Malvarosa dress – Measure Twice Cut Once

Posted on 09/02/2015 by Susan Goodwin — 16 Comments

Sewing Adventures: Patchwork Malvarosa

Sometimes you have an idea and you know it’s either going to be brilliant or an epic fail. This is one of those times.

I picked up this fabric at a Garage sale, along with a bunch of other, I really liked this piece but it just wasn’t big enough to make a dress. So taking this Gorman skirt as inspiration, I thought I’d try an experiment?

I used the Pauline Alice Malvarosa dress. Cutting the floral on the top and the band for the skirt. Using the scraps of the floral, some blue and black from the stash to create the other panels.

The panels were calculated out by dividing the rectangle that creates the skirt up and cutting the number of triangles needed. I didn’t quite have enough of the floral so there is an uneven pattern happening but I don’t think it matters that much.
Attaching it all together using my overlocker, I used bias binding for the neck and armholes.

So after all that maths and cutting and drawing the dress is well, ugly. It’s really a bit weird and not in the good quirky sense. Oh well you live and learn and it’s only fabric.

Pattern: Pauline Alice Malvarosa, made before.

Alterations: Eliminated pockets, eliminated facings, added centre back seam, turned skirt into patchwork panels.

Fabric: Garage sale purchase and from the stash.

Posted on 18/08/201418/08/2014 by Susan Goodwin — 16 Comments

Sewing Adventures – Paris Malvarosa dress

I have dreamt about going to Paris for forever, like forever forever. In my mind I always had it worked out that I could be there in July when it would be summer, I could celebrate my birthday there with The Englishman, the couture shows are on and the Tour de France finishes in Paris. Add in some cheese, bread and pastries and we are pretty much getting close to all my favourite things in one place. So far that is yet to happen, but I have been living vicariously though the Instagram feeds of Roisin and Christine. Jealous much? um yeah, a whole lot of jealous.

So instead of being in Paris for my birthday I found myself in Bondi Junction Spotlight and saw some lovely Japanese Lawn (I adore this fabric so much). Not overly thinking it I saw it as a lovely geometric print…then I realised no, it was mini Eiffel towers with lasers shooting out of it! SOLD!

I needed something fun to make out of it and settled on the Pauline Alice Malvarosa dress as I love the ease of construction, no zips, no buttons! Plus it’s breezy style is perfect for this odd inbetween type weather we are in as I can match it with tights and a jacket and then as it warms up wear it on it’s own.

I finished it up last week and was wearing it to head to a meeting so grabbed 3 very quick photos before I headed out. Only 3 because I had a meeting and it was so windy this day that I couldn’t wait to put my jacket on.

I’m standing weirdly and the wind has caught my skirt but I’m pretty happy with the dress. I find the lawn gets a better drape to it after it’s been washed which means the skirt looses some of it’s poufyness at the gathering which is good. The wrinkle above the bust is due to me being slouchy more than anything else.

I didn’t get a back shot but I get some slight pooling at the lower back, am unsure if it’s because the gathering skirt was sticking to my tights or if I could take it in a bit? I’m not bothered by it as I prefer a drop waisted dress to be loose and breezy but I’d like to see if I can fix it?

Much like my last Malvarosa I didn’t bother with the facings, just bagged the whole top out for a clean finish.

One last photo of me trying not to laugh and telling The Englishman to hurry up so I can put on my jacket. The complete derp face photo I’m saving for instagram as it’s just too “what the?” style face. So funny.

Posted on 16/06/201415/06/2014 by Susan Goodwin — 14 Comments

Sewing Adventures – Malvarosa Dress

I hope everyone has had a good weekend? The highlight of my weekend was my attempt to cut my own fringe. It was getting a bit long and needed a trim. Turns out cutting hair is nothing like cutting fabric and I was in rapid danger of losing all my hair in trying to straighten up the original mess. So in a stroke of genius I stuck a piece of washi tape across the bottom of my fringe and then neatly trimmed to it’s edge. Unconventional yes but in a crisis, it worked.

In other weekend matters I managed some sewing and made 4 kinds of soup so my freezer is now nicely restocked. Most of my sewing is of the pattern testing kind so I can’t share it all yet so instead I’m sharing my Malvarosa dress.

This dress was made all the way back at the beginning of the year and has been waiting to be blogged until I got some decent photos of it. I wore it to our first Sydney Spoolettes meet up. Thanks to When All you Need is for the photo.

It appears however that my hate of getting my photo taken does quite clearly result in terrible photos.

These are the best of all the ones taken, 3 different locations and just all blah. I really dislike being in front of the camera. So while the photos are a fail, the dress however is quite the success. I’ve worn it a few times and while there are some minor tweaks I will do if making it again I’m pretty happy with this version.

From the original pattern I made some changes

shortened the dress through the body

It was just too long for my torso. So I took out some of the length. From bust up I left it alone and only took out from lower chest to hip. I took it out in 2 sections as I took out around 12cm to 15cm in length.

shortened the length of the skirt

Even with shortening the torso it was still too long so I took at least an additional 10cm out of the skirt length. It was possibly more as I can’t quite remember if I re cut the hem before finally stitching it in place.

added a centre back seam

I was working with vintage fabric and there was no other way I could fit the pattern on the meterage I had. In future I think I will do this anyway as I have a slight pooling of fabric at my lower back and the centre back seam could be nipped in just at the base which would eliminate this pooling.

blocked in the neckline to narrow the opening

Even on my wideish shoulders I found the neckline just too open. I added in 4cm to each side and then reshaped that back into the original neckline.

lined the bodice instead of using the facings.

The pattern called for a neck facing and a sleeve facing. they would have overlapped under the shoulder seam and I thought it would look bulky and messy. So instead using a lightweight voile I cut an entire front and back and did a fully bagged out lining for the entire upper half. Is incredibly clean finish, adds a nice shape to the body of the garment and means zero handstitching too.

added width to the skirt.

I was using vintage fabric and if I had cut the required skirt width I would’ve been left with only 10cm leftover fabric. Instead I decided to make the skirt a bit wider so I could use more of the vintage fabric.

Now to be fair most of these were due to me being just on 150cm tall (5 foot) so I had height issues to deal with, and because I was using a narrow width vintage fabric. So not everyone is going to need to make these changes. But I would certainly be checking the length before cutting any fabric as it seemed overly generous in length.

Overall it’s very very comfortable and easy to wear. The pockets in the drop waist seam are fantastic and really useful. I’m looking forward to making some cotton versions for next summer and am considering a winter weight version too?

Pattern: Pauline Alice Malvarosa

Fabric: Cotton pique purchased at Gardems in Brisbane during my first year of fashion college (and yes it’s old enough to be classed as vintage now..eek)

Shoes: Marc Jacobs suede booties