July | 2015 | odetosew

I’m in love with these pants! I made them in a wonderful, silk charmeuse with a big, bold swirly floral print I purchased at Mill End Store in Milwaukie, Oregon a few years ago. I originally bought this fabric to make a maxi dress, but decided that they would make great flowy pants instead.

I made these using New Look 6271 pattern:

These were fast and easy to make. Using my serger to make the side, inseam and crotch seams made it go pretty fast.

I added 3″ to the leg of the pant and another 2″ to the hem. I wanted these to be long and flowy and to have a deep enough hem to weigh down the drape. I think I ended up with 2″ for a hem.

I let the pants hang for a day or two before I hemmed them so that they had time to relax and “grow” if they wanted to.

Pants hanging before hemming

I also made a couple of quick sketches just to practice and to get ideas of tops I could wear with these pants:

Yup, that’s me!

I love these pants and they are SO comfortable! It has to be a “skinny” day to wear these as they can really make the thighs, butt and waist look just as wide as the pants if you are not careful, or make sure to wear something form fitting on top to balance out the fullness of the pant.

I was going for a summery, beachy look such as these images:

I will definitely be making more of these pants. Maybe out of linen, a soft cotton, rayon or silk again. I love them!

Adios Amigos!

This dress was completed just in time to wear to the Pattern Review weekend retreat in Los Angeles back in April 2015. Here is a photo of me and Deepika Prakesh (who is amazing and hysterical!), the founder of PatternReview.com, at the group dinner that weekend.

With Deepika at PatternReview weekend in LA

I met so many wonderful sewers and connected with them in a special way. Here is my new buddy Kristin that I also met on this weekend retreat:

With Kristen G. at PatternReview weekend in LA

I used Vogue 8995 pattern to make this fitted sheath dress with interesting seams:

I’m always looking out to expand my creativity with commercial patterns. I really consider this denim dress sort of another muslin version, a draft, to see if I like the dress and want to “move forward” with it, creating other dresses from this as standard. So fun! And good sewing practice too!

I really enjoyed making this dress. It took some time and planning, as I originally wanted to add metal studs to the shoulder yoke part of this dress, but then decided that would make it too limiting. I may go back and add the studs though and give it a bit of an edgy look. I did use a metal-look plastic exposed zipper for this dress to give it a little back interest. The dress looks actually kind of flat and the seams are not apparent in this dark fabric. perhaps some top stitching would have been a good idea for this to really help the cool seam lines “pop”. Next time….

Seam detail of denim sheath dress

I made up a muslin and asked my good friend and fashion designer Rachael to help fit it for me. She was great! I definitely will be using her fitting help again in the future!

The dress is made up of a dark wash stretch denim and a stretch silk lining. I serged the fabric edges of each cut out piece of the pattern for both the outer shell of the dress as well as the lining. I use my awesome Baby Lock Imagine serger to overlock and stitch seams as often as I can. It’s a beautiful machine!

I will like to make up this pattern again, but making changes to the neckline, carving it out a bit so that it is not quite so high. Also, I will taper the skirt to more of a pencil skirt.

The opportunity came up to have a photo shoot done at The Nines Hotel, a really lovely, luxury hotel in Portland, Oregon, and I grabbed it! An acquaintance of mine, Gina, has a photography business Afar Photography and wants to expand her portfolio, so asked me if I would like to have some of the clothes that I have made in the shoot. Heck YEA!!!!

Here are some of the great shots she got of me in this dress: