Colette Laurel dress

I took my sewing machine in for service yesterday. It was long over due - maybe 5 years? I won't have it back for 7-10 days. Very sad. Fortunately, I finished this dress before I took it in.  This is Colette Pattern Laurel dress.  I think it's supposed to be a shift-ish dress but on me, it's like a loose shift dress.  Despite my continued sizing issues, I love this dress!!!  It's super comfortable and perfect for summer.

I'm about ready to give up on Colette patterns (after I make another 100 of this dress).  The patterns are cut for women who are far more voluptuous and short-waisted than me and I end up having to make a lot of adjustments to the pattern and then the dress once I have it sewed together.  I was really careful when taking my measurements and picking the correct size pattern but it's still kind of loose in the top and I ended up taking 1-2" off the side seams. 

The fabric is a Japanese print that I got on sale.  How can you not love a dress that was made for $10?!  I really love how it came out, even if it's not the way it was supposed to come out.  I have fabric for a sleeveless version that I'll whip together when I get my machine back. 

My mom taught me how to make a nice seam finish on the neckline by making my own bias tape.  It's a lot more comfortable than a interfaced yoke - I'll have to keep this in mind on other projects. 

Happy Summer!

Colette Peony dress

Back in December, I made my first attempt at Colette Pattern's Peony dress.  It's a cute pattern and I thought it was a good "beginner dress" to make.

In general, it came out ok.  I like the pattern and it's a really great work dress.  However . . . notice anything weird about the bust??

I don't think there's supposed to be this much extra fabric in the top!  Colette Patterns tend to be made for women with more voluptuous figures than mine (and those who have much shorter torsos than me).  I have curves but they're compact and subtle curves, not va-va-voom curves.  I am still struggling with believing the measurements I take are actually my measurements so I add in a tiny bit of extra room in my seam allowances.  Add these together and you get what I've been calling "wonky chest":

Last month I worked on Peony Version 2.0.  After cutting out what I thought was the correct size pattern, my mom helped me positions all of the darts and I ended up with a dress that fits a LOT better!  I also made the skirt a little smaller and shorter and took in the waist.  

There's still some extra room, but there's no "wonky chest" that needs covering up.  I'd like to make this dress again, with continued adjustments to the size of the dress.  Now that the bust fits better, I can see that the sleeves are too big . . . and so it goes . . .  The craziest thing about Version 2.0 is that when I wore it to work, two of my co-workers complimented me on my dress!  And my co-workers have never complimented me on any thing I've worn before :-)

Next up: a quilt for a friend's baby, a bag, and a couple of dresses.  And hopefully some warmer weather!!  :-)

catching up

Things have been a little hectic around here lately, thus the lack of posts.  I've been knitting and sewing but I just haven't been in the mood to post.  Spring is coming so I'm emerging from my winter funk, so I hope to get back on track soon.   

I'm happy to report that since January I've finished two (yes, two!) knitting projects.  My knitting goals for the year included actually finish a project or two and to learn how to knit lace.  I took a into to lace class in February and learned out to make this scarf/shawl:

I used less yarn than the pattern called for so it's not quite shall-sized.  I kind of like how it looks all bunched up around my neck (unlike in this photo which reminds me of an Egyptian headress).  

I also finished Madelinetosh's Honey Cowl.  I loved this pattern - so easy and fun to make.  It came out super soft and squishy and cozy.  I've been wearing a lot at work as kind of a shoulder shrug. 

My knitting streak ended here.  I got about a quarter of the way through a new project and dramatically frogged it over the weekend.  I might try to figure out the gague and adjust the pattern and give it another go.  It's a cowl with great potential.

During Friday's lockdown, I had a lot of nervous energy so I whipped up another Colette Sorbetto tank top.  If only it were warm enough to wear it!  Spring has been very slow to come to Boston and I am itching to break out my summer skirts.

I think that's about it . . . next up on my sewing agenda is to finish my second attempt at Colette's Peony dress.   I just need to put in the zipper and hem the dress.  My mom helped me re-fit the top of the dress to avoid the "wonky boob chest area" of my first attempt :-)

And lastly, but certainly not least, I'll put together this quilt that I made for a friend of a friend.  She wanted University of Illinois colors.  I was a little unsure about combining orange and blue but I think it works.  It's super bright and cheery!

Until next time . . . xo

#handmadeholiday - apron

My uncle retired yesterday, after 30+ years at the same hospital.  When I asked him over Thanksgiving what he was going to do post-retirement, he said that he would love to have a second career as a line chef.  You could have knocked me over with a feather!  I love my uncle, and I know he's in love with Rachel Ray and has gotten in to cooking in the past few years, but I don't necessarily see him as a chef.  I think it's because my uncle has always sort of reminded me of John Belushi's character from Animal House: goofy and good at making silly faces.

