Winter's last Sweater - Audrey in Unst

June 11, 2015, 6:10 am

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Winter's last sweater, aka the garment you didn't apply yourself studiously enough to finish before old man winter packed it up.  That sewing machine is a wicked, wicked distraction! "Ohhh Heather, come sew a bunch of summer dresses.....That Wasn't A Request!" Then the sneaky machine set a cake trap and I found myself caught in the pedal unable to free myself until I lined a bodice.

Annnyway, after finishing my last sweater I was still in the mood for another cropped length cardigan. So cute with dresses, so much less to knit. Good old Ravelry pulled up a bunch of options and I was soon down a Gudrun Johnston rabbit hole.  Dear Gundrun, you've been bringing it in the cardigan department and I'm sorry it took me ohhhh something like 5 years to realize it. I blame the the small human who turned my brain into mush causing me to only be able to knit blankets and socks for a few years.  He laughs at my misfortune and sticks my hand knit socks in his mouth. Yeah, it's both gross and an affront to my handiwork. ;)

I could have cast on several of Gundrun's cardigan patterns, but went with the super popular choice of Audrey in Unst. The pattern matched the cropped cardigan requirement, the bib lace detail was very pretty and the amount of regular stockinette would make it good TV watching knitting. In fact I loved the design so much that got out the really good yarn to make it, the Sundara Sport.

Working Heather did splurge on a sweaters worth of this yarn in the mid aughts and then knit up an EPS cardigan in 2009. While knitting that sweater I came to the conclusion that this was one of the best yarns, and color, ever and wished that there was more.  For shits and giggles I visited the Ravelry sell and trade page for Sundara sport and, HOLY COW, another knitter had another sweater's worth she wanted to sell. Not sure if "TAKE MY MONEY!" was a thing in 2009, but that's pretty much what my DM message said. She happily did and sent me another 5 skeins of this precious yarn to augment my stash.
(Side note - The 2009 EPS cardigan is still going strong. The color faded a tad and I've worn off the cuff cast-on yarn and mended it twice. Otherwise the yarn has held up wonderfully, very little pilling and no holes to speak of.)

80% of this project was very enjoyable knitting. The other 20% was the horrible slog that is 36 rows of twisted rib knit flat. Oh my god how I hate knitting twisted rib, yet so many of my chosen projects feature it. I must have some sort of self torture through knitting thing going on. "It's not a real knitting project until the entire side of my neck cramps up!" *insert crazed laughter*  But anyway, after finishing up the giant waist ribbing of doom the rest of the sweater went smoothly.  The bib lace portion was fun to knit and I was kind of disappointed when that part went so quickly. I also enjoyed finally learning the technique of knitting on set in sleeves with short rows. Wow do I loooove that and want to do it all the time now.

Here are the knitting details for those of you dying to know.
- Went down a needle size on the pattern since I'm a habitual loose knitter. Hem and sleeve twisted rib was knit on 5's, stockinette on 4's and the button band was knit on 2's. Size knit was the 36" bust.

- Could not get exact row gauge in Sundara Sport, it was bigger, so the body length was shortened. I removed the 7 rows of St St before dividing for the fronts and back.

- Also shortened the armhole area a bit by stopping at at 16 rows instead of 18.

- Did not remove any of the length from the sleeves so they are more bracelet length than 3/4 length.

- Since I'd shortened the body length, I used the button band pick up numbers for the smallest size.

- I needed very little yarn from the 5th skein, only enough to knit the button bands and the i-cord neckline bind off.

Finding 10 tiny green buttons is a bit of a challenge in my area since JoAnn's doesn't stock that many colors of green. Actually if you need over 6 buttons for any sort of project good luck finding that many in stock. Etsy came to the rescue and I was able to get 10 buttons for a very reasonable price at AJ Stuff. They arrived in my mailbox very promptly too, so I'll be perusing their store for future projects.

The finished cardigan is probably the most perfect thing I've knit in a long time.  The amount of ease is just right, I like the length of both the body and the sleeves, the buttonband doesn't gap weirdly, I could go on and on.  No wonder this cardigan is so popular!  So that's my last cardigan project for awhile. In the mean time I'll be whipping out socks in front of the A/C unit, muttering about humidity and sewing summer dresses. Lots of summer dresses. 

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Stashbusting Power Boost

June 14, 2015, 11:33 am

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It's been a little quiet on the blog this month because I've been cranking the sweatshop into high gear. Frog and I have been pumping out garments for the PR Fabric Stash contest. Since this contest is won based on yardage sewn, it seemed like we might have a shot at one of those sweet Mood gift certificates.

Froggie and I played the Rocky 4 soundtrack over and over again, and got our "Eye of the Tiger" on. However real life conspired against us and cut our sewing time in half.  Then I decided to sew a dress that needed plaid matching and bound buttonholes.  Oh yes Heather, planning a giant time suck project is greaaat strategy for this contest......not.  Froggie also might have binged on birthday cake and not held up his end of the hemming bargain.  Long story short, Team knitnbee is way behind in the numbers and won't be taking any prizes home

On the good side, the contest has been a great motivator to use up some of that dreaded orange stash layer. All those rementants and tricky fabrics that have been lurking in my stash for years. When the shiny new fabric is off limits, amazingly I come up with pattern ideas for the old stuff.  Or at least recycle patterns that seem to fit with the yardage available.

Most of the garments team knitnbee has made are ones you've already seen on the blog.  Instead of doing my normal review format, I thought a quick overview would make more sense. The pictures aren't going to be quite as good either. It's basically just me lurking on the sidewalk in front of my house, trying not to squint into the camera. So let me show you what I've been up to.
 
Outfit #1 - Maria Denmark Day to Night Drape Top and Colette Mabel

A couple of one yard knit remnants have been the bane of my stash for some time.  Too much to throw away, not enough for most pattern ideas....unless it's these two patterns. Score! The Day to Night Drape Top is new to me, but I'd seen numerous versions on other sewing blogs.  Figured it wouldn't be too hard to fit and whipped out a size medium with no changes.  On the whole I'm pleased with it other than the armhole depth. It's a little too close to flashing my bra band for comfort. I'd raise the armholes about a half inch for any future versions.

One sewing note - Instead of using either of the suggested bindings, I went a different route. The neckline was bound with self fabric the same say you'd use fold over elastic.  The armholes were finished with self strips of fabric and then coverstitch in the manner shown here.  Both of these methods worked out to my liking and I'd use them again. The Day to Night Drape top is a great way to use up rayon jersey scraps and it also got the husband seal of approval.  Not sure why I waited so long to make one.

Some of you may remember that I was less than enthused with the ponte Mabel made last summer. Surprisingly I actually found myself wearing that skirt around the house on a regular basis.  It's great for "fat" days and crawling around on the floor cutting fabric. When the deep stash yielded a yard of black rayon ponte it seemed like a good idea to modify the pattern and give it another try.

The pattern was lengthened 5" to make it a length similar to my woven pencil skirts.  I also put 1 1/4" elastic into the waistband to get rid of the feeling that the skirt was going to fall off. Both of these changes did improve the pattern for me, but I'm still not 100% comfortable with knit pencil skirts.  Stretch wovens just give you more lumps and bumps coverage.

Outfit #2 - Kitschy Coo Comino Cap/Lady Skater mash-up

Past Heather might have gone on a mesh buying kick two years ago under the assumption she was going to sew a bunch of underwear.  Guess what she never did....yep, sew underwear.  That's OK because present Heather needed some contrast fabric to squeeze out a dress in this swanky black jersey.  The swanky black jersey fiber content has been pushed out of my brain, but I did remember two things.  The fiber blend had milk fibers in it and the price per yard was on the high side.  That's why I hoared this fabric for years instead of sewing it right up.

Pattern details - The two Kitschy Coo patterns are drafted from the same block so you can sub in the lady skater skirt with no changes.  I did add 3" of additional length since I'm an old lady that like her knees covered.  The Comino Cap bodice is sewn as instructed other than reversing the direction all the seam allowances were stitched down. It seems smarter not to have the SA's peeking through the see through mesh.  I LOVE this dress and am happy to have put the swanky black jersey and feather mesh to good use.

That's all the sewing accomplished and photographed for now. I'll be back later in the month with another quicky post of TNT's. :)

It's Baaaack - Sundress Sew-a-long

June 18, 2015, 12:54 pm

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Hello all you fabric mavens out there.  We had such a good time sewing sundresses together last year that it seemed a shame if we didn't do it again. So I had my trusty sewing room helper Froggie put on his administrative hat and hash out all the details.  We are happy to announce that Sundress Sew-a-long 2015 is a go!

To keep things simple, the sew-a-long will be pretty much the same as last year. The only real change is the time frame.  "Someone" might have misremembered when we rolled out the sewing machines and frozen drinks last year. Alcohol is not responsible for that though.  The problem is that I don't read my secretary's memos....because she doesn't exist. Annnnyway, here's the skinny for this years sundress sewing palooza.

The Details

1. Sew-a-long runs from July 1st to August 31st. Feel free to start hatching plans before then.

2. Pick any pattern you want to sew. While the true definition of a sundress is a "sleeveless dress", I'm not a stickler about it. If you prefer a to wear dresses with sleeves, then choose a pattern that says "Sundress" to you.  Modern, vintage, self drafted patterns are all welcome. 

3. Join the flickr group. Post your finished garments so that we all can admire and be inspired. (The flickr group is by invite to keep the flickr creepers out. Everyone looking to actually sew something is more than welcome.)

4. Get social. For those of you hip to hash tagging you can use the tag #sundresssew15 to share your plans or progress. 

5. Wear that Badge with pride.  Grab the code below for this years sew-a-long badge. 

<div class="handmade-by-heather-b-button" style="width: 200px; margin: 0 auto;"> <a href="http://handmadebyheatherb.blogspot.com/" rel="nofollow"> <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a223/Heather_Beckley/Smaller%20Badge_zpstlhrwddh.png" alt="Handmade By Heather B" width="200" height="175" /> </a> </div>

Now that the sew-a-long has been announced I'd better get Froggie on frozen drink duty. I know all that sewing works up a thirst. Chop, chop, margaritas for everyone. Here's to pretty dresses and summer time fun. Cheers!

Plaid Madness Insues

June 23, 2015, 6:40 am

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Say you haven't sewn with plaid in years. You are well aware that your plaid matching skills are rather rusty and things could get a little dicey. Because of this you're entirely sensible and choose a simple pattern. Maybe a pull over top with a side seam zipper so you only have to plaid match across the shoulders and at the side seams. You get a little plaid matching refresher without tearing your hair out. Pleased with yourself you celebrate with cake.

Or you could think, "My plaid matching skills are a little rusty. Maybe I should sew a shirt dress with a big collar and a bias cut skirt. Don't have to plaid match across the waist seam. WINNING!" Fixated with this fact you fail to think about all those seams that do need to be plaid matched, some of them on the bias. Oh no, this project is going to be a "Piece Of Cake", you think while eating cake.

Now that you've seen a picture, it's pretty clear the direction I went in. Sensibility is not my strong point and I did think a bias cut skirt would be a piece of cake. I told myself that this worry over plaid matching was silly and everything would be fine. FINE. Thusly prepared with fake confidence I went forward to cut plaid fabric.

The plaid cutting technique I used was drawing a line on the pattern and lining it up with one of the white plaid lines. When pattern pieces were labeled cut two, the first piece was placed on top of the fabric to assist matching the second. This was most likely a fine cutting technique if I'd been a bit more careful.  But I got a little sloppy and though, "That's close enough and I'll be about to make it work."

I also flat out made a cutting mistake. When cutting the second front, I plaid matched the white plaid lines but not the red ones.  But that was an error that wasn't caught until much, much later. Well get to that in detail in a bit.

My order of assembly was to sew up the bodice first. All the darts, facings, shoulders and one side seam were stitched.  I even went so far as to hand sewed the sleeve facings in place.  All that went smoothly other than realizing that I hadn't plaid matched across the shoulders. Oh well, no use losing sleep over that detail now that the fabric was all cut.

