The nude sheath dress
10 March 2010, 22:31I like to keep up with fashion, but I definitely pick my trends to follow, leaving the totally unsuitable ones to the wayside (anything involving shorts or capris, I’m looking at you!). But the catwalk looks for SS/10 are just so full of lovely pale nude colours that I just couldn’t resist. I mean, Celine are the source of it all (say UK Vogue, anyway), but you know a trend is here to stay when the high street gets involved, with even Zara hyping up nudes and neutrals for spring!
And need I remind you that neutrals were big at the Oscars, too!
So when I saw some nude, pale pink poly/viscose stretch suiting in one of Totally Fabrics‘ fantastic sales, I knew it was time for climb aboard the hype train and ride this one all the way through to warm weather. I ultimately decided on the Divine Details sheath dress (Vogue 8576) for its great neckline and pleasing geometric seamlines.
I did make up a muslin for this dress but the fit was pretty much perfect straight off the pattern paper so I jumped in and ended up with my very own catwalk look!
Even with my pale skin it just feels perfect for spring!
Here’s some side views:
And the back (there’s honestly not this much wrinkling under normal wear, I was horrified to see how the back shots turned out here!):
I’ve been talking about pairing it with my grey tweed jacket so I couldn’t possibly disappoint you all!
There’s a lot going on in this dress, with all those triangular sections and godets coming together at fun angles, but the crowning glory here is the front neckline:
I found it interesting that there’s no need to interface the points, but you do need to do directional sewing to keep them even, which Vogue doesn’t instruct. Also, I found it much easier to wait until after the lining was in to do all the bodice topstitching rather than do some early on and hope your later stitches match up perfectly (ha! I can avert disaster!).
Here’s a better view of those front section seams:
From my topstitching samples, I knew I wanted to use Gutermann upholstery thread for the nice thick line it produces, but the colours in my stash (gold and silver for jeans) weren’t great so I bought some taupe and it’s perfect! The colour is just slightly different enough from the pale pink to stand out, but not so much as to be garish. I like that the topstitching is a feature when you’re close to the dress, but it blends in when seen from afar.
The sleeves here are just a short cap sleeve which is integrated with the front and back yoke pieces, so there’s no armscye:
Lining up all the section seams around the waistband was fun, but made much much easier by my fabric having a little bit of stretch!
Here’s a view of the back:
This invisible zipper makes me happy (I installed it by machine, with a regular zipper foot, in my usual two-pass method)! It doesn’t matter how many I do, now that I’ve hit upon a winning formula, a well-inserted zipper still gives me the warm fuzzies.
And here’s the back laid open to reveal the lining:
I lined the bodice with a peach-coloured nylon tricot mesh, which preserved the stretch of the suiting while keeping everything tidy inside (there’s no facings for the pattern so you pretty much have to line the top, or draft your own). And the mesh feels really soft against the skin, too!
If you’re keeping track, this is the second of three Planned Partnerships, but I’ve decided I’m not going to carry on with the last one. I’m just not 100% certain of where I want to go with it (use the frilly blouse but with pared down trousers instead? Or keep the A-line skirt and pare down the blouse?) and because the colour palette is really for cold weather so I feel like shelving it until Fall to give myself more time to decide.
But there are BIG things on the horizon that I’m really excited about (and are currently occupying most of my sewing time right now), plus my birthday’s coming up, so it’s hardly like I’m wanting for things to sew!
Tags: dress, knockoff, vogueComment [12]
I won!
5 March 2010, 13:28Wow! I’ve been entering Pattern Review contests for years and never even come close to winning, but I’ve won first place in the first ever Lingerie Contest!
Thank you all SO much for voting for my Racy Lacy Lingerie set, I’m so touched that it inspired so many of you to sew up some lingerie of your own.
And special thanks go to Sigrid, who inspired me to start sewing lingerie, and also gifted me the gorgeous kit that turned into the winning entry!
