Monthly Archives: October 2010

October 5, 2010 · 5:58 pm

Next big thing

I feel a little floaty with having the coat done. Not sure what to tackle next. Now that I have my whole wardrobe back, it seems like I’ve got jillions of clothes. Make something for the kids? It’s Tyo’s turn, I guess, but she just got two whole big black garbage bags full of hand-me-down clothes from a friend. I could work more on my Lady Grey coat. I’m distinctly behind, but since I can’t buy my fashion fabric yet (and probably not util the very end of October) it’s hard to get too pumped up about that. Not to mention I’m heading off to a conference on the weekend that I need to get ready for (myself, but the family also, house clean, childcare figured out).

So what do you think I should do next? Something frivolous like the 50s petticoat? Be good and work on the Lady Grey (make my muslin wearable? I have a few ideas floating around for knit tops but I haven’t got the fabric at the moment. I want to try knocking off some of the drape-drape ideas I’ve seen, since the odds of me actually getting my hands on one of those actual books are vanishingly small.

August Burda jacket---finished

Anyway, I did manage to motivate myself to stitch up the last of the lining hem on this jacket (first mentioned here), which has been hovering between wadder and UFO status for the last month and a half. It’s my first (and so far only) stab at a Burda magazine pattern; I guess I need to make at least one more thing from this issue to justify buying the magazine, otherwise I might as well have bought the pattern off the website ;). The biggest problem with it is that for some reason I cannot fathom, the shoulder seam is wonky. It sits in the right place at my neck, but angles backwards from there. Which means that when matching the shoulder seam to the top of the sleeve, it hung and pulled very strangely. Basically I had to pretend that the apex of the sleeve-cap matched up with a point about and inch and a half in front of the

August Burda Jacket---Back

actual shoulder seam. And they’re still a bit wonky. A more minor problem is that it’s a petite. I made the 18, which is allegedly the petite equivalent of my regular 36, but somehow when I got the lining in it became really snug. Maybe I should’ve gone up a size… or done an FBA? Seriously, if I need an FBA, it’s pretty silly, folks.

These are, of course, all the reasons why you do a muslin, but when your thick wool fashion fabric came from the thrift store for three bucks… well, I rush in.

Being a petite, it is quite short, but we’ve already discussed the disproportions between my limb-length and body length ad nauseum :). I could’ve added half an inch above the waist, perhaps, but it works. Most importantly, it conceivably gives me something to wear right now when my awesome winter coat is still a wee bit too warm.

Also, I lengthened the sleeves by one inch. Incidentally, this is the sleeve pattern I swapped in to the winter coat—the problem with the armscye/shoulder seam is why I didn’t want to try and use the armscye from this pattern, too (because that, y’know, would’ve saved me about fifty headaches.)

Anyway, here it is.

Open

Another cute back view

Seriously, though, people, what do you think should be my Next Big Thing? 🙂

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October 3, 2010 · 11:14 am

A Whole Lotta Coat

The Amazing Coat of Doooooom

In a way, this is the garment that started it all. More than a year ago, now, I was facing down another Canadian winter realizing, sadly, that my erstwhile-winter-coat (really more of a fall weight) was not going to get me through more than one more brutal season. And the kinds of winter coats I like—long and elegant and warm—are hard to find, dastardly expensive, and never have long enough sleeves.

So a kernel was planted in my brain.

It took a long time to germinate. I had candidacy exams last fall, which constitutes the most intensive and brutal academic hazing I’ve yet encountered. I couldn’t really contemplate anything that fall; I woke up, got the kids off to school, and sat in bed and read, researched, and wrote. All day. For months. Finally in early December the final (oral) part of the exams was finished, and I had just enough time to inhale, explain to my kids’ teachers why they were both acting out in school (can we say stress at home?), and get ready for Christmas.

Around the same time as the coat-kernel was planted, the idea of making the girls some coats had also been sown, as I had some burlap-weight curtain material that I couldn’t imagine actually wearing myself. So after Christmas, I took myself off to Fabricland, in search of little girls’ coat patterns, and found this one. Keeping in mind at this point, the only lined garment I’d ever made was a vest.

The girls’ coats became the ones blogged here and here and I moved on to other things, but the dream of a winter coat percolated ever in the background. I was absolutely delighted when Elizabeth decided to revive the Trench Coat Sew-Along in a more relaxed format. Just what I needed, I thought.

A whole lotta skirt!

I won’t bore you with too much more blathering. It’s pretty much all documented here already, probably in triplicate, right up to my button crisis the other week. And there’s the trials of the flipping-out-facings, which haven’t been totally tamed, as I’m sure you can see.

