Little People Pants

This funky fabric is from Palngun Wurnangat an independently owned Aboriginal women’s organisation based in Wadeye, Northern Territory. They make all of my favourite fabrics! 

This one is called 'Little People'. There's a cool set of photos here of how they print it, too:

I was lucky on the day of the art fair as this particular bit of fabric was on the sale table - I got 3 metres of it! I've made a lot of dresses lately, so I thought I would make a matching skirt and top out of it. I felt like it needed a long, big skirt, and a top with sleeves. But I don't have anything in pink or purple, so I decided to make pants. What a shame! 😏

It was fairly simple to cut out and fit quite well. 

But it turned out that the pants didn't quite accommodate my curves. They fit VERY well on the back, but were a little low. I had to unpick the darts and sew a yoke in, a curved addition, to bring the back up to the level of the waistband. 

Obligatory pocket!

And I was off to brighten everyone's day at work again.

#lovelypennypatterns

Shorts to Skirt Refashion with a bush chook

A friend donated me this pair of shorts to do as I liked with them.

 They had an initial printing session, but I felt that they were missing something...

 So I decided to turn them into a skirt. I cut the leg seams open, turned them inside-out and sewed straight lines down the front and back.

 It made them into a nice little skirt.

#lovelypennypatterns

Gone Batty at the Show Dress

I spend some time at our local show each year, but instead of buying a show bag I get.... fabric! Of course 😆 
This is from a couple of years ago now, but I finally made it up.

Bring on my favourite dress pattern and it was just a matter of cutting everything out (and hoping that I had enough fabric). 

I wanted to try a different neckline, too, maybe an asymmetrical one to match the quirky pattern?

Isn't it a great pattern? I overlaid some of the pieces to make the skirt slimmer and also to preserve some of the bats whole. I'm still playing with this pattern to make it fit me.

Then I made the mistake of putting the project aside after I cut it out, caught up in something else. I pulled the pieces out a couple of months later, sewed it all together... and when I tried to put it on, I found that it was waaaaay too small.

Puzzled, I dutifully cut out two new pieces for the back and sewed the zip in without looking at it properly. The result was this:

Sure, it fit better, but that much bra shouldn't have been flashing. Grumpy, I set it down and decided to tidy my work space... in which time I found the two missing pieces that I had cut out!

Bah! Ah well, I'll use those pieces in some other dress I suppose! A bit of tweaking and the dress fit well. I played with some pieces for the back and landed on this:

I've seen a lot of cute patterns recently and wanted to cut a bat-shaped pocket out, too. 

I found some red cotton to use as a backing, sewed around the edges and turned it through. 

It worked out pretty well!

 All in all, the disaster turned into a pretty groovy dress.

It's one of my favourite outfits now. I plan to wear it later this month to give a presentation at a conference in Sydney - show off a little bit of the Territory. 

#lovelypennypatterns

Dragon Age Inquisition Cosplay - Orlesian Skirt

My Dragon Age Inquisition cosplay has been only a thought for a couple of years now,  but I'm determined to finish it in 2019. So I got the pattern out one night and cut out every piece of the layered skirt.

Layer 1 - Underskirt

I scrounged some fabric from my many boxes and made a simple, full-length, A-line skirt that I could wear on its own, separate from the cosplay.

See the odd black pattern on the back where I JUST ran out of fabric? Ha ha! This pattern uses a lot of fabric.

Layer 2 - White cotton underskirt.

Looks like I mostly forgot to take a photo of this in progress, but you can see it on the final skirt.

Layer 3 - Moth wings

These were the complicated part of the skirt, because I had elected to do them in satin for the more formal ballgown look. And satin is slippery.
I did them as separate 'petals', so that the layers and drape would look more like the original gown. 

Once sewn, all of the moth eyes were fabric printed on using the lino cuts I had designed and carved for this project.

It's always a slight risk printing directly onto your finished, sewn product, but I was confident. As long as I let the black dry before I put the copper on, it would turn out fine.

Each part was a top layer, sewed together with a bottom layer, and turned through so that the seams were on the inside. A lot tidier than simple hems, particularly with the satin.

It was a LOT of sewing with very slippery fabric....

And I had it draped everywhere!

But it was coming together according to my plan.

I sewed the wing designs on rather than paint them, so that the effect was subtler. 

Lots and lots of pinning followed, trying to work out how the individual layers would hang. The white underskirt and all of the satin were sewn together as a single skirt, with a substantial, solid waistband to hold all of it up.

But can you see how it all came together?

I think you can really see the moth wing effect at the front!

The finished skirt! 

Just the matching corset top to make, and the hand-painted stand-up butterfly collar.....

#lovelypennypatterns

Star Wars Bedsheets refashioned into a dress (and three skirts!)

I'm going through a dress phase again at the moment, and I'm not afraid to wear interesting things to work. So when I found these Star Wars Stormtrooper bedsheets in an op shop I had to make something!

Cue favourite pattern: 

There was plenty of fabric for a full-length dress, so I folded and pinned my pieces. I wanted to get more than one garment out of it, so I didn't necessarily follow the grain of the fabric... but hopefully it won't stretch too much.

I also cheated and combined a couple of pieces- sometimes I'm lazy! It's for me, so it doesn't matter so much.

The other skirts that I cut out:

1) Rockabilly pattern, just needs the waist band on it in this photo:

Finished:

2) Rockabilly pattern for my nerd skirt, in progress:

3) Flared skirt:

Four garments out of two bedsheets is good recycling! 

Keep an eye out for the finished dress!
#lovelypennypatterns