Category Archives: Sewing

March 29, 2011 · 2:34 pm

Apparently I am learning how to sew

Finally stitched!

In particular, when it came time to stitch up the “waist” band on this cropped little jean jacket, I was able to topstitch along the entire length, from the outside, and successfully catch the underside along the whole length! Cue bugles, triumphal marches, and possibly even choirs of angels.

Of course, the nice, crisp hand of my denim and the straight edge didn’t hurt, but still, I feel like I was very careful feeling my way along, making sure the fabric was where it needed to be on the bottom and all that. I felt like I knew the little tricks the fabric was likely to pull, and what I had to watch out for—and how to watch out for it. Woohoo!

Back view

Which is not to say that this jacket is anything like flawless (I did mention the collar points before, didn’t I?), but on the whole it came together pretty well. The fabric was thin (for denim) and crisp enough that my machine did the buttonholes with scarcely a whimper.

If I decide to do another such jacket, I’ll increase the bust shaping in the front, as it’s a bit minimal—not that it doesn’t fit, mind you, but when your assets are, ah, modest, a bit more shaping that nature strictly requires can be a fine thing. Also the “waist” band is pretty loose—not problematically so, but it could have an inch or so less ease without even beginning to feel snug.

I’m a little regretful that I didn’t topstitch the front sleeve seam… I suppose I could still do it if I really wanted to, I’m just a little doubtful of my ability to do it neatly.

The buttons look as snazzy and shiny as I had hoped. I had two sizes available; I used the larger ones for the front and the smaller size for the pockets and cuffs.

Cuff (linked)

For the cuff buttons, I linked two buttons together with thread and blanket-stitched along the little length of thread between them to make a short bar. This was kinda a pain as the thread kept trying to miss the button, but while the end result was a bit messy, it doesn’t show, so I shan’t complain.

I went on about the construction at fair length here, so I won’t belabour it too much more. Incidentally, as you can see in the interior shots in the other post, there really are little pockets under those chest flaps, although they’re so tiny (and in such a location) that I probably won’t actually use them much. I’m still glad they’re there. Flaps without pockets would annoy me—but apparently flaps with vestigial pockets are fine.

Now, I just need the weather to shape up enough so I can wear it. Today is the first day in over a week that it hasn’t snowed, so that’s a good sign!

 

In Me-Made March News,

MMM day 29

I can’t believe that Me-Made March is almost done! I’ll try to spare you my requisite freak-out about time passing… it’s not that I’m that messed up about growing older, but when every month is one less of funding you have left, looking forward to the future is a bit hard. I’m sure everyone who’s ever done contract work knows the feeling.

Today I’m wearing my skinny jeans and this blue short-sleeved Lydia top (pre-dating many of the tweaks that made this pattern actually fit me), which incidentally is the exact same outfit I started off the month in. But I have my cropped jacket, so that’s different, at least (even if the denim of the jacket and the denim of the pants don’t match at all)

I have to admit, I find these cropped jackets surprisingly nice for wearing around the house. Someone commented that their tummy would get cold, but I really find that having the extra layer around my upper body is warm enough—and anything that gets me out of my bunnyhug* is a plus in my world. If I could just train myself to wear slippers, I’d be snug as a bug.

*Central Saskatchewanese for “hoodie.” And no, Saskatchewanese is not a word.

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March 28, 2011 · 9:18 am

More fun than a barrel of monkeys

 

Yummies!

This is exciting. It will also be a bit challenging, especially combined with the RTW tailoring sewalong.

So an old friend came by yesterday with a project. She’s in the final stages of putting together her debut album (yay!) and wanted a frilly, over-the-top tailcoat for a photo-shoot. So we did some discussing, trawled Fabricland for suitably sumptuous fabric—the paisley corduroy is actually quite a lot more subdued than we were initially thinking, but Fabricland’s sumptuous-crushed-velvet selection is sadly understocked (go figure). Still, I love the fabric we did come home with, and I’m (not so) secretly hoping that there will be enough of the corduroy left over for me to get a little cute something out of it, too.

I’m planning to use the M-sewing tailcoat pattern, with considerable modification as you can see if you squint (or click through for full size) at the sketch on the photo. Fortunately Modern Pattern Design has diagrams for most of the modifications I’m going to need to make, although I’m still not quite sure about the collar—mostly because I’m still not quite sure exactly how I want it to look. Will figure that out soon enough.

