Ok, so it's November and I'm only just getting round to putting photos and text together but better late than never.
This year I used an ancient Prima pattern and apart from some hilariously placed bust darts it went really well. I've previously blogged about tunic #1 - a sleeveless dress - and the plan was to make a second tunic, this time with sleeves, and hopefully resolve the dart issue. Which I did, so here is the dress, now dyed my favourite shade of Dylon, and the tunic-tunic which fits fine but colourwise is a failure.
The photos were all taken rather hurridly in fading light so apologies - they're not fantastic but hopefully you'll get the idea.
I had an idea for a really rich dark purple but the Dylon purple is too teenage-6th form-hippie for me so I will over dye it with blue next time I'm dyeing and see how that turns out, otherwise it's for the Oxfam bag.
Once I'd made those two I felt like I'd finally found a pattern I was happy with, so three more quickly appeared. Sleeveless, because it was summer, and therefore really quick to make. The first one was made from a print muslin that I was oggling over in my LFS. It's pretty sheer and needs a nude bra but I wore it loads. In fact I wore all three of these loads - my usualy summer staple, the jersey vest top, hardly got a look in.
The neck facing is a white cotton lawn. I was a bit afraid that it would be too white (because the muslin is so light) but it doesn't make a noticible amount of difference when it's on.
I also used white lawn for the facing of this next one, made in a heavily embroidered cotton.
I bought this fabric in Germany a few years ago on a whim because I really love broiderie anglaise but although the fabric looks great, all that embroidery makes it a bit stiff to wear so if I had to have a least favourite of the three, this would be it. But I still wore it lots so it is only 1% awful!
The last was a mild cock-up and recovery. I decided to make the neck notch deeper and it came out far too deep, with seriously illegal amounts of clevage on show. So I put in a false camisole type thingy, and that solved the problem and added a little bit of difference to the other two.
The fabric I used for the 'camisole' has a lovely scalloped edge which was perfect for the job.
I now have my eye on a viscose blend at the LFS that would make a good winter tunic but the way my sewing (and blogging) time is at the moment, it'll probably be high summer before I get round to cutting the thing out!
A quick comment on buttons: I put 'proper' sized buttons on the dress and purple tunic but found that they weighed the neck notch down and pulled it open in a kind of flopsy bunny type of way. I decided that the three sleeveless tunics would just have one very tiny button so that I could close the neck enough to keep them from falling off their hangers; this works much better.