Brass Rat

It's been a loooong time since I've blogged. I'm still sewing, but since I'm now busy with school and living in a small (and messy!) dorm room, I mostly make clothes over the summer and when I go home for break. And I'm still blogging over at the MIT admissions blogs (you should really check out my post about the Costume Design class I'm taking right now!).

But recently, I made something so important that I really have to share it.

A life-sized sketch of myself wearing a bird costume!

Just kidding, that was my costume design homework for this weekend.

I made my first-ever formal gown!!!

What was the special occasion?

Ring delivery!

Ring delivery is a celebration held for the sophomore class where we all, after months of anguishing over the appropriate bezel size and antiqued finish, received our class ring...the brass rat.

Missoni Maxi Madness

This is an example of total fabric inspiration!

I would never have pictured myself making this project on my own.

Prior to making this dress, this was my mental picture of a maxi dress:

Pretty much a tube of fabric (which I don't mind, I love fabric!) except that maxi fabric is usually ugly and clingy and sometimes the stripes don't match up and really the only good reason I could think of for wearing one was if you forgot to shave (...actually, that's a pretty good reason).

And this was my mental picture of a Missoni dress:

....And I was like eeeeeeeegh I'll just wear jeans.

And then Elliot Bermann had a promotion, and among my mom's haul from the sale was this gorgeous swath of textile.

Disclaimer: I got permission from my mom to steal this fabric.

Emergency Dress!

Today was the most important day of the school year, because it's the one day of the year we get to wear fancy clothes to school!!!

Our schoolwide celebration of Founder's Day is the one time we get to ditch our boring uniforms for dresses and suits! (Some of you might remember it from last year when I made a pair of sparkly separates.) Clearly, such an event warrants a new outfit!

This year, I intended to wear my new winter-white coat. Except that I had absolutely nothing to wear underneath it. (As in, true confession, I am actually wearing biker shorts underneath it in the pictures I took for my blog.) 

So it was time to whet my needle, thread up, and rise to the challenge of putting together a dress in time for the event!

(Let it be known, that this is the first time in three years of Founder's Days that I have not been up late frantically sewing the night before. Mission accomplished.)

My College Interview Dress

I finished my dress!

I am now ready and ravishingly-dressed for all college interviews. Which is pretty ironic considering I'm done with almost all my interviews...but at least now all of the ones I have left will have to accept me! ;)

The pattern that I used is V1265, a Pamella Roland suitdress pattern. I made it in a really cool black fabric with a purple pinstripe and iridescent purple silk dupioni for the lining. (In my last post, I discussed my inspiration for my dress, my fabric, and the alterations I made in greater detail.)

I really like the skirt of this dress. I love how the front panels hug the body as if it were a pencil skirt, even though there's a big puffy ruffle in the back! Bam!

Because the ruffle in the back is a little longer than the front, you can see the lining peeping through. Which I love because I used some AWESOME purple lining to match my purple-pinstripe fabric.

"Business Casual" In Progress--Pamella Roland V1265

I've been doing a lot of college interviews lately, and it has been posing challenges for my wardrobe. 

Most requests for an interview come with the dubious instruction to dress in "business casual". Well I don't really own a blazer or a pair of slacks, so I end up wearing a full pantsuit and heels, and then my interviewer looks at me like "This is your idea of CASUAL?!?!" and I make a bad joke about how I'm an attorney on my school's Mock Trial team and this is my Prosecution Suit.

So I decided that next up on my sewing queue had to be a garment that was sharp, business-themed, and stylish, but slightly less imposing than the suit I use when I'm (hypothetically) trying to send people to jail.

Pamella Roland to the rescue! Let's all agree that Pamella Roland has some amazing suitdress patterns!

V1233

V1279

Look at that action shot! V1232

And my muse...

V1265

I love this pattern! It's tailored, professional, and sophisticated, but it's also cute and even feminine. Where's the femininity, you ask? Wait a minute...

BOOM! RUFFLE! (Look at that sly smile, she knows she's wearing an awesome ruffle ;) )

I wanted my fabric to reflect the same business-with-a-twist aesthetic. After extensive searching I found a great fabric for a steal while fabric shopping in New York.

I bought this at Paron fabrics. I love the fact that it takes a typical, menswear-like pinstripe and puts a playful, feminine twist on it. Purple power pinstripe! 

Maybe actually my favorite dress so far...no seriously.

I have to admit, every year I look forward to Homecoming: not because I'm a football fanatic, nor because I like wearing silly hats to school during Spirit Week (though I do)--but because it's the perfect excuse to make the most beautiful, exquisite, fancy, outstanding dress that it is within my capabilities to pull together. 

(Whee!!!)

I am at the point where I have so many self-sewn dresses that if I was going to spend time making another semi-formal dress, I wanted it to be, not only stunning, but notably different.

