My next project

After making the prom dress which was quite complicated and demanding, I wanted a nice simple project. So this one will be a remake. I bought this eighties dress in a second hand store some months ago.



I thought the floral print is cute, but the model is a bit dowdy. The dress is right now in pieces. I will change the awful v-shaped waistline to a normal one, and i will take it up to where my waist actually is. I will also shorten it, and probably remove the bows on the shoulders. As a consequence of the shortening, I also have to move the pockets down. Ah, I love a dress with pockets... And finally, I'm thinking about changing the neck line. Maybe making it deeper in the back. This is the back:



The front feels harder to change. I don't know. Any suggestions?

Right now I have only 4 work days left, then it is Midsummers Eve, and the start of my vacation! Yay! I will go back to my lovely home town Boden then and stay for two weeks. I bought a nice white fabric whith small pink roses (that used to be curtains) when I was last there, and it is in my old girls room waiting for me to make it a skirt. :-)

Ooh, and tomorrow, we are going hot air balloon riding. Maybe. We have had our flights cancelled five times so far, so I'm trying to not get my hopes up to much. The wind speed has to be less than 5m/s and no risk for rain to be able to fly, which is apperently pretty hard in this country. Weather report looks promising tomorrow, so I'm crossing my fingers... If it actually happens, my next post will be some nice pictures of Stockholm from above. In the mean time, here is a picture of me disapointed the time our balloon ride got cancelled just before we went up in the air (due to changed winds).



Hehe. :-)

Love,
Helena

The Prom Dress

So, here is the finished prom dress!

And from the back:


It was hard to photograph the train properly, because it was really windy that day. Anyway, I think the dress turned out quite beautiful. What do you guys think? There were some details that were not perfect, but overall I'm happy with it. And my sister liked it, which is the most important thing. She looked so beautiful, hugs to you little sister!

Love,
Helena

A sad sad day

This day is a sad day. Anna Bergendahl lost in the semifinals, and will not be singing tomorrow in the big finale. For the first time in 34 years, Sweden will not be represented in the Eurovision Song Contest Finals. She had a great performance and the song was good, a lot better than some other crappy songs we have sent over the years (our dear Lena PH for example, hurts, oh it hurts, really hurts to hear that song). But it was not enough. I'm not going to blame anyone though, just conclude that the competition was stiff yesterday, and Azerbadjan and Ukraine that followed Anna kind of put her performance in the shadow by just being a little bit more and bigger and more memorable. And also, you have to acount for the fact that even people with bad taste are allowed to vote (come on, the Cypriotic song... "tell me about your feelings" they sang in the refrain... how cliché and stupid and unrealistic... How many guys likes to talk about feelings, or better yet begs a girl to talk about her feelings? Denmark kind of sucked to, but they had a typical Schlager that will probably get a lot of Swedish votes.).
Uhm, long parenthesis. Anyways. I will look at the finale tomorrow nevertheless. Just need to find some other country to root for. So far, I like Belgium and Ukraine, and Germany seems promising too. Be sure to watch it, extremly important for monday lunch room conversations. :-)
Love,
Helena

Dress progress and stuff

Hello hello. I had some busy weeks. Big presentation at work, important fitting of my sisters dress, my boyfriends father and his girlfriend visiting... And at the same time weather in Stockholm has been amazing! The russian heat was here.
But okay, first things first. My sister was here to model in a fashion show last monday. This is her on the catwalk:


And while she was already here, I worked as hell to get the dress to be in one piece and try it on her. This is what it looked like from the front...



...and from the back



I especially like the back. It will even nicer when it has a zipper and is not just pinned together. I do need to make some changes though. I streched the fabric to tight when draping the bust in this version, which made the lining peak out. So I'm whipping up a new bust part right now. And then lining of the skirt needs to be sewn in, but thats easy peasy, and then it's just the hemming and zipper-attaching. In a week this dress will be worn. I'm both nervous and excited. I hope the dress will be beutiful, and that Smulan will love it! (Smulan is my petname for my little sister, I have called her Smulan since she was a tiny toddler. It means bread crum.)

After having my big presentation last Wednesday I was exhausted from working all day and night for two days. I rewarded myself by leaving work early and visiting the closest second hand shop. There I tried on some dresses.

I fell in love with this lovely seventy's dress. Unfortunately it did not close in the back. Partly because the zipper was broken, but a bigger problem was the missing 7cm of fabric...


I liked this sweet dotted thing to. But it also had a size problem. I could definitly close it, but I could only raise my arms about 20 degrees. Might be a problem as I intended to use it for dancing lindyhop.


Nope, both of them had to stay in the store. But I did buy this one:



I'm not sure when I will wear it, but I think it's fantastically whimsy and fun but still whith a classy silhouette. I imagine a sophisticated Italian lady in black wavy hair, red lipstick and black gloves wearing it for a shopping spree... in the eighties...

On saturday I was barbequing for our visitors. It was a sunny and wonderful day.



The next day it was raining and thundering. But I was happy anyway. It was nice to be able to stay in and sew with a clear conscience (since warm days are rare in this country, I feel obliged to be outside when one arrives). And I could listen to the rain hammering on our abatjour (is that the proper term? I looked it up in a dictionary, and chose most beautiful synonym).



Oh, that's it for now I think. I will try updating more often so I don't have to make these massive posts.

Need to sleep now.
Love,
Helena

Let's start the show...

... as Heidi would say. I'm watching Project runway while writing this post, my favourite show! Anyways, now I would like to introduce you to my current sewing project. I am making a prom dress for my little sister, and it is slowly but steadily coming along. She wanted a dress that looked something like this dress, worn by Eva Green in Casino Royale:


Isn't it nice? And also fairly complicated. I have been working on this dress for a long while now, designing and re-designing and making endless lines of muslins. But now I have finally cut into the real fabric. Yay!
This is where I am at the moment:


Whew, draping is hard. Not quite my forte, but I'm learning. One thing complicating this sewing process is that my sister is living 1000km away (literaly, not an exaggeration). But hopefully, she will come visit me on sunday. Looking forward to seeing her, and fitting the dress on her! Therefore; hard work awaits this weak to have a fairly finished dress by sunday.
Well well, work day tomorrow, time for bed. See ya!

First post

This is my first attempt at blogging. It is a little bit scary. Let's see how it goes. More info coming up, stay tuned.