New Follower Shout-out!

Wow! I'm so grateful for all the new followers who started reading recently! I'm do hope you enjoy the blog.

Thanks to:

magda magda

Silver Rose

Shawnta of Peace, Love, and Namaste

Katherine

bX-46eyv2

Ditte Lampe

Lady Be Good

Lynn Gray


If any of you have blogs, let me know!

And just because:

I have no idea what she is staring at so intently.  It must be food.

FIDM Frustration: #4 I Can't Get No Sleep!

No sleep = bad grammar and a very, very grumpy girl.

Oh, and also a pretty dress that I love and am so proud of.  :) I designed, drafted, and sewed it.  It was a two week project, but the majority of the work was done the night before :(

Unlike my draping class from hell, I really enjoy my pattern drafting class.  My previous post has pictures of the muslin and the requirements for the first garment we had to make for my drafting class.  Two nights ago, at 4am, I finished the dress.  That night I got only 1 hour of real sleep, a few minutes in the car ride to school, and mere seconds on the icky train ride home.  I couldn't help it! I kept dosing off.  

The only thing I didn't finish was the zipper, which was not required and I plan to install one when I get the dress back.  I think it will fit my sister too.  

The fabric is a vintage cotton/poly blend flocked dotted swiss gigham.  Wow, that was a mouthful!  Thanks textiles class!  It is fully lined (my first time fully lining anything, and doing it the right way!)  with a white cotton/poly broadcloth.  I used this awesome burrito method to line the dress. I'll take pictures of the lining next week.  The bodice pieces, waistband and skirt are lined separately, but when attached there are no exposed seams and everything is enclosed in the waistband.  Pretty awesome!

What do you think, 7" exposed zipper, or invisible zipper?

FIDM Frustration: #3 The I Don't Give A Damn Drape

I HATE DRAPING!  I'm such a rules person, so not having any is a big problem for me.  I always have questions that my teacher does not want to answer.  Like, am I allowed to go off-grain?  Who knows.  Our assignment is to drape a knit dress using this awful polyester interlock using Bonsai trees as our inspiration.  I didn't just want to throw sh*t on the form like some students did, so I tried to keep it simple and my teacher hated it.   Honestly, I hate it too.  She told me its not couture enough.  Adding a bunch of volume and fluff to a dress does not mean couture.  Hand sewing is couture.

Dress when I turned it in.  Horribly basted together, and the edges not finished.  This was the first drape.  Its not supposed to be polished and done.

 And after it was verbally ripped apart,  I added this macrame garbage to it that I learned in a workshop the day before.  This was about 5 min. of me adding crap! The front has potential, the back still is really ugly.

I have until Wed. to fix the drape, make the pattern for it and cut it out of a chocolate brown interlock I got for a $1/yd at the scholarship store because I didn't have enough of the white to make it again.  Also, I refuse to spend a lot of money on this class.

We'll see how it all turns out....

FIDM Frustration: #2 The "I Don't Give A Damn" Dress

I stayed up to 3am working last night and only got 2.5 hrs of sleep so apparently I do give a damn, but toward the end I wasn't trying as hard.  I started getting loopy that night and started humming really odd things like the William Tell Overture and quoting Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind.  I was tired (and still am).

I had a week to drape a sheath dress, pattern it out with an all in one facing and sew it with zipper and kick pleat.  Doesn't sound so bad, but there's just one problem...I don't know how to drape.  It just doesn't come naturally to me.  Last Friday I worked for 5 hours draping and then working out the pattern pieces only to realize that the pattern was total crap! It was awful! Nothing balanced! The fronts and backs didn't match at all and it wasn't fixable.  I broke down and gave up.  I was a devastating day.

Monday I tried again with much better results.  6 hours later I had a draped design, and most of a pattern.  It seemed to fit the dress form pretty well too.  Whew!  I finished it last night (made patterns for the facings, interfacings and figured out the kick pleat).  Then I sewed.  On top of that I had to finish 20 concept sketches, 3 flats of Theory outfits, and a research paper.  I was done with my dress except hand stitching down the facing to the zipper tape.

