Happy leap week

I’ve been puttering around kind of wracking my brain over a jacket and making a skirt way more difficult than necessary.  I was just thinking that I needed to just take an hour or so and make a knit top to give my mind a break but still give my creativity a boost.  At that very moment, I came across Trena’s post about leap day and wearing yellow and blue (leap days’ official colors apparently) and inspiration struck.  I was not only inspired by her yellow, but by the opportunity to colorfully celebrate the 220th birthday of Rossini, who is in my top 5 of favorite opera composers.

I’ve had remnants of the Milly rayon jersey I used for this dress hanging about waiting for a project.  I thought about making pajama shorts and a cami, but I didn’t have quite enough.  My coral Jalie scarf collar top is getting a little threadbare, so I’ve been kicking around the idea of replacing it.  When I saw Trena’s lovely yellow dress, I knew what I had to do.  I had just enough to squeeze a cap-sleeved version of the scarf collar out of the scraps I had leftover from the dress.  I cut it out at 4 pm and had all but the hems and side seams finished by 5 when the kids woke up.

I came back after dinner to finish though only to find that the ceiling in the sewing room was leaking!  Quelle horreur!  You can imagine how excited I am about being a plumbing assistant.  We have a container in place under the pipe in the kitchen that’s the culprit until we have more time on the weekend, but needless to say, my quick top didn’t materialize as quickly as I would have hoped.

By the time I got back to it, I had very little time to wear it and “officially” celebrate leap day, so I decided to declare it leap week.  I leave you with some Beverly Sills and “Una Voce Poco Fa” from the Barber of Seville. (could this woman have been more brilliant?)

 

Short naps and awesome things you learn during them

My family game is pinochle.  I grew up playing it with my great-grandma and her sisters and uncles and aunts and my older cousins and my parents.  It’s so ingrained that the whole process is automatic, but once in a while someone will miss a bid or play the wrong suit or forget that it’s their turn.  We started referring to that as taking a short nap.  And boy have I had a few short naps on this sweater.

I knew that this tie waist sweater was going to take some hand sewing of the ruffles to finish, but I wasn’t prepared for having to do so not once, not twice, but three times.  Mostly I blame Burda and the unclearness of its directions.  The first time I misread where I needed to gather the strips, the second time, it was totally Burda.

The directions tell you to gather in the middle (clear enough from the picture–not sure how I missed that the first time).  Then I realized that you need to sew that gathered middle the 3/8″ from the neck edge.  The first time I gathered the edge of the strip, not the middle and sewed on the gathered edge.  I hand basted and everything, but the ruffles don’t really look like what they look like until you take out the gathering stitches.  Hence why it didn’t work yet again.

The upside of all of my short napping is that I’ve been listening to lots of great information on Lori’s podcasts Sew Forth Now.  When I first started sewing, I’d listen to a lot of crafting sorts of podcasts like Craft Sanity and CraftyPod.  Both are hosted very well with good information, but I soon found out that I was not particularly interested in crafty sorts of projects or quilting fabrics.  At the time, I had no idea that Lori was around doing this wonderful podcast devoted to garment sewing.

Really though, it’s kind of great that I’m discovering this now because my knowledge has grown to the point that I can start really being able to understand what she’s talking about, and that is kind of fun.  If I had come across it earlier, I think I would have felt overwhelmed by everything.  So I’ve been enjoying the archives of these podcasts even when I’ve been sewing very poorly.

My only disappointment is that I was hoping to have traced and muslined this motorcycle jacket with a detachable fur collar I have planned in time for my fitting group on Saturday.  

Instead, I have a riff on the Ottobre blouse I made here cut out and a skirt muslined that I can take on Saturday.

My full review is here.

With this sweater finished, that leaves the camel skirt, white shirt, dress, ponte pants, and faux fur piece left for the sew along.  I omitted the puffy vest from my accounting, but that’s another tale that I will leave for another day.

Tie sweater in process

I’m moving forward with the Wardrobe Basics Sew Along.  Of course I’m not going in order of the list. I figured I’d get the really cooler weather things out of the way so that I could still get some use out of them this season.

On Saturday Sam and I had a good adventure at Denver Fabrics to buy fabric for the rest of the sew along items.  I’m really looking forward to the jacket I’m making a detachable faux fur collar for.  Though it took me 2 hours to get out of there, inspiration struck, and thankfully Sam was a trooper.

