Custom Printed Fabric at Contrado

Last Saturday I was lucky enough to visit the Contrado fabric printing factory in sunny Harlesden, along with fellow bloggers Marie, Janene, Katie, Elena and Charlotte. The visit was kindly organised by Rachel and Kate at The Fold Line. If you haven't come across Contrado before (and I hadn't) they're a family run, UK-based company (hoorah) offering a facility to design and print your own fabric.

There are over 75 different fabric types to choose from, which made picking just one a bit of a nightmare. We were sent swatch packs of fabric beforehand, which are full colour printed to give an idea of how light or bright the final fabrics will look - this was really helpful. At the factory, there were giant swatch packs to play with - even more helpful as you could really feel the fabrics.

I was completely torn between 100% silk satin or (bizarrely) polycotton sheeting. As unsexy as it sounds, the polycotton sheeting was a lovely quality and had an amazing drape. In the end I couldn't pass up the opportunity to own a piece of super luxurious fabric and went for the silk. Here's a tip: check out the care instructions of your chosen fabric type beforehand! Yep, you guessed it, the silk is dry clean only, with strict instructions not to let steam anywhere near it. I'm guessing the polycotton sheeting would have been a lot less hassle! I stand by my choice though, the silk is absolutely beautiful.

The one area I totally struggled with was the design process. Once you've chosen your fabric, there's software on the website for you to lay it out and tile it. This all sounds simple enough, but I have zero technical expertise, and although I had lots of ideas for fabric designs, I had no idea where to start. In the end, Rachel kindly came to my rescue and created my design for me, based on a piece of original 1940's fabric I'd found on Pinterest. Some of the bloggers are experienced designers and even they found some of the software a little confusing, so it was good to have technical staff on hand to make sure everything was the right size and scale. There's an option on the website to print out a test piece of fabric before committing to your design which I'd strongly recommend you utilise. This is not the sort of thing you want to get wrong!

Once we'd sent our designs off to be printed we were given a tour of the factory by owner Chris.

  

You don't have to print massive quantities of fabric, you can print just a small panel if that's all you need. The full width of the fabric is used for different orders, so there's very little waste.

Custom fabric printing is just one side of the Contrado business, the company also prints designs or images of your choice onto a wide range of homeware or clothing products. Imagine my delight when I came across these custom printed espadrilles!

Finally we were able to see our designs printed hot off the press. This was Charlotte's....

Elena split her order into two different fabrics....

 

Here's mine on the press!

And on the bolt....

My design was very faithfully reproduced, although the flowers did look a bit darker than I was expecting. I'm not complaining though, this is the only fabric of its kind in the world, and it's all mine! I'll now have to think very, very carefully about what I make with it. Any ideas?!

Thank you very much to Rachel and Kate at The Fold Line for organising such a fabulous day - I found every aspect of it really interesting. Thank you also to Chris and the rest of the Contrado team for giving up your Saturday to accommodate us and for generously allowing us to print our fabric designs for free. x

Book Review: Sew Over It Vintage

Sew Over It Vintage is the second book by Lisa Comfort (of Sew Over It sewing classes and patterns fame), this time focusing on vintage style. I found it refreshing that Lisa doesn't promise you a head-to-toe vintage wardrobe once you've read it. What she does do is to take inspiration from vintage fashions and styles of the past and mix them up with modern elements to avoid looking too costumey. This pretty much sums up my own approach to using vintage style in my wardrobe so I knew I'd get on well with this book!

It's divided into four different sections:

- Dabble with a bit of vintage - for those who want to add a bit of vintage flair to existing items. 

Adding a Peter Pan collar to a neckline 

Adding fur cuffs and collar to a coat

- Make a vintage inspired wardrobe - this was the section I was really interested in!

- A little something to go with it - how to make your own vintage accessories

- Vintage Home

The 30 projects in the book are clearly labelled with a skill level and there are plenty of quick, easy fixes for those new to sewing, particularly in the Embellishing and Vintage Home sections. For me though, it was the second section (make your own vintage wardrobe) that was the most interesting part of the book and what I'll be focusing on in this review.

You do need to have a bit of sewing experience before tackling the dressmaking projects. The reason for this is because there are no patterns included with the book - they're all made from blocks which you draft yourself based on your own measurements. I promise you, this is not as scary as it sounds - I'm a complete thickie when it comes to anything involving maths and measuring, but even I managed to draft a bodice block without incident. Yes, they take a bit of time to create, but they're not difficult. There's a well explained section on measuring yourself properly (you'll need a friend/partner to take some of the measurements) and the steps are very comprehensive and detailed.

