08 March 2011

dame folle dans le jardin

A few weeks ago I did a 'Sketching the Face' workshop at the National Gallery. Very confronting for me since I'm used to drafting or sketching plants. It was wonderful though - like eating chocolate for 3 hours! Sunday was a lovely sunny day and I dusted off my sketch book and SAT in the garden (I did find myself having to get up and do some dead-heading periodically).  I then had a play in Photoshop with some goodies I purchased last year from House of Three and voilà!

I discovered a very cool new shop in Camberwell today - Again Recycle. They have hand-picked vintage and op-shop clothes and accessories and some new-from-old stuff.  It's modelled on similar shops in Los Angeles like Wasteland and features retro clothing and a sustainable ethos. Finally...a cool shop on this side of town! Entry is two doors down from the car-park side of the Camberwell Salvos (also always worth a visit).


03 March 2011

Colette Patterns Spring Challenge

I finally got around to making my first skirt for the Spring Challenge:
The fabrics are a 1950's vintage cotton from Donna Flower with an Italian black textured cotton jersey for the band on the top.  There's an elastic waist-band sewn in under the black cotton. My favorite skirts are elastic-waist, so I decided to keep it simple and follow a couple of tutorials on BurdaStyle and Grosgrain.

Look at the pretty wrapping the fabric came in!

The fabric piece was too short for the skirt length I wanted, so I added a band on top to get it about knee-length. I like to use my mannequin to see how things look as I sew rather than relying on my measurements (by my measurements, I thought I might have made the skirt too long - but it's just right). I wanted it to be the same length as my favorite skirt, so here's what I did:

First, I put the skirt with the length I like on the dummy.
Next, I marked where the hem hit with removable artist's tape all the way around.

I'll leave this on my mannequin now so I have a hemline mark for future skirt-making! If I want to take it off in the future, the artist's tape is easily removable and won't damage the paint on the metal frame.