After completing all those details the only thing left was sewing the bound buttonholes. I wasn't in the mood to tackle those yet. Sewing bound button holes is one of those things that always provokes a mild panic attack.  Matching plaid on the bias skirt seams would be much easier...right?  The first seam, CF, took one whole hour to sew. "Oh Crap! What have I gotten myself into and why are some of the plaid lines matching and some aren't?" After much trial and error it was discovered that the plaid intersections were just as important to getting good chevrons as just getting the colors to line up.  Did I mention that my plaid matching skills were pretty rusty?

On the CF seam my cutting was almost correct.  With just a little fudging of the 5/8" seam allowance I was able to get good alignment of the plaid.  The rest of the seams wouldn't be so fortunate.  The other 3 skirt seams had to be sewn at crazy seam allowances to get the correct match. One side would be 1/4" and the other would be at 3/4".  I went back and trimmed down the larger side down to 1/4" so that the finished seam looked a little better.  If any future seamstress looks at this dress they will probably wonder what the hell was going on. Maybe I shouldn't get so uppity about some of my vintage hand sewn dresses.

But back to our plaid matching saga, it is far from over.  At this point I'd done a pretty good job during cutting keeping the repeats matched horizontally. Three skirt panels were sewn together with only a 1/4 or so of mismatch at the hem. It wasn't until panel number 4 that there was a big problem. I found that it needed to be shifted upwards an inch to get the side seams to match correctly. Eeeeep!  A small thank you was said to vintage pattern drafters for using super deep hem allowances as I shortened the other 3 panels to match.

With the skirt finished it was time to finally tackle those bound buttonholes.  I did refresh my brain on sewing those by rewatching the Sew Retro Starlet Jacket class on Craftsy. At least part of me learned something about doing proper prep work on this project.  The bound buttonholes were a slow go, with plenty of ripping out.  At least there weren't any horrible cutting mistakes and the finished holes looked pretty good. I moved on to the facing windows and then hand stitched the two layers together. Feeling pretty pleased with all my hard work, I went to baste the bodice pieces together and saw this.

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!! A thousand scream emojis have just been born. I thought, "OK, let's not freak out. The non buttonhole side can be replaced. Wait, which side matches the back?" You guessed it, the non buttonhole side.  At this point I started manically laughing in the way crazy people do before they flip out and start stabbing everyone.  I...Have....To...Redo....All....The...Buttonholes. Perhaps I should just fall on my sewing shears instead.

At that point my husband arrived home and said, "Time to go to the church picnic." This turned out to be a good thing because I couldn't lounge dramatically on picnic benches crying about mismatched plaid in front of near strangers. "No, no, you don't understand! They were bound buttonholes, bound! I have to dissemble half my work!" *Cue manic sobbing.* By the time we returned home I'd calmed down a bit and was able to deal all the work that had to be redone. There was some fabric left and I was able to cut a new front and facing that did match the other side.  Praise the sewing goddess! She also made sure that second set of bound buttonholes sewed up a lot faster. Or it could have been all that practice bound buttonhole practice I'd just had. Bodice fixed, it was attached to the skirt which magically still fit. Thanks bias cut! The final bit of magic was that the skirt stretched before hemming and was no longer an inch shorter than I'd intended.

Pattern
McCall's 7977. Haven't seen this one floating around before purchasing my copy. This project counts as #vintagepledge number 5.

Fabrics used
Cotton shirting (May have a bit of poly in it. It was from my grandmother's stash and I didn't feel like doing a burn test.)

Pattern changes/alterations
- Added 1/2" through the waist and hips. For the hips I actually added the 1/2" throughout the length of the skirt.

- Shortened the bodice 3/8"

- Shortened the skirt 5.5" (Think as drafted this would have been a maxi skirt on me.)

One alteration I would go back and do is to take in the shoulders about 1/2 -3/4" Even with shoulder pads sewn in that area is a little big. You can see that the CF is collapsing a bit and it's from the excess in the shoulders. The actual bodice length is correct. (It took me completing the whole dress to finally figure out this issue.)

Confessions/Advice
- Make sure your plaid matches across center front before putting in bound buttonholes. Duh.

- This shirting was a bit more sheer than I'd anticipated before sewing it up. I've worn a red slip underneath the dress for the photos.

- I slapped some ready made shoulder pads in this dress at the last minute. I should go back and either use the shoulder pad pattern pieces provided or cover the ready made ones in self fabric.

- The belt and buttons were a vintage deadstock set I stumbled across on Etsy.

- Covered belt enthuses rejoice, I ran across an internet source for belt backing!  Sew-Biz Fabrics has a lots of widths available. Their website might be a little dated looking, but they shipped promptly and I was pleased with the backing in real life.

Husband Comment
"Hey look, you got all the lines to match. Oooo, they go up or down depending on how you look at them. I also like your belt buckle. But you didn't make that, just strapped it on there."

My Final Thoughts
With all the cutting snafus this project should have ended up in the trash can as an unfixable wadder. Maybe Grandma had my back on this one making sure it worked out in the end. I can tell you that she would have given me an earful about that bodice cutting error. She didn't hand out sympathy for being a dumbass and not paying attention.  ;)  She still would have made me 3 different things for lunch because she rocked.

So I've talked about plaid matching at length, but not about the actual pattern.  Please forgive me lovely pattern, I'm still a bit shell shocked from making you.  In a solid or non directional print this dress would be a snap to sew up.  It has several design details that look as nice on a real body as they do in the fashion illustration. That's always nice since fashion illustrations don't have to worry about gravity or real life bust/waist/hip ratios. In recap, great pattern, fraught construction, awesome final dress. Now excuse me I have to stare at my skirt seams while eating cake. Ooooo plaid.

More Stash Busting Contest Makes

June 26, 2015, 11:42 am

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I promised/threatened to do another post of all my PR contest makes, so let me show you what else the frog powered sweatshop cranked out.  We had to close the sweatshop up a little early thanks to a freak storm that blew out our power for a few days.  Now that power is back on, we find ourselves only interested in laying in front of the air conditioning and surfing the internet. Oh internet, never leave again.

We still cranked out a lot of clothing during the middle of the month, including another Advance 9441 that will get it's own post. Mainly because I took so many pictures and can't whittle them down to one. So you have that pic heavy post to look forward to.  For now feast your eyes on a plethora of tops and a few bottoms that are no longer stashed fabrics.

1. Comino Cap
Finally decided I was keeping this yard of mermaid jersey for me. Sorry/Not sorry kids in my life. No changes to this baby, just hot pink mermaid goodness.

2. Maison Fleur 1301 Top View 2
This was supposed to be another version of View one, but the cotton sateen seemed a bit too thick for shoulder ties.  No worries, it's easy to convert the top to view 2 mid project.  All you need to do is cut off the ties on the back an put some buttonholes in the front ties.  A few self covered buttons were added to the front for a decorative element.

3. Nettie with cap sleeves and gathers.
Somehow I didn't make a short sleeve black Nettie last year. What! Well that oversight must be fixed immediately.  To spice the pattern up I added a few minor tweaks. First the normal Nettie short sleeve was swapped out with a cap sleeve that I'd drafted way, way back for the Fauxneta.  Second I gathered up the CF with a 1/4" x 1.5" piece of black elastic.  Easy, Peasy.

4. Edith and Self Drafted circle skirt
Yep, I really like the Edith pattern and keep adding them to my closet. More prints! More Colors!  And what could be better for summer than a sea themed vintage cotton version? Nothing! After that was finished, I decided to sew another self drafted circle skirt for a snazzy new outfit.

 

5. Several pairs of Barrie Briefs.
At long last a use for those Lillestoff remnants that are too big to throw away! I've been sewing the mid rise version because I'm turning onto an old lady who likes her underwear bigger and bigger.  They have excellent "check coverage" for those of us with plenty of junk in the trunk. I'll be sewing up a least a week's worth and while chackling with delight.

The stash busting contest was a fun challenge and did make me sew up more yardage than I normally do.  Nothing like a good dose of competition to get one cranking out all those things on the sewing list.  Still I'm looking forward to July, using new fabrics and not feeling guilty about picking up my knitting.

Extra, Extra.

June 29, 2015, 9:09 am

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Popping in on this Monday morning with a quickie info dump.

1. This week I'm the featured maker over on Kollabora. Pop on over there if you feel like reading about "creative process".  I put that in air quotes because my process is usually just a chocolate fueled exercise in winging it.

2. Sundress Sew-a-long officially starts on Wednesday. Here's the link to the flickr group if you haven't already joined. I'll be doing a few sew-a-long related posts throughout the month to get everyone's creative juices flowing.

Sundress Sew-a-long - Pattern picks

July 1, 2015, 7:47 am

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Happy July 1st everyone, sundress sew-a-long is officially underway!! I'd say that Froggie and I are celebrating with mimosas, but in truth we are just eating chocolate chips straight out of the bag. Sometimes you have to spend your champagne money on car repairs. C'est la vie.  But we're not going to let that get us down because sewing plans are free! Should any of you be looking around for sewing inspiration we've compiled a list of our favorite new dress patterns.

1. Butterick 6167  - The newish bust shelf pattern from Gertie. This is the pattern I'll be making if I can finally stop waffling around about fabric selection.  Flora, tropical, polka dots, they all seem to be choices that will work equally well. I might just have to blindfold myself and throw a dart at some swatches to decide.

2. Butterick 6164 - I really like the classic design of the pattern and the sample fabric used doesn't hurt either. Interesting use of darts at the neckline.

3. For causal maxi dress lovers there are the pattern options of the Southport dress for wovens and the Sallie for knits. Both seem like great wardrobe building patterns.

4. Sew Over It Vintage Shirt Dress -  They've given me a bunch of antibiotics but I've still got shirt dress fever.  The new pattern by sew over it makes me want to scratch that shirt dress itch some more.

5. Vogue 1446 - If anyone is looking for a challenge then this Rebecca Taylor design has one eye catching back.

Those are a couple of lovelies I've had my eyes on recently. If you're in the mood for more pattern ideas then check out last year's pattern posts for modern or retro picks. Those of you with plans already, I can't wait to see what you sew up!

Advance 9441 Take Two - Summer Lemon Dress

July 7, 2015, 5:30 am

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Oh look, Advance 9441 is back and in a lemon print just like past Heather had promised. Wow for once she didn't lie to us about sewing plans. (It's all her fault when posts about sewing plans don't come to fruition. She should know that I get distracted by shiny new things.)

Does this version of the pattern really need it's own blog post? Not really. But sometimes a fabric/pattern combo works out great and you want to post a gazillion pictures of it. So please bear with me and in return you can all have lemon bars at the end of the post.  I sure Froggie won't dust them all off while you're reading.

Let's talk about this beautiful lemon cotton lawn for a minute, because it's only gracing my body thanks to the kindness of another sewer.  I saw this beautiful fabric on Handmade Jane's blog last year when she sewed up  a Mortmain Dress. That dress instantaneously filled me with a bad case of fabric lust. The colors, the painterly quality of the print, the sheer size of those lemons. It Was Perfection! I quickly clicked on the link to Abakhan fabric with my credit card in hand.  Well my friends it was then that I found out that Abakhan does not deliver to the US.  NOOOOOOOO!!!!

Having been foiled in my attempt to purchase this fabric I went over to Twitter to whine about it. "Booo Hoo Hoo, poor me. Why can I not relieve my fabric lust by rubbing this fabric all over my face?" (I might have left that last part out of my tweet.) Then Elena tweeted me,  "I can order some and mail it to your house." SHUT THE FRONT DOOR! YES, YES, YES!!!  So Elena awesomely enabled my fruit print fabric addiction and personally shipped 4 yards of lemon lawn to me.  I am forever indebted to her because this fabric is the bomb.

