SewTawdry

Burda Color Block

2012-01-31T22:52:00.000-05:00

So one Saturday not long ago, I was happily sewing a Roland Mouret inspired dress. My DH yells “Mail is here!” I take a break to see if any of the vintage patterns I ordered had arrived. No patterns, but the BurdaStyle Feb. issue was there, a week earlier than normal. Since I am on a sewing break, I decide to look at the magazine. I see the color block version of dress and my SAD (Sewing Attention Deficit) kicks in.

Burda Feb 2012 #117

Roland was pushed to the side and I immediately started the process of tracing the pattern. Of course it helped that the gray and navy ponte knits I was using for the Roland dress could also be used for the Burda dress. The magazine show 4 colors used for the color blocking. I consider using bright blue and aqua as colors 3 and 4.

4 color combination

3 color combination

but decided to use a 3 color combo.

Alternate 3 color combination

I wished I had some orange ponte knit. I really like the orange, gray, and navy color block combo.

BurdaStyle magazine pattern tracing is not my favorite activity, and tracing this pattern seemed to take longer than usual. The factors that caused this were the pattern lines being printed in red, there were lots of them, and they were irregular shapes. Red lines are hard to see through my tracing paper, especially when they cross the solid red patterns also printed on the same sheet. I also tend to look for familiar shaped pattern pieces rather than use the numbers printed along the sheet border to locate the pieces. I couldn’t get away with that on this pattern.

There is a lot of shaping in the seams of this dress. The visible bust dart is balanced by a dart incorporated in the seam on the opposite side. Waist shaping is also done in the V seam at the bottom of the front waist sections. The center back seam curves in at the waist, out over the butt and back in underneath it. Great for callipygians - those who have shapely buttocks (my dad taught me that word along time ago and I still enjoy saying it) But since I am not one, that seam got straighten from waist to hem.

Shaping in seams

I recommend tracing and adding seam allowances accurately so you don’t lose all this subtle shaping. Some of the odd shaped pattern pieces are cut out once and care had to be taken to ensure they are cut oriented correctly on the right side of the fabric. I almost ended up with a reverse image dress because I was not paying attention during the cutting out. To make assembly go faster, I laid the cut pieces out on a flat surface as they would be placed in the finished dress. There are illustrated instructions for this dress in the pattern supplement, which is helpful.

I did not install a working zipper in the back as the pattern instructions suggest. I sewed the front overlap partially shut leaving just enough room for me to pull the dress over my head. I sewed invisible, iron resistant, nylon snaps to hold the front closed after the dress was on.

Snaps

I liked the exposed zipper down the back as shown in the magazine, but for the length of my dress it had to be 41 inches, with an open bottom and either blue or gray. Not available in my local fabric stores! I special ordered a zipper from www.zippersource.com It took two weeks to arrive. Much longer than any previous custom orders, and it is what delayed this post about the dress. I used a 1.25 wide satin ribbon to stabilize the center back seam and prevent it from stretching from the weight of the zipper. I chose a wide ribbon so it would be under the whole width of the zipper. I hand basted the ribbon over the center back seam on the inside of the dress.

back seam stabilized with ribbon

I then hand basted the zipper over the center back seam on the outside of the dress. And lastly, sewed the zipper in place with four lines of stitching. One along the outer edge of the zipper tape and one against the teeth, on both sides of the zipper.

Zipper basted in place

I like the dress a lot. The colors make me happy. The bright blue pendant shape on top draws the eyes away for lower, wider parts. It is very comfortable. Now to get back to the neglected Roland dress.

Catching Up

2012-01-21T12:54:00.000-05:00

Well, work has been every bit as stressful as I thought it would be when I was told I was taking over the responsibilities of my coworker, in addition to the ones I already had. “Drinking from a fire hose” is an apt description of how I felt the first two weeks. So much information, as well as phone calls and emails about problems, coming at me non stop. My new responsibilities now include the day to day support of applications that track the hourly workforce work time and attendance. We have multiple unions, each with their own convoluted and complicated pay rules. The union contract pay rules must be reflected correctly in the application or paychecks are incorrect. People get very upset over incorrect paychecks. Imagine that! This week I am finally starting to feel I will eventually have a good knowledge of the applications and be able to fix my clients’ problems quickly and efficiently, which is a huge factor in my job satisfaction.

Sewing is my de-stressor. Blogging about sewing is low priority, which means I have some catching up to do.

I finished up the last two pieces of my 6 PAK wardrobe plus two extra ones. Here is the story board for this mini wardrobe.

Misty Morning 6 PAC Story Board

Kwik Sew 3915 a close fitting pull over top with full length sleeves and V-neckline with lapped collar that is gathered at front neckline with four decorative buttons and loops.

I made it out of a print rayon Lycra knit.

Kwik Sew 3915

Actually I used a TNT T-shirt pattern and added the Kwik Sew collar to it. Why? Well the Kwik Sew sizing is S,M and L. To fit the measurements in each of those size ranges, the sleeve pattern back and front armhole curve is the same length, with a short cap height which results in a wider sleeve. I need a more shaped sleeve cap with back armhole length longer than the front. Also I prefer a narrower, close fitting sleeve in a knit top, which the higher sleeve cap creates.

My TNT knit top pattern is an older New Look pattern.

New Look 6779

The second pair of pants is Silhouette Yoga Pant pattern made in a gray heavy weigh poly/rayon/lycra ponte knit.

At the sewing expo, Peggy Sagers, the designer of Silhouette patterns, was wearing a pair of these pants and they looked very polished and comfortable. Not at all like she was on her way to yoga class. The pant pattern includes a fabric covered, 2 inch wide elastic waist band and seaming down the front and back legs. By the way, the line drawing of the pant front on the website is incorrect. It looks like this. Hint: seams on front leg.

When I emailed to ask if the pattern had been changed, Peggy replied "Thanks for bringing that to my attention...we had put the pattern back envelope up on the website and before printing noticed the error and clearly, did not go back and fix...we will do...so thanks, we will get it fixed...the back of the pattern is correct in the printing, but not on the website...thanks again...Peggy"

The extra garments were both made with Silhouette patterns. Peggy got a lot of my money at the sewing expo. A raglan sleeve knit top pattern with shirred sleeves and princess seams, made of a light weight, opaque, dark gray poly Lycra knit.

Silhouette Pattern #110

I liked the shirring and the princess seaming, which is only in the larger women's sizes, not the kid sizes which are also included in the pattern. I did have to add some width at the hips area as the pattern seemed to be drafted for a body whose hips were smaller than bust.

Silhouette Pattern 110

And a very loose-fitting, pullover top with one-piece twist front (wrong side shows)

Silhouette Pattern 95

The fabric is a rayon gauze, very drapey with an open weave. This top was quick to make. Hemming the edges of the front and back pieces took the longest time. I used a rolled hem, but in hindsight, a serged edge would have looked just as good and made the task quicker. I have always admired the bohemian look of this type of garment when it is worn by others, but it is way out of my comfort zone of tailored, fitted tops. Still, I will try anything once. I like it, but it is so drapey it gets in the way when I am working with my hands and it catches on things. It has been consigned to my “wear to a stand around and look good” wardrobe for a party, lecture, or art show.

All of the Silhouette Patterns are available at this website. Silhouette patterns.

Here is some pictures of the new garments worn in combination with the older ones.

On the Border

2011-12-30T14:50:00.222-05:00

Wow, I was really surprised how many of you had gone through similar job layoffs. Your comments really helped me shake my bad mood.
The holiday guests have gone on to Fla. We live a short distance from I95, the main north/south road on the east coast, a good stopping point between Fla and northern locations. Hubby and oldest son are out shopping for a used car with good gas mileage and storage capacity for a duffel bag full of ice hockey gear and sticks. Yep, they took the bag on the test drives. I pity the poor salesman. The smell of a bag of used (sweaty) hockey pads is indescribable. No amount of soaking the pads in a tub full of bleach solution can erase it. Phew! The reason for the new car is that as of Jan 1, younger son is a legal driver. He will inherit the “loser cruiser” an old, mud colored, no horsepower, mini van. And older brother gets a “new” car in preparation of going off to college in the near future.

As for sewing, I have been working on the final pieces for my 6 PAC wardrobe. The one inspired by my misty morning drive to work.

I order this double georgette silk fabric to make a blouse.

and got this

A border print! Not along one selvage edge, but every 26 " in the print. This is the 2nd time DenverFabrics has surprised me by sending me a border print when I thought I was getting an allover print. There was no mention of this in the product description and the border was not shown in the online picture. This annoyed me greatly because I had ordered a specific quantity assuming an all over pattern. And they always ignore the border placement when they cut the length specified. So each cut end was a different distance from the border. Grr. When life deals you border prints, you’ve got to get creative. I found the Purrfections 1039 modern poet blouse pattern in my collection and thought the border print could be used for the cuffs and cross over band.

Oh and the border was not printed on the cross grain. It was about ½ inch off at one end. Better to have the fabric of an interfaced band cut slightly off grain, than to incorporate the border on the bottom of a garment piece and have to cut the piece out slightly askew for the border to be straight. After reading the patternreview.com reviews of the Purrfection pattern, I felt it would require too many alterations in the back, sleeve and shoulders for me. Those are my problem areas. I still loved the style though. I looked through old Burda Style magazines for a similar shoulder princess seam blouse pattern that I could modify to look like the Purrfections blouse. I found the perfect one in Jan 2008 blouse 105/106.

I overlaid the Purrfection center front pattern over the Burda center front pattern and traced the deep V neck line with a 2" overlap at center front.

The neckline is on the bias. To make sure this edge did not stretch during sewing, I did several things.
1. I used light weight fusible interfacing on the facing.
2. I made sure to cut the interfacing using the pattern piece (accurate) rather than the garment pieces or the pattern piece with the garment fabric still attached (inaccurate) and yes, I am guilty of doing this.
3. I used fusible straight grain iron-on stabilizing tape on the neck line of the garment front pieces. I pinned the fabric to the pattern, wrong side up, to ensure it was the exact shape of the pattern. Then I applied the fusible tape over the seam line.

Since the neck band I wanted to use was much wider than the one on the pattern, I moved the neck/ band seam outward towards the shoulder seam, otherwise the band would have been covering my ears. I added some thin flexible trim at the band seam to accent the V neck.

I will post pictures of the blouse on me when I finish the new pair of pants I am working on now.

Does my blouse match your kitchen? DH and I remember the color scheme and pattern of the border as being very popular in the tile selection at the Do-It-Yourself stores a couple of years ago.

Bits and Pieces

2011-12-23T19:55:00.000-05:00

I usually love to sew dresses for year end parties. This year I just wasn't into it.

My employer announced another salaried employee reduction in late Nov., with notification to be made on Dec 15. Horrible timing. I didn’t RSVP to 2 company related holiday parties until after the Dec 15th date for obvious reasons. I still have a job. Several of my coworker/friends do not. This is the 3rd reduction in as many years; declining market, etc. The last two cut out the poor performers and none value added skills. This one was much harder to go through. The selection criterion was not publicized, or even explained to the people that were terminated. Less than 4 years and I am out the door with full retirement benefits. I hope I can hang on that long with my increased workload.

Rather than sew something new, I refurbished my little black dress from last year. I like this dress a lot. It is fitted and has a bra friendly V back which shows off the results of those P90X back and shoulder workouts. I blogged about the dress here. Dec 2011 I removed the silver and black faux jewels and replaced them with a black braided trim with gold balls.

Over it I wore the faux fur jacket that I made last year.

I attended a couple of classes at G Street Fabric's several weeks ago. Beginners Guide to Sewing Silks and Sewing with Sheer Fabrics. Both were very informative and the instructor had a wonderful trunk show of garments she had made. There was one top that I really liked. It was made in a sheer fabric with narrow french seams that accented the unique style lines. All the instructor could remember was that the top was made from a discontinued Vogue pattern. The sketch is below. It may not be completely accurate because it is from memory. The top had kimono sleeves. The lower back wrapped around to the front, and there are geometric pieces sewn on the bottom. Do any of you recognize the style lines/pattern?

What Pattern is this?

Well, I am off to paint the bathroom that will be used by the guests who are arriving on Christmas Day. I wish I was motivated to keep my home in guest ready condition, but I know when it comes down to a choice of what to do in my spare time, sewing wins over painting any day.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday season!

Troublesome Trio

2011-12-04T23:50:00.000-05:00

My week off and the Thanksgiving holiday was lovely. DS hosted the holiday dinner so the parents would not have to travel far. Here is her gorgeous table before the meal started

and after.

I was taking the pictures. When I had put the camera away and filled my plate, I found that DS the eldest (19) had promoted himself to the adult table and the only empty seat was at, you guessed it, the kid table. So I ate with my nieces and nephews, ages 6-17, and had a great time.

On the sewing side of life, I am working on a 6 piece wardrobe, part of a 6PAC sew along at Stitcher’s Guild 6PAC The goal is to sew a 6 piece wardrobe in 3 months.

The color scheme for my mini wardrobe was inspired by the colors I saw, for what seemed like weeks, on my morning drive to work. Gray skies or fog. Ribbons of concrete top stitched with lanes lines of dull gold and white. A leafy border of fading gold and rust above the ribbed cement noise barriers lining the side of the road. My drive home from work is in the dark.

The colors: greige (gray +beige), brown, gold, white, rust. The textures: smooth, ribbed or leafy. Techniques: top stitching, pin tucking, gathers

I have completed the first three garments. Each of them had an issue/challenge.

The knit top is Burda 1-2011 – 129.

I used a small piece of poly lycra animal print fabric. With a careful layout, ¾ sleeves and 3/8 seams, I was able to get all the pattern pieces cut out. I sewed the bodice using a straight stitch, something I do for fitting purposes on knits because I hate to rip out serging. It was too big, gigunda. I would have expected this top pattern to have been drafted with negative ease. But for the size 42 ( bust 36.25 inches) the pattern bust measurement was 38.5. I removed 4 inches of ease to get this top to fit snugly. Some of this may have been because my fabric was softer and stretchier than the jersey fabric used by Burda. On the back piece, which has the front armhole and shoulder cut on, I did it by creating a center back seam. On the front I cut the excess fabric off the sides.

The pants were a challenge because of operator (me) error tracing the pattern.

Where was my mind that day? I didn’t trace the front zipper area extension or the pocket extension. The pants pieces on the pattern sheet overlapped and I inadvertently traced the grain line for the front pant piece on the back pattern piece and vise versa. It wasn’t until I was laying out the pattern pieces on the fabric that it occurred to me something might be wrong. The pant leg bottoms were not on the cross grain.

I discovered, after 20 years of using Burda patterns, that the grain line indicator on any pattern piece starts at the top edge. I caught the grain line and the front extension error before cutting the fabric. But not the pocket extension. I didn’t notice that until I was sewing the pocket to the pocket lining and they did not match up. The save was easy, but not satisfying. The side seam can be seen in the pocket opening. The fabric is a milk chocolate brown wool gabardine. I do like the style of these pants, especially the close fit in the upper leg with the gentle flare at the hem. This is not mentioned in the copy or obvious from the line drawing.

Finally the jacket – a Sandra Betzina Vogue pattern 1036 with lots of pattern pieces and top stitching.

I chose a cement colored polyester suede fabric. It was the perfect color and texture, but what was I thinking? I must have taken out the top stitching on every seam at least once because of wavering stitches and tension problems. My machine does great top stitching in the center needle position. But when I try to use an edge foot and a needle left or right position, the thread tension goes out the window. I actually have to tighten the tension of the heavier top thread to fix the problem. And how the heck do you press this type of fabric flat? Heat, steam, both? Too much heat and it melts. Ask me how I know. I broke down and actually used a press cloth to prevent imprinting the suede texture with the iron. But the press cloth I used was muslin and I couldn’t see what I was doing. It was very frustrating. I was complaining about this to my sewing friends over lunch, after a guild meeting, and one mentioned this Threads magazine article "Make a Press-Cloth Wardrobe," Threads #154, p. 44 Guide to Press Cloths about having a variety of pressing cloths, including one of silk organza which is slightly transparent. The silk organza worked great, but I still had to hand baste edges to hold them in place for top stitching. Any "how to press" suggestions are appreciated as I would like to make Vogue 1268, the Guy Laroche shirt dress, out of similar fabric. And to add more rework; I cut the lining for the jacket out of some heavier taffeta like material from my stash. It was too stiff and changed the hand of the suede. So I ripped it out and cut another lining out of Bemberg.

This jacket took forever. If I don’t look too closely at the top stitching, I actually like it a lot.

Right now I am trying to decide whether to make a few new holiday party outfits or wear ones I already have. Making new ones is definitely winning.

Red Pant Friday

2011-11-18T10:09:00.000-05:00

I declare today Red Pant Friday! A great day to wear red pants. Why? Because it is Friday, the last day of work for 9 days - vacation yeah! Food, family and friends coming up on Thanksgiving, and the first frost of the fall i.e. I am cold, time to break out my wool pants.

My other suitcase sewing project was a pair of red pants. The pattern was Burda 9-2011-107, a fitted , slim leg pant with no side seams. Instead there is rather interesting wedge shaped piece over the hip area. The wedge seams incorporate the darts usually seen in fitted pants. There are in-seam pockets in the front wedge seam and a pocket stay that helps hold the pockets in place and flatten the tummy.

The pattern recommends a stretch fabric. I used a prewashed, medium weight, wool gabardine from Vogue Fabrics. I did add some extra fabric in the waist and upper hips because it was non stretch and the largest pattern size was a 42. I usually use a size 44 for waist and high hip. There is an invisible zipper in the back seam that extends all the way up to the top of the waistband. I made the pants to duplicate this look by Australian brand Lover.

I have the fabric and pattern (self drafted) for the blouse, but sourcing the lace has been an adventure. It is a very light weight net lace. The scallops are larger than normal and the transparency creates interest where two layers overlaps. After an exhaustive search, I found similar white lace on a British bridal site for big bucks. And an acceptable poly lace at JoAnn’s. When I attempted to dye the poly lace red using iDye Poly Red, I ended up with some very pretty wine colored lace.

That really puzzled me. Oh well, I have some red silk netting in my fabric stash so someday if I am feeling especially creative, I may embroider my own lace using my sewing machine and instructions found on the internet. Since the blouse is going to be a long time coming, I decided to incorporate the pants into my winter wardrobe. With styling inspiration from netaporter.

McQueen

Versace

Though I didn't go with the black shoes cause I wanted to wear the red ones I bought for the Lover look. The jacket is one I made several years ago with a Burda style pattern, to replicate an Akris jacket I loved.

Sewing from a Suitcase

2011-10-23T14:26:00.000-04:00

Yes, that is what I did last week while at of out of town, work related training course. The class location was a drivable distance, so I took along my sewing machine and packed sewing projects in my suitcase. A blouse, with the pattern pieces cut out, the interfacing, buttons, and threads. Pants, cut out, with thread and zipper. I forgot the interfacing for the pants waistband, a different type of interfacing than for the blouse, so I didn’t get as far on them as I had planned. I did finish the blouse.

I wanted to make a blouse to go with the pants in my last post. BurdaStyle and the retail web sites are showing a lot of flowy, lightweight blouses with pants for fall. I really liked the bouse on the right in the Fall 2011 Lutterloh fashion supplement (pamphlet of patterns).

But as I am still a Lutterloh pattern neophyte and not familiar with the fit and built in ease of these patterns. I decided to use a pattern brand I was more comfortable with. This BurdaStyle blouse, from the 9/2010 issue, pattern 102 is almost an exact replica of the Lutterloh blouse including the stand collar, though it is hidden behind stiff, bias cut, double thickness, gathered ruffles.

I drafted my own pattern for the small cascading ruffle that was sewn on the one side of the button placket on the Lutterloh blouse.

Drafting the ruffle:

1. Determine the length and width of the ruffle strip. Length was the distance from the neck seam to the waist. Width was about 1.5 “(no seam allowances included at this time) Cut a rectangle of pattern paper to this size. Label the neck, center front on the pattern piece.

2. Cut slashes from the outer edge to the center front edge, at even increments, leaving a hinge of paper on the center front edge.

3. Open up each slash the same amount to form a curve. The number, location, and open area of the slashed determine how the ruffle looks and hangs. Fewer slashes, fewer and bigger waves. More slashes, more gentle waves.

