Sewing basics, yea or nay?

I know a lot of sewers have some strong opinions on the subject of sewing basic wardrobe staples like t-shirts and camisoles etc. that could be easily purchased.  I for one would love to be able to buy a few plain knit white camisoles to protect me from sweaters and to put under my v-neck dresses.  Sadly, though I’ve lost all my baby weight (yay!), my weight is distributed differently and it’s pretty hard to find a plain camisole that fits me.  No doubt that I’m sure I could find one if I were diligent enough, but shopping is usually a blow to the self-esteem, and it’s faster for me to fit a pattern and sew it than to spend a day feeling bad about my shape.

So, though there’s more exciting sewing that I’d rather be doing, I’ve been pretty excited this week to make something that I wear so much that fits me perfectly. 

New Look 6564

What I learned:

Incognito FBA:  I needed to do an FBA as usual with this one and this was a good pattern to practice a different way of doing an FBA that I’ve been puzzling over for the past few tops–is it possible to do one without having to put in a bust dart?  I mean, who wants a bust dart that you constantly have to readjust because you, in total innocence sewed it up in knits that tend to migrate down as you wear them?  It’s so terribly conspicuous to have a bust dart in knits–or worse yet, to pretend like you don’t need one and then have all that nasty fabric bunching at the sides that sounds the alarm that you really really need one (which is what happens in 98% of the knit tops that I purchase)

The answer is yes, you totally can do an FBA w/o a bust dart.  Whew!  What a relief.  I turned to help on the forum at pattern review, and the wonderfully helpful people there sent me to Debbie Cook’s tutorial for a FBA in a raglan sleeve top.  It looks a little weird when you finish, but, hey, so did that first FBA you did many months ago.  All that matters is that it fits, right?  I need to fuss around with the side seams a bit more to fit me really well, but for my first go at this, it looks pretty darn good.  And for the first time since before I was pregnant I have a cami that fits!

Plain, shmain!:  At first I was a little put off by the added lace on this pattern.  I’ve ONLY ever worn plain, white camisoles.  But, if I can start wearing lipstick (okay, organic lip tint, but that’s another story) at age 28, why not try a little lace on the camisole?  Plus I had some stretch lace leftover from another project that matched perfectly with more of the pink fabric I used on my asymmetric collared top.  I cut out the motifs I liked and sewed it on with a narrow zigzag and my trusty 75/11 stretch needle.  Super easy, and I love the little ladylike touch that it adds.  So, while I will definitely make a couple plain versions of this top, I might totally be a lace convert.

Aw shucks

So the lovely, always supportive and encouraging Lauranie nominated me for this award.

The terms of accepting this are you must thank the person who nominated you (I did, but I’ll say again, thanks Lauranie!), paste the award on my blog (I’ll figure this here computer thingy out soon), linking back to the nominator, tell 7 interesting things about myself and nominate 7 others linking to them.

I will try and write 7 interesting things about myself that I don’t already blather on about here.

1.  I hate nail polish on my fingernails.  Hate. It.  I feel coated and like I can’t do anything.  When I was little I would paint myself up in makeup with my Gram and I’d either suck off the polish when I was still sucking my fingers or I’d bust out the remover (I DO love that smell).  I also like my fingernails nice and trim (all those years violining).  If they get beyond about 1/8″ in length, I go nuts.

2.  I’ve been playing violin since I was 7.  Other than my family and God, my violin has seen me through more stuff and knows me better than anything else in my life.  That sounds a lot creepier than it is.

3.  The vast majority of my foreign language vocabulary has to do with food (minus the 3 years of high school Latin that I took).  Blame it on the cookbook collection that I have and my endless reading that I do in food. 