In Me-Made March news

Here’s photos for yesterday and today. Again not overly glamorous, which I will blame on the continuing snow. Yes, it’s still snowing.

Me-Made March 27

Me-Made March 28

MMM 27
Cowl-sleeve jacket
Super-cowl top
skinny cargoes

MMM 28
raglan-sleeve top
skinny cargoes

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March 26, 2011 · 4:34 pm

The Great Thread Crisis of 2011

Cropped Jean Jacket---progress report.

It is with some difficulty that I am refraining from titling this post “The Great Snow Crisis”, since it’s snowed, I think, every single day this week. But since I’m trying to keep this blog about sewing, rather than the weather (something it can be very hard for a Canadian to do…), I’m instead going to restrict myself to lamenting about thread.

In particular, my lack of it.

Not just the lack of red thread which is preventing me from

Cropped jean-jacket, rear view

finishing my cropped jean-jacket—that was almost to be expected, since I started the project with less than two medium-sized spools and the triple-stitch topstitching I’ve been using is extremely thread-hungry—but I’ve also run out of basic black, of which I always have at least two and often three or four spools kicking around. So naturally I figured, when I used up my last one, that I must have one somewhere. Apparently not. Even worse, I’m completely unable to rectify the situation as I’m home carless today as the hubby is working, and retaining the car on a day when he’s working requires getting up at an obscenely early hour and driving him halfway across town to work. OK, it’s not halfway, but in any decently-sized city (as opposed to this monstrosity of urban sprawl we inhabit) it would be halfway. Were I in full health, and feeling masochistic, I could bundle up the children and walk down to Zellers, which is my nearest likely source of halfway-decent thread*, but the two-block walk to the grocery store the other day still almost did me in, and the thought of trying to wrangle children all the way to Zellers, in the snow… well, let’s just say it’s unpleasant. Times like these are the only ones where I miss the stroller days, although I never had a properly snow-worthy stroller anyways. Anyway, jean jacket. Frustrating to be so close—although really, I’m getting to the point where “close” becomes “annoying finishing details”… buttonholes etc.

So, details…

Collar attachment

I used Sherry’s technique for putting in the collar, which is very lovely and saved me from hand-slip-stitching the interior, which is my usual fall-back. My only complaint is that her method for tacking the facing to the shoulder-seams didn’t really work with how I was trying to finish the shoulder seams on mine, so I’ll have to tack those down by hand. Otherwise, it’s a treat, though.

See how cool my cuffs will be?

I decided to go a little whimsical for the cuffs because, well, I could, so I’m going for a sort of flared, cuff-linked look. This actually went together better than I thought it might, and the sharp, pointed ends on the cuffs came out much better than the ones on the collar.

The sleeve-caps have a bit too much height for denim (which doesn’t ease for shite), but I think what will be a very reasonable amount of ease for normal fabrics. I did end up taking in the shoulder about 1 cm, which suggests that the original shoulder-length is fine after all (I had increased it by 1 cm when I graded up the pattern after my first muslin). Armscye depth and range of mobility seem to be good. There are a few wrinkles forming to the front of the sleeve, but mild enough that I think I’ll leave them be at least for the moment.

Jacket closeup, with interior shot.

The collar still needs some work. I think the height of the stand is about right as it’s folded (in the upper images), but as you can see in the rear shot the roll doesn’t quite cover this in the back. And I need to give up the dream of sharply-curved front points and just have sharp points… I’m not capable, even with severely shortened stitches, of making such a narrow curve neatly. Not twice, anyway (and certainly not the six times including topstitching on the jean jacket).

One little fact that slipped my mind when I was drafting the front band/facing is that

Interior closeup

since I didn’t subtract anything from the CF for the band, I actually added 3cm across the front. In my head I thought of this as overlap, but of course, only half of it is. My bad. It doesn’t seem to mess with the fit, particularly, so I’m not going to bother with it this time, but it’s something to keep in mind next time I want a jacket with a front band. I imagine you learn this sort of thing in pattern-drafting classes, as opposed to when you just decide to jump in without having a clue what you’re doing.

I’m going to use some of my haul of vintage metal buttons from last week, which should give a nice added bling.

In Me-Made March news,

you can see I’m wearing the 70s dress today. I can get away with this because I’m going nowhere at all, and was hoping to photograph the cowl-sleeved jacket at some point today. I haven’t because I’m still lacking a really good place to take pictures (as you can tell by the poor-light shots of the jacket) and there’s no point in taking a second round of half-ass photos. I will just say that I love, love, love how this dress looks with a cropped little *something* on top—be it the cowl-sleeved jacket, the 50s shrug, or even the jean jacket, which is completely the wrong sort of style for it.

*I find it a bit disturbing that I can buy a sewing machine at at least three different places within walking-distance, but fabric at none of them.

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March 25, 2011 · 4:06 pm

Lots and lots of little bits of paper

Playing with paper (MMM day 24)

As I continue to try and fail to shake off the dregs of this cold, I’ve been messing with paper, seeing how far I can push my blastula-stage pattern-drafting skills. As part of the greater goal of the Springy Coat, I wanted to test a two-piece sleeve and a tall-standing collar. For whatever reason, I find it more satisfying to try this on an (at least attempted) actual garment.

I’ve been considering making a cropped jean-jacket for myself pretty much since last summer when I made my children jean jackets and discovered that I could, with a little wriggling, actually get into Tyo’s. At the time I had considered just trying to grade up (and shape) the Burda kids’ pattern I was using, but, now that I have this fitted, cropped jacket bodice, well, why not use that?

Of course, jean-jackets aren’t traditionally princess-seamed. So I needed to approximate the darted block that the princess-seamed version would’ve been derived from. This was not a particularly scientific process, which mostly involved tracing out the pieces adjacent to each other, using the gaps as the legs of the dart, and estimating an apex which may or may not turn out to be in anything like the right place. Ah well. Once I had that estimated, I should’ve made a muslin of the darted bodice (which would be useful for all kinds of things…) but I didn’t—I skipped straight ahead to marking off the seam-lines for yokes and panels and doing my best to incorporate my darts into the taper between the panels. I even drafted a front-band/facing (granted not until after I had all the other pieces pinned on my fabric and realized it was missing, but still.

I don’t think I want to admit too much about my process for drafting the two-piece sleeve. There’s plenty of instructions on how to do this out there, and Claire was even generous enough to email me hers, and I still just went ahead and winged it. The finished product looks kinda generally similar to the sleeve I used for my winter coat, so I’m hopeful that it will work.

Jean-jacket pieces

Hopeful enough, anyway, that I went through my denim stash, and eventually settled on the same light-weight, sparkly denim I used for the kids’ jackets. There was just around a metre left, which as it turns out is just about enough to lay out a cropped jean-jacket pattern on, leaving enough left over to make the bottom band which I haven’t actually bothered to draft a pattern for yet (I still have trouble with rectangular pattern pieces… it always seems easier to just measure. Except for pieces to be cut on the bias, anyway…)

I settled on some red bias-tape from stash for binding the seams (I know a jean-jacket should be flat-felled, but I like the flash of colour from the bound seams), red thread for topstitching, and the last remnants of red cotton from my very first JJ blouse (which in tun was the remnant from a dance skirt a few years back) for the under-collar and pocket lining. I probably could have squeezed the undercollar from the denim, but I like the contrast of the coloured undercollar. Since the red is basically a cotton gauze, I interfaced with some super-light knit interfacing, which gave it a better body, except for the pocket-lining part, anyway.

And I started merrily sewing away. Seam were bound, tops were stitched, and I would probably be there still, rather than writing this post… except that my pocket flaps have gone AWOL.

So until they surface, I guess I’ll be tidying my kitchen.

In Me Made March news,

MMM 25, with accessory.

more unglamorous shots from a singularly unglamorous week. Yesterday, pictured at the top of the post, and was another day of not-leaving-the-house-trying-to-keep-my-lungs-in-my-chest. Today the children have no school (boo) but student-led conferences (which is like parent-teacher interviews but less fun), so I had to make myself a wee bit more presentable.

