Great British Sewing Bee Challenge

“Sewers, you have a week to make a garment inspired by the current series of The Great British Sewing Bee.”

So were the words of Marianna from Sew2Pro last Tuesday.

Source

I LOVE the GBSB. I watched every episode of the first series on You Tube with pure glee and bliss and excitement and roller coaster emotions. Reality TV at its best! Hang on - there's a second series??? And there have already been seven episodes??? Let's just say that several hours over the next three days were spent very happily ensconced in front of the BBC on my computer.  Tip: if you are outside the UK, you can watch the BBC by installing this add-on from Media hint which works on Chrome and Firefox. The episodes will be available until 15th April and the final is tonight!! Get watching people!

So, after emerging, bleary-eyed from watching the first seven episodes (I loved every minute), I started considering Marianna's challenge.

I decided to include several things in my challenge:

- a time limit;
- use fabric from my haberdashery stash;
- use as many techniques from the series as possible in my one garment.

After perusing my stash (that took some time in itself), I decided to use stretch fabric (episode 3) to make a wrap dress (episode 3) and do some pattern matching (episode 2). Marianna kindly provided the link to some of the patterns used in the series and I downloaded the wrap dress. Some detective work revealed that the pattern was actually Butterick 5454.

Butterick 5454

I decided to use some stretch fabric with diagonal stripes for my dress and to cut it in a clever way so that the stripes criss-crossed elegantly and flatteringly at the front and met in a very aesthetically pleasing diamond at the back. No worries mate.

So, with the pattern printed and glued together, I set myself three hours for the challenge.

I think I am a pretty fast sewer. There were no instructions and I knew the pattern matching would prolong the cutting out process, but I thought three hours was doable. Ha! Little did I know....

Dramatic TV moment 1: The pattern matching was a nightmare. 'Like a TOTAL nightmare' as my son would say. I cut each pattern piece from a single layer then flipped that piece to match the pattern and have the stripes going in the opposite direction. But where was the opposite direction? The diagonal stripes meant that each piece had to be flipped 90 degrees, not 180 as I first thought. Oh dear. Knowing that stretch fabric needs to have the greatest stretch going around the body, this was a bit of a spanner in the works. However, after a quick stretch test, I decided that this fabric was of similar stretch up and down as it was side to side, so I just went for it.

I had to cut each piece as I went, rather than being able to lay all the pieces out on the fabric first. I had quite a large piece of fabric ($2 from the op shop - score!) so I thought it would be fine, despite cutting a couple of pieces the wrong way round and having to recut them.

I was wrong.

Dramatic TV moment 2 (head in hands, horrorstruck): The above picture shows the back skirt piece not fitting on my remaining piece of fabric. OK. Recover. Not to worry, I'll just put in a stripe matching patch and no one will ever know...

It took over an hour to cut out all my pieces except the sleeves and the waist tie. I was careful to match the stripes and orient them in the desired direction. I thought I'd got that right.

I thought I had, but I hadn't.

I pressed on. Having that timer running was way more stressful that I expected. The pressure on the actual GBSB must have been so intense.

I started sewing the bodice first. The back was looking good. The front was looking bad. How did the stripes end up in the same freaking direction when I was so careful cutting the pieces?

Then, with little time left, I sewed the skirt. Again, the back was the only reasonable section.

Before I knew it, there was only one minute to go! Very dramatic TV moment.

One minute to go!!!!!

I forced myself to step away from the machine and put the dress on the mannequin.

The bodice and the skirt were still two separate pieces. The edges of the skirt were unfinished, the sleeves and waist tie were not even cut out.

I saw Patrick and May approaching and hid the offending pins.

Fortunately Patrick and May allowed me to go away and finish the dress before they did their final assessment.

I was ready to run fast and far in the opposite direction, tossing the wrap dress in the nearest bin on my way past.

I considered my options. Did I have time to go fabric shopping and start again? I pondered some more and then an amazing thing happened. Project Runway's Tim Gunn murmured in my ear: "Make it work".

Gathering my dregs of enthusiasm for this project I picked up my dress and my timer and forced myself to continue.

It took me another 2 hours and 43 minutes to finally finish.

"The first thing I notice" said May "is that the stripes are all running in the same direction at the front...

...but in four different directions at the back"

"Completely intentional" I lied.

"The pattern matching is not bad in places" said Patrick.

"I love you Patrick" said I.

"And the top-stitching with the twin needle is handled quite well" added May.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Things were looking quite good. Until...

"Oh dear" said May, "what is this seam here? Has a patch been added at the back of the skirt???

"Oh help!"

"Meggipeg, you are the weakest link. Goodbye."

Well, it's definitely not my finest piece of sewing, or my favourite piece of fabric, but I did challenge myself and, despite some stressful moments, I had a lot of fun with this sew.

Is it wearable? Let's see.

It fits.

The back is pretty cool (can you see the patch?).

It could be worse. Actually, I really like this pattern and I challenge myself to get some really lovely stretch fabric (NOT striped) and make it properly next time. In three hours.

Betcha I can.

PS. Thank you to Marianna for a really fun competition.

Into Autumn with Pantone's Spring colours

 The idea of Pantone colours has slowly seeped into my consciousness over the past couple of years. Pantone is a company who declare themselves to be 'the world-renowned authority on color'. Each year, amongst numerous other things, they hold a two-day secret meeting to choose the 'Colour of the Year' for the following year. In 2013 the chosen colour was emerald green. A colour palette is designed around the main colour. This palette is then used by the fashion and other industries to plan and design their upcoming ranges.

Pantone 2013 Spring Colours (source)

This year, Sewing Pattern Review are holding a competition to sew a two-piece outfit based on the Pantone 2013 Spring colour palette. Any combination of colours can be chosen as long as the 2013 Pantone colours are the prominent colours in the outfit.

 Well, I can't resist a sewing competition, especially with such delicious colours to choose from. I love the muted colours from the palette and when I saw this chiffon incorporating hues of 'grayed jade' (14-6011), 'African violet' (16-3520) and highlights of 'Monaco blue' (19-3964), I knew it would be perfect. I also knew exactly which pattern I wanted to use - the tunic (No. 112) from Burdastyle 11/2012.

Burdastyle magazine 11/2012

For the second part of the outfit I used  lovely, soft, knit fabric with a slight stretch in 'grayed jade' (also used here to make a top). I used Vogue 1247 to make a skirt.

Vogue 1247 (Source)

I made the top as a tunic style, according to the pattern. I decided to leave the pockets off as I knew I wanted to wear it tucked in for this outfit and they would add bulk in the wrong places. I will wear this as a tunic as well though. I decided to make the slit in the neckline less deep than in the pattern and leave it open at the top, omitting the button at the neckline. I prefer a more open neckline on me, especially on a top with sleeves. 

I was careful with the finishing of the chiffon seams and used tissue paper (torn away after sewing) to sew the hem and cuffs so the fabric would hold its shape. I like the way the neckline and collar sit on this top.

The skirt was made exactly to the pattern except that I added 17cm in length as I was cutting it out. This seemed to be just about the right amount for me as my last version of this skirt was a tad short. The slight stretch in the fabric meant that I did need to take in the side seams a bit. It also made more of a challenge to sew the pockets and I kept getting puckers where the front yoke joined the lower skirt piece. Several attempts were needed for that section!

The back view.

Truffle was beside himself being on a real farm....with real cows!

Progress on this outfit was hampered significantly due to the boys being home for school holidays! The skirt was made the day before we went off to a farm-stay in Nannup, south of Perth, for a few days when I should have been packing and preparing for the holiday! I wanted to finish the outfit so I could use the farm scenery as a backdrop for the photos.

 I don't usually get the chance to take bush and farm pictures. The farm was lovely and we had a very relaxing few days bushwalking and helping to feed the cows. We had beautiful, sunny, autumn days in the mid 20Cs.

So nice to get back to nature for a bit, not that I had much use for this outfit down there on the farm!

It's fun to dress up and pretend though :)

Voting in this contest will run from the 3rd to the 9th of May, 2013. There are some fab entries so get on over there! Oh yes, I found both fabrics on sale for $5/m each, so the entire outfit cost me less than $20.

A bit of fun

While waiting in for the oven repair man this morning, I've put together an entry to win a year's supply of Spencer Lacy clothing worth $4000! Entrants have to submit a photo of the place they'd like to wear a SL outfit. The most creative entry wins. I love SL, so I thought I'd give it a go. Maybe I should start a new career as a poet...yeah ok maybe not, but there's not a lot that rhymes with 'lacy'.

This was put together using the free online photo editing software Picmonkey. I use it for most of my photo editing since we no longer have Photoshop after switching to a Mac. You can do some pretty cool things with Picmonkey. Let's hope the judges like my collage!

Well, the oven man has now been and gone and the oven remains unfixed. Looks like I won't be doing that baking today after all. I wonder what other competitions I could enter...

Cravat for Matt

Ahoy Masterchef fans! I know this is slightly out of date but I just came across some photos of my entry for the 'Make a cravat for Matt' Aussie Masterchef competition last year. This was to be a cravat for the ever colourful Masterchef judge Matt Preston, who always wears a cravat (necktie thingy). Here he is:

So, I thought I would enter. The cravat had to be made from Handee Ultra paper towel as they were sponsoring the competition. I decided to make a huge flower and dye it with food colouring.

I dyed the tie part with watered down food colouring and decorated it with Masterchef logos, which I had photoshopped on to a background in the same pink colour. I dyed the flower with darker pink colouring and used more concentrated dye on the tips  to define them. I then sewed a knife, fork and spoon from the paper towel and dyed them green to make the 'leaf'. It was good fun to do and I really liked the way it turned out. I was hoping that there wouldn't be too many people interested in creating something elaborate for the competition and I might be in with a chance of winning. This was sadly not to be - there were loads of entries and some were absolutely amazing. I really enjoyed looking at the website to see the new ones that were being added all the time. It seems that there are a lot more people out there who sew and craft than I thought. This makes me happy as I worried for years that we were a dying breed and eventually the fabric shops would all close down, as many did in Perth. But now, the trend seems to be reversing and there some lovely fabric shops around. Yay!