Saccharine

I can’t handle this dress.  I’m not the puppy dog oohing kind of girl, but seriously, these kids’ clothes are quickly turning me into a little melted squishball.

I had quite a bit of the pink striped seersucker leftover from my jacket (and I still do), so I had a notion to make little summer dresses for my nieces with it.  Of course, now I’ll have to make my nephew something so he doesn’t get left out.  Maybe some matching swim trunks for him and Noah so they can be even more cute together when we all go swimming this summer…

Up first is my newest niece’s dress.  A simple little jumper dress from Little Stitches by Amy Butler.  I must say, this is a great book, but there is so much verbage in the patterns.  For such a simple little dress, there’s no less than 4 pages of text in teeny weeny font.  I said in my pattern review to look at the pattern pieces and you can figure it out in 5 minutes if you think about it.  Much faster than slogging through so much text.  That is all with the rant.  On to the good parts:

Comfy Jumper Dress with Bloomers (!)

What I learned:

1.  #2 in a series–not all polyester is evil:  I scored this amazing chunk of vintage sheer poly crepe at the thrift store for $1.49.  There’s enough to not only to have added a skirt to this dress, but for me to make a top (perhaps one of my summer picks).  It’s a beautiful print.  I’d love to know how old it is.

2.  I don’t think I’m going to get over how fun it is to line things:  For the lining, I ousted the directions and made a free-hanging full lining.  I made the outer dress fully and the lining dress fully and then put them wrong sides together and stitched around the neck/shoulders/armholes.  I graded and clipped the seam, pressed it, and topstitched around to keep things pretty and keep the lining where it should be.  I like the lining like this–it’s so airy and bulkless.

3.  There used to be life before the serger, remember?:  My serger is down…again.  I think I’m going to cut my losses and upgrade.  This one has been such a lemon for me.  But before I do that, there’s sewing to be done, and today was no exception.  Instead of serging to finish my seams, I used French seams, which was a good solution on such light fabrics (the lining is remnants of eyelet).

I hope this fits G–the armholes sure look tiny, but then I forget that all 0-3 month clothes do.  Bonus–bloomers!

Topsy turvy

Thanks for the suggestions on summer tops.  Now that I’ve thought about it, I’ve got some good ideas going.

Momawake suggested that I shorten a dress.  Not a bad thought, I think.  Chopping off the bottom half of a lot of dresses makes them look rather incomplete, but I think this Vogue dress would possibly lend itself well to such an application:

Mikhaela suggested sweetheart neckline knit tops.  Check.  I love this Simplicity pattern.

Mikhaela also got me thinking vintage with all the lovely linking to her own stash of patterns.  I found this pattern on Etsy–Ooh, I’ve got big plans for this one that involve a beloved Britcom.  More on that later.

And this…oops, not a top.  Focus E!

A lovely PR’er was offering her old Burdas for cheap.  I picked up 2/2007 and  found this lovely in it:

 It has gathered sleeve caps, which I hate, but they don’t look too poofy, so maybe I can handle it.

Lots of dresses in this issue too, but I won’t bore you.

My last pick is Burdastyle Ute. 

When this pattern first came out, I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not.  I blame it on styling.  I love the tie-neck and the princess seams.  I think the sleeves have darts in them at the top instead of gathers, which weirds me out less.  I like the shaped sleeve bands–interesting.  The Peter Pan collar variation is fun too.  Burdastyle users’ Utes all look great too, so why not?

Much to think about…

Summer Sewing Woes

The irony of today’s post is that’s it’s sleeting outside.  Ahh, spring in CO.  But really, I’ve been thinking about the reality that it will be hot soon, and I’m in the market for non-post-partum summer gear, namely tops.  I’m not sure if I’m picky, or things are really this bad, but as I look for patterns, several troubling trends pop up:

The Balloony and Voluminous:  pleats, gathers, and ruffles, oh my!  I’m none too thrilled about the prospect of adding more bulk to my curvy frame, which rules out any of these patterns.

Shapeless:  Call me batty, but I’m not really into looking pregnant when I’m not.  Who do these things look good on?  

 

The problem with straps: Ever a summer concern, I’m always searching for cool tops that don’t require special underthings as strapless is a very very bad word in my mind.

They’re calling this a top?  Scandalous…

This one manages to be shapeless too.

So what say you readers?  Any inspiration for summer that avoids these pitfalls?   The good news is that I keep finding fabulous dress patterns everywhere, so not all is lost as I ponder and scheme.