Fitting/style wise this version is the same as the one made in March, other than using the shorter sleeve length. I was actually surprised at how long the "shorter" kimono sleeves are. Guess I'm used to the length of gussetless kimono sleeves that just cover the shoulder.

Finally some sewing notes.  Cotton lawn is a lovely light weight thing, but it's semi-transparentness can cause problems in the underwear department.  I decided to underline/line this dress with some Siri interfacing from EOS.  I haven't been able to find anyone stocking true Siri poly/cotton lining like Gertie used to have in her online shop that one glorious summer. The lightweight rayon/cotton interface is the same weight and the hand is almost the same. It works great for underlining if you don't feel like shelling out $$ for cotton batiste.

The bodice portion is underlined and the skirt portion is a separate lining.  If I had to go back and do it again then the dress would have a proper full lining.  At the time I couldn't stomach the thought of sewing extra gussets and took the "easy" way out.  (The easy, easy way out would be picking a pattern that didn't have sleeve gussets.)  In the end my combo underlining/lining doesn't look any different from the right side of the garment and that's OK by me.

In closing I'll leave you with some theoretical tall glass of lemon aid and a good petticoat twirl picture. Ahhh summer, you're the best.

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The Return of the McCalls Shirtdress

July 16, 2015, 9:08 am

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Two sewing repeats back to back? Tsk, tsk. Someone needs to plan my life better so this sort of thing doesn't happen. In fact let me just get a ghost blogger so I can focus all my attention on my real loves, cake and toy frogs. :)  But not toy frog cake because that would be weird.

Anyway, let's just blame Roisin for pattern repeat number 2 and move on.  She's been cranking out McCall's 6696 like clockwork and with every post my desire to sew another has increased. There was even a moment where I thought, "My wardrobe really needs a M6696 sewn in Liberty Carline," forgetting that I'd already sewn one. Derp. To be honest though two Carline shirtdresses would not be a bad thing.

Not having any other colors of Carline in the stash, I did the next best thing and chose a Liberty Lawn in a different print.  It's name did not lodge itself in my head, but it's the one with all the different colored pears. When purchasing this fabric I thought, "OOOOHHH FRUIT PRINT ON SALE!" and grabbed 3 yards. This probably would have been more than enough fabric for most garments if a. The print wasn't directional and b. The pears are set up in stripes so you have to stripe match if you don't want the garment to look like a pile of dog poop. I did luck out was able to fussy cut most of the garment correctly  One button band had to be squeezed out without any regard to pattern placement, the inside waist facing is pieced and my skirt side seams aren't perfectly aligned. But the center front looks pretty great which is what's really important...right...right? *twitches slightly when looking at sideways pictures*

This dress was cut out at the end of May, a few days before we took a trip to my in-laws.  The plan was to get most of the machine sewing parts done and then do all that tedious hand sewing at their house. No machine no problem, I'm still making garments!!!  Well the fly in the ointment is that my hand sewing is slow and even with the assistance of audiobooks,  incredibly boring. At the end of that weekend only half of the sewing was done. The stash busting contest started in June and this poor dress sat around in a tote bag for most of that time.  I finally picked it back up during/after? our long term power outage and finished up all the fiddly handiwork. 

There are a few minor pattern alterations to this version. After pulling last year's dress out of storage and putting it on, the bodice length felt too short.  I went back and removed my bodice length alteration of 1/2" and sewed this one as drafted.  The waist hits where I want it now, but it seems like this change makes the back puffer.  That's my current theory anyway since the fabrics are exactly the same.

My preference for skirt length as also changed in a year, so I added 3 3/4" to the pattern to make it 27" long. This change was also made to the button band because you want all those pieces to fit together. ;)  On this dress I gathered the edge to ease in the extra fullness and catch stitched a 1 3/4" hem.

In any future versions I'd tweak the back gathers a bit. They may just need to be distributed over a larger area since I do like the feel of that much ease across my broad upper back. I'd also make the pockets bigger, a change that had to be skipped on this is dress due to fabric yardage concerns.

All in all it was a good stash busting project to crank out since I didn't need to buy a thing to sew this dress. Isn't it nice when all your hoarding pays off in the future. There was even a pear brooch already lurking in my collection. (Somehow not surprising thanks to my brooch addiction.) Though I'd like to go back in time and tell past Heather to buy these sandals in navy too. Still kicking myself about that years later.

In parting I'll leave you with a picture from a different location in the park.  The house in the background is an office space for some of the local government employees, but hasn't lost any of it charm....if we ignore the AC units. It might also amuse you to know that a family found my photo taking entertaining enough to stand around watching for about 10 minutes.  In truth watching me try to climb up this wall before the camera stopped responding to the remote probably was hilarious. Climb overly dressed women, climb!

My arch nemesis the bathing suit

July 23, 2015, 4:21 pm

≫ Next: Lay you down on a bed of roses

≪ Previous: The Return of the McCalls Shirtdress

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Guys...guys... I have to talk about my troubled relationship bathing suits today and it might result in some binge chocolate eating.  But we're gonna get through this because it's helpful confess when projects don't go smoothly.  Or maybe I just need some absolution over the dumb shit I did while trying to appropriately cover my body for our trip to the coast.

OK, so let's unpack some childhood trauma to give you some context first.  I did not have a lithe, toned teenager phase. The body I have now is the body I had then minus some additional abdominal padding and a bunch of blown out veins in my legs. (Thanks pregnancy!) Had I been born in the Renaissance my pear shape with saggy bewbs would have made me tres sexy. Just add a gauzy robe plus hair flowers and the studs come a running. Not sure about that wind guy though, he looks a little sketchy.

Of course our current beauty standards are pretty much the exact opposite of this and teenage me was painfully aware of how short I fell from them. We women tend to beat ourselves up anyway, but I also had the additional "help" of series of asshats who regularly told me that I was fat and ugly. So to say I had low self esteem as a teenager might be putting it mildly.  

What does a teenager with body issues really not want to do?  Strip down to a clingy piece of swimwear and stand around with a bunch of strangers in a public place. Guess what my father's favorite activity is? Ten points if you guessed going to the beach. So I spent a fair amount of my teenage age summer's awkwardly sitting on the beach hoping the Dude Bros would just ignore me instead of giving me derisive looks. Or even worse bark...as in "That's one's a dog bro!" (This did happen more than once.) In short, the beach was akin to a low level circle of hell for me. The moment I moved out of my parents house and realized I never had to go to the beach again it was like winning the mother clucking jackpot!

But wait, what's this Heather? You appear to have gone back to the beach despite that fact that you hear the "Psycho" RRRRKKK, RRRRKKK, RRRRKKK noise while looking at this picture. Well people, I did it for the kid and for the grandparents.  My father now lives down at Ocean City MD, when he isn't living somewhere in the Philippines.  Every summer he starts calling/emailing, "When are you coming to the beach? When are you coming to the beach?" for....the....entire.....summer. We did go once before when Des was almost 1 years old. I remember two things about that trip, A: I bought a back one piece with ruching knowing no one was going to pay attention to me with an adorable baby in my arms. (100% true, adorable babies always pull focus.) B: Desmond ate sand and by a stroke of luck I got this picture. It still makes me laugh really hard. 

The next couple summers I declined visiting because.....well I hate the beach. This year Desmond started asking me when were we going to the beach about the same time my father did. You dirty rats, I smell a conspiracy!!! Being double teamed by the two of them I sucked it up and agreed to come for a visit this year. Now what the heck was I going to wear? The previously mentioned black bathing suit had been donated with my other plus sized clothing last year. I could either endure the hellscape that is trying on bathing suits in grimly lit dressing rooms or try something new and sew my own. Since we're talking about bathing suits you probably figured out that I decided to make my own. This is when I started making mistakes.

Mistake number #1 - Procrastinated away time needed for the project.
Despite being in a much better place about my body, I'm still not that keen on swimsuits.  With other garments I can camouflage areas that are not my favorite and end up feeling good about what I'm wearing. With swimwear that's just not going to happen. I knew that looking at myself in a swimsuit would be depressing and put it off as long as possible. Then I was on a sewing deadline and had to skip some important steps.

Mistake number #2 - Not muslining.
Due to the previous mistake I was in a time crunch and did not muslin anything but the bra portion of the Nautilus swimsuit.  I should know better! It was silly to think that swimsuits wouldn't need any fitting adjustments when everything else I make does.  Also my brain really could have used a trial run on how a suit goes together since it was my first try at this sort of sewing. It would have saved a lot of grumpy seam ripping later.

Mistake number #3 - Not knowing what I really wanted in a swimsuit. 
OK I "thought" I knew what I wanted, a one piece with minimal bust support. This was based on that black bathingsuit from the previous beach trip. However when wearing the suits on the beach I found that my girls were in desperate need of more support. So much so that I felt uncomfortable.  If you are the sort of person who doesn't understand why people hate underwire, then Do Not assume a swim cup is enough support. My heavy as shit breast tissue was like, "Haa haa floating foam, how amusing, let's flop around now. Who can reach her belly button first?!" I also also wrong about wanting a one piece. I have a tiny bladder so having to completely undress myself for every bathroom break was super annoying.  I also felt a little dumpy/matronly in a one piece because it just exacerbated my pear shape. If I'd muslined and tried on the patterns ahead of time, then the problems mentioned above would have been apparent then.  Both of these patterns have two piece options and links in their sew-a-longs about how to add more supportive cups. It would have been possible to adjust both of them to some sort of bra top with a high waisted bikini bottom had I not made all the mistakes above.

OK, now we're done with my extremely long intro about personal human frailty and we can get into the patterns themselves.  I even put up unflattering photos! I'm a little small in them, but considering it was my husband's first spin with the Canon camera he did a good job. At least that's what I'm telling myself to avoid taking more pictures of these on my back porch.

Bombshell from Closet Case Files
I chose to sew view A with the small alteration of crossing the straps at the back instead of doing a halter. My heavy breast tissue and halters don't mix unless I'm really in the mood for some neck pain. Let's face it, no one's ever in the mood for that.  My fabric choice was a red nylon spandex tricot from The Fabric Fairy. I took a gamble buying this bright red color without swatching it and lost.  It was not the bright red tone I like, more of an orange red and therefore slightly irks me everytime I look at it.  Yet another reason to leave plenty of time for projects don't you think? (A comedy of errors I tell you!) This superficial problem aside, was good quality and was pretty easy to work with.  I used the more matte side as my right side for the suit. 

Despite following along with the sew-a-long blog posts I managed to do just about everything wrong on this suit the first time.  Probably because I'm a complete asshole about reading directions and sometimes my brain is like, "Nope, not learning new stuff. I'm sleeping now. Zzzzzzz." It would be fair to say that I did not gracefully climb the learning curve of sewing swimsuits. Instead my deadline drug me kicking and screaming up the hill. You can teach me new tricks, but it's going to involve a lot of seam ripping and feeling like idiot. Most of the mistakes were fixable with the ripper, but I did end up putting my lining in backward and only realizing it until most of the elastic was in.  I wasn't crazy enough to rip that out on a deadline.
My suit is a combo 10/12 size which was almost perfect out of the envelope.  The suit could use the torso shortened about 3/8", but the ruching does help to hide this.  At the center front the ruching line had to be extended further down into the suit body several inches so that it matched up to where my bewbs actually were.  I made the bust tab longer to accommodate the new position and the increased volume of gathers. This was done on the fly so I'd guesstimate that it was about 1/2" longer.

I really liked the ruching and the leg/butt coverage on this suit. In fact the whole bottom half gets a perfect score in my book.  The upper half didn't work for me because I hadn't put in the kind of bust support I need. As I when on and on about earlier, swim cups did little and the addition of elastic under them did not help, My breast tissue just make the elastic buckle away from my body so that it offered zero support. It's possible that stretching the elastic would have helped, but I thinking nothing short of underwires is really going to do the job.