So I made my uncle an apron for Christmas this year.  I modeled it after a standard chef's apron, though I made it about an inch larger all the way around and used a heavy cotton canvas from Jo-Ann Fabric.

The khaki fabric looked a lot more utilitarian once I got it home, so I used white stitching for contrast to brighten it up.  

I got three yards for the tie and I thought that was a little excessive, but it was just right for twice wrapping the tie around the waist.  The men in my life are not small people! 

I think the apron was a hit!  My uncle unwrapped it and immediately put it on and wore it all afternoon, through dinner and until he went home.  This made me unreasonably happy and I hope it serves him well in his new career :-)

xo

project updates

It's been a while since I've posted.  Rest assured, I've been sewing and cutting, but either my projects have been a secret or I'm not far along enough to share anything more than a giant pile of scraps.  I also started a new job at the end of October so I am still trying to balance work-time with commute-time with sewing-time.

The one project I have finished is (yet another?) Colette Ginger skirt.  Now that I've made three of these skirts, I'm really into the pattern.  It's a great cut for my body and I've adjusted the pattern enough so I just have to cut out the fabric and sew it together without a lot of brain power.  This one is in corduroy, my first non-boring-cotton clothing project. 

Pardon the lousy shot - I took this in the mirror at work. 

I didn't try to match up the seams. The print is busy enough that there's a bit of trompe l'oeil to make you think that I was clever enough to have planned any matching that may have occurred.

At this point I definitely feel like a whiz at inserting an invisible zipper.  Since this skirt is so fitted around the waist I'm sewing the zipper in far further than the pattern suggests (10").  Any less and it's a struggle to get the skirt over my hips.  

I've also been on a bag tear.  I found a great pattern online for a wide mouth pouch and earlier this month I used some scraps to play with the sizes.  I now have bags to match Amy Butler's Weekender bag, a pair of pajamas and the back of a quilt I made earlier this year.  One must always accessorize!  

You may be wondering why I left such a long piece of the zipper hanging off the end of the left side of these bags?  It's an open mouth bag so the extra zipper allows you to open the bag to a full circle, rather than keeping it tightly closed at each end.  I really love the practicality of this design!

Lastly, there's a project that I've only started preparing for.  I've always wanted to make a postage stamp quilt (also known as a "vomit quilt").  This quilt is great for using up scraps as it calls for an unlimited amount of 2.5" squares.  Over the past few weeks I've been slowly going through my scarps and cutting squares.  I don't have nearly enough but it's nice to have something in the works that I can plod away at over time.  

It's been fun traveling down the memory lane of my previous projects.  And I love that I can still use tiny pieces of fabric that I love but don't have enough to use on something larger.  I probably should figure out how big I want this quilt to be and do some quilting math to get a sense of the project's timeline but I kind of like not knowing the end result (this is crazy for me - I generally hate surprises!).  

Next up on my sewing agenda:  I just cut out the fabric for a Colette Peony dress and yesterday I snagged some fabric and the patterns for two other dresses.  I may never shop again! :-)

log lady gather skirt

I was obsessed with Twin Peaks when I was in high school.  It was so quirky and cool and the atmosphere and music were like characters of their own.  In addition to having a massive crush on Agent Cooper, I really like the Log Lady character.  You knew that when she showed up with her log, saying things like "the owls are not what they seem" that you were either getting a glimpse as to what was to come or you were going to be totally frustrated and confused by the episode's end. 

When I found this fabric over the summer it made me think of the Log Lady and her strange ways and I also thought it was the perfect fabric for a quick fall skirt. 

This fabric was too fun to make anything too serious so I decided to make another gather skirt.  I'm pretty happy with the way it came out - it's very whimsical :-)  I felt that my first gather skirt was way too bulky and had way too much fabric in the waist.  For this version I found a tutorial for a similar skirt that suggested measuring your hips and multiplying by 2.1 to get the width of the skirt panels.  This calculation yielded a measurement that was pretty similar to my first version where I just winged it so I still ended up chopping off about 8" from the waist.  I think the bulkiness problem lies in the fact that I have a very small waist compared to my more shapely hips.  If I make another version (who am I kidding?  I am totally making a 3rd version with a fun fabric in spring!) I am going to take my waist measurement and multiply by 2.1 and see how that works out.  This time I inserted the zipper before putting in the waistband which made the finishing a little neater.

I'm really kind of in love with this skirt and hope that it stays fall-like for a good long while so I can wear it a lot.  

