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  • New fabric additions

    Wednesday I met Mary in NYC.  The fabrics I purchased at Mood and B&J arrived yesterday.  Today my fabrics arrived from Sawyer Brook.

    Aprilbj These are the B&J fabrics:  the blue and violet are cotton poplin that I will use for some casual summer suits.  The white with green dots is a really lovely Swiss cotton dotted Swiss voile, which I purchased primarily because of the green dots.  I love dotted swiss and I love green, how could I go wrong? On the far left the rose pink tweed will be a jacket and I have a lot of things that will go with it. 

    The purple wool, 2nd from left, is my only non-summer fabric and was purchased because I wanted to make a skirt with feathers on the bottom after seeing a photo of one by Marni in the new May Vogue Magazine.   I went to  M&J Trims and purchased the feathers first as I figured that would be the hardest part for me as I get really picky about that kind of thing.  Then I looked a couple of places before finding the fabric I wanted.  My skirt will not look at all like the Marni skirt and is more fall oriented.  Still, I can’t wait to make it:  Here is a picture of the fabric and the trims:Purplewooldetail

    I am really eager to make this even though I might not wear it right away.  If I don’t get it made this week, I will be going to San Francisco for one of Sandra Betzina’s Power Sewing weeks and I will take it with me.  Who knows, I might even be able to wear it.

    I started looking for the tweed at Mood, but didn’t find anything I wanted for the skirt.  I bought silks this trip, mostly for linings.

    Aprilmood2_2 The black with the paperweight design was just pretty.  The other three were purchased to go with specific fabrics and you will see them in the near future.  The peachy fabric on the far right can be seen in more detail below with the cotton from Sawyer Brook.

    Aprilmood3 I am planning on taking this combination with me to work on in San Francisco.  I am stil planning on making the fairly straight DKNY jacket; It will be a very casual jacket, purposely minimally structured and I think it will be a lot of fun.

  • Summer Roses

    Since I spent a good bit of time "resting" this past weekend, I had plenty of opportunity to get into trouble.    A packet of swatches arrived from Sawyer Brook while I was away and now I have succumbed to the lure of new fabric:

    Rosefabric   This rose cotton/lycra sateen caught my eye right away.  I immediately thought of it for this suit:   Valentino Suit courtesy Bergdorfgoodman.com

    Valentino2_1

    I originally thought of making this in a stretch poplin or perhaps a cotton/linen with a little bit of texture or cross/dye interest.  But I really like the rose cotton.  However, the suit in rose strikes me as being a little TOO feminine and flirty for me.  I would like the very feminine shape in a color like gray more than pink.

    I think the pintucked and tied jacket idea would work beautifully over a pair of pants however, something like this pattern from voguepatterns.com, Vogue 7685, V7685photo courtesy of my scanner as I have had this pattern for about 8 or 9 months but haven’t made it yet.  It is still available however.

    The jacket could be made sort of like a cross between a blouse and a jacket, something without all the tailoring and interfacing.    Kathryn at Sewing World posted this pattern a couple of months ago and I ran right out and purcV2789chased it:

    Of course here it looks too light and blouse-like.  I would probably put together some cross between this pattern and a jacket pattern.  I know I have several suitable options but have not yet looked through the pattern file for likely candidates.

    I also ordered this kind of interesting striped cotton:

    Stripe_1 which I am thinking of using for a jacket to wear over the pants, possibly over the blouse as well, depending on how I make the rose blouse/jacket.  I am thinking of using this pattern, Vogue 2738:

    V2738pdf

    A DKNY now OOP.  I think this combination will make a nice casual, fun summer jacket.  Of course, there is always the possibility that the fabric will arrive and I will wonder what I was thinking.

    Well, the fabric is on its way and only time will tell.

  • Peruvian Textiles

    Here are two photos of Peruvian Textiles from the Natural History Museum in Lima.  They were in glass cases in a dark room and this has limited the quality of my very amateur photography.