Nautilus from Seamstress Erin
I went with view A on this one as well, with straps that connect to the back band. The starfish print fabric is also from The Fabric Fairy and I'm going to have to gush about it for a minute.  This is one of those fabrics where you touch it and think "Ooooo yeah, that's some nice quality here." It's just a tad thicker than the solid red fabric used for the bombshell.  The face is matte and the colors are clear and bright. It's still in stock and I might have to snag a bit more.

Since I'd muslined the top part and gotten a little experience sewing the bombshell, the Nautilus went together a lot quicker. My suit is a 10 with a C/D cup.  Based on the measurement chart I muslined the DD cups but they were too big on the bottom.  The C/D's fit perfect even though I were a DD bra, so that's one area where it was good that I'd bothered to muslin. With the bra like straps and a underbust seam Nautilus has a bit more bewb support built in.  I still need more since my girls are pushing down into the seam and puckering up into the little keyhole window under the twist.  The Nautilus top seems like a design that would lend itself to being converted to more of a standard bra. I "think" it would be easy overlay the twist over a bra base.....if I knew how to sew a bra base. Guess that's a goal that should be added to the sewing list.

I should have muslined the bottom half as well because there were a few minor fitting problems that would have been easy to fix. The torso length needs to be shortened on this pattern. You can see it wrinkling up where the body joins to the bra portion. I also wasn't happy with the amount of butt coverage. In these pictures the it looks fine, but while wearing the suit the bottoms felt a tad too small.  It didn't help that the elastic on the back of the leg was a little loose, adding to the feeling that my butt was not covered. The elastic on the top edge of the back also needs to be shortened up to really lay flat on my body.  Erin gives you suggested elastic lengths per size in those areas, but I should have known that some fine tuning to the fit might be needed.  Good news is that sort of thing can be fixed if I feel like getting out the seam ripper and re-attaching the elastic with a shorter length.

On this suit I like the top a lot more than the bottom.  It's not bad from the back but from the front I don't like the look of the one piece on my body.  Again, musling would have solved this whole problem and I could have easily modified one of the bikini bottoms to cover my belly.  

Shewwww! That was a big info dump so how about a summary?

- I hate swimsuits. Duh. However sewing one seemed like a better idea then unsuccessfully searching for a decent RTW one.

- For the most part sewing one was better, even if it was a very aggravating process of learning new skills. I can confirm that it gets easier after the first suit.

- I made some stupid mistakes from the get go that caused me not to be 100% happy with my finished suits.

- My personal opinion is that both of these swimsuit patterns are nicely drafted and have helpful sew-a-long blog posts.  If we could pull out a time turner I'd still use these patterns, just chose different views than the one's shown here.

- Some of this shit is all in my head because my husband was thrilled with both suits and had nothing but good things to say about them.

- And finally if you can get yourself a 4 year old to take to the beach I'd recommend it. First you're too busy making sure they don't drown to worry about your appearance. Secondly their pure happiness at being at the beach rubs is contagious and soon you find yourself laughing and holding hands while slapping waves. Take that wave, SMASH!!!!

Lay you down on a bed of roses

August 5, 2015, 5:13 pm

≫ Next: Fabric Hull Video and a Giveaways Galore!

≪ Previous: My arch nemesis the bathing suit

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A couple weeks back I was surprised to find an email from the Lillestoff company in my mailbox. My first thought was, "Has someone stolen my identity and bought a lot of luxurious fabric that I will not get to pet? I demand petting privileges!" But no, instead it was Lillestoff asking if I'd like to receive some of their recent fabric range and host a giveaway.  After falling off my chair, I had to wait 10 minutes before replying yes so that my email wasn't all capital letters and emojis, like some highly caffeinated teenager.

Lillestoff has been my "screw it I'm going to splurge" fabric of choice since about 2011. At first my purchases were small, only getting a yard at a time to make things for Desmond.  Eventually the "kid yardage" started to migrate into the "fabric for myself" pile and I now have my own Lillestoff PJ pants, bodysuits, and T-shirts. Hey moms should have nice things too....and I'm a greedy fabric hog.

Lillestoff was very generous and sent me a GIANT box of fabric.  Des and I might have opened it and then flung fabric around while manically laughing.  "We're high on cotton and we didn't even know it was possible!" Once we stopped sniffing the new fabric fumes, things calmed down a bit and I started to brainstorm what fabrics to sew up first.  Out of all the prints the "Black Rose" jersey was screaming my name the loudest so it got the thumbs up.  (Bright colored roses on black = Heather bait....if you're ever looking to trap me for your own personal baking slave.) Selecting a pattern took a little longer because I was looking for a knit dress that I hadn't blogged about a million times already. (Those would be all of Kitshycoo's patterns which are always my go to dresses.) The pattern winner turned out to be Vogue 1027, a dress I've made before but never blogged.

I attempted this pattern back in 2009 without making a muslin or consulting PR for reviews on the pattern.  What I ended up with was a nice dress that was almost 2 sizes too big.  At that point I pulled up a couple of PR reviews and discovered that everyone found their usual size to be too big.  Most reviewers went down at least one size, sometimes 2 to get the pattern to fit their measurements. Curses, you dirty graders or maybe block makers!!! A knit dress should have a bit of negative ease, not be inches too large.  Well at that time I didn't feel like trying to salvage the dress. Instead it got put away in one of those dirty secret UFO boxes....the ones way in the back of the closet. We all have those right? I always hope some sewing fairy will show up and magically take care of those garments.

Here in 2015 I've done a couple of me-made culls but still have that first version of Vogue 1027. The fabric print is really wonderful so I'm gonna cut it down "someday." (Confession - Someday probably means never.) I figured, why not just use that as muslin #1 and do all my normal fitting changes.  Sounds good, yes? Spoiler, I didn't wait for your feedback and tried the dress on. At my current weight the entire bodice needed to be sized down and a large amount of ease needed to be removed from the waist. I pinned out something in the 1 3/4 to 2" range....on each side. Yes that means I needed to take almost 4" out of the pattern.  There was also some gaping in the wrap bodice neckline that needed to be removed.  OK then, I knew what my problems were, it was time to fix them in the pattern.

I would have loved to simply trace a smaller size of the bodice, but in 2009 I'd made the smallest size in the 14-22 size nest. Never fear though because it easy to do a little DIY grading using the nested sizes. (I blogged about this technique here. To grade down you reverse the process.)  I graded down the width of the bodice, but left the length at the size 14 measurements.  This removed about an 1" of ease at the side seams and about 1/2" around the armholes. At this point I mocked up a new bodice and decided to remove an additional 1/2"(on the quarter) at the waistline. The skirt and belt pieces were adjusted to fit the new waist measurement, details in the review portion, and the length of the skirt was shortened two inches.

In my previous version I used a knit lining to finish the edges of the bodice. This worked well for the armholes, but I had problems with the lining rolling out along the neck edge.  This time I decided to use the provided facing for the armholes and draft one for the neckline.  I traced off the neckline area of the front and back bodice patterns to create the facing.  To reduce the gaping on the bodice I reduced the length of the front neckline facing about 1.25." When the facing was serged on, I stretched it to fit, making it pull towards the body a bit.   To finish all the edges, I covered stitched on the right side and then trimmed any excess facing fabric on the wrong side.

Pattern
Vogue 1027 - DKNY faux wrap dress (Might be OOP by now)

Fabrics used
Lillestoff cotton/spandex jersey in the "Black Rose" print.

Pattern changes/alterations
1. The size 14 bodice was graded down one size in width, but the length was left alone.

2. An additional 1/2" was removed at the waist area on the bodice.  Finished dress had 4" of ease removed from the waist area.

3. On the skirt I removed 1" from the side seams and reduced the length by 2".

4. The two belt pieces were reduced by 1" so that they would match the new waist circumference.

5. The front belt edges were serged together to eliminate the white back from showing through.

6. The pockets were omitted because there was not enough yardage.  (Confession - I wouldn't use knit pockets either)

Confessions/Advice
- That waist seam has a lot of layers thanks to the sewn in belt.  On my version I basted each layer with a large zig zag stitch to keep all 4 layers aligned. Then the seam was finished with the overlocker and the basting removed.

- Since Lillestoff cotton is less drapy than rayon, the facing trick did get rid of most of the gaping. If I were to do it again in rayon, I'd reduce the length of the bodice fronts as well.

- I'm not completely sold on the sewn on belt.  At some angles it looks good, in others it looks bulky.

Husband Comment

"It has sharp angles, which I like. That rope thing coming off the waist is like a karate uniform. Cool." (I "think" sharp angles means wrap bodice, but I didn't seek clarification from the source.)

My Final Thoughts
After all the pattern edits were done, sewing up this dress was easy peasy. None of the construction steps are difficult and Lillestoff cotton doesn't fight you as it goes through the serger.  Instead it wants to be sewn, and worn, and fondled....um maybe I should stop there. *Goes and sniffs fabric in a corner.*

This was a bit more fitting work than I'd usually want to put into a knit pattern, but for some reason that didn't bother me too much this time. It helped that I'd purchased the pattern so long ago that it just felt like being thrifty at this point. Now that I have a version that actually fits, I'm very pleased with the pattern. The style lines are classy and work well with my body type. I also think it pairs every elegantly with the black rose pattern making me look dressed up when really I'm thinking, "Ahhhh secret pajamas."

The Lillestoff fabric giveaway will be next post, hopefully later in the week.  I need to take photos and do a video for Mrs. Crafting a Rainbow. As long as tomorrow goes according to plan then everything should be on schedule.  *Famous Last Words*

Fabric Hull Video and a Giveaways Galore!

August 7, 2015, 1:38 pm

≫ Next: A sundress just under the wire - Butterick 6167

≪ Previous: Lay you down on a bed of roses

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I mentioned last post that Lillestoff sent me giant box of fabric with the instructions to sew some of it and give some away.  Well today is that exciting day where I'm arraying all the goodies out for your perusal.  If you're a knit junkie you might want to put a drool guard on your keyboard now.

If you've never gotten your hands on this fine german jersey then you may enjoy checking out this fabric hull video. You can thank my gal pal Gillian for prompting me to get out the camera and inexpertly prattle on about fabric bases.  Also per her request I compare/contrast Lillestoff to both Kaufman Laguna jersey and Art Gallery jersey. So hit play at your own peril!

(P.S. I reversed the fiber content on the Art Gallery knits. It is 95% cotton, 5% spandex. Guess if you say that enough times it loses all meaning.)

Now on to the really juicy stuff, how to score some free fabric. I've split out the fabric into 4 different bundles so that more people could get their hands on pretties.  The pattern name and yardage are noted under each bundle.  (Lillestoff was generous with their cuts so there is a few extra inches in edition to the stated yardage.) If you want a closer look at any of these prints then pop on over to the Lillestoff website and type in the pattern name into their search bar. They have expandable pics of all the printed fabrics over there.

Note - The giveaway is for US residents ONLY. (Sorry my lovely foreign readers, but I'm covering shipping and we don't have a lot of extra cash floating around in the Bee coffers at the moment.)
To enter leave a comment on the blog and then put your information in the Rafflecopter box under the bundle you'd be interested in owning. The giveaway will run from today Friday the 7th to Friday the 14th at 12am.  "May the odds ever be in your favor." ;)


Bundle 1 - Wovens

Contains....
2 yards Marrakesch
2 yards Marrakesch Kombi
2 yards Lightflowers Ornamental
a Rafflecopter giveaway


Bundle 2 - Brown/Purple Knits

Contains
2 yards Trees
2 yards Trees Kombi
1 yard Light brown heathered jersey (Lighter weight)
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Bundle 3 - Teal knits

Contains
2 yards Waterbloom
2 yards Roberta
1 yard Light blue heathered jersey (Lighter weight)
a Rafflecopter giveaway

Bundle 4 - Jersey mashup

Contains
2 yards Flowers N Dots
2 yards Apples
1 yard Heathered pink jersey (Heavy weight) a Rafflecopter giveaway

A sundress just under the wire - Butterick 6167

August 30, 2015, 10:16 am

≫ Next: Sewing Notes - Butterick 6167 Low bust adjustments

≪ Previous: Fabric Hull Video and a Giveaways Galore!

