Posts Tagged ‘Apricot Lane’

Draw it Sew it: Swim Coverup/Dress

July 5th, 2013
21 Comments

I am completely exhausted. Keeping up with work and blog posts means that I get about half the sleep I need to function and my house is a complete disaster.

Over the last 5 years I’ve struggled on and off with anxiety and depression. I’m now managing it successfully without drugs, but I have to be aware of my triggers. The lack of sleep and falling behind on my to-do list is triggering my anxiety. For the next few weeks I’m going to be paring down to 3 posts a week rather than 4 or 5 mediocre ones.

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Last week’s results were neck and neck, the subtle hemline winning out by 6% of the votes. Short it is! Thinking that this dress would be much easier to sew up than it was, I didn’t really allot myself much time to make it. I started cutting around 9pm Wednesday night. Big mistake.

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Turns out, this fabric is evil. It’s cursed or something. I bought it from Michael Levine loft, it was in a crumpled mess, all wrinkled and kinked. I thought that was part of the design. Not the case.

This fabric wrinkles easily and does not iron well. Naturally. It’s a synthetic. Usually synthetics are slow to wrinkle though.

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As I was cutting out this fabric, I was fighting to keep it from shifting around and kinking. While sewing, I was fighting to keep the edges lined up together.

It was 3:30am before I threw in the towel and went to bed. I had everything done except for the ties, the button hole on the side and a little fit detail I needed to fix on the neckline. It was going to take me another 2 hours before I could call it complete.

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I finally finished it today, spending about an hour just ironing out all those kinks. GAH, this stuff is annoying!

On the bright side, I love the color and I love the drape. It flows really nicely as I walk around. I just need to remake this dress in a different fabric. A real silk perhaps?  It’d be a lot more expensive. I got this fabric for something like $3-4 for 5 yards. I used about 3 1/2 yards.

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Drafting up a pattern for this dress was simple. I shortened the high-low on Megan Nielsen’s cascade skirt and I used my basic scoop tee pattern (actually had to draft up a new version since I couldn’t find my physical pattern anywhere) for the top. I needed a curved ruler in order to do this. Otherwise it was simple.

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If you look really closely, you can see marks from the steam and my iron (it didn’t burn or melt the dress, but it did make random marks in some spots).

Outfit Details:

  • necklace: Ardor
  • dress: handmade
  • bangles: thrifted, gifts and c/o Apricot Lane
  • earrings: H&M
  • shoes: thrifted

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I’m looking forward to wearing it to the pool. I also made it long enough so I can wear it out and about as a dress. I love how it turned out despite the nightmare of working with the material. I’ll definitely make another one.

Which combination of fabric should I choose for this raglan tee?

@melissapher: Which color scheme? #sewing #fashion #diy

Refashioned: Floral Liesl Dress

January 10th, 2013
10 Comments

My sister-in-law gave me this dress over the break and I just finished refashioning it. It was just a bit too short for her and she wouldn’t be taking it with her to Chicago anyway. I happily obliged. The fit wasn’t fantastic and the sleeves were about a mile high. BUT THE PRINT!! Oh that print.

The poor fit and the puffy sleeves combined made me look like I was about to break into song, “I am 16, going on 17. . .” Yikes! I’m not particularly awesome with sleeves, but I thought I would give it a shot. The puffy sleeves provided more than enough fabric for the sleeves I reconstructed. And if I failed, I could at least finish the arm holes nicely and wear it with cardigans.

And the sleeves worked! I’m so excited with how it turned out. It looks and feels so much better. Here’s how I did it:

  • I unpicked the armhole seams and the side seams all the way
  • I laid out the arm hole flat on the ground and traced the hill shape on some swedish tracing paper
  • I cut that out and pinned it to the arm hole seam and adjusted the pattern from there
  • I pinned and sewed carefully
The sleeves have a little bit of gathering at the top, but just enough to coordinate with the hem below and the straight hem of the actual sleeve make it look more grown up. Much better.

