Spring/Summer sewing plans...

To be honest, I'm not that good and making coherent sewing plans. I pretty much tend to make what I feel like making. Or what I need. 

Of course, that doesn't mean I don't have plans for what to sew in the coming. It rather means I have too many...

Me-Made-May is a bit of help here. It helps to be get even more aware of what I actually wear. I mostly wear trousers to work and I often struggle to make nice-yet-practical combinations. 

Ergo, I need another pair of my 'standard' trousers (seen here in with my cape). 

Probably one in black twill and one in dark blue jeans. And more 'semi-dressy' tops. Comfortable things which may ore may not be in jersey but are not really t-shirts. Like the flip twist top I made last week. 

However, that is hardly the stuff of daydreams. I'll show you some of the things I've sketched (I'm not great at sketching). 

This dress is something I've wanted to make for the past two summers. A strapless dress with a twist at the bust and a full skirt. I will make it in a cotton with an abstract sunflower print on white which I've had in my stash for those two years. I plan on constructing the bodice using lingerie drafting technique to create seperated bust pieces. I'm not sure about the skirt yet. Circle, pleats or dirndle... It may have to depend on the amount of fabric I have available. I think I bought 3 meters.

This is also a dress which has been lurking in my memory for a while... A sort of 1950's style bodice with short kimono sleeves on top of what the vintagesewing.info site (which unfortunately doesn't exist anymore) would call a "cowl skirt". In fact, the skirt is cut with large 'points' at the side which create a draped line. I plan on making this pretty soon, using some dark teal fabric I bought last autumn.

Do those things sound like sewing "frosting" to you yet? On the odd chance they don't, I'm pretty sure this will:

A jumpsuit with "cowl legs". Vaguely based on Poiret hobble skirts, last seen on Sylvia in Parade's End, this would be neither practical, nor in tune with today's trends. Nor, come to think of it, with my usual looks...

And yet, I'd love to make it. I plan on using some of the dye-it-yourself crepe fabric M gave me and dye it grey. 

I made a lot of different sketches for this thing. First, I got really ambitious and thought about mounting a complicated, draped bodice on a boned, strapless underbodice. Then, I remembered the idiosyncracies of jumpsuits and thought the better of it. After that, I considered a shirt style top, like Sylvia's outfit has. And noticed I already planned pretty much the same thing for the dress I discussed before. 

This sketch then, is the happy medium I ended up with. Coming this summer, to this blog ;)

And then there's this.

Remember the wonderful 1949 party dresses I showed you?

Two of those really caught my imagination. One is more of a winter option so I have no problem with letting it wait for a while. The other one it this one:

The Dior. Cotton or linen decorated with embroidery, beading and/or sequins... Wouldn't it be great to make some sort of own version?

And then I found this stuff for sale at the market:

They sold it in several colours so I brought the fabric I had in mind. A good quality blue cotton I bought a lot of when it was on sale over a year ago. It's  nice fabric but I've always felt that, on its own, the colour is way too much like that of a hospital cleaner's uniform...

I've used it once before, for the Marion hybrid dress, which was sort of a wearable muslin, but there's plenty left. 

I'm thinking shawl collar, short, fitted kimono sleeves and a long-ish half circle skirt, probably with stick-out pockets. 

And all of it, from about 20 cm above the hem right up to the collar, covered with bits of that lace, cut out and rearranged to elegantly overgrow this dress.

Way to much work? Ehm, probably. Impractical? Sure. Worth it? Kind of. 

I'm not on a deadline, I can work on this whenever I feel like it. Cutting out the lace flowers is the kind of mindless work which can be pretty nice sometimes and I'm sure some of the sewing on will be as well.

I don't think I'll complete this dress soon, but I'd like to think I can do it...

I can't even say I've covered all my crazy plans in this post. Just the well defined ones, for which I even have the fabric. There is more where they came from but I will consider myself very productive if I manage to make all of these, in addition to the more practical stuff...

And what about you? Any crazy, ambitious or imaginative plans looming at you sewing horizon?