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.

Perfume: Perfume? Oh, yeah.

So in all this babbling about sewing and other things, I haven't been ignoring my perfume collection. I've been wearing perfume, I just haven't been making a meal of it. And I find that my perfume taste under those circumstances is a bit different.

For example, there's k. hall designs Cypress and Cassis, a solid perfume that I wear so rarely that I tried to give it away. The other day I wanted a solid perfume for minimal projection, and I was bored with Pacifica Tuscan Blood Orange, so I grabbed this one. And after a few hours with it, I've concluded that, no, I'm not giving it away, I'm putting it toward the front of the collection for a while. It has a medicinal edge, probably the cypress, and a "clean" vibe, but it's a clean that doesn't depend on either soapy musk or watery notes. The cassis is in there, but it's so well blended with the cypress that I don't read it as "fruity"; fruity annoys me. The whole package makes me feel as if I smell interesting, and I like that.

If it really were low-projection, I'd claim that as an added advantage; I like my perfume to be largely undetectable until the hug range. Unfortunately, Himself complained about it at a range of three or four feet, so apparently it is neither low-projection nor Himself-approved.

Moving on, there's Balenciaga Rumba, acquired for the "under twenty" series, which I will get to one of these days. Mals at Muse in Wooden Shoes predicted that I wouldn't like this. Having met me, and knowing what I now know about Rumba, I would have concurred with this prediction. But, contrarily, it turns out that I love it. It's sticky and fruity and slightly cloying and fabulous.

Wild divergence: Long ago, I did computer support. Although our customers were employees of our own company, under some circumstances we had to ask to be paid for our work from the customer's departmental budget. A coworker once summarized the attitude of a cat, versus that of a dog, in those terms:

"Ya got a charge number?"

OK, maybe you have to have worked there to burst out laughing, as I did. But in the cat people versus dog people contest, Rumba is definitely a "dog" perfume, eager to please and puffing friendly pungent fumes at you as it drools just a little. It would never dream of asking for a charge number; it just wants to give. I'm a cat person, but sometimes I can appreciate the uncomplicated adoration of a dog.

Image: By Anthony1592. Wikimedia Commons.

Sewing: Did the Buttonholes!

I hate buttonholes.

Those of you that don't read or talk about crafts online may not be familiar with the term UFO, or UnFinished Object. Every sewer or knitter or needlepointer or quilter other crafter that I've ever known has lots of UFOs hanging around their house, projects that were started with enthusiasm but never finished. There are infinite reasons for never-finishing, from not knowing how to do a step, to just rushing ahead to the next project. Or disliking a step, like, say, the buttonholes.

I have a shirt made from the HotPatterns Plain & Simple Princess Shirt pattern hanging in the closet, a UFO from perhaps five years ago. It's been waiting all that time for the shirt hem, the sleeve hems, and the buttonholes and buttons. I don't remember why it got stalled. The collar is wrong, but I didn't know that back then, and it is at least symmetrical and without wrinkles, so "wrong" is a matter of degree. It's not the fabric, which is a beautiful blue linen that I admire every time I see it. Odds are that something shiny crossed my vision and I ran away.

Yesterday I got another HotPatterns Plain & Simple Princess shirt (in lime green Brussels Washer, a linen/cotton blend) done to the same point, around 10pm. I stopped for a sandwich and, I thought, for the night. But the shirt, probably hearing fearful stories from the blue linen one, kept nagging at me.

First I stitched down the front facings, something I've been considering but thought would look funny. After pressing, it looked just fine. More nagging from the shirt, and I hemmed the bodice. I learned in the process that Brussels Washer is rather substantial, so that the front corners of the shirt (where you have two layers of fabric due to the facing, plus two more when you turn the hem down, plus two more when you turn it down again) were too fat. But I gave it a deeper hem to give the fat bit some space to relax, and topstitched and pressed it into submission, and it's wearable, if not perfect. (Edited to add: Oh. Yes. Now I see what I did wrong; you just don't hem a facing that way. Next time, I know which Outside Instructions to drag out.)

