Valentine Pink Jacket

Happy Valentine's Day to all!

source

Pink is pretty far down on my list of colors for apparel and even home décor, so my having actually sewn a pink jacket seems like the perfect topic for a Valentine's Day post.

This soft denim is a very pale pink with gray (or beige, depending on the light) embroidery.

It was originally intended for jeans, but having decided that I prefer darker colors on my lower half, the fabric stayed folded on the shelf until I opened up the Craftsy course Sew Better, Sew Faster. It's a project and technique course in which "garment industry secrets" are applied to sewing this Islander pattern for a modern jean jacket.

I'd actually signed up for the industry secrets, not for the jacket pattern, since the pattern photos did not look very flattering, but rather quite boxy and floppy. Still, I figured that following the instructor through the making of the jacket was the best way to learn these coveted secrets.

I will start by saying that although the course did not change my sewing life, there was one clever method of turning the garment to apply a yoke facing that I am quite delighted with. Other than that, most of the "secrets" are things that anyone who has been sewing for some time will pick up automatically. For example, in the garment industry they don't pin pieces together before stitching. I think we all know that already, and I would be surprised if there is anyone, who has been sewing for a few years, who still pins every seam together. Another example of a garment industry practice is order of construction: sewing all the seams, whether for the body, sleeve, collar, before topstitching, rather than sewing and topstitching each one in turn. Doesn't this seem rather obvious?

As expected, the jacket pattern was no great revelation either. For a pattern with front and back princess seams, and three (yes! three!) sleeve seams, I would expect a more fitted shape, but maybe it is meant to provide a blank canvas for people to fit to their own figures.

Surprisingly, I like it. It is boxy and floppy, but it is supposed to be casual so I don't mind the looseness and droopy shoulders so much.

The fabric is still a favorite and after scouring four fabric stores, I finally found buttons that I think are perfect.

It has some nice details, like the rounded collar and cuffs.

Even though I was disappointed in the course, I think this was a win overall, with a cute, casual jacket and an interesting yoke application that I can use on shirts as well. I would say this particular course is good for intermediate-beginners, that is, you know how to use your machine and have made some garments, but you haven't been sewing for so long that nothing is "secret" any longer. I will be watching the course again (one of the great things about Craftsy) to see if I missed any other gems.

Have you taken any Craftsy courses recently? Or other online classes? Did they meet your expectations?

Katrina

Inspiration at the Museum

This past weekend offered the opportunity for free museum passes, so we went to the Phoenix Art Museum to see what was new since our last visit in September. We looked at some photos and a lot of southwestern paintings, but I purposely left the Fashion Gallery until the end, knowing I would be there for a long time. Once I got in there, I almost couldn’t leave.

The current fashion exhibit is “Modern Spirit – Fashion of the 1920s.” Where do I even begin to describe this incredible collection? The colors! Yes, the colors. Surprisingly subdued, the colors in the room were mostly earthtones. Rust, camel, salmon-peach, black, and ivory made up the majority. There were also a few dusky versions of jewel tones like jade and plum, and dark blue appeared once in evening wear and once in a suit. A brilliant scarlet red was the exception to all this restraint, and it stood out in several areas of the exhibit. 

Although no photos were allowed in the museum, many of the exhibit pieces are from the Arizona Costume Institute, and these images are from their online gallery.

1928 dresses

The textiles were utterly amazing. Each piece was dripping with embroidery, beading, ruffles, rhinestones, or sequins. Several of the dresses were covered with thousands of glass beads individually sewn onto silk tulle or lace. How does the fabric bear that weight? How does the garment survive 90 years?

Three evening dresses by Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel. 1928, 1925, 1925.

One of the most luxurious-looking effects was the voluminous, gathered and rolled velvet collars of the evening coats, which were shaped very much like the Poiret cocoon coat. Even the velvet was embellished with beads and embroidery, and in one case, fur.