4.  I’m a total solfege dork.  Somewhere along the way in high school a French horn teacher told my full orchestra that if you could sing it, you could play it.  I thought he was nuts until I was a freshman in college and I was forced to take 4 semesters of sight-singing.  Combined with a really excellent teacher my first year, I became fluent in solfege and my intonation as a violinist improved dramatically.  I hear tunes and I dictate them in my head (for instance the lyric from like Jackson Five’s ABC “do-re-mi” is actually sol, la, do which annoys me) .  When I went to do my master’s in music ed with an emphasis in the Kodaly method, this became a very useful skill.

5.  Growing up, I used to make clothes and accessories for all of my stuffed animals.  My most beloved subject was my little squeaky pig named Spam.  He’s rather barrel-like and has short little legs, so there were some fitting challenges, but I couldn’t be deterred.  He has a Santa costume, beachwear, an Elizabethan getup (for a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream I played for), a tuxedo, and outfits for every musical I’ve ever played.  Why don’t I have good pictures?!  I need to get on that.

6.  I’ve lived in CO 7 years and haven’t skiied yet.  Nor do I plan on it.  Accident prone already, the idea of strapping things to my feet and hurtling down the side of a mountain whilst others zip around me does not sound appealing.  Once Nathan and I rented a condo for the weekend near Aspen with friends and I cooked while they skiied.  It was a happy time.

7.  I’m not a good camper.  Once I got roped into backpacking in the winter without proper bathroom facilities.   It was entirely miserable.  After that trip, my motto has been and perhaps always will be, “No water, NO WAY!”

As for nominating 7 others for this award who are tres inspirational with their own beautiful blogs, here’s my list:

1.  Ann–for the lovely doll clothes that she makes.  Spam is really jealous of her dolls’ fine attire.

2. Sewbeeit–are these not the prettiest roman shades and bathroom ever?

3. Trudy–because she’s so encouraging and talented with her sewing and art and such a sweet Momma to boot.  She helps remind me of the things that are beautiful and I love about Texas too.

4.  Miss Emily–Trudy’s daughter.  This girl is amazing, I tell ya!  At 9 she sews, writes, obviously entertains and loves on her family and teaches people about her learnings.  There need to be more young people in this world with such kind hearts.

5.  Angela–a fellow Craft Hope person.  You can read about her sweet family and all of the beautiful things she makes.  Her kids are very blessed indeed. 

6. 10th Muse Studios–  She’s a very creative lady and very generous in sharing how she does things.  Once had a giveaway of her pretty pleated purse pattern just because.  How cool is that?

7.  Adrienne–holy cow she’s a talented sewer!    Check out her wardrobe collections in her sidebar.  I love her reviews on Patternreview…always helpful.  Plus, if her writing is any indication, she laughs more than I think anyone, and if that isn’t beautiful, I’m not sure what is.

Shocker in pink!

I didn’t realize how close the shade of this fabric and that I used to make one of V’s dresses was until I went to go thread my machine.  Oops!  I guess we’ll be candy floss twins.

At any rate, this is an OOP Butterick pattern I found when I was browsing through their website a while back.  I was drawn to the asymmetric collar.  Actually, I’m discovering that I like big, dramatic collars.  Who knew?  The whole thing was super easy and took me about 2 short naps and a little more time.  Basically it was an instant gratification sort of top to make which is balm to my mind after the blue dress.

Butterick 4230

What I learned:

Stretch needles are happy:  I glanced through an article on sewing fabrics with lyrca and it mentioned 75/11 HS stretch needles.  Gnomey generally prefers them way over ballpoint needles in general, but it made a big difference on this fabric.

Maybe not all polyester is evil:  I’ve been known to quip that polyester is like high fructose corn syrup–of questionable origin and in everything.  While I will never willingly wear 100% polyester anything lest I suffocate and die from it’s lack of breathability, I must say that this cotton/poly/lycra blend is really quite comfy.  Ask me  again when it’s hot outside.

Steam a seam is handy when you don’t feel like pinning hems and your baby is way too fascinated with the task of ironing said hem and of pins too:  yup.  I do love this stuff.  You get a nice even hem and it stabilizes it just enough that you don’t get funky distortion.

