Tuesday 3 September 2013

An Oliver + S weekend

I expected all of last weekend to be taken up with a work activity. It didn't eventuate, so I spent the weekend in my sewing room with my Oliver + S patterns instead.

The first item I made was the book report dress.  I wanted to make it all in one colour and I made a few little alterations to the pattern based on this t-shirt from Daks that I bought at Christmas time


Note the zipper and the quilted shoulders and sleeves

So I borrowed those ideas and incorporated them into my dress:

Size 4




I quilted the fabric onto a fusible batting first before cutting out the back yoke.  It was surprisingly quick to do and produced the result I was after.




It really isn't that wrinkled in real life!



I inserted invisible zippers at the front and back yoke shoulder seam.  They are not perfect but I think they will look OK once the  dress is on.   Perhaps next time I will make the zipper more of a feature like the Daks's t-shirt

The only other modification I made was to use the "burrito method" to enclose the stitching for the  back yoke and its facing just like on a man's business shirt.  The batting added quite a bit of bulk which made this a little bit more of a fiddle than it might have been but it turned out looking very tidy on the inside.




And to finish off, I found a little sparkly button in my button box that matched the dress colour perfectly.

Although the photo is out of focus


On Sunday, I made a skirt using the rather appropriately named Sunday brunch a-line skirt pattern - although it would have been a very late meal if it had been needed at the time suggested by the pattern!  

I cut up an old Anna S dress that I bought for about $5 at a school fair several years ago and tried to recreate something a little like this skirt that I snapped in Tokyo last year.... while trying to not look like I was stalking the child

this skirt
plus


equals



Ok, so this looks nothing like the little girl's skirt but you gotta work with what you've got!


And then in the second half of the day I whipped up a roller skate tunic from a Nano Iro print, and some Japanese lawn from Spotlight






And I bundled these up to send to Rosa with yet another Sailboat top I recently completed.  I think I have probably had the knit fabric for at least ten years!  So, another successful stash bust here and therefore time to buy more fabric....


And look!  I managed to get the shoulder pieces overlapped the correct way again



Now, that was a much better way to spend a weekend than doing paper work....




4 comments:

  1. Whoa. The book report is great, love the little zips. Absolutely LOVE that brunch skirt. The fringey bits, the sectioning, the colours. I think it's the best one I've seen to date. Then you went and threw in that Nani Ito tunic. Divine.

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  2. Thanks! I had a lot of fun sewing these and the book report dress turned out pretty close to how I imagined or hoped it would.
    I wasn't sure anyone would like the skirt so I'm pleased that you like it. I am so useless at throwing things out and I hate things to go to waste that I still have half of the dress left over...just never know when those bits will come in handy....

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  3. These are terrific, the lot of them. I wish I fitted the size 4
    I particularly like what you've done with the skirt. Great colour combinations and a little bit of funk going on there. Just as well you saved those scraps. Your grandmother (& grandfather) would be proud of you for such resourcefulness

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  4. wow i would love the quilted book report dress in an adult size. That's my cup of tea! ;)

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