Fendi Inspired: Color-Blocked Hi-Low Skirt and Shirt, Blue and Black

 I had not planned on sewing this morning, but last night, I kept playing with color-blocking ideas  like Fendi does. Also, this royal blue color from about two fall/winters ago seems to still be making appearances:

I would like you to know that the Fendi dress above is $1700. . .On sale!!!

Anyways, I have this royal blue maxi skirt that I bought on eBay last fall, but haven't really worn because it's kinda tight and I bought another one that fits better. 

Also, I watched the Fall/Winter 2013-14 New York Mercedes-Benz Fashion week video on YouTube and they had these hi-low skirts like this drawing I did (I can't remember which designer's show had them. Notice the shirt at the bottom. Look familiar?):

Anyways, before I went to sleep I did a couple of drawings because I've been trying to figure out what to do with the skirt--it's too pretty a blue to throw away. Yes, I wanted to cut it into a hi-low, but what would I do with the extra material? I wanted to incorporate it into a top.

I decided to do the shirt on the left. It took forever this morning to get the cutting done, because I just couldn't bring myself to cut anything. I'm almost completely out of brown packing paper with which I make my patterns, so I sort of tried to use patterns that I already had made, but cut around them differently. Once I cut the skirt, I really had to be mindful how to use the piece I cut away to piece into the shirt, because it was much smaller than I'd anticipated. Also, I was down to just a very small piece of black. The idea of cutting anything was scaring me. A process that should have taken two hours became like four or five!

Here's the finished product (The blue is like the skirt above. I don't know why it came out as teal in these photographs.): 

Here's what the skirt looks like on. My mirror is dusty, sorry:

You can barely tell, but there is a bit of hi-low to the bottom of the shirt too.

Below you can see the problem with how little blue I had to work with. It was supposed to go all the way down to the waistline like in the drawing, but this is all I had. Oh well. Next time!

The End!

Prada Inspired: Black Silk and Cream Striped Puffed Wrist Sleeve Blouse

So sometimes when your husband insists on piddling in the yard doing yardwork all Saturday and you've done all your housework, you decide to piddle in the sewing room.

A few nights ago, I watched the Prada Fall/Winter 2013-14 fashion show and was inspired by these sleeves:

Here they are in fur:

Also (and I'm ashamed of this one). but I love these sleeves on this coat of the character "Joyce" on the t.v. show Siberia.

Also, I'd been seeing all these black bodice and light colored puffy sleeved shirts in the New York fashion week show. Of course I can't find any pictures of them now, but most of them would have the bodice in black leather with lighter colored silk sleeves.

My aunt-in-law gave me this polyester silk material and told me she always thought it would make a nice blouse. (I didn't want to make a whole blouse in it because I thought that might look dated, so I updated mine):

I didn't want to make a bodice in leather because I would never wear it because it would need too much maintenance. I did have some silky black shiny polyester, though, so that's what I used. I also wanted to play with a squarish assymetric front/back hem and a bow at the neck. I'm really excited, because this shirt looks exactly how I imagined it!

(The slit in the neck line is also Prada-inspired.)

I'm really proud of how it hangs. It's not feed-sacky, but not clingy either.

I pinned the sleeve back here so you could see the hem better. Also, this is what the front looks like if you just tie the tie once.

I like it tied in a little bow best:

Now some close ups:

The End!