$5.25

That’s what it cost me to make this jacket.  I love this!  Okay, so I didn’t factor in the cost of my pattern, but I will negate this for 2 reasons. 

1.  It’s from a Japanese craft book (isbn 9784579109968) with 26 patterns, all of which I will sew probably multiple times by the time I’m done with having kids

2. I wanted to say I made a jacket for $5.25.

Noah’s birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks and I’ve been wanting to make him this jacket since forever.  A few weeks ago, I found this really awesome twill pillow sham from Pottery Barn and I knew it would be perfect for a jacket.  I paid 75 cents for it.  Now, I’m not one who can walk into a thrift store and find fabulous stuff regularly, but when I do, I’m thrilled to my toes.  The fabric is a really nice quality fabric that was barely breathed on, much less used, and it has some really sweet decorative rivets and flat-fell seams.  The lining is Henry Glass Dogwood Basket Weave fabric I had in my stash that I bought for $6/yd, and I used 3/4 of that.  I got the buttons for free and the thread was from another project.

Jacket for Noah

What I learned:

1.  Yay for creative layouts:  When I laid out my pattern, I was able to take advantage of the flat-fell seams and decorative rivets by playing with the grainline.  The back is cut on-grain, and the front is on the cross-grain.  One of the fell-seams falls across the front in between two of the buttons.  The other fell seams run down the back equidistant from CB.  My genius with the layout fell short on the hood.  I didn’t understand at first how the hood was constructed, so I laid it out how I thought it was supposed to go, which would have put seams on either side of the center of the hood seam.  When I sewed everything (including the lining–argh) together on the hood, it became obvious to me that this was not a hood, but a big old pancake.  Pancakes don’t fit cupcakes (as in baby’s head).  Seam ripper and I had a nice conversation, and I resewed the seams together properly, only to realize that the seams that would’ve been opposite the hood seam were now in one straight line that I could not possibly match.  It’s a design feature, right? :) 

 Despite all this, I was able to take advantage of the rivets, which are at the bottom corners of the hood.

2.  Jacket facings, like all facings are not terribly hard to make:  The pattern is for an unlined jacket, but I knew from the beginning of this project that I wanted to line it fully.  To do this, I needed to draft back and front facings.  Because this is a raglan sleeved jacket, I knew the sleeve had to come into play with the facings because they form the neckline partially.  I pinned the back facing to the sleeve at the neck and traced the top edge and the sides.  I drew a curve 1.5″ away from the neckline curve along the bottom edge.  This whole thing became my back neck facing.  For the front facing, I did the same thing, tracing the front straight edge all the way down. 

When I went to make the lining pieces, I followed these instructions from Threads. 

I lined it as I lined my striped jacket with the directions in Sandra Betzina’s Linings A to z video.

3.  Kids’ clothes are very quick to make:  This should not be a revelation to me, but I just haven’t made many kids’ clothes before.  Sometimes I feel guilty about this, but we’ve seriously had clothes for Noah entirely provided for us over and above what we’ve needed his entire life.  This pattern just had a few diagrams to help you along.  There is minimal instruction in Japanese, but, since I don’t read Japanese, the diagrams were what I had to work with.  It was more than enough.  It’s quite refreshing to only have diagrams to work with.  You realize how excessive directions can be.

4.  Making things for my baby makes him very happy: Noah picked up the lining scraps and carried them around all day.  He knew that this project was for him.  It was really sweet to see him so excited about it.  He kept trying to steal it away from me while I was working on it, and once it was finished, he popped it on and ran around the house, totally overjoyed.  I need to do more of this.  I mean, check out the reaction:

My full review is at Patternreview.

Mommy sewing and a very simple tutorial

Sorry for the rather cheesy post title, but I didn’t want “Breastfeeding Lifesavers” to be the first thing that popped up in people’s Google reader. 

Seriously though, in a wave of genius, I made myself a wrap to wear while nursing in public towards the end of my pregnancy, and I don’t know what I’d do without it.  It’s kept things G-rated, been a blanket for Noah, a play mat when he was really little, a wipe for all of that spit up at the beginning, and occasionally when I’ve been desperate, a changing pad.  I more or less followed this tutorial, but instead of doing yards of hemming and pressing, I made mine reversible.  One side is a lightweight printed jersey and the other is a really finely woven cotton.  I have a couple of friends who are pregnant (one due imminently), and I wanted to give them something super useful.