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Oh hi there, where did those almost 3 weeks go? All I remember doing was laying in bed coughing and then decorating for Mr. D's 5th birthday party.  Maybe I happened upon "The Doctor" and some weird timey whimey crap happened and suddenly it's the end of August and I have strange dreams of giant bugs. AHHHHH, AHHHH, get away bee!  In truth I've been suffering from a rather long case of lost sewing mojo this summer. Usually warm weather puts me all in a froth to sew as many dresses as possible before being forced once again to layer in wool. However this summer's mostly been spent knitting said wool and binge watching TV series most people saw years ago. Maybe I just have too many giant stashes of supplies that make me slightly nervous. Gosh darn hoarding gene.

I have been doing a bit of sewing at about a quarter of my usual pace. You might say that Butterick 6167 is a perfect encapsulation of this. A perfectly fine project that was then complicated by second guessing, procrastination and general laziness. In total it took more than 3 months from start of muslining to finished dress. This is honestly terrifying since it's a cute summer dress and I've made lined coats in less time than that. I'm sorry Butterick 6167, you deserved better!

Originally this pattern was going to be one of my first summer projects.  The design caught my fancy when Butterick released their Spring line and I thought the version Amy sewed up was very pretty. Coincidentally after Amy's FO post JoAnn's had a Butterick sale, so you know I "had" to buy a copy. Pattern in hand I excitedly muslined up the bodice to find that there were going to be major fit issues due to my low bust. You'd think that would have been my stopping point, but no. Sometimes I need to show my dominance by pounding fitting issues into the ground with a steely gaze much like Robert Patrick as the T-1000.

Ooooh yeah....I will kill you fitting issues/John Conner with merely a gaze.  Side note - Anyone else find the T-1000 weirdly hot. He's trying to kill us all, but he looks so good doing it. I'm all a flutter just thinking about his intense running. Stupid sexy evil robot. Anyway, let's just say I put this face on and the fitting problems magically melted away...with the liberal use of elastic. If that sounds vague it's because I'll be going into detail about my low bust alterations in a "Sewing Notes" post tomorrow. I compare boobs to baked goods.......so you've got that look forward to.

Now back to actual sewing talk....having completed the musling process all I had to do was pick a fabric and get sewing.  Usually this is not a hard decision for me because A. I have a lot of fabric and B. I have no problems buying more fabric.  There should have been at least 7 different applicable fabrics in the stash, but for whatever reason I just wasn't excited about using them for this particular pattern.  One sewing lesson I have learned is not to shoehorn fabric into a project if it doesn't feel right. You are never going to be happy about sewing that fabric up. Better just to put the project on the back burner until the right fabric comes along.  So poor Butterick 6167 got put on the back burner a looooong time.  I did try to find it some new fabric but my usual crack fabric dealers just didn't come through for me this time.

I'd just about written this pattern off for this summer when my pal Margo mailed me a surprise package of fabric. Margo has impeccable taste, so I basically squeed all over myself when I found she'd send me a tropical print on a black background. The fabric said, "I'm here for the Butterick dress! Aren't you glad you waited for me?" YES fabric, YES! You are so worth it. We hugged and I put it in the washer for a prewash.

It's all smooth sailing from here right?  Wrong.  Turns out that if I make a muslin in April and then pick it up in August my little brain decides maybe the whole thing needs to be tinkered with. Maybe it needs to be more like the Bernie Dexter Paris dress I'd been wearing all summer.  The general look between the two was very similar, but I liked some of the details on the Paris dress more.  Why not get the pattern out and just change one or two things?

The great thing about sewing is that you can make a garment just how you want it. It's also the worst thing because you can get caught up in a series of fiddly changes that had nothing to do with the fit of the garment. You end up wondering if you're really just trying to drive yourself crazy and/or find an excuse to abandon the sewing project for you knitting project. "I can't possibly think of pattern edits right now. Guess I have NO CHOICE but to knit this sock and watch The Americans. Yeah baby, Wigs!" Seriously though, the wigs in that show are great. This blonde one....uhhh I want to marry it.

Eventually I burned through all cold war era spy craft available to me and finally buckled down to make those pattern edits. Based on the look of the Bernie Dexter dress I decided to make the following changes:

- Changed the ratio of bust shelf to lower bodice.  The height of the bust shelf was reduced and added to the lower bodice instead.

- Added a bust band under the ruched area.  I thought the band gave a nice transition between the two areas.  I've put my drafting and construction details for this in the Confessions/Advice area.

- Thinned the shoulder straps to about the same width as the Bernie Dexter dress.

- Added a lot more width to the skirt for more gathered volume. Since this made the pieces very large the skirt was cut on the cross grain even though my fabric wasn't a border print. I think the skirt as drafted is nice, just wanted to turn it up to 11.

- Added side seam pockets because why doesn't this dress have some in the first place?

I kept some of the nicer elements of the Butterick pattern that the Bernie Dexter dress doesn't have, like a full lining and a deep hem. If you're cherry picking you might as well have it all, don't you think? Just nod your head and we'll move on.


Pattern
Butterick 6167. Started with a straight size 14 with a C cup.

Fabrics used
Stretch cotton shirting from the most excellent Margo. Thank You Margo!!!

Pattern changes/alterations
1. Added 1/4" at the waist to each side of the front princess line seam.

2. Changed the proportion of the front bodice of the dress.  The overall height was nice but I wanted the ruched area to be a bit smaller.  Removed 5/16" from the bust pieces, added the same to the lower bodice pieces. (Back needs no alteration since the overall height remains the same.)

3. Changed the angle of the bust shelf. On the bodice side added 1/2" at the very top of the curve and graded it out to nothing. Removed the  3/4" from the bust stay and bust inset because that area needed to be taken in.

4. Additionally reduced the length of the bust inset 2" for a total of 2 3/4" of width removed.

5. Added 8" long elastic to the top of the bust shelf to get rid of the rest of the gapping.

6. Added a bias band to the bottom of the bust shelf.  Finished width is 5/8".

7. Reduced shoulder strap width to a finished width of 8/16".

8. Added 11" to both the front and back skirt pattern pieces to increase the skirt fullness by 44".

9. Added pockets to the side seams. I used the pockets from the Odette dress.

10. Made the hem slightly smaller at 1.25" when pattern calls for 1.75" hem.

11. Omitted the boning called for in the back of the bodice.

12. Went back into the finished garment and took the side seams in a 1/2". Think I didn't make my muslin small enough to account for the lycra in the real fabric.


Confessions/Advice
- Just a note that my fabric choice was a lighter weight than the cotton sateen the pattern sample is sewn in. I probably wouldn't have added as much volume to the skirt if using a sateen weight.

- I'm not opposed to boning in dresses, but don't think one piece makes sense for the design. I could see adding additional boning into the side seams/front princess lines seams if you wanted to make the garment really sturdy. I also think this design works fine with no boning at all. (Bonus, you don't have to worry about dry cleaning the dress because of spiral steel boning.)

- The hem was machine sewn because I wasn't feeling it in the hand hemming department.

- Also skipped the lapped zipper and put in an invisible one. Screw you lapped zipper.

- Looking at these pictures I should have done a bit more seam allowance grading at the waist.

- If you like the underbust band, here's how to add one to the dress.  First measure the curved seam of the lower bodice to get an idea of the length needed.  Double that and add an extra 1" of wiggle room. This will be the length of your underbust strap pattern piece.

Decide how wide you want the finished band to be. The fabric piece will be folded in half when it is attached, so double that measurement and then add seam allowance.  For example my finished band is 5/8" so the finished pattern width is 2.5" After drafting the pattern add a bias grain line to it.  You'll want the band cut on the bias so that it bends around the curved part of the bust seam.

The band is added before sewing in the bust inset. To attach the piece, fold it in half and then baste it to the lower bodice edge.  Change to a regular stitch width and then edge stitch the folded edge to the bodice.  Try to make the curved area as flat as possible. You may need to manipulate the curved area of the bias with your fingers as you stitch.   Once the folded edge is secured you can remove the basting, or leave it in until the bust inset is attached.

Husband Comment
"It's bunchy...and all the cleavage is hidden under the bunches." *Insert sad face emoji here* (I even showed him my Marilyn Monroe impression photo and he was not impressed.)

My Final Thoughts
The husband and I are going to have to agree to disagree on this one because I felt pretty darn good taking pictures out on the sidewalk today.  I even got an unsolicited "Beautiful dress," comment from someone's husband.  (His wife chose not to comment, but I'm going to pretend he spoke for both of them.)  I also like being able to bend over in a dress and not worry about my girls falling out. Flashing cleavage all over town has never been my MO anyway.  Flashing collarbones, now that's another story.

Don't let my long list of alterations scare you off. Remember that half of them didn't really need to be made to get a pretty end result.  The only thing really had to be tinkered with was the front of the bodice/inset area. If your bust apex is in a "normal" location or if you are smaller busted this area would not be as tricky to fit. For those of you with low bust apexes like me, check out tomorrow's fitting post.  A little elastic in the inset area hides a lot of sins. :)

Sewing Notes - Butterick 6167 Low bust adjustments

August 31, 2015, 5:21 am

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Do your boobs hang low, do they wobble to and fro? Do they hang out near your waist instead of being up by your face? Are they pointing toward the ground while you're walking around town. Do your boobs hang low? Oh yeah, that just happened and you're welcome. Now that we've gotten the juvenile humor out of the way, let's talk about how having a low bust complicates a dress with a bust shelf element.

One could make the argument that those of us with low busts should just pass on this trend. When your bust just rolls off the shelf into the "floor" is there really any reason to put a shelf there in the first place?  The answer for me would have easily been "No!" if I hadn't purchased a Bernie Dexter Paris dress. (Here's a photo of that particular RTW dress.)

Wearing that dress convinced me that girls with low busts can enjoy a bust shelf as long as you mentally relabel it as a rufflely bust dickie. It's there to cover your bust root and fill some your large upper chest area with fluffy goodness. To that I say, "Thumbs up to fluffy goodness. Let's sew some more bust dickies."

To do so we are going to have to brace ourselves for some pattern alterations.  Even on a pattern that offers different cup sizes*, the bust ease is not going to be in the correct place for those of us with "low hanging fruit." To see what I mean, let's take a look at the bust stay piece.

The bust apex is clearly marked more than half way up of the bust shelf with not much shelf height above it. (1.5" to be exact)  From this I can infer that the drafter is expecting there to a lot of breast fullness at the top of the dress.
To give you a colorful mental image of what I'm talking about let's think of the breast as a cupcake. The bust shelf is the ruffled cupcake liner with the top half of the breast, the icing, sitting above it. This is all well and good if your apex matches this point and you have plenty of "icing" to fill out the top of the bodice.  But what does this bodice look like if you have a low bust point?  Or to further our metaphor, your breasts are more like creme filled donuts than cupcakes? (Just as delicious but with less fluff on top) What you are going to get is a bodice with MAJOR gapituts along the top edge of the inset.

Sorry about the poor quality photo but I was a bad girl and threw this muslin alway some time in the last 3 months. You can still see that I have literally inches of extra fabric along the top edge since all my bust fullness in in the lower part of the bodice. What you can't see is that the front part of the lower bodice feels tight because that's where my apex actually is. My face also says, "Crap, I need to do some major fitting work on this pattern."

That muslin might make the pattern look like a lost cause, but never fear because the bust ruching is going to allow us to make an easy fix.  All we really need is elastic!  That's right ladies, we're gonna sew elastic into the upper edge of the bust shelf and make all our problems go away.  Woot, Woot, fitting short cuts!  But first let's make few minor adjustments to the front bodice.

First you can remove a bit of that extra ease at the upper edge by changing the curve of the bust stay. This will keep the lower part of the seam the same width, which is good because your boobs are in that area. On my dress I was also changing the location of the seam, so some of the width removed here was added onto the bodice piece.  (Note - I changed the height of the bust stay for aesthetic reasons, not fitting ones.)

