So in the garment sewing blogosphere, practical garments that one would actually wear on a routine basis are known as “cake,” and ridiculous things that one would not wear very often are “frosting.” This is without a doubt, the most frosting-y thing I’ve ever made, and that includes a tulle ball gown skirt. Are you ready for a close-up?

Yeah. That’s a lot of shiny. Rose gold sequins on a mesh netting from my very favoritest local fabric shop, Tissue Fine Fabrics! I knew I wanted a sequined top of some variety to wear for the holidays, and this fit the bill nicely! I ended up buying about 3 yards, although I really only needed 2, because I can’t help myself when it comes to fabric.

And here’s the finished product! (Please pardon the disembowled dog toy on the floor. I’m just trying to keep things real, and there are usually disembowled dog toys scattered all over my house. It’s the dogs’ way of warning off potential intruders, I think.)

Ooooh, that’s a shiny tunic! So shiny…good gravy. The pattern…isn’t really a pattern, per se. I took a t-shirt, traced it, gave it dolman sleeves, and extended the length by a good 12″ to be properly tunic-y. I also gave it a high-low hem (see Exhibit A), because why the hell not?

I love me a swoopy hemline. Gives it just the right amount of swish, I think. So! Construction details. I read approximately 327 blog posts about tips for sewing with sequins before I worked up the courage to dive right in. Since the sequin fabric is pretty much sheer, I needed some kind of lining. Since I am lazy, I decided to do an underlining in this lightweight fine-woven bisque-colored wool gabardine that had been sitting in my stash for three years. I bought it thinking it would make a lovely dress…and it turns out that this particular color of bisque makes me look like a corpse. So away it languished until I needed a nice lining!

Thus – the underlining. I cut a sequin & lining front & back and hand tacked them together with basting stitches. Then the fun part…attempting to run sequins through a sewing machine! It wasn’t too bad. I used really wide seam allowances (almost 3/4″) so I could flat-fell the seams and avoid any itchiness from stray sequins poking out on the inside. It worked better than I anticipated, thanks (I think) to the way the sequins are sort of scattered on the fabric rather than overlapped. I left the bottom of the side seams and the ends of the sleeve seams loose – those were hand-stitched so I could get the illusion of a separate lining. My efforts were a wee bit clumsy, but overall they worked out well! The inside looks reasonably clean, and there’s a delightful smidgen of sheerness at the hem and the end of the sleeves.

I used bias tape to finish the neckband (again, my desire to be comfortable pretty much outweighs all other considerations) and rolled it under once to give a nice clean finish. Please ignore my very crooked lines of stitching. Precision is not my forte; that’s why I don’t quilt.

Et voila! A ludicrously shiny tunic/minidress (depending on if you wear it with pants or tights!) for the holidays, that is marvelously drapey to allow for full indulgence in pie and eggnog. YUM.

Peace, love, and frosting,
Sumiko

You know that feeling you get when you have to do something, and you willfully decide to do something else instead? That giddy, delicious feeling of intentional disobedience to the dictates of society? In the last year or so I’ve discovered that sewing is the thing that I turn to when my brain says, “NOPE!” to whatever I’m supposed to be doing (ahem: grad school).

I started sewing haphazardly and cheerfully sans patterns a couple of years ago, mainly for the fun of it. The rest of my life (ahem: grad school; ahem: work) involves lots and lots of labor with very little immediate payoff. Sewing offered a form of labor through which I could immediately see the progress of my work. VERY SATISFYING! Then, a few months ago, I discovered sewing bloggers and indie pattern designers through Instagram, of all places – delightful little nooks on the interwebz like Oonaballoona, Cashmerette, Idle Fancy, Lladybird, and about a zillion more! After enviously stalking their blogs for a few weeks, I gathered up the courage to try my hand at sewing for reals – with patterns and everything!

As it turns out – patterns aren’t so scary. Also, they keep me from wasting quite a lot of fabric, and since I don’t particularly like wasting things, I have totally come around!

After some attempts at simple tank top blouses (which get quite a lot of wear), I decided to go for something more ambitious and bought Cashmerette’s Upton Dress pattern. Being impatient as I am, I went for the PDF version…70 pages of pattern assembly later, I was feeling appropriately humbled.

I wore this Upton dress as a bridesmaid in my friend Kim’s wedding! Since the main fabric is eyelet lace (procured from a really fantastic local SLC fabric shop, Tissu!), the entire thing is lined in a very lightweight black linen/rayon blend rather than just the bodice, as the pattern says. By the time I was finished with all that black thread and black fabric, my eyes were nearly crossed!

This is fairly classic – as soon as a camera is pointed at me, I either close my eyes or start making silly faces. This pattern did fit right out of the metaphorical envelope, though! The only modification I think I might make is to narrow the back shoulders a bit – there is some gaping on the back neckline, as you can see below.

Observe the twirly skirt! All the twirls! (Also the burn on my leg from my motorcycle’s exhaust pipes. First burn in a decade of riding. Grrrr.)

Forgive the gratuitous rear-end photo (and the dust and little floaty lint thingies that stick to this dress like magic), but this is the second time I have ever sewn an invisible zipper and I am very proud of how nicely it lined up. Also, the fit-and-flare silhouette is insanely flattering. Every time I’ve worn this dress, strangers on the street have stopped me to say how much they like it. #winning!

But I think my very favoritest part of this whole dress is the fact that I shamelessly cheated on the hem. I DETEST sewing hems. So fiddly, so annoying, so time consuming when all I want to do is put on my new clothes and prance around like a drunken unicorn…so I skipped the hem! Instead, I cut off the scalloped eyelet lace edge of the fabric and attached strips of that to the bottom of each of the seven gored skirt panels. I think this is my new favorite trick!

So, in summary: sewing is the best procrastination.

Love, peace, and #Uptondresses,
Sumiko