Summer sewing dreams #1, #2, and #4 realized

Hey!  So I just finished watching the finale of season 4 the GBSB and I cried, which really took me by surprise!!

So it is summer here in NJ, glorious sunny fantastic summer. Spring and summer are my favorite seasons and I hang on to them with all my might.  I eat outside as much as possible, sometimes staying outside til dark, looking at IG periodically while the sun sets.

Near the start of June I made a list of "summer sewing dreams".  I know there are people who sew with a plan or sew to make coordinated items.  I'm just not one of those people.  I sew what I like pretty much when I feel like it.  I'm also slow at sewing.  And sewing is supposed to be fun, not my own personal sweatshop.  So calling these ideas "plans" feels like setting myself up for disappointment, whereas calling these ideas "dreams" seems more appropriate somehow.  I make these kinds of lists frequently.  I like seeing all my "dreams" in front of me.

And somehow, sewing dreams 1, 2 and 4 happen to coordinate with each other (sewing dream #3 was the cherry print dress in my last post).

Sewing dream #1 is the Jalie 3246 shrug.  I wrote a big post last December with tips on how to sew this shrug.  After sewing for PR weekend, I took a 3.5 week long sewing break, and sewing the shrug seemed like a nice way to transition back to sewing.  The fabric is a delightfully textured cotton sweater knit from my fabric dealer Kashi (Metro Textiles) in NYC last year.  I bought 2 yards and I'm glad I did because it is not wide fabric at all!  Normally a yard is enough to make a shrug but not in this fabric.

Sewing dream #2 is the gray skirt.  It's actually Vogue 1247, which I sewed back in 2011 in the same fabric, but this time I omitted the pockets and the horizontal seaming across the front and back of the skirt, which gives a rather lumpy appearance in this spongy fabric.

This fabric is from Jomar in Philly and was purchased during PR weekend in 2010!  I have been wanting to sew this basic for ages, and needed to sew it to get it off my mind.

Sewing dream #4 is the lacy yoke top. This shot up to the top of my list when I saw the same lacy colorblocking on IG that rosiejanesews made.  I really liked Simplicity 8016 when it was released but did not want to do any new fitting, so I took S1283 (the pattern I used when I sewed a sweater from a cotton knit blanket) and cut it so that it had a yoke and a lower neckline.  The neckline and armholes are bound in Nike Dri-Fit then twin needle stitched from the top, and the hem is a rolled hem on my serger since I didn't lengthen the top enough.


 The raspberry stretch lace is from Apple Annies online (2015) and is underlined with raspberry double knit from Michael Levine (2013).  The gray bottom piece is from some gray double  knit from who-knows-where-or-when.  The fit was waaay better in my chunky cotton sweater knit than it is in all this ponte, but it still makes me smile.


I originally sewed a piece of this lace into a tank top for the gym last year.  The raspberry stretch lace will make another appearance in a different incarnation here soon, so stay tuned!


So how about you?  Are you living the (summer sewing) dream? Did you watch the GBSB??  Did you cry??

Be well!

Vogue 8944 again! What to do about the fabric?

Obligatory twirling shot


Thank you for all your birthday wishes and kind words about my Batgirl birthday outfit!!  I had a blast that day at the gym (I actually did keep the cape on for the whole class, as I liked how it looked swishing around and sort of gave the effect of a fan!)



Side

Back
I have been enjoying wearing my first version of Vogue 8944, so I thought I'd make it again last weekend. Since it was already traced, I was somehow able to cut and sew this dress in about 6 hours, which is somewhat of a record for me for a dress like this.  

Interior shot of the binding


About 3 hours on Halloween (yes, I sewed while dressed as Batgirl!) and 3 hours on Sunday and I was ready to wear it on Monday.


Interior shot of the binding and the serging

Armhole closeup




Interior shot of blind hem

My current method is to baste on my sewing machine, then serge it all together after fitting (since every knit has a different amount of stretch--I always baste before serging).  Then I bound the armholes and neckline, and blind hemmed it.