4. Trace new ruffle shape onto a new piece of pattern paper, smoothing out the curves. Round off the outside corner bottom edge. Label center front edge and neck on pattern.

5. Cut out ruffle, adding seam allowances to neck and center front edges, and hem allowance to long curved edge.

6. Finish curved edge by desired method.

I did the narrow hem on the edge of the ruffle by hand, while watching Project Runway. Twice, because I turned the hem to the wrong side the first time I did it, distracted by the TV. That helped me empathize with the frustration some of the designers had executing their designs that night, and I got extra practice on narrow hemming.

The fabric is a silk chiffon remnant purchased at the Vogue Fabrics sewing expo booth. I was determined to use silk chiffon for this blouse. It has the most divine lightness and drape, which cannot be duplicated in rayon or poly, IMHO. But silk chiffon is my sewing nemesis, especially keeping the fabric flat and on grain while cutting out the pattern.

This time I did two things that improved the process. I ripped the fabric into shorter lengths, corresponded to the length needed for the bodice pieces, so I had smaller pieces of fabric to square up. And I used a layer of paper under the silk in the pattern cutting out process. I have heard of this before, but never tried it. I used newspaper because it was handy (I checked for ink rub off first). In hind sight I could have used tissue paper, which I buy at the dollar store for gift wrapping. I am a convert to using the paper! It is easy to pin the fabric to the edge of the paper to keep it on grain. And the cutting, oh my! The fabric does not shift or push up in front of the scissor because of the paper's stiffness. And my scissors cut the paper/fabric together much cleaner and easier than the chiffon fabric by itself.

Other construction details - I used skin tone silk organza as the interfacing for the front band cuffs, yoke and collar. And French seams to neatly finish inside seams. The cuffs are standard rectangular shirt cuff. The pattern used is from the other, tie neck version, of this blouse in the same issue.

I am pleased with how this turned out. It looks nice with the pants and also worn with jeans as an over blouse. It can also be worn with gray pants and jackets I have in my wardrobe.

That is Ms. Ashley trying to get into the picture. Speaking of cats. I just found out about a book called Crafting with Cat Fur Yes, it is about using your cat's fur in crafting projects like felting. Ms. Ashley is a long haired cat and a prodigious spring time shedder. I have no desire to use her hair for crafts. But I thought some other members of my family, with a potentially large supply of that raw material, might be interested.

A Taste of Wine - Burda 8_2011 Pant 137

2011-10-04T16:47:00.000-04:00

I seem to be spending my weekends gallivanting off to quilt shows and sewing expos. This results in lots of new ideas and purchases, but very little sewing activity. I did manage to add some color and a new pant silhouette to my fall wardrobe. The color, a wine bordering on magenta, the silhouette - slouchy tapered leg. The pattern is Burda pant 8_2011 137.

Burda pant Aug 2011 #137

The pants have a double pleat, one within another. A sewn inverted pleat covered by a larger pleat. I think I interpreted the directions correctly. They look fine and the waistband fits so I am happy.

I was concerned about looking like an ice cream cone in narrow leg pants so I did a comparison of the pattern leg width to some other pants in my closet. The pattern leg circumference is 15.5 inches. The narrowest leg pants in my closet were 14" jeans so I felt comfortable making the pattern. I did not include the side seam pockets. Most of my hip curve is between my waist and 4 inches below. Side seam pockets always gape on that short, extreme curve.

The fabric is a lightweight wool lycra gabardine from Vogue Fabrics. It is described as washable and came through that test beautifully. It has the soft drape needed for these pants. I did not line them. I looked on the netaporter web site for purple pants and styling ideas.

Diane von Furstenberg

Acne

YSL

I prefer pants like this hemmed long, covering the ankle, and worn with chunky high heel shoes. But looking at the picture, I think I need to shorten mine about an inch to keep the leg from pooling on the top of my foot. I haven't rotated my summer clothes out yet, so in this picture I am working the color blocking trend and wearing the pants with a gold sleeveless RTW knit top and chunky sandals. But the weather is cooling so I am in the process of choosing a pattern, and fabric from the stash selection below, to make a coordinating blouse.

Just wanted to mention the wonderful 2 days I had at the Chantilly, VA Sewing Expo. I took a lot of classes, mostly on fitting or sewing techniques. Even if a class is on a topic I am familiar with, it is good to have the refresher and see the demo’s again. This year Cynthia Guffey’s “Fitting your Hanger” ( shoulders and back) presentation really drove home the point that a lot of fitting issues in the bodice are because of poor shoulder and back fit. Before you start messing with bust and armholes, compare the shoulder slope of the pattern to your shoulder slope and make sure they match. Lorraine Henry’s "Crotchety Crotches" class discussed measuring and fitting armhole and leg crotches. I never thought of underarms as a crotch, but they are. She did an interesting comparison of her crotch shape to that of several pattern lines, and a pattern copied from a RTW pair of Liz Claiborne pants. It was easy to see which pattern fit her best ( Liz). I want to do the same comparison exercise myself. I bought several new pairs of specialty scissors, some independent patterns, fabric and lace. I love sewing expos and always come away invigorated and raring to go/sew.

The Rest of the Wardrobe

2011-09-18T20:02:00.000-04:00

Here are the other pieces of my summer sewn wardrobe. They are all made using patterns that were very popular, with lots of positive reviews, and coverage on other blogs.

The skirt shown with most of the tops is view C of Simplicity 2451. I use a size 14 for the back and a 16 for the front as that is how I am distributed below the waist. I lined it to reduce wrinkles.

This sleeveless top with contrast band is made from Simplicity 2892. I wanted to incorporate the tribal trend into the wardrobe so I used a rayon cotton print (Hancock Fabrics) with silk ruching and neck ruffle.

This sleeveless top in a teal crinkle poly/cotton voile ( Jo-Ann Fabrics) is sewn from Burda 07-2007 -119. To keep the crinkles from stretching in the armhole and neck line area during construction, I use bias fusible stabilizing tape to hold them in place. Burda magazine instructions quite often recommend this type of tape and I find it very helpful. My original supply came from Judy Barlup but I found a cheaper source at.fabric.com fusible tape

I collect 1980’s Vogue blouse patterns because they were designed for woven fabrics, unlike most of the top patterns nowadays, and they have interesting details. Patterns from that time were designed for shoulder pads and generally need to be modified if pads will not be worn. I made changes to the shoulder seam and sleeve hole opening to remove the space for the shoulder pads.

View A of Vogue 2504 was made in a variegated purple print silk (EOS). I love the print. But this fabric is overprinted with tiny plastic squares, which made it a challenge to iron and give the fabric a shiny snakeskin look. I washed the fabric several time in really hot water hoping to eliminate or dull the coating. It didn’t work.

Butterick 5185, a twist top with angled hem lines was made in a non stretchy shadow print cotton knit . Thi stop was fast to make and easy to wear.

And lastly Simplicity 2554 view F - A sleeveless blouse with flounces sewn into front and back shoulder princess seams in a purple, clay pink and black silk print ( G Street Fabrics). I love the colors. This is one of those multiple style top patterns where some are designed for knit and some for woven fabrics. Wovens are recommended for this top, but it has been made successfully in knits.

I have still not started my fall sewing. I have purchased a few fall fabrics, and am studying the Sept. fashion magazines from France, Britain, and Australia, which I buy at my local Barnes and Noble book store. Earlier this week I attended an Accessorizing Workshop given by a local image consultant. A small group of us met at Nordstrom’s for the initial lecture on “using fabulous accessories (shoes, belts, jewelry, sunglasses) to make an outfit spectacular” while considering body shape and hair and skin coloring. Then we trouped on down to the Chico’s, Black Market/ White House and Ann Taylor stores where she showed us the on trend accessories at each store and used us as models to illustrate flattering style and proportion. Then it was back to Nordstrom’s where we had a homework exercise - “Pull together a flattering outfit, clothing and accessories, for yourself from any department in the store.” It was fun roaming about the store, selecting shoes from the shoe dept. choosing jewelry, picking cool sunglasses from the teen dept. and why not …high end garments for my outfit. Yes, I did have to explain to the clerks what I was doing, but they were very helpful. It was not easy task for me. I think it was harder because of my sewing background. I kept thinking “If only they had a jacket in this fabric, but in a more flattering style, or if I could just find a pair of cropped pants in this particular color..." rather than accepting and working with what the store had to offer. But I got an A on my homework assignment, and seeing the latest clothes and accessories gave me a lot of ideas. And to my husband’s relief, I did not buy a thing.

Not Falling Yet

2011-09-06T17:32:00.000-04:00

I am still sewing summer clothes because it is quite warm where I live, though the humidity has dropped, the light is softer and it is now dark when my 5:45 AM alarm goes off. Sigh, yes fall is on its way. Since June I have been sewing items for a summer wardrobe, part of a sew along our ASG sewing group is doing as a follow up for a presentation I gave on SWAPing. My wardrobe was inspired from these photos in my idea files.

All of them feature dark gray bottom pieces. I wanted to take the easy approach for this wardrobe and make the bottoms out of the same fabric, charcoal gray cotton linen look( Hancock Fabrics). Then go to town with tops that coordinated. Just about every color can go with gray, which meant I could find coordinating fabrics in my stash. It was so hot when I was sewing many of the tops that they are either sleeveless or overblouses intended to be worn without a jackets.
Using LIFO, the latest top is made from OOP Simplicity 5555.

The fabric is a white linen with black pinstripes (JoAnn Fabrics). I ombre dyed the fabric ocean blue and then added black to the dye mix for the darkest color band, inspired by this Anthropologie dress.
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Unfortunately this band cannot be seen because it is in the turned up hem. A lessoned learned for the next time I do this type of dying.

The pants are straight leg falling from the hip, faced waist with side invisible zipper made from my pants sloper.

Blouse Burda 7770

2011-08-22T13:16:00.000-04:00

I made this blouse earlier this summer and have worn it quite a lot. When the weather is hot and humid, I prefer a sleeveless over blouse. They tend not to show the rivulets of perspiration running down my body as readily as a close fitting knit top.

Burda 7770 – princess seam blouse with extended sleeve and an asymmetrical opening. This Burda pattern has been around since 2007, so I was really surprised that there wasn’t already a review in blog land. Burda envelope patterns are printed with seam allowances, and finished garment measurement for hip and bust on printed on the pattern pieces just like the big 4. The only thing I don’t like about the Burda envelope patterns is that the cutting layouts are printed on the pattern tissue, not on the instruction sheets. I often want to see the layout before I open up the pattern tissue. And from years of using big 4 pattern brands, I am programmed to rough cut around the pattern pieces and throw away the pattern tissue scraps.

The fabric I used for this blouse is a cotton print remnant purchased at JoAnn Fabrics. The colors and floral motifs of the print reminds me of a piece of fabric my mother had in the early 70’s. The blouse on the pattern envelope front looks a bit small in the bust on the model. I checked the finished garment measurement of the bust printed on the pattern pieces and there was a 2 inch difference between it and mine (wearing ease). I thought that would be enough, but when I tried on the completed blouse it was tight in the bust area and I am not a busty gal. I reduced the seam allowance in the princess seam to 3/8 inch over the bust to give me a bit more room.

The asymmetrical front opening is faced, Easy peasy sewing.The only issue I had was, because I was using a remnant that was less than the recommended yardage, I had a difficult time finding a piece of the fabric with the right shape and size for the asymmetrical facing. Don’t tell, but it is slightly off grain. The blouse required 7 buttons and I had 8. I sewed the extra button to the inside side seam allowance, as is done on RTW men’s shirts, so it would be handy if I lost a button.

There is a very similar blouse in the Burda Style magazine 06-2007 issue, # 112 and 113, with the same asymmetrical front band/closure. However the magazine blouse has darts instead of princess seams, and either cap sleeves or long sleeves instead of extended sleeves. The long sleeve version is featured in the detailed sewing course section. The magazine pattern would probably be easier to sew/alter and give the same look.

I wear the blouse with several different bottoms; white RTW jeans, and culottes and capris which I made. More on the latter garments in the next post. This is a picture of me wearing the blouse while giving a presentation at an ASG meeting. The presentation topic was planning a SWAP (Sewing with a Plan) around a garment already in your wardrobe .

Back from Vacation

2011-08-09T21:39:00.000-04:00

I just returned from a wonderful vacation at the Delaware shore.

My vacation attitude was best summarized by this line from the Jimmy Buffett, Zak Brown song, Knee Deep, ”only worry in the world, is the tide going to reach my chair” My beach chair was parked at the high tide line so I could keep an eye these two "sea urchins".

They had to be forced to take a breaks from playing in the waves and digging holes in the sand. I wish I had their energy. We were dreading a beach vacation in the hot humid weather the east coast is experiencing, but it was tempered by cool ocean breezes and we could actually were able to sit comfortably on the porch of the beach house in the evening. We returned home to a crunchy brown lawn and parched looking perennials. My fig trees are the only plants in the yard thriving in the hot weather and they will have a bumper crop, if I can just keep them watered until the fruit ripens.

Sewing related activities during the vacation included a trip to all the quilt shops in the area with DS, BFF and SIL, who are all quilters. My DS has a AccuQuilt,

a fabric cutting machine that uses dies to quickly and accurately cut the strips, triangles and other shapes used in quilts. On the one rainy day of the week, we sent the guys off to the local nail salon to get pedicures and we used the Accuquilt to production cut quilt shapes. I have saved my good silk work blouses for years with the idea of making a quilts from them to “document” the fabrics and colors worn during my career 1979-20??. This is only a small sample of my old blouses.

Originally quilts were made from clothing scraps, and historians learned a lot about the fabrics and dyes of those times from studying the quilts. But nowadays, quilt shops have fabrics designed specifically for quilting, complete with marketing and advertising campaigns, classes, and glossy books to encourage sales. I am a bit saddened by this trend. These fabrics are not anything like the natural fiber fabrics used currently for clothing. I cut apart my blouses, preserving the large sleeve, front, and back pieces. So while SIL and BFF were cutting up the latest quilt fabrics, I was cutting triangles and strips from silk broadcloth and shirting. I recently read a post by Lauriana of petitmainsauvage She buys circa 1980's silk blouses like mine from thrift stores and repurposes them. I thought “Honey, I wore those blouses, you ought to see my collection!" But she is right about the blouses being made of wonderful fabrics, and lots of it because of the blocky styles.

On my inspiration board for fall are these wonderful garments that combine traditional tailoring and knitting. I just love them.

They are from the Winter 2010 collection of VAWK, a Canadian based design team that includes Sunny Fong – winner of Project Runway Canada’s Season 2. The knitting is the work of 24 year old Jacqueline Schiller, who was discovered behind the counter of a yarn shop and commissioned to do the knitting side of things two weeks before the show.

The knitted pieces appear to be attached to some of the garments with needle felting. I wonder if I can justify the purchase of a needle felting machine for this project.

I have a coworker who is a fantastic knitter. She looked at my sketches and the pictures and suggested the yarn type and weight that would achieve the look I was after. Part of my confidence in pursuing this project is the knowing what a great resource she is. I found the perfect yarn, a wool thick and thin bulky roving, that matched my wool fabric, while on vacation. I practiced my knitting during after dinner chats on the porch. I need the practice. The last time I knitted a garment, I was in high school.

The article Knit One, Sew Too by Susan Lazear, which appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of Notions ( a publication of the American Sewing Guild) is a great source of information and inspiration on using a sewing pattern and incorporating knitting in the finished garment. I may use some of Susan's ideas with some of the sweater knits I bought in recent years from EOS and Denverfabrics, and thought there might be others of you with similar fabrics aging in your stashes.

Keeping Cool in Hot colors - Vogue 1223

2011-07-24T12:15:00.010-04:00

It has been so hot and humid here in central Virginia that I have forsaken outside activities in favor of sewing in air conditioned comfort.
I just finished Vogue pattern 1223. It is a mid knee length lined dress, fitted at the bust with pleated front and back skirt, a back zipper and narrow hems.
I liked the diagonal tucks on the front bodice that release into pleats on the skirt. And I thought it would be a good pattern for one of the big prints that are everywhere this summer. The tucks lines would break up the print, but you would still get the color impact. The recommended fabrics were chiffon, crepe de chine, and organza. Chiffon is my nemesis fabric, so no way on that one, I found some lovely big prints in silk charmeuse, but they were in the $25/yard range. Too much money for me to risk on a style and pattern I hadn't made before. And they were shiny. I prefer matte finish silks. So when I found a bright tropical print in woven rayon on sale at Hancock Fabrics, I bought it. If all the work resulted in a wadder, I wouldn’t feel too bad. This style was a bit hard to evaluate for fit. I ended up pinning the tucks in the front pattern pieces, pinning the 3 pieces together and holding the pattern up to my body to evaluate the fit, matching the shoulder seams to my shoulders and checking the waist location and width. No changes needed. I did make my normal length changes to the bodice back. The front pieces have to be cut out in a single layer and all those tucks have to be marked. So there is a lot of prep work before sewing can start. I cut out large pattern pieces like this on my kitchen floor. The linoleum blocks also help me square up the fabric.
I remembered seeing a picture of this dress on the model where she wasn’t swirling the skirt(maybe in the Vogue Pattern magazine) and the front hem was not even. I think this is due to the diagonal tucks and how the fabric hangs when released on the bias. This will vary with the fabric used.
I definitely had the same problem with my fabric. It is easiest to see on the mannequin. But even with my hips filling out the dress the sides were still lower than the center front. To even up the hem I used my handy dandy Dritz Chalk Hem Marker. This is a goofy looking device with a nozzle that you fix to the desired height from the ground where you want your hem to be. You stand, wearing the garment you want to mark the hem on, with the nozzle very close to the fabric. The nozzle is attached to a bulb you hold in your hand. When you squeeze the bulb, a jet of air shoots chalk through the nozzle onto your garment. As you slowly rotate and continue to give the bulb more squeezes, the hem will be marked the same distance from the ground all around your garment. You should not be looking down when you do this, like I am in the picture, because it affects the hang of the dress. I am looking down because I hadn't used this gizmo in a while and wanted to make sure the chalk hadn't run out and needed refilling.
The chalk will brush off so easily, I immediately insert pins at the chalk marks or mark them in wash out marker to make them more permanent and visible.I trimmed the bottom edge along the marks

Both the hem of the dress and the hem of the lining were done with my rolled/narrow hem foot. It made the hemming go very quickly.

I used a very light weight silk cotton woven for the lining. I had bought it to make a blouse but it was too thin for that. It worked great for a lining.

I am so pleased by how well this dress turned out, I may make it again silk.

Vintage Patterns - Resizing using a sloper - Part 2

2011-07-12T19:23:00.023-04:00

I fully intended to post part 2 of the pattern resizing shortly after part 1, but I had to put it aside when I realized I had volunteered to present the program at the July sewing guild meeting, and hadn't done any preparation. I did the presentation, which was on Sewing with a Plan (SWAP). So here we go on the Vogue 380 blouse front pattern resizing. Many of the steps are the same as those used on the back pattern piece, but the front has some decorative tucks, located on a center front seam above the bust, that impacted the pattern changes.

Here is the original blouse front pattern piece

And here is the copy of the front pattern with all the markings

which I will compare to my sloper. I rotated part of the waist dart on my sloper front to the side like the blouse pattern.

1. Pattern Sloper Comparison - Front

Align the center front of the pattern with the center front of the sloper
Align the waistline seam of the pattern with the waistline seam of the sloper

The center front tucks don’t appear to contribute to bust shaping. But unfolded, they make it hard to line up the center front and check the fit in the neck area. So I form the tucks and smooth the pattern so it is flat and the center front seam is straight. Now I can match up the center front easily. I was surprised to see that the tucks reallly pull the fabric in the shoulder area down and affects the fit in that area. So I will do all the pattern changes with the tucks folded.

2. Vertical Adjustments

The front is too short. The neck point of the pattern is below the neck point of the sloper about 5/8 inch. I will be adding less length in the front than I did it the back. This is normal for me. The underarm point of the pattern is way below the underarm of my sloper so I add the length below the arm hole opening, slashing from side seam to neck point in an "L" shape. This lets me to raise the shoulder, raise the underarm point and rotate the shoulder seam up the 1/2 inch needed for the shoulder pad in one operation.