(Note: I just figured out how to do some basic photo editing in iPhoto!  Hurrah!  I am very excited because my apartment has terrible light and I take terrible pictures of myself so I always feel like my pictures are pretty horrific.  Hopefully the editing will make a little bit of a difference!)

the summer of the skirt: the Ginger, take 2

My first Ginger was my experiment.  It was the most in-depth pattern I've ever worked with so I struggled quite a bit with the fit and the pattern.  I am happy to report that my second Ginger is a raving success!  I. Love. This. Skirt!!

Helloooo wrinkles!

I made a couple of key adjustments to my process:

1. Sizing.  According to Colette's size chart I'm a 6.  I made my second skirt in an 8 so it would sit slightly lower on my waist.  To be honest, at the end of it all, there isn't a whole lot of difference in the sizing of the first and second skirts.  I still needed to adjust the size of the waistband but I was able to do this in the pattern cutting phase rather than waiting until it was all sewn up to take apart.  The slightly larger size gave me a little more wiggle room with the fit and will allow me to wear the skirt into fall with tights.
2. Pattern.  I transferred the pattern to freezer paper which helped a lot in making sure I was cutting the right size.  Pattern paper is so flimsy that I think I'm going to try to trace all of my patterns on to it from here on out so as to not accidentally destroy (or lose!) an original pattern piece while cutting.
3. Notches.  On my first skirt, I cut out all of the notches on from the pattern in my fabric.  Badly.  So when I needed to take out some of the seams I had very little fabric that hadn't been chopped to bits by my notching skills.  In a genius maneuver, I used chalk instead this time.

  

Tracing the pattern was a huge boon to my cutting skills and it allowed me to easily make adjustments to the pattern - like adding more length to the skirt - without destroying the pattern.  

I wore this skirt for the first time today, while visiting a museum with my brother (though I was quite over-dressed for a trip to Costco afterwards!).  I say enough how happy I am with this skirt and how great I felt wearing it!  Love love love the Ginger!! :-)

the summer of the skirt: the Ginger, take 1

I challenged myself to start sewing clothing because I fell in love with the Ginger.  The Ginger skirt is an a-line skirt from Colette Patterns.  I'm thin but also curvy with a small waist so a-line skirts tend to fit really well and be very flattering on my frame.  I spent the past week sewing the Ginger and I have to confess that I did not fall head over heels in love with this skirt.

 (Is there anyone out there who is less photogenic than moi?  I think not.)

For sure, some of this comes from a pattern cutting problem - um, I believe I cut the wrong size waistband *eep* - and some comes from just not liking how high up on my body the skirt fits. With such a high waistband (and I went with option 3 instead of skirt option 1 or 2 that have even high waistbands) I kind of feel like I'm all boob.

I struggled mightily with the waistband; I had a very bizarre moment where I found myself wondering if the skirt was too big or too small.  I think what happened is that I cut the waistband out too small so when I inserted the zipper I had to line it up with the waistband, causing the skirt to be slightly too tight around my hips.  As you can see from the picture above, I added a little fabric to both sides of the zipper which allowed me to then line up the zipper with the "extra" fabric I had on the main skirt panels.  I then had to slightly take in the waistband side seams to accommodate for my small waist (it drives me bonkers when waistbands have too much extra fabric!).  So, yes, I added and subtracted the same amount of fabric from two different places in the waistband - yoiks! (o_O)  It actually ended up working out ok but man, it was a frustrating experience!

While I was kind of frustrated sewing a skirt that I had been obsessing about for months, I'm not quite ready to give up yet.  I am still leaning and still very much a novice sewist so I am sure many of my mistakes could have been avoided had I had more sewing experience.  I am going to call this Ginger version my "practice" and give it another try, hopefully learning from mistakes!

a lot of dress

When I was a little girl my mom gave me some of her old bridesmaid dresses to play dress-up in.  I loved those dresses!  There were a couple of pink ones, including one with a weird train, and a green taffeta dress that I probably would have liked to wear as an adult.  I've only ever been a bridesmaid once and my dress is a little different from my mom's bridesmaid dresses of the 60s and 70s; heck, it's pretty different from bridesmaid dresses of any modern era!

There are a lot of jokes that could be made about the bridesmaid not "upstaging the bride" in this dress, but despite the dress' prairie-like appearance, it wasn't that bad.  My friend was in the throes of a lengthy hippie phase and the dress had to accommodate a wide range of body types.  All of our dresses were handmade and my mom made mine.  We unearthed the dress while cleaning out a closet and I feel ready to put my Project Runway skills to the test by transforming it into something a little more modern and wearable. 

I haven't completely worked out what I want to do with the dress, but for sure, I'm taking off the sleeves:

And I am definitely removing the exterior "wings" of the dress.  I think the wings were supposed to be a "figure flatterer" for plus size women and spices up what would otherwise be a dull pattern, but frankly I think it just adds a lot of extra fabric where it shouldn't be. 

There are about 5 yards of fabric that went into this dress so there's a lot to work with.  I was thinking of making something shorter and flirtier, like the dress on the right of this Simplicity/Project Runway pattern:

(Source: Simplicity Pattern 2588 http://www.simplicity.com/p-1546-misses-dresses.aspx)

Normally I'd be freaking out about taking something like this apart but I feel pretty calm about the project. In all honestly, while I think the fabric pattern is ok, I don't love it so if whatever I do doesn't work out and is unwearable, it will be a great learning experience.  Secondly, there is so much fabric in this dress (and we found a small bag of 1-2 more yards of scrap) that even if I massively screw something up, there's more than enough fabric to fix the problem :-)

The front of the dress in all its glory:

 View of the back:

the summer of the skirt: the gathered waist skirt

I purposely didn't sign up for a class to make a gathered waist skirt because I had hoped (desperately hoped!) that I would be employed by the date of the class.  I'm still not employed and the class is full but after reading the description of the skirt - two large rectangles and a waistband - I thought it would be a fun project to try on my own.

Fortunately, I found a really really helpful tutorial. The tutorial probably would have been a bit more helpful had I actually paid attention to the sizing of the skirt.  You see, the tutorial's author, Gertie, said that she was "a ready-to-wear size 8".  I am not at all a ready-to-wear size 8 in skirts, especially in a skirt that is supposed to sit on your waist, and not your hips.  As a result, I made the waistband way too big and had to go back and take out about 6" of fabric from my gathers before inserting the zipper.  Lesson learned: do not be afraid of my own measurements!  


Despite the waistband mis-measurement and a disastrous buttonhole experience, I am super pleased with how this skirt came out!

Things I liked about this skirt:
- I wasn't sure about the style at first but now I love it.  It's sort of 50s inspired and not something I would usually wear.  I am branching out!
- If you measure correctly, this is a really easy skirt to make.  
- The patterns on the side seams match up nearly perfectly!
- The tutorial suggested hand sewing the inside of the waistband.  Ugh.  I hate hand sewing.  I machine sewed the waistband and managed to perfectly sew through both sides of the waistband. *pats self on back*.
- This was only my second time using an invisible zipper and it's so so easy.  My machine doesn't have a specific invisible zipper foot so I used my regular zipper foot and you can't tell the difference.
- At first I wasn't sure about the length - I've always viewed mid-calf skirts to be slightly dowdy and unflattering - but mid-calf balances out the fullness of the skirt nicely.  If I had fewer gathers in the waist, I would probably go a little shorter.


Things I didn't like about this skirt:
- If I make this skirt again, I will only use as many gathers as needed for a size 4, not a size 8.  It's a lot of skirt for a smaller frame.  Fortunately, I'm tall enough to balance it out.
- Though I took the waistband in, it could still stand to be taken in another inch.
- The. Damn. Button. Hole.  Seriously!  I spent several hours trying to figure out how to use the buttonhole feature on my machine and I still ended up making it too small.  My seam ripper got a little too carried away so I had to try to sew the rip closed.  Fortunately, when the waistband is buttoned, you can't quite tell what kind of mess is lurking underneath.

the summer of the skirt: the pencil skirt

My first foray into the "summer of the skirt" was a class in pattern making and constructing a pencil skirt at Gather Here.  I was pretty pumped to take this class, because I love how pencil skirts look!  So sexy.  And so Mad Men. 

*rant on*
I bought a cheap-o pencil skirt at the J Crew outlet in March and I love the fabric but I don't love the fit.  Like nearly every other skirt in my closet, it just doesn't fit right.  There are 35 million female body shapes out there, yet clothing retailers offer just 10 or so sizes (size 0 - 14 or higher if you're plus sized and lucky).  There's no way that each garment is going to fit each body type.  And this bugs me.  I hate trying stuff on and struggling with how clothes are "supposed" to fit - and I don't even wear an unusual size!  It's just that my size has nuances that the standard sizes don't incorporate. 
*rant off*

Anyway, I was excited to learn how to draft a pattern that would actually Fit My Body.  I picked a navy blue fabric that I felt was French-ish and loved.  Here's how it came out:

I'm no Joan Holloway but cute, right?  I love it!  But . . .  you probably can't tell, but there is extra fabric on the hips, making it slightly baggier than I felt a fitted pencil skirt should be.  I hate it when skirts have extra fabric in the hips!  It makes me feel dowdy and dumpy and like my hips are wider than they actually are.  So, with a little help from my mom, I took in about an inch from each side seam, and voila! Sexy Pencil Skirt.

I am very happy with this skirt.  I'm not huge on wearing super-tight clothing.  This skirt isn't super-tight, it's just supper fitted.  To my body.  How can you not feel confident when you're wearing something that you made and that actually fits well?