Not especially successful cowl top

Ellen Pants

Winter Coat

 

Oh, yes, and in the photo from yesterday I’m wearing my very first Jalie Jeans, which just shows how far down the wearables list I’m getting ;)… they’re stubbornly refusing to disintegrate on me, but they are definitely off the A list, mostly due to poor topstitching, although the fabric (which I never liked, but it was cheap) doesn’t help. And of course my Kimono Lady Grey, which you’ve already seen umpteen-bajillion times. I really need to make myself more sweaters. Don’t worry, that’s in the works too, but first I need to get all these little jackets out of my system…

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March 23, 2011 · 5:38 pm

A further invocation of spring

Mermaid skirt

Since the first one worked so well. Well, it did—the temperatures I’m complaining about right now are a full 20° C warmer than the ones I was complaining about at the beginning of the month. It’s still snowing, however.

This fabric was snatched up in the frenzy of stash-building earlier this month when I discovered Fabricland had actually put some decent knits in their clearance section. Mainly I like the colour, but it also has an interesting sueded surface and a moderate stretch. It seemed a little heavy and so was passed over during the Great Cowl Experiment (which Sigrid’s versions are making me ache to revisit, by the way…), but I thought it would be great for a springy little skirt.

My first thought was a half-circle like Hip Dropped Stitches’ gorgeous one, but I was concerned that the nap running in different directions might end up looking odd (I can’t tell if there is a direction, but if I pretend there isn’t, you know I’ll find out there is when I photograph the skirt.)

My next thought was a mermaid skirt. I’ve been wanting a little, flared, gored skirt since… well, aside from always liking them, Loutracey posted this one lots back in Self-Stitched September, and then Big in Japan copied this one, and then most recently Yoshimi unveiled this gorgeous (red!) version. Yum, yum YUM.

Evolution of a pattern: right, original piece; centre, doubled; left, tripled width.

What flummoxed me for the longest time was a pattern. Obviously a straight gored skirt would be easy to draft (bum-fitting aside), but I wanted something with a graceful curve hugging the hips and then flaring out below. This would take a bit more thought. And of course, going out and buying a pattern would be too easy. Lekala had a couple of versions I considered, but the one had too many panels (a 10-gore skirt, in fact) and looked too long (which is SO weird, because if you look at their artist’s rendering, the skirt comes to below the knee. The pattern piece is only 22″ long, people, and the waistband’s not that wide either. I mean, I know I have long legs, but not that long.), and the other one, while lovely, seemed to have a bit too much flare. I wanted the skirt to bell out, but not be a circle dropped to my hips.  (I can’t believe I just admitted that a skirt can be too full. That’s like saying pants can be… too long. Or that the Blondissima got your hair too blonde).

Skirt closeup, showing waistband

Anyway, when this fabric came along and the idea crystallized, I went back to the Lekala patterns, thinking I could probably make one work. I knew the length I wanted (just above knee), and that I wanted a six-gore skirt with wider CF and CB panels and narrower panels at the sides.

So I revisited the Lekala patterns, and eventually printed off Lekala 5826, mainly because it required less paper. Man was that a tiny pattern piece! Comparatively, anyway.

So, I had the pattern piece for a 10-gore skirt that was designed to fit me (or rather, someone with hips my size but a “normal” waist) at the natural waist. What I wanted was a 6 gore skirt that sat lower on my hips, with wider front and back panels. It was time to get creative.

Some quick measuring informed me that if the pattern piece as is were used to make a 12-gore, rather than a 10-gore, skirt, it would have pretty much exactly the “waist” measurement I was looking for. The length and flare still seemed good—it would be a very short skirt if worn at the true waist. Furthermore, a 12-gore arrangement is much easier to convert to the uneven panels I wanted—I could make the CF and CB panels the width of 3 original gores, and the side panels the width of 2 original gores. Perfect! I checked the amount of stretch on my fabric, to make sure I didn’t need to subtract ease, and got tracing. I used the highly scientific method of tracing the pattern piece, then sliding it over so the waist and hip notches lined up and tracing the other side. Aside from running off my paper and having to piece in a bit at the hem, it worked really well, although I can’t swear there isn’t a bit of flattening along the hem curve on the 3-times-wide panel.

So, I had my pattern. Time to lay it out.