3. Horizontal Adjustments

Shoulder

I also notice that the neck point, where the close fitting raised neckline should start to go up the side of the neck, needs to be moved closer to my neck opening. To get the correct shape of the raised neckline I put a small piece of tissue paper over the pattern and redraw the raised neck so it starts at my shoulder point.

Width at Bust- no changes.

Width at Waist - I compare the sloper dart width to pattern tuck take up. I need some extra width in the waist and I add it at the side seam. I change the location of tucks to the center of the new waist width

Width at Hip - I add additional width to the pattern to equal ¼ of my hip measurement .

Here is what the final pattern looks like with the front tucks opened up again. The tucks really do pull the shoulder area down when they are formed.

I checked the lengths of the side seams and shoulder seams to make sure they are the same on both the front and back. I drafted the front facing using the new shape of the neck area. I added a center back seam for fitting and easy sewing of the top back opening. I did not put a zipper in the side seam as suggested by the pattern. The fabric I used for this blouse was a rayon polka dot jacquard in a gray green color sometimes referred to a sea mist. I thought rayon was appropriate because it was available and used for clothing in the 1940’s. Back then it was called the “new silk”. Though my mother remembers the rayon from that time as cheap, flimsy fabric that did not hold up well. The tucks in the sleeve and the front are sunburst tucks, so named because they start at the same point and radiate out. The front seam is on the bias, so to get the tucks to match took a bunch of fiddling and hand basting. I sewed the tucks along the fold lines to hold them in place. The fabric was so soft, they drooped and looked sloppy without the stitching.

The blouse fits well and looks very much like the drawing which was very satisfying for a first resizing effort.

Next post will be on the resizing of the skirt. And then back to showing you current fashions, the summer clothes I sewed for my SWAP presentation.

Answers to Bra Questions.

2011-07-03T15:03:00.008-04:00

I wanted to answer some of the Bra related question I received on my last post just in case other readers are interested in the answers.

Lynneb has left a new comment on your post "Bravo":

It's a fascinating concept to me...making my own bras. Thank you again for such a detailed and informative post. I wonder...how do you feel about the seam across the center of the cup? And is there such a thing as making a seamless cup?

I wasn't thrilled about the seam across the cup because I usually wear molded cup bras, The seam did enable me to get a cup that matched my shape exactly. I sometimes have trouble filling up all parts of a molded foam cup. I won't wear the bras I made under T shirts because the seam does shows through. I think you could cover a molded pad with stretch material and then sew it to the band just like we did for the cup on this pattern. I have been reading Melissa's blog where she is talking about making a smooth cup bra Fehrtrade She hasn't discussed covering the pads yet, which is what I am really interested in.
Bra Makers Supply has foam cups for sale and super stretchy fabric they say is to cover foam cups. I looked for instructions on their site, but couldn't find any. They might be in one of the bra making books they sell.

If you find any info on making bras with molded cups, let me know. I am very interested.

dd has left a new comment on your post "Bravo":

Those bras look great! I love the swimsuit pattern. Can it be purchased online? I hope to be able to take a bra making class when the sew n expo comes here.

The bathing suit pattern was purchased from Etsy seller Merckwaerdigh She is based in the Netherlands. Her pattern prices are equivalent to the big 4 non sale prices and shipping is a bit higher, but her bathing suit styles were different than any I had seen before, and my order arrived within a week.
Sign up for the Bra classes at the expo as soon as registration opens. From what I hear, they fill up quickly.

Myrna commented.
Great write-up. I took a bra sewing workshop a few years ago and loved it. I've sewn Elan 645 numerous times. It's a great pattern. Thanks for showing the strap. We weren't taught that way in my class. Our straps are elastic. I'd like to try that. How are they stitched? How long is the bit of elastic? Thanks.

Here is the quick and dirty description to make the non stretch strap. Cut a piece of the fabric 3 times the width of the finished strap desired and about 16 inches long. Apply "tailoring" weight nonwoven, iron on interfacing to the wrong side of the strap pieces. Fold strap pieces in thirds to the finished width and zig zag, or other similar type decorative stitch, on both long sides of the strap pieces, very close to the edge. We used tricot fabric for our straps in class and I used poly/lycra for one of my bras. With the interfacing applied, the fabric is no longer stretchy. There are variations in Anne's book for a similar straps with padding or padding just at the shoulders. The piece of elastic is 3" long. After attaching to the band with a 1/4 inch seam allowance and the strap with a 1/2 inch seam allowance, the part that shows is about 2.25". The no stretch strap is attached to the elastic in the back as one of the last steps. The bra is put on and the strap is pinned to the front cup at the desired length, making sure the bra cups are pulled up to a perky height. Anne really hiked the bra cups up when doing this step. Mark seam on the strap and cup. Take the bra off and sew strap in place.

I have seen some really pretty bras sewn from the Elan pattern. I definitely want to make that one next.

VIntage Patterns - Resizing using a sloper - Part 1

2011-07-03T13:43:00.019-04:00

I have a lot of vintage patterns. Most of them are not in my size. One day I told myself, "no more buying vintage patterns if you aren't going to do something with them." So I decided to try resizing one of them to fit me. I chose a 1940’s Vogue Couturier design pattern, number 380. It included a "fitted jacket with small inset godet at centre of dropped back-line. Loop and button closing below small stand-up collar. Long fitted sleeves. Skirt has straight front and godet flare at centre-back, shaped waistband. The blouse is described as a “tuck in blouse with cap sleeves cut in one with front and back. Built-up collarless neck- line.” The pattern was a size 12 - 32 inch bust, 35 hip. I have a 38 inch bust and a 41 inch hip. Major up sizing required. I have successfully completed the blouse and skirt. The review is on http://www.patternreview.com/ I have been asked for some info on my up sizing process, so the next few posts will be about that topic. I will start with the blouse.

There are various methods to resize a pattern. Since I have a custom fitted bodice sloper, I used the method described in Lynda Maynard’s self-published CD book De-Mystifying Fit: Using the moulage(sloper/block) to adjust commercial patterns. De-Mystifying Fit In her book, one of the examples she shows it the up sizing of the 1970’s Vogue pattern for the iconic DVF wrap dress. I had a Duh-Ha moment when I read it. Using my sloper also takes care of the normal fitting changes I have to make on any pattern. If you don’t have a fitted bodice sloper, you might be able to use a TNT pattern of a similar style to your pattern, or the fit bodice pattern of a pattern brand that customarily fits you well.

1. Study the pattern

Like many patterns from the 1940’s, the pattern pieces have no printing on them. The seam lines, darts, tucks and match points, even pattern piece names are indicated by little circular or square cutouts.

I find non printed patterns difficult to “read”. My first step is to spend time looking the line drawings of pattern pieces on the pattern instructions and note where tucks, darts, and key seams, are located. Then I look at the pattern pieces for the corresponding holes/markings for the tucks, darts, etc. that I saw in the drawings, as well as waistline markings, shoulder point - SP and neck point - NP. And finally I read the layout diagrams and sewing instructions.

From these I learned the back is cut on fold with a faced slit opening at the top. I made a mental note to consider adding a center back seam to facilitate my fitting issues and back closure construction. I also surmised that the blouse is supposed to be very fitted at waist and hips, because the instructions show a slide fastener (zipper) closure at the lower side in addition to the back opening. The instructions included a section on making 1” thick shoulder pads for the blouse. So I make a note to make sure there is space in the shoulder area for the shoulder pads. The unique pleats in the blouse front appear to be decorative and do no contribute to the bust shaping. It is helpful to have an idea of the fit of a garment, i.e. fitted, semi fitted, loose, etc. so that during the resizing the correct wearing ease can be added. The pattern pieces measured 36" in the bust area and comparing it to the pattern bust measurement of 32” indicates the wearing ease = 4 inches

2. Make a Copy of the Pattern

I don't want to cut up the original pattern so I make a copy of it. I lay a piece of tracing paper over the pattern and copy the pattern edge and all the dot markings using pencil.
Then I remove the pattern from underneath the tracing paper and mark all the seam allowances dart and tuck lines, hem lines and waist line with a marker and ruler so it looks just like a commercially printed pattern. There is no need to make copies of facings at this time because future alterations may change the shape of the facing pattern pieces.
Optional - cut off seam allowances to make pattern easier to compare to sloper, which have no seam allowances

3. Make a copy of Sloper

My slopers are heavy cardboard. I trace them onto Kraft paper and mark the darts because I am going to do some dart rotation on the sloper so that the dart locations are the same as the pattern.

4. Rotate sloper dart to match the dart location of the pattern.

I rotated half of the back shoulder dart to the armhole. The pattern has a slight easing of the back shoulder to the front so I left half of the shoulder dart to be eased onto the front shoulder seam.

5. Pattern Sloper Comparison - Back

Lynda suggests starting with the back because it fairly flat and changes will be simple.

Align the waist of the pattern to the waist line of the sloper and align the center back of the pattern to the center back of the sloper. I know there will be a lot of change to the back pattern piece because my back is long and curved at the top and I have forward shoulders and neck.

Back Vertical adjustments - Do these first.

The neck point of the pattern is almost 2” below the shoulder point of my sloper.

The neck point, the distance above the waist where the shoulder meets the neck, is a constant point of reference. It doesn’t change. Do not use the neck center back on the pattern. The pattern may have a lowered of raised neckline for design purposes and this information may or may not be printed on the pattern. To add length, I slash the pattern horizontally above the waist and spread the pattern so that the neck point (NP) match the sloper.

Back Horizontal Adjustments–

Compare shoulder width. My shoulder width matches the pattern.

Compare shoulder slope. The pattern shoulder slope matched mine exactly. But this pattern includes instructions for a 1 “shoulder pad so it is drafted for a person with sloping shoulders. I decide to us ½” shoulder pads not the 1” recommended by the pattern. To create space for the pad, I slash the pattern to the NP and rotating the shoulder seam up ½ inch.

The side seam should start about 1 inch below the arm hole on kimono style sleeves, according to a 1940 sewing book I have, so I slashed the pattern horizontally through the armhole so I can move the top of the side seam 1 inch below the sloper arm hole.

Waist - I compared pattern dart take-up to sloper dart take-up. My sloper back waist dart take-up was bigger than the take-up of the two darted tucks on the pattern. So I can use my sloper side seam as the guide for waist width.

I true up the armhole opening line.

next post - resizing the blouse front.

Bravo

2011-06-21T19:08:00.029-04:00

Thanks so much for all your nice comments on my dress. I wore it to my son’s High School graduation ceremony last week. I made a point of linking back to the blogs of “new to me” commenters, and as a result I added a load of blogs to my Google reader subscription list.

While I was working on the dress, I had to set everything aside, and attend a Bra Workshop and Lecture I was signed up for. I was not really interested in sewing bras, but I always sign up and support garment/fashion related classes put on by the local ASG organization. Otherwise the course offerings start to skew into the realm of “Glitzy embroidery techniques for tote bags made of felted sweaters, pet hair, and dryer lint”. My thoughts about sewing bras: the fabrics are hard to find and sew, the construction techniques are difficult, and what with all the wonderful things RTW bras can do, why would I need to sew them?

The question "What kind of problems do you have with your current bras?” was on the pre-class questionnaire. When I reviewed my answer, “cup shape is not the same shape as I am, the shoulder straps fall off, and the back band hikes up” I started to think I might benefit from the class after all.
The class included a bra fitting session, a customized bra pattern, hands on sewing instructions and the guarantee that you would leave the class with a complete, custom fitted bra. The instructor was Anne St Clair, owner of Needle Nook Fabrics in Wichita, Kansas. She has become known as “The Bra Lady” on the sewing expo and ASG education circuit.

Day 1 - Anne fit each of us in a bra during a short, private 1 on 1 session. She had brought close to 90 sample bras for the fitting exercise. During the fitting she noted any changes that needed to be made to the pattern. That evening after class, she and her assistant Janet, hand drafted a custom pattern for each of the attendees, based on the changes noted during the fitting. We received a packaged bra pattern, either the Elite and Queen Elite based on our bra size, plus customized pattern pattern pieces, as well a list of the exact lengths for the elastics for the band bottom, under arm and center front, and the underwire size.
Anne encouraged us to compare our customized pattern pieces to the packaged pattern pieces so we could see the modifications she had made.
The afternoon of day 1 was a lecture on what makes a well-fitting bra, and how to make changes to the pattern to achieve it. Also discussed was modifying the pattern to make nursing, exercise and sleep bras. And making bras out of nontraditional fabrics like poly/lycra , cotton/ lycra, and wovens. To “support” her lecture, Anne would lift up her T shirt, made in a cute cotton/lycra print and show us on her own bra, which was made in the same fabric as the T shirt. We were all a bit startled the first time she did it, but it was a very good visual.

The second day of class we were split up in groups. Each group was guided through all steps of the bra making process, from cutting the fabric through the final step of sewing on the straps. I was surprised to find that the sewing was not that difficult. The stitching was either straight or zigzag, with a decorative stretch stitch thrown in as an alternative to the zig-zag. The seams are all rather short so sewing went quickly. Tricot fabric, used for the lining on the cup, can be a bit slippery, but there were tips and tricks taught on how to deal with it. Roseana’s blog post has great pictures of the class she took with Anne and the tips. Class Pictures

At the end of the day we tried on our completed bras for a final fit confirmation by Anne. We left the class with the completed bra, and enough fabrics and elastics remaining in the class kit to make two additional bras. I was amazed that I had a completed bra and how well it fit. The cup shape modifications Anne made included dropping the cup seam by ½ inch so that it crossed my apex, and removing some of the curve in the center front cup seams. My straps stay in place because they are none stretch and cut to the length I need for each shoulder, one of which is lower than the other. The straps are attached to the bra above the apex in the front and closer to the center in the back so there is no slippage. We were told that RTW bras have stretch straps with adjusters in order to fit a wider range of customer shapes. With custom made straps the only stretch needed, for ease of movement, is provided by a small piece of elastic where they are attached to the back band. And the back band stays horizontal across my back. It is also one size smaller than I was buying in RTW, but the difference that makes to the fit is incredible and it is not uncomfortable.
Anne had prepackaged bra kits with unique fashion fabrics and matching elastics, tricot, power net /mesh and hooks for sale for $12-15. This was a great price for a kit that includes all the materials to make a bra. Especially since the bra fabrics, plush back elastics, appropriate laces and the fittings; rings, underwire, or hooks, cannot be found in local fabric stores.
My only dissatisfaction with the class was the printed instruction materials. The pattern instructions and the separately purchased book were not complete and the illustrations were poor. Sewing steps were left out or in a different order than presented in class and the illustrations were originally black and white photos that had been rendered fuzzy and unrecognizable by copying copies instead of originals. So the week following the class, I sewed a couple of the kits together to reinforce the steps in memory and added notes to the instructions. Here is the rather basic bra as completed in class; thin tricot cups, high front, underwired, no padding.

My second bra was to made from a poly/ lycra animal print knit. The key to using other fabrics successfully is to maintain the structural integrity of the bra by compensating for the different weights and stretch of the materials used. In this one the fashion fabric is used over the power net of the band and the tricot of the cups so that the original stretch and support is maintained.

My third bra had some light padding (fusible fleece), a poly cotton nude knit with the same stretch characteristics as tricot for the cup lining, and a woven jacquard poly nylon fabric cut on the bias for the cups. Again the power net and cup lining maintains the support.

I am really glad I took this class. I learned so much about bra fitting and alterations. Being shown the steps for constructing a bra eliminated all my concerns about sewing nylon stretch fabrics. And I can take the learning’s from the class and apply them to the sewing of other bra, swimsuit, and corset patterns that I have in my collection. Here are some recent purchases.

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Carolina Herrera Dress Knock-Off - Finished!

2011-06-01T21:30:00.010-04:00

Remember the inspiration dress?
Well here is my knock off. All finished, yeah. I am surprised how much it looks like the inspiration dress.
It took lots of research, planning, samples, ripping out (oh yes) but overall it was enjoyable. I missed completing the dress by the contest deadline. No long holiday weekend for me. I work in IT for a company that regards holidays as an opportunity to work. My employer moved their data center from NY to NC this weekend. I helped and I have the cup to prove it.
Don't get me wrong, I am grateful for having a good job that finances my hobbies. No matter, I use the contest end date as a self-imposed deadline. Here are some closeups of the details.

Carolina Herrera Dress Knock Off - Part 3

2011-06-01T19:52:00.016-04:00

One of the features of the CH dress that caught my eye was the ruching around the neckline. Ruching (rooshing)is a French term that means gathering, ruffling or pleating. Ruching has been used to embellish garments for hundreds of years. I have loved this detail since first seeing it in the book Decorative Dressmaking. This book is a good addition to a sewing library, especially for inspiration. The book takes a technique, such as ruching, faggoting, piping, pin tucking, etc. and presents a collection of pictures showing the technique used in garments over the years. Then the author sketches ideas for using it in current garments , as well as providing direction for one garment (warning - circa 1990’s). I have several patterns in my stash that feature ruched trim.

I have made this Vogue DK T-shirt, which was donated to Goodwill because I used a poly sheer for the inset ruching and it puffed unattractively, and the Burdastyle jacket below.

Both used a method of inserting the ruched strip between two seams. The fabric to be ruched is cut in a strip on the straight of grain. The width of the strip is determined by the width of the desired insertion. The length will be determined by the fabric weight and the amount of gathering desired. Gathering stitches are sewn along each cut edge. The stitches are pulled so that the strip is gathered to the finished length and inserted into seams on both sides.

Sample 1 is an example of this method I considered for this dress. One side of the strip is inserted in the band to bodice seam and the other is finished off with a wide bias binding to
create the dark border.

On the close up photo of the dress neck line, I could see what looked like a line of stitches ¼ inch from the edge of the ruched strip and it didn’t look like the strip was inserted into a seam. Sample 2 was my first attempt to acheive that look. A strip of the silk chiffon was cut on the straight of grain. A small hem of 3/8 inch is turned under on the long edges before sewing the gathering stitch ¼ from edge. The strip was gathered and top stitched in place sewing ¼ from the edges, over the gathering stitches. But the double layer on the outside edge appeared more opaque than the rest of the strip. Not quite what I was seeing on the dress.

The third sample was a bias cut strip of chiffon, gathering stitches sewn slightly more than ¼ from the cut edge. I gathered the strip and top stitched to neckband ¼ inch from cut edge. The bias cut edge does not fray and gives a softer edge look to the ruched strip. You can even trim it after applying, if you didn’t stay 1/4 “ from the edge.

The method used for Sample 3 was the one I chose to use on the dress based on the finished appearance. I love the look of silk chiffon fabric, but I dislike working with it because it is so light weight and hard to control. My bias cut white chiffon stripes acted just like long slithery ghost snakes; slipping, sliding, changing width, catching on any rough surface, aarg! And my chiffon fabric was 52 inches wide which is great for long bias strips, but bigger than most home sewer's cutting tables. The wool rug in my living room came in handy for cutting the bias strips. I lined up the edges of the silk square with the edges of the border in the rug and the texture of the rug kept the silk from shifting while I cut the strips using sharp shears.
The neckline inner edge also had brown sheer fabric that extended beyond the dark band , softening the edge. To achieve this I used a bias cut strip of brown chiffon that when folded double measured ¾ inch wide. I sewed it ½’ from the finished neck edge. so that it extended beyond the edge by ¼ inch. In the picture below the facing has not yet been sewn to the front band and the brown chiffon appears flush with the band inner edge.

This method of finishing an edge was used in the Vogue Issey Miyake pattern 2796 below. You just never know when those weird IM techniques will come in handy.

Carolina Herrera Dress Knock-Off Part 2

2011-05-29T16:44:00.005-04:00

I have completed the skirt of the dress. It is basically a tapered pencil skirt with waistline darts, a center back seam and a center back seam vent for walking ease. I used the first pencil skirt pattern I came to when rooting through the patterns on my sewing table.
The dress fabric is a light to medium weight white linen, rather coarsely woven. Seam allowances on the wrong side of the garment show through to the right side. To prevent that I decided to underline the linen with Bemberg rayon in “ Camel “, a color that is very close to my skin tone. The linen and rayon were cut from the same pattern pieces. The rayon underlining was laid on the wrong side of the linen with all edges matching. It was basted to the linen, by machine, about ½ inch from the cut edges. Then the cut edges were finished with a serger. All darts and seaming was done by treating the rayon and linen as single layer of fabric.
I pinned up the hem when testing the fit of the skirt, but I will wait until it I attached to the bodice before actually completing the hem.

