Mirroring Suzy Bee Sews - Life So Strange It Should Be Fiction

BCBG Max Azria Pre-Fall 2013 Clio  pinned the Max Azria on the left sometime last year and I immediately loved it.  She has shown  her awesome raglan tee  so I figured I should get around to showing mine (which I made several months ago--hence the three different sets of photos!). Michael Kors, $1695 I dig the bare front cutout in the Max Azria, but for my real life sheer sleeves like the Michael Kors on the right are more doable.  I would not wear this dress to work, but it is the perfect LBD for winter parties. The body fabric is a heavy poly/lycra knit I got on eBay several years ago from a seller that has, unfortunately, stopped selling (Uptown Fabrics High End Fabrics ).  I bought it for yoga pants, and it is a really nice heavy weight for skimming over lumps and bumps.  I made a pair of yoga pants and a pair of hiking capris with it, and with mixed emotions used up the last of it for this dress.  I got the sleeve fabric, a rayon burnout in a...

It's stash busting time!   PR's Fabric Stash contest  started at midnight on Friday night (so, Saturday, June 1).  What better way to stash bust than to sew up double layer projects?  I have at least 3 planned.  This is the first, using my TNT tee pattern as I did for my striped sweaterdress . Source: neimanmarcus.com via Trena on Pinterest Lace is still hot!hot!hot! for summer.  I love that it is sticking around so long.  This one is Elie Tahari ($598), showing a contrast color underlayer. Source: bhldn.com via Trena on Pinterest Here's another one from BHLDN ($420), in a swingy A line shape. I use the stash contest to try to use up older pieces that have survived multiple purges and yet still linger.  The lace is the elderly stashbusting here, I got it on the G Street $2.97/yd table over 4 years ago in 2009.  The underlayer is a mere two years old, an athletic knit I got from FFC in 2011.  It has a waffley texture and is fairly she...

I am way behind in blogging.  I actually made this top in the nick of time for Jungle January! The variation on this tee is that I used the sleeve from Burda 01-2013-119 .  A while back on Pinterest I saw these  Handmade by Carolyn spiral leggings .  I was fascinated, and loved the way they draped.  I vowed to use the idea for a sleeve eventually.  Well, lo and behold January's Burda arrived with the pattern already drafted for me.  I would still like to do a full spiral eventually, but I am in love with this sleeve. The Burda pattern is a raglan sleeve tee, but it was very easy to transfer this feature to my set-in sleeve block.  I traced the sleeve head onto tissue, and then set the tissue on the Burda tracing sheet.  I lined up the underarm corners of the sleeve patterns, ignored the raglan sleeve head, and traced down the body of the sleeve.  The raglan sleeve was a bit wider than my set-in sleeve, so I just sort of centered my sleev...

Here is a recent project using my TNT t-shirt pattern (I just extended it from the lower edge); the pattern started life as a Burda, but has been extensively altered to fit me.  I bought this wonderful striped wool jersey in NYC a couple years ago for $10/yd.  I bought it to become a sweater, because I am perpetually undersupplied on winter tops.  But the problem is I like dresses more than separates!  So when I realized that I could get a dress out of this 1 1/2 yards (the fabric was incredibly wide), well there went the sweater idea. Source: farfetch.com via Trena on Pinterest I put myself in Rossio in Lisbon (the backdrop is a picture I took on my trip ).  A much more exotic location than my bedroom where the photos were actually taken. Stripes have been in style for several seasons now, so I am actually trendy for once.  This wool sweaterdress by Rag and Bone is $350.  It makes my semi-splurgey $10/yd wool ($15 for the 1.5 yard dress, plus a neg...

Source: shop.nordstrom.com via Trena on Pinterest I found this stretch lace on the $2.97/yd table at G Street Fabrics a while back and had been puzzling over what to make it into.  With lace being in style right now I wanted to make it up fairly quickly, but the somewhat blah color and the fact that it would either have to be lined or worn with a camisole was cramping my creativity. Enter Burda 09-2012-123  with its contrast shoulder and the fact that I had this silk charmeuse in an exactly matching color and voila!  Perfect long top to go with my jeggings.  I got this made in my pre-vacation sewing.  The photos were taken on Mt. Penha in Guimaraes, Portugal. The contrast shoulder is a nice way to dress up a plain tee, as in this Classiques Entier® 'Pezza' Leather Trim Ponte Top, $168. I used the Burda pattern as a guide to mark the contrast shoulder on my TNT tee pattern.  I pinned the front and back pattern together along the stitching line at the ...