Anyway, last night I finally tackled the dreaded buttonholes of doom. Er, tackled might be a little too strong a word. At present they are hand-finished, but the thread I had (buttonhole thread, but not hand-buttonhole thread) didn’t give good coverage; I may try just zig-zagging over the cut edges. All my sewing incompetence comes roaring to the fore in the face of buttonholes (at least buttonholes I can’t accomplish with my buttonhole function on my sewing machine, anyway. Which is pretty much anything that isn’t a light blouse). Probably I should’ve gone for bound buttonholes, but the chances of me getting (eight! of) them even and matching… well, anyway. I didn’t.

But here it is. Perfect? Not hardly. Well fitting? Well, the sleeves are long enough and it creates

A nice back view, except for the closed eyes.

the illusion that I have a curvaceous figure, which is exciting in a coat. How warm it is remains to be seen—it’s certainly more than adequate for a crisp fall morning like today, but will it get me through -30, -40, -50? There isn’t much ease for stuffing extra sweater layers underneath it (the idea was to render those 2 or 3 extra layers unnecessary, of course. I’m still not sure I’m absolutely in love with the stand collar, especially in grey—not a great colour for me—but it’s interesting and different. Maybe I’ll try the regular lapel version sometime. I like it best with the red accessories—I have a red winter hat, too, that goes well with the scarf, but I couldn’t find it just rooting around this morning.

Obligatory twirly shot

Front shot

Front, no scarf

And here’s a link to the slideshow on Flickr with a few more photos.

Whew! That was exhausting!

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October 2, 2010 · 7:50 am

Frankenpattern

Fun with plaid

So last weekend I “splurged” on this purple plaid-printed knit. One whole yard, costing a whopping $2.50 (I would’ve gotten more but let’s face it, how many outfits in a fabric like that can I get away with? Although, I suppose I could’ve made stuff for the kids). It’s a fairly thick, stable knit, a little too polyester-feeling but not awful, and decent recovery. There’s some kind of flaw in the pattern-printing (doubtless why it’s in the clearance section) but it mostly only shows on the reverse (plain, light purple) side, so I was able to ignore it for the bodice pieces.

But I didn’t want to do just another boring Lydia. The plain, scoop-necked Lydia is great in solid colours I’ll layer under stuff, but for something striking like the plaid I wanted more of a statement pattern, something that would stand on its own. And one of my regrets from Self-Stitched September was not getting much use of my cowl neck tops, due to their sleevelessness*. (Due to the knit, they wouldn’t drape nicely over one of the Lydias, I think.). I considered re-drafting a cowl-necked version of the Lydia (honestly, this would not be hard.)

Then, I threw caution to the wind, re-traced the sleeve from my Lydia, measured the armscye, chopped off the top of the sleeve, and added the sleeve to the Manequim cowl top.

This was… interesting.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t capable of making the cut-off top of my sleeve match with the horizontal “shoulder” of the cowl top, so I

peekaboo shoulder: I bound the top of the sleeve and finished the cowl separately.

kept them separate. In theory that means there’s some potential for cute shoulder peekaboo; in reality, the way the cowl has ended up sitting makes this unlikely. Whatever.

It took a fair amount of mental gymnastics to get the pattern working this well—there are certainly a number of places I could’ve measured better, remembered what my seam-

Purple plaid Manequim

allowances were, etc. Also the original pattern has a lower armscye (typical for sleeveless patterns, I think), and adding sleeves to it really pulls it up and into the armpit oddly. Not uncomfortable, but weird if you think to look for it. On the upside, something about the close fit at the armpit means that so far this top is completely resistant to sliding up onto the shoulder, unlike every other off-the-shoulder top I’ve ever encountered.

Plaid top---rear view

I used the wrong side of the fabric for the contrasting cowl-neck.

The only downside, at the moment, is that the broad, off-the-shoulder cowl neck pretty much negates the added warmth given by the sleeves. I am COLD!

I should add for the sake of the free-pattern-grubbing masses (like myself), that while this pattern is based on the pattern here, I totally messed with the bodice, so really the only relevant piece from the original pattern is the cowl/drape itself. You’ve been warned. I also lengthened the bodice (I had kept the original length the first time) by 3 cm, and it’s better but still a bit short for my liking, especially since I haven’t hemmed it yet. I was about to, but my twin needle decided to break going over the first side-seam. Really, it’s done quite well—none of my previous twin needles have survived more than one or two garments at most before I managed to break them—but it means the shirt won’t be getting hemmed for, oh, another few weeks.

Also, look at that! RTW jeans! And honestly, this is the only pair of the RTW pants I missed, the whole month of Self-Stitched September.

