The Hundred Dresses: Day 18

June 20, 2013 Erin2 Comments

Here’s today’s dress:

This is another collarless Simplicity 1577 — when I had to do the collar amputation on the denim one, I thought, “Hey, what if I did this on purpose?” and voilà:

The bias binding for the neckline is a slight bit lumpy. The fabric is a lighter twill, so it showed through more than I thought it would (better image of the fabric below). I’m very happy with the pocket lining (it’s Liberty, natch):

Here’s the back where you can see exactly the spot I missed while pressing this before taking pictures:

And the zipper, which is truly terrible, a C- at best. For some reason this dress came out smaller than I thought it would so I have to go back and undo both side seams and cheat them out a bit, and do the zipper “right” in the process. Needless to say this has not happened yet. At all.

I tend to wear this dress in the winter (it’s warm) with black boots and a black sweater (or brown boots and a brown sweater). It’s a good traveling dress, too, since I made the pockets extra-deep. Now if only I managed to get this on to the top of the pile for fixing …

The Hundred Dresses: Day 17

June 19, 2013 Erin6 Comments

Careful readers of A Dress A Day (are there any other kind? I think not) will have seen this dress twice before; it’s definitely one of my favorites:

The buttons are probably my favorite part — they’re covered with another black&white alphabet fabric at a different scale:

There are a lot of things I’ll do differently when I make this pattern again. For instance, I don’t think the placket edges need to be edgestitched:

And when I first put in the zipper, I started the top too low and the fabric ripped at the stress point — you can see the repair below (I also replaced the zipper):

Here’s the back, it’s off-center on my dress form but not in real life, really.

This is from Butterick 7513:

Honestly, I don’t know why I don’t make this all the time, it’s super-comfortable and not very demanding. It might be because I tend to shy away from center-front skirt seams, but I’m getting over that. Maybe I’ll give this one another shot soon …

And in Hundred-Dresses-The-Book news, did I already link to this nice HuffPo slideshow? Check it out!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 16

June 18, 2013 Erin8 Comments

Here’s another version of the W3 dress:

It is surprisingly hard to tell the back from the front with this dress pattern (and this print!) but here is what I am pretty sure is the back:

I made this dress in an extreme hurry because I had gotten it into my head that I needed a slightly vintagey, yet cool and comfortable dress to go out dancing in one Saturday night. I got this idea about 4 pm, and the dancing started around 9. So it was a bit of a rush job, as you can see by the not-quite-matching of the print at the waist, here:

That shoulder pleat, though, I’m still really liking it:

Side zip? B+ this time.

Oh, and a sneak preview of a dress (or two) that’s coming next week, as it was hanging in my hotel room waiting to be hemmed:

The Hundred Dresses: Day 15

June 17, 2013 Erin16 Comments

Brand new pattern! This is Simplicity 4003 — another half-size pattern, or as I like to call them, squishy-middle patterns (they’re bigger in the waist than non-half-size patterns):

I was drawn to this pattern by the simple-looking skirt and the nice collar, but I had absolutely no intention of making that welt chest pocket. (Let’s just get that out of the way up front.)

It has a little bit of a 1940s vibe all made up that it doesn’t have on the pattern envelope, doesn’t it?

I really liked this fabric, too, as an abstract cityscape. The buttons are nothing special, although the buttonholes turned out pretty well:

Here’s the collar, which has a decent roll to it:

Side zip, much improved, I think you’ll find:

And back view:

And sleeve. Sigh. The sleeve caps did NOT want to go in flat. Despite much basting and pressing and easing and cursing, this was the best I could do:

I’m definitely going to make this dress again; it’s really comfortable and sews up well in quilting cotton (which is what this is). I’ll probably add just a bit more fullness to the skirt (by the lazy expedient of adding an inch or two at the front gathers, unless someone has a better, less slapdash idea?) and spend more time on those blasted sleeve caps …

Editorial query: do people want me to post sources for the mouseover text on the pictures (when it’s not just straight-up jokes)? Almost everything is searchable with Your Favorite Search Engine, but would it be helpful to include them here, or would it ruin the fun (such as it is)?