On the lower bodice you'll want to add some extra ease to the princess line seam for your low bust point. I added 1/4" to each side of the seam. (You can also see that I added a bit to the outside curve and changed the length of the bodice. The lengthening was more for portional reasons than bust fitting reasons since my bust won't actually hit the shelf area.)

Then you may want to reduce the width of the bust inset. On this pattern the ruching ration is fairly high on the bust inset. Adding elastic to that area is only going to increase it and it may get poofier than you'd like. Of course this is more of a personal taste than fitting issue, so use your own discretion. On my dress I reduced the inset by making the same curve change to it as was made on the bust stay. Then made the pattern smaller by moving the CF fold line in and cutting off some of the ease. In total I removed 2 3/4" on the half.

To assemble this area follow the pattern instructions for gathering the bust inset, sewing it to the lower bodice and the top edge to the bust stay. Before you do any edge stitching on the top edge, open the bodice like so.

We are going to sew in some 1/4" elastic onto the seam allowance to tighten up the area.  On my dress the inset area was 13" wide without elastic.  I wanted to gather it down to around 10" to get a nice snug fit against my chest.  After much trial and error, meaning sewing and seam ripping, I ended up inserting an 8" long piece of elastic.  Long story short, I recommend basting in the elastic and checking the fit before "really" sewing it in.

The elastic is going to be basted into the seam allowance of the bust inset area. First fold the seam allowances the same way you would for stay stitching. Pin the edges of the elastic near the edge of the bust seam.  I found it's a good idea to baste both ends of the elastic first before attaching all of it.

Stretch the elastic to that it sits flat against the inset and baste it to the seam allowance. At this point try on the dress to see if the upper edge fit is to your liking. If not you can rip out the elastic and try a different length.

Once the you're happy with the elastic length, it can be secured with some edge stitching.  On my dress I edge stitched the entire upper edge of the bodice at once, but you could just do the inset area.

Go back and remove any basting left over. Then press the edge so that the lining rolls toward the inside of the garment

Ta Da! A perfect fitting bodice. See that actually wasn't all that hard to do. Thanks elastic!

* Note about cup sizes on this pattern - The shelf pieces vary 1/4" in height between each cup size but are the same width. I did go with the recommended cup size for my bust, but don't think it's as important for women with low busts.  You could just choose the height of the shelf you prefer the look of the most. 

Changing Seasons

September 9, 2015, 6:16 am

≫ Next: In which I pretend to be a 40/50's era Gillian Anderson

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It's still hot as blazes here in Pennsylvania, the sweating in your house sort of hot. The forecast is low 90's - high 80's for the next two weeks and I'm sort of tempted to ignore the fact that it's September and sew another summer garment. All that chiffon in the stash is still waiting.

Speaking of summer garments, let me just say a big thank you to everyone who participated in the Sundress Sew-a-long. As always I'm just delighted that anyone wants to sew along with little old me. Then I get the added bonus of looking at everyone's completed dress pictures. So many beautiful dresses, you are ALL amazing! (A couple of you might find you dresses missing and replaced with a bag of cookies.....it was the frogs idea.)

I'd probably be tracing off another short sleeve dress right now if it wasn't for my lizard brain. It's noticed that the daylight hours are getting shorter and has been complicating matters by screaming for Fall clothing. "PLAID, we need more PLAID!!! Maybe some corduroy and anything with apples on it. For god sakes women it's September!" Umm OK, but it won't be cold for at least another month. Don't you want to sew some florals? Lizard voice - "NOOOOO PLAID!" Woah, Woah, just calm down there. How about we do some Fall planning instead? Hey look, it's time for the Fall Essentials Sew-Along again. Let's do that.

Some of you may remember that I did this sew-along last year and actually sewed/knit at least 3/4 of the things that were planned. That's a pretty good result for someone who gets distracted by new projects pretty easily. Now I'm not implying that I will be such a good sewist this year, because there are less real wardrobe holes to fill.  I'm back to "sewing according to my whims" status after having been in, "Need clothing to actually cover by body," for about a year. That seems to be how long it takes to resew/buy a new wardrobe after losing a dress size or two. Right now garment planning is more about trying to pair stashed fabrics with patterns than anything else. 

Fashionable Foundations

1. Wearing History Smooth Sailing Trousers.  I might have talked Lelia into making a similar pair of trousers last year and haven't stopped thinking about having some myself. Then a girl can pretend to be Katharine Hepburn and say witty things to Cary Grant. Be cool if I could also put some "cheek bones that will cut glass" on order.

Thanks to a local sewing store closing, the stash has yards and yards of navy wool suiting which will now become a pair of these pants. Maybe about 5 other things too.

2. Toying with making another Betsy pencil skirt out of black pleather. That might be a little too cool for my wardrobe. Maybe that's why all the pleather has been sitting around for 4 years. Pretty soon it's going to get itself adopted by someone who doesn't think a hot Saturday night is watching PBS and drinking tea.

Chic Chemises

1. Sew Over it Anderson Blouse.  I already have this one nearly completed because the pattern would not stop dancing around in my brain. "Pretend you're Gillian Anderson without the red hair or talent." I can manage that!  The blouse being sewn up in this stashed double georgette. Meanwhile I'm practicing my, "Don't make me hit you upside the head Mulder," type stare.

Fabulous Frocks

1. The Wiggle dress from Gertie's first book has been on my mental sewing list...since the book came out. I've been waiting for it to appear fully formed in my closet, but for some reason this isn't happening. Did my husband trap all the sewing mice?  Or did they unionize and decide to sew mouse sized clothing?  Did Froggie send them on an overseas trip because they were eating too many of his cookies? Whatever the reason it seems I have to sew this pattern all by myself.

Underneath it All

Remember this vintage slip pattern? Still wanna be wearing it, but still haven't sewn it. Froggie, get me a fluffy powder puff immediately. 

Tender Tootsies

Just like last year I have some wool socks on the needles that could be finished in this time period. Or they could sit there for a few more months while I cackle madly in the sewing area. Froggie's currently taking bets on the outcome.

Those Cozy Nights

Not planning to make any sleepwear this year unless some knits jump on the serger themselves. Stranger things have happened.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Last year I entered a weird groundhog day situation where I was always knitting a red beret but it never was finished to satisfaction. This year the goal is to finish the sew-along with berets on my head. No particular patterns or colors have been chosen yet because it's 95 degrees and I can't even think about it. Now an ice pack holding vest, I could get on board with that.

Those are all my fall sewing/knitting plans at the moment. I'm sure that new items will pop on the list as the weather cools or new patterns appear before my eyes. It's also possible that I'll find myself suddenly cutting out a sundress and this list will get tabled. All that's certain is that there is ice cream in my future. Nom, nom, nom.

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In which I pretend to be a 40/50's era Gillian Anderson

September 15, 2015, 1:23 pm

≫ Next: More FESA Makes - The Smooth Sailing Trousers

≪ Previous: Changing Seasons

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Last year my husband and I decided to watch season 1 of "The Fall" together.  It was an enjoyable if super creepy time until the end. At that point I might have shouted, "You Bastards!" at the cliffhanger ending. (I come from a long line of TV yellers.)  My take away from the the series was, A. My brain will always be semi scared of poor Jamie Dornan, who I'm sure is actually a lovely person. And B. Who ever was dressing Gillian Anderson needs to take me shopping.  If you've never watched "The Fall", it's about a serial killer with Gillian Anderson playing the detective trying to find him. Her wardrobe is full of tailored suits paired with silk blouses of various colors. She comes off as professional but coldly sensious, which seems to drive some of her male co-workers a little crazy.

Obviously I wasn't the only one taken with her collection of silk blouses since Lisa Comfort decided to design a pattern inspired by the show.  When it was posted on the Sew Over It instagram feed last year I was sobbing lightly after reading it was only available in a class. But I wants the precious and I don't live in the UK. *Sniff, sniff* Thankfully all I had to do was wait and now the pattern is available as a PDF for those of us who reside across the pond.

I'd classify this pattern as beginner level blouse pattern since there's no darts, collars/collar stands, button bands to deal with. The cuffs do call for button holes, but having to sew two is a lot easier than making a standard button down shirt. So here's the thing about me and beginner level patterns.....I can't leave well enough alone.  At first I'm all like, "Oh and easy project that I can zone out on." But I never really do that. Instead I start redrafting the pattern because I'm not a beginner and I'm dangerously equipped with "textbook" pattern drafting knowledge. That said, there wasn't any major redrafting done on the Anderson blouse. I think this pattern has a solid base, but there were one or two details of the drafting that weren't to my liking. Then add to that my usual personal preference changes that have nothing to do with the draft of the pattern. The things you change because it's your garment and you can. So here's a breakdown of what I liked and didn't like, and what was changed just for my tastes.

Things I liked about the pattern as drafted
- The back neckline is finished with bias binding that is slip stitched down.  This gives you a pretty clean edge that won't flip out like a facing would.

- The fronts are finished with fold over facings. I found these to be drafted wide enough that they weren't prone to flapping out the neckline.

- The sleeve caps have just the right amount of ease. Just a little for movement, but not so much that you have problems setting the sleeves pucker free.  I'm also like the width of the sleeve itself. Feel like it would have been easy to stray into 80's puffy sleeve land, but these perfect.

Things I didn't like as drafted
- If you make this blouse as instructed then the sleeve slit is part of the underarm seam. When scanning the directions I saw this and said NOPE.  On the good side it will take you all of 10 minutes to move the pleat, add a slit and draft a piece of continuous binding. (Steps for this are under the Confessions/Advice section.)

- The bottom of the blouse is cut straight across and finished by sewing a casting and inserting some ribbon to gather it up. As someone who has always had a "large for her frame" butt, anything that gathers around that area sends me into a fit of hives.  I did some brainstorming for alternate finishes and didn't come up with anything that would look all that great if the blouse was worn untucked. So I procrastinated another day and then decided that I didn't really want to wear the blouse untucked and finished it with a rolled hem.

Things I changed just because I'm picky about clothing in a way that drove my mother crazy when it was her job to clothe me.
-  Instead of gathering the shoulders I turned that area into pleats.  It's more of a 40's look which appeals to me, but might not appeal to everyone.

- The pattern comes with a narrow cuff. After making a muslin I didn't care for the narrow cuff and widened it to the same width as some button down patterns in the stash.

With my mods I'm pretty pleased with this blouse. It's got a bit of a vintage-ish vibe when paired with a pencil skirt that is gonna work great with my wardrobe. Now on to all the review details!

Pattern
Sew Over It's Anderson Blouse

Fabrics used
Double silk georgette (This was purchased from Tessuti fabrics years and years ago. Sorry because I know a lot of you like it.)

Pattern changes/alterations
1. Standard 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment to the sleeve and shoulder.

2. Took the shoulder width in 1/4".

3. Changed the side seam from a straight line to a curved one to remove a bit of the ease at the waist. Removed around 1/2" on the quarter for 2" of ease removed at the waist through the entire garment

4. Changed the gathers to pleats.

5. Redrafted the sleeve to be a standard shirtmakers sleeve with a continuous bias binding.

6. Increased width of the cuff to a finished width of 2 1/4".

7. Sleeve length was reduced 1" since I'd increased the size of the cuff.


Confessions/Advice
- The sleeve redraft is super simple because the only thing missing is the cut line to make the slit. I converted one side of the pleat to the cut line and moved the pleat.

1. The left side of the pleat will be converted to the slash line so first we will move the pleat to the right.  Measure out the 1 1/4" from the right pleat mark.

2. Cross out the old pleat fold marking and draw in an arrow over the new pleat location.

3. Go back to the leftmost mark and extent to up to the length you want the sleeve slit to be.  Mine is 2 1/2" finished. (So 2 1/2" plus the 5/8" seam allowance for the cuff, 3 1/4 total.)