The drape was frustrating and so was sewing the damn thing.  It was going really smoothly until I got to the facing.  My instructor told me I could install the zipper first in the CB. Bad idea!  I ended up with mobius strip from hell and had to rip out part of the facing and sew it the home sewing way.  I sewed the shoulder seams of the fashion fabric then tucked the facing shoulder seams in and hand-stitched.  Not perfect and I thought it looked gross, but my teacher didn't notice.

It was one of the better dresses in the class.

Here's a cruddy cell phone picture from class:

Wow!  It's interesting to see just how bad a photo makes my dress look!  I hate this muslin too.  You press it, and it wrinkles again in 5 seconds.  

I have so much homework this week, but the Boyfriend is moving in, so that will be nice.  Just hectic.  I don't know how I'm going to fit everything in!

FIDM Frustration #1

Since I've heard from some of you about wanting to hear about my school experiences, I will continue to write about it in short bits.  I'm too busy to write long posts so I'll write quick installments when I have time or feel like procrastinating.

So one reason for my breakdown last week was I learned from my new pattern teacher that my slopers are all wrong even though they were graded and approved by my previous teacher.  While the measurements are correct, the shoulder slope measurement (shoulder tip to CF) is off by a 1/2" which throws off the entire balance (even though it technically balances to all my other slopers!!!!!) It's hard to explain, but I hope you kind of get what I'm saying.  So I'm frustrated and PISSED OFF! because I have to redo 10 weeks of work in a week and a half or I will continue to get bad grades this quarter because my previous teacher screwed me over.  I feel like I was completely mislead last quarter and I question everything I learned.  Unfortunately, I have my former pattern drafting instructor for draping again this quarter.

  I've been working on a contoured dress in pattern drafting with my F'ed up sloper.  It does not fit well on this dress form because it is a different size and manufacturer but you can get the idea.  Hopefully it will fit the other form like a glove!

Here are the rules for the draft.

Using the contour bodice block:

Draft Sleeveless, low Surplice Bodice
Must have some sort of Empire Waistline
Must have some sort of stripes matching on a seam line somewhere
Skirt must be gathered or circle skirt.

We had to just draft and sew the bodice for the first fitting and to see if we want to make any design changes.

Here is the Portrait dress.  I thought of ornate picture frames and wanted to frame the back and maybe highlight a beautiful chunky necklace:

Pardon the bra.  It helps it fit better on this form.

New Quarter, New Classes

Just started my 4th quarter at FIDM.  I'm taking 4 classes again.  Trying to keep it a little less stressful so I can put more effort into each class.   My first class was Pattern Procedures, the second pattern drafting course.  I'm a loser and totally forgot to bring my slopers to class! Luckily, my teacher was really cool and didn't seem to mind because I took the initiative to make mini slopers before class started so I could still participate.  A lot of students forgot stuff, but I can't believe I was so lame.

Class started with a creative exercise with playdoh.  It was cute, not too exciting.  Someone picked a type of music (we had teen pop, a movie soundtrack, and classic rock) and then a theme (toys, weather, transportation).  We had to sculpt with both the music and theme in mind.  It would be fun to do with kids.  Next we got our supplies.  Nothing new except for some ugly striped fabric and a small cartoon book about the manufacturing process.   I don't think it will really apply to home sewing.

Next we had a review of our slopers, which I didn't have, haha.  All my slopers were approved by my teacher last quarter so hopefully they will work out well for this quarter and my clothing will fit properly on the mannequin.

We then learned about the contour bodice block.  Using our pattern book, we adapted our slopers to contour slopers.  Basic slopers have enough wearing ease added to the pattern so that one can move around, sit, bend, drive, etc.  Contour bodice slopers are made for fitted, sleeveless, or strapless garments.  If you do not take out the extra ease, the garment will gape at the neckline and armscyes.  Not a good look!