On the table right now is my waist tie sweater.  I fell instantly in love with this jacket (1-2012-106–though this is the 107 picture because I like it better, but I’m using the 106 length) from the January Burdastyle.

This horse is clearly a unicorn in disguise who breathes out glittered rainbows I’m sure.

I found this fluffy purple sweater rib knit at the Sew Expo a couple of weeks ago and picked it up.  It’s not quite as fluffy as the modeled fabric and I think it’s some sort of cotton blend, so it’s not super warm, but at this point of the year that means I’ll get more use out of it.  Yay!  If I ever find something wool and gauzy and fluffy, you bet your glittered unicorn I will pull out this pattern again even if ruffles aren’t in.

All that’s left is to attach the ruffles.  I’ve thought about how to get around hand sewing on this, but in the end, I think I will bite the bullet and hand sew them just so that I can get everything just where I want it.  I need to pick off the belt carriers and make them a little narrower and move them a little more towards the back as well.  I’m not entirely sure that they’re not off from each other too.  So I’ll fix that too.

How are other people doing with their progress, or if you’re not sewing along, what’s on your table?

Vote for my jeans! Plus a Flatlocked turtleneck

The Jeans contest has ended, but voting is up for Patternreview members.  Would you consider voting for me and my jeans?  The voting page is right here.  End shameless plug.

Moving on…

Since I’m now double covered on the jeans front, I thought I’d move on in the Wardrobe Basics Sew Along.

My next item to finish is a black turtleneck.  As I never do black unless work required (and by ‘required’ I actually really truly mean required), I chose a heathered oatmeal rayon knit–decidedly a better color for me.  Though I had to resize for this version of Burdastyle 9-2010-121, I knew it would come together very quickly.  Knowing this, and inspired by an article in Threads #155 (June/July 2011), I thought I’d make things more interesting by trying out some flatlocking on my serger.

I thought that I needed a fancy pantsy serger for flatlocked stitches.  According to the Threads article (entitled “Flatlock for Fashion”), not so!  After fiddling around a bit, I can honestly say I have not been getting my money’s worth out of my rather humble little Janome serger.  I really want to do a little video tutorial for a flatlocked hem in particular (crazy excited about this hem), but I’ll give a fast run down to give you an idea.

Kathleen Fasanella gives a thorough explanation of flatlocking here.  Basically, a flat lock stitch lies flat (crazy, right?), but how you achieve that makes for some interesting effects.

• You want your serger to be in a 3-thread configuration.  Take out your right needle if you want a wider stitch or take out the left needle if you want a narrower stitch.
• Set the tension on your chosen needle to the lowest setting (0 for me, perhaps different for you).
• Increase the tension on your lower looper to the highest setting (or higher than normal, but you know how playing with serger tension works…).
• Keep the tension on your upper looper where it usually is.
• Flatlocking can have two different looks:  ”loops” or “ladders”.  To see “loops” on your right side, serge with wrong sides together.  To see “ladders” on the right side, serge with wrong sides together.  For whichever you choose, once you’ve serged a seam, pull gently on the seam to expose the ladder stitches (this will flatten out the loops on the opposite side).  Press well.  Tada!

Besides having a decorative look (especially if you use some decorative threads like Wooly Nylon), the flat seams are really unexpectedly noticeably more comfortable than traditional serged seams.  You see these seams in a lot of athletic wear just for that reason–the flat stitches reduce chafing during exercise.  Who’d a thunk it?  And I just wanted to play around with my serger.

I updated my review of the turtleneck here.

Turtleneck with jeans.  Oops, there they are again.  Have you voted?

Designer Pastiche Jeans

I finished my jeans for the Jeans Contest!  I’m really pleased with how everything worked out.  They were a lot of hard work, but I rather enjoyed switching among 6 different presser feet and no less than 7 different colors of thread and my serger despite it being a bit of a three ring circus.

I started looking around for inspiration in December in planning for the contest and there were a lot of different details that I liked.

• Specifically, I love the little loop at the bottom of the belt loop on these Burberry jeans:

It’s a tiny detail, but I really like it.

• I also really liked the buttoned vent on these Balmain jeans:

Balmain is not my style–way too edgy for me, but the buttoned vents an interesting embellishment for the side seams.

