Dress form evening

Oh boy, things are going to get moving starting tomorrow - I've got one less day than I thought I would in Bucharest so lots of meetings with lots of people will happen. And some shopping, I hope.

I spent this evening in front of my laptop looking at dress forms. It seems that the only real options out there are made by this Kentish company, adjustoform. I also toyed with the idea of making a mold after myself but ended up dismissing it as too much hassle.

I've finally decided on getting a Lady Valet, which comes in two colors, black and cream. Truth be told, I prefer the cream version more, but the black one is cheaper and it also comes with some seemingly useless things (flimsy-looking hem-maker, brush, measuring tape). Well they probably aren't useless, but I haven't had a problem with my hems yet and I already own the other two things. The cream is prettier, however, I suspect I will need to pad it at the waist line, so the black one would end up looking cream anyway.

Unfortunately, the official website doesn't sell the cream version online. I have, however, found it at 119 pounds here on the sewing world website (thank you Google!). I'm actually considering phoning the factory to ask if they have any showroom on site. I'd like to see these forms for myself before I buy and Ashford is fairly easy to access from South London. I'll discuss it with Mr. T - at this point I'm still considering whether travelling there is worth it. Maybe he has some input on this.

Images from adjustoform website.

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Birds dress

Just another sheath dress from me today, from my TNT pattern. This one is all about the fabric:

I got this bird fabric from Plush Addict, and it seems to have been the last fabric purchase pre-baby (Cosmo - Nihonkai - Budgies On Oxford Cloth if you are interested), so didn't cut into it for a long time. In May, after finishing my coat, I finally took the plunge.

The pattern, as I said, was my TNT sheath pattern, pretty simple. The biggest challenge with this dress was fabric placement, I didn't want any weird bird cuts at seams, nor did I want any other sort of weird placement.
As i had 2 meters of this fabric, I thought I should be able to get all that, so I spent a lot of time moving fabric pieces around, until I got it. I'm pretty happy with myself, the seams meld as much as possible, I'm particularly proud of the center back:

Construction wise, this dress has 6 darts and 5 seams, so it is all relatively straightforward. I stabilized the neckline and armholes with…

How to make silk bias binding

I promised this tutorial a while ago, but was too busy with work to get to it. This tutorial will focus on how to iron and fold the binding, rather than how to cut it. I have three links to good tutorials about how to do the correct cutting.

Here goes: a tutorial for properly making bias binding. Apologies for picture quality, I was using my phone.

Tools needed:
* silk square for the bias, sewing machine and scissors to make the continuous bias strip that will be ironed into place
* a 2-inch (5cm) wide piece of cardboard
* some sort of vaporiser, filled with water
* bias tape maker - for these pictures, I used a Clover which makes 1/2" binding (starts with 1" strips), but if I were to do this again, I'd use the one which makes a 1" binding (out of 2" strips)

Naming:
* left-side: bias strip not yet passed through the bias maker
* right-side: bias strip which has been folded by the bias maker

Steps:

1. Cut bias strips out of your silk square. I like this tutorial…

Burda Spring Coat - Construction

Here I am back with the promised post on construction of my Burdasyle Spring Coat

For me, this coat was all about the embellishments: I had had my eye on the pattern for a while, I like that it's very simple so it was perfect for embellishing. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you'll note that I haven't yet gone back to making a notched collar after messing this one up (that's less fear than not having enough time). I also liked the opportunity to forego closures, which meant more time to play with all the pretty things I used :)

So, construction. The fabric is wool gabardine, and the lininig is silk satin. I interfaced this using the lightweight fusible weft interfacing from FashionSewingSupply - I wasn't really sure what to use, but upon testing multiple interfacings, this was was the best on this fairly light-weight fabric. I mostly used my Singer Tailoring book, and followed the "fusible" method: this means interfacing the whole front, t…

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