Having learned from that, I finished the edges of the sleeves with silk organza bias strips (a Hong Kong finish?), so that when I turned down that finished edge I ended up with only two layers of the main fabric, instead of four. (The thickness of silk organza doesn't really count.) That produced a much more fluid hem, and I'll remember the next time I make a version of this shirt in a substantial fabric. Of course, the white organza strip is also visible inside the sleeve when I gesture. I suppose I could buy a rainbow of single-yard pieces of China silk so that I can match colors when I do a Hong Kong finish in the future. Or I could choose to admire the crisp white line as a sign of a clean-finished interior. That's my vote today.

So nothing was left but the buttonholes. I hate buttonholes. I hung the no-doubt-still-nervous shirt up and went to bed.

And got up today, and took a bubble bath, and went out to lunch (Charcuterie plate! Fried chicken! Fruit bowl! Gluttony!) and went to the grocery and came home and played on the web and cleaned the kitchen and did laundry and folded laundry and played on the web and tidied the back room and all the while the shirt was begging, "What about meeeeeeeee?" Then I had a sandwich and played on the web.

At 7:30 I think the shirt resorted to hypnotism. I found the sewing machine manual, the fancy sensor buttonhole foot, and the card of small clear buttons left over from... huh. Probably from the blue UFO, now that I think about it. I put together a sample swatch of Brussels Washer and organza to match the shirt's facings, for testing buttonholes. I did five sample buttonholes and figured out juuuuust the right pressure to make the wad of thread from the first half of the buttonhole go under the presser foot without jamming when making the second half, but not so much that I distort the length of the buttonhole. I dug out the pattern to remember where the center front line was supposed to be. I basted a line of stitches at the exact position for the line of buttonholes. I put on the shirt. I marked the bust point and the lapel point. I measured the rest of the buttonholes. I inserted pins. I sewed the buttonholes (gasp) and cut them (bigger gasp; there's always the risk of cutting past the buttonhole and inflicting a mortal wound on the shirt) and removed the basted guide line and sewed on the buttons. (Everybody fall down now.)

See why I hate doing buttonholes?

The shirt is done. I started out to create a shirt with buttons. I created a shirt with buttons instead of a UFO. I'm not absolutely positive that I've achieved this since high school Home Ec. I'm only fairly sure it's legal.

Above is the shirt. The throw pillow that wore the notched collar in the photo of the last post was feeling left out, so they're posing together.

Bwahaha!

Sewing: Bwahaha! (That collar)

Remember that collar? The Hot Patterns notched collar that rated a nine-page thread on PatternReview and a very fine tutorial on Off the Cuff? The one that defeated me and destroyed a perfectly nice rayon Dolman Blouse?

Bwahaha!

At least, half a bwahaha. The good part is that with the aid of that tutorial, I got a half-decent looking version of this collar done.

The bad news is that I somehow managed to attach it to the wrong side of the shirt - a muslin mock-shirt, so there's no tragedy there. I'm just startled that I managed to get the whole thing constructed and half of it pressed before I realized that it was wrong side around.

But all the same, I proudly clothed a pillow with the result (I only cut the shirt pieces down to the middle upper arm, because the collar is all I care about) and present a photo, above. I should now be able to produce an adequate Hot Patterns Plain & Simple Princess Shirt. At least, if I can remember to put the collar on the correct side.

Bwahaha!

Photo: Mine.

Rambling: SWAP 2012 (Again I talk about the sewing.)

NaNoWriMo is over. So I need a substitute, right? Right?

Well, there's this thing called a SWAP, or Sewing With A Plan. The Stitcher's Guild hosts an annual SWAP contest. This year's rules, as briefly as I can describe them, call for participants to:

• Choose seven garment types from a list of fourteen choices. The choices include things like collared shirt, tee, pants, skirt, jacket, and so on.
• Make one example each of those seven garment types.
• Make another example each of four of the seven. That is, repeat the garment type, not necessarily the pattern. That makes a total of eleven garments.
• All eleven garments must be sewn by the participant, but two of them can be from before the beginning of the contest.
• The other nine must be sewn between 12/26/2011 and 4/30/2012.

People generally have a theme for their SWAPs, and a title, but I haven't gotten that far. Rather like typing at blinding speed for NaNoWriMo, I'm going to count any garment that, well, counts. Later, I might substitute in spiffier things. On those grounds, I've technically finished (or almost finished) four out of the eleven garments:

1 - Lazy Skirt (Skirt): I already own at least four self-sewn skirts, so I'm counting one as one of the two before-the-contest garments.

2 - Goth-Daffodil Cooking Coat (Overshirt): As a test garment/wearable muslin for the delightfully weird Liberty Shirt from Sewing Workshop, I sewed this up from black cotton printed with white daffodils. It's pretty weird to wear outdoors, so I'm calling it a cooking coat. (Fried chicken splatters, after all.) I intend to make a closure with a pig-shaped button and some chicken-and-egg ribbon. A cooking coat may be pushing the category of "overshirt"; we'll see if this one remains a part of the SWAP.

3 - Pink Girly Top (Blouse or shirt, collar optional): The Sewing Workshop Cowl Top in pink silk crepe, previously blogged. I used the pattern pretty much unchanged, except for adding triangular godet/gusset things at the hem to make more room for my hips.

4 - Red Polka Dot Girly Top (Blouse or shirt, collar optional): The Sewing Workshop Cowl Top again, in red rayon with white polka dots. This represents Version Two of my copy of the Cowl Top pattern. Who knew that sewing would require version control? But I'm finding that it really does; without versions it's only a matter of time before I cut an un-altered sleeve and try to install it into an altered armhole.

In this version, I shortened the hem a fraction to make it shorter than any likely jackets or cardigans, shortened the sleeves to wrist length, sewed everything but the cowl in French seams, pre-hemmed the pieces before assembly (a little weird, but it solved the rippling hem problem that I had on the pink one), and topstitched the cowl instead of hand-hemming it. I abandoned the triangular thingies; they went in just fine in the silk crepe for the first top, but I failed three times in the wobbly rayon of the second one, so I finally ripped them out and did normal side seams. Therefore, I'll be tucking this shirt in.

In Version Three I'll modify the main bodice pieces to make more hip room. I may also make hem templates to avoid the pre-hemming weirdness while still avoiding the ripply weirdness. I'm debating whether to remove some fabric from higher in the bodice, but I'm pretty sure that that would be just silly--this shirt wants to be loose and roomy. I also really want to find a way to do a completely clean finish, like a French seam, on the cowl seam, but so far I'm not sure how.

My construction skills are already improving; this version is greatly improved from the pink one. Unfortunately, I don't look so good in it. That is, I really like the head-and-shoulders view in the mirror; it's just what I wanted. But the shoulders-to-waist view makes me look a little, er, substantial. It appears that polka dots call for a few distracting details like a collar and buttons, rather than just an expanse of flowing fabric. So I'll be wearing this blouse under a cardigan or jacket and will make future Cowl Tops from solids.

So, how about garments five to eleven? Some of them are planned.

5 - Yet Another Black Shirt (Button Shirt With Collar): The cooking jacket was OK, but the shoulders were too wide, giving it a dropped sleeve when it's not meant to. I used the "narrow shoulders" alteration in Sandra Betzina's Fast Fit book to change the pattern and I (gulp) went ahead and cut it out in black linen without testing it in muslin. I may regret this, but that linen's been hanging around for at least ten years, so I'm declaring it to be fully depreciated. Or whatever you call it for sewing stash.

6 - Weird Skirt (Skirt):  I'm realizing that my taste for weird extends to sewing patterns as well as perfume. The Liberty Shirt is weird. And when I decluttered much of my pattern collection a few years ago, I kept all the Issey Miyake and Folkwear. Vogue 1082, the skirt that I'm tentatively planning to make for garment 6, is subtly weird, with lots of cool architectural seams.

Now, going full-fledged weird with this particular skirt requires absolute perfection in topstitching. I don't have that talent yet, so I'll be making it up out of some quiet matte-finish solid, and skipping the topstitching.  There's a narrow slightly pegged version and a much fuller version; I'll be starting with the weirder narrow version. For a later project, the fuller version looks good, too--plenty of walking room with not a bit of excess fabric further up where it's not needed.