Tags: lingerieComment [22]
The forecast
1 March 2010, 15:03On Saturday I took a trip out to Goldhawk Road with neighbour Helen with a strict list on my iPhone and an even stricter budget! My brain and eyes start to glaze over whenever I enter a fabric store so I have to come prepared with a list now to keep myself focused.
My list was mostly pretty boring – lots of linings (I got a few metres of a silk/cotton woven mix in both black and white for underlining some thin dress fabrics, and finally got some stretchy nylon tricot to line my Vogue sheath and test it for bridesmaid dress lining suitability) plus very cheap but very drapey viscose knit for birthday and bridesmaids dress muslins. The only real fun on my list was some luscious silk jersey for my birthday dress and a nice knit to make James’s sister a dress, and well, both ended up being silk jersey!
As they were cutting my dark turquoise silk jersey, the lady at Classic Textiles warned me their silk jersey will be going up in price to £18/m (once the current £16/m bolts are gone). And Fabric World across the street have black silk jersey (only black) for £10/m as a one-off right now, too. Consider yourself warned, Londoners!
So since I’ve already got the fabrics and the patterns paired, here they are for your visualisation (though they’re not quite the next things in my queue, I’ve got to juggle some muslins and draping in there first) –
Pattern bonanza!
When it rains, it pours! Within a few days of each other, I suddenly went from new pattern famine to feast! With my Burda subscription turning up early combined with a Vogue sale good enough to pay international shipping for, plus a co-worker hitting up the Swedish newsagents, it was all too good, frankly!
These include:
- March Burda WOF (love the strapless cover dress but YAWN on the rest)
- Vogue 1020 knit wardrobe pattern (the gathered side top and flounced skirt look particularly useful)
- Vogue 1117 Michael Kors sheath dress (nearly bought some green wool/cashmere suiting for this but didn’t want the entire 3.9m left on the bolt!)
- Vogue 2973 Montana biker jacket (on Clearance for $5 but my god it looks tough! The jacket alone has 24 pattern pieces!)
- Butterick 5243 Maggy London knit dress (So cute and also on Clearance! I can’t believe this is going out of print so soon, it’s the first Butterick I’ve actually liked in about 4 years!)
- And not pictured, Patrones 288, which turned out to be a Ninos. Oh well, there’s some cute kids shorts and tops in it and I’m sure it’ll get used eventually
And in other news, I finished the nude sheath dress this morning! I was handstitching the lining to the seam allowances and zipper tape in hospital waiting rooms this morning and got all sorts of smiles from people. Sewing in public just makes people feel good I swear! I picked up some taupe upholstery thread for the topstitching while at Goldhawk Road (the shop that stocks the haberdashery has moved it upstairs and expanded! woo!) and I love the look!
I can’t wait to show this dress to you, it fits like a glove and I’m just so proud of it!
And your uplifting thought for the day – neighbour Helen hadn’t been back to Goldhawk Road since her fashion school days and was amazed at how the area has grown! She said that 15 years ago, there were really only two shops, as compared to the ten or so there today, so it’s fantastic to see these shops doing well and branching out into ethnic fabrics (Helen said there weren’t anywhere near as many batiks, African embroidered fabrics, laces, etc back then)! It’s not all doom and gloom for sewing shops!
Tags: city-guides, shopping, silk, vogueComment [12]
Nude sheath dress in progress
25 February 2010, 15:15I’ve been working on the partner to my grey tweed jacket, Vogue 8576 in a nude, pale pink poly/viscose stretch suiting I bought from Totally Fabrics during one of their fantastic sales.
I usually detest tracing Vogue patterns since their tissue paper is so flimsy, utterly enormous and so unwieldy to work with, but this one was surprisingly small since there’s only one view so no need for tons of extraneous pieces. Still not as easy as tracing KnipMode’s compact newsprint, for instance, but not enough to put me off sewing Vogue for months on end like it did previously!
The overall shape of this dress is quite simple, but it’s cut up into a ton of triangles and curves that can be tricky to visualise. So my first step was to lay them all out and see how they went together (seam allowances are included here so they don’t line up nicely like I’m used to though).