The Hundred Dresses: Day 14

June 16, 2013 Erin7 Comments

I could have sworn I’ve posted this one before, but I can’t find it now. (Obviously, my tagging needs some work.) Anyway, yes, another 9929, this time in a border print!

I’m pretty sure I bought this fabric on eBay with absolutely no idea what I was going to do with it. (As the bromide has it, leap and the net will be there, or, in my case, buy the fabric and the pattern will appear. I’m waiting on quite a few patterns right now …)

Here’s the salient part, the border:

I really do love those houndstoothy things. If I were doing this again (and by “this” I mean making another border print 9929 — I’ve been reading a lot of Javascript lately and have been fascinated by issues of “this”-scope anaphora) I would not just have the hem and the edge of the border coterminous, as easy as that is — I’d use some hem bias facing to give it a little weight. (Oh, and I *am* going to make another 9929 border print sometime before the fall, because I bought this fabric especially to do it with.)

Here’s the back:

Here’s the neck facing — one of my favorite things about the neck bias on the 9929s is finding out how it will look when it’s attached. I don’t do much, if anything, to try to plan it out:

Here’s the zipper, another “C” effort. Since I’ve made these last two 9929s I’ve gotten a new zipper foot, which has helped quite a bit (I think):

In Hundred-Dresses-The-Book news, there was a VERY nice review in the Chicago Tribune! Check it out if you’re so inclined. They called it “a refreshing sashay through the history and pop culture of the dress.” (“Refreshing Sashay” is now the name of my new band …)

The Hundred Dresses: Day 13

June 15, 2013 Erin7 Comments

I don’t often make black dresses, or, at least, not all-black dresses (and since I’m not from New Zealand, I also have never made an All-Blacks dress). But every once in a while I overcome my reluctance and put one together, like this one:

Did you recognize our old friend Vogue 9929? Here’s the bodice:

I lined the whole thing with lightweight black batiste, so instead of regular bias binding, I used Wright’s narrow double-fold, and encased the bodice and binding fabric together, like so:

Here’s the side zip, I grade this about a C-:

I put piping at the waist, because with an all-black dress, what else can you do to jazz it up?

Here’s the back:

And the pocket, which is just the batiste, not the eyelet; I figured having pockets with holes, even little ones, was not the best move:

Whenever I make a black dress I cannot help but think of that scene from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where they’re on that ship for the band Disaster Area:

It’s the weird colour scheme that freaks me. Every time you try to operate one of these weird black controls, which are labeled in black on a black background, a small black light lights up black to let you know you’ve done it. Hey, what is this, some kind of galactic hyper-hearse?

(I think of this quote so often, in fact, that I’ve saved it to Findings for easy reference. I also think of it when I see this one particular all-black fixie in the Mission — not this one, but similar.)

The Hundred Dresses: Day 12

June 14, 2013 Erin7 Comments

Today’s dress is a survivor dress. It’s a Simplicity 1577, made in mid-weight dark blue (almost black) denim:

But wait, you say. Didn’t that Simplicity 1577 pattern have a collar? Why yes, it did:

And I did a nice Liberty-print undercollar for it, too:

And the pockets:

But unfortunately, I didn’t think to use Fray-Check and the collar raveled pretty much immediately. (Moral: always use Fray-Check
on raveling fabrics!) No worries, I just took it off and finished the neck edge with some bias binding.

But that’s not the only reason why this dress is a survivor — it also made it through a bike accident I had in SF last year. Here’s where I landed in the street — my keys were in the pocket and keys+acceleration+denim+tarmac = abrasion damage:

I was pretty lucky — the driver stopped, I had no injury other than a few scrapes (I was wearing a helmet, of course!) and I even got right back on my bike and rode the four more miles to my meeting. (For the SF-curious, this was in the traffic circle on Townsend … which I walk my bike through now.)