What to make it in? That question highlights a conflict between sewing and decluttering. See, it's common to make a test garment or "muslin" of a pattern in cheap ugly fabric. The fabric might be actual muslin or some length of textile ugliness that you bought while visiting a fabric store with impaired judgement. That's not the decluttering conflict--muslins are made to be thrown away.

But next comes the "wearable muslin". Once a muslin is done, you may want to retest the altered pattern in, say, seven-dollar-a-yard bargain rayon bought on sale before you cut into the fifty-dollar-a-yard Silk of Majesty and Grandeur. If you succeed, you're ready to move on to the expensive fabric, but you also have a garment that is, by definition, a compromise. Unless you're fifty miles away from the nearest laundering facilities, how many compromise garments do you want in the house? As they start to stack up, will you actually wear them?

I have three different fabrics that are perfectly suitable for Vogue 1082, but I don't actually like any of them, at least not for a skirt. I also have a lovely nubbly black wool that I want for the skirt in the end, but I'm afraid to ruin it. It's a thicket.

7 - Standard Shirt (Button Shirt With Collar): I want a shirt that I can make up several times in different shirting fabrics, but I can't seem to perfect a set-in sleeve in any of the candidates tried so far.  Burda 7429 has dropped sleeves and appears to have a fairly fitted bodice, and might be just what I want while I'm avoiding the set-in sleeves. I haven't so much as unfolded the pattern yet, though, so we'll see.

8 - My Kingdom For a Dress! (Dress): I've been fighting with two different princess-seamed dresses, but I don't know if I'm going to win either battle. First was the Hot Patterns Wong-Singh-Jones Kimono Wrap Dress. After my first attempt at a bodice-and-sleeves muslin, I realized that I'd have to lengthen the bodice, modify the sleeve to account for a larger upper arm, possibly remove some ease from the sleeve cap or completely redraft the sleeve to be properly asymmetrical, and modify the shoulders to account for narrow shoulders. That's before I get even as far as my waist.

I got discouraged and tried the Petite Plus Princess Dress, because it's intended for people who are round for their height, like me. It turns out that the size that the measurement chart recommends for me is too large everywhere, so I'll need to start over with a smaller size, tracing all five pieces again--and if I guess wrong on the size, possibly again. Once I trace that smaller size, I'm pretty sure I'll still have to do a low bust adjustment and narrow the shoulders.

I'm going back to Wong-Singh-Jones; if I have to put this much work into a pattern, I prefer its shoulder princess seams to the armhole princess seam of the Petite Plus dress. But, sheesh. What's worse is that this is probably not an abnormal amount of work for fitting a pattern.

But, hmm. I dug into the pattern box to have another look at those two patterns and ran across Stretch & Sew 526, a pattern so old that I don't see even a mention on PatternReview. I remember making a perfectly satisfactory loose cotton summer dress from this. It has barely dropped sleeves, getting me out of the set-in sleeves drama, but still with the shape of a normal sleeve. I don't like the empire waist, but in digging through the envelope I see I already altered that away. I suspect that the scoop neck version doesn't even require a real button closure. Unfortunately, the dress is packed away with the summer clothes, so I can't try it on.

9: Again, again! (Dress): If I put that much work into a dress pattern, I'm making it at least twice.

10: Cloaklike object (Overcoat or Raincoat; it seems clear in the rules discussion that a cloak counts for this type): I don't know what kind--the Folkwear Kinsale Cloak, maybe? Or some much smaller elbow- or hip-length thing like Vogue 8605? Vogue 1476, a freaky draping cloak/coat that one of the reviewers says has been in the catalog for twenty years?

Oh. Never mind. Forget all that. Look at Vogue 2232. Architectural. Weird. Look at the version that appeared in Threads 91, as depicted in this post from Now Sewing. Want.

Number 11? I just don't know. The rules do say that if you wear pants, you should include them in your SWAP, and I do wear jeans and occasionally shorts. So that's what this ought to be. But.

And by the way, is it wrong to want a dressmaker's dummy just so that I can photograph my garments on it for blogging and pattern reviews? Probably.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.