Front bodice pattern pieces
Back bodice pattern pieces
Skirt pattern pieces (front and back are almost identical)
I first made a bedsheet muslin since I haven’t sewn any fitted Vogues since, err, the Roland Mouret Galaxy dress, so I wanted to check the sizing first. I didn’t take photos of the muslin on me, but the fit was pretty much spot-on! Hooray!
So I progressed to cutting out the fashion fabric, and I took the pieces to the moorings craft night to hand-tack the gazillion tedious markings this pattern has. I’ve gotten so spoiled by the straightforward “only put a notch in if it’s REALLY needed” ethos of the pattern magazines that this was just driving me mad. So as I sewed up my muslin, I scrawled “not needed” on a whole bunch of markings so I didn’t need to worry about them for the dress (case in point – the marks on the shoulder seam. Err, duh, those two pieces fit together! Where else would they go??). But with so many triangular points in the design, there were plenty of necessary dots to transfer accurately…
I got as far as assembling the bodice and about half of the skirt before I lost steam on my day off and retreated to nurse my cold and watch a bit of Season 5 Project Runway off the Freeview+ box. I’ve realised that I can’t go too much further anyway without sorting out some topstitching thread and either a stretch lining or facings.
I did some topstitching tests with what I’ve got on hand (apologies for the low-quality iPhone photo):
From L-R:
1. regular Gutermann Sew-All in pale pink
2. Gutermann upholstery thread in silver
3. regular Gutermann Sew-All in cream
4. regular Gutermann Sew-All in cream and another strand of pale pink together in one needle
I like the look of the upholstery thread (my usual topstitching choice) but not the grey. So I may have to drag my snotty nose out to Goldhawk Road on Saturday for supplies or face a brick wall. I mean, I could make this dress without the topstitching, but I really think it adds to the design here and is a really nice detail. And the only linings I’ve got in my stash are silky wovens, and it seems a shame to use such a nice stretch suiting in a fitted dress and then not use the stretch, so I’m hoping to either find a thin stretch woven to line the bodice at the very least, or just create some facings since this fabric doesn’t fray at all.
And, believe it or not, my mind is already on my next project, aye yae yae…
Tags: dress, vogueComment [5]
La Mia Boutique turtleneck
21 February 2010, 14:01Before I tackle the Vogue sheath dress that will marry happily with my tweed jacket, I made a quick diversion in the form of a simple wintry knit top from the February 2010 La Mia Boutique magazine:
It’s a classic turtleneck pattern with a little bit of neckline gathering at the centre front, so there were only four pieces to trace (front, back, sleeve, and collar) and it was ridiculously quick to sew on the overlocker/serger and coverstitch. We’re talking a single evening in between preparing dinner here, folks!
Turning to the back…
The only problem is that, while those little neckline gathers look great from the front, they make a horrible little bubble that sticks out from your chest when you look at them in profile.
I’m only just starting to learn pattern drafting and manipulation (more on that another day) but I think this comes from creating too short a triangle when inserting the fabric for the gathers, if that makes any sense? It’d be an interesting lesson to cut this apart and try to fix the problem. The only other very slight improvement I’d make is to shave down the sleeve cap a tad as it’s a bit too high for my liking. But neither of these really impede my wearing it – I wanted a quick long sleeved top for the office since it’s kinda drafty in there and my arms and the back of my neck get chilly while I’m at my desk. And seeing as how my small office is entirely full of coding boys who never notice what I wear anyway, this is absolutely fine!
I was umming and ahhing on what fabric to use here, but I finally settled on some black cotton interlock/ribbing from my Brighton trip to Ditto Fabrics last June. I’ve still got a little less than a metre left after using it here and in the Punk Words day dress. The other point to note is that by La Mia Boutique’s size chart, I should sew a size 46, but because this pattern only goes up to a 44, I just thought I’d try that, and if it was too tight, I’d wear it as a base layer. But as you can see, a 44 is plenty big enough so now I’m not sure whether to sew a 44 or 46 for that draped dress…
And even though we did this photoshoot at the same time as the silver tweed suit, I thought for this one that my À bout de souffle haircut required the full Left Bank treatment with the back turtleneck and glasses styling… ahh oui oui!
