I waited a little while before writing this post, since I wanted to get my sewing underway, before I shared this news. I have decided to take part in the Weaving Destination Fashion Show in Edinburgh again this year.
Weaving Destination is a social enterprise based in the State of Assam, North East, India. It helps vulnerable women including women living with HIV and survivors of human trafficking. For more information, take a look at the Weaving Destination website
Weaving Destination produces hand-woven silk and cotton products using traditional patterns. They include silk scarves, and silk and cotton fabrics. These can be bought on their Etsy site.
I’m really pleased to be able to support this event, and support an organisation that promotes fair-trade values and create sustainable employment. Plus the weaving destination fabrics are beautiful, take a look at last year’s fashion show.
Last year I sewed a halter-neck top and wrap skirt for the show.
Click here to view the video from last year’s entry.
This year, I was dying to get hold of some of the eri silk. I’ve gone for creating a simple dress, cut on the bias. Below is my design sketch. I’m not much of an artist, but I hope it gives some idea of the final garment.
For the pattern-drafting I turned to a book I found in the library – Bias Cut Dressmaking. I have to say that normality has returned as far as sewing books are concerned. I really found this book hard to get on with. The concept of the book is quite simple; first of all it outlines how to make basic blocks, for example a bodice block and then this is altered in simple ways to create various different garments, for example a halter-neck dress or a princess-seamed dress. For someone like me who has limited knowledge of drafting I thought it would be ideal. Sadly, and I truly feel sorry for the author, the book is poorly printed and poorly edited. There are several pages where it is virtually impossible to read the text, because of a printing problem. The page appears to be mostly grey. There are numerous occasions when the figures don’t tally with the explanations. For example, the text on one page mentioned figures 1, 2, etc. but the labelling didn’t exist. After spending some time assuming that the first diagram on the page was figure 1, I found my assumption was wrong and the middle diagram of three was figure 1! This was a small problem in comparison to the difficulties I had with the bodice block, where lines were labelled wrongly or not at all. Altogether this book was a challenging experience and at times I really felt like throwing my toys out the pram. In fact, now I’ve looked on Amazon, this book as got some truly depressing views.
Despite the book, I’ve managed to draft a pattern and I have cut out my dress. I was really apprehensive about this; I always feel like that when I’m about to cut into a beautiful piece of silk fabric. It’s a nervous moment! I’m been busy over the weekend sewing the dress and I’ll share some photos soon……
Steely Seamstress 
July 31, 2015 at 1:52 am
I agre, iris difficult to make the first cut! Sorry you had problems with the book.
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