Folkwear Pattern 503, The Poiret Cocoon Coat. Source

I could go on and on, but without photos, I feel I can’t really do justice to the other pieces.

I will leave you with the last one that I do have a picture of, which was the simplest design, and also my favorite. It’s a Vionnet, of red silk crepe chiffon. The narrow silver edging is a lamé binding. For the sewists reading this, can you imagine trying to stitch a long strip of lamé to a fluttery, tissue-thin expanse of silk, on the bias, without snagging, tearing, shifting, or even creating the tiniest hole?

The epitome of elegance

A history of Madeleine Vionnet and her design techniques that we still use today is here. Also, Coletterie did a nice writeup on Vionnet here.

I was very inspired by my visit. I won't be sewing up any 20s-style evening gowns, but it certainly boosted my creativity.

What has been your source of creative inspiration lately?

Katrina

all photos from the Arizona Costume Institute, http://www.arizonacostumeinstitute.com/ACI/The_Collection.html

 



What I Meant To Say

In my last post, before I veered off on a tangent, I started talking about the problem of shorts. Short pants, that is, not men’s underwear.

1897 riding bloomers source

1922 golf knickers source

First, let me say that the last time I wore shorts outside of my home was in 2000. As I’ve gotten older, shorts have become less comfortable, what with the extra fabric of waistbands, pockets, and crotch seams all sitting in the bulkiest and/or sweatiest parts of the body, but they did have the advantage of convenience in some outdoor activities. Still, I discovered in my early forties that I was more comfortable in skirts, both physically and in how I looked.

1940s shorts source

1970s hot pants source

The only time I do wear shorts is for gardening, because skirts just get dragged through the dirt too much. For the dirtiest tasks I’ve been nursing along a 20-year-old pair of cotton knit shorts, but they finally deteriorated too much even for gardening. After searching through the closets and drawers, I found a stash of shorts in good shape, but they were all too small. I’m not sure why. I bet some of you are thinking about pie right now, but let’s try to stay focused on my problem, please.

I have a few choices of how to replace the old shorts.

Option 1: Spend actual money to buy new shorts, which would only ever be used to get really dirty in the garden

Option 2: See if the bottomless closet contains some unloved trousers that can be cut off

Option 3: Make gardening shorts

Obviously the answer is Option 3! I can make some incredibly awesome shorts, maybe even with big pockets for garden stuff! This could be a lot of fun.

I could put multiple pockets on both legs with this pattern.

The Burda cargo pant looks very similar to the McCall. source

Before I get too excited, I should make a point to keep comfort as my main consideration, since I want to wear them outside when it’s over 100 degrees. The need for pockets is less than the need for comfort, after all.

Also, there are other ways to introduce pockets!

Tool belt? source



Do you like to wear shorts, or have you found a more comfortable alternative? (Or maybe it’s way too cold where you live to even consider it!)

Katrina

Finished Objects!

Dear Readers, this week I struck a blow for procrastinators everywhere by finally finishing four huge projects. See, we do get around to it eventually.

First, the Plum Pleather Purse.

Yeeesh. At some point, I must have found this textile appealing. Maybe I just liked saying “plum pleather purse.” I don’t really like the color that much now, but since it was all cut out and ready to sew, I decided to go ahead and put it together.

I used this pattern, view A. (Clearly it’s meant for quilted fabric, but I was never good at matching pattern to fabric, as we'll see below.)

Textured lavender chenille-like fabric for contrasting trim.

Lavender polka dot lining, with a couple of pockets.

The top opening has a magnetic snap closure. I got several packages of purse hardware last year during a sale at JoAnn’s.

The pattern suggests cardboard as an insert for the bottom of the bag. This seems odd, especially when the pattern is actually for a fabric bag. But since I don’t ever plan to put this in the washing machine, I went ahead with the cardboard.

