Yellow-Brown Dress - Sleeves

As I must double everything, I have to work with a paper pattern. I marked the changes since the last trial - fortunately, this just meant to change the back tuck.
I ripped it out, drew on both the dresses and resewed. The center back tuck has been prolonged to the little tuck above the gore, so that the little one actually disappeared:-)

The sleeves were OK, so I could prepare them for the dress assembling. I sewed them in the center seam and pressed the allowances flat. As the seam's not very straight, it should be ironed in the following way.
I put it on a tailor's ham and ironed the straight part up to the top of the curve which has been placed to the edge of the ham.

Then I turned it and finished ironing from the other side, raising the sleeve to make it easier.

Not very interesting work to watch today:-)

Toy Serpent

A Christmas present for my almost one year old niece.
I had a scrap of velvet kniwear. I cut it in about a triangular shape and sewed the edges together at the long side. The seam shrinked as you can see - maybe you know what it is like to sew knitwear on regular sewing machine.-)

For reasons like this I have been collecting small useless pieces of fabric. I tried to cut them to even smaller squares or whatever for the toy to be soft.

Before filling the head I basted the fabric about two centimeters from the edge.

I stuffed the head, gathered at the basting and pushed the edges inside. I sewed quite a lot of times over the opening for the toy to be safe.

I sewed on a tongue with satin stitch. It was cut from a piece of red satin lace.

I took a fabric from above and under the tongue, pressed them on it and sewed there. This way I got an upper and lower jaws.

The rest was embroidered - I didn't want to use beads or so for such a small child. Eyes - raised fishbone stitch, back - coral stitch.

Yellow-Brown Dress - Neckline

Before the friend would try it on, I could prepare the necklines as well. I basted the line and made small cuts towards it.

I ironed the squares so that I got a regular ellipse, or whatever:-)

I roughly drew a pattern for the sleeve, she should wear it with the lower side turned up, so I had to make this part straight.
I sewed the sleeve to the armpit and now I'm very curious if it will fit:-)

Yellow-Brown Dress - Gores

A dress for a friend of mine. I've owed it to her for more than a year:-)
Now we finally got to the pattern - I arranged the fabric on her and made a paper pattern. That was necessary as the dress should be lined. In fact two identical dresses sewn together.
This is the pattern I got. I has a tuck on a spine and should have one gore in the front, one at the back. The lining doesn't have a seam at shoulders, unfortunately I didn't have enough brown canvas to cut this as a whole.

The worst part - the gore. I have been searching for another method than this. I made more than fifteen models of the gore's tip. But this way I got the best results.
I cut an opening for the gore. I made a little tuck at the top - a cm high and about three milimeters wide.

I pinned the gore to the dress. I drew a mark on the dress, twenty centimeters below the tip, and that's where I put the edges equally.
You may spot a pin on the left, it helps me to know, wheather the tip of the gore and the end of the tuck are exactly one on the other (it must then stand upright).

I jabbed the needle to where the tuck ended. I can move my needle left or right, so I arranged it so that the edge of the gore would follow the left side of the foot.

I sewed in a stable distance from the gore edge. In my opinion, at this technique it would be better to iron vlieselin on before cutting and sewing for it not to fray out.

But not necessarily. The gore has wide enough allowances and attaching these to the dress should cover the narrow ones securely.
I won't do any of these, seam allowances will be hidden inside the dress.

The gore at the right side.