The book includes ten garment projects, all made using either the bodice block or by drafting a skirt section. Lisa then shows you how to adapt the basic blocks to create the different garment designs. Influences for the designs range from the 1920's to the 1960's:

A chic, 1920's-inspired Anita Tie Top for pairing with jeans.

A lovely, tie-necked 1950's sailor blouse with a simplified collar. 

A Betty Draper-inspired box-pleat skirt. The example in the book is made from crepe which gives it a softer look- I'm keen to make one with a more structured feel. 

A cute, 1960's-inspired pleated dress. This project uses an existing fitted top as a starting point, then shows you how to draft the skirt to attach to it. Such a pretty result!

One thing to note is that the bodice block is not supposed to be close fitting - the projects that use it all have quite a lot of ease built in. This simplifies the process and eliminates the need for darts and closures. So if you like your top half to be fitted to within an inch of its life, then the dressmaking projects probably won't be to your taste. To be honest, I like my top half to be super fitted too, so I was surprised when my attention kept being drawn to the chic, 1920's inspired, unstructured Anita Tie Top!  Eventually I caved in and drafted one for myself. Yes, you read that correctly, I drafted one for myself!!! Despite my scepticism about the relaxed fit, it's a winner and I've already worn it out twice! I changed a couple of things about it, so I think it deserves its own separate post, but here's a sneaky peek of the finished top….

…and one of me wearing it. It's self drafted don't you know!

If you're familiar with using commercial patterns, but would like a bit of hand holding before moving onto pattern cutting in more detail then I can't recommend this book highly enough. I certainly got a lot out of it and already have plans for a self-drafted pleated skirt.  x


Sew Over It Vintage was given to me free of charge for review by Love Sewing Magazine, all views my own. You can find out what other sewing bloggers thought of the book here:

A Stitching Odyssey
Did You Make That?
House of Pinheiro
What Katie Sews

Vintage style Bonnie Sweater

Sometimes a pattern comes along that just seems to click. It looks exactly as you imagined, the fit is good and it blends in seamlessly with the rest of your wardrobe. That's just happened to me with my first make of the Bluegingerdoll Bonnie Sweater!! It's a vintage-inspired sweater for knit fabrics and comes in three variations with lots of mix and match options. 

I bought it mid-way through reading Handmade by Heather B's review as I was so impressed with how it looked on her. At that point, it was a new release and only available as a PDF, which just goes to show how keen I was to make it! (I loathe PDFs). For those of you with similar anti-PDF tendencies, you'll be pleased to hear it's now available as a paper pattern (available here in the UK). To be fair, it didn't take that long to tile it together and I only made minimal fitting changes, so I barely felt any pain.

Anyway, back to Bonnie. I made View A (the cropped version with the crew neck) with long sleeves and following Heather's example, I lowered the neckline by an inch (adding half an inch to each end of the neckband to make it fit). I also shortened the arms by an inch as I am in fact descended from a T-Rex. Based on the finished measurements, I cut a size 12 at the bust, grading to a 10 at the waist and hips and this was almost a perfect fit. The shoulders seem a tiny bit wide, so I may narrow them to a 10 on my next version, but other than that I didn't make any other fitting adjustments. The cropped bodice section did look pretty short when I was making it, especially before the waistband was added, but I'm glad I didn't make any panic stricken changes as the finished length is really flattering. The side seams narrow at exactly the right place and by some kind of sewing sorcery, make your waist appear tiny.

The design has slightly gathered sleeves which was the only thing about the pattern I was sceptical about, but now I've made it, I think they're lovely.

You can see the gathered sleeves more in this picture

They're very subtle and pretty and hardly even look gathered most of the time, just when I'm striking poses or putting my hands in my pockets.

For fabric I used a grey poly/wool jersey blend, with cream polka dots, which I picked up from Katie in a sewing swap. It only just had enough stretch to be suitable for this pattern, but I'm so pleased it worked because it's very cosy to wear. Once the pattern pieces are cut out, it doesn't take much more than an hour to put together, it's definitely a quick, easy make. I made it during a sewing afternoon with a few pals and even with constant chat and distractions I still whipped it up in no time. The overlocker was already threaded up with red thread, so I did my usual lazy party trick of just changing the left needle thread. Magic! The seams are grey, but the insides are all red and pretty!