Side view---cowl "up"

*now, historically I have worn plenty of short-sleeved and sleeveless tops all through the winter. Rendered more-or-less invisible by my signature hooded sweater. But having discovered through sewing the wonder of the long (or rather, long-enough) sleeve, I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring myself to do this ever again.

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October 1, 2010 · 8:13 am

Self-Stitched September: Lessons?

Self-Stitched September 24

Looking back

It seems obligatory to do a post on the things learnt from Self-Stitched September, the impact it has had on me, especially since I hadn’t done the Me-Made-May challenge. So here goes.

The Good:

  • I had enough pieces to get me through. I’ve been trying hard to focus on practical sewing this time around, and aside from the odd venture into pouffy-skirt territory, I’ve been pretty successful. A big thank-you to everyone who pushed me towards a “full” commitment. It’s good to stretch ourselves a little.
  • It pushed me to get more creative with my outfits—layering Lydias and JJs or the Danielle Dress over jeans, even finding ways to style my Kasia skirt—which I still have issues with.
  • it pushed me to “step it up” with my photos to reduce the boredom of photographing repeat outfits. Though my photo-quality is still pretty spotty, I think.
  • it pushed me to make use of borderline pieces that I probably wouldn’t get much use out of otherwise—like my first black Lydia with the wonky shoulders, or my ex-capri Jalie Jeans, which fit fine but have some construction, ah, idiosyncrasies.
  • it clarifies a lot of things about what I like to wear.

The Bad:

  • Boring! Although I had enough pieces to get through (without doing laundry every other day), it gets old rotating the same two pairs of pants and the same few shirts, especially when weather necessitated layering or omitting the more summery items. I didn’t get a lot of use out of my cowl-neck tops due to the weather, and I got mighty bored of my variations on JJ and Lydia (especially layered together).
  • I wish I had a few more “relief” pieces (like the Danielle dress pictured) for spicing it up when the staples get old. I’m really lusting after a mid-length mermaid skirt like Big in Japan’s or LouTracey’s. The Kasia fits this ‘hole’ but a) I don’t really like it with any of my self-stitched tops, and b) I find the whole pencil-skirt thing a big constricting for everyday wear. I like to walk fast and take stairs two at a time, which is not good for pencil skirts.
  • DAILY photos! Tiring, boring. Probably the repetitive garments wouldn’t’ve bothered me quite as much if I hadn’t been photographing them. (I know, this is also part of “the good” because it pushed me to get more creative with my photos)
  • I never did find my blue tank top. It’s been MIA all month!

The Odd:

I don’t think my husband or children even noticed that I eschewed all RTW (except jackets, sweaters, and sleepwear… and undies) for the month. I guess this is partly because I was wearing a fair amount before (one piece a day through August and much of July), but still. Way to go, family! Also, it felt really weird to grab a non-self-stitched pair of jeans this morning.

The wardrobe:

Here’s a link to my Self-Stitched Flickr set. I didn’t manage pics every day, but more than not. You can tell which days I was inspired and having fun and which days were just “bleh let’s get this over with”, can’t you?

So on the whole, I’m glad I did it. I really like the feeling of wearing my own items, even if I don’t like being restricted to just them. It would be fun at some point in the future to have a fully me-made wardrobe, although I don’t think I’m going to exclude the possibility of buying stuff as needed. I hope I didn’t bore you all to tears with the outfit posts—I tried to have a bit of something else in there, even on days when little or no sewing was done.

The Way Forward:

I still need to finish my winter coat, and of course proceed with the Lady Grey. I’m still toying with the idea of turning the muslin (assuming I can get the front working) into a real, light-weight coat. I won’t be able to do the “final” version until I can get fabric, which hopefully will be sometime in October (I have a 50%-off coupon for up to 5m of fabric at Fabricland that expires at the end of October, but funds remain tight in the Tanit-Isis household). I have the lining! Tyo will also need a winter coat at some point this fall, so I need to decide whether to buy or try to make her one. I’m thinking I should hold off on making her one until I’ve tested whether mine will end up being warm enough, which of course means after the winter, which means buying one in the meantime. I’d also like more cardi-wrap-type garments, but again that requires buying substantial amounts of not-cheap fabric.

And, in the purely fun and frilly side of sewing (that oh-so-seductive side I’m trying to avoid), I now have all the materials I should need for a tiered petticoat, and also I’m considering sacrificing some of this red fabric to a retro circle skirt to go over said petticoat. How fun? Plus I still need some madeleine bloomers to go under the pouffy skirt (see above), and maybe some more nighties. I may resort to some of these just because I can use fabric I already have, instead of having to buy more.

So that’s where I am as of this morning, happy to have risen to the challenge but also glad it’s over. My wardrobe is going to feel so massive and well-rounded now… 😉

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