Sewist Pride

While the new Ice Age hasn’t quite spread over to London from the US, my sewing has nonetheless slowed to a glacial pace thanks to going back to work full time. I am working on a snake print dress for Pretty Grievances‘ annual Jungle January party. In fact, I’ve been planning this since January last year. Fingers crossed it will be finished by end of January this year. More about this one another day.

What I did manage to finish (sort of) over the Xmas holidays are these muslins for my top and three skirt slopers. But I’m not going to go into details about the pattern-drafting and fitting this time. I’m feeling a bit fatigued with the nitty-gritty. In the depth of winter what one needs is some day-dreaming. And would you believe it, I’m actually rather inspired by these muslins.

I’m very tempted to turn these muslin into sewing-themed wearable garments. It sounds mad, but at least a couple of high fashion designers have already set the precedence…

Maison Martin Margiela Spring-Summer 1997 collection

0inspiration_martin-margiela-1997ss-60inspiration_martin-margiela-1997ss-4

(More from Dusty Burrito blog…) How cool is that? OK, maybe not everyone’s cup of tea. But for someone who came of fashion age during the first wave of fashion deconstructionist era, yeah I would wear that.

Moschino Cheap and Chic Spring-Summer 2004

0inspiration_moschino-cnc_2004ss-2

I love the idea of wearing my sewing proudly. In this age of ready made cheap fashion it feels a bit rebellious to proudly declare oneself a home-sewist/sewer/seamstress/whatever.

Most of the muslins were made from an old linen color bed skirt, so already looks a bit like the MM dress form top. The only problem is that when I was cutting out I didn’t notice that the two sides are slightly different shades (sun fading?). So some panels are slightly darker shades than others. Oops. Will have to stew this idea for a bit longer.

In the meanwhile, I’ve also started planning the skirts I’m going to make from these skirt slopers:

0plans-skirts

But these will have to wait a bit longer. I haven’t quite figured out all the construction details yet.

Plus I don’t want my snake print dress to miss another year of Jungle January!

0 comments on “Sewist Pride

    • Thanks! Glad to be able to inspire you.

      BTW, photo poses also make a big difference to how they look. I will eventually show the standard front-back-side mug shots so you can compare. Thank goodness in real life we rarely stand at attention. So many more clothing probably looks better than when photographed with less than masterly skills! 🙂

  1. Oooo… I remember yeeeeeeeers ago seeing a Dior collection that had all the catchstiching done on the outside and LOVED the idea! Your pencil skirt muslin looks perfectly pencilly. Did you end up doing princess seams in the back?

    • Do you have clipping showing that Dior collection? It’s rather difficult to search for isn’t it.

      Pencil sloper…yes, I caved in and added tapering princess seams as well. I couldn’t get the bottom curve without it. A naturally curvy bottom may be able to get away with only side seam & CB seam tapering. I can’t. While it would be nice to have just dart-based option, at the end of the day the overall silhouette is much more noticeable than seam details. So I think I will probably add back princess seams to my pencil skirts regardless of whether the commercial pattern has it or not.

    • That might be a possibility. But I would like to keep the linen coloring, so would have to research where I can buy dyes of the right color.

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.