Wednesday 10 December 2008

Als je begrijpt wat ik bedoel...

I read on Trena's blog that she made the Knipmode Wrap Top that Melissa has been raving about for a while now. I just have to say that I am so very impressed with the fact that so many of you use sewing magazines in a language that is not your own! I assume most of you (very successfully) just rely on your sewing experience when tracing and putting the garments together, but thought I should offer the following anyway.

One English-Dutch sewing dictionary and another English-Dutch sewing dictionary; both dictionaries can also to be used Dutch-English by using Ctrl+F and entering your search term.

An English sewing dictionary (if not for you then for me!) , another English sewing dictionary, and lastly, an English sewing glossary.

And of course there is the sometimes very funny BabelFish translation site to help, but if you have any other ones that you can recommend, please let me know!

Monday 1 December 2008

How fitting

The dress form (Miss Patty) fit in the drum bag and she is now set up in my front room (we have a temporary lodger, so my sewing room is occupied). Miss Patty (short for Patience; she has to wait around a lot when I'm sewing) is currently dressed in a white T-shirt with the pin stripe skirt that I made over the weekend, but don't have a picture of yet. I'm quite happy with the end result, and the pinstripe wasn't too much of a challenge.
Now, what Miss Patty has, I lack: Patience. I only measured the paper patternpieces at what I thought would be the most important bit (my hips are quite wide), started cutting my pin stripe, and the sewing could begin! Everything went like clockwork until I tried to put the skirt on, and found that my waist has grown to a size that I can't even find on Miss Patty... Time for some drastic weight loss action!

Anyway, after taking out the two outer darts from the back I was able to squeeze myself into the skirt, and was actually quite happy with the results. I think it was really smart to start with the skirt before moving on to the jacket and/or trousers: a nice easy piece to get used to the pin stripe, and to remind myself to measure, measure, measure. Pics to follow!