Tags: knit, la-mia-boutique, topComment [5]
Silver tweed skirt
19 February 2010, 08:00You’ve seen the jacket, and a peek of the skirt as part of the suit, but now it’s the skirt’s time in the spotlight!
(Dutch readers – who is Odette Simons, anyway? Dutch celebrity? Fashion designer? Stylist? She’s appearing in most issues these days and it’s bugging me…)
I just loved the shape of the yoke and pockets on skirt #7 from the January 2010 KnipMode. Essentially they’ve just drawn a bunch of lines onto an A-line skirt pattern which you then cut apart to be the wide yoke, the main skirt body, the pocket backing, and the pocket facing. All that pattern piece reusing means you actually only end up tracing 3 pattern pieces (front, back, and pocket) because you cut up the pieces as you go along. So the top of the skirt back pattern gets cut off for the facing, the skirt front gets cut apart for the yoke, the pocket back, and the facing, etc.
I had a bit of an “A-ha!” moment when I realised you could pretty much do this to any skirt pattern with whatever shapes you like and end up with something really cool. Yet another reason why I love patterns without seam allowances!
I shortened this skirt by a hefty 4 inches so it’d be above the knee (my preferred length). The magazine photo is a bit misleading as it looks like it should be that length anyway until you look up and realised the skirt’s been hoiked up really high in the waist to make it that much shorter in the hem. I just preferred to make the whole thing shorter. Full disclosure – my hem finish is actually much nicer than it looks in the photos. I didn’t have enough time to press it after both rounds of hand sewing, as James was on his way out the door and it was “now or wait another week” for the photoshoot.
The yoke didn’t totally match up, which was annoying but was totally my own fault for not thread-basting it. I know it should match up because I cut the pattern pieces apart myself!
I interfaced all the facings on this pattern, but I only used fusible bias tape on the curved edges of the front yoke seams. I think if I did it again I’d also interface that top yoke piece to reduce wrinkles that occur naturally when I move and make it just a little bit cleaner.
The pockets have facings on both sides, with the rest of the pocket in lining fabric. I would normally cut the pocket back in fashion fabric and the pocket front (the portion away from the body) in lining fabric, but truth be told I didn’t have enough fabric for a pocket bag in tweed. ha! So these pockets just have a tweed facing and the rest is lining fabric, which is probably best anyway in terms of reducing bulk.
Take a peek inside:
And in the centre back, I made a perfect invisible zipper, yee ha!
This time I did it by machine, using a regular ol’ zipper foot with my favourite two-pass method (though I often do them by hand). By two-pass I mean that I first machine baste the zipper tape down, not sewing particularly close to the teeth or anything. I then open up the zipper and press the coils open, and holding them open with my fingers as I machine sew reeeeeally close to the teeth. I just find I get a much better result this way than with the invisible zipper foot, which just doesn’t get close enough for my liking.
Like the jacket, the skirt is fully lined in pale blue, sealed up at the bottom because the tweed is really prone to fraying and I wanted to protect it as much as possible… This is the back view, but the inside of the front is pretty much the same.
And here’s the happy pair together one last time!
Comment [6]
Silver tweed jacket
17 February 2010, 09:48It’s time now to turn our attention to the upper half of this silver tweed Planned Partnership, the little boxy cropped jacket (#18) from Patrones 272:
You saw the jacket as part of a classy suit, but how does it work with jeans?, I hear you ask.
As it turns out, even better!
I actually prefer this jacket hanging open instead of buttoned up (which is why I left off the button loop at the very top of the collar stand and the small button hidden under the collar that the pattern suggested).
