Fantasy sewing league

I've been working on a new project using a lovely (and expensive for my sewing budget Nani iro print), and have been having a hard time finding a pattern that will work with the somewhat inflexible fabric and limited yardage. In the meantime I thought I'd post sewing inspiration and plans for future projects - I find that much of the fun from sewing comes from dreaming up projects!

I have a giant sewing queue - and more project ideas then I know what to do with. Right now I'm mostly looking forward to spring sewing - light dresses with lots of design details that don't get hidden beneath winter layers. 

While I'm stuck on my current project I'm also planning:

A black pencil skirt based on this pattern:

And with a decorative band around the bottom with this skirt from express (taken from pinterest). I bought a small amount of expensive vintage fabric from etsy and have been wanting to make a colour block skirt. 

This 1960s pattern from vogue is one of the first vintage patterns I ever bought (some time ago now!) and have had a muslin cut from it sitting in my sewing box for a few years (!!) now. I love the colour combo of this Top Shop dress. Maybe a little fall, but still cozy for winter. 

Gothic wallpaper dress

Well, my first finished project of the new year (and the first to make it onto the blog)! Classes have started but have yet to get gruelling leaving me a bit of leeway to work on this dress. I actually started this dress some time ago, but due to an error in cutting never got around to finishing it. The problem was, that when I was cutting out the skirt portion I spaced on the fact that this was a directional print, leaving me with not enough fabric left to cut a new one. Since a new skirt from the old one it was too short, I had the idea of adding a band of velvet around the edge of the skirt. But it took forever for me to get around to buying new fabric... in the end I got some Robert Kaufman wale from etsy. I like the mix of the two fabrics, I also ended up adding bands to the sleeves as well as a design detail.


Bodice detail - The bodice is a modified Burda pattern 128 from the 2009 08 issue:

I shortened the sleeves, and had to narrow them by about 4cm. The sides of bodice also had to be taken in about 6cm. I made it up in the size 38, which is my size, so I guess there was just a lot of wearing ease. even though the model in the photo is shown wearing something quite tight... patterns can be frustrating! I think I also should have shortened the bodice, since I'm short waisted. As it is the fit is not 100% flattering, but is good enough.

A more true colour picture of the fabrics: