Lady Skater Wrap Dress Hack

Hi All! Today I have to share with you a wrap dress hack, using the Lady Skater dress pattern by Kitschy Coo as a base for the bodice and this beautiful jersey. This was my third Minerva Crafts Blogger Network make.

To make the wrap bodice I traced both sides for the front bodice piece (which is originally cut on the fold) and drew a diagonal line from the shoulder seam to the waist side seam. I cut off the excess, pinned the new pattern piece to the fabric and cut 2. The back bodice I left the same because the wrap is just going on in the front. I ignored the patterns binding piece and measured the diagonal line of the bodice front x2, plus the back neckline.  I started sewing the binding at the waist of the right bodice front, going upwards across the back neckline and then down the left bodice front, then cutting off the excess. I did pull the binding a bit taut to prevent gaping. The skirt is a circle skirt, which is the with of the left bodice front, the back and the right bodice front as it wraps over itself.

The left-hand tie was sewn into the side seam, and the other was sewn to the waistline of the right-hand front bodice piece. The dress then ties at the side. Because the fabric is so busy the ties are pretty much invisible. It would have been interesting to do them in a contrasting colour so they stand out more. Maybe next time! 

The dress does sit really nicely. All of the dress was sewn on my overlocker, making it a really quick and easy make after I'd done the pattern hacking. I left the armholes and hem raw because as it's a knit, it won't fray. I cut the hem length a bit longer than usual, so I would have enough for a hem but I liked the longer length so left it as it was.

 I've never made or worn a wrap dress before so it was interesting to try a different shape, and I must say I quite like it! This dress is so, so comfy, because the fabric is so soft and being a knit it stretches with you.  It's definitely a secret pajamas dress. The colours in the print are really beautiful pinks and purples which brighten me up when I wear this dress. Even after a spell on my 'floordrobe' it was crease-free and ready to wear straight away which is exactly what I need.

Thank you for reading, and to Emma and Paul who took the photos for me! Also, thank you to Meghan for rescuing me when I got too dizzy twirling to stand. Unfortunately all of the twirling photos show EVERYTHING, so it was all for nothing. 

Lauren xx

Tie-dye Culottes

Hello All! Please permit me to present to you my take on culottes! I've been seeing a lot of them around the fashion scene lately, and even though I am definitely anti-fashion when a new trend comes along that I like the look of, I'll give it a go. And if I like it, then I'll wear it forever until I tire of it, not when the fashion industry tires of it.

 I dug out Simplicity 7463 from my stash and decided to make view 3 (the pink ones), lengthening them to the shin. It turned out that I didn't have enough fabric to do that, so settled for having them just above the knee instead.

It turned out that when the hem was just above the knee I was totally indifferent about them, so I shortened them a bit and hey presto I love them! I might have been a tad enthusiastic with the shears but they cover everything decently, so it\s fine!

I inherited the fabric from my grandma, and I think she may have tie-died it herself to create the awesome print. I'd love to know how she did it.

As the pattern was a size 12, and I'm a 6/8 so I took it in at the waist and hips a bit, but the rest seamed to be okay. I'm really happy with the finishing of these culottes. Every seam is overlocked, and I used facings for the waist and hems. I'm also really proud of the lapped zipper that I inserted by machine at the center back. I've never had a successful one so I tend to use invisible zips or handpick them but I'm so pleased with how this one turned out!

And this is me proving that they are culottes. The hem was a nightmare to even out due to the box pleat at the front, especially as my mannequin can only have dresses or skirts put on her. In the end I put them on me, and measured from the waistline as far around as I could reach. It seemed to work out okay. It's a pity that I have already had my last P.E lesson because I would have loved to wear these for tennis. 

Thanks very much for reading and to Ed for taking a break from revision to snap some pictures!

Lauren xx

Me-Made-May 2015 Week 1 round up

 Hello all! This years pledge for Me Made May is as follows: "I, Lauren Digby of www.ladysewalot.blogspot.co.uk, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May '15. I endeavor to wear at least one handmade garment each day for the duration of May 2015 and try not to have any outfit repeats." It's going well so far. I would say that taking pictures is the hardest thing!

Day 1: Grey blazer and dress with a RTW shirt.

Day 2: A sneak peek of this months Minerva Crafts project, yet to be blogged, worn with a RTW cardi.

Day 3: Unblogged floral lady skater and RTW cardi.

Day 4: Cherry Blossom Chardon and RTW top that I need to copy because this one has been worn so much it's falling to bits.

Day 5: Grey dress, green cardi and RTW scarf.

Day 6: A finished on that very morning Victoria blazer and Holly trousers. The trousers are a future Minerva Crafts project and I managed to squeeze the blazer from the scraps because I was determined to wear these trousers to school!

Day 7: Floral top refashion which is one of my oldest makes still being worn, grey skirt and green cardi

Day 8: Today was a non-uniform day so I went for floral dungarees and the navy lace bomber jacket.

Thanks for reading and to Beth for being a saint for taking photos every day!

Lauren xx

Elmer Crop Top

The idea for this top was sparked by a conversation I was having with a friend discussing what our imaginary animal friends would be like. (Mine would be a moose called Gary.) My friend plumped for an elephant named Elmer, which brought back childhood memories of everyone's favourite multi-coloured elephant. The message that Elmer gives is that it's okay to be different which I agree with wholeheartedly. 

My friend mentioned that he had an Elmer shirt, which I was very excited about, then disappointed about when it turned out to be just multi-coloured checks. I decided that I could do better than that and this top was born.

