Killing your darlings, or rather, sparing them from your scissors

After my realization about sheer knits and my hatred of camisoles and their sometimes obligatory necessity, I started thinking about sewing a couple of woven tops.  I run into a couple of problems in thinking about this though.

There’s a couple of lengths of wovens in my stash that I love.  L-O-V-E.  Like I sometimes go through my stash and dream of what they will be and how long I’ll wear them for as if I were a gardener peeking on my little seedlings or something.  But at the stage I’m at, I have a hard time justifying surrendering up some of those fabrics to keep myself cool in this heat.  Here they are, and even as I photograph them, I put them in deep stash so they will be safe from my grabbing hands.

The thing about it is that maternity clothes, kind of no matter what end up being one season clothes.  Who knows if I’ll be pregnant again at this stage in the summer or in my pregnancy, and it’s up in the air whether or not the stuff I do have will fit come fall given that I will be considerably more pregnant than I have been in the fall before.  Giving up any of these dear fabrics seems pointless, and I’d genuinely be sad just to wear any of them for a season.

Buying a couple of RTW woven tops is out of the question too.  I despise things falling off my shoulders because the neckline is too wide and readjusting the front because the neckline is too low, and the more I do petite adjustments in the armscye to fit my body, the less tolerant I am of sleeves that are cut with lower armholes.  So you see, I’ve become my own worst enemy.

But I will happily sew up this mind-numbingly pedestrian white shirting I have (not pictured because you all know what I’m talking about).  If I hate it, I will dye it.  As I was taking pictures of the other fabrics, it occurred to me that this rather boring fabric is also kind of sheer.  Biscuits.  Back to the drawing board.

How about everyone else?  Do you have a hard time sewing up fabrics that you truly love or do you put yourself in tricky pickles with your resolve to not buy/dislike for the fit in RTW?

White House/Black Market cowl, version 2.0

It’s remarkable when you have a TNT how the edges of it just get etched in your brain.  As I said, I suspected that the Ottobre might be smaller than my Jalie TNT base tee even with my maternity alteration.

Sure enough, it’s smaller than my Jalie along the entire side seam–minimally so at the base of the armscye, a solid inch at the waist, and maybe 1/8″ at the hips.  This feels like a really slim-fitting pattern–the knit tops that I’ve made from Ottobre before seemed much less fitted, and 34 in Ottobre bottom patterns are always a little loose.  The modeled photo doesn’t look particularly fitted, but then her arm is kind of in the way.  If you make this pattern, know that you might have to go up a size.  The neck and shoulder sizing is consistent with their other patterns–for me that means I graded down to a 32.

For version 2.0 which I made in a less stretchy cotton/poly blend from Harts Fabric, I literally superimposed the Otto over the Jalie on the front and the back (the back was also smaller on the Otto) and used the Jalie on the side seams and the Otto everywhere else.  I did add an inch at CF for my bump which isn’t much of a bump at this point–I think I’ve had more bump non-pregnant before.  But I want this top to get me through the summer, and I’ll probably need some more length at CF before the end of that.  This top fits much more comfortably than the last, and it’s still keeping me cool which is so so needed.  If it’s close to 100 in June, what are we in for the next two months?  I hate the heat.

And sadly, I have to wear this one with a cami as well because of the sheer factor.  I look forward to these sheer knits going out of fashion.  I’d rather not wear a cami, and I’m certainly not going to line a knit top.  But for now, I’m not going to pass on knits in pretty colors like this one that are otherwise good quality even if they’re sheer.  I hate too that camis throw off the fit of a garment–both versions of this top drape and flow better without that second layer.  And it actually looks tight across the bust which couldn’t be further from the truth (of course cotton knits for all of their breathability drape like wads of paper).  I think I’m going to have to start fitting with the dumb things on in the muslin stage if it turns out that my knit is indeed a little sheer.  Urggh.

Is anyone else ready for sheer knits to bite the fashion dust?

My full review including both versions of this pattern is here.

The T-shirt Project #3–White House/Black Market summery cowl knock off

I hesitate to call this a knock-off because seriously, this could not have been a simpler project.  But honestly, that’s the kind of project I needed these days.  My energy is still up and down and I’ve often felt kind of gross.  After I finished this yesterday, I have to say I felt about 1000% better if not in body, than mentally.  It was good to have a new something to wear and more than that, the act of creating was just good for my heart which always gets a little down when I’m physically limited.

As for the details of the top, I’m using Ottobre 2-2009-5.  It’s just a basic knit cowl.  I stuck with it though because Ottobre’s drafting is really similar to Burda and I find them easy to compare to my Jalie TNT.  This is a fairly slim-fitting pattern–I need to double check, but I’m thinking that even with the slight maternity alteration that I did, my end result still makes this narrower than my Jalie TNT.  It’s possible that I need to revise that TNT at some point given this, but I’m keeping it for right now when things they are a changin’.

The cowl is constructed by gathering the shoulder seam and then matching the shoulder seam to the shoulder seam on the cowl and basting them together before joining the front and back at the shoulder seam.  It’s fairly clever–the angle of the shoulder looks all out of whack, but then it magically makes for the drape at the front once you sew that seam.  Never having sewn a cowl before, I can’t say if this is always how it goes down, but I like it.  I’m all about clever construction.

