Tag Archives: Cashmerette

Cashmerette is out with another knit dress pattern – the Turner Dress. The Washington dress isn’t really my style so I was glad to see something I would actually wear! I picked this up at Modern Domestic on Saturday and by Sunday Night I had a new dress.

Altogether I think this took me under 3 hours to trace, cut, and sew. I used a rayon/spandex blend which is not the easiest fabric so I spent extra time pinning. The dress is just 4 pattern pieces.

Speaking of fabric, this is from the Nicole Miller collection at Joann Fabric. All Nicole Miller was 60% off so I finally bought some. This particular print is called Urban Movement. It looks almost like a kaleidoscope of abstract city lights. I had to be careful of my pattern placement with this print.

If I had one complaint about this pattern it would be that I had to use 3 machines – sewing, serger, coverstitch. I prefer to do knits with just my serger and coverstitch, but the v-neckline needed to be sewed and the instructions called for under stitching the neckline.

I sewed a 18 G/H and I think the fit is good but the waist might be a little big. I think it’s a very flattering style that I could wear without my spanx as it camouflages my tummy.

This dress is bit fancy looking so I will probably wear it to work. I might make another one out of french terry or some other cozy stretch fabric for more casual wear.

Thumbs up, Cashmerette. This one’s a keeper!

Jem & the Holograms Costumes

posted by lorene

on 08.22.2016

On Saturday my friend and I raced in the 19th Annual PDX Soapbox Derby in our Jem & the Holograms themed car. It was a glittery pink guitar.

Our sponsor, Pine Crest Fabrics, let us loose on their remnant bin. We managed to find a ton of jems..I mean gems..in there! The only costume we didn’t find great fabric for was mine. There were only scraps of the sparkly stretch velvet, so I grabbed the kind pukey mauve fabric and a sparkly black mesh and figured I would, as Tim Gunn says, “make it work.”

I was crossing my fingers that there was some nylon in there so I could dye it..and there was. Yay!

I hacked the Cashmerette Concord tee into this dress. First I lengthened it into a dress and cut out the front and back in my purple fabric. Then I cut the front into 1″ strips below the bottom of the neckline and spaced them out by 1″ – essentially doubling the length.

I did a wide zigzag over 1/4″ black elastic along the center front and about 3/4″ from each side seam. I basted the ruched front piece to the purple front piece and sewed it together to the back as one. Then I pulled the elastic out of the sides, but left the center elastic in. This let me adjust the gathers to where they were more flattering. I added on the purple velvet sleeves – you’ll see sparkly velvet on all of our costumes. I liked the unfinished edges so the only finishing I did was turning up the bottom hem. This ended up being way more flattering than I expected.

For Jem’s dress I used pink sparkly velvet and the full skirted option on New Look 6301. Because the velvet was thick I sewed the neckline and sleeve finishes as bands. I made the belt from some faux leather from Joann.

For Aja’s costume we only had a small piece of that awesome metallic print for her skirt. So I drafted a skirt with an aqua velvet yoke/waistband to maximize it. I used Cation Design’s free Dolman Sleeve top for a starting point, but I omitted the sleeves, removed the bottom band and shortened the length, and widened the neckline.

Cimberly made herself an awesome Kimber costume. She found a basic white blazer at a thrift store and removed the lining and replaced the back piece with tails cut from an awesome blue sequined fabric. She also added hot pink ruffles to a tshirt and made an asymmetric skirt from royal blue sparkly velvet.

To unify our look, aside from that sparkly velvet accents, we all wore leggings. I made everyone’s leggings using Cake Patterns Espresso leggings. Everyone was stoked to have custom fit leggings made for them. I love that they are so quick and easy to make.

Cimberly and I also covered some helmets with holo glitter so we would be extra blinding in our races. Oh…and we built our car too! Want to see how our race went? Watch our video!

It was a really fun day despite it being ridiculously hot! Everyone loved our car and tons of little girls wanted to take photos with us, which we loved as the only all women team in the derby. My only gripe is that the team who won best costumes had store bought costumes (Elvis, Spiderman, mermaid). It’s always disappointing in any sort of costume contest when the judges don’t take into consideration that some costumes are handmade.

