Rambling: Fashion and... who am I?

You know all those posts about whether there are too many perfume blogs out there, whether there's room for so many voices, all that? Yeah; have you seen how many sewing blogs there are? Oh, my. If I go to a perfume blog and follow its blogroll, and then follow its blogroll's blogrolls, I'll very soon find myself linking in circles, already having visited most of the blogs. In the sewing world, the lists of blogs just grow, apparently exponentially.

And I'm not reading those blogs purely for the sake of geeky technical sewing information. I'm paging through them looking at clothes. Looking at dresses. See this post about the Mad Men Dress Challenge? Dresses like that. Mad Men. Downton Abbey.

You understand that this is weird for me, right? My awakening of interest in clothes is something that I can't yet begin to explain. It's been, I admit, an occasional theme through my blog, a weak watery thread, starting 'way back in 2009 with Perfume and Being a Girl. But that doesn't make it any less incomprehensible.  I'm staring at those dresses, wondering if I could ever get as perfect a fit. Wondering what it would be like to own a Little Black Dress. When we went to Manresa restaurant in Los Gatos recently, I looked around the dining room and found myself noting that, "I could wear evening clothes here, if I wanted."

What the what?! Evening cl... who is residing in my brain? Who? Who let her in? And why don't I want her thrown out?

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Food: The Best

Anybody who doesn't think that the best hamburger place in the world is in his home town is a sissy.
Calvin Trillin

The best Thai iced tea in the world is served at Tour Eiffel in Los Altos, California, along with the world's best egg rolls. I hadn't tasted either one since we moved to Oregon; I'm happily full of them today. We've been traveling. And eating. (Read Himself's post for the details and the restaurants that you really should visit.) And I've been thinking about the best foods in the world, past and present, available and lost. The best foods, that is, according to my memories.

The best cupcakes in the world are sold at Saint Cupcake in Portland, Oregon. They're not the usual bought cupcakes, the kind that are mostly sugar and oh-yeah-maybe-we-should-add-some-butter. They taste of enough butter to make your fingers shiny when you eat them, and of eggs, and chocolate--that is, if you get the yellow cupcake with chocolate icing, my choice. The buttercream icing has the texture of chocolate ice cream that's thawed to precisely the point of no resistance, except when you're dealing with ice cream that point is followed fourteen seconds later by melting into liquid, while the cupcake can stay there all day. Or at least half an hour, which is the longest I've ever kept one uneaten.

The best fried chicken in the world was cooked by my mother. I'm pretty good at frying it myself now, though I only sometimes achieve the level of glorious greasy crunchiness that she accomplished regularly. I've learned part of the secret--it's a side effect of cooking more chicken than will fit in the pan. But I think there's more to learn, and Mom doesn't cook it any more, so I'll have to figure it out on my own.

Early in my St. Louis childhood, I learned that the Flaming Pit was the best burger restaurant in the world. We moved away to Nashville for a few years, where I ate the micro-thin steamy burgers from fast food restaurants. And then we moved yet again, back to St. Louis, and my brother and I begged to rush to the Flaming Pit. I have a clear memory of my first reunion with that burger, in its fat, smoky charredness... and not liking it one little bit. My mis-trained palate betrayed my memory, and as far as burgers are concerned, it never recovered; I never asked to return again, and have never appreciated a really good burger.

My memory asserts that the best Chinese food in the world is served at King Doh's in Kirkwood, Missouri, the town where I spent my teen years. I remember when King Doh opened, decades ago; back then, the term "stir fry" was a new curiosity, at least for folks my mother's age. The first time she was invited, Mom said that she didn't want to go, because she didn't like fried food.

We figured it out eventually, and ate a lot of dinners there. Mom was delighted by the chopsticks and the feeling of experimenting with the exotic, Dad looked forward to the hot sake; they both seemed more jovial than at most other family occasions. I hope my brother experienced those meals as happy, too. Me, I loved the food and still remember it as having a flavor unmatched by any Chinese restaurant I've eaten at since. Did it, or is my memory colored by happy moments? I suspect I'll never know.