Back view

Blerg. Now I remember the second reason I had hesitated making one of these things—man are they wasteful of fabric! Especially since I couldn’t reverse any of the pieces due to nap-related fears. This little, itty bitty, not-even-knee-length skirt used up my full two metres of fabric, with barely enough left over for the wide, fold-over waistband I wanted. Of course there are plenty of (rather large) scraps… but seriously! I could probably have gotten two shirts out of that thing! As it is, maybe the scraps will be large enough to play with glovemaking… faux-suede sky-blue gloves would be lovely, don’t you think?

Anyway.

It was pretty quick to sew up, although I did inevitably serge the two wide panels together almost right off the bat. I don’t pick out serged seams, so I just cut that seam off. As it turned out (due to that magic of stretch fabric, even when it didn’t seem overly stretchy when tested) the skirt needed a fair bit of taking in anyway so it wasn’t a problem. I took a couple of cm off each seam, and then took the two side seams in another inch or so.

Skirt---spread out

The waistband is a wide rectangle folded over and applied exactly as the neckband in this tutorial.; I determined the length by wrapping the piece around my hips until it seemed like it was a good tightness. This wound up being a smidge smaller than the skirt opening after I’d taken it in, which seems about right. I didn’t have enough clear elastic to include it in the waist seam… we’ll see if I regret that in the future. Since the skirt’s absolutely the same front or back, whereas I am not, it has the potential to ride up in the back, but if I fold the waistband properly I can prevent that. If the problem persists I can always trim it at the front later; I didn’t do a hem, just trimmed the bottom edge smooth by running through my serger without thread.

It actually turned out quite a bit longer than I had thought it would—it’s hovering just below knee length where I was expecting it to be above. I guess that has to do with adding the waistband and where it sits on my hips, and the fact that there’s no need to take up a hem… anyway, I like it very much, although I’m going to have to figure out what it works with other than just tank-tops. It’s lean enough on the bottom that any puff on top—like the puffed sleeves on my JJs or a cowl neck on a shirt—makes me feel top-heavy, so we’ll see. I may have to make a shorter version in the future, though, out of a less drapy fabric to see more of the “mermaid” shape.

I do like the blue with my red shoes!

(But for now, since it is still snowing, I’m going to put my sweater back on!)

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March 22, 2011 · 2:29 pm

Miscelania

Why yes, that is eight yards of jumbo piping...

My sewing machine is pretty basic, a three-and-a-half-year-old bottom end Janome; she’s mostly pretty reliable, if not terribly fancy, and at this point we pretty much understand each other.

But every once in a while, she really annoys me.

Today, it was the needle positioning. Now, I can adjust needle position to the left, but not to the right of centre. (It goes further right during a zig-zag, but there’s no option for me to set a straight stitch to the right).

This isn’t a problem in normal sewing, but every once in a while, just once in a while, it drives me batty.

Today was one of those days. I was making jumbo piping. Eight yards of jumbo piping.

Yes, my friends. I am undertaking … shudder… home-dec sewing.

And not even for my home. I’m making a custom cushion and cover for a friend’s window-seat. Technically this is an exchange of labour since she did a wonderful photo shoot for my kids before Christmas with her fantabulous DSLR (she’s one of those hobby photographers) that also gave my a chance to play with RAW images… soooooo fun…. ahem. Anyway, so I’m making her this cushion. Which I’ve been dawdling over for most of the month because, well, it’s home-dec sewing, and why would I do that when I could make whimsical costume jackets? But she came over for tea on the weekend and I wanted to have something to show her, so I spent some time Sunday morning cutting out rectangles… endless rectangles… and then I figured I should at least sew up the piping before I lose those long, skinny strips.

At this point I’ve made lots of little, garment-sized piping on my machine with nary a problem. But this jumbo, mega-sized piping is, well, a wee bit trickier. You see, it doesn’t slide under the “high” side of the zipper foot at all. It has to pass to the right of the whole zipper foot apparatus. And because I can’t adjust my needle position to the right, I could not run my stitching nearly as close to the cord as I would’ve liked. People, I have saggy piping.

Man, I love these dresses...

Grr.

Even more annoying, I know I’m going to have the exact same issue sewing it to the pillow cover itself. Grrr-grr.

Can’t I make something nice and easy, like a jacket?

