Spring Dress - Project Sewn FINAL Week

It's the final week of Project Sewn! Wah!

I feel so honoured to have made it to the final round. Thank you guys so much for following along and voting for me. Please accept one million dollars* as a token of my appreciation.
*invisible money and not actual money.

Project Sewn has gotten me back into the thick of my sewing passion and for that I am so grateful. It has also taken me away from housework. Lets just say that my son Harry is not the only thing growing in my house at the moment. At least now I can take a breather and restore order to our abode. I'm sure my husband would be happy to hear this, if I hadn't lost him a few weeks ago in one of the laundry piles. I'm going to miss that guy.

So for the last time this season, click here to check out the fabulous creations and VOTE for your favourite!

This week the theme was to create something of our own style.
When it comes to looks that define us, I have a bit of a split personality. The great part about being able to sew is that you get to experiment with all different types of looks, and I love many! I lean towards vintage, the 60's in particular with it's feminine silhouettes, but I'm also drawn to modern fashion with architectural shapes and lines. So which one do I choose?

I decided on this little number which is feminine, soft and vintage but yet wouldn't be out of place at a spring event today . The moment I put this dress on I feel like me.

Details

The dress is made using beautiful ivory lace and underlined with satin. Underlining gives the lace structure and stops it from being see through! I took extra time to make sure that the lace patterns lined up and matched on all the pieces. Check out my tutorial here on underlining lace.

I featured the scalloped edge on the skirt hem of the dress and by making little cap sleeves for the bodice.

I made a scoop neck on the front and back of the bodice,  and added soft pleats on the bodice front neckline. The dress is closed down the centre back with an invisible zipper.

I wanted a big full skirt to go with the fitted bodice. I shaped the skirt waist by making small even knife pleats along the waist. This takes longer than gathering the skirt, but it creates an even shape and makes the skirt sit a bit flatter to the stomach instead of foofing out where you don't need foofing.

This dress would be perfect for an afternoon tea party, a garden wedding or the Melbourne Spring Races which is in a few weeks time!

Styling

Earrings: Swarovski (I wore these on my wedding day!)

Brooch: Myers

Belt: Alannah Hill

Shoes: Burgundy sandals from Zara

Thank you again to everyone for your kind words of encouragement and support throughout this competition! It has kept me going on those days when I never thought I would finish in time!

Don't forget to check out the entries and VOTE for the winner! 

Mustard and Lace Dress + Give Away Winner!!

If you can't eat it ... wear it.

I recently found out that I'm not supposed to eat mustard. But nobody said I couldn't wear it.

I have not however been given restrictions on lace, though I'm sure it's not entirely good for me to eat. Or is it ...

So I made me up a dress with a lace bodice and a mustard skirt. In your face nutrionists!

Now before I get carried away with my ins and outs of my new fancy pants dress, let's talk Give Away. Oh yes.

I'm very happy to announce that the winner of this months give away, chosen using the Random Number Generator is the very Purpelicious ......

Naomi!

Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of 2 metres of pure silk Peau de Soie/Duchess Satin. I will be contacting you via email shortly.

Ok, now that the balloons have been released from the ceiling let's talk latest dress.

I made this dress using just over half a metre of stunning french lace that I bought from the Tessuti Fabric Store in Melbourne. They had just recently sent out an email to all us fabric addicts showing us their new stock of laces.

Seriously I should just start getting HR at work to pay my wage directly into Tessuti's bank account. I am addicted to their fabrics and cannot stop myself from buying everything that comes into that store.

Any way ... Here's a photo of some of their laces.

Seeing those photos was like a starving man seeing a leg of lamb. My mouth started salivating and I started banging my head repeatedly against a wall. My husband thinks I'm like the self-punishing Dobby from Harry Potter. Which in my opinion is totally off;  I never wear loin clothes. Much.

I love the pattern in this lace. A lot of laces you see now a-days have floral features on them (which I love). I found this pattern delicate and unique.

I featured the beautiful shaped edging by making little cap sleeves out of them.

I underlined the bodice with a cotton lawn so that my bodice wasn't seethrough. Otherwise you would be able to see through to all my wires and buttons and discover my secret that I'm actually a robot (with feelings).

Underlining is great for giving fabric extra-support, drape or to stop a fabric being see-through. It can also help to bring out the colour in your fabric shell. In my case it also stopped the loosely woven lace from stretching and changing it's shape as I sewed with it.

For those of you that have never Underlined before, here's the deal-io.

First, you cut out the identical pattern piece for both the shell and the underlining fabric.
Typically the underlining is a lighter fabric than the shell but not always. Here I've used a cotton lawn as the underlining and the fabric shell is lace.

Look how naked the lace is!

Then, you place the wrong side of the fabric shell (lace) onto the right side of the underlining fabric (cotton lawn).

This means that both of the good sides of the two fabrics are facing up.

Pin the shell to the interlining.

Then carefully you baste the two fabrics together within the seam allowance using a long stitch.  You can do this by hand or by machine. I used the machine for mine.

I used a pink thread so you can see my stitches.

Once you have basted the two fabrics together the piece now acts as one piece of fabric.

Now my lace is underlined and no longer see through!
My example is a little wonky as I rushed it. Yours will look much neater I'm sure.

You can then go ahead and make all your notches and markings on the wrong side of your underlined piece.

Now when you do darts and pleats the two pieces of fabric are kept together and the folds are hidden at the back of the piece instead of being visible from the front.