Amongst some red fall color, with my brown Jalie shrug

This fabric is a very interesting fabric--it's black with creamy colored bits, or at least the inside is black, but it does appear brown when worn, so I paired it with a brown shrug, tights and shoes.





I'm slowly sinking into the ground in this shot...





But when I'm wearing the dress, it's like you can see the outline of my bra.  The fabric is actually pretty thick, so it's not like the fabric is see-through.   I have played around with this (tried different bras, tried wearing it with a full slip with different bras) and come to the conclusion that wherever the dress has to stretch (even if I drape the skirt part over my bust and stretch it), it's like the creamy undertones of the fabric are much more pronounced.  And I don't like that....so I'm thinking of ways to try to remedy that....like using those special sharpie markers for fabric....hrmmmm....I will try it on a scrap of fabric first of course before I totally ruin this.  But I'm up for other suggestions too!

See what I mean?




In other news, I've been on Instagram for a little over 2 months now and I really love it!  I've met more "new-to-me" sewists on IG in these 2 months than I have on 5+ years of Twitter.  I'm participating in #bpsewvember and have been enjoying that too.  I need to add the "follow me on IG" button on my blog sidebar, but you can follow me at vacuumingthelawn, where I posted that I got a new sewing machine, met up with velosewer in NYC recently, and I'm now in Austin for a work trip (but flew out a day early so there will be a sewing component!)




As the sun sets over Austin this evening....
Be well!

Vogue 8944

Do you read the McCall Pattern Company blog?  Last year they started doing videos of their new collections and posting them on their blog.  One of the women in the video was wearing this dress and I was instantly smitten.

One of their blog commenters pointed out that it was also in their Fashion Fusion magazine, Fall/Winter 2014, on page 18.  Fashion Fusion combines Joann Fabrics with McCall patterns.  I have to give credit to Joann's; their fashion fabric is getting better.  No, it's not like going to the NYC Garment District, or downtown LA, but they are getting some better fabrics.

It's a spongy knit with 25% crosswise stretch.

Here's the pattern envelope:

I went by the finished pattern measurements and started with a 10 grading to 12; by the end it is probably a 10 all over. (The dress is supposed to be "very loose fitting" so it starts with a lot more ease, plus I was using a knit not woven fabric. I usually start with a 12 or 14).

I was totally intrigued by that above-bust seam.  It basically is taking the place of a dart.   I wanted to match the fabric print at that seam, so that it would be as invisible as possible.

I traced the pattern onto swedish tracing paper first, so that I would have full pattern pieces.  Have you used swedish tracing paper before?  An advantage is that you can sew on it and use it as a muslin!  Of course it is not stretchy like my fashion fabric, but I wanted to get a rough idea of where that seam was going to fall.  I basted that seam, the shoulder seams, and one side seam, then put it on (where the neckline promptly ripped--again, not stretchy--I just taped it back together again later) and used binder clips to hold it shut.

This gave me the idea to take 1/2" out of the top, to raise that seam up a bit.  I didn't want the seam to fall across my bust. I then removed the basting stitches from the tracing paper.

When it came time to cut out the real fabric, I realized that the holes from the basting line gave me the perfect positioning of where I should place the pattern on the fabric.  I also had to tug on the fabric to grain it to get the lines in the fabric to be horizontal.

The above picture was taken afterward, on a scrap, as a not-so-dramatic reenactment.

If you stare at this picture long enough, you will see where the seam is.

Instead of lining it as recommended, I bound the armholes and neckline with Nike Dri-Fit.  I love love love the effect.  Since the fabric turns out to be a little scratchy inside, I wear it with a full slip, and use a belt to nip it in at the waist.  Next time I make this dress, I might try lining it completely in Nike Dri Fit.

The hem is very rounded and instructions for hems like this usually say something about basting that raw edge so you can gather it up to hem it.  A big tip (sorry, I don't remember where I learned this) is that if you crank up the DF on your serger to finish the raw edge, it will start to gather your fabric up (kind of like a fitted bed sheet corner) and naturally curl inward.  

