HSF '15 challenge 2 - Blue

Hi Folks

This is a bit late for the actual challenge date of end of Feb, but although the dress was finished I didn't have time to get this bit done. So here it is now. 

Tie the knot

Good morning all

I hope you are all feeling tip-top today. Well we have nearly 10 weeks till the big day and I kinda went and did a little silly something; You may remember a few weeks back when I was listing some of the things I had to do for the wedding well.....

My EvaDress competition prize arrives!!!

Morning all

and I have a very exciting event to share with you this morning. Yes I have received the patterns that I chose for my prize.  For any new readers, I won one of the categories for the EvaDress.com sewing competition 2014 (see picture to the left).  Well the other day the postman arrived at the Honey Pot with a large brown envelope and here's what was inside....

I have to say a huge BIG THANK YOU to Xandra for running the competition and also a really big thank you to everyone who voted for me.  I still have my voucher for material from Fashionfabricsclub.com, but now I have the patterns I will have a little browse through their lovely site.

I am a little over excited and not sure which one to start with, but with hepcats coming up in a couple of months I think it may well be the 30s dress and then the 50s blouse.

Well Thursday sees another Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge due so I best get on and finish it.

Hugs and Kisses

Ally

a big hurrah to me !!

Morning all you lovely people out there.

Today finds me rather pleased with myself to say the least.

I won one of the catergories for the EvaDress.com sewing competition. Yes little old me, and I would like to say a really big thank you to all the people that voted for me. I won't go into detail about the dress I entered you can find that all in Monday's post if you haven't already seen it.

So what did I win, well as well as all the prestige and a button to put on here and my website, I won a $25 gift certificate from Fashionfabricsclub.com and a $100 EvaDress Patterns certificate.

I hadn't visited fashionfabricsclub.com before, but I can tell you it's like a little paradise for sewers. So much choice I am going to find it hard to choose. But the really exciting thing is the $100 dollars for EvaDress patterns, and Xandra from EvaDress has kindly thrown in the postage too, which is quite a bit. If any of you outside the USA, like me, are buying things from America, you will know how much that has gone up lately.

Well I'm going to take my time deciding what to get, but I thought I would just show what I may be tempted by and if any of you would like to see any of the choices made up then let me know and that just might help make up my mind and I can blog about the construction so you can see the process. Does that make sense?

well on to the patterns...

.

So much choice, I'd make them all if I could, but leave a comment if you have a favourite. All the images are copyrighted to EvaDress.Com by the way.

Oh and don't forget that if you are planning on taking advantage of the Mad March Sale on my Etsy Shop you only have 10 days left till the coupon expires, so get shopping now!

So once again yippee and thank you if you voted. Stay tuned for a give away in April.


Hugs and Kisses
Ally

a little brown hat part 2

Good afternoon folks, 

just putting this up quick, whilst having a spot of lunch, multitasking at it best, beans on toast.  If you are reading my tatting blog too (link at top of page I hope if I have done it right) you will see we are off camping tomorrow so today is suppose to be prep day and to be honest I am stalling as the next job is cleaning the car out and it's the midday sun out there. 

So instead (just for a short while) how's the hat doing, well I have finished it now, although I thinking of changing the buttons, maybe a little cream tatting for something a little different.

The next stage was steaming the felt to shrink it down and remove the gather wrinkles.  Then I continued on with the instructions as given in the pattern. Steaming the felt to the right size gives a much more streamlined hat. I also gave the inside a blast to help the folded over area become a little smaller and lie flatter.  Before doing this always remember to have enough leeway and not make it too small to fit on your head, I’ve done that too before now.  And also remember when attaching your hat band to fold the edge closest to the hat outwards, as this will be the finished edge once you have turned it under, the other side doesn't matter as it will be covered up in the end.

Then hand sew the hat band down and add buttons and you're done.

Well here is my finished hat, hope you like it. Now to start work on the bag, well after the holidays, beside which it really is not the weather for a felt hat. ..

Speak soon

Ally x

a little brown hat - part 1

 

A little brown hat:

Felt is a lovely fabric to work with; it does not fray, it can be stretched a little and shrunk quite a lot, with the aid of a bit of steam, and it has a warmth to it that I really like, especially for hats and bags.

The hat in question is a pattern I got from Mrs Depew (Etsy) although I have seen it since in other places.

My first consideration with hats is which side is my hair parted, unless the hat is symmetrical, ie both sides the same, it can make a big difference and I have made a couple of errors when working this out only to find I have a hat that is angled the wrong way.  The problem often arises from the fact that I look at the hat with it facing me and I when I look at myself with the aid of a mirror I am also facing me, but the two are not the same.  My reflection is obviously a mirror image and my parting is on the opposite side in real life. If I forget this momentarily I can, and have, cut a hat to sit on my mirror image head not my real one.

The parting on the picture of lady wearing this hat is on her left and I part my hair on the right so I knew I would need to reverse the brim on this one.

 I also decided to line the hat, this can sometimes save your hair a little when you take the hat off, slides off instead of sticking and pulling your hair out of style.  I picked some vibrant burnt orange satin to make the lining left over from I can’t remember what.  I do tend to keep leftovers of a reasonable size to line bags and hats as you really don’t need much and they can always be a mixture of different colours as no one actually see them, in this case though I only used one colour as I had enough of it, and there should still be enough for the bag too. Obviously if I’m making for someone else the whole lot matches, I’m just a little more thrifty when it comes to my own things.

Trimming the interfacing close to the seam,

I also choose sew-in interfacing rather than iron on, so there would be no chance of it starting to wrinkle.