For this one I serged rectangles of leftover jersey for one side and used quilting fabric for the other.

This one I made out of a cotton dobby and quilting fabric on the reverse side because it’s for a dear friend in Houston, and I wanted something that would not get too hot for her or the baby in the summer.

As for the tutorial, the other thing that super saved my life at the beginning of nursing with Noah were these pads to put in your bra to help absorb the extra milk that leaks until your body adjusts to your baby and to the whole business of nursing.  The flannel is soft against sore tender skin, and the layer of iron-on vinyl helps hinder leaking through your clothes.

Nursing Pads Tutorial

Supplies for 3 pair (that way a pair can always be in the wash):

Cotton flannel scraps–4″X48″ or the equivalent of that

Cotton batting (today I used polar fleece because I forgot I had cotton batting scraps)–4″X24″ or the equivalent

4″X24″ of iron-on vinyl

a 4″ diameter circle template (I used one of Noah’s toys because I didn’t have my circle rotary cutter handy)

a marking pen

Trace around your template onto the various materials and cut out 12 circles of flannel, and 6 each of the iron-on-vinyl and batting.

On 6 of the flannel circles, remove the backing from the vinyl and iron it on with the iron on the flannel side.

Place a circle of batting on top of the vinyl and put a plain circle of flannel on top of that.  Use a zigzag stitch to hold everything together or serge around the edges.  Tada!

Wool in April

Finally!  My last piece for the Patternreview Mini Wardrobe is this swingy skirt I made out of navy mystery wool I bought as a flat fold from Denver Fabrics.  I don’t have much banter on this project because I think I’m a bit braindead from writing all of my reviews and just trying to finish.  So, onto what I learned…

BWOF 08-2008-121–navy wool skirt with godets

What I learned:

1.  Forget the big 4:  Every big 4 skirt pattern I’ve tried has been a nightmare to fit.  Every single one.  Not until I drafted my own did I not have to struggle horribly to make it work.  This Burda fit me right out of the gate.  I changed the hip curve at the side seams to fit my hips, and I had to change the width of my side seams slightly from my muslin to the final product, but really, this was super easy to fit.  I hate to say NEVER, but I’m tempted to say that I never want to sew a non-Burda skirt pattern again. 

2.  Blind faith:  the skirt itself is a gored skirt with godets that are not seperate panels, but cut-on from the skirt panels themselves.  The godets make for the swingy flowery shaped bottom of this skirt, but they also make for a challenge in hemming.  Here’s my run down of hemming this sucker.  The godets meet at angles and are curved, so there is quite a bit of excess fluff you have to get rid of while hemming. I added 1.5″ for my hem allowance. I did my standard marking of the hem by running a line of basting stitches in a contrasting color along the bottom of the hem to mark the fold. I then pressed up the hem. From there, I ran another line of basting stitches 1/2″ from the raw edge. This line I gathered all around the skirt to help ease out the fullness. This was pretty time-consuming, and I’m sure that if I had chosen to have a shallower hem depth, I would’ve had an easier time with it, but since I was going to blind hem it, I made it deeper (my personal preference is for deep blind hems). I hand basted the hem down about 3/8″ away from the easing line. This allowed me to not have to pin when I went to press the hem before I stitched it and to get out even a little more fluff. Before I stitched it, I steamed the hem like no tomorrow. I don’t own a clapper, so I used a cookbook I had out to force some steam back into the hem to help flatten it, which worked pretty decently. After all of this, I blind hemmed it which turned out beautifully in the wool, which made it worth all of the work. Because this fabric is more drapey, I don’t think a shallower hem wouldn’t have held up the godets well either, so though it was extra work for me, I think I made a good choice by making a deeper hem. 

The best part about this hem was my blind-hem foot, which I finally learned how to use properly.  The way it’s set up, you have to not pay attention to what is happening behind the presser foot.  Instead, you must trust the work you’ve done in pressing and preparing the hem and watch the groove on the front outside of the foot and make sure that it’s travelling along the fold.  The first couple of times that I used this foot, I was obsessed with making my stitches “invisible,” so I kind of forced things along and the groove travelled over the fold several times.  Observe the difference:

From top to bottom, you see my efforts, and you can see that the stitches become increasingly invisible.  Granted, the camera couldn’t capture the wool well because of it’s dark color and general fuzzy texture, but trust me, you can only see a vague impression of stitches.

If you’re interested, here is my full review of this skirt.

