Kimono dress it is!

My name is Etemi, and I am addicted to buying fabric remnants. I guess the first step on the road to healing is admitting that you have a problem, right? So there is this shop where I buy fabric most of the time, called Rolls and Rems, and they have this box right in front of the door. It’s an evil trap, and works brilliantly, as for the second time this Saturday, I went in to buy something specific, couldn’t find it, but came home with two pieces of remnants. A few weeks ago I spent my last couple of pounds on the silky fabric from the previous post and about 2 metres of white crepe. I’m not sure what works on me, not having to make the big decision of getting some fabric cut, or that it’s an exclusive offer as it is cheaper than normally or that it’s the last chance to buy it, but it sure does, every single time. So here is the progress on the printed silk from the previous post that I scored for about £5.

First I wanted to make a maxi dress out of it, but I wear maxi dresses for comfort, which could hardly be achieved with this material and print. So I looked further and found this Issa dress.In order to make something similar, I started looking for tutorials on how to make a proper kimono, and found this image below. It’s a photo from Vogue, July 1970 of Candice Bergen in a  cut panne velvet kimono dress designed by Bill Blass.“A dress for utterly luxurious evenings at home, wrapped with a high obi sash, long sleeves slipping, dipping from the arm like folding wings,” was Vogue’s description. I like the Issa dress, but this is just stunning. I found the Kimono drafting instructions I needed -and would highly recommend. on Taeliac’s site, and off I went to cut the fabric. So  the top is going to look like a kimono, with the sleeves and standing collar, and it will end in a knee length skirt with a non-removable belt just under the bust.

I am not sure if it is real silk, since I did not buy it off the roll, but the fabric is a nightmare to cut and pin and sew. Since it slides easily, I pinned every 2 centimetres at first, but if a pin is not sharp enough, it tends to pull the thread from it, you see. I’ve only realized that I could have matched the pattern while cutting it out, after I’ve sewn it together. I’ve attempted to match it afterwards, but next time the back pieces will be cut from one piece for sure. After wrestling with the dress for about 4 hours, and unpicking two 40 cm long seams 7(!!!) times, I can’t even be bothered any more, when I see a loose thread from the fabric. Since I don’t have a pattern for the bottom half of the skirt I am pretty much improvising on the go, and luckily it’s been working (slowly) so far. I’m doing French seams wherever I can, and hand-stitched the collar, which was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. I’m just about to attach the back panel of the skirt, then I need to finish up the sleeves, insert the invisible zip, sew the side seams and hem the fabulously-looking-but-where-will-it-be-worn dress. It really is almost finished.

 

 

One piece of fabric, endless possibilities…

The patchwork journal cover

Lately I’ve discovered a few traits and habits that I inherited from my Dad, other than the habit of not finishing things we start. Like this sewing thing. He is just as obsessed about woodworking right now, watching videos for hours of a man cutting wood with different machines, as I am about dressmaking. He has always been like that, but only now I can see this connection. And then there is the journaling. It turned out that keeping a journal runs in the family, as my late Grandfather used to have them, my Dad has precious little books for phone numbers, calculations and notes to himself, and I started keeping one 5 years ago too. I bought the first one when I moved to London for the first 7 months, and from then on, buying a fresh, new notebook was the highlight of my Decembers. Honestly, some of them are more than half empty, like the Moleskin London edition, but the rest work as the most helpful self-help books I could ever read. Whenever I feel empty, bored or tired of life in general I just open one up and read through how I saw my life at certain times. It helps putting my current struggles into a different point of view, and reminds me that if nothing else can help, time solves absolutely everything. This is why I’m so worried that I’ve neglected the writing habit this year, even though so many important things happened to me already. In a bid to inspire my journal writing (and try my hand at quilting again), I decided to make a patchwork cover for my 2013 notebook. I drafted the pattern on an A4 paper, numbered the pieces and wrote the colours on them, cut them out, added seam allowance on the fabric, and started sewing the blocks together. It has pocket on the inside and a little pen holder. It would have turned out neater if I didn’t pick the bloody green stretch velvet fabric, as even though it looks awesome (since it’s velvet!!!!:)), it pulled the other fabrics, and seriously misbehaved… Apart from that, it was done in a few hours from planning to squeezing the journal into it, and it looks like a magician’s little exercise book from Harry Potter, so I am quite pleased.

Front

Back

Apart from making something absolutely useless, I’ve started sewing a dress as well. More on this tomorrow!

The A-line skirt is finally ready!

    Here comes the A-line skirt that I made a few weeks ago. I used the pattern for the shorter skirt that can be found in the May 2012 issue of Burda Magazine.  