Close up of edge stitching on right side 

and on wrong side

The gathering ready to be streamed

The instructions were fairly straightforward and I followed exactly the same procedure for the lining, the only difference being when combining them together.  I folded up the lining along the hem line and ironed if down, then I pinned it inside the hat before running the gathering stitch around both.   Now I have some steaming to do to finish the process before sewing the hat-band on. All that will have to wait though ... will have a finished hat for you next week.

Ally x

Hepcats Weekender July 2013

 

Well as predicted no post last week, as the house was a hive of activity getting ready for Hepcats, so I’m afraid this had to wait.

Well now I’m back and sitting here exhausted, I feel I should be productive, but this is about all I have the energy for.  So I will tell you all about Hepcats.

For those that don't know Hepcats is a twice yearly weekender dedicated to the 40s, music and dancing.  They have lessons during the day and then dances with a great mix of bands and djs during the nights. It starts on Friday and runs through till Sunday night, with breakfast and evening meal included in the price.  I have to say I was very impressed with the whole dining experience, we had the same waiter throughout and he was lovely, really helpful. The venue for the July date is Sand Bay near Weston Super Mare, and our chalet was good, clean and on the whole I would say really good value for money. 

Friday Night and a red felt hat

Two sets of dance lessons run parallel from ten till five and last year the other half was still fairly new to lindy hop and balboa, so we felt that we should make the most of the weekend and do as many as we could (and it was raining a fair bit).  This proved to be a bit of a mistake really when you just have very achy feet, and can’t remember anything because you have tried to take in too much.  So we decided to be a little more selective this year and just pick 2 classes a day that really interested us. We have really developed a love of balboa dancing so the obvious choice was those and we threw in a Collegiate Shag class too for variety.  If you have no idea what these types of dances are then get yourselves over to youtube and search for them to see what I’m on about.  Balboa when done well is wonderful feeling.  It was a dance invented for very crowded dance floors when space was very tight, so it is quite different from lindy with its lifts, air-steps  and charleston moves that take up a lot of space and are real crowd pleasers. Balboa is danced for the dancers not for the audience, although when danced well it is really impressive, we are nowhere near that level, but just do it to have fun, which we have bags of.  Well we very pleased with our lessons and came away with a couple of really nifty moves to add to our repertoire (I  wrote them down too, just in case we don’t get chance to practice for awhile).

Saturday night saw a small crochet skull cap with beads

The weather was perfect this weekend which is possibly not really what you want when you have to be inside for quite a lot dancing, but since we had already made the decision not to take too many lessons during the day time it really didn’t matter, and we were free to enjoy the sunshine which made the whole weekend seem like a real holiday, even managing to sunbathe, go swimming and sit around and do some ukulele jamming with some friends from other ukulele groups who were down there, very pleasant all round.

During the evenings the venue did what they could to keep the ballroom and other rooms cooler, with large air conditioning units, they were filled with cold water at very frequent intervals, so it wasn’t as hot as it could have been and practically all vintage ladies carry a fan with them anyway, you really don’t want to be all sweaty after dancing in your vintage frocks.

40s hairdo

  Talking of frocks there were some wonderful ones on show, people really made the effort to dress up for the evening dances and it was a joy just to sit and watch the people go by.  During the day the venue had a number of vintage and retro sellers toting their wares, and let me tell you there were some beautiful things, the work that went into some of the vintage evening dresses with their beads and embroidery is really inspiring and I have lots of bits and pieces running round my head now that I need to pull into some order and think about getting some sketches down before they go, I think I’m being pulled towards lace, and I feel the need to do some tatting (a type of lace making) to use as lace for applique on pockets and collars. I will keep you informed of the progress of this little venture.

The little bag was so cute I was really pleased with it.

Sunday ran out of time so just
fabric roses to match dress and bag

On the whole this weekend was lovely, we enjoyed every bit, didn’t stay out as late as we had hoped but we are getting older and the heat made us sleepy. But we danced, meet old friends, made new ones and in general had a ball. I would recommend Hepcats to anyone on the scene or just interested and curious to find out more.

vintage inspired evening bag update

Hi folks
I know it hasn't been a week yet, but I just thought I'd share with you the finished bag photos as next week there may be nothing on here as I will be busy with last minute preparations for Hepcats.

I am pleased with the way it turned out and the style goes well with my outfit, obviously the colour is a perfect match as it is the same material, and there was enough left for a few flowers for my hair, so I shall be very coordinated.  The dress is almost finished now too, just the handsewing to be done.  I have been known to spend the car journey sewing and even be still attaching shoulder pads just before the 'do', obviously this is a little tricky if I'm driving so I try to get someone else to do that bit for me.

Well back to the bag; 2 half circles sewn together and a zip inserted, I decided to only line the bottom half of the bag for ease so I ran a zigzag stitch over the raw edges, to stop any fraying, before sewing the zip in place.

The handles were just 2 lengths of the material folded over some felt for padding, I sewed them onto the outside, parallel with the zip, sewing over the stitching already there for neatness, bit hard to get that bit to show on the photo, but hopefully you get my drift, let me know if it needs more explanation.

Then I layered the circles together, felt on the bottom, then the bottom circle and then the top, face down so right sides are together, and simply sew round the edge.  One very important point at this stage is to make sure your zip is open otherwise you'll have a right old job trying to turn your bag right side out. 

and viola 

I ironed a hem on the lining and cut darts into the seam of the bag so there would be less bulk once turned.

The last task; getting the lining on. This was a little tricky as I had to hand sew the lining in position through the zip opening, but with a glass of wine and a bit of telly, quite do-able. 

 so here it is, a vintage inspired evening bag, is there a market for such things or is it just me that loves to dress up. No I know there's loads of you out there........

But enough of this I've still got several more outfits to finish for next weekends Hepcats. Wish me luck. ally x

50s style evening bag to match my outfit.