    You can click to see the details (hopefully)Amazon_005. 

    Amazon_006

    The first one is embroidery and weaving and the second is woven.

  • Sewing Resolutions!

    1.  Never sew when you are very tired.

    2.  Never try to sew something in a big hurry at the last minute.

    3.  Never sew when you are very distracted by familial craziness or other intrusions by "real life".

    NEVER SEW WHEN ALL THREE ARE GOING ON AT ONCE.

    The blue linen pants are fine.  There is no biasing.  I must have been standing very crooked that day. (I vaguely recall that my back was really sore for a couple of days, but now that I have relaxed on vacation that recollection seems so distant as to be lost in a fog somewhere).  I certainly refuse to sew for the crooked days, until they become the majority at least.

    If I ever have time to sew again, I will pick up where I left off and finish the pants.  Thank goodness I did not trash them (but I might have trashed the lining, who can remember these things?)  Meanwhile, the problem with vacation is all the piles of things that lie waiting for your return.

  • Biased

    No linen pants, alas!  They fit beautifully through the waist, upper hip and crotch; in short they fit very well from the crotch line up.  I thought the biasing problem on my side seams would be fixed automatically by fixing the top of the pant.  A naive thought at best.  If anything the biasing is worse.  I think I see why however and it can be partly predicted by the curve of the waistline (see patterns).  On previous pants the pant itself did not sit properly on my waist or hip so the fabric of the pant would kind of slip around so that the leg seam did not appear as biased as it may have been, but the hips or waist would pull or pucker on one side or the other.   Now with the hip straight and the side and center seams vertical and well fitting, the pants hang more crooked.  The grain is straight at each leg but the leg does not come off the hip at the right angle for it to hang straight.    I might be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

    I can see I am going to have to work on this further, and my preliminary analysis may or may not be accurate.  The advantage to the one seam pants is there is no side seam to analyze so if the pants hang crooked who would know.  When I made striped one-seams, I ended up taking very strange looking curved, hooked, and almost horizontal darts in places to get the stripes to hang straight.  I never worried about this figuring that getting it to look good was the important part, not how I got there.

    Well the whole process will have to wait two weeks for my return from the Amazon Cruise.   All I can think is that when this whole process is over I will have a much better understanding of patterns and drafting and my own body.  I may never be able to sew for regular people again.

    Byoc

    Here is a picture of the projects that await my return:

  • Ziplexia

    Ziplexia:  one of the many forms of dyslexia in which the afflicted person is incapable of figuring out which way to install an invisible zipper so that the outside of the zipper is lined up on the outside of the pants.

    As you may be able to surmise, no pants have been sewn.  Both pairs are still stacked neatly on the end of the ironing board smiling expectantly every time I walk into the sewing room.  We still hope that construction is in their immediate future although given the time constraints they may remain in limbo, neither pant nor mere fabric for some time.

    Yesterday I attempted to start the linen pants and lined up the invisible zipper, put in the zipper foot and started to sew.  Four stitches later my lovely Bernina stopped and flashed me a very ominous message "main motor failed, check hook system".  It didn’t sound good but I did find the appropriate action in the manual and I cleaned and lubricated the hook.  Still the sewing machine did not work.  Same message.  I see that the nice Bernina will be going to the hospital on Monday.

    I set up the Elna and promptly sewed in the invisible zipper, upside down.  This is not unusual.  I have put in how many invisible zippers over the years, hundreds? Thousands?  I have probably put 90 % of them in backwards before gettting them right. 

    I can only assume that my general zipper failure is related to my mild variant of dyslexia where I have trouble telling right from left.  In order to say "turn right" I have to first look at my hands and figure out which is my right hand so that I know I am saying to turn the correct direction.  Unfortunately zippers are not this simple.  I can’t look at my hands.  I do look at the fabric; I look at the zipper; I put them together and imagine zipping up the zipper; then I sew it in backwards.  Yesterday, between the sewing machine and the zipper I decided that the goddess of sewing was not smiling on me and moved on to other things.

