Having left part of my fabric stash, most of my sewing patterns and my beloved mannequin back in Germany, I instead picked a download pattern for an easy dress from Burdastyle.....which is something I'm not going to do again so soon:
More than 60 pages of printout, 30 minutes of frantic cutting paper edges and glueing pattern pieces and cutting out the pattern, while some of the contained pattern pieces weren't even needed for this version of the dress, but only for a variation of it - for which the instructions were of course NOT contained in my download.
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| Lots of dead trees |
Ironically, the dress I had picked was contained in the current Burdastyle magazine - since the Dutch version contains the same patterns as the German one, I could have spared myself a lot of crawling around on the floor with glue and scissors, by a 2-minute-trip to Albert Heijn around the corner.
Anyway, enough ranting, while the fabric wasn't the nicest jersey to work with, and the pattern itself isn't that spectacular, I'm happy. Comfortable work-proof cold-weather-dress.
Some days later I came across a really nice sewing blog, petit-main-sauvage, featuring a lot of simple but pretty patterns and tutorials for pattern drafting and alterations. Some of them immediately went onto my to-sew-list, for example this dress:
I bought the fabrics last year on the Dutch fabric market that is touring through Germany, and the blog mentioned above is actually a Dutch blog - a rather fitting project for my start here in Amsterdam :)
A new favorite in my wardrobe, I think!
Next on the sewing agenda: My dress for the Gala Nocturna! I have a plan A and plan B, let's see which one wins...
Now that all my boxes, patterns, costuming books, and my mannequin Ada are finally here, I'm a little more enthusiastic as well.
Hi! Thank you for the link. Your dress looks great!
ReplyDeleteI made that tutorial so long ago (I think it pre-dates my blog...) but it's still a nice basic-with-something-extra.
After reading your post, I thought I would give you a couple of tips:
- Although I've never lived in Amsterdam, I used to do work experience there for a while so I got some chance to explore. And so I know that the places to buy not-too-expensive fabric are the Albert Cuyp markt and the Noordermarkt.
And that traveling Dutch fabric market you visited in Germany also tours the Netherlands: It's called Stoffenspektakel and has a competitor (which I prefer) called Stoffenbeurs. Both have websites by their names on which you can find out when they will be where.
- Of course, Burdastyle and blogs like mine are good resources for tutorials but there is one special source you shouldn't miss if you're a goth with German as a first language (I am adding it although you probably know it already): http://www.natronundsoda.net/main.html
I don't think anything new (apart from pictures) has been added there for almost two years but the site still works just fine and it is still a huge collection of tutorials in German.
Thanks for your kind reply :)
DeleteNoordermarkt is only a couple of minutes from where I live and it really is a good resource! I'm right now really in love with the fabric store near Nieuwmarkt and their selection. I've never seen a store that has corset boning and latex sheets on stock, and they have this exact shade of red metallic PVC I've been looking for for years!
And Natron und Soda were who taught me sewing around 12 years ago and I made several friends through their community - sadly, the 2 girls behind the site announced just this week that they're not continuing the project, so the site will be frozen and the community will probably migrate to a different host.