Vignette: Lunch

It's been too long since I posted a vignette, so it's time to start "just post it!"ing. I wrote this in the context of a discussion of how to depict the passage of time.

He was too late to catch the tastysquirrels in their nighttime hibernation; by the time he reached the grove, the sun was up and the squirrels were chasing one another up and down the trees. He sat in a not-too-damp patch of leaves and watched them scamper, then amble, then settle into un-defended furry sleeping heaps as the midday heat took hold.

Venturing from his hiding place, he was dumbfounded to learn that John was right; the colony of squirrels slept on when he grabbed several by the scruff of the neck and tossed them into his basket. Even the captives just keened irritably and curled up again in the wicker, resuming their tiny snores. "Like windfall apples with fur," he murmured as he headed home with his harvest, wondering if he had any panko crumbs in the pantry.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Link: Pointers to The Other Blog

I used to have two blogs. That means that my rambling on various topics is split into two places. So I'm adding this post so that the mostly older posts there can be found with the mostly newer ones here. If you got here through a tag, click the link that matches that tag:

Fiction
Writing
Gardening
Rambling
Sewing
Fashion
Coriolis Effect

Image: By Tony Lozano. Wikimedia Commons.

Sewing: Liberty Shirt Version 2

So, my sewing plans tend to be over-ambitious. When I cut the altered (shoulders narrowed, sleeves shortened) Sewing Workshop Liberty Shirt out of some medium-weight black linen, I had fancy plans for it. The linen is too heavy for the French seams that the pattern instructions call for, so I was going to do a Hong Kong seam finish with bias strips of black chiffon. And I was going to line or interline the sleeves to make them nice and slick, to make the shirt suitable as a jacket. I even considered a full bagged lining, not that I know how.

Then it was six (or so) weeks later and today I decided to just sew it up. I followed the very fine instructions for the mitered hem, and argued the sleeves into the armhole (it took two rounds of "staystitch plus"). I did ordinary seams, finishing them with the fake serger-like stitch on my sewing machine. I pressed, I did buttonholes, I sewed in glossy little shell buttons, and yay! It's ready to wear tomorrow.

That doesn't eliminate my fancy plans; they've just moved to other garments. I have extra elaborate intentions for a garment involving silk brocade piped with silk charmeuse, but before I go that far I think that I'll try handkerchief linen piped with... well, something. Something gaudy. I still crave the whacky.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.

Sewing: Valuable Packages!

My edgestitching foot came! My edgestitching foot came!

As I said to Himself while opening it, trying to topstitch without an edgestitching foot is rather like trying to work as a draftsman without a straight-edge. I was dismayed when I learned that I'd lost my old foot, and so were the wobbly-stitched shirts that were created during the foot famine. I'm delighted that the replacement has arrived.

I also got a package full of linen, which raised a question for me: Is it weird to review fabric?

I review perfume. Well, I don't know if you can call it a review, in the sense of an educated and informed professional who takes care to remain neutral, blah blah blah. I'm an amateur expressing an opinionated opinion. I also once reviewed a chocolate bar. And I've opinionated about the occasional book. So now that my obsession has turned toward sewing, and now that fabric stores are rare and so much yardage is bought online, it seems not unreasonable to review fabric.

But it still feels weird. If I reviewed, say, a Parfumerie Generale perfume, I'd have no hesitation about linking to their site. Why do I hesitate to point to the fabric store's site?

OK, I'm going to declare that it's not weird, and say that the quite inexpensive linen from fabrics-store.com seems to be pretty nice. I just received two cuts, one handkerchief linen (3.5 oz/yard) and one heavier (5.3 oz/yard). The handkerchief linen was a nice texture, fluid and not too crisp. The heavier stuff feels a little stiff, but a PatternReview poster (see? someone else informally reviewed this fabric) says that it washes up to a pleasantly rumply shirt-weight texture.

I still have to prewash it and sew it up, so I'll have a better idea then, but I'm pretty pleased--this stuff is cheap enough to use as a staple, without any obvious down side. Well, except maybe for the down side of choosing colors online. The site does offer free swatches, but they were sadly already out of one color that I wanted by the time that my swatches came, so I ordered the other interesting colors in a hurry. The cut in the color called "crimson" is a color that I would call "tomato". I love all sorts of reds, so I'll use it, but I may send off for another cut in "biking" red. This is my own fault--with free swatches available, I have no excuse for complaining about color disappointment.