    We were lucky to have a sunny bank holiday weekend here in London, so I could play dress-up outside. The buttons are not quite on the right place, hence the little hole, but I just couldn’t be bothered to move them as of yet. The grey and denim tops are my sister’s, and the striped crop top is something I cut-off a few weeks ago when I couldn’t find anything to wear for a night out. Have a look!

    As you might remember, I had some issues with the look of the inside of the skirt, but since I restarted the whole thing, I managed to make it pretty enough. I used French seams, a faced hem and fabric covered snap-fasteners instead of the buttons suggested by Burda. I am rather pleased with the results, although the hemline is still far from perfect. Maybe next time…

Reupholstered wingback chair: Before and after

   A few weeks ago I shared how I found a 1959 wingback chair on the street and what inspired me to have a go at upholstery. The chair is now ready, and in fact, I’m sitting on it writing this post. It is comfy, I’m rather pleased with the outcome and I’ve learned so much making it. Here are the 3 most important lessons I’m taking with me from this project:

1. Never choose a fabric with a pattern that runs in lines. I had 6 meters of fabric and almost ran out of it, as I had to match the patterns everywhere on the chair. It really was a nightmare, but looking at it now, the hard work paid off.
2. If you don’t have a high pressure stapler gun I suggest you use a good old hammer and upholstery tacks. I did it this way, because this is how it was originally done and I couldn’t find my stapler. Although at some places it was hard to reach the nails with the hammer, they held the fabric in place much stronger than the staples could have.
3. Upholstery is probably more time consuming than would imagine, but it isn’t as difficult as it seems to be. You need common sense and tons of patience. I threw away the old cover without tracing it for the new pattern (I didn’t feel like touching it ever again, as it was wet and smelly when I found the chair), and still managed to pin together the new cover on the chair.
   

   

   

   

   Luckily I did not have to buy new foam for the seat cushion, as we had one lying around at home, the fabric was only £10, I also bought some piping for about £2 and then some rope in a similar width. I did not buy any buttons, but covered two regular ones with the same fabric myself, so while a similar, one-off, handmade chair usually costs anything between £300 to £1500 on eBay, Etsy or Anthropology, costed me no more than £20. Yeey! Take a look at the before and after!

…by the way, that beautiful painting was a parting gift from an old colleague/new friend of mine, Regina, when I moved to London. She used to paint when she was younger, and apparently picked it up again, as one day I showed her a picture on Apartment Therapy of a portrait on the wall in somebody’s living room, and told her that it was the  kind of painting I would love to own, so she painted an exact similar one secretly and gave it to me as a parting gift when I left the company where we worked together. It is still one of the most cherished things I am lucky to own.

Check out how I found this chair and what inspired me in this previous post.

1 skirt = 3 easily avoidable mistakes

    I guess the big lesson of this project was to plan my steps ahead…and I don’t mean the outfit ideas. I bought this fabric a year ago, while  I was attending a sewing course in Budapest, for about £2. I was planning to make a skater dress from it (that’s the basic idea every time I randomly buy fabric )  but 2 weeks ago, inspired by the amazing (& waaaay too short) sewing competition/series on BBC, The Great British Sewing Bee, and by some of these images below, I started sewing this skirt from Burda.

Image sources:1., 2., 3.

    It could have been finished in a couple of hours, as it is a relatively easy pattern, consisting of 8 skirt panels and 2 pockets, but I discovered some problems that could have led to having a very “handmade” looking, rather unprofessional garment. So here are my mistakes, they might seem elementary, but I wish someone told me these before.

Mistake: Choosing a seam finish method AFTER the pieces are sewn together. The Burda patterns have no instructions on seam finishes, so I ended up having to choose between zig-zag stitching or Hong-Kong binding 16 (70 cm long) seam allowances, as folding and stitching the seam allowances worked out to be too thin and curled up.

Solution: French seams. Obviously for this, I had to unpick the whole thing, it took ages, but it was worth it. It looks very professional on the inside, and if you use 1.5 cm seam allowance when cutting the pattern out, you’ll have enough space to comfortably do this.

Mistake: Making a hem with 4 centimetres of fabric by folding it once, leaves you with loads of excess fabric on the inside. Hemming isn’t supposed to be a big deal, but I’ve learned the difference between turning up a centimetre of your skirt and 4 times that much the hard way, when I ended up trying to tuck all that fabric under the straight line I was supposed to sew on the  the right side, and a mess on the inside.

Solution: Face the hem. I mean cut a facing to the same size as the bottom of the assembled skirt, and sew it on wrong sides together, just as you would on a neckline. If you use a zig-zag stitch to finish the seam on the facing, and measure it properly, you will end up with an even and neat hem inside out, and the top-stitching will be no problem either. (I was trying to be way too pedant, so used a single fold here, and ended up with not so perfect results, but I guess I can live with that.)