Although this fabric is nice-looking (in the right light), I must say the quality is absolute crap. I don’t know where pleather falls on the faux continuum, but I’d previously thought it was a thick, plasticky substance for use in raincoats and handbags. This particular pleather should not be used for much of anything. It was like sewing with Swiss cheese. It is thin, floppy, mars easily, and cannot be folded, pinned or pressed. Sewing causes it to pucker, and creates a line of perforation which is highly susceptible to tearing.  

Well, it was an interesting experiment. On to the next one.

The Leopard and Antelope Bag.

The fabric came from a potential wadder/charity candidate. It’s upholstery-weight linen, but I fell in love with the print and just HAD to make myself a skirt about a year ago.

The skirt was way too stiff and scratchy so I never wore it. I just couldn’t give it up, so I decided a large, flat bag might make good use of the print.

I found some brown nylon for the lining and a heavy-duty zipper for the top. It has a bunny pocket inside! 

I used thin sheets of polyester batting to give some body to the sides of this bag.

You can sort of see from the top pictures where the sides of the bag are extended to make a loop to hold the D-ring. The brown shoulder strap is from another bag.

And finally, two Bird Pocket Totes.

You may remember this dress from October. I used a Marc Jacobs fabric, sort of denim/canvas weight.

It was cute and it fit well, for about a month. Then my lower torso expanded the dress shrank somehow and I could not get into it any longer. Good news though, it was a straight rectangle, so all I had to do was cut a tote bag-sized piece off the bottom.

The pockets are Premier Prints “Bird Sketch.” The two front pockets have magnetic snap closures.

The side pockets, for umbrella and water bottle, have elastic at the opening.

It's funny how this bag strongly resembles view D on the Butterick pattern, but I never noticed it until I was putting these photos together!

The front of the dress became the back of the bag.

Nylon lining with pockets.

The base and sides of this large tote are reinforced with buckram, which I happened to have for making belts.

D-rings and a luggage strap from an old computer bag.

The second, smaller tote is from leftover fabric.

The outside is the Marc Jacobs canvas.

The inside pockets are the bird fabric. I wanted this one to be more organizable, so it is divided into two sections by an inner zip pocket.  

The flap closes with a magnetic snap.

I used scraps of medium-weight sew-in interfacing to stabilize the fabric for this bag. You can tell that I was really digging through the stash: cardboard, interfacing, buckram, batting. I was grabbing everything I could find!

 And what happened to the top of the dress? It’s a bolero!

I opened up the front, put a pleat in the back, and wrapped the edge in bias trim.

This will be great with my black pique pants.

  

Here’s what I accomplished with the completion of this week’s projects:

• 4 unfinished objects (bags) finished, plus bonus bolero jacket
• 2 potential wadders (skirt & dress) rescued
• 4 yards fabric + 3 zippers + various trims, snaps, buttons, etc used from stash
• Vast amounts of storage space and work area reclaimed.

I also learned that my Singer 4423 Heavy Duty machine can plow through NINE layers of canvas plus buckram without a hiccup. I can’t say the same for my hands, which are sporting broken nails and bandaged wounds, but my fingers will have a long rest from heavy-duty sewing now.

I feel quite virtuous for finishing all these.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

Katrina

Sewing in Progress

I decided that I needed a conservative dress.

Perhaps it's due to my rapidly advancing age? Will I go about in black, high-necked dresses? Or just tone down the colors and prints? It's hard to define "conservative." I know it when I see it, but I don't think I can describe it.

Anyway I decided on a compromise. It's black, but has a print.

I had a huge length of this rayon with a white button print, thrifted months ago for $4 or $5.

This was a good time to try out one of my genuine vintage patterns. After a brief disappointment with the first pattern I opened and found more than half the pieces missing, I settled on this beauty. I got it from Mrs. Depew on Etsy. She has a lovely selection of patterns, and she also blogs at A Few Threads Loose.

