Happy Halloween!

After a week of frantic pattern adjusting, one broken and one new sewing machines, I have my two new perfect Halloween dresses :)

Here's the original pattern.

I opted to make this dress using cotton prints and ponte knit. This way, there's no need to add a zipper in the back. I can just slip this dress on and off overhead.

Fully lined (except the sleeves) and imho, also completely wearable on days other than October 31st :)

Happy Halloween!

Nightmare Before Christmas Top

Halloween is less than a week away and it's my favorite holiday :) So I'm digging through my fabric stash for some Halloween prints and using my Halloween buttons. I'm working on another Halloween-inspired project at the moment - will be making a post in a day or two, because, obviously, I must finish it before Saturday.

In the meantime, here's a little top with a decorated yoke that I whipped up couple days ago :)

Peter Pan Collar

I love a Peter Pan collar and it suits me very well. So here are three tops that I made last weekend and this week with a lace Peter Pan collar.

I searched Easy for weeks looking for the perfect collar but nothing I saw - I liked. So I decided to make my own. I picked up some black lace at Pacific Fabrics and some black piping at Nancy's (it's so edgy yet delicate, a weave of leather and something fuzzy) to finish off the collar's edge. All three of these tops have the exact same collar. It turned out so well, I just had to make more than one.

The first one is a print I found at Mood :) We were at the ACT theater the other night, watching Mr Burns - a post electric play. During the intermission, we stayed in our seats. Suddenly this woman two seats down leans down to me and says: "This is a gorgeous top that you're wearing. It's so cool! Where did you get it?" And I took great pleasure in telling her that I made it. I tell you, honestly, and without false modesty, that's a huge reason and my main motivation for sewing :) I like making unique things that nobody else has and be recognized that I'm wearing something that I made myself. It's kind of a punk-ish print, these multi-colored lips, so adding a lace collar is somewhat unexpected but it really works.

When this one turned out so well, I knew it would work perfectly for the two prints that I designed myself.

This first one is a little homage to my all time favorite TV show - Sex and the City. I found these drawings on Pinterest and worked them over in Photoshop and placed them against a grayish NY City skyline drawing. Then I had Spoonflower print it for me on crepe de chine.

I really love how the Chrysler building registers and of course I had to add some pink shoes to the print!

And finally my lovely Chanel print. I also created this one myself and got it printed at Spoonflower. These are the sketches of Coco Chanel by Karl Lagerfeld. I scanned them (I have his book) and did a bit of Photoshop magic. To this top's collar, I decided to add some thin velvet ribbon, just to be as true as possible to the overall Chanel aesthetic. I'M IN LOVE with this top. It is exactly what I envisioned and now I have it.

Boucle Tops with Exposed Zipper

Here's two weeks of playing with boucle and exposed zippers. All three turned out perfectly.

The last one, the yellow and blue striped Marc Jacobs fabric is, officially, the most difficult fabric that I've ever had the misfortune of working with. It had an almost burlap quality and drape, was virtually impossible to press, unraveled quickly and messily, and of course I had to match the stripes. I did manage to bend it to my will though :)

All three were made with Mood fabrics!