I wanted to talk a bit about how I did “research” on the inspiration dress. I like to have as many photos of an inspiration garment as possible; full size photos and up close photos of style details. I print the photos out on regular printer paper and study them. I often put grids over the model or garment and estimating the width of style details such as belts, collars, neck bands, etc. in proportion to the finished garment. I found this dress on the Style.com website, in the slide show of CH’s 2011 Spring RTW show. The largest photos of a garments on this site are found on the full screen view of the runway slide show. Style.com will not let you copy a photo to your laptop. But the photo can be snagged by using the Print Screen key on the keyboard, typically abbreviated as “PrtSc”. This key makes a copy of the screen, in bitmap format. The screen print can be pasted into photo editing software, word processing software, presentation software or even an email. I use Powerpoint because it allows me to crop off the headers, advertisements and other non-important stuff around the image, add text, arrows, etc. And if I plan to use the photo in a blog post, I save the PowerPoint file in a picture format(bitmap or jpeg. The best photos of designer clothes are often found on online retailer sites like Neiman Marcus and Berdorf Goodman In addition to describing the garment and listing fiber content, they have high resolution photos and a zoom function that lets you look at any part of the photo up close. These sites also prevent you from copying photos directly to you computer. To capture a detail shot, I zoom in on the part of the garment I am interested in and use the PrtSc function as described earlier.
Style.com did not show any close-ups of this dress and I really wanted to see how the trim was applied to the bodice front. I could not find the dress on any online retailer site. But I did find a Youtube video of the fashion show it was in. YouTube Video The dress starts down the runway at about 2:50 min into the video. As the model turns at the end of the runway, the photographer zooms in on the bodice. I used the Prt Screen function to capture screen shots of the bodice, though they are not great quality. I know there is other software that allows you to pull frames from video’s, but I don’t have it. Fashion shows are also a good way to see a back view of the dress as the model walk back down the runway in the background of the next dress.

Looking at the picture above, I think I know how the ruching was applied to the neckline. I have made samples of three different applications methods and will share them with you next.

Carolina Herrera Dress Knock Off - Part 1

2011-05-23T11:03:00.014-04:00

The highlight of my weekend was fabric shopping in the NYC Fashion District. It was a spur of the moment thing. There were some extra seats on the Northern VA ASG charter bus and P. and I grabbed them. The 4 hour bus trip seemed to fly as we talked to a great group of sewing enthusiasts that included fellow bloggers Jane and Michele. I made fabric purchases at Mood, Paron's and Metro Textiles. Kashi opened up Metro as a special favor for us. He is every bit as nice, and enabling, in person as other bloggers have reported. Most of my purchases was there.

There are two contests running over at PatternReview.com that I am participating in; the Vintage Pattern and the Knock-Off contests. The Knock-Off contest ends on May 31, a month before the other one, so I set aside my vintage pattern to start on my knock-off.

It is this Carolina Herrera dress from her Spring 2011 RTW collection. I just love the use of the ruching and shaped band around the neckline. Yes, it is low cut (the first comment I hear from anyone I show it to) But it is not like there is decollete showing and I have the same lack of it as the model. I spent the early part of the month looking for similar fabrics. Based on zooming in on the photo, it looks like the main fabric is an off white silk jacquard overprinted with black floral sprays. The ruching is a sheer white fabric which is sewn over part of a solid black fabric band. The solid black band extends beyond the ruching and is covered by a strip of sheer black fabric. I had no luck finding a similar print silk and rejected the idea of overprinting or stamping a black floral motif on a jacquard silk. I decided to use this printed linen from Denver Fabrics. The print is in an olivy brown and purple, so the trim will be brown instead of black.

Duplicating the bodice design with flat pattern drafting was beyond my skills and available time. I remembered a quote by Tomoko Nakamichi, author of the Pattern Magic books. She said "When I was a student, I remember how difficult it was learning pattern making off the blackboard. I achieved the shapes I wanted by making miniatures (of the garment) out of paper, flattening them out by inserting lines and cutting them to make a pattern . It gave me a great feeling of satisfaction, but I knew that logically, it was a dubious way of going about it." Dubious for her, but it works for me. Another person who uses this technique is Shingo Sato. He calls it Transformational Reconstruction. Shingo has published a fantastic book by the same name and it comes with 2 CD's containing many of his Utube videos showing the technique.

Basically this is the technique:

1. Cut and join flat pieces of fabric to assemble into a three dimensional garment. I made a muslin of my bodice sloper with the center fronts extended as the fronts on this dress overlap.

2. Draw in the new seam lines on the three dimensional garment. I put the sloper on, and roughly drew in the style lines for the neck bands with a marker. Sorry the marker was green and hard to see in the photo below.

I took off the sloper and cleaned up the style lines. Note: the pieces do not lay flat because the sloper darts are still sewn in.

3. Take the three dimensional garment apart and flatten them, to get individual pattern pieces. I cut apart the sloper on the style lines and laid the fabric pieces flat. As you will see from the pictures below, the sloper bust darts and back shoulder darts disappeared and were incorporated into the shaping of the neck band because the edge of the band went through the points of the darts: basic dart manipulation. This technique works because the relationship between the flat pattern pieces and the three dimensional structure of the garment never changes.

I used the parts of the sloper as pattern pieces and cut the pieces out of fashion fabric. I sewed them together and was thrilled to see how good the muslin looks in the the neck and chest area.

Next Task - Working out the details of the ruching strip: the amount of gathering, shaping, and how to attach it.

Field of Flowers

2011-05-17T20:24:00.013-04:00

After such a long blog silence you probably wondered if I ever returned from vacation. I did. Vacation was fun and relaxing, once we got to our destination. We were flying south on the day that multiple tornadoes touched down in VA and NC, which resulted in late flights and missed connections. I have now added “spent a night in an airport” to my life experiences. We arrived in FLA a day late and 200 miles from our original destination city. Sadly I have no sewing related vacation adventures to share. The rental car unexpectedly sped up or veered off course any time I pointed out a fabric store. And all three males in the car chorused in unison “Fabric! You don’t need no stinking fabric”. This is a misappropriation of a line from one of their favorite movies, Blazing Saddles. The original is “Badges! We don’t need no stinking badges”.

Key West is very laid back. We spent our time at the beach, walking around town seeing the sights, sailing, or out on boat fishing. I did not catch any fish and Dad, I seemed to have inherited your quick to get seasick gene.

After three days there we drove up through the Keys to the South Beach area of Miami. South Beach is a whole different world. We stayed in a modern condo in one for the restored Art Deco buildings that faced the beach.
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DH is great at finding wonderful vacation accommodations through VHBO (Vacation Rental Homes by Owner) sites. On a whim we Googled the condo owner’s name, which was on the lease, and discovered that Canadian hockey stars invest their money in FLA real estate. Here is a view from the balcony. The beaches were wide and the water warm.
At night there is a parade of folks, all dressed to impress. It was great people watching. Our last day we drove up north as far as Boca Raton, checking out the beaches and towns. The only sewing related thing I did on our vacation was reading. I took along the books Digital Fashion Illustration with Photoshop and Illustrator and Digital Textile Design I received Photoshop software as a Christmas present. Doctoring photos isn’t my thing but designing fabric prints and fashion illustrations really excites me.

For the past few weeks I have been working on the top and skirt from a vintage 1940 Vogue pattern.

But the computer gremlins struck the PC where I stored photos and the draft post on this project. So while my in-house geek squad moves the drives from the old PC to the new one, I'll jump to my latest project - McCall's 6286 blouse.

This is an over blouse with a wide open neckline. It is labeled “easy” but with many darts, a shaped front band, and a portrait collar, I would classify it as " medium". I always have to make shoulder alterations and I am pretty comfortable doing it to set in sleeves. But raglan sleeves like the ones on this blouse, never fit me well and intimidate me from a fitting perspective. I tried drafting raglan sleeves from my sloper and comparing them to the pattern, but the neck line of this blouse is so different that I had trouble establishing the neck point and shoulder point on the pattern for my comparison. So I decided to do a muslin of the sleeves. I wanted to do the alterations on the shoulder, where the raglan sleeve dart was located. So I slit the raglan sleeve pattern on the grain line from the dart point, creating front and back pieces. I added a seam allowance to the shoulder curve, sewed the sleeve pieces onto the bodice and pin fit the curve of the raglan sleeve from neck point to sleeve edge.

I marked the line of pins with magic marker and transferred the shape back into a one piece sleeve with shoulder dart. Success! Here you can see the difference in the original pattern and my sleeve pattern.

The fabric I used is a a medium weight cotton rayon print. The blouse flares out below the waist quite a bit.

I wore it with a belt as shown on the pattern and it looks okay. Without the belt defining the waistline, the blouse length cuts me in half. I am seriously considering shortening it by 2 inches and wearing it without the belt. It will give me a longer leg line. I thought the 10 acre field of dandelions behind our house ( Please Mr. Developer, mow this field before these flowers go to seed) was an appropriate location to photograph this floral top.

Spring Break Sewing

2011-04-16T11:18:00.009-04:00

Long time, no post. Life has been busy lately. Stuff like odd work schedules. I am too old to work the 11:00 PM to 7 AM shift. I end up feeling horrible and getting sick. And then there were several weekends spent visiting colleges so my eldest son can make a decision on where he will go to school after his June high school graduation. In my sewing class, I gave up on an "inspired from nature" design. Instead I drafted my own pattern for this Giancarlo Ferre jacket, which is what I really wanted to do , and sewed it up. The jacket has some interesting seam lines which are hard to see in the photo. I will describe that process in a future post. It is time for our spring vacation. This year we are staying domestic, but we are going to the southernmost city in the continental USA. That would be Key West, Florida. Followed by a couple days in the South Beach area of Miami. I suspect my travel co-coordinator, DH, is trying to revisit a favorite trip we made 30 years ago. He denies it though. Do I need any new clothes for this vacation? No. But I like having an excuse to sew garments that are not what I usually sew which is work clothes. So I made the one shoulder T shirt from McCalls 6326 out of a some pink and turquoise cotton lycra knit. It is left over from the 80’s when I made leotards to wear to my aerobic dance classes. But I still like the colors in the print. McCall’s pattern have so much wearing ease, I normally drop down a size when sewing one. On this pattern I had to drop down two sizes and make SBA. I like negative wearing ease in knit garments i.e. the finished measurement of the garment is slightly smaller than my body measurements. This was especial important in keeping this top up. It is a quick to make pattern. And the Burda “Mila” dress. a free downloadable pattern from http://www.burdastyle.com. The fabric used in the dress is a piece of white and blue cotton lycra print from a FFM free bundle and a blue/white cotton oxford from Hancock’s. What I liked about this pattern is the contrast top front and placket creates a strong T shape that breaks up a large print used on the front sides. You can leave the front closures open and see the under top. The Burda free patterns can be printed out on 8.5 X 11 inch paper on your home printer and them taped together to create the full pattern. The sewing directions, on a separate download, are good. The only disappointment was that there are no layout directions for the contrasting fabric version shown in the pictures. There is a fake front under the placket which can be seen by leaving the placket unhooked at the top. The necklines of both the outer front and the inner front are to be finished by bias binding. I used the bias binding only on the outer top neckline. My fabric, being mostly white, was slightly see through so I lined the dress with a rayon fabric including the under top, This dress seemed to run large. I made a 42 which is normal for me with Burda patterns. It was reminding me of the shapeless cheap cotton house dress like those worn by some of my older female relatives when I was a child. So I converted the pleats in the back to long darts, and took in the side seams in the bust area. I still need to sew the 12 pairs of hooks and eyes to the front placket of this dress. I hope to get some photos of these two pieces on me in situ, and give you a review of the two fabric stores in Key West.

Procrastination - Burda dress 110

2011-03-14T19:22:00.014-04:00

What have I been sewing in the last few weeks? Muslin fitting shells and collars. My sewing buddy T. and I arranged private classes with a favorite instructor on the G Street Fabrics education staff. In the most recent classes we drafted princess line patterns, both armhole and shoulder type, from our darted sloper and fine tuned the fit on multiple muslin shells. We also drafted and draped various styles of collars. The collar activity was a lot of fun and I finally understand the relationship between the shape of collar pattern pieces and the form of the sewn collar. Every drafting and fitting classes I take has resulted in self discovery about my shape and silhouette. Not all of it pleasant or encouraging. For me the alterations I have to make to deal with my asymmetry really bother me. Sometimes it takes me a couple of days and multiple phone calls to T. to come to terms with my discoveries and get the end goal in focus again: well fitted, flattering, custom sewn garments. Our next class assignment is straight from Project Runway. We are to create a design from an inspiration in nature and execute it into a finished garment. On hearing the assignment, I felt panicked, and procrastination mode kicked in. Since we are to be the ultimate model and wearer of the final garment, the instructor recommended a custom croquis for our design sketches. Croquis is French and means simply "sketch". In fashion, the term refers to a quick sketch of a figure with a loose drawing of the clothes that are being designed. This figure is typically 9 heads tall as this is the accepted proportions for fashion illustration. Here is an example.
Real people are typically 7.5 to 8 heads tall. So a custom croquis, made from my own body, would give me a better idea of how a design would look on me. The article "Discover the Best Proportions and Styles for You" in Threads Magazine June/July 2006 (#125) issue has easy to understand instructions on how to make your own croquis. Sorry, I could not find the article online. So one day, when the boys were out of the house, I followed the article's directions. I took pictures of myself in my underwear standing against a white wall, camera set up about 8 feet away on a table at waist height. I took photos of various poses, including the frontal zombie pose, which is good for evaluating your proportions against standard proportions, as well as other poses that were more “fashiony”. I cropped the excess background out of the photos, enlarged them so that my body was about 8 inches high and printed them in portrait mode on regular printer paper; I put tracing paper over the photo and traced the outlines of my body with a fine tip black marker.
Then to test my croquis, I sketched five dress styles I was considering for my next sewing project. Some looked nice, some just okay and some were no way. I’ll let you judge for yourself

I chose one of the more flattering styles to sew. I wanted to see if it would look anything like my croquis sketch. It was the gathered front dress, 110, from the March 2011 issue of Burda Style,
I really wanted to make this dress in light weight stretch linen. Of course I did not have any of that fabric in my stash. The recommended fabric is stretch silk satin. All of the stretch satins I have ever seen are fairly substantial. The fabric in the picture looks like stretch charmeuse to me. This dress really does need to be made from a very thin, soft, stretch fabric because each pattern piece is cut twice from a double layer of fashion fabric, and one set of pieces is used as the lining. And the lining is gathered at the center front and shoulders just as the garment is. The only soft, thin, woven stretch fabric I could find was a mystery fabric from the $2.97/yard table at G Street Fabrics. It was not just stretchy, it was super stretchy. I can run and do high kicks in this dress. Although it was thin, I decided to use the fashion fabric only for the lining in the armhole/neckline area. I added a horizontal seam about 3 inches below the armholes, and made the lining below the seam from nylon tricot. If I had a do over of this dress I would eliminate the gathering at the lining shoulder seam. It makes the shoulders are a bit thick.
This dress has some instructions for less common techniques. The gathering has to be pulled up to specific lengths on the individual garment pieces before sewing the seams on the center front and shoulders . The gathering on the front seam has one section over the bust that has to be gathered tightly to one finished length, but the adjoining section in the waist hip area is loosely gathered to a different length. I was having difficulty fixing the gathering threads so that the gathers stayed at the proper length. I improvised and used what I call "gathering guides". I marked the finished length of the gathers on thin strips of silk organza which I sewed to the gathered sections to hold them in place until I sewed the center front and shoulder seams.
There is a slit in the top of the center front seam that the tie goes through. There are no markings for the slit on the pattern pieces because it is marked after the gathering is done. I searched for marks indicating the location of the slit, thinking I had made a tracing error, before I figured this out.

The directions include a common Burda method for sewing the lining to the arm holes and neck opening of a sleeveless top/dress. It is often illustrated with a picture of a shoulder seam over the handle of a wooden spoon. This method can be hard to figure out from written instructions and can trigger binges of Burda bashing, even from experienced sewists. The method works great, as does a wooden spoon or wooden dowel rod as a pressing aid, if you know how to do it. An alternate method is this one shown in a great tutorial called Lining a sleeveless dress at Stichywitch's blog.

Here is the finished dress. I am in the same pose I used for the croquis. It does look remarkably similar.
That means I probably won’t be making the Vogue dress shown above, even though it uses a neat technique with wired ribbon on the front neckline that I really want to try. If my sketch is accurate, the dress will make me look like a human bowling pin. Sigh. Enough procrastination. I am off to pick a nature inspiration and come up with a garment design before Friday's class.

Vogue 1186 Issey Miyake Jacket

2011-02-13T15:42:00.015-05:00

I purchased this Vogue Issey Miyake pattern shortly after it came out because the jacket had some interesting seaming.

You certainly can’t see the seams in the jacket on the pattern envelope. But the line drawings show them well.

I felt that if I was going to spend the time and effort to sew those curved seams, I wanted them to be visible is some way. I enlarged the line drawing and played around with my crayons. Besides the obvious color blocking options, another one I came up with was ombre coloration.

I pictured the fabric as wool where the color change was woven, not printed and there was texture or other interest in the fabric. I had no luck finding this fantasy fabric anywhere. I ordered some silk suiting and wool fabrics thinking I might ombre dye them myself, but I never got around to it. This fall I was browsing the Elliott Berman Textiles website and there was some fabric that had the ombre coloration I was looking for.
It was described as 2 Matelesse panels – made in Italy, with no info on fabric content.

It changed from a dark navy color at one end of the fabric to a bright green at the other end. I was hoping it was silk based on the price. It was on sale, but still above my $/yard comfort level. When it arrived the fabric proved to be quite interesting and unique. It was polyester, with a texture that resembled rough tree bark. The texture started out as ridges in the dark blue area and turned into cracks as they moved into the lighter bands of color. In the top green band the cracks were plentiful. The interiors of the cracks had shiny black fibers woven into them. The black fibers are actually thin flat polyester strips, very similar to the Sulky Sliver metallic thread you can buy for embroidery and embellishment. These strips float on the back of the fabric, except where they were woven into the cracks. The fabric was easy to cut and press, but no matter how thin and sharp the needles and pins I used, they often pushed the black strips through the layers to the outside of the fabric. Fortunately this did not cause a snag or pucker in the outer layer of the fabric so I finally just ignored it.

This jacket is a fair amount of work. The pattern includes the pieces for the interfacing at the sleeve hems, jacket hem, armhole and upper back, which was nice. Sewn in interfacing is recommended and that is what I used because I was unsure how well fusible interfacing would adhere to the polyester fibers. I laid out the pattern pieces so that color changed from mid tone to light on the sides of the jacket and dark to mid tone in the center of the jacket. I made the welt pockets out of a darker color than the surrounding fabric so they sort of resemble a belt as they go under the curved section. The pattern instructions are very good, describing the steps needed to complete the unique features and assembly order of this jacket. I had no trouble matching and sewing the curved seams. The only things I did not like about the instructions/pattern was the non functional sleeve vents. They were bulky when constructed as per the instructions. And instead of a button hole on the sleeve vent, the instruction have you make a line of chain stitching to look like a button hole.

I am really pleased with the finished jacket, and though the fabric is totally different than what I pictured, it did fulfill my vision. I am in the process of making a scoop neck top and wide leg pants (not from this pattern) of navy georgette to wear with the jacket. I plan to wear this outfit to a company sponsored reception and special viewing of the Pablo Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris exhibit at the VA Museum of Fine Arts.

Here is some picture of the jacket on me because I think it is important to show garments on real people, not just dress forms.

Earning My Stripes

2011-01-28T11:32:00.015-05:00

Thanks for your suggestions on how to get past the distraction of too many potential new projects. I liked Valerie’s the best. “I think you should take a month or more off from work and get them all done!” Sigh, I wish! What I actually did was promise myself one of the new projects when my jackets were complete. Then I made a list of the sewing tasks remaining to be done on the jackets. Once they were written down, they weren’t so overwhelming and I finished them.

Why was I making two jackets at once? I recently lost two pieces of one of my older SWAP wardrobes. A pair of pants ended up miniaturized because of a poor laundry decision and a jacket had to be thrown away because the trim, made of faux leather, started to deteriorate and flake off the knit fabric backing. I replaced the pants using a TNT BurdaStyle pants pattern.