The dress is still in progress. It won’t be lined, so I’m trying to make sure the seams are finished enough to keep things from unraveling in the wash. Some of the instructions required a bit of research (lapped seams?), and of course there is some hand sewing to be done. We’ll take a look at the finished product next week.

Have a wonderful weekend and a Happy Easter!

from The Graphics Fairy

Katrina

Pants Patterns Part 2

I have the first pair of completed pants with my adjusted pattern, and I am perplexed. Even with all the changes I made, the fit appears to be no better and no worse than any pair of RTW in my closet.

This is the pattern, B5614:

I made the full belly adjustment mentioned last week. After reading a few more fit guides, I decided on a fisheye adjustment for the back. The explanation is here. Due to my recent experience, I won’t post a picture of it, but the site is worth a visit.

This is what my pattern looked like after the adjustment: The overlapped areas are supposed to adjust for the fish eye (called that because the amount of material removed is slightly eye-shaped).

I apologize for the awful photo quality of the finished pants. I actually thought it would be better if I used the computer cam, but obviously these are much worse than my usual point and shoot. But I think we can at least see the general outlines from these photos.

Front: It looks like I needed more than the little ½ inch wedge adjustment I made for the full belly. According to most guides, vertical folds “point to fullness”, meaning the fullest part of the body.

Side: Oddly, the front looks like a good fit from this angle, but the back looks much too big. The excess fabric under my flat seat puffs out since it has nowhere to go.

Back: This is the source of my perplexity: the folds of excess fabric are in the exact location of my fisheye adjustment. Did I not remove enough of the pattern in this area, or was it the wrong alteration altogether?

Summary: I’m not disgusted with the pants, as they are a beautiful, comfortable cotton pique, and the fit isn’t any worse than I’m used to. So I will get some wear from them when I’m not using them as a study piece for the next set of adjustments.

What’s next? I think the pattern is slightly too large from the hips down, so I will shave it down one size in the legs, and increase both the belly and seat adjustments. If that doesn’t help I will at least know I’m moving in the wrong direction, and I’ll have to go back to the drawing board.

Any suggestions?

Katrina

Consulting the Croquis

My croquis took form one night when I didn’t feel like sleeping. Hello, miniature Katrina!

Boiling it down to a few lines really helps. The fact that the legs comprise half the figure's height accounts for my life-long struggle to find RTW pants that are long enough.

More importantly, the croquis’ waist is slowly being swallowed up by the rising hip and the sinking bust which are so common among ladies of a certain age.

Compared to the figure illustration in Vogue Pattern Magazine (not a real fit model, I hope, but helpful for illustration purposes), we can see that there are going to be some adjustments required in the chest/bust, the waist, the hip, and pretty much all points between. If I’d remembered to give the croquis a mouth, she would ask for a better-fitting bra, which might counteract the droop and make the waist slightly more visible.

In any case, my little figure has already been a great help in wardrobe planning. She says NO! to high-waisted pants. Here's why:

Remember this incredibly cute pants pattern? I love it!

Here is the line drawing:

Here is the line drawing on the croquis:

Oh, dear. Not good, unless I add underwires and cups to the top of the waistband and call it a jumpsuit.

It’s disappointing that I can’t wear this exact style, but what a relief that I didn’t put in hours of effort to make pants that would look bad.

This style of lower-waisted, wide leg trouser, on the other hand, works well with the figure’s short waist and slight pear shape (as long as she balances it on the top).

To my surprise, my little creation turned out to be well worth the effort. I recommend making yourself a croquis if, like me, you have trouble deciding on styles or visualizing what something will look like on you. (Or if you just want to try things on virtually. It's fun!)

For very good instructions on making a croquis from a photo, go to LladyBird(GIMPshop) or oonaballoona (Photoshop - see comments section). I have trouble following instructions, so I sort of winged it and ended up with the uneven lines, but I know others have made much neater (and more stylish!) versions of themselves.

Have fun!

Katrina