green

This is one of the two colors that makes me more happy than all other colors (as evident perhaps by my header?). After making my green and grey dress I noticed how much this green-yellow color I could find around me and in my room, and these are just some of them:

(click the detailshots to see the whole thing)

From the left: a cardigan my sweet friend kindly gave me during a wardrobe purge I helped her with (eh, supervised…). I tried taking off a pocket, but that failed, so I added som linen lace to cover it up. ♦ businesscards from the school I’m attending come the fall. They had me at “hello (this is my businesscard)” ♦ my mp3 player. The salesguy said he’d been waiting for someone to buy it in this color. ♦ possibly the first thing I made in this undefinable color between green and yellow. It’s made from one skein of alpacca wool, knitted on huge wodden size 10 needles. ♦ these pillows used to have red pillowcovers, and they matched a thrifted armchair I have. Now they match all the turquoise stuff I own.♦ I so wish this enameled plate was mine, but it belongs to my flatmate, who inherited it from her greatgrandmother or something. I’m so envious.

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purple dress

My dear friend Stine stopped by on her way to a dance gig in Istanbul, and willingly modeled a dress I made her a year ago. She was told to bring fancy clothes for a party after the gig, and she brought my dress – I’m flattered (and proud)! This is the second dress I’ve made for her, and she likes to say she has a designer making her clothes. Who am I to argue with that – she’s my # 1 client!

She was living in New York at the time I was making this dress, and I was not, so she didn’t get to try it on before it was all done. I really enjoyed the process of designing this dress. I was quick to decide on the deep, but bold, purple, which I thought would go well with Stines fair skin. I was picturing this as an evening dress, so I decided she could pull off the rich color. Also – she’s a dancer, so I went with a cut that shows quite a lot of skin and toned-ness, especially her arms and her back. (I apologize for the dark picture – I’m learning where not to hold photo shoots!)

I was aiming for more classy than sleazy, and with all that skin revealed, the only thing that made sense was to keep the dress itself quite loose and flowing, and not skin-tight.

I’m starting to realize that pictures of outfits are easier to match in color to the real thing if they are taken in daylight (oops!), but to give you a better idea of the color of the fabric, here is a detail-shot:

Both the back and the front have deep pleats. The fabric is a gorgeous, crinkly silk chiffon I bought in Paris. I figured the dress would require less ironing, since the texture of the fabric itself would hide some crinkles.

And, as a curiosity; on the left a picture from the process of pinning the fabric and making the pleats, and on the right a dress by 3.1 Philip Lim. I swear, I didn’t see this dress until after I had fully planned Stines dress, so it was funny to see that I was unknowingly following some current trend! (unfortunately an extremely tiny picture)

black pencilskirt

Sometimes, just sometimes, you whip up a skirt, from drafting the pattern, cutting it out and sewing it up, all in one day. I was ecstatic to discover, on such a day, that of my many sewing feet, one of them was a hidden zipper foot. I was not so extatic to discover that the seam initially came too close to the zipper to be functional. That resulted in a less than fortunate incident where the zipper busted, and I was stuck in a highwaisted, snug-fitting skirt. I ended up putting my seam ripper to work on one side seam, and wriggeling out of the skirt. Luckily I wasn’t running late for anything. I’ve since fixed the sideseam and made another (forth and fifth) attempt at the seam, and it’s all done!

Some silly posings: Scarlett Johansson-style (pigeon-toed), pouty secretary-style, cell phone-style (writing silly faux french text messages), 40s-style (flabbergasted housewife).

The fabric is a medium heavy linen, quite textured. I’ve used it before for a pair of dress pants. This time around I managed to get the stretch to go the right way (across, not lengthwise!).

grey and green dress

I’ve finished my green and grey dress!

All ready for spring with a new dress! The pattern is kind of based on Simplicity # 4589 and Built by Wendy (or is it Built by You?) # 3835, and full of my own alterations. I lengthened the top from the Simplicity pattern, and based the lengthening of the sleeves on the Built by Wendy pattern. One problem with insisting on the “wing it – try it on – unpick seams – try again”-approach to sewing is that sometimes it turns out that it’s ok to heed the patternsizes, and that sometimes interfacing is your friend. That aside, I’m quite happy with my dress! And see the inseam pocket? Inseam pockets are the best.

A close-up of the yoke, with some fairly straight decorative stitchings:

The dress was a bit of a patchwork to make, since the pieces I had weren’t all that big. Hence the added panel at the bottom hem, and the diagonal seams on the yoke… The green bits were taken from a dress I thrifted some years back, and I just adore the color (which might be appearent from the header-image!). So far I’ve used that dress for three different projects, but there isn’t much more left of it at this point. The grey fabric came from a friends grandmothers apartment, where I was helping to downsize. In the process I scored some nifty stuff; knitting needles, knitting pattern, fantastic vintage postcards, some belts and this piece of grey material. I’m really not sure what it is though, I’m thinking a viscose blend, based on the feel of it. It’s kind of heavy, but still has a very nice drape.

At the bottom hem I wanted to line with green fabric for a flash of color occasionally peeking out. I didn’t have enough from the green dress, so I used some silk chiffon I scored after a costume job I helped out on (scraps come in handy!). The different greens match quite nicely in daylight, but looks a little off at night in indoors lighting. I think I can live with that though. Here is a detail from the hem-lining:

I can’t even start to say how much I love this greenish, yellowish color. It’s such a perfect blend of bright, muddy and acidic! I’m not sure how to refer to the color though – is it yellow-green, green-yellow, lime, chartreuse? In any case, I think it’s the perfect color to lure spring out of it’s hiding with!