Memorial Day Weekend 2008

It was a 4-day holiday weekend. There was a lot of family related running around, the neighborhood picnic, the local swimming pool opened, driving a 13 year old and his girlfriend to a movie "date" etc. I did manage to complete a shirt dress in a springy grass green color. The dress pattern was from Burda WOF July 2001. It is a slightly A line silhouette with a shaped center back seam ending in a vent. It has epaulettes, sleeve taps and flapped pockets. The fabric is a polished cotton blend I picked up from the give away pile at the ASG meeting. Since I am small on top with sloping shoulders, I like details like epaulettes, breast pockets with flaps, and turned up sleeves because they add bulk above the waist, that balance my hips. These design details may not be the best choice for well endowed, square shoulders body types, but there are many styles they can wear that look horrible on me.
I tend to wear garments one way. A jacket with its matching skirt, a blouse with a certain pair of slacks, over and over again. The "maximize your wardrobe" books recommend breaking apart suits and wearing the pieces with other tops or bottoms. And trying different combinations of tops, bottoms and accessories when you have some time and aren’t in rush to get dressed. So I decided to "style" this dress several different ways based on some pictures I had seen in magazines. I may not be original, but I am great at copying.


Look 1, The dress with casual sandals and jewelry




Look 2 - The dress cinched with a belt, with a big brass buckle. I tried to make the belt form a "V" so as not to put a straight horizontal line across my middle.



Look 3. The dress worn under a short sleeve, khaki, belted jacket with dressier, snakeskin, peep toe, wedges.


Look 4. The dress worn as a jacket over a print top and black pant. I have noticed the longer jackets over tops and slacks a lot lately. They are often called “dusters”. Sometimes the “duster” is a structured jacket, in a bold spring print and sometimes it is more casual like a shirt. Of the 4 ways I styled the dress, my favorites are look 1 and look 4, but I am determined to wear all four just to get more use out of it.

Memorial Day Weekend is significant to me for reasons unrelated to the holiday. 29 years ago on this weekend, I married my husband in a short ceremony by a Justice of the Peace in Pittsburgh, PA. I wore a white suit my mother had made for me. It is still in a closet and no, it doesn’t fit me any more. My husband-to-be had only the holiday weekend off , because he still hadn’t been working at his new job long enough to have any vacation time, and I started a summer job in the engineering dept. of the Hershey Chocolate company the following week. We didn’t want to “live in sin” so after 4 years of dating we got married. The honeymoon weekend was spent hiking on Skyline Drive around Front Royal, VA. This weekend, in addition to the normal humorous card and restaurant dinner, my predictable, non spontaneous, thrifty husband surprised the heck out of me by giving me a very unusual, custom designed ring as an anniversary present. I love it!