Or how about another 70s maxi dress? This one arrived today, courtesy of the Cupcake Goddess’s pattern sale the other week. Num, num. It’s a misses’ size 10, which will be interesting—in the past I’ve usually used 12s and had to take them in a bit, but theoretically the 10 will be perfect in the bust. I’m particularly in love with the blue version, although the rational part of my mind is telling me that collar is a bad idea…

Today’s MMM picture

Boring!

is a particularly blah combination of repeat outfit (see day 6) with no hair/makeup.  I had hoped to make it through the month without a precise repeat, but I was too lazy to check this morning to see if I’d worn this exact shirt with these exact pants before, and now that I realize I have, I’m too lazy to change. Meh. I think I’ll be back to regular life tomorrow, though, so I’ll try and make more of an effort then…

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March 21, 2011 · 6:02 pm

Back to the beginning…

Early sewing efforts. Including pantaloons, T-tunics, leather breastplates and wooden swords.

I’ve mentioned before that, at the age of nine or so, I began my long and illustrious (snerk) sewing career on that most time-honoured of passtimes, making doll clothes.

Barbie clothes, actually.

Ok, clothes for Barbie’s friends, relations, little sisters, etc., mostly. As a non-blonde myself I took great pains to make sure my doll collection represented as much diversity of body shape and colouring as I could, given the medium (I was, however, a Barbie snob; no knock-off dolls allowed). Also finding a Ken doll that didn’t look doofy was a miracle, so when I did, I bought two.

And, when my father came up to visit us for Christmas and incidentally divest his

Soo styling. The bits on the right represented computer components for when I was feeling a bit sci-fi. Like the swirly keyboard?

basement of the horde of boxes I left there when we moved out of Saskatchewan, he brought the boxes containing the remnants of my childhood Barbie collection. So I took the opportunity to document, rather briefly, some relics of my first sewing adventures.

You may notice the lack of actual Barbies in any of these photos. This is because when my kids reached doll-playing age, I very cheerfully gave them the barbies. I’m not a collector. I loved Barbie because she was a blank slate, a vessel devoid of personality that could become any and everyone I desired. It wasn’t about preserving anything about the original doll, ever.

I wove those blue pieces on a home-made loom, too...

Of course, when you give a 15-year-old plastic doll to a three-year-old, well… let’s just say the attrition was fast and brutal. Necks are a particular area of weakness in these dolls (which mostly dated to the late 80s and early 90s)… it took Tyo only a few months to destroy most of them.

Ah, well. I always liked Skipper better, anyway.

The Barbie Library

Of course, clothes were only part of it. There were entire worlds to create. Computer components (see above), food (not pictured… it included beads for “fruit”, bits of shredded foam for bread and cheese, and little snippets of leather for dried meat…), and, of course, books.

Ok, Peter’s Ken dolls may be a bit better dressed…

but this is totally where it all began!

… why yes, I am a total dork. Don’t act surprised. 😉

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March 20, 2011 · 7:14 pm

Yet another knockoff…

Jacket!

Someday I’ll make something original. Sooner or later the universe is bound to get tired of throwing other peoples’ really cool ideas at me, right?

Hmm.

So, I feel a teensy bit guilty about this knockoff, because it’s inspired by this EvaDress pattern, and I really feel like I ought to support her and buy the pattern. But, I’m also a starving student… and I wanted to try some kind of jacket with my new basic princess-seam pattern… and, well, here I am. I’ll buy it someday, I promise. In my own defense, the actual construction of my jacket is almost completely different—the original is a cut-on kimono sleeve, as far as I can tell, while mine is a standard princess-seam jacket, cropped to underbust length, with a set-in sleeve.

Drapey 30s jacket

Drapey 30s jacket

Debi’s made a great version of this jacket. (And here she shows more of the construction, which highlights the many differences between the “real” version and mine). If I’m not mistaken, it’s also the one pictured on this Threads article, which I’ve been lusting after since this time last year. Can we say, yum?

It’s really a very basic idea—a scrunched, buttoned-on scarf over a basic cropped jacket, with cowl sleeves. Lauriana featured a version of the sleeves here, and there’s a description in Modern Pattern Drafting of how to draft it—really simple, actually. I kept my cowl fairly small, partly because I like the close-fitted sleeve and partly because I didn’t have a lot of fabric.