I first cut out a crop top using my bodice block, which doesn't have any side darts. The fabric used was a white linen, which I believe was an old tablecloth. I then printed and cut out a stencil of Elmer, and drew around it using a black fabric marker. I cut the ear on a hinge so I could trace around that too.

I then divided Elmer up into little squares and rectangles so I knew where each block of colour would go.

Looking at a reference picture, I filled him in and ta-da! Then it was time to put the crop top together. I sewed everything with a 1.5cm seam allowance which ended up being too tight, so I had to unpick the side seams and sew them again with a much smaller seam allowance. I'll have to make adjustments to my bodice sloper. The neckline and armholes would also have been better with a 1cm seam allowance.

I decided to line the top in a cotton gauze so edges were really neatly enclosed. I'm really proud of the insides of this top! For the hem, I did a hem facing which was sewn right sides together, understitched and then turned and slipstitched on the inside. It really helps the top to sit nicely. 

It is very white, perhaps too white, as it blends pretty well with my skin! Perhaps I should do some kind of border along the neckline and armholes with the black marker so people know where the top ends and my skin starts...

The back is plain. This is very much a 'party in the front' kind of top. The skort is from a vintage charity shops and I love the colours in it, but I've never really had anything to wear it with. This outfit though, is perfect.

I am very chuffed with it and very proudly wore it to school the day after I finished it. It's been in the wash, and it held up just fine. It was very fun to do some fabric 'painting' for a change. I'd like to do a lot more when exams are finished.

Thanks very much for reading, to Paul for sparking off the idea in my head and to Edward for taking photos!

Lauren xx

Mummy Boy

For my last year of school I took 3 subjects for A Level: Textiles, Drama and Sociology. In Drama we had to come up with a devised piece, made up entirely by ourselves which is then performed. The rest of my class was marked for their performance, but I of course chose to make the costumes instead. Our group decided to use

Tim Burton's 'Mummy Boy' poem

as a basis for our devised piece. The actors needed a Mummy Boy costume each as they were multi-roleing, a virgin sacrifice costume, something fit for a Mexican, beetle costumes and a mummy dog. 

 I made the 2 Mummy Boy costumes and the Virgin Sacrifice costume which I'll talk about in a later blog post. 

The key factor in Mummy Boy’s costume was that it needed to be removed easily, as the actor sheds the costume to become a beetle. Both actors needed a Mummy Boy costume as they multi-role as Mummy Boy throughout the play. With this in mind, I ordered 2 all in one non-woven suits that zipped up the front which could be covered in bandages. These could be easily taken off by the actors. 

 For the bandages, I did some researching on breaking down costumes to make them look old and worn and the answer seemed to be tea. So I dug around in the linen closet for some old white sheets and dunked them in boiling water (in a bucket) with about a dozen tea bags for a couple of hours. 

My tea-stained sheets worked out pretty well, but they didn't look disgusting enough for a mummy. Remember, mummy's have to wear their bandages for thousands of years, so they must get pretty mucky. The solution to this was to paint random brown streaks all over the sheets, to liven them up a bit. I had to do quite a few sets of sheets, and it was definitely easier to paint them whole, and then rip them up into bandages.

Then, the bandage ripping commenced. I started ripping quite narrow stripes, then realised that the narrower the strips were, the more I was going to have to sew on, so I made the bandages quite a bit wider after that. After all of the bandages were ripped, it was time to sew them onto the overalls. This meant a lot, and I mean

a lot

of hand sewing. 

Ta-da, the suit was pretty much entirely covered in bandages! Of course, I had to try it on to see how flexible it was. 

I found that wrapping the strips, then sewing them on made the suit tighter so for the second Mummy Boy suit I sewed each strip at a time. This took much longer, but did the job properly. After this one was finished, I had to start all over again for the second one!

The zip on the second Mummy Boy costume broke and was replaced with adhesive Velcro. This was also done with the first suit as the actor found it was easier to get on and off. However, the sound of Velcro ripping is clearly heard when changing costumes. There was an incident in rehearsal which resulted in all of the Velcro ripping off the suit so both sides of the Velcro were better secured to ensure that it did not happen again. My machine did not like sewing on the stick on velcro atall. The needle and underplate got all gummed up and disgusting and I had to scrape all the sticky residue off. Never again. Next time I will just buy sew-in velcro. 

I kept finding gaps to fill in rehearsals, and crotches kept ripping, so I was sewing bandages on pretty much up to the day of the performance. The overalls were only a couple of pounds so the quality was rubbish and they ripped really easily. Next time I'd do for something something more stable. Another way to do things would be to sew a huge sheet of bandages to make bandage fabric, and then cut overall pieces out of that and sew them together, but I think it might have lost the 3-D effect.

To secure the bandages I did a prick stitch on the right side and a long running stitch on the wrong side. The issue was that the long running stitch caught easily when the actors put the costume on, so the stitches ripped easily. If I made the running stitches shorter on the wrong side it would just be too time consuming. When the strips had been handsewn to the overalls, I sewed the bandages down in key areas by machine in a matching thread, that shouldn’t be visible to the audience to make the bandages as secure as possible. The overalls were very tricky to manoeuvre around the sewing machine.

Mummy dog was just a puppet wrapped in bandages. For our set, we covered everything in bandages, including the audience. 

I'm really proud of my Mummy Boy costumes, because they took a lot of time, effort and perserverance to make. And on the plus side at least I have something to wear for halloween next year!

Thank you to Emma and Katherine for wearing my costumes so well, and to Emma and Katie for taking pictures during the performance. I hope you enjoyed reading about something a little different than my usual floral dresses!

Lauren xx