Looking forward to Fall

It's a nice day here in Cambridge -- while we've had weeks of hot and humid weather, today it's 70F (about 25C for my non-U.S. friends) and breezy.  I left the office early and got to thinking about my upcoming sewing projects on my walk home.  I am working on a muslin for the skirt portion of this Rachel Comey design (Vogue 1170), which I'll probably make out of a tangerine cotton pique that I bought earlier this summer.  I probably won't be wearing it with the top that I made from this pattern, although it would be a perfect match for the orange flowers... Overall I think it would look a little too Rainbow Brite.

The cool weather has me thinking about Fall and well, the impending end of my post-doc at the end of the year and the need to finally start dressing like a grown up (and work at a grown up job, whatever that is).  This also means that I need cool weather clothes for an office setting, which I am loathe to sew for several reasons.  Among these reasons -- summer clothing is just so much cuter.  I like showing my arms, I like wearing dresses.  In the winter, I feel like I am just a bundle of jeans and sweaters and any interesting details on shirts or pants will surely be lost in there somewhere.  And so, this perpetuates a cycle of me not sewing winter clothes and then complaining that I wear the same thing every day all winter long.

Maybe it's time to revisit the button down shirt but... that's so boring.  Maybe I can get myself to master the fit of the button down shirt (I think I will need some as basics in my closet) and make one of each of the following:

Burda 03-2010-122 in white shirting

11-2009-118 in teal shirting or gray washed silk

09-2009-117 in a striped shirting that I don't have

I love the details on these -- the long sleeves on the first one, tuck on the second one.  I'm not crazy about the third one but I think that the gather and ruffles will look great with striped fabric, as will the cuffs if the stripes are just slightly misaligned.  Alas, I have no striped fabric in the stash and since I will be moving again at the end of the year I don't plan to buy any more fabric.

Lastly, my plan is to sew two jackets.

09-2009-127 in leopard print faux fur

05-2006-102 in mustard corduroy (apologies for the fuzzy photo!)

I'll definitely sew the first jacket, but the more I look at the second jacket the less inclined I am to follow through on my plan.  Given the rate at which I have been sewing, I am a little worried that I might be a bit too ambitious to sew all of this before winter!

Cute but stinky

Sometimes you want to make something today to wear tonight.  Well, that happens to me all the time.  Last Saturday my running club was having a progressive dinner and it's still to hot and sticky to wear the Fishy shirt or the Bells and whistles shirt (as an aside: I was looking at my Google Analytics page the other day and that shirt was a hit when someone searched for "ruffles on a shirt, ALL THE RUFFLES" yep, it's got ALL THE RUFFLES and more.)

I'm decidedly riding this ruffle wave till it crashes.  I've had this sheer poly in my stash for a few years and have wanted to use it for something this summer. 

This is the ruffle shirt, 117 from the August 2009 issue of Burda, it was either going to be this or 105 from the April 2010 issue.  I was inspired by Toy's version of 08-2009-117 and Eugenia's version of the 04-2010-105 top. The decision came down to having already traced 08-2009-117 last year and never having gotten around to sewing it.  From start to finish, this is pretty fast to go together, just 5 hours.... even with a mistake that I made partway through where I managed to sew the center front seam in such a way that I turned the top into a Mobius strip and had to unpick the french seam and sew it again.  What a pain!  As a result, the facing in the front doesn't sit quite flat because I had to unpick that as well and it didn't line up right after being sewn again. 

I love this, even though the fabric is, well, polyester.  It's sheer but it really gets sweaty and clammy, and stinky.  It's like those cheap technical fabrics that dry and keep the stink in the weave.  Yuck!  I assure you the hem isn't uneven, I'm just standing weirdly.

Another note - the ruffle is enormous.  When I was walking to the subway, it was billowing around my chest.  Handy for a dinner party, it's like a bib!

Here's the part I'm particularly proud of: the narrow hem on the bib.  I've tried applique scissors to trim the seam allowance, but I find that using my straight scissor is the best way to get close to the stitching without slicing it.

I could see making a few more of these, maybe playing with the fit.  It's really loose and shapeless, but because it's shapeless it's airy and comfortable.  So maybe there won't be any adjustments in the future if there's a repeat.

A whole lot of shirt.

I'm still trying to decide whether I'm wearing this shirt or it's wearing me.  I'm not exactly channeling Seinfeld's puffy shirt, but I feel like it's pretty close to it.  It's #125 from the May 2010 issue of Burda magazine, made up in a crinkle voile that was an impulse buy at Joann Fabrics last summer.  This shirt has it all.  Ruffled collar, puffy sleeves with ruffles, shirring at the waist  and collar, a drawstring keyhole neckline (which I didn't notice in the magazine anywhere)!  I made a size 38 with my usual adjustments.

It's kind of at an odd length where I think it needs a few more inches to be a dress.  I suppose it could work as a swimsuit coverup, but it's quite a shirt to wear to the beach.

You can't see from these photos that the bottom of the keyhole opening falls to the bottom of my ribcage (it's just as well.)  You also can't see how messy this is on the inside.  There's really no way to make a neat finish with all the shirring and gathering, plus the drawstring casing that you make by folding over part of the neckline.

Here's shot of the inside of the collar.  Looks like a mess, eh?

 I don't know what I was expecting, but I couldn't really get an idea of length or puffiness from the magazine photos.  The model is wise to wear something underneath if she's going to leave the ties open.  It's a really deep neckline if you're going to do that.

Too small to see anything!

Now in hindsight, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the keyhole.  You can see it right there!

Despite all my fussing about it, I will admit that it's a very feminine cut and it was fun to sew.  If you are looking for something that has a lot of details, this is your friend.  You have to shir the collar pieces, then gather them to attach them to the front of the shirt.  Next, you have to make a casing for the drawstring, which I think is a little redundant; you could just sew the ties to the collar opening; the casing is only 1" long.  You have to sew the ruffles to the sleeves, then make a casing and insert elastic.  Lots of busy work!

It is one of a kind, and because of the cut really has to be worn with something tight on the bottom to balance it out.  I experimented with a couple pairs of skinny jeans and found that these long boot cut jeans (I always have to wear heels with them) were the best match for the volume and length of the shirt.  I'm sure that there are some taller readers out there who won't have this problem, though!

Simplicity 2593: Cute and easy

It doesn't get much better than this.  I managed to squeeze this shirt out of 1 yard of fabric (the pattern calls for 1 1/2 yards), which was a whopping $2.95 at my local fabric shop.  You can sew this in about an hour.  Possibly with your eyes closed.  The frills on the shoulders really make this top different.  There's no way to make them "perfect".  They change shape and position as you wear them, making this shirt artsy but not in a bad way.

The only thing that I'm not so crazy about is the shoulders, which I think are a little wide on me so that the straps often shift and show my br.a straps.

Oy vey.  Now I see that I have quite the runner's tan -- look at the top of my white X!

And... for those of you following along at home: I got the dye stains out of my blue skirt with Oxyclean.  Amazing stuff!

A tale of 1 fabric, 2 skirts

This is a story of Fabric Fail.  I bought this cool abstract print from an online retailer who will remain nameless because it's not their fault that this fabric didn't work out for me.  I washed and dried the fabric when I got it, and noticed that the black dye had bled out a little.  Because the print is so abstract, I figured - eh, annoying, but not the end of the world.

See?  The bleeding just looks like shadows and even though I know it's there it's really not that noticeable.  You can see it faintly a little to the right of my hand.

So I figured I would go ahead and sew a summer skirt with it.  This is the skirt I decided on, 111B from the April 2010 issue of Burdastyle.  I wasn't going to be put off by its "tall" designation.  I'm anything but tall, but I decided to trace the smallest size and adjust it.  My usually petite-ing (it's a word now!) is to take up a 1/2" between the waist and hips on Burda patterns, so because this pattern was intended for Amazons, I took it up a full inch between the waist and hips.

 Well.  That worked in theory.  I probably should have also taken a little width out of the back.  Looks good in the front...

It also looks all right from the back, but it it is way unflattering from the side.  I really thought that hanging this skirt in the closet for a few weeks would relax the fabric some, but I think the design was really never meant for someone of dimunitive size.

The second part of this story is where I still try to help this fabric redeem itself.  I used it for the pockets of this skirt, a tried-and-true pattern for me (110 from the September 2006 issue of Burda).  It has princess seams in the front and back, with small pleats at the high waist.  I made this in black pique two years ago and wore it death.  This is a size smaller (36) than my actual size (38), which sometimes works for petite-ing instead for of going through the hassle of adjusting the pattern.  This one is pastel blue, pique again.  I would love this skirt.... maybe you'll agree, looks good from the front:

The back (excuse my inability to dress myself, I must have left the bottom hook undone!):

And the pockets in the pleat front are great:

Speaking of the pockets, they bled onto the front of the skirt after washing! You can see what looks like gray smudges on the front of my skirt.  This makes me so mad, because I thought that all the bleeding was done after the first wash.

