The Victory Patterns Blog

I've had to use all my strength I could muster to restrain from announcing this properly over the past few months, although I don't think I did a very good job, because I had to leak the secret here and there.

But here's the BIG NEWS...

The lovely Liesl and Todd behind Oliver + S are hosting my patterns on their site, amongst a selection of other wonderful indie pattern designers. I feel privileged to have been invited to join them. They asked me to talk a bit about my background and the pattern line, so if you're interested, here's a link to their post.

Hey, let's talk about one of the best edge finishing techniques ever: Bias Binding!!! Who, what, when, where, why is binding you ask?!? Binding is a bias cut strip of fabric with pre-folded edges. The fact that it’s bias cut makes it ideal for finishing curved edges.

To celebrate my birthday, my best friend and I trotted off to the textile museum as they're having a Marimekko show. It's the depth of winter, and I've been longing for the colors of spring, and this show was more than a fix. I am so in love with the world that Marimekko built, their vision, consistency, approach to marketing, their contributions to fashion and industrial design, textiles and art, ALL of it!

 

Adding piping to your seams can add such a special touch. It's worth the extra bit of work as it can make your seams more prominent and beautiful. 

Piping comes in lots of different colors and is usually in a basic cotton fabric, but it looks extra fancy when you create piping covered with self-fabric. Whether your pattern calls for it or not, you can add piping to seams if you want to spruce up the design a little. Here's a tutorial to show you how to cover store-bought piping with self-fabric.

Kazz had posted her version of Anouk last week on Sew weekly, and it was utterly AWESOME!!! I was so excited to show it off here. A girl after my own heart, she's mixed my two favorite materials together, leather and chiffon. Aye Karumba! I get so happy to see super personalized versions of the patterns, and Kazz has such a vibrant, eclectic sense of style and she completely did it justice! 
Kazz wears her version of the Anouk dress

Today marks the first birthday of Victory Patterns! Yaaay!!!! This time last year I had been sitting on a couch with my super amazing brother for about two solid weeks with numb bums while we worked on building the website, eating the weirdest food, listening to comedy radio, pulling all-nighters until it was born into the world. That was one of the best feelings ever! 

I went on a vintage glass button hunt at the St.Lawrence Antique Market this weekend, and although I found some beauties, I came across these illustrations that were way more exciting! This set of hand-painted lithograph prints are from an old unknown catalog, and I flirted with the vendor so that he would let me take some photos (please tell me it was worth it)!

I deliberated while making this pattern whether to make a dress option. Silly me! After seeing Anna's version, I'm kicking myself a bit. I'm so happy to see this blouse turned into a dress. I think it turned out so great and I'm going to have to make one up for myself. It seems like everything Anna touches turns to romance. How does she do it?!?

I had the pleasure of working with Anabela from Fieldguided in creating her dream dress for her wedding, which took place this past September. When she asked me to make her dress, my heart started to race in a panic kind of way. I'm pretty accident-prone, so working with miles of delicate WHITE fabric is not something I trust myself with. Also, I'm a little bit scared of brides!