Nouveau Beaujolais Nouveau

It’s done!  #3 for the mini-wardrobe contest.  This is my mish mash combo of the Jalie Scarf top pattern and BWOF 08-2008-125.  I debated about whether to do inverted pleats or just plain pleats, and the plain won out for this iteration at least.  In actuality, I finished this minus hems like a week ago, but I didn’t want to shorten it until I checked the final length with my skirt since I’ll be wearing this tucked in (gasp!).

I chose this red violet rayon lycra jersey from JoAnn.  The quality I’m not confident about, but it’s a lovely color and I couldn’t find anything close at Denver Fabrics when I was looking for inspiration.  It just happens to be really close in color to the buttons on my jacket which is perfect to tie things together.  I got a glance at the bolt, and the color was labeled “beaujolais.”  Usually I’m not a wine-colored sort of girl, but this did match the buttons really well, and it’s growing on me.  I won’t, however be ousting my blues and aquas for it anytime soon.

Pattern Mish Mashed Pleated Panel knit top

What I learned:

1.  Pattern mish mashing is highly entertaining:  I’ve read about people mixing patterns for a while now, but I’ve never had the nerve to try it myself.  This was a good stretch for me to figure out how to make this thing work, and honestly, it wasn’t too hard.  The worst I had to lose was some icky knit fabric I use for testing knit patterns, so I went to town.  The probabilities of me doing more of this are high.

2.  Seam intersections are occasionally fussy: When I was in the muslin stage, I connected my seams on the front horizontally.  Because I lined the bodice when I got to the final stage, I connected things vertically.  I wouldn’t think this would make a difference, but my seam intersections at CF are not as perfect as I would like them to be.  Rather, it took several attempts to get them as close to perfect as I could get them.   

3.  Put down the needle!:  I’m particular when it comes to pleating.  I like them to be free floating in space, but I like the control of having them being tacked down, and this top was no exception.  Usually when I use pleats as a design feature, I end up tacking them down by hand and lining them, as I did here instead of topstitching them into place.  I like the dimensionality, and I like that I can keep things invisible.  Unfortunately, the knit stretches (shocker) on my body, so what was invisible when I was pleating it in the flat, is not entirely so when on me.  This could’ve been resolved if I was pleating on a dress form, but Tina is in no shape for this kind of work.  I still like the look, but next time I will topstitch for the sake of variety.

The Pink Stripes

Piece #2 for the Patternreview Mini-Wardrobe contest is done!  Wow, this little jacket turned into a quite a project for me.  It just took me a lot of reading and a couple of muslins to get my head around what on earth I was looking at.  The good news is that the next jacket will be a million times easier. 

I love the details on this jacket.  The bias cut bands on the sleeves and the bias strips covering the princess seams and threaded through the buttons are really fun with the stripes.  This seersucker from Gorgeous Fabrics was a dream to work with…easy to sew, with a lovely lovely feel, and a wonderful concealer of mistakes design features.  This jacket was also really simple to alter.  It fit me perfectly through the bust, so I only had to shorten it (it would’ve hit my full hip otherwise), and I shortened the sleeves to match the proportion a little better.  The shoulder slope of the jacket also matched me perfectly (which I always have to change in big 4 patterns), so while I didn’t need shoulder pads, I made some very minimal ones out of fusible fleece just to smooth things out.

BWOF 2-2008-106

What I learned 

1.  How to train your lining:  This was really much simpler than I thought it was going to be.  No, actually, simple isn’t quite the word.  This is plain slick.  I followed the lining techniques Ron Collins showed in Sandra Betzina’s Linings A to Z video (I highly recommend this video by the way.  My library had it, which is even better.).  The only thing is that I wasn’t too careful when I was cutting out my lining pieces, so some of them ended up being longer in places than others.  Very strange.  With all of this, the lining went in without a hitch and it looks swell.

2.  A new use for all of those ugly Father’s Day ties:  Peggy Sagers showed a technique for easing a jacket sleeve in when she was at the Sewing Expo in February that I thought looked really cool and too good to be true.  If you cut open any tie (even clip ons!), there’s this really unique interfacing inside.  It’s a bit thick, has an open weave to it and it strong and cut on the bias.  You take a 1″ wide strip of this stuff to ease the sleeve in.  With the sleeve on the bottom and the interfacing on top, stitch along the seamline a couple of stitches, then pull on the interfacing to stretch it while you stitch along the seamline all the way around the cap.  Like magic the interfacing pulls in some of the excess fluff, and you’re left with a really nicely shaped sleeve (and she claims that you don’t need a sleeve header if you use this either).  All I know is that there was no pinning/weird threads/tears of frustration happening when I was setting in my sleeves.  Peggy sells tie interfacing by the yard, but if you’re curious, you can do like me and slash open a thrifted tie.  It’s probably more cost effective to buy it by the yard, but I suppose it requires a commitment to sew jackets.

