Challenge 7 - Mixed Prints

My tunic won Challenge 6.  Amazing!  Thank so much to all of you that have voted for me and left encouraging comments.  This challenge is wiping me out.  There are some days I am so tired of sewing or even thinking about sewing. DH is being very understanding and supportive,  so I took a break to spend some time with him this weekend.

Challenge 7 is mixed prints

Mixed prints are a recent fashion trend. This challenge was to make an outfit of mixed prints and come up with a story on where you would wear it.  This was an excuse to delve into my fabric stash and look at the print fabrics in a whole new way. I usually store fabric by fabric content or by color schemes (great for SWAP planning). I pulled  all the prints out these storage bins and piled them on the table looking for interesting and unique pairings. It was a real challenge.

Prints can be mixed on one garment like a dress of coat or you can wear separates, each in a different print. 
 
Regarding  print separates, one style blog commented that  mixing prints  was scary,  but pointed out that once you get a handle on it and start creating combo’s you have never tried before, your wardrobe combinations and permutations increase exponentially,   you can get dressed faster and you will impress your fashion friends effortlessly. Well, I appreciate her positive spin on it.

I chose to go with the separates option so I can also wear the garments in more sedate pairing with other items in my wardrobe.  My comfort zone is mixing small scale prints, in the same color way. This is a holdover from my quilting days.  I  decided to push my comfort zone a bit in the print scale dept.  But at my age,  a motley mixed print combo  combined with a bad hair day can come perilously close to "Bag Lady" look.  So I made the garment silhouettes fitted and classic and the prints current and modern. So the outfit would look deliberately fashiony,  if you know what I mean.


Here are the prints I chose.



Prints
 

 I made three garments. Which garment from which fabric?

Patterns

  Pamela’s Pattern   - The Magic Pencil Skirt,

  Vogue 8262  OOP

Burda 7073

 

 

 

Pamela's pattern Magic Pencil Skirt

 

 

 

 

Burda 7073

vogue 8262

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Where am I going to wear this outfit?

 

Where am I going to wear this outfit?  The Visual Art Studio (VAS) Patrons Preview later this month.  I have taken many classes at the VAS over the years. Rug hooking, stained glass, shibori dying, and several in pattern drafting and design. My DH and I also make charitable donations to this organization, which are matched by both our employers. This bumps us up to the patron category that gets invited to art sale  previews, events that attract an eclectic crowd who dress in unique garments  and jewelry. I will probably be one of the more conservative dressed attendees. But maybe I will find some fabulous jewelry, just when someone would appreciate a holiday gift suggestion for me.

 

The last challenge was announced.  3 pieces that can be worn together as one outfit or two outfits.

Argg, didn't I just sew that.  So tired.........

Challenge 6 - Judges's Choice

Using the fabric the judges selected for us, we were challenged to make a unique garment and work with a material we may not have used before.

The fabric was in the judges words “ a pretty chiffon panel print” My description is “polyester chiffon, stripes in 1980’s colors of muted forest green, mauvey pink, milk chocolate brown with a border. I believe the challenge was to work with chiffon, which can be difficult. For me this challenge was the fabric print.



Challenge Fabric

Immediate ideas for garments were a maxi dress, or beach type cover-up, neither of which I would wear So I asked myself what to I like to wear in silk chiffon and one of the answers was thigh length, body skimming tunics, over cami's and skinny pants. They make me feel elegant, lean, and covered up at the same time. So I went looking for a tunic pattern that would somehow use the border. After much internet searching and looking through back issues of all my pattern magazines, I found the one that inspired me, that motivated me to move beyond my dislike of the fabric. It was in issue 154, (2009) of Mrs Stylebook.



Mrs Stylebook Tunic

 Mrs Stylebook is a quarterly Japanese magazine  full of drafting instruction for women’s garments that are slightly different styles than what you would find in other pattern magazines. No patterns, but diagrams that show you how to take your sloper and by dropping the armhole 2cm, extending the bodice length 18 cm, or drafting a sleeve based on the length of the your front and back armhole, you end up with a pattern for a garment that will fit you perfectly, because it was drafted using your sloper as a starting point.





Mrs Stylebook tunic drafting instructions

  This pattern was a fairly easy draft. It is a basic un-darted shirt with shaped flounces added to the bottom edge. The collar is a simple rectangle that is gathered to fit the neckline. There are two layers of flounces, one shorter than the other, both with points that hang down in the center of each front and back side panel. I cut the body and sleeves from the striped part of the fabric. I cut the flounces on the border print area. One of the problems I have with this print is that it is busy. There is no one shape or color my eyes want to focus on. And if made it into a garment, an onlooker would have the same problem. So I happened to have a polyester organza ombre fabric colored from light tan to milk chocolate brown. I made the front button placket in this fabric starting with the tan at the bottom and ending in the darker brown near the face with the collar in the same shade of brown. The flounce edges are finished using a serged rolled hem. I have used sergers for 30 years and this is the first time I have used a rolled hem on a garment. You can teach an old horse new tricks! Though I need some more practice, the stitching was not as pretty as the quide book pictures. French seams were used on all straight garment seams and serging finishing on the armholes. I actually like the finished garment. And it is fun to wear, very flowy with lots of movement. The pattern is definitely a candidate for making again.

The Bundle Challenge

Each contestant was sent a 6 yard bundle of fabric. We were instructed to use the 6 yards to make a  2 piece garment, and to be sure to  incorporate the three fabrics in some way.

The fabric bundle I received contained  a 2 yard piece of stiff grey woven with a faint shadow stripe.    A 1.5 yard piece of bright fuchsia slinky (acetate/lycra) with a defect down the length of the fabric and a 2.5 yard length of rose colored polyester knit.  All of which I would have normally relegated to my “fabric for muslin” pile, the knits because of fiber content and the woven for its hand/lack of drape.  But as a result of being forced to use them and liking the results, I may be more open to sewing these types of fabrics in the future.

My Bundle

I love the way slinky fabric looks and feels, but I had a memorial incident in my early years with acetate that makes me averse to using it for garments. I must have been about 12 years old and one evening  I was dressed in my silky grown up nightgown (as opposed to kid stuff flannel) sitting cross-legged on the floor, removing the nail polish from my nails. I over poured the polish remover on the tissue I was using and a large quantity splashed down on my nightgown,  dissolving the fabric and leaving a big hole in my lap.   A rather startling example of science in action.   Yes, nail polish remover, acetone, will dissolve acetate.  Acetate is also highly flammable, it flares up when it comes in contact with flame.  On the other hand these two characteristics make it easy to test mystery fabrics  for acetate content. I would recommend it for sleepwear.

The rose  knit and the fuchsia slinky clashed horribly in daylight,  but looked okay in indoor light. I thought small doses of the fuchsia on the rose would look planned and dilute the color intensity. Looking in my pattern stash for a very different pattern,  Vogue 1135 a Ralph Rucci dress, caught my eye, and I immediately thought that  instead of the  tucks in the bodice, appliqued strips of the fuchsia fabric  would look really neat. Coming up with a way to create and attach them took a lot of thought and samples.

Vogue 1135

The raised bands on the bodice are made using an applique quilting technique for make padded flower stems. A strip of fabric is folded in half with wrong sides together.  I serged the raw edges of the slinky strips to reduce curling and prevent slippage.  The strip is sewn to the background with the stitching line about 1/4 inch from the raw edge.  The opposite side is folded over the seam allowance to cover it and hand sewn to the background fabric resulting in a slightly raised, even width strip.

cut strips

  What a challenge this dress was! It has under arm gussets, lots of tucks which have to be marked then sewn, and an invisible zipper in a curved seam with matching of 3 bands and two tucks across the seam (hand basting required).

gusset and bands

 All the versions of this dress I have seen have  been sewn in dark colored fabrics which makes it hard to see the details.  Well, here it is in all its pink glory.  It is floor length dress on me and I am 5’8” tall. Usually I have to add to the length to Vogue patterns. The dress is actually very comfortable and fun to wear.  It swishes wonderfully.  I wish it was more fitted in the lower back. The fabric is loose and pools on my tush, but there are no seams to do alterations in that area.



being goofy - action shot

I had seen a lot of jean jackets worn over feminine dresses, a balance of structure versus unstructured.  So I used the gray fabric to make a short collarless jacket with jean jacket styling.  The jacket was top stitched in white. My serger developed repair issues between the dress and the jacket.  I resorted to finishing the inside seams with bias cut strips of silk. This jacket is a copy of a white denim RTW jacket I already own. 

jacket - copied from RTW

Jacket inside seams finished in silk bias strips

Jacket and dress

T.

Fabricista Fashion " Recycle" Challenge

All the entries are posted, and voting is in progress for the first challenge of the Fabric Mart Fabricista Fashion  Challenge. Go to the site, check out the entries and vote for your favorite. Voting ends at midnight on Wed, Sept 18th.  I am delighted and amazed  by the creativity and resourcefulness of the participants.

Fabricista Fashion Challenge


Challenge 2 was announced and started yesterday.   The timing of this a bit odd, in that we are supposed to start on Challenge 2, but one of us is going to be eliminated by Challenge 1.

The next challenge is to use the Salme Dress pattern  that has been selected for us, and create a unique garment that reflects our personality. We can alter the pattern or add to the patterns to make it more us.  We have to think of one or two words that describe ourselves to inspire our look. We will be judged on creativity, craftsmanship, fit,  and how well represented the description words are in our design, and difficulty.

 Hmm it looks very similar to the like the Sewaholic Cambi dress, doesn't it?