Instead of just gathering the shoulder seam, I made a casing on the right side and some self loops.  The casing acts as the gathering mechanism as well as adding the detail at the shoulder that’s in the original White House/Black Market tee.

The cool thing is though that the loops fit very snugly inside of my casing and this combined with the fact that I basted the gathered seam to the cowl’s shoulder seam per the top’s construction, the gathering is completely secure.  So I will never have to fiddle around with tying or adjusting the casing so that that seam maintains the gathered look I want.  See what I mean–could not be simpler.

I did have to raise the bottom of the armscye considerably to get undergarment coverage.  I just put my French curve against my pattern, matched the bottom of the armscye on the curve and pivoted it upwards 5/8″, blending it back into the original line somewhere like halfway up.  This worked perfectly, and for the first time, I have a sleeveless top that covers my business which is 100% impossible for my petite self to find in RTW and the #1 reason why I never wear sleeveless tops.  So this alteration feels for sure like a bit of a triumph.

I’m going to change the pattern up a little after I check it against my Jalie and remake it in a lovely frosty aqua knit I have sitting on a chair downstairs.  This marigold knit is a little too sheer to wear without a cami, but it’s very breathable, so remarkably it’s been keeping me cool.  And the bright happy color really lifts my mood.

I will put up a review of this top after I’ve done a check with the pattern against my Jalie.

How is everyone staying cool with their sewing (aside from you clearly enviable Aussies who do not have to endure the icky 90+ degree days this time of year…would that I were you right now)?

Pretty summer pickles and how falafel made my life a little better

I don’t do too many cooking posts because I long ago decided that this was a sewing blog, but I couldn’t resist throwing up a picture of these beauties that Noah and I made this morning.

The Lee Brothers turned me onto refrigerator pickles in Simple Fresh Southern (a book that my Mom “borrowed” and I need back…like yesterday).  Their  method is so absurdly simple.  Put veg in jars, add some aromatics, make a simple brine, boil it, pour it over the veg.  Done.  There’s no fiddling about with canning which makes me really happy not only because it gets pickles on my plate faster, but I think non-processed veg taste so much fresher which is not a shocker.

So today we made the Lee Brothers’ gingered beet pickles which I thankfully found on Food52 (I’m coming for my cookbook Mom!) as well as their zucchini onion pickles which I’ve made a number of times.  I love them on top of red lentils which sounds weird but is really the perfect condiment.

We also made some pink turnip pickles from David Tanis’ A Platter of Figs.  I fell in love with turnip pickles at a tiny Lebanese restaurant in Houston when I was a kid.  I had heard of falafel and mustered up the courage to try it one day.  The restaurant was owned by a family and was overseen by a wizened matriarch who sat quietly at her own little table watching all of the goings on.  But when someone ordered falafel, this ancient woman sprung into action, disappearing for several minutes to create what can only be described as perfection on a piece of thin soft flatbread.  Falafel may have been her only official responsibility at the restaurant for all I know, but if it was, it could not have been a task left in more able hands.  Her falafel was light, loaded with fresh green herbs, and it shattered beneath your teeth with crispiness when you were lucky enough to get a bite of one in the sandwich.  Most falafel I feel gets thrown between some random marginal pita, and maybe there’s some token lettuce and mealy tomatoes and a sprinkle of tahini sauce.  Grandma’s falafel:  it was lovingly set on a bed of impeccably clean deep green lettuce, beautifully juicy tomatoes, showered generously with lemony garlicky tahini sauce and hot sauce, but tucked up in there were these beautiful turnip pickles and they were what has since made falafel mythical and legendary in my mind since.  For one, they were pink which added a Matisse like shock of color in an already outrageously diverse palette, but also, the crunch and the acid they provided was the perfect foil against the delicate crisp and fat of the falafel.  I would happily eat one of her sandwiches every day for the rest of my life, and there’s little that I would say that about.

So when I capped up my little pickles this morning, I couldn’t help but remember that first bite of awesome I had when I was like 11.  Oh that my energy would come back quickly that I can recreate it.  I’m getting there.  Another week and I should be in the second trimester which always seems a little better.

Do you pickle or preserve or can?  Do you have any life changing food encounters?

Discipline

It’s been hard work getting back into the sewing room.  Between my varying energy levels/my need to exercise during naptimes so I don’t fall over and sleep and end up feeling awful and not sleeping at night, falling back into the pattern of working in my room daily has been difficult to get started again.

Add a water heater that died a couple of nights ago (but not before it leaked on the carpet–thankfully not irreparably), and my best laid plans for this week have not materialized.  I can still prewash some jersey on cold, but man my brain is muddled with feeling unsettled about this dumb water heater.

But a shower at my parents’ helped me clear my head and I mustered up enough get up to get a muslin made of my White House/Black Market cowl neck tee with the sleeve ties.

The Ottobre pattern I’m using is perfect–I added an exterior casing to take care of the ties on the shoulder, and it not only worked out elegantly, it might be the easiest RTW copy ever.  I’ve never made a cowl before so I was unsure of the style on me, but I like it.  I am glad I made a muslin though, because I needed to raise the bottom of the armscye a bit which is pretty typical for sleeveless styles…actually I’ve never really successfully made a sleeveless garment.  This dress came the closest, and I remember really monkeying around with that armscye a fair bit.

So little by little things are getting done.  Here’s for hoping that there’s hot water again tomorrow!