Really, hardly any fabric, barely a metre. I had wanted to make a circle skirt out of this fabric (I’ve been cherishing it, waiting for the perfect project, since last summer some time) but didn’t have enough.

Without scarf

To avoid trying to match plaids (across princess seams, no less!), I cut the side pieces on the bias, then interfaced. The interfacing is probably a bit heavier than would have been ideal on this very light, soft, loosely-woven plaid, but hopefully it won’t be a problem in this location. I do wish I’d been a little more precise matching up the plaid across my CF, as it’s a hair off, but ah well. Not visible behind the scarf anyway.

The jacket has no collar (just the scarf), which was fortunate given the fabric shortage and the need to reserve a fair bit for the scarf. The underside of the scarf is made of flannel, as well.

The Built by Wendy book suggests using 1/2″ seam allowances on straighter seams and 1/4″ on highly curved ones (like the princess seams and the neckline and armscye). I followed the advice, and I like it, but I wonder if for this fabric I shouldn’t’ve used wider ones, as it’s pretty loosely-woven and ravelly. Time will tell, I suppose.

Back view, with pleat

The bias sleeves are interesting. They tend to stretch and narrow, which works well with the style but could make getting a long-sleeved shirt on under them tricky. I also didn’t line the sleeves, as I was concerned with messing up the drape. The bodice is lined with some more bits of leftover silver Kasha from my Winter Coat. Someday I’ll run out of that… I’ve still got nearly a metre left, though!

I’m not 100% sure I handled the back pleat the best way possible. I made similar pleats in the lining and fashion fabric, meaning they’re both kind of occupying the same space. I wonder if it wouldn’t’ve been better to try to wrap the interior box pleat “around” the exterior one so they were folding the same way… anyway, it’s not too terrible, I think.

Scarf, lining, really bad buttonholes.

Nitty gritty details: the scarf is lined in black flannelette, as I didn’t have enough to make a wide enough scarf just out of the fashion fabric. As it is, I could’ve made it a bit narrower, and probably an inch or two longer… ah well. It’s pretty hard to get more than a general sense of this until the buttonholes are already in place, so such is life.

I piped both the inside of the facings and the neckline and front openings of the jacket. I like the piping around the facings, but perhaps a softer cord would be better next time… anyway, as is typical with coats and my sewing machine, the facings were too thick to work automatic buttonholes in, so the resulting buttonholes are as attrocious as you might expect. Ugh. The buttonholes on the scarf, on the other hand, worked out just fine… so look at those ones instead 😉

Piped facings

The facings were squeezed out of scraps (I didn’t actually think I’d have enough fabric for them) so are pretty narrow but worked out well enough. Note to self: remember to remove the back pleat when drafting the facings. And here I was trying to figure out how my neckline had stretched out so much…

Cowl sleeves: Bias sleeves are, well, interesting. They tend to grow (which is a good thing from my point of view) but also shrink width-wise. I will admit I took a couple of loose, surreptitious stitches inside the drape part to keep the folds in place. The cowl edge is finished with a fold-back facing, and the seams in the sleeves are finished with serging. I’m glad I didn’t try to line the sleeves, as it would’ve messed with the drape thoroughly, I think (at least with my lining and this particular fabric)

Button front

There are a LOT of buttons on this jacket. Well, eleven, in fact, and I have some extra little ones I might put on the sleeves, just for decoration. I had an assortment of black, white, and grey buttons of this same shape, in a couple of different sizes, from a thrift-store button baggie picked up a while back.  The arrangement I went with colour and size-wise is probably not optimal, but it was the best I could come up with given the limitations I had. They’re not overly visible when it’s worn, anyway. I’m actually really glad I was able to use them all together, and I like their shape—plain but distinctive—with this style.

Semi-glamour

This jacket really deserves a much more glamorous photo shoot, but this is the best I was able to muster up today, as I’m still sick (have been all weekend). It looks killer with the 70s dress, actually. I had been hoping it would work with my circle skirts, but I’m not loving the combination—too much going on both top and bottom; instead of the hourglass look I was hoping for, it just looks busy. This jacket really seems to stand out with a slim, sleek bottom half—coincidentally just like the dress it was originally paired with.