Now for the shocker:

Once in a while I might just have to lengthen something:  I NEVER have to lengthen things.  I may be curvy, but I’m 5’2 1/2″ and my frame is small and indeed petite.  Whacking 6″ off of pants is not abnormal.  That being said, the pattern illustration looked really short and I’m over having to worry about my top covering my pants when I sit down.  When I made up a practice I discovered that it wasn’t too short at all, but it cut me at the widest part of my hips.  Not so cute.  I lengthened it 4″ and I don’t have to worry about the pants and I magically lost weight too.

Because rug burns aren’t cool

I find myself in a rare place of being between projects.  Noah REALLY has needed something for his feet too.  His rather enthusiastic crawling/scaling of vertical surfaces leaves his socks in the dust no matter how many times I put them back on.  His little feet are then left with rug burns.  He doesn’t complain because he’d rather be mobile than anything, but I still feel bad about it all.  I’ve tried putting him in his sleepers, but his legs get all caught up in the body, and what with him wanting to walk badly, I figured it’s high time I busted out a pair of booties.

These are from Amy Butler’s Little Stitches for Little Ones.  No drama here–just a quick, easy, well-drafted pattern.  These things managed to entertain Noah, keep his feet protected, and stay on all day long, even here, when my Dad was trying to get a decent shot of them on a very wiggly, very tired boy.

E versus the blue dress

This, the last piece for my dear pregnant friend was doomed from the get go.  Why?  Who knows?  Maybe we all just burn the toast now and again.  Such was the case here.  Normally, I don’t like pointing out everything I screwed up, but this time, I’m going for it because it’s probably therapeutic.   

Butterick 5244

A whole lotta sighing and oy-veying going on:

1.  Welt pockets:  Not having done welt pockets before, I knew that these were going to be challenging (and they were), so I should have practiced on scraps first, but I didn’t.  I managed to sew part of the pocket bag backwards, so when I turned the pocket, for the pocket to come together it had to be on the wrong side of the fabric.  Thankfully this is a double knit.  I suppose I could have reattached that little bit, but I improvised another solution before I thought about that and honestly I think it would’ve stretched the whole thing out and looked even worse.  So all I can say about the pockets is–at least they’re functional.  Just don’t look too closely at the front or the back…well, really, don’t look at all.  Perhaps my photo should look more like this to protect the guilty.

2.  Center Back Seam: Since my front piece was now inside-out, I thought I’d make the back inside out too.  So I grabbed my back pieces and recklessly sewed down what I thought was the CB seam and happily finished off the seam, grateful that I could just do something simple after the mess with the pockets.  When I went to match it to the front, the sides were mysteriously several inches shorter.  Confused and beside myself, I took a good look at what I had sewed and realized that I had sewn the side seams of the back together.  Whoops!  Out the seam ripper came and I watched one of my favorite Britcoms to try and make the process less depressing.

3.  Alterations gone wrong: in my honest efforts to try and make more room for baby, I didn’t taper my extra length to the side seams, so I ended up with the extra inch on the bottom of each side seam.  To fix it, I aligned my front at the side seams and the CF and whacked off the excess, tapering on down towards the center.  Not precisely pretty, but what can you do?

Things that really weren’t my fault:

1.  Raglan sleeves:  Normally I love raglan sleeves.  It’s always so nice in the middle of frustration to align the seam and zip zip zip your way into a lovely sleeve in a couple of minutes.  That being said, these sleeves are E-NOR-MOUS.  Very baggy.  I have no idea who these would look nice on.

2.  Yoke/collar:  There’s a yoke AND a collar on this thing.  I didn’t have some of the problems that other people did with having a big gap at the CB with the collar like others did on PR, but my collar points do stick up a bit at the back.  The worst of it though is that this whole yoke/collar combo is super super bulky, especially since there are tabs sandwiched in there and a very gathered front.