 

And there you have it. Doesn't that make it look neater?!!

Back to the dress!
I made a scoop neck front and back because I love the shape of it.

I then made up the skirt part of the dress in a quilting cotton that I found on special at Spotlight. Sold! it has tiny little white flowers in it that I find incredibly satisfying in an unexplained way.

I lined the skirt (good girl Julia).

I added two strips of fabric on the hem of the skirt also as a little feature for the bottom half of the dress. These strips were cut out and then folded in half so that they were self faced. I then attached them by machine onto the dress.

The skirt and the bodice are joined together at the waist, with an invisible zipper down the centre back.

And there you have it. I have combined two of my favourite things into one dress. Lace (I don't think I'll ever stop loving lace) and mustard, which is everywhere at the moment ...

...except on my dinner plate.

The Joan Holloway copy-cat

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my great pleasure to announce my most recent celebrity copy-cat dress; the Joan Holloway.

I modelled it off this dress worn by the character Joan in Mad Men.

This dress is in perfect theme of my latest (and well.., first) sewing group challenge: to re-create a mad men dress! If you missed my last post and want to join in on the fun you can check out the details here

I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with! I am going to need some serious massage therapy come April 1^st; the muscles in my neck and back are all jammed up in anticipation and extreme excitement.

I have created with considerable help from my husband Mr. Robin Bobbin (Robin input 99% - Julia input 01%) a shiny new blogger button for the Mad Men Dress challenge (note, I cannot guarantee shiny-ness).

<center><a href="http://www.juliabobbin.com/2012/02/mad-men-dress-challenge-you-in.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7189/6890944447_3fc1efa18a_o.png" width="150" height="150" alt="Mad Men Challenge Blogger Button" /></a></center>

Isn’t it lovely? So for those of you who want to show on your blogs that you’re participating in the challenge, just copy the HTML in the grab box below and let’s make magic. (Disclaimer – I don’t know how to make actual magic; never got my Hogwarts letter).

So … back to my latest copy-cat dress!

When I first saw it on the screen the cogs in my brain (I like to pretend there’s more than one in there) started turning and I go into a state that can only be described as a ‘lust-over-a-dress-shock’ (L O A D S). 


This is where my brain starts feverishly working over time trying to deduce how it can re-create this visual delight. I try and get my head around the idea that no, at 1pm in the morning/night the fabric stores are not open and there is no point getting in your car and camping out in front of one of them till morning (and crying CERTAINLY won’t help).


To anyone witnessing me going into LOADS it might appear that I have turned into stone or perhaps looked a Basilisk in the eye (nasty beasts), but if you look carefully you’ll notice the pools of drool start to trickle down the side of my face and that’s the sign that I am still alive. ish.

There is something about the combination of blue and white together that delights my senses, and coincidentally also gives me the urge to sail a boat.

Naturally I love the shape of this dress of Joanies. As all Joanie dresses do, they pull in at the waist and hug the curves in scandalous-disguised-as-conservative ways.


These sorts of dresses make me feel good. Plain and simple.
I guess it’s the most flattering shape for my figure and I’m always satisfied with the end result when I replicate this shape.

You know, when I purchased this fabric and cut out the dress I got sidetracked with another project and almost didn’t continue with this dress - gee, I wonder if I'm the only sewer with this problem ... I’m so glad that I picked it up and got re-inspired again as I love how it turned out.

Once again I pulled out a recent favourite, Butterick pattern #5603 which I used to aid me in re-creating my Peggy Olson dress.

The bodice of this dress has such a lovely shape and mimics vintage beautifully. It has a lovely wide bateau neckline and a darling V shaped back neck.

I love the high empire waist of this pattern, which emphasises the waist to contrast nicely again the width of the hips.

As before with the Peggy dress I completely changed the skirt of this pattern for the pencil skirt instead of a full panelled skirt that goes with the pattern. 


Here's a picture from the Butterick website of how the dress looks when you completely follow the pattern. It's beautiful but quite different to my finished look!

The skirt I used has four darts at the front and the darts on the pattern piece didn’t line up with the darts on the original skirt that comes with the pattern. This just won’t do!

I used my re-drafted pattern from my Peggy dress where I took the time to slash and cut to move the darts in the bodice to line up perfectly with my skirt darts. You can see in more detail how I did this on my previous post here.

I added white ribbon trim around the front and back neck.

Just like the inspiration dress I added the white ribbon down the front of the dress starting from under the bust. The ribbon ran parallel with the centre front all the way down to the skirt hem.

I then hand sewed 8 lovely buttons to the left of the trim to mimic the inspiration piece.

What is it about buttons and bows that turn me on so much? I never thought I was a real girly-girl but I think I have just always been in denial. I’m probably as girly-girl as you can get.
Wow, I feel so much better getting that out in the open.

I added my own little sleeves to the bodice as the Butterick pattern doesn’t come with sleeves.

And yes I do own an iron, I don't know what is going on with the sleeves here.

Other changes:

I fully lined the dress – the Butterick pattern only gets you to line the bodice.

I moved the zipper to the centre back instead of the side seam and I used an invisible zipper to close

I cut the bodice 12, waist in a 10 and used my own skirt with a size 14 from the hips down (sigh).

I love how this dress turned out! When I wear this I really feel like I am wearing something that no one else has and it satisfies all my vintage urges.

And there you have it!

Looking forward to seeing all the Mad Men delights for the challenge. Any one started their Mad Men dress yet?