Skip to main content

New Look 6514 -- Quick Duster jacket


Finally got out to take some photos of this long duster-top thing!


 This one happens to be New Look 6514 which I have had in my stash for a minute. Making this was all actually a happy accident!

Originally, I bought this Art Gallery fabric named Carnaby for a Butterick Dress "sew the look" that Carlos from Vogue Patterns posted. I have been needing some sewing/design projects to keep me occupied lately since we are moving permanently to the Grand Rapids, Michigan area.

I don't know how/why I spaced on the fabric yardage but the Butterick dress needed 5 yards and there was only 4 left in this print! I pulled New Look 6514 out of my stash and it only needed around 4 yards! Yay!


Above, I ended up buying 5 yards of a Kaffe Fassett "Lake Blooms" fabric (left) for the "sew the look" Butterick dress. I actually am most of the way done with the Butterick dress too! 

(See below for the post by Carlos.)

Lately, I feel like my looks runs from "cool badass" to "boho beauty" and so much less vintage/retro than before, but that's just fashion if you ask me. I also am super-into black lipstick though I don't wear it out as much as I should. Some people have signature red? My signature lately has been black lipstick!

This top/duster was super-easy to make. The hardest thing about it may have been ironing my 4 yards of fabric (haha) and this sewed up very quickly.

I made no adjustments to View B in a size Small on the pattern. I actually wanted to make the longer version but when I measured, I noticed  that this was the perfect length for 5 foot me!

  

Michigan has been fun lately. There is SO MUCH more to do here than there used to be. They are really building up areas like downtown Muskegon (food trucks, Taste of Muskegon, cool cocktail bar with live jazz or blues, farmers markets, indie shopping, outdoor concerts, etc.)  Not to mention that there is a ton of nature-related things to do here like hiking, kayaking, exploring, or outdoor museums like historic White Pine Village. 

I have missed walking around and feeling relatively safe. Chicago just got too nuts for me and all of the violence and rudeness. (Yup, ruder than NYC!) People in Michigan are SUPER nice and Grand Rapids is a huge art city. I think we will really settle in here nicely.

My long-time post as a manager of clothing store Brooklyn Industries in Chicago closed the end of March so me and Patrick decided that now was the perfect time to pick up, move, and change our lives for the better! It had been almost 15 years of Chicago for me (minus that brief 8 months back in Michigan) so it was long overdue being time for a change.

I weirdly feel more free to be myself out here in Grand Rapids than in a big city like Chicago.





Another random note: I stopped dyeing my hair maybe 4 months ago with the exception of a little Touch of Sun spray here and there, so this is mostly back to my natural red color. I'm surprised to see it like this after soooo many years of dye. It's been really hard to get back to it but I am more there now than ever! 



 Until next time!


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Latch Hook Rug Update

A little under a month ago I received all of my supplies to take on one of the biggest long-term projects I have ever taken on - a self-designed latch hook rug. I don't know why, but I am clearly nuts. So beginning today I am posting photos each month, (preferably on the 1st of each month) progress of this gigantic shag rug. See how I started it here (scroll down past posting of my $10 dress).  This is a photo of it today:  Yes, I used the candelabra for scale. Haha.   This rug is really soft and is fun to run your fingers through.  It doesn't look like much was accomplished, but though the number of packages we have gone through of pre-cut latch hook rug yarn already I have calculated that  we've used over 2500 strands for this ie.) 8 packages. I also just ordered 10 more packages of lime green since that's what I ran out of first and 6 more packages of straw yellow. There is still quite a bit to go, but you see the blue row squares? Each of th

DIY Trapeze Dress

I'm a pretty big fan of tent dresses (or trapeze dresses - call it what you want). They're simple, easy-to-make and you can have many variations of them. These are a fun style to wear for spring and summer!  See this DIY from a Good Housekeeping Crafts book from 1971 - photos at the end of my own trapeze top from a while ago! (Bear with me on the photos here - this book is quite cumbersome and hard to scan.)  Applique patterns, in case you wanted the dress to look EXACTLY like the photo. (But why?)  How to cut the fabric efficiently. (This is actually pretty important cost-wise for you - especially with something this big.)  Using pattern instructions from my patternmaking book from college, I created this swingy trapeze top a bit ago. I used sweater fabric from a thrift store find for the collar of this top.   I also opened up the back on the pattern to have a diamond shape.   It can easily be belted like in this photo fo

Shingo Sato and the Art of Transformational Reconstruction

So I got really excited on my break at work today when I got an email from Burda about a webinar they're doing on a pattern technique called "Transformational Reconstruction" developed by Japanese designer Shingo Sato. I hadn't even heard of Shingo Sato until today let alone his design technique but oddly, it's sort of the path I'm going down with my designs anyway as seen with the Sunrise Panel dress as well as the Petra Dress and the pattern making involved in those designs. What I did there is perhaps a "light" version of Sato's where the darts and shaping are hidden in the seam lines. If you've been reading this blog long enough, you know that my design aesthetic focuses largely on color blocking, unusual seam lines, and a love of anything psychedelic. Note: All photos stolen from the internet. Sorry! I'm super-excited. Let me know if it's yours and I'll take it down.  Shingo Sato teaching.  More designs using