3.  Funky tabs:  What originally drew my eye to this pattern in the first place ended up evoking an owl.  Strange, kids.  Strange.

At the end of it all, I decided I deserved a bit of Kashmiri Chai(I made it with almond milk and without the gin because it’s gross and things aren’t THAT bad), and I happily tossed out the pattern in the trash.

Pretty in Pink?

So I finished 1 of the 2 dresses out of that I’m making for my friend yesterday.  This is Butterick 5245 in a cotton candy drapey rayon blend.  This was another pattern I made for myself when I was pregnant and it worked out so well I thought I’d give it another go for V.  I made a couple of changes though.

Butterick 5245

What I learned:

Princess seam FBA’s:  This was something I should have done when I  made mine, but I didn’t know any better.  I followed Sandra Betzina’s super simple method for FBA’s without a dart on princess seams in Fast Fit.  I had to guess a little on the bodice lining because it’s only 1 piece and the bodice front is 2 pieces.  At the end, I put the extra space in the same location on the bodice lining that it was on the front 2 pieces and made sure that it was as wide as the edge of the front front bodice piece.  It worked out pretty well–I had a wee bit of extra fabric that I happily whacked off.  This was a pretty forgiving pattern because of all of the gathers.  I feel like I made the alteration without really understanding what I was doing, so I’ll be revisiting this one in the not-too-distant future.

Pressing up a hem:  this is an addendum from my last post about marking hems before you start constructing.  I pressed up the hem to the basting line and it saved me even more time as Deepika said it would.

Length and width:  I followed this tutorial on adding length and width to the front for maternity on the advice of Assorted Notions.  This should make more room for baby, and as far as I can tell, it’ll be fine, but without V right next to me, it’s hard to know precisely how this will fit.  Am I the only person who freaks out and thinks that what you make will never fit it’s intended person despite all the measurements you painstakingly take?

Overall it came together really quite fast.  I hope V likes it.  It’s really really pink.

A bit dotty

 

Lacking my model, I was trying to figure out the best way to show off the maternity pieces I’m making for my friend.  In the end I ended dressing Tina (Man, one of these days I need a new dress form–Tina seriously does not reflect me at all–I’m not sure what happened)  and wadding up bits of knit fabric scraps into roundishness under the tunic.  I couldn’t help think of this moment in my life when I was about 18 months old and my Mom was quite pregnant with my brother. 

Teehee…

As promised, this is the first of three of the maternity pieces I’m making for my friend.  I love the green and teal dots on the mocha background.  The pattern is Butterick 5196.  I used it for a top when I was pregnant and I loved how simple it is and how flattering it ends up being.  V admired mine so when we were talking about me making her some clothes, she remembered this pattern.

Butterick 5196

What I learned: 

1.  I love my walking foot!   Encouraged by the use of my walking foot on my jacket, I thought I’d pull out the old screwdriver and take it for a whirl with knits.  I will gladly do this every time I’m sewing knits now.  The extra power and extra wide presser foot made for nice even stitches even without wooly nylon in the bobbin, no waviness in the hems, and I even got away with using a jersey ballpoint needle instead of the stretch needles my machine typically prefers.

2.  Mark your hems before you sew.  I’ve been doing this for a while, but I haven’t written about it before, but was compelled to after reading this fantastic article.  I set my machine to a basting stitch and lower the tension and stitch along the hemline.  This top was easy because it used 5/8″ hem on every part, but for wider hems, I mark first with chalk and then stitch on that line.  The line of thread makes it easy to fold over the hem and press.  When you’re finished topstitching, you can pull out the basting thread.

3.  Big patterns look weird unmatched.  I might have thought of this when we were buying fabric, but not seriously.  The seams and the pattern intersect oddly because I had JUST ENOUGH fabric to cover the layout.  Even though it’s a polka dot, they’re big enough that it’s obvious that the pattern doesn’t match…not as obvious as an unmatched plaid, but still noticeable.  It’s not a dealbrearker, but something to consider next go ’round.

