Printed Chiffon Summer Dress

Three years ago, I wore a dress I made to the annual Festival of Arts/Pageant of the Masters in Laguna Beach.  Ever since then I have made it into a sort of tradition to make a dress specifically to wear to the event.  Last year, I made this strapless blue and white dress:

This year I wanted to make something very feminine and soft.  Since I did not have a lot of time to sew, let alone draft a pattern (and do a muslim mock up!) due to my schedule, I decided to try out another pattern from Burda magazine.

Image from Burdastyle.de
You can find the pattern here!

Chiffon and ruffles... can you get more girly and summery than that? :)
This pattern is from the 7/2010 issue of Burda.  This is my second time using a pattern from the magazine and I love it.  I have not tried out many commercial patterns, but of the ones I have (Vogue, Simplicity, McCall) Burda has been my favorite to work it.  I rarely have to do much alterations to the pattern itself and I love their straightforward instructions (if you are a beginning sewer, the magazine may be challenging as they only provide the absolute bare minimum when it comes to constructing the garment).  I decided to pick out a printed chiffon for the dress, but keep with the same nude color scheme which is very trendy this year.

Some changes I made to the pattern:

• Omitted the last layer of chiffon.  It seemed too long for me, but now when I look at the photos maybe I should have added it, lol.... but also a basic design rule is things look best in odd numbers!
• I narrow-rolled hem each ruffle.  You cannot see from the photo above, but they had left the edge of each ruffle raw and did a fray effect.  I wasn't a big fan of the result.
• Decreased the width of the neck ruffle slightly. Also made the first ruffle a bit wider.  The length stated in the magazine gave me a very pregnant look from the side, lol.  If I did it over again, I would drop the empire waistline to help even out the layers.
• Instead of sewing two layers of chiffon together to act as a lining, I decided to line the dress with satin. I was afraid three layers of chiffon fabric wasn't opaque enough to wear the dress out in the sun :P

Other than that, I stayed pretty close to the pattern. Although a bit time consuming due to the layers, it is a rather simple and straightforward pattern!  Out of the three dresses I have made for the Pageant, I received the most compliments on this one :)

 

Can't help but laugh sometimes at the seriousness of "modeling," lol :P

You can find more photos at my BurdaStyle page:
http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/ruffle-printed-chiffon-summer-dress

So light and airy, perfect for the absolutely beautiful summer day we had. Actually, it was SO sunny that a lot of the photos came out hazy! :/

The day of I did my hair in a curly-style messy bun and paired the dress with pink crystal chandelier earrings, a diamond necklace my mom gave me ♥, brown oversized Gucci sunglasses and a vintage Gucci wristlet (we're in Laguna after all!), and nude wedged slingbacks from Naturalizer (I'm usually not a fan of Naturalizer other than work pumps, but these were cute and super comfy, win win since we did a lot of walking!)

By the way, this is my fifth year in a row to the Festival of Arts/Pageant of the Masters.  If you live in Southern California and have never been to it, I highly recommend it.   It is a truly unique art event... I look forward to it every year now!

Millinery - blocking

Today was opening day at Del Mar! Of course that means everyone wearing their hats at the racetrack! Now that I know how to make hats, I truly appreciate all the hats even more.  With the last hat I made, I wanted to photograph some of the stages of hat making:

I used a head block to make the crown.

For the brim, I patterned a 2-inch wide brim and cut it out in the buckram.
Wire goes around the outer edge of the brim and then covered with a bias stripe of crinoline.

If you have a 100% all natural fabric, you can block the fabric too for the crown.

This eliminates having to pleat, gather, or have those seams in your crown.

Lots of handsewing at this point!

The black crown is for another hat I am in the middle of making
(just waiting for the right trims).
I made the brim asymmetrical, so I am excited for the finished product!

Cut out two pieces of brim in fabric... one for the top and one for the underside.
More sewing and add your details.

Put it all together, and you'll get something like this!

There are lots of intermediate details, but I just wanted to show some of the steps in making a hat (plus, I forgot to take more photos as I went along :)

My Couture Wool Skirt

I finally took photos of the couture skirt I made for Apparel Construction II.  I know many people do not like hand sewing because it takes forever, but I love it.  Maybe because I can take my sewing anywhere and call me crazy, but I think hand sewing is rather therapeutic! LOL.  I wished I had more time to include even more couture techniques, but I was lucky enough to finish this. The initial project I wanted to do was to make a multi-layered ballgown I designed :P... but I just didn't have the time with the amount of hours I was working.

You can read and see more photos of the skirt here:
http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/couture-wool-skirt-with-inverted-box-pleat?all_images=1#project-shot-all

If you are interested in learning more about couture techniques, these were a couple of books I used and liked:

• Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire Schaeffer
• The Art of Manipulating Fabric by Colette Wolff

Nursing cover

My sister just had a baby! I am so excited to be an aunt!  I keep thinking of all these things I can make for my new nephew (except, really, it is much cheaper to just buy the clothes nowadays... but that won't stop me :P)  The one thing my sister did ask me was if I could make her a nursing cover, which I had to google since I didn't know what a nursing cover looked like!  She mentioned the one she wanted to buy had an opening which you can peek down to see the baby.

After looking through some pictures, I realized the cover was only a rectangle with a neck strap. And most didn't include a lining.  Even better, I saw a lady who had posted a tutorial on how to make one (the internet is great).  Since I didn't know how wide or long it should be, I decided to try out the tutorial... besides I didn't want to make my sister a trial one, nor did I want her to have an accident while using it in public!

The nursing cover is very, very easy to make.  I think it only took me an hour from cutting the fabric out to sewing it up.  I added the terry cloth pocket in the corner, which doubles as a wipe or pacifier holder, and also added a clip like you see here for an easy on/off.  Boning is used to keep the top opening away from the body.  I decided to not line the cover I made for my sister since I wanted to keep it lightweight and airy for the summertime.

In total, I think this cost me only about $10 to make... the fabric being the most expensive item. (The fabric I chose was $8.99/yd at Beverly's, so if you can get your hands on super cheap fabric, this would be a steal!)

Please excuse the pj bottoms :)

I figured if I wanted to open an Etsy shop, I should have a blog to go with it. I hope to have a list of one-of-a-kind garments for sale and maybe some hair "embellishments," as every outfit really isn't complete without the right accessories.  Please stay tuned!