It doesn’t look like much of a change, but it took forever and feels completely different! Another piece crossed off my list for my Alt Summit wardrobe.

Outfit details:

  • earrings: Forever 21
  • dress: handmade, thrifted and refashioned
  • Bracelet: c/o Apricot Lane
  • tights: H&M
  • shoes: H&M

Refashion: Winter to Summer Clothes

June 15th, 2012
8 Comments

While at a blogging event (Apricot Lane) a few weeks back, I scoured the clearance section (as I always do) to see if there were any fun pieces. And I was lucky enough to find long-sleeve midi sheath dresses for $9 each. I bought two; one in charcoal grey the other in an ashy brown. It was obvious these were meant for fall and winter, but I quickly saw how easy it would be to transform those dresses into something a more seasonably versatile.

I haven’t done a thing to the grey one, although I might shorten the sleeves on that one. The ashy brown one fit well, but the color looked terrible on my lifeless pale skin. I dyed it a deep purple, really the perfect color for all seasons. I could pair it with browns for fall, blacks for winter and bright hues for spring and summer. The dye job didn’t turn out as solid as I would’ve liked. I think it might be related to the fact that I didn’t wash the new dress before dyeing. It’s almost uniform like a tie-dye, but it’ll be interesting to see if it will even out with wear.

I shortened the sleeves and in an attempt to bring up the hemline of the dress, I added three pleats across the chest.

The pleats were trickier than it might seem. I had to be very particular with measuring and steaming in order to get all of the seams straight, and I needed a stretchy straight stitch. I found that the stitch with three stitches like this: ||| worked out the best.

This dress is perfect underneath my shear tops. I love that I can wear it plain, under crop tops or shear tops.

Outfit details:

Style: Button-Up Refashion Result

May 24th, 2012
11 Comments

Kate from See Kate Sew made a yellow striped jumper for me. Interestingly enough, she was in Utah last month to hand it to me in person. It was so great to meet her in person! I’ve loved this refashion swap, but the thing that would make it infinitely better is if we were able to make these clothes and swap them all in-person. Project Runway style.

Kate knew how much I love yellow, she did a fantastic job of scoring this light yellow stripe for me. It’s such a fun color!

I don’t wear jumpers, at least I haven’t in a very long time, so it’s fun to have gotten something that pushes me out of my normal comfort zone.

I used to be far more adventurous with my wardrobe than I am now. I was the first in my high school to wear stilettos. I’ll never forget sporting my camel stiletto booties; feeling super self conscious as I clicked and clacked my way down the hall turning heads and I’m sure getting plenty of disgusted looks. I was no popular girl. It’d be safe to say that I was more of a “popular loser”. Most people knew who I was. Probably because I always lugged around my 30 lb portfolio the size of a small bilboard like a security blanket. But I never quite felt like I fit in. My ridiculous pairings of hot-pink golashes with 3-piece suits was my way of keeping the tame people away I guess. Oh what I would give to see snapshots of those outfits I wore back then.

Kate reminded me that I need to be more adventurous with my clothing. So for the next half of the year, that’s going to be my goal.

Outfit details:

 

Read how to make your own jumper out of a large mens button-up shirt here.

Style: Indecision

May 11th, 2012
6 Comments

I don’t know if the weather is similar in your neck of the woods, but around here no one knows if it’s spring or fall. I dressed for both. Bright summery colors paired with subdued fall tones is really fun. And different. I like different.

  • scarf: Soel Boutique
  • top: Apricot Lane, c/o Apricot Lane
  • sweater: Mode Boutique
  • belt: thrifted
  • bracelets: gifts from Chris
  • watch: Soft Watch, c/o Soft Watch
  • pants: thrifted + refashioned
  • shoes: TJ Maxx

These photos are so grainy, and the white balance is completely off. I took these photos at 7:30 at 4000ISO. But still, my old camera would never get pictures this nice at such a poor time of day.

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