On to the two dresses!  Cutting everything out in one go is saving me buckets of time.  I think I just might finish both dresses by Monday when we’re celebrating her birthday.

Snip snip snip…snip…snip…

I’ve never showed this box before, so I will now because this one’s getting lots of use today.  It’s a vintage Samsonite makeup box that I decopauged with Moda Wonderland Snip Snip fabric in tomato and the help of my beloved Mod Podge.  Not a terribly interesting thing to write about, but it is cute and it makes me happy, but more importantly, it houses all of my cutting tools (in hopes that I won’t “misplace” my scissors–ha!). 

Anyhow, I bring up this little box because today I’m cutting out and altering no less than 3 separate patterns.  A while back while I was having tea, I came across this post and thought–this is genius!  Batch cutting projects???!!!!  This will save untold amounts of time and mental energy that it requires to cut out things.  I also might have inadvertently bitten off more than I can chew in telling a girlfriend that I’d make 3 separate maternity pieces for her (from said 3 patterns).  I’m telling myself that I’m going to learn a. lot., but we shouldn’t have waited until month 6 to start this project.  Her birthday is next week too, but I’m not going to put that kind of pressure on myself, so my goal this week is to get as much done as I possibly can.  There will be lots of scissoring…

Looking back at 2009

I’m not a resolutiony kind of person.  I figure my perfectionistic tendencies get enough of a workout on a daily basis that to put that on my plate on Jan 1st is a bit overkill and overwhelming.  With that, I’ll keep my general goal (which is shockingly similar to when I was teaching) in my sewing of upping my skills one seam at a time.  It’s worked pretty well this past year, so why fix what ain’t broke.  In reality, I probably have like 59000 sewing goals, but they all fall under the umbrella of this general goal, so I won’t firehose you with the minutiae of these right now, but you’ll probably hear about them along the way.  So, without ado, what did this last year bring?

~I realized that all these sewing skills I’ve been building can be put to use for the sake of other people close by and around the world.

~I saved a really cool quilt from the thrift store.

~I made myself some maternity dresses.

~I taught friends how to pull strudel for my birthday.

~After 7 years, I left my position as a music teacher to an amazing group of 1st-6th graders at an equally amazing school with wonderful colleagues so that I could pursue my dream of being a stay-at-home Mom to my so-worth-every-minute-of-lost-sleep son, Noah, who by the way, is more incredible, funny, industrious, and sweet-natured than I ever could have imagined him to be.  My sweet husband and I are truly blessed.

~After giving birth, I really really started my journey learning to make clothes after swearing up and down 2 years ago that I’d NEVER EVER make clothes because I didn’t want things to look homemade (I still don’t–I want to up my skills so that they DON’T).  It’s only been 6+ months since I made that goal, but I’m pretty jazzed by how far I’ve come.  From this to this for a fast example, and there’s too many pictures and posts for a broader example for me to catalog here.

~I took a facings class on Patternreview.  It was wonderful, and I learned so much.  Were I not so impatient, it would have helped me with this dress, and it DID help me with this one.  I plan to take more classes like this.  I’m ready to embrace my continual thirst for education.

~I started learning how to fit clothes to my body and to others too thanks to this, this, and this.  So fun, so empowering.

~I got to play in Oktoberfest.  See me look in awe upon these swell accordion players.  To adapt a quote from Moonstruck, “What you don’t know about” accordion “is a lot“.  Gots to get practicing those polkas.

~I listened to and saw a truckload of opera.  TRUCK-LOAD…like 30 something. 

~I made a button down shirt for my Mom!  Of course, I forgot the camera on Christmas.  Poo.  A picture and review will follow soon.

Overall, it’s been a good year here at E Made This.  As we approach this new year, I will wish my favorite blessing upon you from Numbers 6:24-26: The LORD bless you, and keep you;  The LORD make His face shine on you, And be gracious to you;  The LORD lift up His countenance on you, And give you peace.’.