Vogue 1102

As some of you know, I have the luxury of being able to travel between Portland and Germany at the moment. It sounds romantic, and there’s no denying that it is. I’m wildly ecstatic about being able to spend considerable amounts of time traveling in foreign countries with my partner, learning new languages and cultures, adding wonderful people to my life, and having the time and resources to focus on sewing and blogging. My life is seriously charmed. But, while I’m enormously grateful for the opportunity to travel, it’s not all picnics in castle courtyards with rosé. My life is becoming increasingly disjointed as time goes on and there’s a large amount of flexibility required to pull off such a nomadic lifestyle.

In some sense, it’s a process of trying to keep at least one foot on the ground at any given time. I’ve had to move entirely to freelance, which has been consistently inconsistent and a necessary challenge for the ability to get up and leave every 3 months. Other than work, I was hoping to stay grounded in Portland until I was ready to establish permanent residency in Europe. Maybe I naively expected the transition to be seamless in that way.

Due to unforeseeable circumstances, I’ve recently had to make the decision to move out of the space I had envisioned to have as my Portland home until I could establish residency in Europe. It’s both fortuitous and unfortunate timing; I’m leaving for Germany again in two weeks, so in addition to packing for 3 months, I’m also packing my life belongings into storage. And while I consider our home in Germany to be my true home at this point, I feel I’ve got nowhere I belong. I feel I’ve got nothing under my feet.

Losing one of the last bits of stability I had has done a number on my anxiety, but further, I’ve lost the time, space, and energy to really get elbow deep in sewing projects. There is always a silver lining, and I promise there is plenty here. One big positive about this move is that I’ve lined up a Portland sublet for the summer in a home with a fellow Sewcialist! She’s currently working on a Tilly and the Buttons’ Zadie dress, and I’m so excited to see how her version turns out. But this silver lining doesn’t provide me with the ability to get some real sewing time in, here and now. Which is, you know, what this blog is all about.

So, in an effort to not put blogging on hold for a full month while I make this transition, I’ve got an old make or two here to share with you. These old makes might not be so sewing-talk heavy, since it’s a bit difficult to remember all the challenges and details a year+ on, but I’ll do my best. Without further ado…

The Pattern: Vogue V1102 Dress
The Fabric: Japanese Ikat from Fabric Depot
The Size: 6
Adjustments: none (that I remember!)
Alterations: drafted a high-low circle skirt

This dress is special to me for a few of reasons:

1. I made it for my 30th birthday a couple years back, wherein I celebrated with a weekend getaway at a cabin on the coast with a dozen of my closest friends. It was my first birthday with my partner, and probably my last for a while celebrating with most of the people I hold dear. I wore cat ears and we made paper masks of woodland creatures and drank cold bubbles in the hottub. It was lovely.
2. I’ve had this pattern pinned for a while, but couldn’t really picture this dress in a fabric other than the black it’s shown in on the pattern cover. I hear this is a common problem for Sewcialists… that as far as Big 4 is concerned, it’s hard to picture a garment that is not the sample garment shown. However, the moment I saw this fabric, I knew it was meant to be with this pattern. It’s a little happy and fun, but simultaneously serious and a good reference to my heritage. And yarn dyes… swoon.
3. This was the first garment where I fell in love with finishing techniques. Before this, I was content to leave my seams raw with the occasional indulgence in a french seam here or there. But I was using one of the last of my old batch of clothing labels on this dress and decided on a whim to finish everything cleanly. I’ve been so happy with the finished garment and with how neat every seam is that I just haven’t stopped with the finishings since then.

I paid more attention to pattern matching than I had before, and part of the product of that was actually making two bodices. The first one I made was a little off-center, so I ended up using it as the lining. The lining is hand-stitched into the skirt on the interior.

I bound the skirt seams in bias binding, and, though I debated about finishing the bottom with a contrasting color (since it would be visible with the high-low), I ended up finishing the circle skirt in black bias as well.

To convert the circle skirt that the pattern came with into a high-low circle skirt, I first decided how short I wanted the front to be and kept the back length the same. I halved the difference between the length of the front VS the back, and shortened the side-seams by that amount. I then graded the curve of both skirts to the new side-seam length (from the OG back length to the new side-seam length; and from the new front length to the new side-seam length) using the curve of the original circle as a guide. It wasn’t very scientific, but it worked!

I took a much needed trip to the coast for these photos, stopping by my favorite sit-and-think spot along the way. It was super cold and abnormally sunny that day, so after about an hour of battling the sun and wind in heels on the coastal cliffs, I called it quits and headed inland to a more manageable setting. I did feel a little silly making twirls while cars whizzed by on hwy 101, and even sillier walking around between shots in this dress and jeans and fur-lined boots, but I guess this is what we do in the name of Sewing Blog, amirite? Does anyone have any tips or tricks for taking good blog photos (primarily with a tripod and remote), clothing blog “poses” or any other resources to share?

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend! Until next time…