• I also was drawn to the width between the topstitching rows on these jeans from True Religion.  I didn’t make my topstitching quite as wide (and I’d need an industrial machine to handle topstitching thread that is this heavy), but I did make the space wider than on previous jeans I’ve made.

As for my additions:

• I saw a girl at Denver Fabrics who was wearing jeans with two-tone topstitching.  The threads on her jeans were white and cream, and the contrast was really intriguing.  When I decided to add that to this pair, I wanted more contrast and went with pink and cream (unintentional Valentine’s overlap there).
• I added add extra belt loops per Ron Collins’ ideas on Sandra Betzina’s Jeans Couture DVD (such a valuable resource!).
• I had leftover voile leftover from these pajamas.  I lined the pockets with it entirely, but added a little strip of denim at the top of the pocket facing so that when I pressed the pockets, the voile would not peek through the top.  I used French seams on them because I dislike serging on something as delicate as voile (French seamed pockets are also on the Jeans Couture DVD).  I used more voile on the fly shield and the interior of the waistband to cut down on bulk and again, so I could feature this beautiful fabric.  If you haven’t faced a waistband with a lighter cotton, I would really advocate it.  It’s a lot more comfortable against your skin than a second layer of denim, and it makes buttonholes so much easier.
• The zipper is in the same color scheme as the voile.
• I used the contoured waistband from my pair of BWOF 8-2008-122 that I made recently.  It fits me well and a lot more comfortable on my body than straight waistbands.
• I looked at a lot of different back pocket embroideries.  Besides these MIH jeans (I don’t have an embroidery machine to pull of a little cute bird), none of the designs really appealed to me.  Instead, I freehanded a lowercase cursive letter e (for my name) and another one so that I could feature both colors of my thread.  I had previously tested making each e with both colors, but it looked like an outline.  I liked the single line better.  I did have to redo a pocket to get the topstitching thread to not pull out of the pocket when I removed the stabilizer.  I eventually used fusible interfacing on the wrong side of the pocket to keep the stretch in the denim to a minimum and Solvy on the top so that my design was consistent between pockets.

As for the pattern, I used Jalie 2908.  I’ve been thrilled with the fit of it.  I cut the inseam one size smaller, did a 1/2″ flat seat adjustment (per Sandra Betzina in Fast Fit p. 223-227) and scooped out the front crotch about 1/2″ to match the curve on my previous jeans.  I had to shorten them slightly, but not nearly as much as I thought I would given my height, (granted, I kept this pair super long).

To add the buttoned vents, I followed this tutorial from A Fashionable Stitch.   Because I topstitched my side seams, I had to mark where the side seam would fall (2″ plus the 3/8″ side seam) into the vent.  I basted the vent and pressed it open really well so that I could run the topstitching all the way to the bottom of my vent.   I decided to make the buttons be on the backs instead of the fronts (like spurs!) as they are in the Balmain jeans.  Because the topstitching is entirely to one side of the press line (which IS where the side seam falls), it was possible to remove the basting, press the untopstitched side back under the topstitched side to secure the vent in place with bartacking.  From there, I added buttonholes 2″ up from the hem and then every 2 1/4″ up from that 1/2″ from the side seam press line.  Whacking 10 tack buttons into place was a project, but I got them done, making for a really cool look.  

The rivets are from Cawaiiland on Etsy.  I like their rounded appearance.

I finished off the hems with hem tape that matches my voile (I used the same hem tape at the bottom of the voile in the waistband as well).  It makes the insides pretty and was a detail in my favorite Banana Republic jeans.

My full review is here on Patternreview.

I leave you with feathers in my hair and flats on my feet.

Wardrobe sew along: turtleneck progress

I’m finishing up my jeans slowly, but since I’m still waiting on one more piece of hardware, I’m moving ahead with the sew along.

I’m on to a turtleneck.  I made the famous Burdastyle 9-2010-121 when I was pregnant with Sam, but for obvious reasons, I had to retrace everything.  Since my Ottobre experiment with shoulder sizing, I graded down the neck and shoulders to a 32 from a 36 (boo) and the side seams to a 34 (not a big deal).  I wish Burda would do as Otto and offer everything in 34s to start with.  Ah, but we can dream.  Until then, I think I did an okay job of grading from my muslin.