I'm currently on the hunt for some good quality wool jerseys or sweater knits to make a few more. I'll probably try the Goldhawk Road first, but if anybody has any online recommendations, please let me know.  

There are several great knit top patterns out in the wild, but the reason I like this one is because all the details work for me and my own personal style. I love the vintage look, the neat fit and the fact that I'm now the owner of a polka dot sweater! It adds a bit of pizzazz to a pair of jeans and works perfectly with skirts and high waisted 1940's strides, I couldn't be happier! x

Pattern Cutting Weekend at Ray Stitch

I've been sewing for five years now and would like to think that my dressmaking skills have improved a teeny bit during that time. One thing I still don't have much of a clue about though is fitting. I've never been properly taught how to fit patterns - everything I've learnt has been cobbled together from reading sewing blogs and books or by following sewalongs. Yes, I can more or less tweak a pattern to fit me, but I don't really know how and why I'm manipulating it. I've always wanted to be able to make a sloper or block to fit my proportions exactly, which I can then use to adapt other patterns. I don't want to become a designer, I just want somebody knowledgeable to explain the basic mechanics to me. 

So when Katie posted this excellent review about the three day pattern cutting course she'd taken at Ray Stitch, I was on red alert.  I knew that this was exactly the course I'd been looking for and booked in for the October Pattern Cutting Weekend. During the weekend I would create a skirt and upper body block and learn how to use the blocks to adapt commercial patterns and even create my own!  I. Could. Not. Wait!

The course was taught by Alice Prier, a super-stylish pattern cutter and designer with a ton of knowledge and experience to share. Alice was also very engaging and funny, which really set the class off on the right foot. This was a world away from the soul destroying needlework lessons at school! We started by taking 'accurate' measurements of each other. It was reassuring that Alice could take one look at our pattern paper and know immediately if we had an incorrect, or, in some cases, physically impossible measurement (ahem!) We each created an upper body and skirt block joined together at the waist to form a dress, which we then sewed up in calico. After trying them on, we all needed only minimal adjustments to ensure a perfect fit. Honestly they all looked great, and that's saying something as calico is notoriously unflattering (see photo below…) I achieved a good fit across the bust (hallelujah!) but needed to add an inch across the stomach and bum area i.e. the widest part of me, as the toile turned out a bit tight. I also had to pin a small chunk out of the front neckline as it was slightly gaping. Apart from that it fitted. Perfectly!

Any pulling you see is just the way I'm standing - it actually fits like a glove

This all happened on the first day - the second day was devoted to learning all about darts. Now I've done the odd FBA (full bust adjustment) and gaping back adjustment in my time, so I had a rough idea about what happens if you pivot or spread a dart.  Having it explained properly really did cement it into place for me - this was definitely my lightbulb moment of the whole weekend! Alice slashed a bodice into sections and then showed how a different fit/look could be achieved by pivoting the darts around the bodice.

This is the block we started out with. It has darts at the top and bottom

Once a bodice block is created, there is a set amount of shaping within the darts - so as long as this total amount of dart area remains the same, the darts can go anywhere. It can all go into one dart.

It can be redistributed between two different darts.

It can be joined together to form a princess seam (forgot to take a picture of that one.). It can be an underarm tuck.

Or, if you want more ease, you can simply choose not to sew the dart up at all.  This may be obvious to a lot of people, but it wasn't to me, so to finally understand it was well worth every penny of the course fee. These basic principles can then be used to create patterns for whatever you like. The possibilities are endless and I came away bursting with ideas. I've now transferred all my scribblings to my 'fitting' notebook', just in case I forget anything, which is highly likely. I've also decided to take Alice's advice and trace my block onto card to preserve it.

Obviously you're not going to learn everything there is to know about pattern cutting in just one weekend, but I felt that I learnt more than enough for my purposes.  I also met some lovely new sewing pals and a very inspiring teacher. Plus we were constantly plied with chocolate cake, which didn't hurt. Thank you to Ray Stitch and to Alice Prier for an excellent weekend course. x

Purple Stitches fabric winner

Thank you very much to everybody who entered the Purple Stitches fabric giveaway - I hope my high glamour apron inspired you all to get sewing for Mother's Day! The winner is Katie from What Katie Sews, who chose a metre of Flea Market Fancy fabric (great taste). Hoorah hoorah, congratulations Katie!!! Please email me your address and confirm which of the Flea Market Fancy fabrics you'd like.  Thank you again to Vivian at Purple Stitches for such a generous giveaway.

Have a wonderful weekend everybody. x