4. Last step is to draft a rectangle to be the bias binding for the slit.  The rectangle should be twice as long as your slit length plus seam allowance.  Mine is 6 1/2" line.  The width depends on what seam allowance you will use to attach the piece and how wide you want the finished binding to look.  I sew sleeve bindings on with a 1/4" SA and like them to be around 1/4" finished. My binding piece is drafted to be 1 1/2" wide.

- I was a dum dum and transferred one of my slit markings incorrectly to the cutting paper. Didn't notice it until I'd cut the slit in the fabric and tried to sew the binding on.  So on this blouse the sleeve slits are 3 1/2" instead of the drafted 2 1/2".

- In my humble opinion this is not a blouse to wear untucked. Here's my photographic evidence. Having it tucked into a fitted bottom makes all that ease look good. Hanging on it own....not so much. Tucked in though, it's sooo good.

- Want to convert the gathered area on the shoulder to pleats like I did? Here's a look at my pattern.

The 3 pleats are around 1 3/8". There's a bit of fudging here to make everything fit in the marked out gather area. Between the pleats is 1" so that they don't stack right on top of each other.  All the pleats were folded towards the neck.

- I used the old stiffen it with gelatin trick on this double georgette and had a very pleasant sewing experience. Here's a link to the Threads article which explained it to me.

Husband Comment
"Ooooh, blousey. That's a cool fabric."

My Final Thoughts
Even with my anal retentive tweaking this project sewed up really fast. It took me only a week even with the time suck of cutting silk between paper. Speaking of silk, this is the perfect pattern for using some of those long stashed lengths in the stash. I'm thrilled how great this almost 5 year old georgette looks sewn up and how the blouse pairs with my collection of pencil skirts.  I'm pretty sure another Anderson blouse is in my future.

So that was a good start to my FESA sewing. Froggie thinks that the Smooth Sailing trousers might also pair well with an Anderson blouse. He's probably right, but I started another pencil skirt instead.  Trouser fitting will wait for another day or until someone prods me into doing it. Please someone prod me a little. Or come sew some pant for me. I have cookies! Please?

More FESA Makes - The Smooth Sailing Trousers

September 30, 2015, 6:35 am

≫ Next: Just going for a stroll - The Joan Dress

≪ Previous: In which I pretend to be a 40/50's era Gillian Anderson

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Pants.  We've had a long and somewhat traumatic history. I think my pants fitting rant was the first blog post that was written purely for "laughs." Laughs really meaning cathartic venting/sobbing into my sewing machine.  Two years later my pants fitting has improved all that much when it comes to fitted pants. The perfect crotch length/depth ratio seems to be an elusive number that forever tap dances out of reach. So I did the only sensible thing, stopped wearing pants.  OK, maybe not sensible, but it was an effective way not to have to deal with pants fitting for awhile. For the most part being an exclusive wearer of dresses and skirts has worked out just fine.  I've got my emergency pair of RTW jeans in the dresser for really dicey weather, but wool tights get me through most of winter.

Being a happy dress wearer does not stop me from occasionally having sexy pants daydreams.  You might be saying, "Listen Heather, we all daydream about sexy men in pants sometimes. I mean have seen Tom Hiddleston dancing?" Oh yes I have and I'm a strong proponent of his "snake hips", but that's not really what I'm talking about here.  The kind of pants daydreams I have are of completed outfits that are not actually in my closet. Red capri pants are featured heavily, but it seems planning outfits in your head does not make them magically appear. My window for red capri pants is quickly closing so I decided to put the second most wished for pant on my FESA list, a pair of wide legged cuffed pants.

For several years if I put on a pair of pants, it was a close fitting capri or jeans style. But Vivien of Holloway's Swing Trousers got me thinking about wearing wide leg pant. So roomy, yet elegant!  I toyed with just buying a pair, but my inner seamstress was very adamant that saving money through sewing was the way to go.  "You know there's a shit ton of wool in the stash. Sew that stuff up!!!" OK inner voice, you win this time.

There's a couple of nice wide legged pants out there but I decided to go with the Smooth Sailing Trousers from Wearing History.  They were the closest in style to the Vivien of Holloway pants with the waistband at the natural waist and a seam seam entry.  The Smooth Sailing Trousers use a zipper instead of buttons, but that was just fine with me. I can confidently say that I don't need more "visual interest" in that particular area of my body.

So pants fitting, how does that work out when you're making wide leg pants?  A lot better than it does with fitted pants!  Only the waistband area is supposed to be close to the body so it's a lot more like fitting a skirt than pants.   I did need to lengthen the back rise because hello big butt.  It might still be too long or too short, I honestly don't know.  There might be some sort of black hole vortex thing going on back there bending time/distance so that no rise will ever be right.  But I do know that you don't have to worry about under butt wrinkles in these pants. Huzzah!

See? And any wrinkles there I can just use the excuse, "It's how I'm standing." Muhaaa, Big Pants!

As a sewing project these pants were pretty boring.  While a good wardrobe staple, plain navy wool is enough to put anyone to sleep. This lead to a lot of procrastination, especially since they needed to be lined. My brain knows that skipping lining is a bad bad move that I will forever regret later. That doesn't make it any more fun cut and sew.  I need to hire some lining elves or to promote froggie to linings. He says he needs a pay raise for that and a cake every Monday morning.

But enough about my frog contract negotiations, let's get back to pants for a minute. During the boring sewing I kept telling myself that once these babies were done I'd be pleased a punch.  Happy to report that this is 100% true.  The Smooth Sailing Trousers pattern was exactly what I had in mind when daydreaming about big wide legged pants. Now I can finally get my 40's vibe on and/or climb things in a reckless fashion.

Pattern
Smooth Sailing Trousers from Wearing History  (I bought the PDF version.)

Fabrics used
Lightweight wool suiting and poly blend lining.

Pattern changes/alterations
- To accommodate my tilted waist, the front waistline of the pants was cut down 1/2" and graded out to nothing at the side seams.

- Added 1" of length to the crotch.

- Straighten out the front crotch curve to give an additional 1/4" of ease on waistline at the CF. (For cake babies and such.)

- Shortened the leg length by 3/4".

Confessions/Advice
- To line the pants I used the same pattern piece but shortened the pants length an inch.

- My muslin showed I needed more waist ease. Then my real pants were a little too big in the waist.  Curse you muslin! (Or maybe I need to start putting zippers in muslins. Sigh.)

Husband Comment
"Wait, did you make those? Really? Pants?   They're BIG."

My Final Thoughts
Swishing around in giant pant legs is weirdly addictive and I might.....might have to make another pair. Or maybe I'll wait until I've got my child labor trained.  Sew Desmond, Sew! No, put the scissors down! On second thought child labor might be more work in the long run.  Sigh.

P.S.  I finally did my Better Photos Project homework and scoped out a new photo location near my house. Or how the police might term it, "Trespassing on a local law office for inexplicable reasons." Don't worry though, I'm non threatening enough that no one pays attention to me dancing around on a lawn....
other than one very loud squirrel. I almost started hollering, "Go eat those nuts loudly somewhere else!!" Blog picture taking is much more important than your winter preparations Mr. squirrel. ;)  Anyway lighting was a little dicey here and I wound up trying out 5 different angles. Took so many pictures that I fully depleted the camera battery and had to hope some of those shots were OK. Thank the sewing goddess that several of the pictures were fine.  Meanwhile Gillian has far surpassed me and is taking street photos. Oh My Lord how cool is her last post?! 

Seriously Gillian, you're too cool for school...which might make your job hard to do. ;)  Thanks for having me on your blog pal. I'm looking forward to next month's Better Photos Project posts so I can learn a thing or two.

Just going for a stroll - The Joan Dress

October 12, 2015, 6:50 am

≫ Next: A wiggle dress years in the making

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Hello all my sewing friends. Fall weather has finally found us in PA and I alternate between sighing with happiness and freaking out that I don't have enough warm clothing. Why haven't I been sewing wool clothing since August?  Didn't Past me know that Future me wanted some new wool dresses to shimmy around in before old man winter arrived? I hear her whining about sewing wool in 90 degree heat and all I can do is frown sternly at her lack of commitment to Sparkle Motion  Fall wardrobes.

In truth I can't blame Past Heather too much because planning has never been a strong point for any Heather, no matter what time continuum she's currently in. All we can do it put our forehead to the side of the sewing machine, sew like the wind and hope the weather holds. Which is pretty much all I did last week with the exception of getting some teeth filled, making my kid do homework and cooking meals for the family.  There's currently ironing strewn across the floor in the main part of the house and the bathroom hasn't seen the back of a sponge in two weeks.  Listen, some things need to be sacified for fashion.

On the flip side, procrastination does pay off when it comes to the release of new Fall patterns. If I'd been sewing in August who knows what this shiny piece of wool might have become.  Instead it was still sleeping in the wool box at the time Sew Over It released their newest pattern The Joan Dress. When it popped up on their instagram feed it was an immediate "Add to the mental buy list." I probably would have bought it right away if it wasn't for the surprise dental bill my teeth earned me this month.  I'm sure my cake consumption has nothing to do with those new cavities, nothing! The tooth fairy gave me a special dietary clearance and everything.

I was going to be a good girl and wait till next month to buy this pattern when an email from Pattern Review popped into my inbox. Would I like a copy of the Joan Dress pattern to blog about?  Are you guys reading my mind because I've currently staring at it with longing in my web browser. Yes, yes, please hook me up.  So Deepika emailed me a digital copy and I banged the dress out in a week.  What can I say, this baby was easy to put together, including that sassy collar.

Unlike my last Sew Over It project I didn't make any major changes to the pattern. This garment only has fitting adjustments and the sleeves/hem were lengthened a tad.  Am I the only one that puts unhemmed muslins on and suddenly decides the final garment needs to be the same length? It's like once my brain has seen the garment at that length there's no going back to the drafted hem allowance.  On this dress that meant adding 5/8" of length to the sleeves and 2" of length to the skirt. Oh and I did make one more change, I reduced the kick pleat high by about 5".  It literally started right under my backside and while I do like extra walking room, no one needs to see the much of the back of my legs.

Fitting notes - This pattern has a lot of darts in it which usually makes fitting easier for me. For example my wide upper back adjustment creates a shoulder dart. In this case the pattern already has a dart there, so I only need to make the dart bigger when adding the extra width. For the most part I plugged in all my standard fitting adjustments and the dress fit great. There were two areas where I had to make extra adjustments, the bodice length and the sleeve width.  The bodice length must be on the short side because I actually have a short torso and usually have to reduce the length of bodices. On this dress I lengthened it a 1/4" and probably should have gone for a full 1/2".  Something I only really noticed when trying to keep a belt on that seam while taking pictures.  As for the arms, those of you which sender ones will probably be fine with the sleeve width.  But if you carry a bit of fluff on your upper arms like I do you might need to split the sleeve open to add extra width for bending your arms.  On my dress I added a 1/2" along the whole sleeve width. I have this problem with some designers and not others, so it's more of a "second tier" adjustment for me.  You'll see all the alterations listed in the regular place in the review if you're interested.

Warning non-sewing tangent ahead:
Gillian's better pictures project has given me a bit of a kick in the butt when it comes to my photo routine. This year it's felt like I've been going to the same 3 places and doing all my standard poses. Not that there's anything wrong with that, especially if you have to knock some blog photos out in a limited amount of time. Still I was in the mood to do something different this week and had a bit of fun choosing a new location in my favorite park. (The one that houses the white door patio and the rock wall. )  Over on this side of the park there is another lovely historic building which would be a great backdrop if it wasn't in full sun all morning. Drat.  But this Sunday I noticed the walking path next to it had a fair amount of tree cover.  Only problem, all that sunlight in the background messes with the camera's foreground brightness setting and I was coming out all dark.  Nooo what's a girl who doesn't really know anything about photography to do?  Answer - Mess around with random camera settings and accidentally stumble on a solution.  I shoot with a Canon Rebel T5i and here's the settings that were used. After setting the camera to Creative Audio mode I hit the camera button so I can see the "backdrop" in my view finder. Then I hit the Q button to get the additional option menus.
I change Flash firing to "Off", Background to "Max blurred", Ambience based shots to "Brighter" and finally Effect to "Medium." All other settings were left at their default locations. This brightened up the foreground so that you could actually see me against the backlit background. Now if you're someone who does know someone who does know something about photography and has a better way to do this then fill me in. I would love to know.