Since there’s not much to this pattern and literally can be made up in about 30 minutes from cutting to wearing, I’m thinking I might try my hand at some decorative serging.  There was a good article in a Vogue Patterns magazine I picked up at the library about flatlocking which I’ve always wanted to try.  It turns out I didn’t have enough gray jersey to make this work, but I do have a pretty heathered oatmeal (with bits of yellow and gray) rayon jersey that I picked up at the Sew Expo this past weekend.

I do love the simplicity of this pattern, but I’m also very attached to this turtle tie neck sweater I have.

Since I started sewing, copying this neckline has been high on my list.  A cursory glance at Polyvore didn’t reveal much variation in turtlenecks…some are more funnel-shaped (much nicer I think since it follows the neck) and others are more tube like (not very flattering as far as I’m concerned), but nothing super detailed or interesting.  I did find this Rick Owens biker jacket with ruched turtleneck with the zipper running all the way up asymmetrically on the neck.  So cute, and a detail easily copied.

Readers, have you found any interesting turtleneck variations?

Wardrobe Sew Along #1 and quick planning

I’m cheating on the sewalong because it’s allowed!  My first item for the sew along is my skinny jeans.  I already wrote about them here.  I’m linking that post in the linky party at Girls in the Garden, but reposting the pictures on this post.

I will add that a wardrobe basic they certainly are.  I’ve been wearing them nearly non-stop since I finished them.  They work with boots, flats and every top in my closet.  And I love the little details of the flaps and the purple topstitching.

Where can you get purple topstitched RTW jeans?  Oh the reasons we sew!

Here’s the sewalong list and a quick list of how I’m adapting (some of the suggestions are not my taste) in italics:

1. Slim Black Pants (on the segment they called these ponte pants)–I have some gray RPL from Emma One Sock perfect for this because I have it and because I don’t do black.
2. Dark Skinny Jeans–check!
3. White button shirt–wrap shirt as I hate button-downs, and probably not white
4. Black turtleneck\–gray
5.Camel – khaki skirt–Boot wearer that I am, this would be a really useful piece.
6.Tie Waist Sweater–Yay!  A cozy sweater to replace my stolen-stolen back 70′s sweater from my Mom?  I’m so there!
7. Puffy Vest–I’m thinking about alternatives because I don’t understand adding bulk to one’s upper body
8. Faux Fur Vest\–I think I will make a jacket with a detachable fur collar for the same reason as the puffy vest reservations
9. Black Dress–in another segment of the Nate Show they had a knit print dress instead of an LBD, and I’ll probably go this route since I only do black dresses if I’m playing in an orchestra

I have bigger, more extensive ideas roughed out on one of my Pinterest boards.

Wardrobe Basics Sew Along

Katie of Kadiddlehopper has inspired me to join the Wardrobe Basics Sew Along going on at Girls in the Garden.  It was inspired by this really good segment on the Nate Berkus show on 12 Winter Wardrobe Basics.  On the show they combine them into 30 days of looks, but 12 tone serialism lover/music theory nerd in me knows that they can be combined into a whole lot more than that.

While I try to not sew orphan garments, the fact is, that they just happen.  You find some random really cool knit and you sew it up and realize that it matches with nothing.  Nothing.  Remember this jacket

that I spent so much time on?  It’s gotten not near the use it deserves.  It does not play well with dresses, my covered snaps kept popping open, and it’s generally kind of big on me (At the time silly me thought that using a 36 in the neck and shoulders wasn’t an issue–no wonder I had so many fit problems!).  It’s only been very recently that I’ve realized I could fix the snaps and pair it with a slim fitting long sleeved undershirt and jeans.  I want to avoid having really nice garments like this one hanging around for no reason in the future (it’s so sad–I love this jacket!), so the idea of a basics sew along was pretty appealing.  The fact that there’s no timeline per se fits makes this a lot less pressure than a lot of sewalongs out there, and I can sew most of it from stash too!

I think when I started sewing I avoided sewing staples because they’re [*snore*] boring, and I’m sewing because I don’t want to do boring among other reasons.  I know now that I can make staples like these jeans

as interesting as I want to, and the more I think about combining things together, the more sense it makes.  I have limited time to dress while running after 2 kids…why not make it easy by giving myself some options?  I’ve tried the wardrobe concept before when I was pregnant with Sam,

but 5 garments doesn’t give you as many combining options as 9.  The long and short of it is that I’m in for this sew along, and I’m looking forward to reading others’ progress too!