    Today, I have sewn the zipper in backwards, twice.  How can I do that you ask?  Once, yes, take it out, turn it over and it should work.  Not so.  Who can tell how my twisted mind works.  Well I am ready to keep trying.  Three’s a charm they say.

  • Square silk top

    I went into Chico’s to look for a funky belt to go with my new knits and while I was there I fell in love with this silk top.  Actually I am not sure if it is meant to be a top or a wrap, but since it has to be pulled over the head, I tend to think of it as a top:

    Squaretop3 It is really just a simple square of silk chiffon and would be very easy to make.  I bought this one because I LOVE the fabric and it coordinates perfectly with everything I am taking on a trip to Brazil next week.  This would be great over a swimsuit with some cute casual pants by the pool and it also just solved an entire formal dinner dilemna.   Well, to dinner I would obviously have to wear a tee or tank under it.

    I think I might even have a piece of chiffon or two, originally meant for other things, that will get transformed into something similar.

    The top is a rectange of fabric folded in half with the fold at the shoulders.  An opening is cut for the neck; I would think I could just copy one from another pattern. The fabric is turned over in a narrow seam and topstitched.  The bottom of the rectangle has a narrow topstitched hem.  The sleeve openings are a little more than 1/3 of the length of finished top, although that could be easily varied for individual preferences.  After the sleeve openings were finished with a narrow hem, the side openings were french seamed closed.

    Very simple really.

    Squaretop4

    The bottom fringes are sewn on individually.  Each one consists of 6 strands of shiny rayon thread in a heavier weight, about 13 inches long.  They were obviously threaded through the hem of the fabric, so the needle must have a big enough eye to hold the thread but a sharp enough point to pierce the silk, pulled half-way through, and then knotted in place leaving about a 6 inch tassel.  On my top the tassels are spaced 5/8 inch apart.

  • I cut two more pairs of pants today, the periwinkle linen, and the blue silk. I used a blue grey lining for the linen, it seemed to be a nicer pairing than a matching bemberg and I think the slightly darker color will add opacity and a depth to the color in the sun.   I really like my newly adopted technique of cutting the seam allowances off the pattern and tracing the sewing lines directly onto the fabric.  Even working with bemberg rayon and silk was a pleasure as I could see exactly what I was doing and the fabric wasn’t slipping around as I cut.   I think my cutting was more accurate than it has ever been.

    After cutting and hemming the chinos,  I had to at least gather clothes together for the trip, so I have spent the time packing.  Here I am all ready to go:

    Byoc_003 I am wearing the Nancy Erickson sweater set and the one-seam pants.  The other parts of the collection are in the BYOC photo album.

    I have enough clothes so I don’t need the linen pants but I would like them.  It is quite possible that I will finish them before we go and I don’t think I will be hitting up against the weight limit, but I don’t know for sure yet (don’t have toiletries and camera gear packed yet).  Packing has to take priority now.

  • Fabric Prep

    I finished pressing and prepping all my fabric last night.  Now everything is ready to cut and sew and the patterns are ready as well.  I have changed my mind again about the linen pants, I think I will just make a separate lining.  That is so fast and easy I see no reason to mess with a different technique.

    I also washed the aqua pebble weave knit.  This piece did not have the same biasing problem that the periwinkle pebble weave had.  That piece must have been an aberration, but at least it worked out.

  • All pants, all the time

    Thank you to Kathryn at sewingworld for today’s title.

    I tried to make yesterday a sewing day.  My goal was 3 pairs of pants; it was not met, but I did get a lot done.  It would have helped if all the fabric had been prepared and at the ready and if I had not needed to redraft pants patterns.  The drafting work IS done now however and future pants will move much faster, at least as far as these styles go.

