CarmencitaB

Sewing in Paris

So you are in Paris, France. You've just spent a whole day in Marché St-Pierre and your stash is this much higher and you want to start sewing right away? Go to Canal St-Martin and drop by The Sweat Shop, a "couture café", a cybercafé for seamstresses. It's got a cutting table, 10 Singer workstations you can rent by the hour, coffee and cake. What else do you need?

Finished : Oscar De La Renta

Here it is! Finished! I wore it on Sunday and the fabric is still a little too stiff for this everyday dress to fall properly, but give it a couple of wash, and it should look just right. All the work I did on the muslin payed off but I worked on the lining pattern which ends at the waist, the hips ended up a little too tight! That's a beginner muslim mistake I will not repeat!

The straps look really good because I had a total sewing epiphany using Deb Thompson's tutorial on How to Attach Facings in a Sleeveless Garment and this is one piece of information I'll be using forever and ever, because it involves absolutely no hand sewing! As you know I am one lazy seamstress!

The insides look just as good as the outside, which I love and this was thanks to another invaluable piece of information found on Sew-4-fun on Attaching a Partial Lining to a Bodice.

It's a little scary to tell you the truth, but if you've done your homework and made a muslin, I recommand this method as the result looks great. (The trained sewing eye will see immediately that I was too chicken to take out a whole seam allowance worth of fabric there, but next time, I'll really go for it!) No hand stitching there either, that's all good.

It really is a joy to construct, it's a pattern with only 3 main pieces and I think you actually could spare the bodice work and finish it 'Burda Style' with bias tape and overstitch and it would look just as good, come to think of it, I might just do that to the Stunt Dresses as they might not get as much wear.

Please note that the dress actually fits me better.

Jewelry

I don't wear a lot of jewelry, but if I did, I would wear this. It's lovely and it reminds me of my first sewing projects, dolls clothes, which I did on my Mom's ancient Singer on which they had added an electric motor. Look for it here.

Sidetracks

I just got sidetracked, so the Oscar De La Renta is not finished.

I was casually looking up fabric on the web and saw this : Alexander Henry's Thunder Flower. I thought OMG and then sent the picture to my niece who's really into Mangas and she said OMFG and I just spent most of my free time looking for this fabric because I realized it was from the 2009 collection, it's all kind of back order everywhere and we might not ever see it again. Etsy sellers, a good place to look for funky fabrics, once again came through with some yardage which I added to my US fabric stash.