Was that weird?

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Rambling: Rambling

It's been days and days days since I wrote a blog post.

I fried a chicken day before yesterday.

I wore Cristalle yesterday.

I'm wearing Cuir de Russie today. It's not quite working for me. Is it possible that it's not a winter perfume?

I declared a fabric diet. Nine cuts of fabric are coming in the mail. Dieting isn't so much working.

The less-sugar diet is kind of working. Maybe that's why I'm buying all that fabric.

Not a bit of perfume is coming in the mail, and I haven't set foot on the LuckyScent website in weeks. Possibly months. I seem to be a one-obsession girl.

Silk costs more but takes up less space.

When you search for Wikimedia Commons, the actual Wikimedia Commons site is the fifth in the list. This seems like a flaw.

I'm planning to make a shirt in lime green silk brocade with violet dragons, with violet silk piping. And another in violet linen with lime green piping made from the scraps of the brocade. I really hope one or both of them work. I crave the whacky.

I'm happy with whacky shirts and jackets, but I want skirts to be sober. Why is that?

I need to learn how to fit patterns. The whacky should, ideally, be flawless in every other regard.

That is all.

Image: By Deutche Fotothek. Wikimedia Commons.

Sewing: White Shirts

Grrr.

My two white Plain & Simple Princess Shirts, the ones I was so bored with, are almost done. Once I got them past the trimming-and-pressing stage for the collar, they became far less boring. Now I'm able to try them on, and I can see that the sleeves on the cotton one are a little bit short again. How did I manage to lengthen the sleeve and still make it too short? And how is it that the cotton shirt and the linen/rayon shirt seem to have a roughly 3/4 inch different in sleeve length, when they were cut from precisely the same pattern?

OK, OK, yes, the linen/rayon fabric is fundamentally different. It presses differently (and better), it molds differently (and better). Its sleeves eased in like butter, while I had to rip and re-stitch the cotton ones in two different places. In the mirror, the fit looks both closer and more comfortable. It's just better. I assume that its sleeve somehow molds better to my arm and thereby ends up with more length down at the wrist. But it's still weird.

The hemlines of both shirts are also a little shorter than I'd like. The cotton one looks skimpy, while the linen/rayon one looks great but I know that it's going to try to show skin on my back if I don't sit down extra carefully. So I don't want to take away the inch or three that I'd need to take for a non-skimpy hem.

That green polka dot top that I made in the previous post had faced hems for the sleeves, and a regular fold-up hem for the blouse hem. The sleeve hems looked great, both crisp and fluid. The fold-up hem looked soft and wrinkly, fifteen minutes away from the iron. The fold-up hem of the completed green Plain & Simple Princess Shirt was also sort of soft and wrinkly, though much less so, because it was made from a stiffer fabric.

My conclusion is: Faced hems are good. I suspect that the firm definition of the seamline will make the hem a cleaner and more accurate line that wants to fold where it's supposed to fold, and that for floppy fabrics the four layers of fabric in the seam will provide needed body. However, for the fairly stiff cotton and the fairly bulky linen/rayon of the white shirt, I may not want the bulk of four layers of the shirt fabric.

So my new conclusion is: I'm going to do a test of a faced hem in silk organza, using the shirt scraps. If that works, I'll draft facing pieces for the sleeve and hem of the shirts, and make faced hems. Actually, if the shirt hem is dead straight, I guess there's no real need to "draft" anything - I can just cut wide strips of organza. I think.

Oh, I forgot the grr: The cotton shirt already has a spot on it! A curved faint tea-colored stain right below the right-hand half of the collar, the most obvious possible place. I know it's not from my hands; I've been washing them obsessively every time I handle the white fabric. Nor is it from actual tea. (I just used that picture because I liked it.) I think my iron's far too new to be producing rust stains. I suppose it could be from the ironing board cover, but I can't see where, and I don't know where it came from if so. I'm cranky. Once I get that shirt hemmed enough to be safely washable, I'm going to wash it (and if that doesn't work, bleach it) before I do all the work of buttonholes and buttons, to make sure it's going to come out. And now I'm nervous to press the rayon/linen shirt.

