Helen of Troy

Good morning everybody!

As I´m too tired to sit in front of my sewing maschine this week, I´m posting a dress I already made last May.

A friend of mine from my childhood asked me for a dress to wear at a christening. She wanted one in a kind of Helen of Troy style.

So, I made the pattern according to her despcription, bought white Crepe de chine, chiffon and a lot of different beads in bronze, brown and gold colours. This is what came out:

Its knee-lenght, I don´t have a better picture...

The beading took a loooong time, but it was worth it!

I hope I can continue with the Dirndl pattern today or tomorrow...

Let´s Dirndl! - Starting point

A collegue of mine asked me if I could make her a Dirndl, a traditional austrian dress.

She has difficulties with finding a size that truly fits.

As I´m fairly new to pattern making I promised I´d try. So yesterday we had a nice chatty evening and I took her measurments. Now I´ll start drafting the pattern - wish me luck!

The dress is made out of four major pieces:

The blouse: Traditionaly ending at an empire waist. With either short, 3/4 or long sleeves, depending on the season, most of the time puffy and gathered at the hem.

  

 The bodice: It is originally made out of linen. It has a button closure at the front, sometimes it has Dirndl-hooks for lacing. The more modern Dirndl have a zipper at the side and the lacing and buttons are just decorative. The bodice is kind of low cut, but got more and more low, I think since the "Oktoberfest" (it´s a festival in munich where everyone get´s into a Dirndl and get´s drunk with beer).

The skirt: Sometimes the skirt is attached to the bodice, but if you want to be able to vary between skirts and bodices you can make it seperatly. It´s done in 3 lenghts, floor lenght, mid calf and over the knee. Traditionally the skirt is gathered with a method that´s called "hanseln":

The apron: It´s hem ends a few cm over the skirt hem. The apron is gathered with the same method as the skirt. The side you tie the bow says something about your status (married, unattached, widow).

Enough Dirndl talk - let´s start!

Hermiones red dress- photo heavy post

Two months ago I started to recreate the red dress Hermione Granger wore to Fleur & Bills wedding.

I constructed the pattern myself. After sewing a muslin and little alterations I had a finished pattern for the bodice with princes seams and darts in the back:

After this - fabric shopping!!!

 I bought 3m of very soft and flowy micro satin, 5m chiffon, a little darker glass beads and of course, an invisible zipper.

I started by making the bodice out of a double layer of micro satin and chiffon. And then the ruffles...oh yes, the ruffles. I had to run to the store because I ran out of needles...

That´s just the ruffles on the edges of the bodice...

 

After I sewed in the lining - also micro satin - more ruffles! They run from the front of the bodice over the shoulders to the back, all of them facing outwards.

I sewed the skirt in a sewing-flash, so I didn´t make good progress pictures. I made the skirt out of a 3/4 circle of micro satin and chiffon. There are  8 lines of ruffles down the skirts. These ruffles are getting narrower as they run down the skirt.

I put the zipper in the side seam, not in the back seam as the original dress, so it´s easier to close by myself.

And what´s missing? Of course more ruffles!

I did many rows of ruffles around the waist and a big flowery ruffle circle in the front.

Last I handsewed the beads in between the ruffles.

As I am no good at taking pictures of myself, I only have this lousy one, but I hope I´m able to convince somebody to take better pictures soon.

 All in all I made 32m (34yard) of chiffon stripes into ruffles!!!

But I just love this dress and hope I can wear it soon!

Present time!

A collegue of mine (the one I made the purple Aotonement dress for) had her last day at work today. As a good-bye gift I made her several things to wear. Her favorite colour is purple, so I went purple crazy at the fabric store=)
That´s my farewell package:

 

A Simplicity 2364 waterfall top made out of viscose jersey. I have the same shirt just with a different fabric.

This is a longsleeve Shirt "Albi" from Schnittquelle with overlenght raglan sleeves. 

A summerdress with awesome and kind of psychedelic viscose jersey. I used a pattern from a lingerine top and altered it.

This ist a pattern from Farbenmix and is called Antonella. The embroidered motive is from Urban threads,  website with lots of absolutley great motives! The fabric is cotton jersey.

I also made her one additional shirt, but I forgot to take a picture...

That´s about it. I hope she´s happy with her new warderobe and won´t forget me so quick:)

Silverado corset photo shoot

The first corset I made was a Silverado corset from Laughing moon. I love this pattern:)

I made it out of silk dupioni, cotton interlining, satin lining and steel boning.

The pattern came together easily, it was fun to sew.

Here are a few pictures from a photoshoot with my wonderful cousin Schildgroede.

For her birthday I made my cousin the same corset in smaragd green, I don´t have any pictures of it.

My Atonement

In my first post I want to share a dress I made last summer. I wanted to catch the style of the green dress, Keira Knightley wore in Atonement but with alterations. I didn´t want the bodice to hang so loosley for most things, and I didn´t want fabric tied at the front.

So I used a Vogue pattern, which matched my whishes prefectly. 

Here are two pictures from a photoshoot:

A few weeks later 2 collegues of mine and I were asked to perform at a wedding, so we needed matching dresses. They both fell in love with my Atonement-Dress, so it was quickly decided.

We bought a light green and a purple duchesse satin and I got started.

Here are the picture before our performance:

Black diamond costume from Moulin rouge

I started a longtime monster project. I want to recreate the Black Diamond costume from Satine in Moulin rouge:

Nicole Kidman in the Black Diamond costume

I started making the pattern by using parts of McCalls 6480 and drafting the front sections myself:

Then I went fabric hunting: and got a black cotton, a black microvelvet and a black powernet. I also got a first stack of 7mm and 10mm twisted bugle beads and sequins.

 After making a muslin I finally started. I made the bodice out of the cotton with an overlayer of powernet so the beads can´t damage the cotton with their wheight. The flaps are made of velvet with cotton lining.

 Next came the sequins. I drew the shell pattern on the fabric and handsewed the sequins on one-by-one.

After hours of sewing I finished the sequin part so far. The next thing were the 7mm bugle beads. I sewed them on in vertical rows and filled the shells.

Because filling the whole bodice is very very tiresome I´m not doing it all at once. So I made the motive on the flaps with little metal stars, 7mm bugle beads, glass beads, sequins and silver thread...

Okay, back to the bugle beads and the current status of this project.

Whenever I run out of beads, which happens often as the bead stack in Vienna is very limited and I have to wait until the next delivery, I make the bugle bead strings for the front waist of the garment with 10mm beads and glass beads: