Week 1

Week 1 of 2013! Wow! I have one more week of leave before going back to work; it doesn't feel like there's been much time for sewing lately but perhaps there has been. [WARNING: Picture heavy post!]

This week I've:




1. Worked on a muslin for the jacket from V2823, to be made from this sea-green silk velvet and perhaps with this wild pink fabric as lining:

 



Is it too OTT? the green velvet is more vibrant than it appears in this photo... 

I'm currently removing some excess from the front bodice. SBA I guess.


2. Had a trip out with Miss UpSewLate for a zipper and threads that ended in fabric purchases at Tessuti, including the above lining and these couple of scrummy fabrics drying in the sun after their baptisms in the washing machine:

plain turquoise colour is hanging over the edge

a 2.3m stretch remnant!

as well as 0.5m of this stretch fabric

3. that I turned into a KwikSew 3169 top for Miss UpSewLate:

Size 6, arm elastic omitted. Coordinating skirt for Barbie highly recommended.

4. Whipped up a quick sewing room cushion with a centre back zip. I used my new cutting mat (thank you Mr UpSewLate) to get lovely straight lines and proper right angles.

Obviously this photo was not taken in my sewing room. It is Sydney, but it's not hot all year round!

5. Got through the initial stages of a pair of shorts...

... starting with a comparison of pattern shapes (would that be your first step too?). My Vogue 1098 Anne Klein trousers fit me really well in the critical areas, but I was interested in the Vogue Basic Design shorts pattern. I thought they'd be a similar shape in those critical areas and that the leg shape might be different - perhaps a bit flared below the hips?

I was honestly really surprised at how different the pattern shapes were! The photos below show these two patterns line up - both have been cut as size 12 except on the inner thigh where the Vogue Basic pattern is cut as a 16 (and please note I am not responsible for this hacking - it's a second hand pattern). 

FRONT comparison.  What a difference in crotch shape, crotch length, and hip width!

BACK comparison. Same differences!

I'd be interested to hear if you think I'm aligning these pattern pieces incorrectly.  But for the record, I then made the same comparison with the pattern pieces for three different Anne Klein trouser patterns - and found they all had the same crotch shape and length but slight (much, much smaller than those pictured above) differences in hip width and crotch length. I don't know if each designer has their own standard shape, but I'm planning to make some more comparisons with other trouser patterns.

Anyway, I decided to stick with the pattern that fits me...

... and this afternoon I cut the Vogue 1098 Anne Klein trousers shorts out of an emerald green linen and serged them, using the shorts pattern just for shorts length and some side pockets. I hope to get these sewn up soon!

6. Ignored a half-made top - double gauze Nani Iro fabric lined in silk but all looking really wrong. I just don't get the drape on double gauze fabric!
 7. Made vintage pattern purchases on Etsy, including these:

 and these:

 

 
Now by the way, have you ever wondered why old McCalls pattern envelopes came in colour and in black and white? Like this one:




















Patterns for sale in Australia and New Zealand were printed in Sydney in black and white while the American versions were printed in colour.  I've seen Australian black and white prints of patterns for all the major brands, and single colour envelopes for the smaller Australian brands (Pauline patterns, for example).  

and


8. Supervised Miss UpSewLate in a craft project. She wanted to make herself a top to match her own special design from a tiny scrap of green linen. Instead we made a simple paper pattern for her, then a muslin, which she decorated.

the proud artist

The front picture is trees on either side of a rocket house (NOT a hammock), with a flower in the foreground and small grey fluffy clouds in the sky. The painting on the back is of a bride throwing petals, with a flower girl walking behind her.

I now need to find out how to make crayons and water colours stay :-), and later we'll have a go at turning her fabric scraps into a top using her pattern.  

Phew, it sounds like I've been busy! 

Back soon with a normal sewing project, Gabrielle x

Classic Linen...

Linen is a classic look, isn't it, and so is navy with cream... perhaps a bit boring for some tastes, but definiteley useful in the me-made wardrobe. So here is a new maybe combination but more likely separation of linen pants and linen-cotton mix jersey top:



Quite hard to photograph together with the top so white bright and the pants so inky dark!


The top is made from V1310, the relatively recent Chado Ralph Rucci pattern (the one with the photo of a severe looking model in a column-like burgandy skirt and loose white top). After my recent ooh-this-feels-too-tight issues in a "semi-fitted" Vogue size 12-graded-to-14 dress, the ultra loose fit of this (also "semi-fitted") size 14 Vogue top was unexpected, although I guess part of that may be down to my fabrics.

tucked up hem

free hem

The top is cut on the bias, and the pattern calls for a bias-cut self-lining, but that would have been too hot - besides, I only had a single metre of this fabric, and it had turned itself from a neat rectangle of fabric to a wonky trapezium in the wash. So facings is all I could do.

