DNKY Inspired - Oversized Colorblock Sweater

I like this DNKY fall/winter sweater.

I just don't have any leopard print jersey, so I color locked it instead. I also added pockets. 

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UPDATE: Okay, since making this, I decided that I hated the sleeves, because they were too long and always fell down. I felt like I was an orphan in this shirt...so I made the sleeves thinner. It helps to balance out the gigantic-ness of the shirt:

Two More Fendi Inspired Colorblock Knit Dresses - Teal, Tan, and Grey - Blood Orange, Plaid, Brown, Grey, and Tan

I love this Fendi dress. . .

. . .So I decided to make two more!

I don't know if you can tell from these pictures, but I took a little time to refine the shoulders/sleeves pattern and I brought the drop waist up a little from my last endeavor. I still like the first dress, but these ones are just a little more comfortable and fit just a little better. Once I was happy with my pattern, I simply cut out both dresses and sewed them together almost at the same time. This really cut down on construction time--doing two at once.

It's crazy how just changing the color scheme gives the dress a whole different look. I think these teal green/blues make the dress look sporty whereas my last one looked european.

This blood orange one looks bookish and Autumn-y.

The dark orange part isn't double knit. It's actually semi-stretchy faux suede. You use what you have!

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Fendi Inspired - Colorblock Knit Dress - Salmon, Black, Tan, and Grey

Whether or not you liked my Fendi Inspired outfit a few weeks ago, I haven't been able to stop thinking about the salmon, black, tan, and grey dress that I used as inspiration.

 You can see the front and back of this dress here.

I went to a thrift store and found a bunch of different colors of double knit polyester and then realized I had the exact colors to make this same dress! The pattern isn't a traditional one and it's been baffling me, so I've been putting this one off for a few weeks to wrap my head around it. Then, husband and I didn't leave the house on Saturday, so I decided to make this dress. I have run out of the brown packing paper that I've been using to make patterns, so I taped some newspapers together for this one. It took several hours to figure out how, not only the dress is put together, but how to proportion it for my body--decidedly NOT model shape!

Anyways, skipping ahead several hours, here is the finished dress. Pretty good, huh? Actually, I found the salmon, tan, and grey in double knit, but I couldn't find any black jersey that was thick enough to support the thicknesses of the other fabrics. Fortunately, I found a thick black maternity skirt at another thrift store and just cut it apart.

 It's harder than you think to get the seams to match up. This fabric is really thick. If I didn't have a Husqvarna, I would have been dead in the water!

 You would be horrified if you saw how I put the collar in...I cut the white off a dress I was getting rid of...Anyways, you'd be horrified. I did it in like five minutes.

The sleeves were the hardest part to pattern because they didn't follow the traditional pattern. I don't think I got them quite right, but I will make another dress using this pattern and I will fix them then. They are good enough for this first try, though!

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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!

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