Long time no sew! I have been busy busy at my new job working at a bridal gown shop, and it hasn't left me much time (or energy) to work on my own sewing projects. I also haven't made too much progress on my sewing room, which will make it much easier to keep ongoing projects instead of just powering through something in a week or two in order to get the mess out of my living room! Working at a bridal shop has afforded me a great opportunity to look at how wedding gowns are constructed, and I've gotten to help make minor repairs (no alterations!) to the gowns; redoing beading, fixing tacks that have come undone on pickups and ruching, etc... It's also been really fascinating to see the seamstresses who do alterations work. One of the seamstresses used to teach design at the University level and is an extremely talented designer and seamstress, so she comes at the alterations from a very different perspective. She's also FAST and has been making me rethink a lot of my methods. For instance, she laughs at me for being as cautious as I am; she says cutting out a pattern should take an hour. She told me she tells her students to never do mock-ups; just cut a little bigger and alter it on yourself! It's neat to think about sewing from a completely different perspective.
In other news, I am working on a new project! I am going to a couple of weddings this summer and I have absolutely nothing to wear (this is an exaggeration; I don't want to wear any of the things I have). I decided to start working on Butterick's B5814, a vintage-styled wiggle dress.
I plan on tweaking the sleeves a tad and playing with the proportions of the drape on the skirt. I really wanted to make it in a deep wine color or a dusty blush pink, or maybe even a nice rich emerald or forest green, but alas, my fabric store was lacking; I ended up coming home with a deep red silk dupioni. It's a beautiful cut of fabric, but a little vampier than I would have preferred for a wedding. And who knows, with my cramped schedule, I may not even have time to finish it before the weddings I have to attend. It looks deceptively simple; the bodice is constructed like that of a strapless dress since the sleeves sit right on the tip of the shoulder and cannot support weight without slipping right off. It has boning in the bodice and an inner waistband to keep the dress anchored at that point.
So, wish me luck! What are you guys working on right now? Do you find it difficult to find the time to sew?
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