The fabric I wanted to use to replace the SWAP jacket was maroon wool with faint tan, pink and dark maroon stripes. So I was looking for a jacket pattern that could be made of a striped fabric. During my holiday break, the Jan 2011 issue of Burda Style arrived. The picture of Jacket #127 showed a high hip length, fitted jacket in a solid color. Closer study of the drawing of the pattern pieces revealed that it had a back peplum that was an extension (cut on) of the jacket front.

If the front of the jacket was cut out of a vertical striped fabric, the stripes in the curved peplum would be on the diagonal and they would chevron at the center back seam. I love details like that. Also the vertical dart on the jacket front has one leg parallel to the grain line /stripes and one at a slight angle. When the dart is sewn, the stripes to the outside of the dart would angle slightly up and outward. A nice look.
I have noticed that BurdaStyle often shows striped or plaid fabric in tops with the waist bust dart. I assume this is because this type of dart does not cause the eye jarring distortion of stripes and plaids like a side bust dart would.

There was another piece of striped fabric lying on top of my fabric heap that I also thought would work well with this pattern. In a burst of energy, I decided to cut two jackets using the same pattern, vaguely remembering this recommendation in a sewing book of "Time saving Techniques and Shortcuts for Busy Sewers". It said use fabrics that can be sewn with the same color thread, double the interfacing and lining so you cut the pieces for both jackets at the same time. Sew the jackets simultaneously repeating each step for both, with the real time savings coming from not having to read the directions or think through the construction steps on the second jacket. I reread the book after making the jackets and discovered there was a line I had forgotten. The author goes on to say "It seems a little tedious while sewing, but I always remind myself that in the end I will have two new jackets" Tedious is too nice a word to describe sewing multiple lapel collars, and setting in 8 sleeves, 4 in the garments, and 4 in the linings. And because stripes require careful layout and cutting, I think all the theoretical time efficiency was lost.

Both jacket fabrics were uneven stripes. An uneven or unbalanced stripe repeats the stripe pattern in only one direction on the fabric. An even or balanced stripe repeats the same pattern on both the right and left of the dominant stripe.

For a garment made from a vertical uneven stripe, you can choose to have the stripe repeat around the garment or be a mirror image on each side of the garment. For a repeat, cut the pattern pieces using the with nap layout which is with the fabric folded double with selvedges together, all garment pieces oriented top to bottom on the fabric.

For a mirror image, it is recommended that pattern pieces be cut out of a single layer of fabric. And the left side pattern pieces be in the opposite lengthwise direction as the right side pieces. Uneven lengthwise stripes will chevron only if mirror imaged at the seam.
Rather than cut out each pattern piece from a single layer of fabric, I chose to fold my fabric in half horizontally, making sure the stripes on both pieces were exactly aligned, and cut out each piece double. It achieves the same result.

The wool jacket has subtle stripes. The only one easily seen by the eye is the pink one and it repeats evenly across the fabric. So I used the with nap layout. The jacket works well with my old SWAP blouses.

The second jacket was made out of a 1.3 yard remnant of 54” cotton lycra green and burgundy stripe. I had to use every layout trick I knew of to get the jacket out of the available fabric. All seam allowances are 3/8 inch. The sleeves are ¾ lengths. And the upper collar and front facings below the roll line are pieced together from scraps.

Some of the stripe matching that a perfectionist would do was not possible because of limited fabric. The stripes at the shoulder seams and at lapel collar lines are not matched. I just went for symmetry of stripes on both sides of the jacket. This jacket is more casual and will be worn in warmer weather, if it ever gets here.

Even though my spring Vogue patterns have arrived, I will probably do a couple more winter sewing projects. The cold and dreary weather makes me want to sew warm fuzzy wools and flannel.

Magazine Sources

2011-01-28T11:22:00.007-05:00

In answer to the questions about where I get some of the foreign sewing magazines shown in the picture from my last post.

Australian Stitches magazine

This magazines features fabulous garments made from the latest patterns (6 months behind the USA) with technical instructions, and step x step photos. They are known for sewing the garments and giving honest assessments of the style, fit and pattern instruction sheet. There are also articles on makeovers of real people with wardrobe-planning advice and the latest trends from the USA and Europe.

I have had a subscription for years through the Canadian company Stonehouse Publications.

www.stonehouse-publications.com Staff is available 9AM to 5PM Eastern Time, Monday thru Friday to answer any questions at 1-800-461-1640, and to assist with your order. They currently have a very good offer of 15 issues for the low price of $74.63 on their website or if you call. I have no idea how long this offer will last.

Russian Sewing Magazines

I have purchased trial (3 month) subscriptions to two Russian sewing magazines through a US distributor of Russian magazines called Podpiska.

Шитье и крой Translation:Sewing and Cut
Ателье Translation:Studio

Podpiska http://www.podpiska.us/

Contact Information:
Phone: 1-800-763-7475 (Personnel speaks Russian and English)
Fax: (617) 964-8753
E-mail: podpiska@unipressa.com

Address:
Unicont Enterprises, Inc.
1340 Centre St., Ste 209 .
Newton Centre, MA 02459-2453

60088 ШиК ( Шитье и Крой) This is the Item number and the Russian name of the magazine. You can copy /paste either of them into the search field on the web site to pull up the order info.

Subscription of 3 issues for $28.00

My description - This magazine is similar to European pattern magazines BurdaStyle, Patrones, Mia Boutique, KnipMode, etc. in that the patterns are printed on pages which can be removed from the magazine for tracing. However the garment styles are rather basic and conservative. Except for the styles of the featured Russian designer, which can be rather “different”. Each garment pattern is available in only one size, unlike the other pattern magazines which usually print each pattern in a range of sizes. One issue per year is an exact copy of a previously published Mia Boutique issue. The Nov 2010 issue of Sew and Cut was the Jan 2010 issues of Mia Boutique, same pictures, same patterns, and same sizes.

60073 Ателье This is the Item number and the Russian name of the magazine. You can copy /paste either of them into the Search feature on the web site to pull up the order info. Subscription of 3 issues for $28.00

My Description - This magazine has articles on the latest trends in fashion, articles on drafting patterns using CAD software, and articles on couture level garment construction. There are also articles showing how to work from a fashion illustration or a picture of a garment and drape it on a dress form. I don’t believe there are typically patterns in the magazine, though the last issue had a number of dress patterns, each in one size only. In the Dec. issue there was an article on making the patterns for and sewing wonderful fur hats with shaped insets of contrasting fur.

And this article on draping this haute couture dress with pages of pictures of each step.

I wish there was an English language magazine with this same content.

Sewing Sensory Overload

2011-01-11T20:27:00.013-05:00

Help, I am paralyzed by sewing sensory overload. I was nearing completion on two versions of this jacket from the Jan. issue of Burdastyle magazine when I received 5 sewing magazines and two vintage patterns all at once.
The magazines: Jan/Feb Threads which was a bit late, two issues of Stitches, the Jan issues of Studio and the Feb/Mar Vogue Patterns. So many ideas and new patterns, I can't focus.

The patterns for all these dress were in the Jan. issue of Studio, a Russian magazine about pattern drafting, designing and industry clothing construction. I want to make every one of them. They all have design details I have never sewn before.

Then the Vogue Pattern magazine arrived. This magazine has improved so much in the past year. More technique articles, and free patterns. They have even copied shamelessly from BurdaStyle. Vogue now has the line drawings of the garment on the photo page, and has the "styling one garment 4 ways" feature that Burda has. "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery"

This issue has a lot of new patterns I want to buy, right now. Or at least put in my shopping cart on the Vogue pattern web site so the minute the BMV sale is announced, I can send in my order. Of course none of the new patterns are on the Vogue web site yet. It is so frustrating. Here are my favorites.

I love the ladylike sillouete and seaming on this dress.

And the neat released tuck detail at the neckline of this dress. This pattern is for knits. I am thinking of converting the dress to a top by cutting it off at the high hip.

This Donna Karan dress looks like they took one of the her knit crossover dress patterns and converted it for wovens. Interesting but a bit bulky looking.

I love this Donna Karan shirt dress, though I would make it in a lighter weight woven fabric than the one it is shown in.

This Pamela Roland dress is an update of the sleek lines and A line silhouette of my favorite 60's dresses.

I have the perfect silk print fabric for this Vena Cava dress, but I don't think I can carry off a shapeless silhouette like this one. I don't have the shoulders for it.

And my absolute favorite - the jacket in this wardrobe pattern. Interesting sleeves and seaming, open neckline, and pleated peplum. The perfect casual summer jacket.

Anybody have any suggestions how I can calm myself down and prioritize my next sewing projects?

Catching Up

2010-12-24T12:03:00.009-05:00

My holiday preparations are under control and I have some time to answer reader questions.

There were a couple of questions on the Burda Curved Inset Jacket

Carolyn asked “Do you think if you had used 5/8" seam allowances on the curves that it wouldn't have lain as flat when the curves were cut? It's not that I'm disputing Burda's instructions, but rather thinking of how this would work with a big 4 pattern? Thanks

Response: I do think that when sewing a curved seam where you have to join an outward curve to an inward curve, a narrower smaller seam allowance eliminates extra fabric that has to be clipped, pinned, and manipulated while sewing. It also results in less fabric to iron flat. So all in all the narrower seam allowance probably does aid in achieving a good final result. In doing some research on your question. I found this on the Simplicity web site.

When is the seam allowance not 5/8"?
On very small pieces such as doll clothes, on small detail pieces such as belt carriers and in larger areas where you would need to trim away the excess seam allowance; we typically reduce the seam allowance to 3/8" or 1/4" to make your sewing easier.

However, I have rarely see seam allowances less than 5/8” on the big 4 patterns. I think reducing seam allowances may be one of the things a sewist will do based on their experience and confidence. It took a while for me to get away from the comfort of the 5/8 inch seam allowances used by the big four pattern companies, because that is what I “learned” in my early sewing experiences.

Barbara asked, "Did you interface all the jacket pieces? "

Response: I did not interface the jacket back or sleeve pieces. I did interface around the back neck and armholes openings as well as the sleeve and back hems. Whether to interface the back jacket pieces and sleeves is something I mentally mull over every time I make a jacket. The fabric weight and drape, and the style of the jacket is usually what determines if I interface all the garment pieces or not. I don't always make the best decision and have been know to interface pieces that are already sewn together.

Carolyn also asked about the closure on the Kwik Sew Fur Coat .

Response: There is an in-seam button hole in the seam between the collar and the jacket front. The button I chose blends in with the fur so well that even my son, who was standing 5 feet in front of me, commented he had trouble seeing it.

"42" commenting several days ago on an older post Bunka - Fundimentals of Garment Design asking “I am a little curious (not important, but fascinating) as to why so many Americans and Australians are using and in fact very much in love with Bunka Sloper? (an Asian sloper) What are the benefits of possessing this sloper? I myself are Chinese and I never knew that is it a treasure until I learned from you all through blogging.

Response: For me the motivation to use the Bunka sloper is that it is the base used to draft all the wonderful garments featured in the Ms. Stylebook and Lady Boutique magazines. And the sloper drafting instructions, which are diagrams rather than words, can be understood without reading Japanese. There are pattern drafting books available in the USA, but the garment styles included in those books are basic, limited, and are of the time the book was published. As you guessed the Bunka Asian sloper (either from the preprinted magazine insert or drafted from my measurements) still needed some changes to fit my taller, middle aged, non Asian body properly. But after making those changes, I have a sloper I can use to draft the magazine patterns.

i hope that answers all the outstanding questions.

My last bit of sewing this year was my holiday party dress. This year the dress was black. I don’t think I have ever had a black dress. I never been convinced by the Little Black Dress (LBD) marketing hype. I associate black dresses with somber occasions like funerals, or the uniforms worn by female members of choruses or orchestras. So I was a little startled to find myself gravitating towards black this year. After a little introspective thinking, I believe my color selection was driven by my state of mind and some stressful life events that occurred in Nov. and early Dec. when I was planning for the holiday parties. We were dealing with unexpected surgeries required by an elderly family member. Car repairs, insurance and legal hassles resulting from my car being hit (no injuries) by an out of control, non insured, non licensed, ESL driver. And a heavy work load. Fortunately the 2nd surgery was a success, the insurance company settled after 7 weeks of negotiations, and the work project was a resounding success.

The pattern is from a 2000 holiday issue of a Russian language version of Boutique pattern magazine. The dress is fitted, with waist inserts, cap sleeves, a scooped front and V back neckline.

I liked the fitted silhouette of the dress and came up with several options for the neckline trim. It was shown with the neckline trimmed with fur. I had an old mink collar I considered refashioning into fur trim similar to that shown in the picture. As another option I considered adding neckline flounces in a sheer sequined fabric. This idea came from a picture of a dress worn at the Melbourne Race posted by Gail
But in the interest of time, what I ultimately ended up using was a premade trim of faux jewels and sequins. It came in a curved piece that was pretty close to the dress front neckline curve, and straight yardage which I used on the back neckline. The trim was on sale for about $4.00, probably because the faux jewel fad is fading or perhaps over, but it worked for me in terms of cost and ease of application. I hand tacked the trim in place so it will be easy to remove and replace with a different trim.

The dress fabric is a lightweight wool crepe and it is lined in red and black print silk twill. It was very easy to accessorize with sheer hose and strappy sandals.

Here’s wishing everyone a happy holiday season, whatever holidays you celebrate! And a wonderful start to 2011!

Warning - Curves Ahead

2010-12-07T12:14:00.010-05:00

I got a lot of practice sewing curved seams on my last project, which was jacket 103 from BurdaStyle Magazine Oct 2007. The magazine description: "A round bias cut insert vividly offsets the straight lines of the plaid as well as emphasizing the fitted silhouette of the short jacket. This combination of narrow lapels/reveres with an extra wide collar is also new."

I have liked this jacket since I got the issue because of the inserts and the fitted silhouette. It just took me a while to find a suitable fabric. Looking at the line drawing I was a little puzzled as to how the fitted silhouette was achieved without darts. There is only so much fitting in the bust area that can be done with curved sides seams.
To find out, I traced the patterns pieces and taped them together with removable clear tape. Because the traced pattern pieces have no seam allowances, taping the pieces together along the seams is a great way to check the accuracy of the tracing, the draft of the pattern and the silhouette. I found that some of the bust and hip shaping is done with the insert. The insert shape is not an exact duplicate of the cut out shape. The length of the curve is the same, but the shape of the curve on the insert is slightly different than the curve of the cut out. When the insert is sewn in the opening, it creates the same shape that a side bust dart and vertical bust dart would create.
Burda recommends a 3/8 inch seam allowance on all the curved seams of the jacket cutout and the insert. This is definitely a good tip, but a lot of clipping is required to get pucker free insertion.

The collar is a bit different, very wide compared to the lapel and with a collar stand only in the back neck area which makes it stand up nicely. The collar stand is yet another inset curve. And the insets have to sewn in the lining as well. Like I said, lots of curves. The wool blend fabric was purchased at Hancock’s.

Fee Fi Faux Fur

2010-11-14T16:33:00.019-05:00

Faux fur is everywhere in fashion this fall; vests, coats, even skirts and purses. The last time I sewed faux fur was back in the 80’s when it was called fake fur, and the craft world was experiencing a make your own teddy bear craze. Anybody else remember that? I believe I still have bear eyes and joints in a closet somewhere. In September, on an unseasonably hot day when the temperature was over 100 degrees F, I was checking the upholstery flat fold table at JoAnne’s Fabrics and found all kinds of faux fur on the bottom shelf. Nice feeling, realistic looking fur at reasonable prices. After getting 2 different pieces cut to length, I was standing in the cashier’s line and noticed the lady behind me eyeing my armful of fur with a funny look on her face. I was thinking, she must wonder why in the world I am buying fur in this weather. Sure enough she finally said “That looks hot” and I just burst out laughing.
I can now say I have sewn faux fur clothing. A vest and a jacket. It was definitely a learning experience. Translation - frustrating at times, hot, and messy. Both furs had a nap, and that had to be factored in when laying out the pattern pieces, which had to be cut from single layers of the fur. The fur backing was a knit, but not one with any recovery. All curved seams had to be stay stitched to prevent distortion. I used what I think is a pair of bandage cutters (we found it in my FIL’s things when he passed away) to cut out the garment pieces. These cutters have short, narrow, pointed blades that make it easy to cut the backing without cutting the fur fibers.

Fur Fashion - Vest

Fur vests look good on celebrities that I know are smaller and shorter than me, so I thought I might be able to wear one without looking too silly.
The fur I used for my vest had long pile, about 2.5 inches,in a soft tan color with longer hairs tipped in black. It reminds me of the fur of the Husky breed of dog. I went through my patterns looking for a long vest and found Vogue 8000, a Sandra Betzina pattern.

All the shaping in this vest was done with seams. It included a side panel with inseam pockets. The pile was so long I could not sew a seam without first trimming all the fur from the seam allowance. I did the trimming at one time, working outside over an unfolded newspaper.

Once that was done, sewing went quickly. I lined the vest to the edge. I did not use the collar piece provided in the pattern.
I love my family, but the Chewbacca (hairy Star Wars character) jokes get a little old. Just for that I am not going to help rake leaves. I will supervise from the Adirondack chairs.

Fur Fashion - Jacket

The jacket fur was a soft gold leopard print with short ½ inch pile. I was inspired by these photos.
I wanted a short jacket that was loose enough to wear over a dress or top, but with a little bit of shaping. I picked Kwik Sew pattern 3531.

Kwik Sew patterns come in Small, Medium and Large (S, M, L). Depending on where your actual body measurements fall within the range of a size, the finished garment may have a little or a lot of ease. The Medium size jacket’s finished measurements (measured from the pattern pieces) were 4” larger than my body measurements, which was fine for my purposes. There were darts on the front bodice and the sleeves for a little shaping and I added back shoulder darts. Darts were easy to sew in the low pile fur.

but to make them lie flat, I cut along the dart fold line to about ½ inch from the point and opened the dart wings.
I faced the jacket front with matching synthetic suede. Well, actually I cut the front and collar facings out of the fur and blissfully sewed them to the garments pieces before I realized that was a poor decision which resulted in 4 layers of fur in the center front where the lapels overlapped. I unsewed the fur facings and replaced them with the faux suede facings, which worked much better.
I finished this jacket just in time to wear it over a dark fitted sheath dress to the company sponsored recognition dinner for DH’s 25 years of service. Here is a picture of us heading out the door.
Sorry the photographer was in a hurry and chopped the picture off, but you get the idea. I have also worn this jacket with jeans for a fun casual look.

Camouflage

2010-10-31T20:13:00.010-04:00

My sewing space was recently featured over at The Blue Gardenia Blog. It was all cleaned up when I took those pictures. Now it looks like a tornado came through. Fall fabrics and patterns lying in piles all over the place.

I wanted an easy project after the Karl Lagerfeld jacket so I picked a pile with an autumn print knit and McCall’s pattern 6163.

The dress is described as close fitting, above mid knee length, with mock wrap front gathered at left side, collar, collar band, raglan sleeve, side zipper and stitched hem.
The poly knit fabric is from JoAnne Fabric and is a print type that I have heard called “a shadow print” because it looks like the shadows of a leafy branch. When I modeled the finished dress, my husband‘s first comment was “That looks like camouflage”. Not exactly the comment I was expecting, but it got me thinking about using prints to camouflage things. This darkish random print tends to hide body bumps which is good, but it also hides style details. If I didn't know it was there, I would never noticed the collar. It turns out the print's camouflage like properties were fortuitous for another reason. I had a sewing disaster making the dress. I laid it down on the table to trim the side seams, but it wasn’t laying flat and I inadvertently sliced into the back hip area.
I didn’t have enough fabric to cut another back piece. To salvage the dress, I cut a large patch from the same part of the print and hand appliquéd it over the cut, matching the print and turning under about ¼ inch seam allowance.
I turned the dress to the wrong side and trimmed away the fabric around the cut to match the edge of the seam allowances of the patch.
Then I turned the seam allowance out so I could see where my hand stitching just caught the edge of the fabric and machine stitched exactly on that line of stitches. I removed the hand stitches and pressed. Basically I inserted a circular section of fabric into the original garment matching the print, making it almost invisible. The technique was described in a Threads magazine article on insetting decorative shapes into a garment. I used the technique to patch my dress and the print helps camouflage the patch. This is a closeup picture, but to the naked eye it is almost invisible.
Wheh! I am glad I was able to pull the repair job off because I really like how the dress turned out.