Grr.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Sewing: Changing the SWAP, and More Polka Dots

Remember that SWAP (Sewing With A Plan) that I talked about? My plan has changed. Completely. Well, fairly completely.

The previous plan specified black for everything but the shirts and blouses, and bright saturated colors for long-sleeved and fairly wintery shirts and blouses. Almost all of the candidate fabrics were "fancy"--washable, but washed separately and nervously in the Wool or Delicate cycle, rather than being flung with their similarly-colored companions into the Normal cycle.

But I noticed that there's not much winter left, at least in sewing terms. And accepted that while I can wear a silk blouse around the house (as long as I put on a cooking coat before I fry anything) and out to lunch on a cool day, silk is a little much in the garden and not very comfortable on a sweaty day. And, perhaps most importantly, we already have a lot of wash-seperately garments (aka "freak laundry") and Himself might rebel if the "Don't wash that!" population gets much bigger.

So the new plan is a warm-weather SWAP. It uses chocolate brown for the neutral, has no wool and no silk and more cotton, and some of the shirts will have short sleeves. It acknowledges that I'm not going to sit down in damp garden dirt in a skirt.  It still has colored tops. That leads me to:

• Yoke skirt (Vogue 1082), in lightweight brown denim.
• Narrow pleated skirt (HotPatterns Trouser Skirt) in brown linen.
• Roomy big-pockets shorts in brown denim.
• Roomy trousers in brown denim.
• Jacket/overshirt (the Liberty Shirt?) in brown linen.
• Long-skirted short-sleeved princess-seamed dress (the Princess FrankenDress) in dark ruby red linen.
• Same, in... I'm not sure. Linen or chambray in brown or maize, or exactly the right cotton lawn-or-shirting print.
• Short-sleeved collared shirt (probably the HotPatterns Plain & Simple Princess Shirt) in dark ruby red handkerchief linen.
• Same, in maize handkerchief linen.
• Collarless top in a cotton print.
• Same, in another cotton print.

"Exactly the right print" for all those prints would be something with a colored rather than white background, and a definite "mood" to the design--Art Deco, Art Nouveau, Fifties Space Age Housewife, Seventies Flower Child, something more distinctive than just, "Ooh, pretty." (Unless it's such a heartbreakingly beautiful "ooh, pretty" that extra personality is not required.) And it can't be quilting cotton weight, because I look dreadful in the way that quilting cotton hangs; it needs to be lawn or voile or fancy shirting or some other garment-weight fabric with more drape.

I dug out every stash fabric that works with the brown theme, just to look them over, and of course I took a photo. You'll see that my taste for the whacky is growing. In case you're wondering, yes, that stuff to the left is orange chiffon with multicolored velvet polka dots. I'm not yet skilled enough to sew anything with it, with is just as well, because I need to figure out an occasion to wear it--Himself is not going to be willing to be seen with me in the resulting garment.

Most of the blouse fabrics that I've sewn (or only cut) so far this year were chosen for their affinity with black, but I think they'll work fine with brown. Two white shirts--fine. The pinky/red silk top--adequate. The red polka dots and the lime green may work even better with brown than with black. The black linen Liberty Shirt (cut and waiting to be sewn for weeks now) will make for a funereal combination with the dark brown linen skirt, but then again, I was going to wear it with a black skirt, right? Of course, all-black can have a sharp urban look, while black and brown may just signal "blah." We'll see.

See that green stuff with the polka dots, in the photo above and then sneaking in half-constructed on that hanger to the right? It's a nice drapey rayon crepe. It's not included in the SWAP, because it's neither cotton or a saturated color. I should be hurrying to work on SWAP garments, because I have to finish eleven garments by 30th to finish the SWAP. So, naturally, yesterday I cut and started sewing the green stuff.