(Fun fact: I’m probably one of the few women in this day and age who know their glove size. I’m an 8! It coms with my high-quality leather glove addiction, you know…)
Turning to the back…
My only regret in the construction was not cutting the undercollar as two parts (on the bias), only because I didn’t have enough fabric to do it this way. Which means even despite my compensating for turn-of-cloth during construction, you can still see the undercollar poking out a little bit. But I actually did remember to use “directional sewing” when creating the collar this time around – this means you sew in one direction only, from the centre back out to the front tip of the collar, flip it over, and sew from the centre back out to the other collar tip. Have you ever had a RTW jacket or shirt where one collar flipped out a bit funny no matter how much you ironed it? That’s why – they did it the easy way, all in one go from collar tip-to-tip. The more you know!
I’m very proud of my beautiful bound buttonholes, especially since they’re paired with very pretty grey shell buttons from MacCulloch & Wallis that have a gorgeous pearly shine and a nice weight…
I pulled this lining fabric out of my stash and realised I’ve had it in there since.. ooh… the OMG LBD! Wow. And there’s still some left, even after lining the LBD, this jacket, and the matching skirt. I’m not 100% sure, but I think it might have come from the free Fabric.com designer bundle I got during my trip to America in 2007. The jacket tweed is woven from white, pale grey, pale peach/pink and pale blue threads – the pale peach/pink is an exact match for the fabric I’m making the sheath dress from and the pale blue is just too good a match fr the lining not to use here!
My Fabric Tetris superpowers means I squeezed both the jacket and the trousers out of the 1.5m of wool-mix tweed I’d bought from Totally Fabrics for £3.30/m during one of their 40% off everything sales. This means that together this suit cost me under a tenner for fabric, buttons, and zipper. Mwahahah!
If you don’t believe about my superpowers, this is the fabric I had leftover (these are single layers):
But even superheroes have their fatal flaw. Clearly mine is becoming my memory. See, all I could remember is how amazing the fit is on my Patrones duffle coat, which I wear all Fall and all Spring, completely forgetting about how many alterations I made to make it fit so damned well in the first place! Argh!
What I should have done was make a muslin. But I’m lazy, and only remembered the first point above. Barring that, I should’ve sewn the lining, then cut out and sewn the fabric. But I didn’t want to commit to that pattern until I was sure I could squeeze it and the skirt out of the fabric, so I had to cut the tweed before the lining. But in my defence, at least I sewed the lining together before the tweed, because it was instantly apparent on the first fitting that, “oh yeah – Patrones’ sleeves are freaking tiny! I totally forgot…”
Repeat it with me again, so I never forget – “Patrones’ sleeves are freaking TINY!”
So the first option was to rip out the sleeve seam (thankfully easier to do in lining fabric that tweed!) and sew as close as possible to the seam edge in the bicep area. I gained about a half inch of room this way, which made it tight, but not unwearable. My neighbour Helen had the idea, though, to turn the one piece sleeve into a two piece sleeve, so I cut up the pattern piece (though I didn’t even have room to do a properly wide under sleeve and even so, I only gained a half inch there since my largest remaining tweed pieces (pieced together) weren’t really big enough.
So in the end I just compromised by letting out underarm seam allowance (and by a corresponding amount on the shoulder seam for shoulder pad room) instead of creating an under sleeve pattern. It means I’m limited to wearing sleeveless or very thin short sleeves underneath it, but at least it’s wearable (and if I’d do this again I’d also let out the upper back like I did in the duffle coat as it’s a bit tight across my upper back, but there’s no quick fix for that so I’m just living with it, as I prefer it worn open anyway).
But enough about my stupid mistakes, I really think I made up for it in the little details here. I really love the little in-seam pockets, which, thanks to my understitching both sides of the opening, the lining never rolls to the outside. This was criminally easy to do just after attaching each pocket half to the body piece but before joining them together, and it’s something I’ll do time and time again.
And finally, you may think that I have all the fun with the designing, constructing and wearing of these clothes, but James has his fair share of creative outlet with the (currently freezing) photoshoots. IMHO he’s really outdone himself with the framing of this shot…
Coming up… the matching skirt!