Mistake: Not enough thread to finish up a project. This is a no brainer, I know, but if you “impulse buy” a piece of fabric and some thread together, you might end up making something totally different out of it than what you had in mind at the time of purchase, and end up with less thread than needed. Honestly, finding out that my regular fabric shop doesn’t have any thread even close to this shade, half way through sewing, was anything but fun.

Solution: Uhm…Make sure you have enough thread before you start a project?! Of course you can cheat a little if you can’t find more matching thread by using any other colour on hand for seams that will be hidden (like the inner seams of the French seams), so that you can leave enough matching thread for the decorative or visible stitches.

The skirt is now ready, I’m just waiting for the sun to return, so that I can take it out and show you and the World the result, so watch this space!

 

A peek into Scandinavia

     A very good friend of mine, Kata, is travelling around the world studying sustainable developmemt, and after Denmark and Bali she now resides in the small university town of Lund, in Sweden. Since I missed out on visiting her in the previous locations (shame on me, for not going to Bali!), I decided to hop over to Lund for the weekend, before she finds herself out of Europe again.

     I was very excited to see her, and spending time together was truly awesome, but I think I either had too big expectations of the trip after reading about the coolness of Copenhagen daily on Justina Blakeney’s blog, or London is simply the best place on Earth, and it’s hard to compete with for any other cities… Either way, I returned inspired,

• by Kata’s eating habits, as she has gone vegeterian again, and eats a tremendous amount of vegetables at all meals;
• by a book about the architect S. Calatrava’s sketchbook and his way of interpreting the body’s forms into architecture;
• and by Garba Diallo’s story about his journey from Mauritania to Copenhagen, from starting school at 15 to teaching young adults from all over the world, how to make it a better place to live in.

I promise I won’t make this into a personal photo album, but here are the highlights and the Instagram feed from the trip.

Lund

     This really is a sleepy little town full of university students, so there is not much to do if you are not involved with them in one way or another. Luckily I had connections, so I did what the Swedish apparently love doing as soon as the snow melts, I went to a rooftop barbecue party. Apart from that, I got the grand tour around the centre which included Lund Cathedral, or Domkyrkan, the University Library and the Botanical Gardens. The old timer frenzy that lasted for the whole weekend started with a beautiful old Volvo in the street that’s famous for being Kata’s favourite.

Lund – Skissernas Museum/Museum of Public Art

Lund Museum of Public Art

Lund University Library

Lund – Botanical Garden

Lund

University of Lund main building

Lund Cathedral

Lund

Copenhagen

   I thought the best thing in Lund was it’s proximity to Copenhagen, but I wasn’t quite right. We did Christiania, Nyhavn the Rundetårn, but none of those really sparked my imagination, so instead of the usual sightseeing stuff, let me tell you the story of our afternoon.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

There was an old timer gathering in town, and we got to sit in a 60′s golden Cadillac!

Christiania

Christiania gift shop

Christiania

Nyhavn

Royal Danish Theatre

Flamenco by Hilda Karlsen and Poul Jacek Knudsen at the Royal Danish Theatre

Copenhagen street style – the only picture worthy scene in the genre, really.

A shop in the centre selling all kinds of furs and exotic animal skins. We were shocked.

Copenhagen fur shop.

Copenhagen Tivoli

     We had no plans after leaving Christiania, so we decided to eat our little packed lunch (I will have to write down the recipe we came up with, as it was amazing) by a canal, and started wandering around Nyhavn with no further plans for the day. As we were looking for a toilet we arrived at this huge square, with the Royal Danish Theatre on one side of it. It looked beautiful, very different from the whole of the city, and as I took pictures of it, I suggested trying to find a toilet in there instead of the McDonald’s nearby. As we walked in, a hostess asked if we were there for the free flamenco concert starting in 5 minutes. Of course we were! The concert was good, but there was this one song that really made the whole experience special for me. After hours of googling I found out that the song is called Sevillanas de la Vida and was performed by singer, Hilde Karlsen and guitarist, Poul Jacek Knudsen. Here is the video I made on the spot, just to give you an idea.

   After the concert, still with no plans, we started to wander towards the centre, where we accidentally bumped into Kata’s teacher from the school she attended in Denmark. He is the director actually, and in a tucked away Moroccan restaurant I found out that he is also one of the most inspiring people I have ever met. We drank some extremely sweet tea (even for one who has no limits when it comes to chocolate), in the traditional Mauritanian way with some added wisdom.

     As I get older and travel more, I am starting to see that for me, travelling starts when I stop comparing things to what I already know, so that I can take in the new information more easily, and let myself go off the track physically and mentally as well.