(P.S. I thought some of you might like a photo of the dress without the hat and gloves to get an idea of how it would look in a more modern wardrobe.)

Pattern
The Joan Dress from Sew Over It.  PR offers all the Sew Over it Patterns as digital downloads and if you're a PR member, which I am, you can get a nice little 10% discount.  I often go that route when it comes to UK based patterns so that the "Paying for shipping money" can become "buying fabric money."

I sewed a 12/14 combo but easily could have sewn a straight 12. I found the lower half to be plenty roomy.

Fabrics used
All fabrics were rather old purchases that have been lurking in my stash.
Gray/metallic silver/lycra wool suiting, originally from Emmaonesock.com
Poly acetate lining, origially from GorgeousFabrics.com

Pattern changes/alterations
1. Lengthened bodice 1/4".

2. Dropped front dart 1" and increased back dart intake by 1".

3. Added standard 1/2" wide upper back adjustment.

4. Dropped armholes 1/2".

5. Made 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment to the bodice shoulder and the sleeve cap

6. Split the sleeve down the middle and widened it by 1/2"

7.  Lengthened skirt by 2".

8. Increased back skirt dart by 1" to match the bodice.

9. Cut down kick pleat length by 5".


Confessions/Advice
- The lycra and metallic content of the fabric made pressing a bit of a challenge especially in the collar area.
I got around this by spritzing the collar with water, then folding it over and holding it with small binder clips. The collar was left to dry overnight and then removed the clips. Essentially I wet set that sucker.

- Instead of hemming the skirt and lining as one I kept them separate. This was more of a personal preference in construction issue. Doing it the way described in the directions will give you a prettier finish on the kick pleat.

- The metallic fibers in the wool really seem to show A Lot of drag lines.  Other than the bodice length I do think the fit of this garment is correct and most of the lines are just from posing. I did put a non-stretch lining in a stretch woven shell which could be a source of some of the problems. Need to add some stretch linings to the stash in the future.


Husband Comment
"You look like you should be in a black and white movie. Swinging your curves around the pool hall...or maybe courthouse."

My Final Thoughts
I'm grandfather clausing this pattern into my FESA list since it wasn't released when the list was drafted. Otherwise I would have put this on the top of the Fall sewing list. Something about Fall weather just makes me want to sew sexy wiggle dresses. Meow!

Pattern Review provided me this pattern free of charge for a blog post. Which means you got to see it this month instead of in November because I was making this baby no matter what. 

A wiggle dress years in the making

October 29, 2015, 5:48 am

≫ Next: Can't blog, Christmas sewing

≪ Previous: Just going for a stroll - The Joan Dress

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Have you ever had a garment on your mental "to sew" list so long that the very thought of sewing it becomes a chore? Shouldn't that dress already be hanging in the closet?  I've thought about sewing it so many times that it should have a corporeal form at this point. "Ta Da, I magiced this dress into to my wardrobe with my mind. It's amazing!!!!" - is what I'd like to be able to say. Instead I have to mutter, "Where did my scissors disappear to for the 40th time?  Oh they're under my butt...once again. Guess I have to make this dress now." *Heavy Sigh*

This might only be a problem for those of us who suffer/embrace the "Ooooo something shiny!" form of sewing planning. Once a pattern loses its shiny new patina it turns into work instead of fun. Those of you who are serious planners will have to let me know if you get tired of old plans eventually. Maybe you have a stronger work ethic towards the sewing list than I. If my sewing list isn't an open ended one like FESA then I'm more likely to sew something completely unplanned. I don't play by anyone's rules, not even my own. ;)

Enough about plans, let's get to the point of this post, the Gertie Wiggle dress from her first book. When I saw her green sample of this pattern it was love at first sight and I immediately preordered the book. Sometimes you know a pattern is going to look good on you just by looking at a photograph. When my copy arrived excitement was running so high that I did a very stupid thing when starting this project. I failed to consult the size chart for the patterns. Who knows what I was thinking at the time. More likely no thinking was actually involved in the decision, "I'm usually a 14 in patterns so I'll trace that one."

Spoiler, my measurements correspond with the size 8 in the Gertie book ,so my size 14 muslin was wrong in every possible way. Not only was it too big in the circumference, the torso and height seemed to be for a much taller/longer torsoed person than me.  The last thing I felt like doing was starting from scratch and tracing a new size.  Instead I moved on to the Shirtwaist dress pattern which turned into a nightmare of fitting alterations. That was enough to make me gun shy and the book went back to the bookshelf not to be opened again for quite a while.

Clearly those sewing traumas weren't enough to put me completely off the wiggle dress pattern. After letting it marinate for 2 years I finally traced the correct size 8 and muslined it up. To my surprise the dress fit almost perfectly straight from the "envelope." Who would have thunk it? In the end this was a super easy pattern to sew up with great results.

I did find two drafting errors on the size 8
- The front torso is 3/4" longer than the back.  I double checked the trace lines 3 times to make sure that the problem wasn't me blending different sizes. Nope, that sucker does not match up if you walk the seam line. My solution was to remove this extra length in the front so that the seam lines did match. I was lucky that this torso length also matched my body.

- The slash lines for the gussets are not the same length on the front and back. The slash lines on the back are longer and seem to fit the gusset size better. I made the front slash lines the same length and this worked fine for me.

So yeah, I'm still a little iffy about the drafting of patterns in the book. On this dress it was just some easy to fix errors that didn't impact my sewing enjoyment. Still that doesn't make me feel super confident about trying a different pattern. Will it be an easy to adjust project or will it end with me futilely trying to adjust the pattern for a completely different body type than what it was drafted for?  Who knows! To be honest I might just stick with Gertie's Butterick line, since they seem to have the standard Big 4 issues that I know how to handle. (Feel free to laugh at me when I sew another pattern from this book.)

Pattern
The Wiggle Dress from "Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing."

Fabrics used
Black cotton/linen? with a silver metallic lace design screen printed on top.

Pattern changes/alterations
- The height of the neckline is very choke inducing. I lowered mine about 5/8".

- Like on my Joan dress I put on the muslin and liked the length of the unhemmed sleeves and skirt.  1 1/4" of additional length was added to both the sleeves and the skirt.

- As previously mentioned I pinched out 3/4" on the front bodice only as it was drafted longer.

- Front gusset slash line was lengthened by a 1/4"

Confessions/Advice
- The only thing tricky about sewing the pattern is putting in the sleeve gussets. Since I had two Advance 9441's under my belt I figured it wouldn't be all that tricky this time. Wrong. The gusset seam lines are drawn differently on the two patterns.  On the Gertie wiggle dress the seam lines are much straighter and closer together. I found this a lot harder to sew than the large and curved lines of the Advance pattern. (Photo comparison -Wiggle dress on the left, Advance 9441 on the right.)

Obviously I persevered and managed to sew all 4 gussets without giant puckers or leaving holes near the points. There was just a little more cursing at the sewing machine than usual.

- Just wanted to note that with the gussets the kimono sleeves are very close fitting. My upper arms just fit in there so you "may" need a width adjustment if that's an area where you carry weight.

- Confession, I did not reinforce these particular gussets.  My fabric felt sturdy enough to get along without extra organza added.

Husband Comment
"It looks nice on you and I like the baseball sleeve.  Hey is that fabric cracking?"

My Final Thoughts
Despite my continued reservations about the patterns in "Gertie's New Book for Better Sewing," I'm glad that this pattern got sewn up. After all it was my fault the first time for not consulting the size chart and muslining a wildly inappropriate size. If you have a similar figure to mine, you'll find it an easy pattern to fit and not much harder to sew. Just get those gussets under your belt and the rest is smooth sailing.  This pattern is certainly a sexy number but it's also surprisingly comfortable to wear.  I feel like it has just the right amount of ease to show off your curves while still letting you move around like a normal person.  So if you like to gamble a bit with your sewing then this pattern might be for you. Just don't gamble with good fabric, muslin, muslin, muslin.  I SEE YOU IGNORING ME! :P Oh well, you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.  See you guys next month with hopefully the last of my FESA list finished. I might have to stay up late to get that beret knit. Do you think Froggie would knit it for extra cookies?

Can't blog, Christmas sewing

November 11, 2015, 7:06 pm

≫ Next: A FESA Non Complete

≪ Previous: A wiggle dress years in the making

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Well that's not entirely true since I'm typing sentences as we speak. It's just that I might have looked at a calendar recently, did the math and then had a small anxiety attack. Where did October go? How is it that I got all of TWO things sewn and both of them were for me? Didn't I say last year that December is too late to sew plaid dresses and all things holiday themed? Oh god, I'm going to blink and it's going to be December. Who Is Speeding Up Time and knock that nonsense off right this minute!!! *Proceeds to rip hair out while staring immobile at the list of projects to get done before the end of the year. *

Ok, it's not that bad really.  This year I was somewhat smart and got all my holiday sock knitting done over the summer.  No last minute mad knitting jags that leave my wrists battered this year. I've also got the Christmas PJ sewing half done.  The only reason it's not 100% done is that the stash didn't have the right colored ribbing and I had to order some. That package should be here before the end of the month and then all the PJ stuff will be done in a day or two.  So no worries on that particular front as long as a certain child stops increasing his knit sock order.  Des -"I want 5 pairs of socks Mommy, Five.  One pair red, one pair green, one pair orange, one pair brown, one pair blue." Me - "You're getting one pair." *Cue melodramatic groan of disgust from the 5 year old*

I might have promised my sister a blazer last year and never come through....or maybe that's just the amount of time it takes me to process her "orders". (See winter coat that took me 2 years.) Good news is that I traced, muslin and fit the Bellatrix blazer last year.  One could consider the project half done already.  All I really need is for Froggie to beat me with the efficiency stick until it's sewn. "Get off the internet and cut some fabric Heather!" That "seems" doable if I don't spend my free time searching Etsy for novelty Christmas print fabric. *Guilty looks at open Etsy tab in browser*

About that novelty Christmas fabric, I kind of want some sort of kitschy skirt or dress to wear during the Christmas season.  Of course it's all gotten a bit late considering I have no fabric or pattern ideas at this minute. As much as I'd like to indulge my "theme dressing" whims it seems silly to completely stress myself out doing so. Oh why didn't past Heather sew something Christmas themed in July? It was too hot to think about that? Excuses, excuses.

So on the one hand Christmas sewing looks doable, but on the other I see my next month and a half scheduled and it makes me real twitchy. What plans? No wiggle room for crazy sewing flights of fancy? But what if I spent half the night looking at vintage Christmas cards and now I "need" a faux fur muff? Froggie says that ridiculous, you need your hands out to keep you from falling over since you won't wear flats anywhere.  Shhh Froggie, don't rain on my mental fashion parade, the sewing list is already doing that.

So how are you guys doing?  Do you love to Christmas sew and happily take requests from your family? Do you hate it and tell everyone "politely" that it's your hobby and you'll get them a nice box of candy instead? Do you do give in and sew for others this one time of the year because fabric is literally coming out of your ears and maybe you should see a doctor about that. No one wants ear waxy gifts.

Well I see that Froggie's gotten the efficiency stick out of storage, so I'd better chain myself to the sewing machine and get cracking.  If you don't hear from me in a month or so then send a fruitcake so I can use it to break a window and escape. Merry Pre-Christmas my dears!

P.S. I have a sudden craving for a black dog. Isn't that strange?  Tell my husband to make it a black Scotch Terrier with a plaid coat and an allergy to chewing shoes. Bonus points if the dog will wear mini berets and I get a matching one.