went down the rabbit hole of garment construction […]
A big goal of 2022 is to continue to learn draping and patternmaking. Surely I own a princess seamed bodice somewhere in my pattern hoard, but I am finding that draping is much faster than flat pattern adjustments from a commercial pattern. Mandy the Mannequin is my twin, so I don’t have to do any SBAs, shorten the bodice length, […]
