Birgitta Helmersson ZW dress pattern review

 This has been on my list for so long, and the fabric has been allocated to it, which I believe is a Meet Milk viscose.  Recent success buoyed me onward. I hate making zero waste things.  I need a lot of prompting.  I just so dislike measuring fabric on the floor and cutting it without pattern pieces.  I also feel like the end results are often shapeless dresses that suit larger women with curves and are uncomfortably airy on me.  

I'm going to cut to the most important part here. My fabric was chosen long ago and the vision was deeply embedded in my brain.  The designer notes in passing that the width of the fabric matters, but mainly to say it should be 140 cm wide, not to comment closely on how much that matters.  I absolutely needed to make this from a 115 cm wide fabric.  I recommend doing so to anyone who is a size US 6 or below.  My fabric just happened to be 150 cm wide and it's devastating, because all the effort gone into sewing this project is wasted as I need to be about 6 sizes larger to suit my dress.  

I suffered through the cutting and indeed, I had no leftover scraps except those ridiculous side-hem triangles.  Those are a joke right?  Who is actually going to randomly sew on a triangle to the side seam?

I made the version with the button bodice but no buttons on the skirt. Can't be bothered with that. 

I lengthened the bodice by 1" which was totally silly.  I shortened the hem by 15 cm which was a good starting point - it was below knee/calf length but had a very high low hem when worn by me.  I ended up snipping off the hem until it hung more or less evenly.  

I made the bodice which was fine, forgot the interfacing for the front button band.  This is bad as it carries a lot of weight.  I recommend interfacing it quite heavily.  

The sleeve, when loosely pinned on, came to my wrist, no thanks!  I put the sleeves aside for later 

The pocket situation was also off-putting. I ended up using my leftover pieces from part of the sleeves to make Bardon pockets (still the best ever) and just applied them as to any skirt.  

I put on the dress to even the hem, then still did a deep 2" hem, which caused some headaches due to the curves.  I can call it a success: there is nothing visible on the outside!  And it gives it a bit more weight. 

For the sleeves I ended up just double folding in the seam allowance at the top of the bodice, and did not put any sleeves on.  It's so very wide on me it already is like having half length sleeves.  

 

Despite trying quite hard to personalise the fit on this dress, it needs to find a new owner who is a lot wider than I am.  I do think it's a beautiful concept and the gathered skirt hangs and swishes really nicely.  I don't even have a suitable person in my usual recipient group, so it may be off to the secondhand shop, sadly.  The people who have successfully made this and posted on Instagram have had a few things in their favour: they are very tall, so they can make a longer length to balance the width, and they have used narrow fabrics.     

This is the Dunya jacket.

I definitely noticed the Dunya jacket when it came out. Fibremood have a lot of instagram influencers and they (when feeds still worked) overloaded my instagram feed.  Curiosity followed, and I had a look at a lot of patterns.  It wasn't enough to make me bite.  It's a different feel than other pattern companies.  You don't get the instructions when you buy the pattern.  You have to do a bunch of drama getting an account in order to access the online instructions.  I guess it's true about age, I'm getting grumpy, I want to not spend time on my computer making yet another infernal account for something I'll use once.  Just in time, instagram is so crappy I've tapered my usage way down.  A funny mental shift, to realise we once didn't think about life in terms of how it would look in a photo...and to go back to living life without documenting it.  Yet again I wondered about my blog's utility.  The act of sewing and the act of blogging about it can be very disconnected from one another, and it's easy to get behind when I'm inspired to sew a lot and not particularly keen to sit in front of the computer. 

Then I posted a lackadaisical post about the Zoey tank top and got over 2000 views (rare for me, as noted, I'm too obnoxious to have so many loyal readers and I'm definitely not influencer material.)  So I suppose for now I'll keep going.  It's reassuring to see that the few remaining blogs out there are still getting some love. 

 A friend told me this would suit my sudden desire for an oversized and cozy coat that would feel like wearing a sleeping bag.  For some reason, I was Inspired.  So much so that I actually bought fabric specifically for the pattern - expensive fabric!  I got Mind the Maker Thelma thermal quilted fabric in olive.  I got it from an Australian website but I don't recall which one.  I went specifically to The Fabric Store to pick out a lining and as invariably happens I didn't like anything.  I bought some silk.  It's pretty but, hm.  I bought the pattern and printed it and then winter got too busy!  I decided to move, I had so little time left and this kept being right on top of my queue while seeming like too much work to actually make.  I even actually bought snaps in the States for the kam snap press so I would be Ready. 

Hopeless.  It took another year to finish the move and get settled and actually buy the snap press.  I found a new lining fabric.  Still not totally convinced, it's Liberty tana lawn with feathers on it.  I just couldn't settle on anything I loved and this was good enough. 

I made size XS

I could have made S by the size chart but the instructions - which are very good - I don't recall too many specific gripes - they recommend going down if you don't want it massively oversized.  I had a moment of puzzlement looking at the pattern I had printed then realised you have options to have the seam allowance printed, or not, and you can have it included, or not.  I included the SA lines and the cut lines in my printed pattern. 

 I didn't rush this project out.  The fabric is a real pain to sew because the raw edges, once cut, leak the thermal midlayer and it's very hard to tell where the green actual fabric is.  The coat gets to be quite a LOT for my small sewing machine to manage.  

