Contrary to popular rumor, I haven’t actually forgotten how to sew, or how to update my blog. 
I’ve been a bit ill this past week, but in between bouts of random nausea and exhaustion, I found the most amazing woman on YouTube. Her name is GiannyL, and she has inspired me to go on a sewing spree. More importantly, she has made sewing big projects really, really fun for me, namely because she doesn’t use patterns. At first, this scared me a little. Sewing without a pattern? Was this possible without years and years of experience? I watched her channel warily, but with growing fascination. Her videos were clearly not for absolute beginners, but they were also beautiful in their simplicity. For one thing, she doesn’t say a word. She explains what she’s doing only with gestures, camera angles and careful pointing. There is no seam allowance, fabric yardage, or stitch setting mentioned anywhere. Whether this is a personal choice or because she doesn’t speak English, I don’t know, and honestly don’t care. As it turns out, since I’m an extremely visual person, I follow the videos just fine, in fact I found it quite freeing. It took me awhile to work up the nerve to take the plunge, but now that I have, I am so glad that I did. Thursday night, I decided to make her elegant “off shoulder” dress from some left over jersey knit fabric that I had originally purchased to make several pairs of leggings out of. I borrowed my mom’s iPad, loaded up her video, and locked myself in my sewing room for 2 1/2 hours.
This is what I came up with:
Later on I found a wider black belt to wear with it, turning it from a cute little brown dress into something that easily could have been worn to a party or important event. I took it out for a test drive last night with my parents while we went grocery shopping, and pretty much everybody who saw me couldn’t help staring for a second or two. Not bad for a couple hours of work.
I think the most important part of making that dress was how much fun it was. Finally I didn’t have to worry about a complicated, hard to read pattern and its fiddly tissue paper that never wants to do what you need it to do. No worrying about sewing everything perfectly straight because you barely have a 1/2 of fabric in which to work. I made my own seam allowances, put my in my own hems where I felt they were appropriate, and just generally did things my way, according to the measurements of my body. It was awesome. And all from a 2:09 long video on YouTube.
My mom was totally blown away by what I had managed to seemingly pull out of nowhere. She and I spent most of today watching Gianny’s videos on her laptop (in gorgeous 1080p HD no less…*drool*) for what ended up being about three or four hours, lol. We finally ran out of videos to watch (probably a good thing) and went through my fabric collection, which unfortunately is pretty small at the moment. Still, we managed to find enough stuff for a few different projects. We decided on a tunic-style top, tube dress, “bat sleeve” shirt and pencil skirt. Since it was easiest, I started with the tunic top first.
I hemmed it quite a bit more than Gianny suggests because I was using different fabric than she was, fabric that liked to fray and disintegrate. However, because of the way I cut it, I couldn’t do a rolled hem without the risk of making it unwearable, so I used a fancy stitch I learned from my awesome sewing instructor Judy in our last class together to keep the edges from fraying into oblivion. It worked beautifully, and I think it really adds a professional feel to the garment. It’s also going to keep it nice and strong for me so I can wear it over and over again. It was also a lot of fun to sew.
I used this video as a reference.
And I’d say the top turned out pretty darn well, wouldn’t you?
It’s so comfortable and fun. Not too hot, not too cold. Basically I don’t ever want to take it off.
So yeah, that’s what I’ve been up to lately. And there’s more to come. Stay tuned! And thank you Gianny!! Your videos are awesome. Also, I am deeply envious of your adorable shoe collection. O_O <3
