Tuesday 13 January 2015

Back on track!

Just before christmas, when I was actually supposed to start studying for my exams, I finally got my sewing mojo back.

Having left part of my fabric stash, most of my sewing patterns and my beloved mannequin back in Germany, I instead picked a download pattern for an easy dress from Burdastyle.....which is something I'm not going to do again so soon:
More than 60 pages of printout, 30 minutes of frantic cutting paper edges and glueing pattern pieces and cutting out the pattern, while some of the contained pattern pieces weren't even needed for this version of the dress, but only for a variation of it - for which the instructions were of course NOT contained in my download.

Lots of dead trees





Ironically, the dress I had picked was contained in the current Burdastyle magazine - since the Dutch version contains the same patterns as the German one, I could have spared myself a lot of crawling around on the floor with glue and scissors, by a 2-minute-trip to Albert Heijn around the corner.
Anyway, enough ranting, while the fabric wasn't the nicest jersey to work with, and the pattern itself isn't that spectacular, I'm happy. Comfortable work-proof cold-weather-dress.

Some days later I came across a really nice sewing blog, petit-main-sauvage, featuring a lot of simple but pretty patterns and tutorials for pattern drafting and alterations. Some of them immediately went onto my to-sew-list, for example this dress:



I bought the fabrics last year on the Dutch fabric market that is touring through Germany, and the blog mentioned above is actually a Dutch blog - a rather fitting project for my start here in Amsterdam :)
A new favorite in my wardrobe, I think!

Next on the sewing agenda: My dress for the Gala Nocturna! I have a plan A and plan B, let's see which one wins...
Now that all my boxes, patterns, costuming books, and my mannequin Ada are finally here, I'm a little more enthusiastic as well.