Sunday, January 10, 2010

Sewing Projects From This Term

I haven't had a lot of time this term to work on personal sewing projects but I did make some cool stuff in my sewing class. This term we were supposed to make a tailored men's dress shirt (I chose to make one with french cuffs for my brother) and make and fit a pair of pants (I chose to make jeans).

The shirt took me forever but at least I learned some good techniques. My brother just recently wore it on a trip he took to Baltimore and said that a lot of people commented on how good it looked. I was very happy to hear this because the entire semester I heard horror stories from people who took the class over again about how their shirt looked homemade or looked like a 'Walmart shirt'. I apologize that the picture isn't too good and the shirt isn't pressed, but take my word for it, it looked great!


As long as I have been sewing, I have always heard people say how difficult it was to make a pair of jeans so when my teacher had told us that we needed to make a pair I freaked out. I didn't seem to believe that it was humanly possible to make a pair of jeans, in my mind you just put denim in one side of the machine and on the other side a pair of perfect jeans came out.

I actually found that Jeans are really easy to make and fit. The only really difficult part is putting in the fly zipper. I don't have any pictures of my jeans finished because I broke the zipper. I tried them on after I got all of the rivets in and the zipper split because it was situated right on a curve and so I had to take a pair of pliers to get myself out of them. So I now officially need a shorter zipper.

Even though I can't show you the jeans I will show you the top stitching on the back pockets. They are strands of DNA if you can't tell. (Get it?! Genes=Jeans! At least I got a kick out of this)

Saturday, January 9, 2010

HOLY COW!

It has been forever since I have updated this thing. Someone had just emailed me and reminded me that I actually had a blog! (Thanks unnamed source!)

So to start things off, I have my fall pattern making final. It was supposed to start out being a wedding dress but transformed into more of a garden party dress. I would attribute most of that to my choice of fabric and it's length. (By the way, if it looks out of proportion that would be because it is a quarter size dress form).



This was my initial sketch. I apologize that the dress looks almost nothing like the sketch, but I put off making the pattern until the last minute. Back in the day when it was going to be a wedding dress I was going to do sort of horizontal princess seams and alternate using a satin faced organza and a plain weave organza to create some interest.


There will me more to come from this semester in the coming days. (Hopefully!)