Stuck (on) Zippers

My blue jacket is still not finished. I have a bad case of zipper indecision. I ordered a 2 way, #5, bottom separating zipper from Stans Sewing Supplies (along with a dozen bottom separating invisible zippers). But when it came, it was too heavy for the jacket fabric. So I order a YKK Formal Fashions separating zipper from Zipper Store. These zippers are light weight and designed for use in wedding dresses. My local Hancock’s used to stock these zippers until they went into bankruptcy and YKK refused to supply them any more (this info. came from the store manager). I am waiting for the YKK zipper to arrive. I hate to lose momentum when I am working on a garment. It is always hard to go back later, remember where I was in the process, and get started again.
Last weekend, my guys were off camping, so I was able to spend a lot of time looking through my stash of summer fabrics. I made lots of groups of coordinating fabrics. The group that inspired me the most was an expansion on the khaki and green color scheme mentioned in the last post.
I found quite a few of what I call sorbet colors, cool frosty shades of green, yellow and blue. One fabric had all the colors. It was a cotton rayon woven with muted stripe in khaki, aqua, chartreuse and pale yellow. I purchased this fabric specifically to make jacket 116 from the April 2005 of BWOF magazine The jacket was shown in a variegated green striped fabric. I loved everything about that fabric, the colors, pattern, and texture. But could never find anything close until recently. Because my fabric was very soft and raveled profusely, I backed all the garment pieces with fusible tricot. My favorite fabrics for summer jackets are silk matka, and silk or cotton blend suitings. I almost always fuse interfacing to all the garment pieces to give them some body and prevent raveling. I use fusible Armo Weft (60% poly, 40% rayon) most of the time. My choice of tricot(100%nylon) this time was based solely on coming across it first in my search for a fusible interfacing. I think I will stick with the Armo in the future. I originally hemmed the sleeves too short. When I took out the hem and attempted to press out the original hem fold, I had a heck of a time. It was like the fold was permanently formed in the tricot. Excessive use of steam and heat on the right side of the fabric got rid of the fold line, but caused the tricot to un fuse and bubble.
I did make modifications to the sleeve. The sleeve pattern was very long and flared out at the bottom edge. You can see this if you look closely at the line drawing. In the magazine picture the model has the sleeves shoved up at the elbow. I didn’t feel the extra length and flaring added to the silhouette, so I removed both. I really like the style of this jacket and will definitely make it again, maybe in the longer version. I am not sure these paler colors are good ones to wear near my face with my coloring. Especially the yellow and khaki. But aqua blue and some greens work for me. So inspired by the mini wardrobe contest going on over at PatternReview, I think I will challenge myself to make a mini wardrobe using some of the other fabrics in this group.
Thanks to Shannon and Sigrid for the link to the archived BWOF pattern magazines. It enabled me to put the picture of the line drawing and magazine photo in this post.

Mothers Day

Today was Mothers Day: a holiday I feel is highly publicized for the main purpose of encouraging the spending of money on presents, cards or restaurant meals to honor mothers. A hug is more meaningful to me. But this day always prompts me to think about how thankful I am for the medical technology that made it possible for me to be a mother. My husband and I were very fortunate that 16 years ago, we lived in a large urban area with state of the art infertility centers, and had enough of our own money to pay for invitro-fertilization, deemed "experimental" by our health insurance companies. I wish everyone had as much success with it as we did.

My MIL came over for a visit today and I made a nice dinner of something I knew she doesn't get in the assisted living facility where she resides; crab cakes, shrimp, roasted potatoes, sauteed spinach and a decadent chocolate pie that had a crust made of crushed pretzels. The pie was a new recipe. I liked the crust, the filling was entirely too rich.

I have been in a bit of a sewing doldrum. But I am so proud of myself. During this time, I did a massive closet clean out. I can’t believe I still had suits and clothes from 16+ years ago. I know why I kept them; they were some of the most expensive RTW clothes I had ever purchased. I just couldn't bring myself to part with them until now. The fabrics and workmanship were excellent, but I haven’t worn them in years and the styles are really dated. It took this long to break the emotional ties.

For spring and summer, the trends I want to incorporate in my wardrobe are

1. A bright blue jacket worn with taupe tops and bottoms, like this.

2. A dress or jacket with safari style details like epaulets and patch pockets, maybe in taupe or khaki, but rust or black are other color options.

3. I also like the look of khaki and chartreuse green as a new, different color scheme. Like this.



4. A red sleeveless double breasted shirt dress with trench coat details like this Lauren by Ralph Lauren dress . BWOF 4/06 # 109 is almost an exact duplicate.






5. Sleeveless tops that work under jackets for the temperature fluctuations of the workplace. It is my first summer in a new office. It faces dead east, and the east facing wall is all glass. It is stunningly bright and hot in the mornings, dark and cold in the afternoon and it is only spring.

The arrival of the May Burda WOF last weekend jump started my sewing again. I am nearing completion on jacket number 101 in a bright blue silk suiting. I am trying to decide on the closure, The magazine shows a separating zipper attached with the zipper tapes on the outside of the garment. While I find this an interesting design detail, it won't be understood in the office environment where I work. And I can't find a matching blue separating zipper. Dress number 116 is next. I have a stretch twill that is denim blue on one side and a lighter blue on the other. I think I will do some color blocking using both sides of the fabric, and I probably won't make the belt.