Here’s the back — you’d never guess anything had ever happened, would you?

I still wear this all the time, even with the little bit of fraying on the skirt panel (and a bit of fraying up near the top of the pocket, although I can’t blame that on the bike accident). It’s nice to be reminded both that 1) you’re tougher than you think and 2) be careful!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 11

June 13, 2013 Erin4 Comments

You’ve seen this fox dress before, but here it is again, in more close-up detail:

neck binding:

side zip:

quizzical fox in the pocket:

and the back:

and the matching Tattly:

The fabric is called Fox Frolic (by Aneela Hoey for Moda).

I really liked this fabric when I first made the dress, and I still like the dress now, but I am thinking foxes are getting, as the kids say today, played out. (There’s a LOT of fox stuff on Etsy, which is always the first sign.) Besides, you know I have to declare my allegiance to the hedgehog side …

Oh! And if you’re wondering which of the book-Hundred-Dresses this eleventh dress would be, it’s Matt Smith! Wait, no, I mean, it’s a Dirndl, about which I say: “The Dirndl managed to be simultaneously practical and attractive. It’s close-fitting, but the deep armholes and free skirt allow for easy movement.”

And! Antipodean friends, the book was reviewed in the Sydney Morning Herald today!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 10

June 12, 2013 Erin6 Comments

Hey! We’re 1/10 of the way there! Don’t worry, there are still many, many dresses to come. Like this one, which is more than a little reminiscent of the Day 1 dress:

This is made from Simplicity 1538, which I really liked in the pattern illustration, despite the fembots-on-the-attack arms:

I’m not as happy with it in Real Life, though, and I think it’s my own damn fault for using this super-heavy Marc Jacobs cotton/linen canvas. Wrong fabric choice, despite the wonderful stripes. Here’s the back:

(As evidence that this dress would look much better in a lighter fabric, check out this super cute gingham version here on WeSewRetro.)

The back stripes are off JUST ENOUGH to bug me:

The side zip didn’t fare so well in the heavier fabric either:

And for some reason this pattern is about a inch too long in the bodice, a problem I never have with Simplicity B34 patterns. I might just make it again (but not in this fabric). And speaking of the fabric, using up this great fabric on a “meh” dress bummed me out, but then I found that it’s still on sale at Mood. (It’s a bit expensive, but maybe I can have a second chance!)

And … The Hundred Dresses was officially published yesterday! GirlsLife.com had a nice piece that makes me hopeful for the Youth of Today.

The Hundred Dresses: Day 9

June 11, 2013 Erin9 Comments

First off, thanks so much to DailyCandy for featuring The Hundred Dresses in their book report yesterday! (I was especially gratified to see that they excerpted some of the lines that I particularly liked myself, that’s a good sign …)

Here’s another W3 dress:

I think I bought this shirting-weight fabric in LA a few years back. The stripes are a grape-jelly purple, which is a color I don’t wear very often, but I really loved the contrast of the wild abstract circles and the shirting cotton.

Here’s a view of the side zip. I’m not sure why I always take a picture of the side zip. If I’ve done it well, there’s literally nothing to see, and if I’ve done it badly, it’s, well, bad. Should I keep showing them? Let me know.

I thought this picture would give a better view of the skirt construction, but with the stripes and circles I’m not sure if you can really see the pleats/gathering arrangement:

One of the things I love about this skirt pattern is that it is straight, not curved, at the bottom, so you can do a very very deep hem to weight down lightweight fabrics like this one. (I know you can do a deep hem with a curved hem, too, theoretically, but in practice it’s always such a PITA — the easing! — that I hardly ever bother. This hem is probably four inches deep, so eight inches of total fabric. It hangs pretty nicely. Here’s the back view:

And another close-up of that shoulder pleat. It is a nice detail, isn’t it?

And today is the official publication date of The Hundred Dresses in the US! Available wherever fine books are sold:

PS to my wonderful beta readers — your copies will be in the mail tomorrow!

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A Dress A Day

A dress, nearly every day.

Month: June 2013