now in technicolour

A few weeks ago when I was sick I watched seasons 1 and 2 of Mad Men in one sitting, and while it's becoming a bit cliched to be influenced fashion wise by that show what caught my eye the most was the colour of all the clothes. From Betty's lovely florals to Peggy's modern prints, but mostly what I was inspired by are the strong jewel colours worn by Joan. Since I have pale skin and red hair, I thought I should try out some of those strong colours too (although I am realistic that I won't get those curves no matter what colour I wear!).

And then I saw this fabulous teal version of my favourite dress made by Cidell of Miss Celie's Pants fame. The pattern is Burda 8_2009, dress 128 which is the tulip shaped dress:

I made mine out of a dark grey herringbone lightweight wool and have since made a black grosgrain ribbon belt to wear with it, so it pretty much looks exactly like the magazine version:


I absolutely love this dress and wore it frequently last winter. It's such an elegant shape that I feel so well dressed in it even though it's so simple to just slip into it with a pair of shoes and I'm dressed. But because of the wool fabric, the longer sleeves, the colour and the fact that I fully lined it means it's only really for wearing during the cooler months of the year. So I decided to make a summer version in a bright colour, and when I say bright, I mean bright:


This is a stretch cotton drill in a vibrant fuchsia colour which I feared may have been too much when I was sewing it, but I wore it to work yesterday and I just loved the colour. I shortened those three quarter sleeves to cap sleeve length so that I could wear it in the hot weather, and I only lined the bodice which should be fine since it's a very dense fabric so I won't get any see through issues in the skirt area and it's not so tightly fitted that it will bag out after wear.

The other change I made to to this pattern which isn't immediately obvious but helped with fitting was to separate the back of the dress into a bodice and skirt to match the front. The pattern itself is just a single back piece, with a centre back zip and two vertical darts, and the waistline seam of the front finishes at the side seams. I thought this pattern looked a bit unfinished since the front and back didn't match, but the other benefits of splitting the back into two to match the front meant I could get a closer fit by deepening the darts and it also created a natural spot for a belt to sit as well.

I didn't make a muslin since I've made this previously, but it all worked out wonderfully and the fit is great which is a huge joy after all the effort I put into the last dress with no results. The only problem with this dress? The weather is cooling down now and I'll have to wait until later in the year to get a lot of wear out of it!

The Vogue pattern for the suit with the peplum and bell sleeves still hasn't arrived yet, so I have started working on another dress. Another muslin, sigh. Can I just have a rant about Vogue patterns online site though? I ordered a bunch of Simplicity patterns when they were $1.99 from sewingpatterns.com a month or so ago, and the postage was very reasonable and the patterns arrived about a week later - totally excellent experience. Voguepatterns.mcall.com however is a totally different story - three weeks later I'm still waiting for them to arrive, postage was an extortionate $15 for 3 patterns but I still bought them because it is cheaper than buying them here in Australia because I bought during a $3.99 sale. Good thing I have plenty of other things to work on, but still, I want to get on with making that jacket!