And a big thank you to Lauriana for the Kreativ blogger award! I don’t really do the award thing, but her wonderful flattery will get her everywhere…
PS: Voting has started in the PR Lingerie Contest if you fancy voting for my Racy Lacy Lingerie set? Shame there’s no prize allocated for this one, though…
Tags: jacket, patrones, tutorial, woolComment [9]
Silver tweed suit
15 February 2010, 22:23Last week I finished the first half of my second Planned Partnership, so I think that makes me exactly one half finished (right, Sharon, resident maths professor?). Though I suppose if you’re counting individual garments, I’d be slightly over halfway finished…
But I digress. You remember the silver tweed fabric and my plans to make a cropped jacket that I could wear with either a matching skirt or with a nude sheath dress (yet to come)?
Well, I’m so delighted with the way both the jacket and skirt turned out that I couldn’t wait to show you! So in the tradition of that other tweed suit, you get a sneak preview!
We got a bit carried away with the photoshoot…
I do like a classy setting for a classy suit, after all…
And you’ll get the full details of both the jacket and the skirt later this week!
Comment [20]
Racy lacy lingerie set
8 February 2010, 12:23When fellow blogger Sigrid visited me last May, she brought along a birthday gift for me – a fantastic lingerie kit from Kantje Boord (a big lingerie notions shop in Amsterdam), full of really cool goodies you only ever see on high-end RTW underwear. In fact, it was all so nice that I was hesitant to cut into it as my bra-making skills are not quite as polished as the rest of my sewing yet.
But Pattern Review are having their first-ever Lingerie sewing contest, so that gave me the impetus to cut into the kit!
I planned on making the same partial-band, underwired bra I’d sewn once before (twice if you count the muslin) with a few improvements, plus my TNT thong panty from KnipMode, and, as it turns out, I was able to squeeze a camisole out of the yardage included in the kit, too!
Camisole
We’ll start with the largest item first, even though I made it last… This one was really easy – I started with a RTW knit vest (tank top if you’re American) that I really liked, laid it on my fabric and traced the front, then did the same with the back.
I had just enough stretch lace left in the kit to go across the front, but I had to really pin and play to get the scalloped edges to look good and still make the points. I sewed the dart/point closed in the lace, zigzag topstitched it onto the fabric, then cut away the fabric underneath, so you get to see a bit of skin through it (or, err, envelope as the case shown!). For the back edge I used a bit of picot lingerie elastic from the kit, zigzagging it onto the right side, then flipping it inside and triple-zigzag stitching it down (this is exactly the same way you apply elastic to panty edges). I’d run out of straps from my kit, though, so I bought some more plush backed straps at MacCulloch & Wallis, making sure to attach them at the front to the top of the lace and the bottom, so it catches the fabric edge, too.
Bra
I’ve heard that bras take a few versions to get exactly the right fit, and I can understand why. You can choose exactly the right size, but there’s so many factors involved and you’ve got a lot of variables working together. And most annoyingly, you can’t really check the fit until it’s completely finished.
I’m about 80% happy with the fit of my last bra, but there were a few things I wanted to change in this one to see if I could make the fit that little bit better. So once again I’ve used KwikSew 3300 (whose instructions are unbelievably excellent, fyi), only this time I interfaced the bottom cup to stop it from stretching, and I took some width out of the mesh in the back to make it fit the pre-made hook & eyes without having to pleat it a bit…
There were some really super nice metal & diamante sliders in the kit, so I added them onto the (also really super nice) split straps as a purely decorative feature, having the plain black functional sliders lower down.
I’d love to say that I’ve reached the pinnacle of fit and cracked the formula here, but I’m still not entirely happy with the fit, as the cup seam is a bit wrinkly, and I think the underwires I used from an old favourite RTW are too short for this style so they don’t go quite far enough up my underarm. Still, I’m pleased with the look of it and it’ll be fine in low lighting (boom chickawocka boom boom, etc).
