Goldie - The wearble muslin

Do you often make muslin's when your sewing? or Toile's or Calico's?

They're all the same thing but named differently depending on where you live. In Australia, we apparently call them calico's  but considering the majority of my sewing education comes from books, YouTube and blogs, I've ended up calling any garment that is a practice garment a Muslin 

Normally I make my muslin's out of left over fabric, old sheets or fabric from the op-shop. I rarely buy actual calico from the store because its actually quite expensive! Its cheaper to buy home spun plain cotton. Go figure. 

Wearable muslin's however are another deal. Sometimes I make up a garment without any adjustments or edge finishes as they're intended to be a test, but they end up being wearable. And other times I make things with the intention of wearing them out, but they end up not really being the best. This is one of those kinds of projects. (kinda)

Dressing the Decade - 1962

Oh my it's been a rather busy few days for me! Sewing and visiting friends, working late and birthday dinners. Very tricky to fit in more than one blog post a week sadly.

How has the past few days been treating you? Nicely I hope! 

I've decided to make up for my absence with a chunky new addition to Dressing the Decade! 

Here we go with 1962!

The trouble with lurex aka sewing with slippery fabrics

Hello there all you lovely people! Its been a very busy week for myself. Working late, crafting up engagement presents and trying to make a dress for this weekend which is taking way longer then normal.

Why is this you may ask? Well the fabric I chose for this task, while lovely and very nice for going out, is having a small fight with my machine. They just don't want to hang out with each other, so I've have to bring in a mediator

The fabric I chose is a stretchy knit gold Lurex. It has a really lovely drape and because its knitted, I can cut the hem in any shape as I please and it wont unravel and fray all over the place. 

But the downside is that my machine has trouble picking up and carrying the fabric through the feed dog. It bunches, it skips stitches and generally makes sewing a dress a lot more stressful than normal

To help the machine and the fabric get along, I simply take a piece of grease proof paper and layer it over the fabric. In the below image you can see that the top layer is normal lining fabric and underneath is the paper. 

Barbara

Finally I bring to you - The Barbara dress! 

I actually finished this last weekend, but never got to take photos! Cheeky me, but finally this lovely lady is complete and I love it! Its soft and feminine and even if it's really more 70s than 60s, I must argue - for its inspiration comes from one of the great ladies of the 60s - Barbara Hulanicki

Dress Dreams

This coming weekend is not only a long weekend, but its also the start of daylight savings which means lots more sunlight before and after work

Around this time every year, my sketch books and ideas lists quickly become full perhaps because of the extra light, warm weather and the increase of activity in the garden and in nature. The anticipation of summer and the festive season also provides lots of reasons to come up with fun new dresses to make.

Here are some of the dresses that are helping me with these ideas. They're also the kind I wish I could just pluck off the screen in the morning to wear and head off for the day feeling super

Tutorial: French seams and double stitched seams

Two of the techniques I managed to obtain while making the Barbara dress (photos yet to come!) were French seams and rolled hems. Both are good techniques for light materials such as chiffon or silk as they both hide the delicate edges within the seam and give a nice clean finish

Today I will show you French seams - which are apparently called English seams in France (couture anglaise), and also a neat little technique which is ideal for curves while using delicate fabrics

French seam

The French seam requires you to make two lines of stitches – one in the seam allowance and one on the normal seam line. It’s ideal for nice soft fabrics as it encases the raw edge within in the seam. Some fabrics do not take well to being overlocked and so the less it's fussed around with, the better. They are also good for medium weight fabrics and children’s clothes as they are hardy and tend not to unravel on often washed garments

The Beatles in Australia (and a little giveaway!)

On Sunday, my boyfriend and I took a little visit to the city to see the exhibition - The Beatles in Australia! 

The exhibition details the hype before, during and after The Beatles tour to Australia in June 1964.

It was a pretty thorough and exciting exhibition, with lots of newspaper clippings, magazines, promotional merchandise and newsreel footage for visitors to read. There were also listening booths set up to hear from people who were there recall their own experiences with the tour and a mini diner set with a jukebox and dining table so you could sit and flick through scrapbooks put together by various Beatles fans

You can view the entire photo album over here on my Flickr, but here are a few stand outs of the exhibition