Review ... Winifred Aldrich

Winifred Aldrich has written many books. Mostly on metric pattern cutting, I've used these books at my night course and they are amazing! 5/5! Lots of stars! etc! Her books tell you about the fabrics to use, some tips etc. They are so basic and tell you how to make the pattern step-by step to your own measurements, and she tells you how to take the measurements as well since it's not quite how it appears. I've made all of my items so far from her patterns and they've all come out so well and they fit properly! What is also good about her patterns is that say your making a jacket, it will give you several options for a collar. Each option will have a picture and a complete instruction, there is nothing fussy about these books. If you seriously want to design I am telling you to invest! They are roughly £30.00, well just under like £27? but they are so worth it! They've 100's of things in them and the knowledge that they hold within those pages are worth every penny!
The pictures in them are well designed and are designed to inspire, the options are endless and she recommends fabrics to use! This saves beginners lots of time since they can go into a shop knowing what is good and what is not!

The books are designed to teach you basic pattern cutting skills. The book is recommended by professionals who still use it, by teachers and by people on Amazon who have never cut a pattern before in there life, or so they claim. The language has been kept simple and easy to understand.

As I said before I give this book 5/5 and completely recommend it. It's been printing since 1985 for a reason!
The best place to look for these books is Amazon.

Turning a simple dress into a Playsuit/RomperSuit

I love play suits, however I just don't look good in them. I recently got my lovely boyfriend to buy  a bundle of dresses off Ebay, and this one came in the bundle, I'm not much of a floral person, but I love play suits and thought it would make quite a cute play suit just for messing about in the garden and such in, so here is a tutorial. Please try on the dress first to see how it fits, I skipped this part and it doesn't fit unless I loose some more weight, so for now it's tucked in the back of my closet.


How to:

1)   1)   Find a simple dress and press (iron) it so that there are no creases, don’t worry if like me you’re useless with an iron, this step isn’t necessary but it just helps when drawing since creases are hard to draw over.

2)   2)   Now find a pair of shorts or jeans, ideally boot cut, since I’m not sure how it would work with skinny jeans etc, but boot cut are just a lot more rectangular and less fiddly I should imagine.

3)     3) Fold the dress and the jeans/shorts in half. Make sure to fold the dress wrong sides together so that your pattern is inside, not facing up at you.

4)     4) Place the halves on  top of each other as so. I would advise if the dress is like the one I am using that you make the crutch about an inch or so lower, since mine turned out to have REALLY long legs.

5)      5) I advise before just cutting, that you pin and then try on, I didn’t do this, and forgot the size of my bum… it doesn’t fit properly, therefore trying it on before does help, that way you can adjust the pins and such and make sure you can pull it up properly….. however if this is on a dress that you will never like and is simple a run through to see how to do it so that you can then do it on a dress you do like… then I suppose you can skip the whole adjusting thing just so that you get the idea.

6)   6)   Now you can try to simply just cut round the jeans or if you’re a bit like me, you can draw then cut, anything will work really.

7)      7) Then simply unfold and pin them and then sew and they should look brilliant (: I used a ½ hem allowance since I could tell before I started that they were going to be small in the leg, however I would advise 5/8 instead. I just used a straight stitch. Do try your machine on a sample piece (the bit you chopped out for the crutch will do) and just make sure your machine is set up okay.

If you have any questions feel free to just leave it in a comment and I'll check the posts regularly, hope your play suits come out a bit better than mine did,but the main instructions are here!

zxoxo

8)