 I found to my shock that each step went very smoothly and things came together in a beautiful fashion.  I did have some drama with the corners of the hem facing at the side seams, whatever the instructions said to do was impossible, or maybe my fabric was just too much to wangle.  There is some visible stitching there where I tried to avoid leaving holes and just topstitched everything in place.  The end result is totally fine.  I didn't diverge from the pattern anywhere.  My snap press was magical.

 

 

And I love this jacket!  I wore it a lot this winter, though now it's too warm for such things.  It's completely oversized and ridiculous.  I do wish that the front hem were slightly shorter and the back hem slightly longer.  I do feel a bit silly out and about in town because there is coat everywhere around me but I trust that I actually look cooler than everyone else.  

She wears the pants no. 12: revisiting the draped dress

 I wanted to branch out and try some new Japanese patterns, but I was a bit scared. Last time I tried to make the grecian dress I literally couldn't figure out how to trace it and I gave up.  So, suddenly fired up with the idea of Japanese patterns, revisiting some previous ones seemed like a good way to stretch those muscles before I committed to the tracing.  The original version of this pattern is here. I made this version in the same size M. 

I had a large piece of very slinky viscose and recalled that it would be perfect for this dress which was a big part of my interest.  I made it longer this time, but no other changes.  It was a quick sew.  I added some seam tape for the shoulders since the weight of the dress is all on those seams.  It really is a lovely pattern as long as you want excellent chest access.  And in fact, I made this with the plan to give it to a breastfeeding friend.  

Truthfully I think my first version was more interesting.  I would use this pattern again for a heavyweight drapey knit.  I think a lightweight knit shows too much!  Also, a patterned fabric made it more visually interesting.  

She wears the pants: draped cardi take 2

 The first version of this cardi was oddly bewitching. See it here. 

I wasn't sure whether short sleeves made any sense. The pockets were low, the cardi was ridiculous.  But something about the flow was very interesting.  A classic Japanese pattern result.  I thought at some point it would be interesting to come back to it with the recommended fabric.  I traced the pattern in size M and didn't, at the time, think that a smaller size would be better if I made it again. 

That moment arrived not too long ago when a friend made a comment and suddenly all I wanted to do was revisit the Japanese pattern books.  I dug through my knits and realised I had a beautiful coral linen knit that would be just the thing for this cardigan.  I thought I could improve on it by shortening the length horizontally above the pockets - this is easy enough to do by cutting and overlapping the pattern.  I also thought it could have something more in the way of sleeves with larger cuffs.  

Sewing it together was no problem.  It's an easy sew once you've done all the tracing work. 

 

But to my dismay the adjustments I made to the pattern were really unnecessary.  I don't think the extra sleeves are useful, they are loose and just hang in the way.  The linen is quite heavy, even if it's not heavier than the rayon blend I used the first time, and I think the change in length is superfluous - I do see it's shorter in my photos, but it didn't really feel shorter while wearing it.  My lesson here is that the Japanese pattern designers know best!  It's really hard to actually improve on their designs.  And I should probably try the smaller size if I make this again.  I wonder how it would be in a more lightweight knit that doesn't pull it down as much.  

These are actually my third Calyer pants

 I was taking seriously my plan to actually use my fancy stash fabrics this year. 

At some point I decided this luscious wool from Geneva should be a pair of Calyer pants. I have an odd relationship with the Calyer pants.  My first pair, I didn't entirely love them...but I sort of did.  The pockets weren't perfect and they are a bit shallow, so not very satisfying to put things in. Yet I wore the first Calyer pants...literally until the butt split open sideways because I had worn the fabric out.  It was a weird fabric too, a wool blend that shrunk and shrunk so the fit was no longer the original fit. 

When I made my second Calyer pants I was sort of disconcerted by the loose fit. I made them from a stretchy fabric and I lengthened the pockets.  The issue with that is that the pocket kind of interferes with my actual thigh, so the extra room in it is still not useful to put things.  I ended up giving them to a friend who uses them for hiking.  I even forgot to blog about them. 

I had kind of forgotten all of this.  So I made Calyer pants (size XS, same as before) from one of my favourite fabrics of all time.  I'm not sure why I rate it so highly.  It was expensive because it was a fabric store in the centre of Geneva, I was there to have my interview with MSF, so maybe it's because of those memories. It's a nice sort of loose weave, not transparent, but hinting at transparency.  I really do love it so much, but I didn't buy enough to really play with, since it was expensive.  (I wanted some patterned silks but they were hundreds of dollars per metre so luckily I held back...) 

And they are too tight. 

 

Luckily one of the friends on my current recipient list is smaller than me by quite a bit. So they went off to her.  I look at the photos and they aren't that bad though the butt is obviously snug, but wearing them, I felt like I might damage them at any moment.  I never expected to have such a long relationship with this pattern, since I disparagingly called it "fancy loungewear" but truthfully I would be tempted to try again at some point, keeping in mind something along the lines of maybe drapey (though that didn't work out super well) and maybe a bit stretchy (but not too stretchy, as those were too big.) 

Another thing I have noticed, and maybe I'm alone in this - that when I use these deep stashed, scary fabrics, even when the results are not exciting and I end up giving the item away - what I feel is a sense of relief.  I'm trapped by the stress of using my beautiful stash to make beautiful, perfect things, and while each inspiration is a step towards a platonic ideal, the act of trying to reach perfection is more important than the result.  I've noticed this over and over again, but only recently has it actually turned into results: I have really cut down on buying expensive fabric when I don't have any idea what to do with it.