To Tommy from Zooey...by Jessica...Navy and Red Cable Knit Dress

Zooey Deschanel has been sporting dresses from her Tommy Hilfiger "To Tommy from Zooey" line lately on her show "New Girl," and I really like the dress below:

Honestly, the main part I like is the red belt, but apparently it's not even part of the original dress as you can see from the picture below.

I still like the dress, but I don't have much of a torso and this shape of dress really does nothing for me. It was time for me to make a similar dress but to my specifications.

I did my "cut around it" method. For the bodice, I copied a V-neck sweater that I really like. 

For the sleeves, I copied a dress I made a few months ago, but never posted on my blog. I don't actually post everything I make! Hard to believe, I know. . .

These are all the pieces I would use and then sew together.

I sewed the shoulders together first.

Then sewed the sleeves on.

Then, sewed down the side seams of just the bodice.

Added the ribbing to the sleeve cuffs.

Added ribbing to the collar. (This was tricky to get it to V nicely.)

Then, sewed the waistband onto the bodice. If you notice, I reinforced the waistband with pink ribbing on the inside of the red.

For the skirt, I cut one long piece and sewed the two sides together.

Normally, you would baste the entire skirt portion, but instead, I skipped that step and just stretched and sewed the elastic directly onto the top of the skirt. Also, I learned a trick from the fashion design course I'm taking: To make sure your elastic stays under the needle, pull it up through the foot at the beginning. Great trick!

The skirt.

Then I sewed the bodice waistband to the skirt. Actually, I sewed over the elastic band again doing this. This assures the waistband will stay put and reinforces that area.

Then, I hemmed my skirt. I don't know if you can tell, but when I fold the hem under to the wrong side, I pin on the opposite side--the right side. I do this, because I much prefer being able to see where I'm stitching the hem vs. guessing and hoping that it looks okay on the reverse side when I'm done. It's a little tricky the first time or so when you attempt this, but I believe it is well-worth the effort.

I just used a basic straight stitch to hem. I know the fabric is stretchy, but this part of the hem isn't going to stretch since the fabric for the skirt is gathered so much. Also, a straight stitch is lower profile than a stretchy zigzag. Hopefully, from this picture you can see how I'm stitching the hem from the right side. This keeps you from being at the mercy of your feed dogs that like to jam and pucker occasionally.

The finished dress. I didn't like that extra white stripe on the original dress, so that's why I just used red.

I like the cable knit of this fabric. Gives it a classy retro look.

The End!

Black Harem Pants

If you have a really good memory, you may well remember these weird pants I made about a year ago. The problem I had with them was that they were grey, and soon after making them, I learned I was T4. I wondered why I hated the pictures of me at the end of that post. Now, it all makes sense. Anyways, I really wanted to remake them in black. So, I did.

I used the same pink shorts as last time as my main pattern pieces. I love this shiny black jersey material. Really edgy and great for this project.

I also used a pair of sweat pants to use as a reference for the length of the pants. I cut around them.

I did something different at the ankles, though. I curved them in slightly. This will make the pants drape differently around the ankles. I think it looks really modern.

After cutting all the pieces out, the first step was to fold the pockets in half and stitch the bottom of them.

Then, I pinned and sewed the pockets to the top of the front pieces.

Next, I pinned pleats into the sides of the front pieces.

Then, I pinned the front and back pieces together and sewed the outer seam of each leg.

This is what the seam I just talked about looks like from the right side.

Next, I pinned and sewed the "crotchal region."

Then, I sewed the inseams together in one big, long seam.

Last step: sewing on the waist and ankle bands. Notice how the ankles curve in here, and notice that effect on the last few pictures. It's subtle, but it's a neat effect.

The End.

Harem Pants

February 2014

So about a year ago I ordered a metric ton of these "Harem Style" Capri pants. I was really excited because they were only like $4.00 each (from China) and had really cool pockets, and so I got them in like...every color. Anyways, they ended up being paper thin and pretty much see-through. Not cool, China. Not cool.

Anyways, the pattern of them was so unique, that before giving them all to Goodwill, I cut one apart to use for my own pattern. Because the pockets are so unusual, I knew I'd probably forget how to construct them later, so I numbered the seams in the order they should be sewn. Any pre-planning you can conquer early helps to cut your construction time into a fraction of the normal time!

Skipping ahead in time: The only difference I added was to lengthen the legs so they are now sort of really fashionable sweatpants.

The End!

Taking a Fashion Design Course: Fashion Illustration 1 - Drawing my Husband

One day I found a Groupon for a Fashion Design course and I thought, "That sounds like $35 worth of fun." One of my classes required me to draw a figure sitting and standing so I could work on proportion. My lucky husband was on-hand, so he got the privilege of being my victim.

The End.