Feathered fireworks

Vogue 8663 has been in my queue for a long time.  This polyester knit from Fashionista Fabrics has  been in my stash also for a long time.  I love the lines of this particular pattern and I love the density and the pattern on this fabric that one day it hit me that they would be a perfect match for each other.

I wish I could say that this was a quick little sew, but the bodice took me a while to fit.  I was really unsure about the pleats…that’s not a feature I typically go for because I think they can be broadening on a full bust.  But these pleats looked a great deal more like darts to me and the pleats didn’t seem to be adding any bulk upstairs on anyone who has reviewed this pattern on PR.

In my muslin, the pleats really confused me.  At first I didn’t stitch them down, so they gaped and did all kinds of weird things that led me to believe that I needed to do an FBA.  I’ve said it before that FBAs create more problems for me than they help.  I have a small ribcage and a small waist, and FBAs add too much to the waist when usually because of my small ribcage I can just add a tiny bit just under the armscye to cover my bust.  I was really puzzled why this really common fix for me wasn’t working on this pattern…I even slashed across my bust point and figured that I needed 3/4″.  After tracing and retracing no less than 3 times and having zero luck coming up with a way to do an FBA without seriously distorting the bodice, it occurred to me that I hadn’t tried my muslin on with the pleats stitched down.  I zigzagged across my slash points and tried on the bodice one last time.  I’m so glad I thought to do that because it fit perfectly and saved me the headache of an FBA.  I did add 1/2″ to the bottom of the bodice in line with my bust point that I tapered back to the side seam and CF because the waist seam was riding up right there.  The 1/2″ of extra length fixed that issue.

I lined the skirt with some poly knit that I had that I’ve been using for knit muslins.  I had bought several yards of it at Denver Fabrics one day for 99 cents/yd.  It has the same stretch as my print fabric and it oddly was a good match colorwise.  The skirt was just a hair droopy without a lining, and my only slip is too big on me, so lining it was a quick solution.  I just sewed the lining and the outer skirt directly into the waist seam.

The only thing that I don’t like about this dress is that I can’t nurse in it.  I’m so used to nursing in whatever I’m wearing that I forget that there are actual physical limitations that have to be recognized.  As such, this dress will be left to be worn out with the girls (like the wine and dessert night I’m going to tonight at a friend’s) or on dates with my husband.  Whenever I’m done with this stage in my life, I’m wearing this dress into the ground.

My full review of this dress is here.

Details

Whew.  I’m exhausted.  I’m working on making up my jeans for Patternreview’s Jeans Contest and it has been rather slow going.  I’m in the mood to work slowly and I also had to redo my back pockets.  One of the ladies from my fitting group graciously gave me some tear away stabilizer, but I didn’t practice with any scraps of it.  I ended up using too long of a stitch length and my tension was all whacked, so the topstitching thread was all loopy gross and the stabilizer was lost for good.  I tried zigzagging over the gross loopies because I’ve seen plenty of RTW jeans with satin stitched sorts of designs on the back pockets, but it wasn’t what I was looking for.  That was yesterday.

Today, with fresh eyes, I pulled out some Solvy that I keep around for stabilizing buttonholes.  I fused some interfacing to the back of my pockets to keep the denim stretch to a minimum.  Then I traced my design on the Solvy and pinned in place.  I shortened my stitch length to 3.0 vs the 3.5 that I was using yesterday.  The Solvy is really thin, so it pulls out very gently (I used tweezers close to the stitching) which kept the topstitching thread from pulling out.

I also French seamed the pockets.

 I wanted a pocket bag entirely out of the voile leftover from the HotPatterns pajamas of doom.  I love this fabric so much and a voile pocket would reduce bulk in the hips (who doesn’t want that?!).  If I had left it entirely out of voile, the voile would have been peeking out the top of the pocket no matter how well I pressed.  To save myself a fight with my iron, I added a little strip of denim at the top of the pocket facing.

No iron wars, and I still get the pretty pocket guts:

I’m going to keep on trucking with these.  I’m waiting on all of my hardware in the mail except rivets.  I probably won’t get around to posting more until closer to the contest’s end, but since I put in a good bit of work, I thought I’d do a quick post today.  Readers, what is taking over your sewing rooms today?