We also made a marker in class as a group of 4 students and wrote out a sewing sequence for a skirt that was on display.   In our next class we are starting to design a sleeveless surplice bodice dress with an empire waistline and either a gathered or circle skirt attached.  Still need to decide how I want to design it.

I'm also taking a photoshop that is a complete joke.  I figure that if I can't say anything nice, I won't say anything at all so you probably won't be hearing about that class.

Taking another Draping class and a Creative Design Applications class as well.  More all all those later.

Honestly, I started this post a week ago and now I'm just finishing it, but so much has happened in the week including 2 days of a stressful mental breakdown.  I've never been this stressed out on the first week of school. . . EVER! Don't think I'll be getting straight A's again.  Something I'm going to have to learn to accept.


Thanks to two new Followers!  Justine of Sew Country Chick (Former FIDM grad) and Mak Teh.

A Pair of Jeans...

I just found this video and thought I would share.  It's pretty spectacular!


Roy's Jeans - Video by Self Edge from Self Edge on Vimeo.



I want all of those machines!

French Bias Binding Tutorial!

A sample I had to make for my FIDM sewing binder that I thought I would share...

French Bias Binding!

There are lots of great tutorials out there for working with bias binding.  One of my favorite ways of using bias binding on a neckline or an armhole is doing the french bias binding method.    In this method, the bias strip (usually 2" wide) is folded in half when attached and therefore double thickness of fabric.

There are two ways to attach the binding:

1) Topstitch from the front

2) Stitch in the Ditch from the front

I'm going to show you how to do the topstitching method and then explain the stitch in the ditch method!

1.  Above you see my neckline sample and a 2" wide bias strip.

2.  Fold bias tape in half, wrong sides together.  Match the raw edges of the folded bias tape to the raw edge of the wrong side of neckline.  Sew a 1/4" seam around the neckline.  

3.  Press the bias binding and the seam allowances up.  

4.  Fold the binding over to the right side just covering up the line of stitching.

5.  Pin in place (If you are real good, it's unnecessary).

6.  Edge stitch the binding from the right side and you are done!

 You can also hand stitch the binding down using a slip stitch (a blind stitch in which you stitch about 1/4" in the fold or tunnel of the binding, then take a small 1-2 thread "bite" of the main fabric, then continue back into the fold).


Okay so the other way you can do this is:

1)  Fold bias tape in half, wrong sides together.  Match the raw edges of the folded bias tape to the raw edge of the RIGHT side of neckline.  Sew a 1/4" seam around the neckline.

2) Press the bias binding and the seam allowances up.

3) Fold the binding over to the WRONG side just covering up the line of stitching.

4)   Pin in place.

5) Stitch in the ditch from the RIGHT side catching the folded over bias tape on the back.  

Hope this was helpful!  This is also a great way to bind quilts.  Very sturdy, and crisp.  

Also, thanks Nonissima for becoming the newest follower! 

One Lovely Blogger Award

Amanda over at Pandiola Lane gave me this "One Lovely Blog" Award!  Thanks Amanda!  Check out her blog :)

So now  I have to share 7 things about myself and pass along the award to other bloggers.  So here it goes:

1.   I love swapmeets and flea markets!  Please share any good ones with me!

2.  I really like the color of oatmeal.

3.  I hate exercise.  I need to get back into yoga or rock climbing, but I lack motivation.

4.  I've read the Harry Potter books so many times over the years I have lost count.

5.  I have never been good about keeping a journal.  This blog is the closest thing to it.

6.  I've never been camping/backpacking.  I'd love to one day if there are showers and toilets :)

7.  I'm such a perfectionist that I have a hard time wearing anything that I make.  If it's not up to my standards, it just sits in my closet. :(  I think I need to get over this.

"One Lovely Blog" recipients:

Pammie of Pammie and the P's

Shari of Shari Sews

Rachel of Shoes and Sewing

Angela of RiAnge Creations



Go check them out! All are lovely!