The moral of this story is: Don't trust anything that bleeds before being cut.  This fabric will be for muslins only from now on.

Inspired: Vivienne Westwood Anglomania via Vogue 8385

As I've discussed before, one of the nice things about sewing is the ability to replace your favorite garments when they wear out or get lost. Even better is being able to copy things you see, and even better than that is when you get instructions on how to do so. Look at this knockoff of Vivienne Westwood's Anglomania "Atlantis Sunday" top by Kristin at Very Prairie, which she describes in tantalizing detail AND provides her alteration to the peplum to get the same look as the designer version! How fun! How can you not make one of your own?

I think that Kristin's version is fun in plaid, but I decided that stripes would be the way for me. Mine is made from silk striped broadcloth from Fashion Fabrics Club, with just enough randomly placed goldfish to add a little whimsy. I made the same peplum alteration that Kristin made, and switched out the 8 buttons for 6 snaps. If you see below, the Anglomania version uses snaps attached with a cross-stitch... I hate making buttonholes, so this worked out pretty well.

























The waist falls at my natural waist, and I didn't need to make any alterations in length. I'm also pretty happy with how the stripes matched up at the sides (at least on the left side... sorry, no pics of the right side but you'll have to take my word for it that I got a pretty close match there as well!)

Here are some detail photos: I used white broadcloth for the back lining. I bought the recommended amount of striped fabric for my fabric width but ran out of fabric because of the peplum change. The lining doesn't show at all, even in the front, so you don't have to worry about using fashion fabric for all the pieces... the pattern instructions call for fashion fabric lining but you could get away without as I have.
Now, I'm not trying to show of my b.ra or cle.avage here, but these photos show how the folds works in the front of the top, and how good the coverage is despite being a wide and low cut U-shaped neckline. Overall, I love this top and look forward to an occasion to wear it!

Tucked + Smock = Smucked shirt?

Wow, the whole month of May is almost gone. I realized when I logged in to start writing this post that there's a half-written one from two weeks ago when I wanted to write about having gone to some local fabric shops in Somerville and Cambridge... I will sum it up here: cheap and beautiful fabrics, one store well organized with cute quinceanera tiaras on display and the other like something out of Hoarders. Like, I was afraid that the fabric (crazy long pile neon pink tiger fur! shrek green sequins! beautiful white flocked cotton lawn! all piled to the ceiling!) was at any point going to topple and smother me. Luckily I was shopping with a friend, because I don't think the employees would ever have heard or found me in that barely lit shop.

Despite my criticism of the second shop, I bought this light weight teal poplin, and two other shirtings. I decided against making the jersey top that I was considering in this post because when I traced out the pattern I realized that it called for a facing in the neckline. I hate sewing facings into knit shirts, hate it, so that was an easy decision. I made the shirt with the tucked bib inset instead. It fits really well in the shoulders and is very loose from the bust down. It turns out that there were a few surprises.
It's got 4 tucks in the back, which with the gathers under the bib in front make this a pretty voluminous shirt. These tucks are each 5/8", which isn't clear from the pattern markings.

In this second picture you can see I pulled another Paul Smith button trick. I had only 4 white ball buttons and then used a clear ball button for the collar. You see the front band below the bib? This was the next surprise for me... it's supposed to be a hidden button placket. Well, I'm not about to make more buttonholes than I need to or hunt down more buttons than I have to. So I sewed the bands together with topstitching, the shirt's loose enough that you can pull it over your head so long as you unbutton most of the buttons on top.

And then, the biggest surprise which I'm not sure was operator error or a problem with the pattern draft. In the teal shirt, the bib didn't have enough seam allowance around the edge to set straight into the shirt front. You can see my wobbly seam at the corners. Somehow on my muslin, I'd managed to not only set it in straight with enough seam allowance but do a french seam! I think if I were to make another one of these shirts I would cut the bib with just a little extra around the edges to make sure that I can set it in straight, because it was really tricky to do this without getting the tucks caught in the seam.

edited to add: This is #124 from the March 2010 Burda issue.