    I started with knit one-seam pants from the last of the Nancy Erickson knits, the plain canvas knit.  I made the one-seams several times last summer and loved them and they fit pretty well, but not perfectly.  In September I was in San Francisco for one of Sandra Betzina’s Power Sewing weeks, and while I was there she had her patternmaker come in to give us a class on altering, drafting, and balancing pants patterns.  It was very interesting and after the class she spent some time with a couple of us who needed extra pants help.  In my normally absentminded way I did not write down the pattern person’s name, I want to say it is Monica, but knowing me that is probably wrong.   Any way, I came out of the class with a newly drafted pair of pants based on one of Sandra’s patterns, which was convenient and available.  I really was only interested in basic pants that fit, where the pattern came from was beside the point.  I learned that my back crotch depth and curve is very long and curvy, kind of bowl-like, and the back crotch depth is VERY LONG.  My front is short in length and short in crotch depth too with a very short little curve, more like a bump.  The whole front curve is less than 2 inches total dept from waist to center.

    Here is a picture:

    Patternalterations_006 The altered pattern from the Sandra Betzina (Vogue 7940) seminar is on top of the old one-seam pant pattern (pants 101 from mysewnigclasses.com).  The yellow line was the waistline on the original one-seams but I changed it to match the new wasitline from the Vogue pattern.  Notice the slope of the new pattern and the steep angle from center back down to center front.  This sewed up beautifully and the waist band went right along the wasitline seam as I marked it from the pattern without any problems, perfectly positioned.  This is the first time that has ever happened to me.  I can see now why, when pants are  cut so the waist is perpendicular to the grainline, the pants skew off center while I wear them.  this way the grain of each leg is straight and the waist is angled to accomodate me.

    You can also see the shorter front crotch curve and that it is a less gradual curve than on the original pattern (which was shorter than many patterns I have tried).  The back has a much longer and deeper curve and the tip of the curve actually curves back up forming a bowl shape although that may not be evident in this picture.

    After I redrew the one-seams to match the new waist and crotch curve they sewed up very quickly and I love this new version of the pattern.  I spent some extra time stitching three rows of stitching along the hems, to make a deep hem and add extra weight to help them hang.  The twin needle was too narrow so I stitched three rows 6 mm apart.  This was tedious because the stitches really dissappeared into the fabric and was hard to see so I probably wobbled here and there.  All in all though, they look good and the extra stitching gives them a nice hang.

    Patternalterations_003 After the knit pants I traced the new altered top to a pair of basically straight leg flat front pants, not the narrow kind like the Vogue pattern, but a wider more straight-leg version, but with side seams.  These have about 20 1/2 leg at the hem, still pretty wide and they are good for linen and other light summer pants.  I am making these out of a blue linen, which I had thought to wash first, but I hadn’t pressed the fabric.  I did that and decided that there was a fair amount of show-through and I should line them so I had to search through the linning box and find a lining, then wash it and dry it.  The lining is waiting to be pressed, after which I will cut and probably flat-line these pants.

    Then I sewed up a pair of basic chinos in a lightweight poplin.  These are fairly roomy through the thighs with deep pockets.  They are good work around the house and yard and good "adventure tourism" pants because they are casual and I can move around well in them if I need to climb or squat or get in and out of things in funny ways.  Those are done except for the hem which is marked and waiting for the handsewing fairy to come along.  This pattern is based on a menswear pattern and I did not redraft it because I am pretty satisfied with the pants.  They are more practical than stylish but they work well for me so I heeded the advise that "perfect is the enemy of good" and left well enough alone.

    I also hoped to make a pair of silk pants out of a lightweight silk in a deep french blue.  I was going to line these with aqua silk and put a slit at the side seam, leaving them loose, kind of a dress casual kind of look.  I hadn’t washed any of the silk, and I wanted to do that although I probably will not wash the pants.  Luckily silk dries quickly so I was able to wash them, let them dry and press them, but no cutting out.

    I do hope to continue today, but it is a busy day with a lot going on at work.  Tomorrow I have to prepack, at least get all the planning done and check supplies and make sure that everything works and works together.  I will probably still have some sewing time and I hope to get a few more of these things finished.