I think I am officially satisfied with my fitting of the cropped bodice version of the “Built By Wendy Fitted Jacket”. Next up—sleeves and collar :). I’m thinking I might try a little cropped jean-jacket to test out a two-piece sleeve.

Warning: I have a deep and long-suppressed passion for boleros and severely cropped jackets. You may get sick of this look… soon.

I don’t know if I’ll ever actually do any of the particular projects in the Built by Wendy Coats & Jackets book (well, maybe one or two…), but I am loving having the basic pattern blocks to play with. So many possibilities! I may not be quite up to drafting my own patterns from scratch, but I love messing the heck out of  an existing one :).

Oh, and you can see the full Flickr set, with even more photos, here.

In Me-Made March news,

I did actually manage a picture today! (I promise I’ve been wearing my usual me-mades, but being sick just drains me of the energy to run around, get cute pictures, and then do the little followups like making links for the construction posts. Bleh.

At least the inch of snow that was covering the deck this morning is gone…

Me-Made March, day 20

Is the equinox today or tomorrow? Either way, the days will soon be longer than the nights! Hooray!

 

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March 19, 2011 · 5:23 pm

A cute model…

…Makes up for many shortfalls.

Some people can just wear anything...

Should I feel guilt about convincing Syo that this totally crappy fabric was a good choice for the sweater-dress she wanted, based on the same pattern as this shirt? It’s (finally) almost all gone. Aside from my distaste for the fabric (and sewing it—it grows under the needle) the dress was really simple. The only tricky part was sewing an elastic into the neckline to keep it from becoming absolutely jumbo-esque. I had to pick out my first try because I hadn’t pulled the elastic taut enough. Argh. As with my sweater in this fabric, I ducked the aggravation of hemming by doing a half-ass lettuce hem, which is just a standard serged edge with the fabric pulled taut as it feeds through. Don’t look too closely at the strap placement or the straightness of the side-seams, but the sprout is happy, which is the main thing, right?

What I've been working on

My efforts towards drafting the Springy Coat pattern have led me astray. Or rather, I figured I should try a full jacket using my fitted pattern, so I’m in the process of working on this. I’d been hoping to have it finished today but that doesn’t seem likely at this point. I’m excited, though… 😉

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March 17, 2011 · 1:04 pm

The joy and pain of thrift store patterns

Thrift store buttons!

There’s been a bit of a sewing-type drought at my local Value Village for the last couple of months, so it was with some excitement that I realized there were actually fabrics on the rack this time, not just encroaching curtains, and even a few baggies of random zippers (expensive and not intriguing) and metal buttons (inexpensive and in sets still on their cards—yay!). Needless to say I walked out with the buttons. I managed to resist the fabrics, mostly due to excessive stashing last week.

Simplicity 8613, from 1978

There were also a few 70s patterns, in a misses’ 12, which is close enough to my size. I restrained myself, though, and just picked up the cutest one: isn’t this an adorable jacket? And look at that neat little waistband shaping on the skirt! Pattern includes jacket, skirt, and pants.

Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later. Buying thrift store patterns (as opposed to from a reputable second-hand pattern vendor) is an obvious crapshoot. No way are the employees going through every single envelope to make sure the pattern is complete, never mind in good condition—not when they’re selling for less than a buck apiece.

Yup, this adorable pattern is incomplete. Half the pants are missing, as is that cute little waistband detail, and the first page of the instructions.

Fortunately for me, all the pieces of the jacket (what really drew me to it) are there (uncut!), and the instruction page that is left is the one for the jacket as well. So tragedy is averted. Most of the skirt pattern is there, too, except for that cute waistband, which I guess will be good if I get the hankering for an a-line, mid-length skirt.

Well, it could happen…

So, at least at this point, tragedy has been averted. Not that I really needed another jacket to want to make up. But hey, I’m sure I have enough fabric!

In Me-Made March news,

a fairy boring (not to mention weird hair) day. Sorry, kittens (or, as Patty would say, platypuses), it can’t be circle skirts and fluffy shirts every day. On the upside, it’s sunny!

Me-Made March, day 17

The Frankenpattern shirt
Skinny Cargoes

Oh, and happy St. Patrick’s day, to all you who are out there getting soused in honour of it ;). Apparently they started the breathalyzer-stops here at six AM this morning…

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