Burda Style - Karl Lagerfeld Jacket

2010-10-24T13:33:00.013-04:00

The jacket pictured on the front cover of the Oct Burda Style magazine is from Karl Lagerfeld's Spring 2010 collection. I didn't really care for it at first glance. The jacket looked bulky and stiff. It stuck out in odd places, and was not attractive on the model. But some of the styling details were unique and interesting. The extended front that is folded up and sewn to the side seam and arm hole, and the sleeve top that overlaps the jacket shoulder and are held in place with a button and in-seam buttonholes.

I kept studying the line drawing and the picture of the jacket Style.com
In those the jacket hung straight from the shoulders and skimmed the hips. It reminded me in some ways of the boxy jackets of the 60’s which often had high lapels and ¾ length sleeves. It looked like it could be wearable so I decided to make it.

The suggested fabric was ottoman. Ottoman describes a weave that has horizontal ridges. The ridges can make the fabric stiff. I did not see that the ottoman weave added anything to the jacket. So I chose a medium weight green wool flannel with a plush finish. When choosing a fabric for this jacket, it is helpful to know that there will be four layers of fabric in the side seams, the back, front and the two layers of the extended front. And in the side hem area, two more layers. A lot of fabric.

The welt pockets on the turn back piece are about an inch deep, not big enough to hold anything worthwhile. I made the welts, but they are decorative. They are sewn shut and there is no pocket bag behind them. There were no recommendations for interfacing the back. I felt it needed more structure in the shoulder areas to balance the heavier front. I added interfacing to the upper back and extended it around the arm holes. I also used wigan on the back and sleeve hems to maintain shape. I had to make my own wigan for the back hem as it is 6 inches deep. I used purchased buttons rather than covering buttons to match the jacket as Burda did. The fitting changes that I made for my body differences; I added a back shoulder dart and eased it in to the front shoulder seam. And I added an inch or so in the hip area so that the jacket hung straight down over my hips. The instructions specifically tell you not to press the hem of the jacket. I was not sure if that was just for that step of construction or in the final garment. In the Style.com photo, the bottom edge of the jacket was very crisp. I pressed the bottom of the turn back, and in addition tacked it to the front about 2 inches from the armhole and at the welt pocket. The sleeves are really cool. Here is what they look like before they are sewn into the armhole. I tried to poke my fingers through the inseam button holes so you could see where they are located on either side of the pointed top.

This is what they look like after being sewn into the armhole and folded up over the button on the shoulder.

The jacket fits fine, but it is a bit big and boxy. The shoulders are wide. I think I may need go with bigger raglan shoulder pads as the sleeves are collapsing a bit at the shoulder. It is more like a short coat than a jacket one would wear all day in the office. The skirt shown with the jacket in the magazine doesn’t fit my lifestyle. I am a little puzzled as to what to wear with this jacket. I am wearing it with a long skirt in these pictures, but I think a knee length tapered pencil shirt, or tapered pants would look better.

This pattern, and instructions, are available as a download from Burda Style.

When I went out on Style.com to get a picture of the jacket, I was surprised to see that Karl used turned back sections in numerous garments in his Spring and Fall 2010 ready to wear collections. These are two of my favorites.
Now that I have made the Burda jacket, I feel I might be able to make pattens for a similar jacket and dress on my own. The invitations to the holiday parties are starting to come in. And one specified "Dress to the nines!" Wouldn’t the black dress with the lace be fun to wear?

Accessories II

2010-10-11T21:19:00.015-04:00

My last two accessories for the contest were purses. The first was a drawstring purse for the beach look. This was my rough design drawing.I thought bright stripes were appropriate for a beach tote. I had orange and tan denim in my stash, both of which were a nice contrast to the blue and brown of my outfit. I have always liked the look of leather trim on a linen purse so I decided to make the top and bottom of the bag out of brown leather. The leather would add contrast, but also strength in the top drawstring area and bottom. At the same time I was mentally planning this bag I was looking through my “sewing with leather” books and saw a version of this made entirely of leather. I wondered if there was any way I could make this beach bag so that it could be converted to all leather. Only the striped panel needed to be covered for it to be all leather.

Convertible garments fascinate me and I have lots of pictures in my idea file. My sons’ favorite pants for years were cargo pants that could be converted into shorts by zipping off the bottom of the pants leg just below the knee. And I like this Cynthia Rowley coat that can be converted from a knee length to waist length coat or from the coat into a vest in two different lengths. Zipper were key to the convertibility of both these garments. So I thought, what if I put one side of a zipper between the leather and the denim stripes and sewed the other side of the zipper to a leather panel that could be zipped on over the denim stripes. And if the zipper had metal teeth, it would be a nice accent on the bag, sort of like piping. And why stop with the leather zip on panel, I could make panels out of other materials like fur, tapestry or painted canvas to change the look of the bag. The most difficult part of this project was finding the zippers. I ended up purchasing the 31” open ended (separating) brass teeth zippers from Zipper Source They make zippers to your specifications. My zippers cost about $13.00 each. The other convertible part of this bag is the strap, It is made of two pieces of leather with another zipper iinserted between them. Unzip the zipper and the one strap turns into two, which can be worn over both shoulders like a backpack. I got this idea from the bag my husband uses to haul his towel, ipod, reading material and gazillion SPF sunscreen to the beach. Here are all the parts of the striped version before final assembly The brown lambskins leather used on this bag came from www.Fabricmartfabrics. They have very nice leather and you can get some great deals when they have sales. here is the finished striped version. A closeup of the purse with the leather panel zipped on
And the third version. The day before the contest deadline, I was at Hancock Fabrics buying the grommets and I stopped to look through the upholstery remnant pile. There was a 5/8 yard piece of brown and tan zebra jacquard that was perfect for another panel. In fact, my favorite version of the bag is with this panel.
A friend suggested I put together instructions for making this bag and I have started doing that. She has promised to be my pattern tester.

The second purse is also convertible. It can be worn 2 ways, hanging from a belt or across the shoulder on a chain accented strap.

My inspirations were these pictures torn from magazines. One a picture of a belt with a small purse hanging by straps, and the other a picture of small purses on chains worn around the neck.

The bag is made with a purse frame from which I bought at Hancock’s. There were no instructions in the package on how to use the frame. There was a sticker on the packaging that said "Visit our web site for project instructions". The web site had projects for other stuff the company makes, but not purse frames. Fortunately, an Internet search yielded an excellent purse frame tutorial at u-handbag Purse Frame Tutorial For this purse I used orange distressed leather from Etsy dealer SantosLeathers.
I could not find a chain of the right metal color, weight and size to use for the strap. I had an old chain necklace that was exactly what I wanted, but it was not long enough for the whole length of the strap. So I cut the necklace in half and used the chain on the end of the straps where they attach to the frame. The swivel hooks used to attach the strap to the purse frame were salvaged from a thrift store purse. I added a round leather medallion made out of contrasting brown leather to the front of the purse. I cut it out using the wavy blade of my rotary cutter and attached it to the bag with decorative stitching. I added a large brass bee as a decorative accent. The bee has personal signifigance to me. I have enough leather to make a matching belt and I plan to do that in the near future, but for now I can wear the purse on belts I already own.
These purses are so cute and I see them everywhere. Including on the cover of the Oct 2010 Burda magazine. One is shown with the Karl Lagerfield jacket which I am working on now.

Accessories - Part 1

2010-10-03T14:58:00.016-04:00

A couple of weeks ago while I was browsing the message boards at Patternreview.com, I came across the Accessories contest. Make five accessories and use them to accessorize 4 looks using the same garment(s). I have a idea file full of magazine pictures of accessories I like or that were made using a neat technique or color combination. I consider myself a woefully inadequate accessorizor. On a good morning I will remember to put on earrings, but scarves, necklaces, etc. collect dust in my closet. As I read the rules of the contest I felt myself getting so excited and ideas were just popping up in my head. Here was the motivation to make some accessories and use them. I ignored the fact the month long contest had started two week before.

I decided to use all the accessories on an outfit of brown pants and blue blouse. I don’t know where that combo came from, it was in the mental images that appeared in my head. The blouse was a medium blue, stand collar, long cuffed sleeves, front opening with long shirt tails. It was a style that could be worn tucked in, as an over blouse or tied around my waist. Of course I did not have this perfect blouse in my wardrobe. I found some possible candidates in the stores, but not in the right color blue. So before I started the accessories I made the blouse using Burda Style's 8-2009 blouse pattern 131.
The only difference was I made the straight bottom into a shirt tail shape copied from one of my husband's shirts.

I picked four “events” for styling - All in the fall - Saturday Errands, Day at the Beach, Work Day and Art Opening. I drew a figure with the brown pants and blue blouse plus accessories from my idea file, with notes on pattern location, materials, etc. Here are examples of my crude drawings. I had lots of fun doing this.

The first accessory I made was a hat. The pattern is from the Autumn 2007 issue of Female magazine, a Japanese pattern magazine for teens. I got the magazine several years ago to see what it was like. The crown of the hat is a flat envelope shape pieced from multiple wool fabrics. It is sewn to a small brim. A button and loop at the top corners of the envelope piece allows you to fasten them together and the crown sort of droops, forming soft folds in the fabric. The lining is a typical cylindrical shape that fits the head closely. The fabrics came from two thrift store skirts and scraps from a jacket sewing project.

One of the thrift store skirts was an Abercrombie and Fitch mini skirt. A&F is luxury retailer targeted 18-21 year olds. The skirt was exactly 12 inches long from waist to hem. It was not a good bargain from the standpoint of useable fabric. The zipper was 4 “from top to stop for gosh sakes. Isn’t that the size used for doll clothes? But the fabric was a brown and bright blue herringbone which was exactly the colors needed to coordinate with my outfit. And I was able to reuse other bit and pieces of the skirt; the blue silk lining to line the hat. And the ribbon belt for the inside hat band.

Next I decided to tackle the sandals for my beach look. The flat leather soled sandals have colorful fabric straps that can be wrapped around your feet and ankles. The instructions are in the April 2010 issue of Burda Style. When I think of homemade sandals and shoes, I remember the ugly, crude styles that "back to nature hippie types" made and wore in the 70's. But after I noticed the instructions in Burda Style I came across this Brazilian web site Pape which sells similar soles and a variety of different straps made of fabric, leather and beads, so you can create your own customized sandals. The videos on their site show different ways to wrap/tie the straps. The pattern for the soles of these sandals is created by tracing a pair of your own flat shoes. I traced a pair of flip flops. The soles are cut from thick rigid leather, 2 pieces for each foot. I used a heavy duty utility knife with a new blade for this and it went quickly. Slits/holes are cut in the top piece of the pairs of soles to allow loops to be inserted. The two layers of leather are glued together and then hand sewn around the edge. The leather I used was left over from some long ago Boy Scout project. I did not have a leather punch to make the holes around the edge of the soles. Instead I used a Dremmel tool and one of the tiny size drill bits this tool can use. This was suggested by the clerk at the Tandy Leather store who said I would kill my wrist punching holes in the leather with a hole punch. Hand sewing the two layers of the soles together is done with waxed nylon thread and harness needles. It took me a while to do it and was not fun. Pictures of the assembly process (and my skinned knuckles) are in this Flikr set. Accessories-Sandals While I probably won't make another pair, I did learn some techniques that can be used to repair shoes and purses. And I have some ideas for other top pieces that can be used with these soles.

Then it was on to something easy. A visor with attached head scarf. When I doing outdoor stuff like hiking or sailing, I like to wear a head scarf versus a hat for several reasons. It is harder for the wind to whip a scarf off my head and make a Medusa mess of my hair. And it covers more of my hair. which tends to lighten to a reddish color from sun exposure. A plain head scarf can have a babushka/grandma look, but a scarf with a brim in a modern print doesn't. I got my first brimmed headscarf many years ago on a sailing trip around Granada. It is a square of tropical print fabric sewn to a piece of plastic shaped like a brim. I bought it from a boatboy that had motored out to the sailboat in hopes of selling us cigarettes, fruit, beverages, souvenirs, frsh fish and lobsters This boatboy was a good looking Frenchman and he had a hilarious marketing pitch on the versatility of this head scarf. The brim could be used to funnel stuff into the mouth, or out away from the boat in the case of sea sickness or too many rum punches. It could be used as a blindfold for fun games, a face covering in Muslim countries, You get the gist of his spiel. Even though the print was garish, I bought it and have used it often over the years. The new version is made from a pattern in the April issue of Lady Boutique. The brim is sew to a band with velcro sewn to the back for adjustments. A triagular scarf is sewn to the brim. It works great. I used the same tie dye print fabric for the new visor scarf as the straps for the sandals.

Seamingly Dartless

2010-09-13T20:31:00.026-04:00

In the September issue of Burda, there was an article showing how to combine garments from the current and past issues. When I saw a favorite blouse #121 from the July issue combined with a great skirt #116 from the Sept. issue, and styled with a belt and shoes similar to those I have, I knew what I would sew next.
The blouse is loose fitting with extended shoulders and short sleeves gathered onto bands. This style is not typically a good one for me. The lack of shoulder seams, i.e., the extended shoulder, emphasizes my smaller, sloped shoulders in an unflattering way. But this version of the blouse featured three rows of tightly gathered strips sewn parallel to the shoulder seam, adding texture and bulk to the shoulder area. I absolutely love the blouse. I made it in inexpensive soft woven rayon. I wish I had made it in a silk. The instructions on finishing the edges of the ruffle strips was a new method for me. First the hem was folded to the wrong side of the strip on both long edges. Working from the front side, stitch along the folded edge using a narrow zig zag stitch. Turn over the strip and trim away excess hem fabric close to stitching. This seemed a little "unfinished" to me, but I tried it anyway and it seemed to work. I am curious if there will be fraying when the blouse is washed.

The skirt is a narrow pencil skirt with the shaping done through curved seams that wrap around the body. I was so impressed with the lovely shape of these curved seams and the way they shaped the fabric from the waist to the hips and over the rear. And also totally intimidated by the work that would be required if alternations were required to this pattern. I was fairly sure I knew how to draft this pattern from a standard darted skirt sloper and I was planning to do that if the muslin didn’t fit well. Fortunately it fit fine. The only tweaks required were around the waistline to make the skirt hang straight from my uneven hips and over my flat butt. Both for the muslin and for the final garment, I was very careful and precise tracing the pattern, adding seam allowances and sewing the seams. It went together beautifully. The curves are very gentle and I did not have any problem sewing them together. Burda provided a separate lining pattern piece for the front that was shaped by darts. So that the lining does not require all the seaming of the front fashion fabric pieces. And I used the lining to work backwards and confirm how the skirt was drafted.

What struck me about both these garments is that the garment shaping or dart control was in the seams. On the blouse the horizontal seam on the front actually contains a small bust dart.

The skirt is a masterpiece of darts incorporated into seams; both the front and back waistline darts as well as the side seam dart. In addition the skirt is tapered by actually drafting the vertical seams slightly inward at the hem combined with a horizontal dart at the hip line. Below are my notes and diagrams on how I would have drafted the skirt.

Summer Shirtdress

2010-08-28T11:59:00.013-04:00

I needed a break from hand sewing on my jacket. As I was browsing through the August issues of the foreign sewing magazines that I subscribe to, this dress caught my eye. I thought the cross hatched tucks on the skirt was interesting and the rest of the dress was a style that works well on my body type.

The pattern is from the August 2010 issue of a Russian sewing magazine Шитье и крой which translates to Sewing and Cut.

The translated description of the magazine from the distributor's website: “Not simply a sewing magazine with patterns, it helps readers create their own fashionable look and accessories. Featuring the latest fashion from the catwalks of the world, it is possible to wear the same fashions as actresses using our convenient patterns and clear instructions. This magazine also presents the work of Russian fashion designers. Each issue contains 70 original patterns for woman. Target audience – women of 16-35 years. ”

Well I am definitely not in the magazine's age demographic, but I thought with the addition of about 10 inches to the length of the skirt, it was wearable by someone my age.

I recently figured out how to translate scans of the foreign language picture captions and sewing instructions into English. Even those written in Russian Cyrillic characters. First step is to use free online OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software to extract text from an image scan (JPG, GIF, TIFF BMP or PDF) of the sections of text on the magazine pages. Then copy/past the text into free translation software which recognizes Cyrillic characters. Pretty slick. When school starts for my sons this fall, I plan to use the OCR to convert the 15 or so printed forms I have to fill out for each son, into electronic word documents that can be updated every year. Also the blasted information forms that my dentist insists be filled out every year from scratch for every member of the family. But I am getting off track.

The pattern instructions suggest gabardine as the fabric. I used a cross woven linen look fabric for the dress and Bemberg rayon for the lining. I omitted the side seam pocket. I used an invisible zipper in the side seam. The dress pattern is printed in one size - 48, which corresponded with my measurements. The only pattern modifications I did were those I do for any commercial pattern; increasing the back length and adding back shoulder seam darts for shaping. I love this color blue accented either red or saddle brown. And it will be a good dress to wear this fall.

Here is a picture of me and Miss Ashley in front of the fall blooming clematis that is taking over my deck. It smells wonderful. We are using the wireless remote for the new camera to take pictures of ourselves. Miss Ashley didn't much like the camera staring at her from the other side of the deck, making funny clicking noises.

On the Fringe of Fashion

2010-08-11T19:35:00.008-04:00

This jacket was supposed to be a wearable muslin to test Vogue pattern 7860 for a possible Chanel type jacket. I rejected the pattern for the Chanel jacket soon after cutting it out because of the bust darts in the front. The darts starts out at the armhole like a princess seam, but taper to nothing at the pocket level. They work great for bust shaping. But the Chanel type jacket requires the lining to be quilted to the fashion fabric and I didn’t know how to do that with a dart like this one. Quilt first and then make the dart or make the dart and quilt shaped pieces together.

I went ahead and finished the jacket because I still liked the style and the fabric I was using. A nubby, multi colored woven cotton , purchased back in 2007 from Fabric.com. I bought the fabric because I was inspired to create a look with fabrics similar to those used for the jackets and dresses in the Burda WOF March 2005 magazine feature “Enjoy the Mix”…of elegant boucle and casual denim.

Is fringe on jackets still in style? I saw a boucle jacket with fringe at a White House/Black Market store just last week, and another fringe trimmed jacket in a catalog this week, but it is not quite the fad it was about 6 years ago. I don’t care. I like it.

This jacket was a lot of work; creating the fringe, basting it in place, attaching and top stitching the contrast bands, and making the welt pockets. The work went on and on. But I am pleased with the result. It is my happy jacket; brightly colored and trimmed with fuzzy fringe.

Thanks to everyone that suggested fabric and trim stores in Toronto. I have saved the info for my next trip there. All I saw on my recent trip was the inside of the office where the project team was working and my hotel room. Sigh, no play time. There is a daily 2 hour direct flight from Richmond to Toronto, and I am thinking about an extended weekend getaway trip for my husband and myself. I will have to keep my eyes open for discounted fares.

Work continues on my Chanel jacket. The lining is quilted to the fashion fabric. The lining seams have been hand stitched closed. The next step is to attach the sleeves to the bodice.

Catching Up

2010-07-25T15:02:00.016-04:00

Catch up time. Here are a couple of items I made earlier this summer. My version of the Burda waistcoat 108 from the May 2009 issue. and a second version of the Simplicity 2633 blouse. The blouse is made from some silk blend fabric purchased during the PR Philadelphia weekend.

More recently my friend Tammy and and I decided to make Chanel type jackets. For reference we used the Nov 2005 Threads magazine article “ Inside a Chanel Jacket” by Susan Khalje, the “Chanelisms” section (page 183-185) of Couture Techniques by Clair Schaeffer , and Claire’s “Behind the Seams - Chanel” DVD. Also helpful was the Chanel Jacket blog http://www.chaneljacket.blogspot.com/

We thought making the jackets would be a good way to keep practicing the fitting and tailoring skills that we learned in our classes at G Street Fabrics this spring.