The cutouts on this dress are perfectly positioned so you can see my really flattering bikini tan from the summer. Haha ;)

I was almost giving up hope of finding an exceptionally flooring pattern when I came across this

Marfy 2323

I'm not sure what makes this design so arresting. I think it's the contrast of the geometric tightness of the top, with the angular straps, eye-catching diamonds, and central gathering, with the ethereal looseness of the skirt. I think it's gorgeous. 

Furthermore, there's little doubting that this is a unique design. Have you ever seen a neckline like that before? Or a slit that's not actually a slit? 

For those of you that are unfamiliar with Marfy, their patterns are expert-level, which basically means they come without seam allowances, or lining pieces, or, oh, instructions. When you order a Marfy pattern, you are pretty much ordering the geometric pattern pieces, and it's up to you to put them together. 

And I had never put together a Marfy pattern before.

Guess what that means? 

MUSLIN!!!

Knocking-Off Marfy, Part 1 (featuring MY FIRST SELF-DRAFTED PATTERN EVER!!!)

If you are not yet acquainted with Marfy, here's the link. Don't worry, my blog will still be here in two hours after you're done browsing ogling.

 

Some of my favorite Marfy designs. Their dresses (daywear, evening, and even bridal) and jackets are amazing.

Now I have to stop extolling Marfy because otherwise I'm going to run out of room for the actual part where I sew things.

...Ok maybe just one more mouth-watering picture.

I love this design. It's very simple--unlike what attracts me to most other Marfy patterns--but it's arresting and flattering at the same time. I love how it creates curves. And I like how the side panels start under the bust, which creates the impression of a prominent chest (something I need help with for this particular style of dress) and sort of blocks off the shoulders and the chest. Plus I knew immediately what I would make it in :D

But it's so...simple. Here's the thing. Marfy patterns are expensive. A knee-length dress like this one will cost you about $20, plus shipping from Italy. And you have to wait. About 3 weeks. I can justify the purchase if I'm looking at some distinctive, intricate design that I wouldn't even know which two ends to put together and it's for a special occasion. But I'd feel guilty splurging for essentially a (flattering, refined) princess-seam dress. So I told myself I would modify a basic pattern and try and  mimic the same effect.

Then I took this beginners pattern-drafting course at Mood (SUPER FUN, by the way) and my head got all big, and next thing you know, 

I'm armed with a dress block, a French curve, and Google trying to figure out how to make a princess-seamed dress. (Except not really, because this design has princess seams AND darts--double whammy.)

So here we go! I'm going to show you how I went about (clumsily and with a minimal amount of pattern-drafting experience) recreating Marfy 3149! 

Sunset Dress

It's summer! And as you can probably tell from the setting of my most recent blog posts, I'm enjoying it.

I love summer sunsets. The quality of the light in the late, late afternoon, when the sun has mellowed out from its bleached, midday glare but is still powerful enough to drench everything in a rich, coppery glow, has this beautiful, latent energy that reminds me why I look forward to summer so much.

That was the inspiration for this dress.

My fabric

I remember being hesitant about buying this piece, because I have an automatic (and, I know, undeserved) bias against orange fabric. I don't really find orange a pretty color, and I can't imagine that as a color family it goes well with my skin tone, and it just seems a counterintuitive choice. And yet I keep finding myself drawn to orange textiles.Orange is a very rich color, especially when mixed with other shades, like gold or magenta, when it can take on the natural, luminescent gradient of the sunset.

As you can see along the fraying edge, this gentle tangerine color is created by weaving orange threads in one direction and yellow threads in the other.

This specific fabric is an orange chiffon. It's delicate, but resilient at the same time. The threads are interlocked so loosely that the fabric had the tendency to snag or leave visible holes if I had to remove a seam, but by gently massaging it I was able to pull the threads back into place and it looked as good as new.

The fabric is composed of two different colored threads running opposite directions, which give the textile a beautiful multi-hued sheen. Depending on the angle at which you view it, it can appear fiery dark orange or shiny yellow. It makes the color (and the slight sine of the textile) very dynamic.

The orange chiffon with the lining fabric under it

After buying this fabric, the design of the dress fell miraculously into place. I was driving home with about three new textiles to add to my stash, none of which I had a very good idea what I would do with, and discontent with having beautiful unassigned fabric, so I dreamed up an ideal garment to go along with my orange chiffon.

V8465: A Coat without Sleeves

Last weekend was my class's Junior Ring Ceremony.

Nothing much actually happens at the ceremony. The juniors receive their personal class rings (well not me, I used my mom’s and plan to spend the savings on fabric ;) ), listen to speeches by class officers, and parade across a stage with a symbolically lit candle. It’s pretty much like graduation but without the circumstantial significance.

So why, you ask, did I go?

So I could make myself a new dress, of course ;) 

Me and my awesome sponsor, the other reason I decided to go :D

Because I wanted to have this dress in time for the ceremony, I made it from stuff I had around the house. In said house, there is this coat pattern, V8465, that I have liked for a really long time. I was really close to using it for the second article of clothing I ever made, which was a bright red fur coat, but I ended up using a different design instead. So I have this beautiful coat pattern around that I have never used:

Specifically: