Hopes for 2012, Baby!

I know, don’t I look all festive and celebratory?

In actual fact, I’m having a quiet new years more along these lines but I hope whatever you’re doing you are having a lovely time!

2011 was a bit of a write-off for me personally, the first 6 moths were spent working extremely hard and reaching the decision to leave the company I had spent all my adult working life with. The last 6 months were spent relocating from New Zealand to the other side of the world and reconnecting with family.

For 2012 I don’t have any big plans other than settling into a comfortable routine, starting with a job. I’m rather out of practice with the whole job hunting process so it’s a steep learning curve (not to mention the fact that I hate trying to sell myself) but, in order to make this London thing work, it’s a necessity. My background is in hospitality Training and Development and if I can find a position in a company with a solid positive work culture I’d love to continue doing that but if not I’m happy to find something else. All I want is an engaging job, paying enough to cover rent, bills, and fabric, and most importantly for me – working with and for good people. Hopefully it isn’t a pipe dream.

This is also the year I turn 30, if I’m happy, calm and content at the end of it, it will have been a good one.

Sewing wise I have bigger plans. I feel like I coasted a bit this year and didn’t really go out of the way to learn or progress my skills; this year I’d like to focus on challenging myself more.

• Move to lazystitching.com: Last year I purchased my own domain name (how grown-up!) and I want to have moved to the new address by the end of February. The hold up is that I’m determined to teach myself html/css so I can design it myself, which ties in nicely with my belief that the internet can teach me anything. It’s actually really fun and I’m using a series of online tutorials called Don’t Fear the Internet as well as resources from Pugly Pixel.

Don’t Fear HTML from Jessica Hische on Vimeo.

• Fit a perfect sloper: For Christmas this year, I finally got my hands on Palmer/Pletsch’s Fit for Real People from Mum + Dad. Their Full Busted DVD is one of my favourite resources and this book has a lot of love in the sewing community. The graphic design may be dated but the content is irresistible so much so that I can’t imagine sewing anything else until I make the fitting shell I’ve had in my stash for the last 6 months.

• Take a pattern drafting course/Buy a mannequin: After drafting a few Sorbetto variations, I’d really like to learn more about pattern-making. Tilly and Suzy have both used courses with the London College of Fashion and that’s all the endorsement I need. So, provided I’m in a position financially, I’d like to do at least one course. Also related and reliant on moolah, is the hope to attain a dress form.

• Make a pair of jeans + a winter coat: I want to up my skill level by tackling some of the techniques and garments I’ve been putting off for most of the time I’ve been sewing. Namely, fly-front pants, bound button holes, and bagged lining. All of which are used to make two wardrobe essentials – jeans and a winter coat. In the BMV sale, I’ve ordered a McCall’s Palmer/Pletsch jeans pattern and Simplicity 2508.

• Sew more vintage patterns/Create side project: After making my first dress from a Vintage Pattern a few weeks back, I’m determined to make more use of vintage patterns in 2012. This ties in too, to a little monthly side project I have in the works. It sounds very secret squirrel but it’s not –  I’m just working on the details still so watch this space.

• Attend V&A talks: Mela has written a couple of great posts on expat guilt on her Sifting Through blog and I can appreciate where she’s coming from. I often feel guilty about not making the most of London and I’m in a city where I don’t really know anyone – making new friends as an adult is challenging, y’all! It makes me miss my friends back home even more. I think the answer is just to say yes to as many opportunities as you can – you never know what will happen. One of those things is to attend more of the museum events that London specialises in. In particular the V&A often has talks by well-known fashion designers so I’d love to catch one of these.

Balenciaga: The Work of a Master - V&A, 19:00, Jan 23 2012

• Buy better quality fabrics: My secret shame is the amount of polyester in my wardrobe. Being in a big city provides access to better quality materials at a range of prices so I’d like to step up the quality of the fabrics I’m using.

• Have a go at some “advanced” patterns: I feel like I was more fearless when I first started sewing – I made a boned corset top for my 6th form school ball – and I scoffed at pattern difficulty ratings. Now I worry about making  mistakes and wasting fabric instead of just having a go so I have a couple of designer Vogue patterns heading my way.

• Utilise more pins from Pinterest: Lastly, something I’m sure anyone on pinterest is guilty of , I’d like to make better use of the inspiration photos pinned to my boards. It’s so easy to put them there and forget about it, but maybe once every 2-3 months a pinterest challenge wouldn’t be a bad thing.

A little Erdem from my pinterest board

Source: style.com via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

Heres to a exciting and rewarding year!

Honey, I shrank the sewists!

If you follow many sewing blogs, prepare to see miniature versions of bloggers (check out mini-Joanne, mini-Ali, and mini-Marie) popping up all over the place as the Colette Sewing Handbook is shipped worldwide.

One of the many fantastic activities included in the book is creating a personalised croquis for sketching inspiration. I’ve written about my love of ursa major’s curvy croquis before but I couldn’t resist playing with one of my own.

The basic premise is to trace a photo of yourself in tight-fitting clothes. To make it easier I printed the photo and scribbled on the back in pencil before placing another sheet underneath and drawing over the top of the photo. The result is a true to scale version of yourself in all it’s glory.

For me this was a  positive activity but I know body image is a really personal and potentially emotionally-charged area. If I’m being honest, (and I really try to be on this blog) my own feelings about my body change on a daily basis. I was raised in a feminist, body-loving hippy house-hold but I also know what the outside world says about other bodies like mine so whilst I try most of the time to be kind to myself, sometimes those nasty voices get in.

Now what does this have to do with making a croquis, you ask? Well it’s a little like stepping on the bathroom scale. If you’re the type of person who sees the number and it sends you into a self-hating hurricane, skip this activity and download one of the many cool croquis available for free online. I chose to give myself a little pep-talk, install definatalie’s ‘No Diet Talk’ blog badge, then dove right in.

And you know what? I actually really love my mini-me. I expected to feel those nasty twinges about my hips but instead I got a series of a-ha moments like, Holy Cow that’s why pants are nearly impossible to find or make.

I’ve found that the longer I sew the more inclined I am to look at myself with a sewist eye rather than a critical one. I don’t feel bad about my hips, I’m much more interested in what adjustments I can make to get garments that fit… it’s like crazy pattern-making sudoku and I love a challenge.

Thoughts that popped into my head:

• No wonder I have to add like four inches to any crotch length.
• My pelvis seems to tilt so I think that the front crotch curve will be a very different shape to the back crotch curve.
• Having a full bust leaves very little waist height.
• My back length is proportionally short but being 5′ 10 the actual measurement fits most patterns.

I’m not really a pear or an hourglass. I’ve decided that my body-shape will here-forth be called the snowman as it’s like two spheres stacked atop each-other.

So from a fitting perspective it really get’s you thinking about possible alterations you might need.

From a design perspective, it’s quick and easy to see which shapes and silhouettes you like on your body.

Pants are a bit of a mare as anything that sits below my natural waists slips down to that groove between my high and low hip, but I think the bootleg works ok.

One final use… De-coding deceptive vintage pattern illustrations like this one (from Amy’s lovely give-away) on my sewing table at the moment.

Computer Croquis + Pattern Illustration Tutorial

Boy, that’s a mouthful but I really wasn’t sure what to call it!

This is a demonstration of how I made the illustrations for the Fall Palette Challenge wardrobe below.

(I just wish to apologise in advance if anyone who actually knows what they’re doing with this stuff is reading. It was developed through true trial and error style so there will quite probably be better ways of doing it)

For the demo I’ve chosen this dress from the July Burda magazine because it has some interesting details to show.

As for the software, I use a free program called paint.net that works for most of the things I want to do. I am sure if you have photoshop that will work a lot better, though. Whichever program you choose just make sure you can do layers with it.

Click to enlarge.

The first thing you want to do is open an image of your croquis. This fabulously curvy one came from Amarina at Ursa Major.

I wanted to have the pattern beside it for reference so I increased the canvas  size {Click Image Menu – Canvas Size – then double the width} and pasted it beside.

Create a new layer above the back ground image {Layers box – bottom left icon with the green plus sign}

Choose the main colour you want the garment to be from the colour box then select the line/curve tool {Tools Box – Third from bottom on right}.

Use this tool to draw the first style line of your garment. For this dress I’m starting at the neckline.

The line is straight to begin with so don’t worry about the shape, just make sure it starts and ends where you want it to.

When you’ve drawn the line, you’ll see four dots appear on it. These can be dragged around in any direction to create the curve.

Continue with this tool until all your outline is marked.

Hint: Make sure all the corners connect up otherwise the next step won’t work.

Now select the paint bucket from your Tools Box and fill in the garment.

In the Colors Box click on “More” then make your shade a smidge darker using the slider marked “V”.

We will use this shade to mark the style lines of the item. To do this you could use the paint brush but I like the irregular effect of the Free-form Shape tool {Tools Box – Bottom Right}.

Now you can use a darker shade to create the shadows mostly on one side of the garment using the Free-form Shape Tool.

Add highlights to the opposite side with a lighter shade.

That’s the dress done but I want to give her some hair. To do that I follow the same process with shadows and highlights.

The finishing touch is to hide the remaining visible croquis lines at the neckline. At this point you can make small adjustments too.

I used the paintbrush tool with white to cover the lines and then used the line/curve tool to lower the neckline a little.

That’s it you’re done.

You can either save the image as a .jpg or .png file which will flatten it to one layer, or you can save it as a .pdn file which retains the layers. I have both and in the next post I’ll show you why (hint: I have way too much time on my hands).

So I hope that explains it, but feel free to ask any questions or suggest ways to do it better

xo Alana

 

 

 

 

Colette Fall Challenge: The Patterns

Hey lovelies,

Thank you for all the kind comments on the sneak peak yesterday. Today I have the actually patterns and fabrics I’ve chosen. Some are already in the stash and some may prove elusive – ochre coloured double-knit anyone?

These show up pretty small but if you click on each one they’ll expand in a new window.

 

P.s. The fabulous curvy croqui I used came from Amarina at Ursa Major. She kindly offered them free on her blog so click through for the details along with some serious style. To create the rest of the images I used the free paint.net program (I could put a quick amateur how-to together is anyone is interested?).

Sneak-Peek: Fall Palette Pattern Choices

Pattern choices made?Hells yeah!

Colette Patterns Fall Palette Challenge

This autumn Sarai & Caitlin from Colette Patterns are reprising their palette challenge from Spring with the Fall Palette Challenge.

I’m really excited to participate as my feeble attempt at Self-Stitched-September has been hamstringed by my lack not just a lack of self-stitched clothing, but clothing in general. In fact, my entire wardrobe since moving to London consists of:

• 1 pair jeans
• 2 tee shirts
• 1 shirt
• 2 tops
• 1 skirt
• 2 dresses
• 1 jacket
• 1 coat
• under garments, pjs, tights etc.

People pack more than this when they go on vacation.

I’ve had a really chilled summer and the only people I know over here are family so there hasn’t been a need for pretty new clothes but summer is fading and the time has come to start job-hunting so the challenge has appeared in perfect time.

So here goes. The challenge is low stress and spread over 8 weeks, although I’m going to run it out to the end of the year and try for a few more items.

The first step is to pick a palette for the season. Over on pinterest, I’ve been happily collecting inspiration on a fall pinboard, as have many other participants,  then I mashed some of them together and came up with this:

(Visit pinterest for the sources)

I love the intensity of the almost neon yellows and golds against the warm ashy greys of the tree trunks so that was my start point.

It was so hard to narrow down the choices though so instead of just four or five colours I picked a range of neutrals and fancy colours that will hopefully all work together and incorporates some of the RTW items I already have.

As you can see the iron oxide orange picks up on the colour of my Rooibos dress so I’m counting that one as my first item just so I can say I’m not as behind as I could be.

The next step is to plan the other items in the challenge but I’m still finalising my picks so that will have to wait till next time.

x Alana

Progress… I promise!

Woops, didn’t mean to dissappear like that!

I had a few days up in Edinburgh at the end of the fringe festival, then my BFF and former roomate from Vancouver was visiting and ended crashing here for 2 weeks rather than the few days I thought. Which, don’t get me wrong, was freaking awesome because she’s the coolest chick, just not so conducive to sewing.

And, now my camera charger has gone walk-abouts, so no photos but I promise I made headway on my rooibos yesterday. In fact, it’s one of those patterns that looks like it would take way longer than it really does – even when it involves a first attempt at piping (and leopard print piping at that!)

So instead here is my artists poor (knock off) photoshop impression of the finished dress.

 

Capsule Wardrobe Inspiration

It’s a long weekend in New Zealand for Queens Birthday (not the queen’s actual birthday apparently just an excuse). Anyways, a long weekend seems to mean a long to do list. Tomorrow is put aside for a big clear out and putting anything worth selling on trademe (our version of craigslist/ebay). But today was all about making lists in my cute new mmmg notebook.

I’ve always been obssesed with capsule wardrobes but the idea of living for months from one suitcase has taken it to an extreme. Here’s some of the inspiration pics I’ve been collecting:

Capsule Packing by lazystitching featuring draped tops

This was just thrown together in polyvore for ideas.

I adore the immaculate coordination of these vintage patterns.

The following are from all over the place, collected on pinterest – click through for sources.

Source: google.co.nz via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

Source: preppywithatwist.tumblr.com via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

Source: omiru.com via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

Source: philo-sofia.tumblr.com via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

Source: polyvore.com via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

Source: lifestylecoach.ie via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

Source: omiru.com via Lazy Stitching on Pinterest

TGIF

Yesterday I was googling “fba McCall’s 5525″ for prepping the trench coat (Erica B. did it and that lady sews/fits garments impeccably)when I came across Shams’ blog Communing With Fabric where, as well as a fabulous version of the coat, she had done an interesting activity to find a flattering colour palette. She took a photo of her eye and ran it through colorhunter to identify the shades. Good idea I thought but my problem was that it entirely depended on what light I took the photo in.

But after ending up in an obsessive loop on the site – I have a lovely palette of colours.

Iris under different lights

Just a bit of frivolous fun on a friday. Now on to the weekend plan:

• Trench-coat-a-go-go: No promises but hopefully I can get this done by Sunday night
• I finally found some narrow black and white striped knit for the Brian Reyes inspired stripey-dress so I’d like to figure out the pattern adjustments on Vogue 1109 if I have time.
• I follow so many insanely cool sewing blogs so I really want to figure out how to set up the blog roll.

Yes, my pajamas are stripey too! Have a great weekend, and wish me luck.

Trench Coat Prep

I snuck out at lunch yesterday and grabbed fabric for my next project – the LV inspired Trench Coat.

The military green poplin was only $4.99 per metre. Thank goodness, as I needed 5.2m of it.

The lining is a matte satin for $13 per metre and I’m obsessed with it. It’s so soft and I adore the colours and the print. It reminds me of this super pretty floral and army green combination from Rebecca Taylor.

Rebecca Taylor

My next big decision is which of the design elements of McCall’s 5525, I should include as there are plenty of options.

I definitely want the length of E, but I’m tossing up whether to do the long sleeves or use the ones from view D which are bracelet length and flare out a little. They’re closer to the Louis Vuitton inspiration picture, but I wonder if the long sleeves are more user friendly.

Louis Vuitton - Resort 2011

… and then there’s all the tabs and buttons and bits and bobs too!

(Designer photos are via style.com)