While a lot of people were a little bit disappointed by the lack of Mod fashion in the first episodes of Mad Men’s season five, that didn’t stop you guys from voting for futuralon‘s beautiful shift dress Mid 60s Mod Mini in our Mad Women contest. Congratulations, futuralon! I think we’re all looking forward to being able to add such an essential and well executed piece to our pattern collection.

For our new contest Sensational Decorations we’d like you to post designs that are simple in shape but have fine details added. Click here to read all about it – then go and send us your ideas! If the last couple of weeks’ submissions are anything to go by, we’ll see a lot of amazing entries again!

As for the next free pattern – we are in the final stages of optimizing it, so we hope we’ll be able to publish it soon – it’s going to be a good one!

Kisses,
Kim

Hello everybody,

I had to delete a couple of entries from the contest – a lot of people seem to find our contest description misleading and send in their finished projects. I added an extra paragraph for new members to the contest description – let’s see if that helps.

Anyway, one of the “entries” was this beautiful Eva Dress, as made by lalaure – it is too good to just delete, so I thought I’d show it here!

This dress is wonderfull: easy to do and easy to wear. I am so happy to wear it with this beautifull sun.
I have done it very quickly, and the size is perfect.
I ever think for a new one!

Wow,

what a great start into the year this was! The pattern for Eva’s self titled dress is incredibly popular – it was posted all over the net and brought us many new members, which is just fantastic! We’re really happy that our little website finally seems to be making the rounds among DIY fashion lovers, and we particularly love that so many of our old and new members took part in the Wardrobe Essentials contest. The amount of beautiful entries was just amazing this time, so here is a big thank you to everybody who posted their design – you guys are true stars!

There can, however, be only one winner – and lyssophietje is the one who made it – congratulations! Her cleverly designed 4-in-1 dress left its competitors way behind. We must admit that it might be quite a challenge to construct a pattern that covers all the details she put into it, but we’ll see about that when we get to it. As of now we are working on the 50′s fashion dress that rma designed for our Past Perfect contest – watch this space…

In the meantime we are also eagerly waiting for the launch of Mad Men’s season 5 – and to celebrate this we’d like to invite you to take part in our latest contest, unsurprisingly titled Mad Women! We know a lot of you love the show just as much as we do, so we are hoping for plenty of stylish 60s-inspired designs. Let’s see what you lovely Stylerockers come up with this time!

Kisses,

Kim

Did everybody see the beautiful Eva dresses that soggywolfie and wenznz shared in our forum? I’m just going to post them here as well because I just love how unique they both look, even though they’re both from the same pattern:

The pattern for Sewhat‘s hooded bolero jacket has turned out to be a real crowd pleaser! Here are two more versions we found on the net, the blue one here and the grey and yellow one here.

Has everybody seen sewingrad‘s great version of the Everywhere Tails vest she posted in the forum – we particularly like her choice of fabric, the green brocade goes very well with this style! It’s always so much fun to see where you guys are taking our patterns (and also interesting to hear about any problems you might have run into), so please do keep the photos coming!

We finally have a new dress pattern for you to download and enjoy – it’s Eva’s dress from the “Let your shoes be your muse” contest. Hope you like it – and we can’t wait to read your comments!

Have a great 2012!

Kisses,
Kim

Lori is a bit of a Your Style Rocks! veteran – if you have followed our contests since the beginning of our website in August 2010, you have probably seen some of her designs already (like this, this and this). This time, however, is the first time she won one of our challenges: her Dress for Cate Blanchett came in late but still managed to get the most votes in our “Dress a Celeb” contest. If you haven’t seen Lori’s creation yet, you should really go and check it out right now, because it is awesome and we can really see the Great Cate wearing it (maybe we should ask her management if she could model it for our photos once it is finished? ).

The new contest should be easy enough for everybody, so we are hoping for lots and lots and lots of exciting design ideas. What we are asking you for this time is an essential piece for everyone’s wardrobe. It would be fantastic if this would result in a pattern that people would use over and over again, in different colours, fabrics, with slight modifications etc., don’t you think? So what would be that basic piece you always wish you could make? Draw a little sketch and send it in!

Kisses,
Kim

As always, I asked our latest contest winner, lizzieartist, to tell us a little bit about herself. I was particularly curious this time, because her winning entry “Through Mist and Time” is quite different from what we usually get when we ask you to submit your designs – think Avalon rather than 5th Avenue! So here is an introduction to the mastermind behind the top submission of our “Stitch Stories” challenge:

I’m 22 years old, I’m a graphic design student in Florida, United States. I have a million interests; reading, writing, drawing, photo-manipulation, photography… the list goes on. I even do voice-acting for the animated videos a friend of mine makes.

As far as fashion goes, I usually do costume design more than fashion design, so my designs tend to be a bit fanciful. I do, however, sometimes design things meant for every day wear. In the case of this contest though, I felt that the terms of it were just begging for something out of the ordinary, though I did get more carried away with it than I intended…

While I draw out a lot of designs, I’m not very experienced in sewing. I have altered many articles of clothing when they didn’t fit me or my siblings, or mended clothing, and a few times I made clothing for small dolls or stuffed animals. But I haven’t had the materials or opportunity to sew something new from a pattern, and certainly nothing of my own design. Now I hope that I may soon be able to do so.

…that’s the title lizzieartist gave her creation with which she won our Stitch Stories contest. And while her outfit inspired by Celtic mythology is certainly not for everyday wear, we do realize that there is a growing community of fantasy lovers who make their own clothes and are just desperate for good sewing patterns to cater to their needs. I’m particularly looking forward to the e-mail interview I always do with the winner this time and to finding out more about lizzieartist.

The new contest is called Dress a Celeb and it should be lots of fun! Have you ever wished you could be the personal stylist to your favourite star? Well then, use your crayons, pencils, watercolours or a painting software of your choice and let us see your ideas!

In the meantime we are working on the overdue patterns. Next up is Eva‘s self-titled dress from our Let your shoes be your muse contest. It is almost ready to be published, we just need to take a couple of photos, so expect the finished pattern up on the website before the end of the week!

Kisses,

Kim