3.  Tailoring is a thick subject:  Enough said.  I studied hard about notched collars between an old issue of Threads (no. 68 as recommended here) and Tailoring.  While I learned a lot from these resources, this is just something that takes time and practice.  Making a jacket is just a lot more complicated than making a t-shirt.  This collar is better than my last.  There.  That’ll tame my perfectionism monster for the moment.  The thing that I’d really like to see someone do is a 2 piece sleeve.  I’m still not sure how precisely the seam is supposed to look when you sew it.  I had the same problem with my trench coat–it might be just how I’m adding seam allowances to my Burda patterns…somehow I think just lopping off pieces that seem excessive is not the best way to proceed.

4. Covered snaps are so cute: I covered the snaps for the jacket.  They sadly are too bulky to actually be functional, but as Nathan wisely pointed out, it’s not like I’ll be shielding myself from the cold in this jacket.

Next up is my knit top for the contest.  I cut it out this morning from the pretty red violet rayon I got at JoAnn.  I’m stitching down my pleating by hand today, and I should be able to constructimicate it tomorrow Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

To invert or not

I finished my Burda jacket, but I’ll wait to post about it until tomorrow when I get some pictures of it.

For now, this is my muslin for #3 for the contest.  I merged the Jalie scarf top pattern with a really pretty maternity pattern from the August 2008 issue of Burda.  I love the scarf top as it fits me well, but it’s a bit too basic.  I figured the pleating from this dress would make it a little more interesting.   My plan was to split the Jalie front essentially into 3 pieces–two pleated sections as it is in the dress and a plain bottom section.  As long as I worked within the boundaries of the Jalie pattern piece, I figured I couldn’t fail because I know that that fits me.  

First I copied my front piece of my Jalie so I didn’t lose track of it.  I placed a plain piece of paper on top of that, matching center fronts which I tacked down to my gridded board.  I traced off the 2 bodice pieces from the dress and found that the shoulder was precisely the same size and slope.  I then tacked the shoulders down and traced the bottom of the curve on the upper portion of the bodice onto my plain paper.  I wanted to raise the neckline on the Jalie by about 1″ because it’s on the verge of being too low for my taste.  No problem.  I just changed the angle of my curve on the neckline with my French curve to match 1″ higher on CF.  I extended the bottom of the bodice to that point and traced the side seam from the Jalie pattern (this eliminated some of the bodice section of the Burda, but no matter, remember it’s the Jalie boundaries I’m working in).  Using graphite paper between the Burda section and my plain paper, I traced the pleating placement lines and the grainlines.  I did the same to the lower bodice section.  What was left over became the lower part of the front by default.  I cut these 3 sections apart and added 3/8″ seam allowance.

Onto the pleated sections…I cut apart the pleating placement lines on the bodice sections from the CF line towards the side seams, leaving a wee tiny hinge at the side seam uncut.  I made sure to keep my grainline the same and I spread these sections on paper so the tip of the line was 2″ apart from the other side of the cut.  I tacked this all down, and traced the new sections and carefully taped my others back together.  Then I cut it out in cheap poly knit I got on clearance at Wal-Mart.  I matched the sides of the pleated sections and basted them all the way around the piece.  This left the extra fabric to be pleated just literally hanging around.  I manipulated that excess into pleats and tacked them down.  One side of the bodice I pleated plainly, with the pleats laying up, and the other I made a series of inverted pleats.  I like the look of both…the plain are certainly easier to do, and I think they look a little better on me. 

Everything else I sewed normally.  I don’t think I need to change anything except maybe to line the bodice because the pleating shows through (but then, this fabric is awful stuff).  I had some white rayon lycra set aside for this top, but it’s not right with the jacket which is pretty pastel…the combo of the two would be overwhelming for my fair skin.  I did see some violet pink lyrca at JoAnn yesterday.  Since I didn’t have the jacket with me and there were about a gazillion people there, I thought I’d go back today (and I will when my son wakes up) and double check the color.  I’m pretty sure it’s almost the color of the buttons I used for the jacket.