Tammy is using Vogue pattern 7975 for her jacket

Her fashion fabric is a a lovely soft blue and orange wool bouclé stripe with metallic weft threads. It is really pretty and looks great with her coloring. She plans to wear her jacket with jeans.
I originally planned to use Vogue 7890, View A for my jacket. I made a wearable muslin of it for the initial fitting. It fit great, but I decided I wanted a style without contrast bands. The wearable muslin is almost done. I had to order the lining fabric from Sawyer Brook. Here is a sneak peak showing the jacket fabric, fringe and contrasting denim trim.

I ended up blending two other patterns for my jacket. I morphed the front lapel, collar and pocket flaps of Vogue 7151, view A with the princess seams and two piece sleeve of Vogue 8260. The 8260 is actually a "V"neck with separate collar pieces attached just like 7151.

My fabric is a green/ pink/ lavender wool blend that is lined with lavender silk charmeuse.

We spent one Saturday fitting muslins of our jackets, having a lovely lunch, poring over the sources and discussing the techniques and next steps. Yesterday we got together again and quilted our fashion fabrics to the lining fabrics and cut out the quilted pieces using our patterns. The quilting was so boring for me when I was doing it on my own, It went much faster while chatting over the noise of two sewing machine with someone sitting at the other end of the table. My jacket shell and sleeves are sewn together and I am ready for all the hand stitching needed to sew the lining seams closed.

I am already playing around with ideas for trims; auditioning ribbons, fringed strips, and cords. I even dug this little gizmo out of my craft closet. It is called Embellish Knit.
It makes a a knitted yarn tube as you turn the handle. Sort of an automated version of a Knitting Nancy.
I had never used it before and was skeptical it would actually work. It does but only if everything is just so… the yarn feed loose and tangle free, the finished cord heavily weighted, and the wheel turning at a steady pace. Oh and you have to hold it in one hand while turning the wheel with the other. I caught myself biting my tongue and holding my breath while using it. Not a relaxing task.

It is so nice to have a sewing friend to work with on challenging projects like a Chanel jacket. Unfortunately, this project is going to stagnate while I am in Toronto, Ontario Canada on business next week, followed by a week of vacation at the Delaware shore. I hope to break away from the meetings next week and make a quick trip down to Queen Street, Toronto, which sounds like a fabric district similar to Philadelphia's Fabric Row on 4th Street. I am staying in the suburb of Oakville and I was told there was a good fabric store there too, though the person who told me that could not remember the name. Any readers' suggestion on good fabric stores in Toronto are welcome. Maybe I will find the ideal trim for my jacket in one of those locations.

Customized Software

2010-06-29T21:11:00.007-04:00

I work in the IT department of a large consumer goods company The department has several off site meetings each year to celebrate our accomplishments. They are nice uplifting events with good food, recognition awards, prizes etc. Typically the dress code is business casual. We had one of these meetings last week. Someone on the event planning committee (I’ll bet they were male and under 25 years of age) decided it would be nice to have casual dress, and to distribute a "one size fits all" white T shirts to all department members, and require it be worn to the event. We were even given suggestions on what to wear with it:

 Shorts – Bermuda-style, golf shorts
 Pants – Khaki, capri, jeans
 Shoes – Loafers, deck shoes, canvas, athletic shoes, sandals

I wasn't the only female in the dept. that expressed dissatisfaction with the dress code. We had a lively lunch discussion on ways to make the T shirt more attractive; tuck it in, belt it, or tie it to one side. I really don’t like this style of T shirt even when it is free. It is unflattering. I won’t even sleep in T shirts like this. I will wear them for work related community service events. Activities like building houses with Habitat for Humanity or replanting city parks. But I donate the free shirts to charity after the event. It seems a bit wasteful. I decided I wasn’t going to wear a big white shapeless T shirt to the off site meeting. I would wear the T shirt, but it would be "refashioned". I also wanted to make a wearable muslin copy of a RTW T-shirt, so I decided to ”kill two birds with one stone”. Here is the RTW T shirt, bought for a few dollars at Walmart I believe.
The color was dreary, the knit fabric thin and cheap, but I liked the styling. So I took it apart, laid the fabric pieces on paper and traced around them to make a pattern. I used the pattern to cut the pieces out of the big white T shirt, making sure the motifs would be in relatively the same location on the refashioned T Shirt. I think the results is a lot more attractive than the original. When asked by my coworkers "What did you do to your shirt?" I replied that "I did some software customization." Most of them got the joke.

I was so pleased with the results of my software customization, I actually plan to wear it on weekends around the house.

And here is another, non logo, version of the same T shirt made of a rayon lycra knit from Fabric.com.

Kimono Reform to Burda Jacket

2010-05-30T10:21:00.015-04:00

This jacket in the April issue of Burda Style caught my eye.

The style of this jacket, waist length with a band and shirt type sleeves is what I have always referred to as a “battle jacket”. At least that is what we called in back in the early 70’s when my mom made me one, and a matching skirt, out of purple velvet. It was my piano recital outfit. (I hated recitals!) Burda showed the jacket made in a snakeskin embossed fabric and the copy reads. “Our short blouson jacket with buckled band collar, hem band, and wide lapels is very daring indeed. You’ll be dangerously sexy in the shimmering, beige/brown reptile print.”
I didn’t particularly like the brown snakeskin fabric, but it got me thinking about the other colors in snake skins; greens, grays, yellows, and it reminded me of fabric I had in my stash. It was a jacquard weave of grayed greens and yellows in an abstract diamond pattern. And many snakes’ skins have diamond patterns. I also liked that the wide lapels of the jacket were sewn on, instead of cut on, because the fabric was very narrow. There’s an illustrated sewing course for this jacket in the supplement which was very helpful. I tried to use my bodice sloper to adjust the pattern for my unique shape, but I still ended up making a lot of fitting adjustments while sewing it together. In the mean time, based on Vicki's and Myrna's recommendations, (Thanks ladies!) I ordered the self-published book De-Mystifying Fit by Lynda Maynard (order info at Kenneth King’s website book). This book is the only one I am aware of on the subject of how to use a personal sloper/moulage to adjust commercials patterns. It is very good, with pictures and step by step descriptions of the process using many different patterns and the slopers of many different sized/shaped ladies. Reading it, I learned what mistakes I was making, so hopefully the next time I do this, I will be more successful.

The hardest part of making this jacket was finding the two matching buckles, one 2” and one 1”. I finally found them in a shop on Philadelphia’s “Fabric Row” on the PR weekend.

Actually the fabric I used for the jacket was originally a Japanese kimono.

One I had purchased specifically for refashioning. Refashioning old garments into new ones is currently very popular. One variation is to take kimonos apart and reuse the fabric to make western style garments. It is called Kimono reform/restyling. The Japanese pattern magazine Lady Boutique has an article in each issue titled "Restyling Kimono". They show the original kimono, the directions for drafting the pattern and the finished garment. These articles and the wonderfully unique prints and weaves of kimono fabrics inspired me to try my own version of kimono remake.

Kimonos are constructed of about 12 yards of 14 or 15 inch wide fabric. There is very little cutting into the actual yardage when the kimono is constructed. So when it is taken apart you will have several very long pieces of fabric (equivalent to approximately 3 yards of 56” wide fabric). The patterns for the western clothing in the reform books and articles are designed specifically for 14 inch fabric and often incorporate unique seaming to provide enough width for a garment section or to incorporate the wonderful large motifs printed on some kimonos into the finished garments. I also find the patterns and the seam lines useful as ideas for solving a problem when I do not having enough fabrics for a pattern I am making or when I accidentally cut or serge a hole in the main piece of a garment.

Kimono fabrics range from lovely printed silks, and shibori dyed cottons to wool, rayon and synthetic jacquard weaves. Prices for vintage collectable kimonos can be thousands of dollars, but recent ones of less expensive fabrics are much more affordable for kimono reform. Still the only ones that I could afford, and actually liked, were the wool blend, jacquard weaves found in recent vintage men’s everyday kimono. The colors are subtle and the patterns interesting. I bought a couple from an Etsy vendor for $20 - 35 a kimono. The fabric from this one is a synthetic blend in a jacquard pattern of grey green and yellow. The seller described it as being from the Showa Era, which is from 1926 -1989. Doing some research I found that “during the Showa period the Japanese government curtailed silk production by taxing it to support the military buildup. Kimono designs during that that time became less complex and material was conserved.” Interesting how war has affected textile production and clothing styles in all cultures. The original construction sewing of this kimono was impressive. It was all hand stitched and all raw edges were hand overcast.

This took so long to make, it is now too hot to wear it. It will go in the closet until cooler weather comes back. Now to do some warm weather sewing.

Pattern Review Weekend in Philadelphia

2010-05-17T21:09:00.011-04:00

I just returned from a long weekend in Philadelphia, organized by http://www.patternreview.com/ and attended by over 40 other sewing enthusiasts. We shopped for fabric, had show and tell of garments we had sewn, took a workshop with Kenneth King and viewed couture garments in the Philadelphia Museum of Art collection. It was wonderful! We stayed at the Sheraton Society Hill Hotel, located a short walk from streets lined with historic buildings, unique shops and restaurants. The weather was cool and dry. I took my camera, but ended up with only two pictures, neither very good. For pictures you will need to visit the blogs of other attendee such as LindsayT and Cidell Okay, part of the reason I don't have pictures is a bunch of us skipped the Museum activities to drive to the brick and morter location of our favorite on line fabric source http://www.fabricmartfabrics.com/ It was worth it. Not only did they have all the web site fabrics, there were others at very nice discount prices, like silk prints for $2.00 yard.

This was in addition to the whole day spent fabric shopping, riding about town in a yellow school bus that looked like it was decommissioned from daily school runs, and was being used as inexpensive group transportation. For the price it was a value.

First stop that day was “Fabric Row”; several blocks of small, family run, fabric stores along 4th Street.
There I bought boucle trims and elastic with beaded edges for $0.60/yard, belt buckle covering kits, which are not available anywhere around where I live, and a "curve square" by Solange Brien, This tool is part french curve and part square ruler. It has both metric and imperial measurements along straight and curved edges, with slots for marking buttonholes and seam allowances. It will be great for adding seam allowances to Burda patterns after I lay them out on the fashion fabric.

We returned to the bus and rode over the river to Cherry Hill, NJ where London Textiles was located. This is a fabric wholesaler that opened for a couple hours just for us and let us dig through refrigerator size boxes of remnants. The remnants were 2 to 9 yards long, nice quality fabrics for $5 to 6 dollars per yard depending on the fabric content. The only rule was you had to buy the full piece. I found some teal burgundy crosswoven silk/wool remnants of a fabric I had been coveting at Waechters Silk Shop web site last fall. Also several silk prints in the teal and grey color combos I love, and a burgundy wool tweed.
The last stop was Jomar and by this time I was getting tired. It is one of those cavernous warehouse places with what looks like manufacturers lots of un-salable or past season clothes, cheap shoes, small appliances, and fabric. Some of the clothes had Chadwicks and Metro labels. I get mail order catalogs for these brands. A voluptuous under clad woman trying on 4 inch high heel, bright pink patent leather stilettos asked my opinion of the shoes. I murmured something about “lovely bright color”. They were great street shoes, if you know what I mean. I found a couple of soft wool twill weaves in colors I use as basics; brown based cream, grey, and a mid hue greens, all for $6.00/yard. These wools have already been through the washer and dryer and are destined to be used for pants.

Some learning’s from my trip:

-Fabric is heavy
-The space under the seats in school buses does not hold much fabric.
- I am able to skip lunch for more fabric shopping time. Maybe I can develop a "Fabriholic Diet"
- Internet friends with similar fabric taste are horrible enablers when they are shopping with you in person.
- Stores don't always have public restrooms.
- Ben Franklin is over exposed in Philly – His face appears in signs, on top of building, in sculptures, and of course on money

I was feverishly working on this Burda jacket (March 2010 issue , pattern 120) before the trip, hoping to have it finished in time to wear with my second pair of Burda"carrot pants". But I ran into fitting issues. I was able to find coordinating belt buckles in the right sizes on "Fashion Row" so maybe it is just as well I didn't finish it before the trip.

I hope to get it done soon.

Pants Play

2010-05-01T13:06:00.009-04:00

Sewing Classes really cut into sewing time. I just completed Pattern Drafting II class - skirt and pants. I now have a pants sloper that fits me wonderfully, especially in the waist, hip and “saddle” or crotch area. Using the waist and hip area of this pants sloper, I can draft skirts or I can combine my bodice sloper with a skirt draft to create fitted sheath type dresses. This class and the other pattern drafting class were taught by Annette Hickman, a mainstay on the G Street Fabric stores teaching staff, and an excellent teacher. Typically sewing class attendees are all women. One of the students in this class was a 13 year old Asian boy, “J” who is interested in fashion design and who sews clothing for his mother and sister. His presence caused a bit of scrambling on the part of the female attendees, especially those that had expected to have their muslin fit while wearing only underwear. The second class everyone showed up with close fitting exercise/yoga shorts which maintained modesty, but don't add bulk. The young man drafted a pants pattern based on his father’s measurements and we got to watch Annette fit the muslin on his father.

It was done very professionally and with respect for personal dignity. Annette is a great advocate for "reading the creases" of the fabric in areas like the crotch and underarm where is it difficult, and downright dangerous to be sticking pins to take up excess fabric or scissor to snip too tight seams. The body heat and moisture in those areas acts like a little steam iron. For example when fitting my drafted crotch curve, which was not deep enough, the muslin fabric bunched up in that area. After taking off the muslin we looked at where the fabric was creased because of the poor fit. Annette instructed me to sew the new crotch seam along the lowest crease line. In my situation and several of the other attendees, the new seam gave me a perfect fit. Thanks to J’s dad for participating in the fitting exercise. I don't know many men that would have pants fitted in front of an audience. I personally learned a lot seeing a man fitted. Especially from the discussion about their saddle area shape and the resulting pattern, versus those of a female. I live with three guys, including two very tall and slender teenagers that are hard to buy pants for, so this was especially useful for me. I am now reading anything I can find on using slopers to alter commercial patterns. Past blog posts by Jkaori and HongKongShopper were very helpful, as was this article from the Threads magazine. Using sloper on commercial pattern

To use my pants sloper for the first time with a commercial pattern, I chose to make a wearable muslin of this pair of "carrot" pants from the Aug 2009 Burda. Carrot pants are named so because of their carrot-like shape–wide at the hips and tapered at the ankles.

SSASYCHIC has some helpful guidelines on wearing pleated pants which includes carrot pants. Pleated Pant Types

These pants have a shaped yoke and a shaped waistband, with front pleats and tapering legs. I chose this particular pattern because it was fitted in the waist and hip area with the pleats starting below the hip. A better silhouette for me than one with pleats starting at the waist. The pattern is in tall sizes. My sloper matched the seam lines in the hip and crotch area closely for the size 88. Good thing my self image is not tied to a size, that number is big! Weirdly, my front crotch length was 2 inches longer than the pattern. The back crotch length matched exactly. I checked the pattern markings and all the descriptions to see if the front waist was supposed to be lower than the natural waist. No indication, so I compromised and added 1” to the front crotch tapering to nothing at the side seam. The fabric used was a medium weight, but drapey twill weave ?rayon? off the $2.95 table at G Street. If you read blogs or pattern reviews by sewists that live near the DC area, you may have heard of the G Street $2.95 table. It is a wonderful source for low cost fabric. According to Annette the fabric on this table is remnants and pieces from NY clothing manufacturers. It arrives weekly on Thursdays, stuffed in bags, via tractor trailer truck. It is dumped on the receiving area floor and employees fold or roll it up into neat bundles. By Saturday the new arrivals are on the table, which is at least 40 feet long at the Rockville store. I have found both beautiful and beastly fabric on the table, but I always enjoy pilfering through the pile.

I certainly don't look like the model wearing these pants, but they are comfortable and fun to wear. I didn't really have the other items of clothing to style them like Burda did, or the way the fashion magazines are showing them for spring; with a fitted tank top under a vest, but you get the idea. The final pair will be in a med. grayish blue drapey blend so hopefully they will look a little slimmer than the cream ones. Sorry about the headless pictures,I was taking my own photos with a timer. My photographers were busy, No. 1 - blowing leaves out of the gutter, No. 2 on his way to Hampton Roads for his girlfriend's Jr. Prom and No. 3 at friends.

It is a beautiful day today, so next on the agenda is planting oriental lily bulbs, Dahlia tubers and gladiola bulbs in my flower beds. Gardening in my yard is a war against critters. I have to plant most bulbs in wire baskets to prevent them from becoming mole/vole treats. The wire mesh Easter baskets from the Dollar Store work great for this purpose otherwise I make my own out of chicken wire. Thinking of some of the jewelry I have seen that is knitted using metal wire, I wonder if I could knit my own wire planting pouches. Something to think about while I dig.

Spring Break

2010-04-11T16:06:00.014-04:00

This past week my classes had ended and it was ‘Spring Break’ for my DS’s. We redeemed all our frequent flyer miles for four tickets to the Caribbean island of Siint Maartin. I used the Dutch spelling because we were staying on the Dutch side. On our last visit we stayed on the French side or St. Martin. The two sides of the island is very different; currency, government, language, and the food in both restaurants and grocery stores. Amazingly, I found French language Burda, Elena, Mia Boutique, and Cadena magazines in one of the grocery stores. I was delighted. Here is the view from our bedroom balcony and the view from the back bedroom. I always get motivated to sew a wardrobe of resort clothes for these spring vacations, but in reality I wear a bathing suit most of the time, only putting on clothes to go to dinner. And though we go to nice restaurants, the dress code is still pretty casual. So I usually talk myself out of sewing anything for these trips. One less thing to stress out over. But a couple weeks before this trip, I saw this picture of a pair of Loeffler Randall shorts in InStyle magazine. They probably attracted me because they were a variation of the wrap shorts that were popular, and that I sewed and wore, when I was a teenager. Simplicity 4192 is a current pattern with wrap shorts. And I was tired of the Capri’s and Bermuda short that I have worn for the past few summers. I pulled up the shorts on the Bloomingdale web site to get a closer look (Zoom is wonderful!) and used the magazine picture to figure out the design scale and style details. Here is my sketch. I used the pants pattern from an old Donna Karan pattern, Vogue 2665,as a starting point because it had a narrow hip band. I made a copy of the front pattern piece and drew the lines for the pocket pieces. I made individual patterns for the pocket front and pocket back. The fabric of the inspiration shorts was a silk linen blend which is not available where I live. I settled for poly rayon fake linen with a soft drape, from Hancock’s, in a milk chocolate color. I couldn’t find a brown striped fabric for the piping, so I used a cotton print of turquoise flowers on a brown background. The scale of the print on the bias is similar to the strip used in the original shorts. I did not want to line the front pocket or front bottom leg opening to hide the piping raw edges. Instead I made piping with a 1 inch wide seam allowance on one side. I applied the piping so the wide allowance could be tacked like a hem allowance to the wrong side of the fashion fabric, hiding the seam allowances.

The shorts turned out more skirt like than the inspiration garment. The pockets tend to fly up in the air in the Caribbean beach winds, but back in hot humid ole Richmond, VA, they will hang demurely. When I make these again, I will move the pocket opening to hit higher on the hip. Though the current placement duplicates the the original shorts, I now realize the side seam of the original shorts are much “shorter” than mine.

We made a day trip to St Barth’s. It is definitely an upscale island and a fashion lovers treat; from the outfits that the fellow ferry passengers were wearing, to the garments displayed in the boutique windows, and the swimsuits and cover-ups on fellow diners in the resort beach restaurant where we ate lunch. For the ferry trip, I should have had on a semi transparent pair of wide legged white linen pants, which required a skin toned thong and/or a total wax job. Designers obviously don’t worry about show through on white pants. In fact they use it as a design element. The pants are worn with a halter top in a designer print with a low draped front so that glimpses of breast show with any movement. High heeled sandals on manicured feet. Lots of gold; rings, chains with pearls, dangly earrings, and to protect me from the sun, designer shades and a big hat. There were several versions of this on women of all ages, included one that was definitely at the 60 year mark. She was well maintained, but there are just some signs of aging that cannot be hidden, at least not by the outfit I just described. Window shopping in Gustavia was wonderful. I was traveling with 3 males, so window shopping was all I got to do. This was fine. It was cheap and gave me lots of ideas. A swimsuit “cover-up” is a misnomer on this island. It should be silky, flowy and semi transparent so your toned body and itsy bitsy bathing suit can be clearly seen through it. Needless to say, my opaque blue knit cover-up declared “middle class American” loud and clear, that and my DS’s swimsuit in a print of Corona beer bottles on a blue background. But I felt quite happy thinking of those Fabric Mart silk chiffon scarf prints I have in my stash. They would make a perfect St Barth’s cover-up. St. Barth was expensive, beautiful, clean, and a fun place to visit. We didn't see any famous people, but the rumor was that Jimmy Buffet was there a couple weeks ago. If we ever make a return trip, I will definitely sew up the most summery fashion forward patterns I can find, and wear them proudly.

