Wardrobe Architect 4 -- Silhouettes

This is Week Four of the Wardrobe Architect Series from the Colletterie.  This week's task was to design your Silhouettes, or wardrobe templates.

I've designed five templates for my outfits.  I've picked two types of dresses, a simple full skirted dress with a fitted bodice, and a warp/faux-wrap dress.  I also chose pants and a top, a circle skirt and a top, or an A-line skirt and a top.

The stockings above are all from What Katie Did,  I haven't tried them personally, but I've heard wonderful things about them from around the blogosphere, and they're definitely on my wish list!

I've got a few patterns in mind for the dresses, particularly the ones on the Pinterest Board.

I've got quite a few top patterns to use as well. There are the the two that I've made already, the Portrait Blouse and B6085, as well as the vintage S1590.  I'm sure I'll come across some others as I go, but that's what I've come up with so far.

For pants, I've been relatively happy with my latest rendition of B5682, but I would also like to try out my two Wearing History Patterns.

Circle skirts obviously will not need a pattern.  I'd love to do a tutorial, if anyone would be interested, in drafting and constructing a circle skirt.

There's one A-Line skirt I'd like to make up, from Sew News August / September of last year.  It has a cute sailor-style button front.  I haven't picked any other ones specifically, but A-line skirts are easy to draft as well, or to come across patterns for if I really need one.

And there we are, Silhouettes outlined!  Let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in a Circle Skirt Tutorial or Sew Along -- I'd love to arrange something.

Christmas Circle Skirt

In all of the kerfuffle around the holidays I forgot to show you the circle skirt I whipped up.  It was a quick job, finished the morning before the family Christmas party.  I'm fairly happy with it, though I did learn an important lesson about sewing machines.

Photographer-fiancee is still in training...
I'll remind him to back up next time ;)

I've almost never sewn on machines that weren't a similar price point and technical level to my own.  My best sewing friend has a machine that's similar to mine, though a different make.  And the machine I learned to sew on was my mother's vintage machine she inherited from her aunt, but that hadn't been for a tune-up any time in my memory.

As was bound to happen eventually, my mother's sewing machine finally bit the bullet.  She doesn't sew a lot any more, so she decided to replace it with one of the super-cheap Walmart sewing machines.  I didn't discover this until I couldn't find the sewing machine in the basement because I was looking for the wrong one.  Now, the new machine does in fact sew, and even has a few different stitch options.  However, I did notice some things were lacking, primarily the foot pressure and the feed dogs (that move your fabric through the machine).  This resulted in uneven stitches that tended to jump around at little bit.  I also noticed some skipped stitches.

Now, to be fair, this was fabric I had gotten at Walmart to test out.  The fabric itself worked fairly well for this project though.  It was really more of a canvas-type fabric, which helped give the skirt a lot of body I think.  However, it frayed terribly, so I do need to go back and add bias binding to the waist seam.  The waistline also seemed to have warped quite a bit between when I cut it out and when I unpacked it at my mother's to finish sewing.  I had probably an extra 4-6 inches, so I added some gathers while attaching it to the waistband, which I think turned out nice enough.

I used a pattern generously posted here by Casey of Elegant Musings.  The pattern is from a 1954 Smart Sewing booklet.  Instead of the traditional circle, the waist line of the skirt is a little bit more of an oval, which makes the skirt hang a little bit differently.  It is still just as quick to sew up though.

Now I just need to make a day wear petticoat to go under it.  The one I have is shortened from my step-mother's wedding dress, so is a little full to wear from day to day!