Being cut on the bias, my neckline was very keen to stretch out. I tamed it with narrow transparent elastic, the sort I usually sew into the shoulder seams of knit tops, and made it very slightly gathered. I topstitched the facings in place with a sliver of facing showing all the way around to give the neckline a decorative edge, but I don't think you can really see it...

spot the serger tension error!

Time: About 2-3 hours

Cost: $12 all up: fabric about $12 on sale at Lincraft; sewing and serger thread $0 (already used in other projects); pattern $0 (second use); and elastic $0 (leftovers).

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The pants have been lying around as an UFO in my sewing area for ages...  I'm sure they were originally ironed and carefully draped somewhere for attention "soon", but by the time I got back to them they were a scrunched up mess. A happy surprise amongst the crumples - the fly was finished, top stitched, and even nicely basted together to wait for the waistband to get sewn on. When I tried them on I remembered why they had become a UFO - they got too tight midway through the sewing! They should hopefully get a bit looser in the near future... if I get myself out of this chair and do some exercise :-)

No, but seriously, that's the best looking view of the pants! And the colour is about right.

With my camera sitting on a chair on the coffee table in the middle of this room, I am getting some leg foreshortening happening and I do not like it:

 

Anyway, you can see that they nearly fit me already (and I only did the getting out of the chair part so far!) and that the stripe matching is OK.  I had to change tops because my camera wasn't coping.

I've made these pants before (here in grey wool and here in black stretchy stuff) because the pattern (V1098, an Anne Klein pants and jacket pattern - ooh and I made the jacket in yummy turquoise cashmere a while back) seems to generally fit, and is one that's easily taken out or run in along the side seams. And I've got to the point now where I just grade the waistband up or down to fit the width I've sewn the pants :-).

Here you can see the details: belt carriers, a neat fly, waistband drafted to fit and cut to match the stripes as well as possible on the curve:

And the sign apparently means Beware of the Dog!

Time: I don't know - too long!
Cost: About $30: fabric a lovely big remnant from Tessuti - call it $25; sewing thread $3; pattern $0 (fourth use); 2 buttons $0 (part of a vintage buttons gift); and zip $2 from a little local haberdashery.

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Has anyone else been having troubles with Blogger lately?  I've been struggling to sign in for about a month (this is a known problem in the Blogger forums but the solutions haven't worked for me to date, so I'm using a strange workaround) - but worse still, over the past week I've found I can't reply to comments! Please accept my sincere apologies for what certainly may look like rudeness. On the subject of replies though I read in a Blogger forum that many people reply to comments by emailing the commenter directly - is that right? Is that what works?

Anyway, thank you very much for reading my ramblings, and if you do comment I will TRY to reply.. .

Colour Shock! New Jacket, Pants and Top

 Me: Come on, tell me the truth - do my legs look big in these?  

You: Well...

Me: What if I stand like this? More natural?

You: Hmmm - well let's focus on something else. What about that jacket?

Me:  OK, here's my jacket - d'you like it?

You: Actually the jacket's kind of big too, isn't it... AND loud. 

       Erm maybe you could wear the jacket with something black?

Me: But don't you like it with the pants?  

Me: Look, it's got these cool little side splits.

Me: And I can do these sort of karate moves really comfortably!

 You: Well it's not for everyone, is it. 

        But obviously you're very happy...  

 

Me (sulking): Well I'm not happy now! I can tell you hate it all! 

         Do you know how long this bloody took me??????? 

You: Look, it's probably fine for Australia. 

And the t-shirt's OK - obviously nothing to it though.

       Not many people would dress like that 'round here though...

i

Me:  Do you really mean that? That it's FINE? 

You: I'm not going to lie. It's OK. OK for you. 

         I like that painting though. Did one of your kids do it?

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Here's the lowdown - costs, timings, patterns. 


Trousers
Cost: $24.20

Time: Approx 3h - very straightforward and quick.



The 2 metres of orange linen fabric for the trousers came from The Fabric Shop on sale, reduced from $20 to $12/ metre. It's a very heavyweight linen, and feels cool and soft against the skin.

The zip and buttons are vintage. The zip was 20 cents at the second hand store ages ago (I have a bit of a zipper stash) - you can't see its (red) fabric colour, but I thought that the gold metal teeth would look OK with the vintage style of pants.  The buttons are much, much older - these come from an amazing button stash that my dad's partner recently passed on to me, and look to have already seen a lot of use before my trousers.



I used my rather favourite old Ralph Lauren Vogue pattern, which I've promised to make into navy linen beach pajamas :-)

I guess you can see these orange trousers as a test run for sizing...