I used the  Indygo Junction Over The Top Tunic. I wouldn't have considered this pattern based on the envelope, because it's pictured in quilting cotton. But Fabric of Vision had a sample of it in a dressy drapey fabric, and I saw and fell in love with that before I saw the pattern photos. The pattern still makes me a little nervous, because it has a raised/Empire waist, and I always assume that those will make me look pregnant or at the very least emphasize my non-trivial stomach. This is probably illogical, like any part of the delusion that people will look thinner in too-tight clothes. Why would making room for a bulgy part of the anatomy emphasize it more than stretching fabric around it?

Anyway, I finished it in the green stuff to the point of being able to try it on, and I rather like it. It has a faint Renaissance Fair vibe, the belt makes it curve in and then out in the back in a waistlike manner, the front doesn't billow excessively, and I really like me in the squarish neckline. I learned that the triangular inset in the neckline should be interfaced when using a drapey fabric; I'm debating whether to rip it out and interface it, or quit while it's more or less working and call that a lesson learned for the next time I use this pattern.

I'm also puzzled about the sleeves--I lengthened them from three-quarter length, and they're a little twisted. (Visually twisted; they're perfectly comfortable to wear.) I seem to remember that twisted sleeves are a result of the fact that one's arms are attached toward the front of the body but patterns are often drafted on the assumption that they're precisely on the side. Something like that. Or, of course, I may have eased the sleeve in a bit wrong. I think that the three-quarter sleeve in quilting cotton would have enough stiffness to allow it to correct itself, but the long sleeve and drapey crepe are causing the sleeve to hang up on my arm and look twisty. I don't have the faintest idea how to fix this, so I'm trying to ignore it.

While I made this as a blouse, it's more often pictured as an overshirt, without the neckline inset and with a tee or other shirt underneath. I don't actually own anything in the overshirt category--when I want to add a layer, I tend to just put a T-shirt on under an another T-shirt, or a sweater and then another sweater. Function, not fashion. Now I'm thinking of making this up in something warm... ooh!

I have a length of red wool that I bought when I thought (for a dangerous at-the-computer-with-a-credit-card-nearby moment) that I would wear a red skirt. I won't wear a red skirt. I already own a red skirt. I've owned it for fifteen years. I wore it once near Christmas. But I would certainly wear a red wool overshirt tunic thingie. I'll probably line it with China silk to test my theory that less friction would ease the twisty sleeves, thus making it red and wool and silk.

More freak laundry!

Photos: Mine.

Sewing: The TnT Quest

So when I last reported in, I had finished the lime green version of the HotPatterns Plain & Simple Princess Shirt. Since then, my sewing focus has been split between several patterns, all of which I hope to make parts of a wardrobe of "tried and true" (TnT) patterns.

The idea of TnTs is that, rather than chasing madly after every fascinating new pattern that comes along, you fit and test and perfect a smaller number of useful and reusable patterns. This way, your sewing projects have quite good odds of actually becoming wearable garments, rather than the usual fifty/fifty (or worse) odds of ending up as scraps.

That would be great. So why does this sound so boring? Something is clearly wrong with me. On principle, I want a nice little group of TnTs. But in practice, that Issey Miyake thing from the eighties, the one that I would probably never wear, just looks like so much more fun. And that Geoffrey Beene jacket that I wouldn't wear either. And the Folkwear Kinsale cloak. And... well, you get the idea. I guess I like the pattern equivalent of Comme des Garcons Garage.

OK, anyway, so far I'm working toward this fine and wholesome goal. Current TnT candidates include:

The Plain & Simple Princess Shirt: This is the one I used for the green shirt, and it seems to work just fine. I lengthened the sleeves, left the rest unchanged since the last round, and used the resulting pattern to cut out two white shirts, one in white Brussels Washer (a cotton/linen blend) and one in an inexpensive white cotton "shirting". The pseudo-shirting really doesn't feel like shirting; it's distinctly coarser than it should be and doesn't press at all well, and at the price I paid for it I have no business expecting anything nicer. Both shirts are coming along nicely, and I'm so bored with them, especially the cotton one, that I don't want to finish them.

