I'm In The Groove

I finally got some good pictures of my new blouse. I love how it turned out. I love how it fits. I love the pockets. I was trying to copy a super cute Burda WOF blouse. Instead of tracing, upsizing and then altering the blouse from the magazine, I used a previously fitted Burda Plus WOF blouse pattern and did a sort of frankenpattern to it. I think I got the details just right. Instead of being romantic like the inspiration blouse, mine is more whimisical.

I really like this blouse pattern on me. It fits well in both the front and the back. The back has two princess seams plus a center back seam. Yep, that's a total of 5 seams in the back. The seams makes for a great fitting blouse.


For the main body of my blouse I used this blouse pattern. This blouse pattern was originally a jacket pattern, which I redrafted to be a blouse. You can read the review on how I completely changed the original Burda Plus WOF pattern in my review of this pattern. Then I stole the sleeves from McCall's 5181, which is OOP. I'm glad I remembered I had the sleeve pattern in my stash because the puffed sleeves I put on the original blouse were too small and would have ruined the look of this blouse.

Insted of the snaps that I had originally planned on using for this blouse, I decided to use buttons. I couldn't find anything with the color combination I needed so I used two different buttons and stacked them. I love how they look on the blouse since they mirror the circle theme in the binding.

Once I finished the whimsey blouse, I decided I needed a white t-shirt. At my ASG meeting, we discussed some new ways to change up our t-shirt patterns, so I decided to add a yoke to mine. Then, since I had a yoke that needed embellishment, I pulled out some stretch lace I had in my stash.

Unfortunately, I burned holes in the lace while pressing it. This became a design opportunity. While in New York, I found some lovely roses trim in white.

I tried to place the trim in an artistic manner. I'm not quite sure I like the effect, but that's how it's going to stay. It does look much better than a burnt hole in my lace. As for the yoke and added gathers, I do like these design features, they just don't look that great on me. Probably because my cotton doesn't have enough stretch to hang properly. It's just a tad too tight to look good over my bust line. I'm going to give this rendition of KS 2900 one more try. I'll lower the neckline, add more gathers, spread them away from the center positioning them over the breasts and use a more stretchy fabric. These are newly drafted cap sleeves and they need to have more cap height to look really good on me. With these changes, I think I'll be happy with this pattern.

Another Trip To LA Garment District

I took my neice to the garment district yesterday. She is losing weight and doesn't have anything to wear that fits. She bought a lot of fabric and I'll be helping her with pattern fitting and cutting out her patterns. She and I are very similar in size except that she needs more of a FBA than I do. Thankfully, I probably won't have to help her much with the sewing. But you know since I was there and had a few $$$ in my pocket, I had to buy something.

At Mike's I found this lovely brown and white rayon/lycra suiting and 5 yards came home with me. It will be a jacket and pants for fall. It has some good weight to it and I hope will wash up nicely.

This is another suiting I found in her $1/yd box. I'm not sure what the fabric content is and I don't think it has any lycra, but I thought it would make a nice jacket.

This is a lovely rayon crepe that looks great with the brown/white suiting. It will become some sort of blouse. I also bought a great quality cotton/lycra shirting in red. The red is a blue red, not an orange red so it will look good on me.

This is a jersey I went dumpster diving for at Michael Levine's loft. I'm not sure what it will become.

This is also a poly/lycra jersey. It's a border print and this picture only shows 1/2 of the print. It is mirrored on the other half so that the navy blue border runs down both selvages. I didn't realize this in the store, but with the print it will have to be cut cross grain. Unfortunately, the cross grain isn't stretchy. Because of that I'm not sure how to use this fabric. I also got a champaign nylon knit to use as a half slip. Some of my dresses need a slip and I think the nylon will keep static cling at bay.

I hope the next time I go downtown, I can have a little more self-control. I do not need any more fabric! I have a birthday party to attend today, then the rest of the week is dedicated to sewing.