Linen gives a lot more than calico, so I found I had to take these in a bit from my muslin size, and then I still had some excess width at the front so I was able to reinstate a couple of pleats that were included in the original pattern.

I also added about 10cm in length to the muslin to give myself plenty of room for hems. When I made this pattern originally (early 90s I guess?) I found my linen shrank a lot, most noticeably in length. I'm covered for that!







Jacket

Cost: $50

Time: 4.5 - 5h initially (incl about 40mins to cut out), + a further 1.5 hours to adjust and finish. 


The fabric for the jacket came from The Fabric Shop, a 2 metre piece bought at $20/ metre at the same time as the orange linen for the trousers. It's a lovely heavyweight linen, and feels like top quality stuff. I already had lots of partially used reels of the right colour thread - from this DKNY dress, this UFO jacket, etc....

Back in the day I made the skirt and top from this Anne Klein pattern (V1325, well and truly OOP) in a size 10 but never got to the jacket. I assumed I'd need at least a 12 now, so I snaffled up a second hand copy ages ago - $10 or less, bingo.

I'm happy to report this jacket is really easy to make - unlined, and no buttons or closures - and it has has interesting cuffs, set in sleeves and lovely simple lines.

However, I should have thought about 80s sizing. The jacket is described as "very loose-fitting", which translated into modern parlance means BLOODY HUGE.

The dropped shoulders seem to demand huge shoulder pads (I didn't give in), and the 7/8 cuffed sleeves which looked so elegant on the pattern envelope are truly voluminous and long.








Here's where the "7/8 sleeves with cuffs" ended on my long arms:



I unpicked the cuffs and side seams, and took these up by about 6cm to get to a better look.

The sleeves were also much wider than they looked on the pattern envelope - one possibility (of course) is that the sweet little Vogue model is actually a giant.  I tapered in the sleeves with a long pencil-drawn triangle that took them in by 5cm at the seam by the cuff to nothing under the arm (where I couldn't begin to think of how to make the set in sleeve narrower without making a new jacket body). So all up they're now about 10cm narrower at the cuff:




T-shirt
Cost: $12 max
Time: 45 mins

The fabric for this t-shirt came from Lincraft - about $12/m, and I used a 1m piece. And leftover thread.

For a pattern I used my own "famous" self-drafted kimono sleeve t-shirt, previously seen here, but left the neckline high.  I cut this out super-fast at about 11.30pm on Saturday night and then sewed 2 of the seams till just after midnight. The other two seams got whizzed through after breakfast on Sunday - ie total of about 45 minutes to make. No edges were hemmed in making this garment.  Nothing was done slowly here.

I pattern matched the stripes as usual (well, less carefully), BUT as I'd cut the fabric out a bit wonky or the stripes weren't straight or something, the shoulders are not equal heights ie the neckline is now odd.

If you like kimono sleeve t-shirts, they're really simple to make yourself - AND if you make your own, you can have it loose / tight in the places you want! 


So all up, for the outfit - well, that can be homework :-)


See you!
- Gabrielle

V2 of V1098 Pants are Done!

Yes, they are done. And they are marching through the garden, looking for a more photogenic spot.

They feel a bit tight. And I intend to re-hem them. 

But I can certainly wear them! That's cause for a small celebration, right? A few balloons?

So... not much to say that I haven't already said about this pattern (Vogue 1098) here when I made the pants first time around. It's a good basic pattern if you want a boot leg style of pants.
This fabric is a smooth lightweight summer wool suiting from The Fabric Shop in Sydney. Probably this style works best with fabric that is not too lightweight, so probably my first pair looked better. However, the first pair had a hardware malfunction (a zipper issue), so they are gone-ski. This second pair is much better put together... much less embarrassing if ever seen inside out!


I don't think I'll be making another pair of these - I'm fancying the more tapered look now.... but who knows how long till I make more pants anyway.

Sneak Peek...

I am really close to finishing off some grey wool trousers - I've been troubling myself to make them nicely so I'm not going to rush to finish, photograph and blog them tonight.  No, instead I will show you the trouser feature I am feeling quite proud of - the fly:

Looking relatively smooth and untroubled from the outside...

And it's pretty neat on the inside isn't it? Well maybe not for you, but that's neat for me. AND it only took me 3 unpicks and resews to get it this way!  Hey, I didn't even forget the fly facing.

 

Not much of a post so far though is it.  Sorry. 

OK, this will be good - another special detail, by invitation only.  This is a detail that only you blog viewers will ever get to see and appreciate :-)  Look how nicely my seams match up!

Next post you can see the trousers properly.  I promise.