Pattern Morph Part 2

I was attempting go from the blouse with set in sleeves in the top drawing to the T shirt in the bottom of the drawing.


Changes I made to Pattern Front

1.Discarded front yoke piece
2. Smooth out lower armhole
3. Remove facing and added 5/8 " SA (seam allowance) to center front
4. Used raglan sleeve pattern from another pattern

























Changes I made to Pattern Back

1. Added seam with 5/8" SA to center back
2. Divided back neckline in 6 equal parts
3. Redrew top of center back and side back sections to correspond with markings, This created seam lines radiating from neckline similar to front.
4. Used raglan sleeve pattern from another pattern. Required some changes to back sleeve seam for my unique body shape

After cutting out the fabric, I sewed the garment together using machine basting stitches. It was late and I was tired. I inadvertently sewed the sleeves on backward. The fit was horrible, It took several minute for panic to subside, and logical brain functions to resume. I restitched the sleeves in correctly. The fit was fine, so I resewed all seams using shorter stitch length, except the side seams, which I left open so the garment could be laid relatively flat for coverstitching. All seams were pressed open

I made a template for the openings from the swim suit pattern. I laid the template on each of the five seams on the front, aligning the center of the opening with the seam line. I marked the shape with wash away pen.
I cut out the middle of the shape, leaving 3/8" of fabric beyond marked line to turn under.
I turned under the 3/8" and hand basted, being careful not to stretch.
The seam was top stitched on both sides with a narrow 3 thread cover stitch, using variegated thread (Maxilock Swirls Polyester). The cover stitch was sewn so the chain stitches were to the outside and the double line of stitching was to the inside. I had a horrible time sewing the cover stitch around the openings because they were hidden under the pressure foot and tended to wrinkle and bunch up. I tried ironing a large piece of dissolvable stabilizer to the wrong side of the front, under the openings. But any time I moved the fabric, it came unstuck. So I hand basted the openings to a large piece of wash away stabilizer. This kept the edges of the openings from stretching. My coverstitch machine has a large pressure foot that starts behind the needles and extends to an inch in front of them, effectively blocking the view of the fabric any where near the needles. After many attempts, I learned to visualize the needle location to the edge of the opening, under the pressure foot. I also learned how to remove three-thread cover stitch quickly (pull on all three threads at the same time at the same rate). I believe I did each of the seams with an opening, at least three times. The armhole and back seams caused no problems.
The neck was finished with a simple band attached to the wrong side, wrapped to the front, turned under and top stitched. Sleeve and garment hems were done with matching white thread

.
In hindsight I think I would use one of these alternate methods to stabilizing the cutout openings
1. Steam a Seam to hold the hem under and prevent stretching.
2. Face opening with silk organza or similar sheer strong fabric, It would be held in place to the wrong side with the coverstitching.

Not everyone has a cover stitch machine, and believe me when I was having all my difficulties, I was also thinking of alternate techniques for top stitching the cutouts and seams. These included decorative stitches on my regular sewing machine using the variegated thread, decorative stitching over coordinating 1/8 ribbon, or couching decorative yarns or narrow bias strips cut from coordinating printed fabric.

This is the one of the few times I have made significant design changes to a pattern. I think what gives me the greatest satisfaction is that despite a lot of frustrations, I just kept plugging away, trying different things. until the problems were resolved. I now feel more confident attempting other sewing challenges.

Pattern Morph

Pictures of all the SWAPs are up at the Timmel Fabric site. Check them out. They are all wonderful!



One of the tops in my SWAP is a knit T-shirt with raglan sleeves. The pattern I listed as using to make it is a blouse pattern with set in sleeves. I thought I would explain how the blouse morphed to the T shirt. I learned a lot from the process. I purchased white cotton lycra knit fabric from Timmel Fabrics to use for my SWAP. But I had the hardest time coming up with what to make from it. After looking through web sites at T-shirts for inspiration, I found one on XOOP,

It was a raglan sleeve T shirt, with cutouts on the seam lines of the sleeves. This triggered memories of a favorite bathing suit pattern with similar cutouts on seams radiating from the neckline,Stretch and Sew 1383.(doesn’t the model in the drawing look like Princess Diana?)

The swimsuit had smaller, more esthetically pleasing, cutout shapes. And there were three of them. Thinking about seam lines radiating from necklines, I remembered Vogue 8476, the blouse pattern I made recently. It had 5 seam lines radiating from the neck. I thought the use of small cutouts on 5 seams would be an interesting effect. Though this blouse had set in sleeves, the bottom edge of the yoke in the front seemed to be located where a raglan sleeve seam would be. The blouse had a fairly close fit so I reasoned that if I made it in the knit fabric, and took generous seams, it would fit like a T shirt. I originally tried to draft a raglan sleeve pattern using the instruction on page 128 of Dorothy Moore’s Pattern Drafting and Dressmaking Book. But since I was using a pattern with build in ease rather than a sloper made from my measurements , the resulting pattern was goofy looking.

I did learn from the formulas in Moore’s book, that the front neckline is divided into 6 equal sections, with the sleeve seam starting 1/6th of the front neckline length from the shoulder. The yoke seam on the blouse pattern was exactly where a raglan sleeve seam would be located.

Since the pattern drafting did not go well, I went looking for a existing raglan sleeve pattern I could use. I had a New Look, raglan sleeve, turtle neck pattern in my stash. The pattern for the sleeve proved to be a very close to what I needed on the blouse. I pinned the blouse pattern bodice on my dress form and also the sleeve pattern. The front fit perfectly, On the back there were gaps between the bodice and the sleeve, so I added about an inch to the back sleeve piece. Part of this was probably needed to accommodate my prominent shoulder blades and forward shoulders. My next post will describe how I created the cutouts and used a cover stitch to emphasize the seams.

2008 SWAP Completed!

Yeah! My SWAP is done. The photos have been taken and submitted to Julie. I had to leave the photo taking until Friday, the last day to submit them, because of bad weather and lack of photographers. I realized I was living dangerously. Technology can fail at the most inopportune times and I was relying on my digital camera, computers and Internet access to work. Fortunately Friday was a gorgeous day for taking pictures, and everything went well. I am looking forward to seeing all the other SWAP's at Julie's Site http://timmelfabric.com/. The colors of my SWAP were gray, white, Caribbean blue and teal,. They came from a boucle tweed fabric that I did not use in the SWAP. I called it "Blue Skies will be Gray, Un-Teal I see you again." which reminds me of some of the goofy song titles of the music from the 40's and 50's, that my father enjoys playing, and his "punny" sense of humor. The blues were very hard to photograph accurately. Below is a picture of the 10 sewn garments and the patterns used to make them. One pair of pants was purchased, because the previously sewn Sandra Betzina pants I had planned to use didn't fit. More pictures can be seen in my SWAP Flicker album. The link is on the right hand side of the page. Today I plan to clean up my sewing room. And spend time in the yard weeding the flower beds and enjoying the scent of the wallflowers and lilies of the valley, and the sight of the pink azaleas blooming underneath the pink dogwood trees, flowering cherry trees and Chinese Fringe bushes.

Last Lap

This is going to be a short post. There are five more days to sew for the 2008 SWAP. I will make the deadline. On Wed. evening I finally made a decision on the pattern for my SWAP jacket. It is Vogue 2919, an Anne Klein design. I have been sewing all weekend and right now I am pretty tired. But the jacket is complete except for some top stitching and two hook closures. And I whipped up a easy knit top using a older New Look pattern, 6779. I have one other top cut out and partially sewn. I need to think about how I am going to get the garments photographed this coming weekend. What enticing bribes I can use get assistance from my three resident photographers? For the oldest son, a promise to take him out driving. He got his learners permit this weekend. Youngest son is easy, homemade chocolate chip cookies, DH, mmm I have to think about that one.