This is a lesson that I keep learning and keep forgetting--don't pour valuable time into boring or cheap fabric. I'll force myself to finish them, but the cotton one isn't getting the expensive natural buttons I bought for it. (So there.) And then I may send off for handkerchief linen in fuchsia. Or that turquoise silk twill. Or the ruby red silk georgette. (So there again.) (OK, I'm not yet competent to sew the georgette, and I wouldn't wear it.) (OK, I might order it anyway.)

The Yoke Skirt: That weird one with all the architectural seams. I made a muslin, declared it too snug, added an inch on each side (a change that had to be made to six, count 'em, six pattern pieces) and am ready to finally cut the skirt in real fabric, probably a hunk of very lightweight denim. Well, technically, after messing with six pattern pieces, I really really really should make another muslin. Having met myself, I strongly suspect that I'm not going to do that.

Just to cause more trouble, I'm also considering trying to modify this skirt to have an elastic waist instead of a zipper. See, even the too-snug muslin pulled on without my un-safety-pinning the opening. And with an untucked shirt that falls three or so inches below my waist, an elastic-crinkled waist won't really be visible. And I hate putting in zippers. So... I'm indecisive. I'll probably baste the thing together in denim and baste in an elastic casing and see how it looks and decide then.

Next? The Princess FrankenDress. I got the Princess Shirt working, and I couldn't get a dress working, so I decided to combine the Princess Shirt with the HotPatterns Classix Nouveau Indispensable Dress. If you happened to look at the sketches for each pattern, you might ask: why would I take a dress that has a princess bodice with a notched collar, and replace it with a princess bodice with a notched collar? Because the original princess bodice is an armhole princess seam, that's why, and I fail miserably at fitting armhole princess seams. They seem to expect the, er, upper fullness to be in a very specific location, so that I can find myself laboriously adjusting things only to find that it's still half an inch off and that that half inch is noticeable. A shoulder princess seam is much more flexible about location.

So I combined the two and stitched up a very quick muslin in muslin, and it mostly fit, and Himself noted that I looked like a scary nurse in it, which is entirely correct and makes me think of the possibilities for scary nurse uniforms for Halloween. The skirt's a little shorter in back than in front, and my Sandra Betzina book claims you can fix that, so I'll give it a try; it would be nice if the hemline were naturally even enough to let me get away without doing the usual measure-the-hem-from-the-floor thing.

Then I need to find a fabric. I still can't tell if this pattern is going to have a Dorothy-in-the-barnyard vibe, or be more of a ladies'-lunch costume, and that determines the fabric. Chambray or silk? I'm probably going to aim for a middle ground and make it in lightweight linen in a fairly dark color (black? chocolate brown? navy? forest green? dark maroon?), something that I could wear with either garden gloves and Merrells, or a silk scarf and heels. OK, not heels; I don't wear heels, especially not in a season that has any risk whatsoever of ice on the ground. But girly flats and maybe even a silly brooch.

The HotPatterns Classix Nouveaux Dolman Blouse is a slightly dubious candidate for TnT status. The difficulty is that the dolman bodice-and-sleeve pieces are huge. When I extend the sleeves from the original elbow length to full length they get huger and can't be cut in folded fabric. I could add a seam somewhere, but that would disrupt the unbroken flow of the fabric. I already killed the pleats in the original pattern, because they broke the flow, too. Well, and they looked very eighties. Yes, this whole blouse wants to be very eighties--I saw Maddie Hayes wearing an almost identical blouse in Moonlighting just the other night--but I'm just not into that decade's fashion.

I wanted that unbroken flow because I was going to use this pattern for prints that I don't want to break up with seams. I suppose I could "match" those prints like people match stripes, but that starts to look like, y'know, work. On the other hand, the failed version of this shirt that I made was very comfortable, so I'm not ready to abandon it.

Next? Next? Maybe the HotPatterns Trouser Skirt. Maybe that Geoffrey Beene thing after all. There are all sorts of Sewing Workshop patterns I've never tried. Or I could actually sew more than one thing from each TnT. Like I'm supposed to. That is theoretically possible.

We'll see.

Whee!

Image: Wikimedia Commons.