Panties
And finally, the least exciting but probably most likely to get worn threadbare, my favourite pants pattern I’ve made over and over, which originally appeared in the January 2008 KnipMode magazine!
You could easily just trace a favourite pair of your own for this, it really isn’t necessary to have a pattern. Just remember to use 1/4 inch seam allowance on the edges you’ll be finishing in picot elastic (like I did with the leg holes here), and don’t have any seam allowance for the edges you’ll be finishing in stretch lace (like I’ve done for the top opening here) or foldover elastic (FOE) like I’ve done in the past.
And in further news, I got some work done on my silver tweed jacket over the weekend, finally finishing the last bit of handstitching on the sleeve hems while watching Inglourious Basterds last night (how happy was I to see the kid from Good Bye Lenin! in there?!). So you may see that on its own, or with the matching skirt soon, depending on how quickly I can get the skirt finished vs when I’m at home in daylight for a photoshoot…
Tags: knipmode, knit, kwik-sew, lingerieComment [10]
La Mia Boutique Dec & Feb
2 February 2010, 14:39It’s been a while since I’ve bought or sewn from a La Mia Boutique magazine. It wasn’t any sort of conscious decision, but it’s a bit difficult for me to get ahold of since the newsagent that used to stock it is no longer a newsagent, and RD Franks sells out of it within hours of getting any instore… The styles were also usually a bit too “out there” for me, in the way that Italian fashion can sometimes be – always vibrant and interesting, but not necessarily something I’d want to wear myself.
In any case, I’d been hearing reports and seeing scans from others that La Mia Boutique was getting a lot more wearable these days, so I jumped on two recent issues when they came up for sale from a UK ebay seller (after having a previous order with a UK magazine shop mysteriously cancelled weeks later with no explanation).
December 2009
I absolutely knew I wanted to grab this issue since littlejazzbird gave a pretty comprehensive rundown of the best patterns in it (seriously, go see the scans on her site! She’s sewn up a lot of LMB patterns recently, too), but there were a few more I wanted to highlight…
This is actually a plus-size pattern (though with LMB I’m a 44/46 anyway so it’s not a big deal), but I absolutely love this tunic! I’d leave the above-bust pleats unstitched, but otherwise wear it as-is.
I really like this all-over lace dress, with a great lace hem and a nice cowl neckline:
How much do I love that turtlenecks are “dolcevita” in Italian?? This is super slim-fitting, but otherwise a nice basic that I don’t really have in my pattern arsenal.
I don’t think I’m quite ready to pair it with one of the many miniskirts in this issue though, even with the thickest tights!
February 2010
This issue I just bought blind, having not seen anything more than the cover, and it turns out that I actually like this one even more than December!
Oh my freaking god, how amazing is this draped knit dress! I absolutely adore this. It’s the kind of thing that makes me want to drop everything I’m doing, go out and buy 2.25m of silk jersey and just go to town. Dress – you and I have got a date with destiny, just you wait.
A new twist on the basic teeshirt, with lots of shirring at the neck. I usually think of shirring as being the sole domain of the (shudder) peasant blouse, so it’s nice to see it here with a totally different look.
I love the technical drawing of these trousers (there’s two other great trouser patterns in this issue, too), but there’s no WAY I’ll be making these in stretch pleather. Just to make that clear…
A quick knit top!
Here’s a cool twist on the twinset idea – layer a vest (tank top) with a modern cape jacket for a great business casual look. For me, this is a grat alternative to the Chanel-esque jackets (of which there’s also one in this issue), which IMHO add at least 20 years onto whomever’s wearing it.
And hooray, another turtleneck! They love them so much there’s even a short-sleeved version to see you through the other seasons.
While LMB are still difficult to get ahold of in single issues, I’m not quite ready for a subscription yet either, so I think I’ll wait and see how many designs I make from these two before reassessing my options.
Tags: la-mia-boutique, magazineComment [9]