It worked like a charm.    Well, my first attempt I only brought the DF to 1.3 which wasn't enough to get the curl, so I went around again, over the existing serged edge, with the DF up to 1.5 and then it worked like a charm.  (I will note that it worked quite well on my serger (BabyLock Enlighten), but when I visited Lynn last week to show her this tip, it did not work on her serger at all, even when the DF on her serger was all the way up at 2.  Probably the tensions would have to be adjusted too on her serger to get this to work.)


Then I press it with my Elna Press.

Then I set it up for blind hemming.

Then I blind hemmed it on my sewing machine with the stretch blind hemming stitch.    Usually I use a setting of -1 but I had to change it to -2 because this fabric is so thick and spongy.


Overall I love this dress!  I like black and white combinations; I love this fit and flare style.  It does not wrinkle. My boss said that it looks expensive.  High praise!

Flowers from the Princeton Farmers Market this week.

Be well!

Vogue 1351: what would you do?

Somehow this combo of silver sparkly belt and turquoise/teal reminds me of Christmas.

So I went through a little angst about what to wear to the McCalls Pattern Company tour for PR Day.  I mean, my favorite dress of theirs is the Vogue 1351 that I made last year, but I have worn that to several sewing events (ASE last year, PR weekend *and* MPB Day this year).  The red Vogue 8571 that I made this summer?  I wore that to the ASE this year.  The black McCalls 6518 ruffle dress?  I wore that to the ASE focus group last year.  How about Butterick 5559?  I wore that to PR weekend in 2012.  Do I need a spreadsheet to keep track of all this?  Ha!

So, with not a lot of time,  I sewed a second Vogue 1351 the weekend before the tour.  I already had the fitting issues and had saved all the changes I had made on the pattern itelsf.

I have been calling this color turquoise but Peter was right in calling it teal.  So this is my third turquoise/teal dress in a row.  The fabric is probably an acrylic sweater knit from Kashi, purchased during my visit with ATP in September of this year, and I have a little left over, maybe I'll try that Muse cardi.  I'm not a fan of the concept of digital patterns and all that taping, but if something is special I could be swayed, and how many pieces of paper could that pattern take?  Cough cough.

Back (it was windy)

Side

Front with cardi and unfortunate shadows

Front with cream cardi


Neckline

Another view of the neckline

The tag, handstitched by me.

Without the belt

Side view without the belt


Back without the belt



Blind hem is mostly blind.

I serge the raw edge, mark the hem, press with the Elna press, and blind stitch it.

What did I learn the second time around?
So the first time I sewed this dress, it was a woven.  The armholes were a little higher than I like them to be.  This time, it's a sweater knit and the armholes wound up being low.

Both times I sewed the shoulder seam basically the way the instructions are written, which as Deepika and I discussed at PR Day, is a crazy way of sewing a shoulder seam.  Next time I think I will try this method. 


The lining is attached to the cowl which keeps the cowl from flipping out, clever!

But what about the lining?
This dress is lined and originally I tried a thin knit but the fabric was not slippery enough and the fabric was getting caught on the slip. So I took out that test lining....

Then I used the fabric from Gertie's slip kit.  That was the slipperiest fabric in my fabric stash and I merrily finished the dress.  The fabric and lining were not sticking together, but I wasn't wearing tights that day either.  It turns out the lining fabric is polyester and so it sticks to my tights which then creates lines on the outside of my dress which I, a crusader for a wrinkle-free world, do not like, and it also does not feel pleasant to have the lining sticking to my tights.  Secret revealed:  I carried a can of Static Guard with me during PR Day.  I wore the dress to work again yesterday but this time with a nylon half slip between the lining and my tights and that helped a bit.

Honestly, I am tempted to remove the skirt part (and just the skirt part) of the lining and replace it with stretch silk charmeuse that I bought at Kashi's last weekend or nylon tricot that I bought on sewsassy.com earlier this week.


Oops

What would you do???
A.  Leave it.
B.  Replace the skirt portion of the lining with stretch silk charmeuse
C.  Replace the skirt portion of the lining with nylon tricot.

Be well!