Back to School

2010-03-25T10:14:00.007-04:00

I am doing lots of sewing, but it is samples/homework for the three sewing related classes I am taking. Draping on the Dress Form, Pattern Drafting, and Tailoring. And yes I am still working full time. I love every minute of the classes, but I am definitely having trouble keeping up with the homework. The pattern drafting and tailoring classes are every Thursday afternoon at the Falls Church, VA location of G Street Fabrics. A sewing friend was signed up for the classes and they needed one more person to make the drafting class a go. The opportunity to be taught pattern drafting in English was too good to pass up. I have tried to teach myself to draft patterns using the Bunka method and the Japanese magazines Ms Stylebook and Lady Boutique. But I have always felt I was missing a lot of information because of language difference. I am using up leftover 2009 vacation days to get the Thursdays off. Class days are long and busy, but also invigorating and fun. What with the drive, a 4 hour round trip, absorbing all the class information, resisting the wonderful fabrics and notions at G Street (even with my 20% class discount) we are both physically tired and brain dead by the time we get home. Because our classes ends at the same time the southbound rush hour gridlock forms, we choose one of the authentic ethnic restaurants located near the store and have a leisurely dinner, pushing our departure time until after traffic thins out. So far we have had wonderful Vietnamese, Burmese and Afghani meals. Our husbands, left at home to eat leftovers, are very envious.

I though I would share some high level information and key learning from the classes – First the pattern drafting class

The instructor drafted patterns for the apparel industry, had her own retail store in New York City, and is an amazing fitter. The text is Pattern Making Made Easy, 2^nd edition by Connie Amaden -Crawford. We used the book measurement guide and basic pattern drafting instructions rather loosely. The book is a text book and therefore teaches industry drafting standards; certain amounts of ease, specific dart location, specific differences in the the front arm hole length versus the back arm hole length, etc. The instructor preferred that we draft a no ease sloper using the instructions plus some additional measurements. She then fit the sloper on our bodies. She recommended the book primarily for the sections describing how to draft garment patterns from a basic sloper.

Our first exercise was to take very accurate measurements of each other, and draft a front bodice, back bodice and sleeve pattern on paper. Once the instructor checked our drafts, we transferred the drafts to muslin and added wide seam allowances. The instructor pin fit the muslin pieces on our bodies. We revised our flat patterns to reflect the fitting changes and used them to cut out a new muslin pieces. We sewed version 2 together and the instructor did a final fitting. Any changes from the 2^nd fitting were transferred to the paper pattern and from it we made cardboard sloper.

Key Learning from this class- No matter how accurate your measurements and flat pattern drafting skills, the fitting will reveal changes that need to be made. Flat pattern are flat, but the body is curved. A measurement will not accurately reflect curvature along its length. For example, the center back to waist, and shoulder point to waist measurement. The draft distributes the length proportionally down the whole back length, but in reality a lot of that length for me is in the shoulder/upper back area because of round shoulders and prominent shoulder blades. Only fitting will identify fit difference due to body curvature. So there goes my dream of being able to draft perfect fitting patterns straight from measurements. Based on discussion with friends that use software to draft their patterns, like PMB, they go through the same process of fitting and tweaking each pattern drafted by the software. A comparison of the my draft pattern versus the fitted pattern are shown below. Green line is drafted pattern, Orange is fitted.

The remaining classes we will learn how to use the personal sloper to make fitting adjustment to commercial patterns. The pattern I am going to ask the instructor to help me with is this Patrones dress.

It was supposed to have been one of my Holiday 09 dresses. But I hit a fitting wall when I made the muslin. No, not the issue the girl in the photo has. My problem is the front is about 2 inches too long and a bit too wide. So I probably have to do a combination of a SBA and shortening the length. The back bodice is too short . My issue is how do I make the fitting changes and retain the integrity of the design especially the yoke and band shapes. I suspect the dart ease/bust shaping is incorporated in the seaming but I can’t figure out where.

Well, my ride to today's class will arrive shortly, so I have to get off the computer. More info on the classes next time

Show and Tell

2010-02-28T10:09:00.016-05:00

Update on the over blouse. I took it the Fashion Focus group meeting last week for Show and Tell and got teased quite a bit about making my own buttons.

But what should I get in my email a few days later? A newsletter from SewStylish magazine with a link to a story on …. Make your own buttons from polymer clay . It is good to know I am not alone in some of the things I do.

Thanks to Joy for pointing me to Karen's Blog. Karen made the blouse for her daughter and moved the gathers on the blouse up to the bust area. I went back and did the same. The wearablity issues went away. However, I really think the pattern was drafted as a tunic front with very little shaping and the gathers in the waist area are a style detail, not a bust dart rotation.

The center front placket is 2” wide. When the gathers are moved up to the same level as the bust point, the side view is a little strange. I don’t have any cleavage so the placket lays flat against my chest bone between the “girls”. I don’t know if this would work for a person whose bust is fuller in the center front. Most blouses with center front gathers have them on either side of a very narrow front band.

The Show and Tell part of the sewing guild meeting was wonderful this month. Since we were snowed in for two weekends, many attendees had been "sewing up a storm” to use a corny phrase, and had lots of garments to share. Show and tells are fun and inspiring. I always come away from them with a list of more patterns I "need” to buy or techniques I “need” to try. I took 2 other items to Show and Tell. One was a skirt. This fall, I purchased some thigh length sweaters to wear with skirts and pants, a la this inspiration photo. But I needed some help styling them. Many of the magazine photos showed a belt around the waist either over the sweater or on a skirt under the sweater; I suppose to make the eye read the silhouette as if it had a waist. Belts over sweaters look horrible on me, so I looked for a skirt pattern that could be worn with a belt under the sweater. Skirt #110 from the Aug 09 issue of Burda Style fit the criteria and was quick to make, The brown poly wool blend fabric with a cream and black metallic grids went perfectly with a long beige sweater.

My second item was a jacket. Made using OOP Vogue 2896, this Anne Klein (AK) jacket has notched collar, three-quarter length sleeves with turn back cuffs and inset carriers for a belt.

The inspiration for this was another fall purchase, a Tahari wool jacket with similar styling. I liked the fit and style so much I decided to make the pattern.

I thought a brown tweed jacket would be quite versatile given the many brown + color print blouses I have, or worn with solid brown bottoms and solid blue, green, cream or red tops. I found this brown/cream wool tweed at Hancock’s. It actually has some threads in blue and green.

This jacket is shown with a belt and really does require one to look good. There is no front overlap or fastening so the belt holds the jacket closed. There are faced slits in the dart legs and side seams so that the belt can pass underneath the jacket fabric there. The belt only shows at the center front and back. I didn’t like the self fabric belt tied casually, as in the pattern picture, so I used a store bought belt. While the AK jacket is OK, it did not come as close to the Tahari jacket as I would have liked because of 1. the non overlap front which shifts up and down even with a hook to hold the front edges together, 2.the fit in the torso is much looser, and 3. I like the look of the belt showing on the side waist of Tahari jacket (done with double princes seams with slits). But it does go with the skirt and the over blouse so I have a little mini wardrobe developing.

Burda Magazine 3/2009 109 Over Blouse

2010-02-10T21:11:00.011-05:00

Do you want to increase the work on a blouse sewing project? Just follow these guidelines.

1. Choose a blouse pattern with an inset neck band/front placket
2. Pick a fabric that can be challenging to work with - example: silk charmeuse
3. Add piping around the neck band
4. Hand dye the fabric for the piping
5. Hand baste the piping in place before final machine sewing
6. Redo piping several times
7. Make your own buttons out of polymer clay
8. Put the placket button holes on 45 degree angles so that button looks like the print,

I loved this Andrew Gn polka dotted blouse with piped trim. Notice how the big buttons on the skirt echo the polka dots. So cool.

I found this dark brown silk printed with cream flower petals that reminded of me of polka dots, well abstract polka dots. This fabric is everywhere. I bought mine at Hancock’s. It was available at www.Fabricmartfabrics.com at about the same time and is still available at Vogue Fabrics and FashionFabricClub/DenverFabrics. I would love to learn more about the supply chain for fabric. Why are some so hard to get, and others show up everywhere, like this one. I thought this Burda blouse was similar to the inspiration blouse. The fabric used to cover the piping is silk/cotton sateen I found at my local quilting store, of all places. It was bright white. To make it more cream colored, I tea dyed it. A long time tea drinker, I know from personal spills and splatters, just what color the stains are; the perfect light brown tinted color I needed. The grocery store brand of tea, made especially for iced tea or drip coffee makers (cheap, black and strong) worked just great. Five minutes swirling the piece of fabric around in a pot of hot, regular strength tea, yielded the perfect color.

The filler for the piping was rayon rat tail cord. Normally I am a “machine sew everything” person, but I always hand baste piping to a garment for control and careful placement. The neck band has 90 degree inside corners and outside corners. After I had machine stitched the piping in place, I was very dissatisfied with the look on the piping on the inside corner. I remembered a picture of piping on a similar corner, applied using a overlapping technique, from a 2005 Threads magazine article called “Perfect Piping” by Susan Kahlje. There were no instructions, but the picture was clear enough for me to figure it how to do it on my own.

Button sources in my town are limited. Many years ago someone gave a presentation at our ASG Fashion Focus neighborhood group on making buttons from polymer clay (like Fimo or Sculpey brands). I loved the idea. A Google of "polymer clay buttons" will bring up numerous web sites with pictures and instructions if you are interested. With a dollar for a package of clay, and a half hour for forming and baking, you can have machine washable buttons in any size, color or shape you want. I made flat oval buttons, with shapes similar to the larger petals in the print. I used a canapé cutter to cut the oval out of flattened clay, and a corn handle to make the holes for the thread. I don’t know how familiar folks are with corn handles, especially if they don’t eat sweet corn right off the cob. They are little pronged handles you stick in the end of a cooked ear of sweet corn to make the eating a tad neater. They keep the butter and salt off your fingers, but it still gets on your face. I wanted the buttons to look scattered like the ovals in the print. To accomplish this I put the button holes on 45 degree angles, alternating the direction of each one.
I chose this pattern because the neck band was like the one on the inspiration blouse, but I was concerned about the front gathers, which are below the bust. They put lots of fabric in the waist area and not in the bust where I would have expected it. I thought about moving the gathers up to the bust when I sewed the front to the placket, but didn’t. I wish I had, and will probably do it in the near future, when I am in the mood for careful seam ripping. The placket buckles when there is any movement that pulls the fabric over the bust. After I get it fixed, I plan to wear the blouse tucked into a skirt under a jacket, not as an over blouse.

Burda Blouse Blitz - #2

2010-01-25T19:57:00.008-05:00

Another well worn blouse in my wardrobe is a mauve silk jacquard.

I wear it with a mauve/black/grey tweed jacket and dark grey pants, or with a grey collarless jacket with matching grey pants. Both combo’s are a bit color blocky and need jewelry or scarves to liven them up. When I found this quirky silk print of magnifying glasses in the same color way, I couldn’t resist.
Unfortunately I only purchased 2 yards instead of the typical 2.5 yards for a blouse. I have no clue why I did that though I suspect it was because I must have been trying to balance the guilt of buying more fabric, with finding fabric I just had to have. I was barely able to eke out all the pieces of BWOF 10-2005-102, a fitted blouse with French darts, hidden button placket, and tie neckline.

In hindsight, the drapey silk fabric was probably not the best choice for this style. Both versions of the blouse in the magazine were made in a shirting fabric. The long dart with slightly bias cut edges is better suited for firmer fabric.The front hidden placket, with its many precise folds, was a bit of a chore because of the soft, shifty nature of the silk fabric. I was getting quite frustrated until I decided to liberally apply spray starch to the front bodice pieces. This stiffened the fabric just enough to make the folding, pressing, and top stitching a breeze. I machine wash all my silk blouse fabrics prior to cutting so the finished garment is washable. I rinsed the starch out after finishing the blouse. I used silk organza as interfacing in front placket and cuffs. I am happy with the way the blouse looks with both jackets.

Burda Blouse Blitz - #1

2010-01-17T15:17:00.014-05:00

Welcome 2010! Is it really mid Jan already? An update on the panda hat. T. loved it and sent me a picture of her wearing it.

Isn’t she cute? My DS the elder (17) met her at summer church camp several years ago. Surprisingly they have kept in touch and try to get together frequently. Ever since he got his driver’s license over a year ago, he has asked repeatedly about driving the 90 miles of highly trafficked roads to her house on his own. After talking to her parents and agreeing on some guidelines for visits, we got him a GPS for Christmas and tempered our parental anxiety long enough to let him make his first trip New Years Eve day. Thankfully, it was uneventful. DS is a good driver, but I worried he would encounter some of the idiot drivers I know are out there, and not have the experience to react safely.

Over my holiday break I spent time looking through nearly 10 years of old Burda magazines. I was looking for all the Burda blouse patterns I liked, but never had time to sew. I desperately needed some new blouses.

I have had the same dress code for work and relatively the same body shape and weight for many years, so I have garments in my wardrobe that are 10 to 15 years old and… I can still wear them. That doesn't mean I should. Specifically blouses. Some of my favorites were purchased in the early 90’s. They are favorites because they are made of beautiful fabrics like silk matelesse or iridescent cross woven’s in colors that still coordinate with many of my jackets. But they are so “out of style”. They have extended shoulders meant to be worn with shoulder pads, a loose fit in the torso, and breast pockets with flaps. I removed the shoulder pads long ago so you can imagine the look; droopy shoulders and lots of loose fabric around the waist when tucked into pants or skirt. As long as they are worn under a jacket, no one suspects. But I really need to wear blouses that are fit to be seen. I have personal global warming episodes when I need to remove my jacket to regulate my temperature. So I have been collecting fabrics in similar colors to the old blouses, in preparation for sewing replacements blouses. Here is the first of three I have completed so far.

BWOF 3-2009-112 collared V neck blouse with gathers along the neckline

I made mine in olive silk shantung to replace a olive silk matalesse blouse. The sewing was very straight forward. Here is the old blouse I am replacing.

Here is my new blouse,

I have a new coordinating jacket planned, but until it is done here are some of the RTW coordinates I will wear it with.

More to come on the other two blouses soon.

Hey Mom!

2009-12-22T11:25:00.005-05:00

“Hey Mom, I have a sewing project for you” I heard my elder DS’s voice say from the computer room. “What?” I asked from my comfortable chair, reading my book and sipping my tea. “Come here” he replied. As I got up from my chair, I knew this was not going to be the typical rip repair request. “T. (his friend girl) wants this for Christmas. She sent me the link, but it is sold out.” He said, pointing to a picture of a fleece hat with big panda bear eyes and ears on a cosplay site. “Can you make it?” Mixed feelings swirled in my head. Flattered that he thought I could, there was also some reluctance because this wasn’t what I had planned to do today. My book would be there when I got done, so I prepared to be "Sewper Mom". The first thing we did was look for similar hats on other sites, but there were none as cute. So we looked for fleece hat patterns with ear flaps and ties. We found some great patterns and a source of unique outdoor fabrics at Finnish web site Shelby , a company that provides extreme materials and designs to do-it-yourself enthusiasts, students, designers, and manufacturers. They have patterns for sale as well as some free ones. The hat pattern we used is the free Shelby Kaava #403 Tunturi Hat Pattern . The crown section of the hat is made from four triangular pieces and the bottom section from one of three options: a short ear flap, a long ear flap with tie, and a Balaclava. The pattern prints out in 4 sizes.

I had to climb up the ladder to the unheated attic to check my fleece stash. I had every color except the black and white needed for this project. The main roads had been cleared after our weekend snow storm and we had to go to the Alltel store to get my dead cell phone diagnosed, so I talked my DH into going "just a little further down the road to the fabric store” to get the fleece. In the mean time DS asked T. what her hat size was. Fortunately she responded with her head circumference, which is what we really needed to determine which pattern size to use.

From a closer examination of the pictures, it looked like the pattern used was a little different than the one we downloaded. The hat was cut in one piece and the crown shaping was done with darts. To get the same pattern shape, I positioned the crown pieces on top for the band pattern with flaps and cut out the shape. Now the crown shaping would be achieved with large curved darts.

After I showed him how fleece stretches in one direction and not the other, my son did the pattern layout and cutting. He drafted the pattern pieces for the eyes, nose and ears. The ears were 3 inch diameter lined circles, that are inserted in the crown side seams. I did all the sewing. Boy, it had been a while since I zigzag stitched around curve shapes. That is definitely a skill and mine is rusty. The white fleece was thin and seams show thorough, so we lined the hat with the same fleece. DS was fascinated with turning the tie tubes using a long metal rod with a hook on the end. He thought that was pretty neat.

Wouldn’t you know, I checked the web site of the original inspiration hat today, and it is back in stock. But DS is very pleased with the result of our sewing collaboration and we both enjoyed ourselves. He refused to model the hat himself, so here it is on a hat form. I think it will look really cute on T. with her long red hair.

I Felt Loopy

2009-12-17T17:59:00.013-05:00

Before I was sidetracked by the December issue of Burda magazine, I was working on a jacket. I bought the fabric in November in Hampton Roads, VA. I had driven my older son there so he could take his friend girl (it’s a long distance relationship so she really isn’t his girlfriend) to her high school’s fall Homecoming Dance. He doesn’t have enough driving experience yet to do the trip on his own. I dropped him off at the friend’s house and spent the rest of the evening shopping. In the sale section, at the back of the JoAnne Fabrics store, was a bolt of dark brown flannel like fabric with a variegated yarn felted to it in a meandering loopy pattern. I am pretty sure it is felted because there is no visible sign of stitching and the yarn fibers can be seen faintly on the back side of the fabric.

The local JoAnne Fabric store had a different colorway of this fabric last fall. I thought it was a bit overpriced for something made of acrylic/poly/wool, no matter how unusual the fabric was. It sold out very quickly. I always wonder what makes a fabric popular at one store and not at another. At half the original price, the fabric became more appealing to me. I decided a jacket with soft curved style lines would be a good choice for this fabric. Simplicity 2810 is a pattern for a double breasted, shawl collar jacket that fits that description.

On the pattern envelope, this jacket is shown in a paisley fabric with coordinating binding around the edges. The instructions say to finish the lapel outer edges and hem normally, and then apply binding made of bias strips cut from a coordinating fabric. I had a solid brown wool fabric that coordinated well, but as a binding over the finished edges it was too bulky. I considered cutting off the lapel edge seam allowances and binding the edge using the solid brown fabric, but that was still too bulky. By this time the binding issue was driving me "loopy" and the project stalled for a bit. I felt the patterned fabric really needed some kind of edge definition. Then I remembered a scrap of cream colored faux suede left over from a Davy Crockett/Daniel Boone costume project. You know the type of costume I mean...a leather looking jacket with lots of fringe. I folded strips of the suede in half and inserted the folded edge like piping. It extends about 3/16 inch from the front edge, about the same width of the yarn.

I had two fitting issues which are not normally a problem for me with Simplicity patterns. The full length sleeves were about 1.5 inches too short. I ended up sewing a bias band to the bottom of the sleeves to get them to the appropriate length. And the sleeves were also very narrow. Bicep circumference measurement for my favorite RTW jackets is 14.5 to 15 inches. For the size 14, the finished pattern measurement was 13 5/8 inches. I used 3/8th inch seam allowances on the two sleeve seams to get a little more room. The sleeves are comfortable over tops made of thin fabric.

One more day of work and I am on vacation until after the New Year. Gift shopping is done, thank goodness! I am actually feeling very relaxed about the upcoming holiday and am looking forward to luncheons with sewing buddies, visits with friends and relatives, and doing goofy stuff with the family like the Tacky Light Tour. The TLT is when you drive around the city after dark, looking at the Christmas lights on the homes of people who go to decorating extremes. I have not planned any specific sewing, but I am sure some will occur.