Springfield Tank

posted by lorene

on 07.26.2016

Cashmerette has a new pattern out – the Springfield Top. It’s a woven tank pattern with options for a closer fitting princess seamed back or a looser back version. I’ve been wanting some sleeveless tops to wear to work so I bought it as soon as I got the email. This pattern got printed and assembled right away – I love trimless patterns! Then I just had to find some fabric.

This pattern requires 2 yards + of fabric if you’re using 44″. That seems like a lot for a tank top. Most of my stashed fabrics for tops are 1.5 yards and the rest are 3 yards for dresses. I ended up biting the bullet and pulling this Moda lawn I had purchased in January 2015. I figured if I was really going to make a dress out of it I would have done it by now!

I opted not to cut the bias binding for the neckline and armholes and use premade bias tape. Luckily earlier that day I had scored a massive bag of bias tape and seam binding at an estate sale for $4. By not using my fabric for the bias tape, I managed to get this cut out of around 1.5 yards of fabric! So there is hope for using this for some of my stashed top fabrics.

I opted for the looser version and it went together very quickly. I had some issues with my neckline sticking out but judicious ironing and clapper application got it to settle down. The only issue I had with the pattern is some gaping in the back neckline. I asked Jenny if this was intentional since I noticed the same thing in some of her own Springfield photos. She replied back that this pattern includes a forward shoulder adjustment and if you didn’t need it then your back might gape. Bingo! If I slouch my shoulders forward then it sits flat. So I just need to remember to make this adjustment to the pattern. Who knew having good posture would cause such problems! 🙂

My gripe is that $14 seems a little pricey for such a basic digital pattern. The version I made was literally 3 pattern pieces and could have been 2. I get that Big 4 companies charge the same for every pattern, but that doesn’t matter when I can get them for $2. I would really like to see independent pattern makers adjust their pricing models to reflect the effort that went into creating a pattern.

Cashmerette Appleton Dress

posted by lorene

on 10.25.2015

I was on the fence about purchasing the brand new Appleton dress pattern from the new pattern designer but not new blogger. Cashmerette. I’m not really one for wearing a lot of wrap dresses, but that’s partially because of gaping issues. However, this pattern is supposed to solve the gaping and Jenny and I have similar body shapes being top heavy and slim hipped, so if it works for her it might work for me. Also, no FBA? Hell yes!

I decided to order the print pattern and missed out on the first print run, but mine still came very quickly. I traced off my size and the E/H front piece. I searched through my stash and found this cotton jersey I had purchased at Joann last year. I thought it was 100% cotton, but the noxious smells it let of when I ironed it on the cotton setting leads me to believe it’s actually a cotton/poly blend. I was definitely short of the fabric requirements, but since I was going for the 3/4 length sleeve I figured I had some room to fudge. I pretty easily fit this on my fabric.

Sewing this up was a breeze. The only thing in the directions that slightly confused me was whether or not I needed to reinforce belt holes on both sides. I did it on both, which was wrong but not an issue. The other thing I could have done a better job on was aligning my neckline bands to the bodice fabric. They are just slightly off and that’s Because I wasn’t totally sure how they should meet up. On the next version I will know better and so they will be perfectly aligned.

Have I mentioned to you that I love my coverstitch machine? It’s definitely a non-essential machine, but it makes hemming knits so fast and easy! This machine easily contributed an extra 25% to the joy I have of sewing knits. I chose not to do any of the extra stitching to tack down the seam allowances around the neckline.

After I sewed up the sleeves and side of the dress I tried it on over my yoga pants…and I was like “Whoa! This dress was looks awesome!” I did absolutely no changes to this pattern…I even hemmed exactly at 1.5″ and it was perfect. I will definitely be sewing this up in a nicer fabric (wool jersey?) than my crappy Joann poly blend.

The only problem I have with this pattern is that the hem of left side of the dress (the under wrapped side) tends to hang down. I can pull it up higher on my chest to pull the hem up, but I might taper the hemline on that edge up a bit so it’s not an issue.

I wonder what pattern Cashmerette will release next?