Summer is for easy projects

At long last, my poppy-print version of Burda 4-2014-124 is done. Let me say right here that my next few projects are going to be purposely simple. Or at least not ridiculously complicated.

I do love this poppy fabric. You can read in this post how I fell hard for it . . . but, man, was it difficult to work with. Seam allowances that frayed almost to the seamline before I could get to them, little shredded areas that materialized if the fabric so much as hung over a corner of my cutting mat—this one had me gnashing my teeth. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean. Okay, enough with the qualifications.

I think I might be able to wear this dress in real life if I just sit quietly in a corner somewhere.

The pattern itself is a good one, though not a quick make. There is a complete underdress (same pattern pieces for the six-gore skirt, different pieces, including spaghetti straps, for the bodice) sewn inside the outer dress. With the French seams that I used throughout, this meant a lot of sewing and pressing. Looking at the photo above, seems I need to press that left front skirt seam a little better, ahem.

If you look closely at this next photo, you can see how the finest sewing-machine needle I have, which I changed out several times during this project by the way, still left little "bites" in the fabric.

I made a number of changes to the pattern. For one, I lengthened it by over two inches (but compare to the magazine photo; I'm sure that model is at least as tall as I am??). More important, I left off everything that I thought of as frippery. Frilly details just do not work well on me, so I substituted a simple edging for the piping, and omitted the lace on the underdress bodice, the topstitched batting under the neckband, and the shirring on the sleeves (in fact, I ended up leaving off the sleeves entirely and finishing the armholes with bias binding). I do feel that the part of the underdress bodice that peeks out looks a little plain, so maybe keeping the lace trim there would have been good.

Here's how the neckband looks up close with my changes:

Again because of the fragile nature of the fabric, I had a heck of a time figuring out a way to hem the skirt without it falling apart on me as I went. I ended up using my serger to make a rolled edge, and I'm happy enough with it.

Nature notes:

Photos are from last month, so not brand new, but I still want to give these turtle mamas a little appreciation. This sweet painted turtle was laying her eggs in our front yard one day in early June.

And she brought her sister along to lay her eggs!

The same day, as I walked down the driveway to get our mail, I came across this snapping turtle looking for a good egg-laying place. She is much bigger than the painted ones, like a large dinner plate, and can easily take off a finger if you're silly enough to present it to her.

GO TURTLES!

The long last part of MMM14

Me Made May 14 was a great experience for me. I reached the two goals I had set at the beginning, plus a third that turns out to feel at least as important. The first of my goals was to wear my me-made clothes out and about, so that I could decide whether they would work in my real life. This worked well: some, maybe most, of my makes are staying, some are going, and a few are in limbo, i.e., to be decided at another time.

Next, I wanted to get more comfortable with taking and posting photos of myself. Yeah, I found the photo-taking part hard and got tired of it but just kept doing it anyway, which is exactly what I needed. Now it feels more like: It's not that big a deal! Take a ton of photos, knowing that somewhere in the batch there is likely to be a decent one, and then move on with the day.

Most important, I so much enjoyed seeing and commenting on what other people were doing (I did this on the Flickr page). So many different people, each with their own style, in Japan, Europe, Australia, and beyond—and all of us enjoy the art and craft of sewing. I was blown away by how supportive and encouraging everyone was.

I have to admit that my involvement in MMM, ironically, took away from my sewing time. The only project I finished this month was a very simple one, Simplicity 4020, a kimono top in a jersey knit. This pattern was very popular in its day, which was a few years ago.

So, here's a run-through of the last couple of weeks of MMM14. (Here I note to myself that I should learn how to make composite photos to economize on space.)

The first sweater I made. It's loose and baggy, maybe not the most flattering, but I am sentimentally attached and will never get rid of it. Oddly, this is my husband's favorite of all the sweaters I've made.

Total success story, as far as I'm concerned. I love this tank top, and even though the hemp fabric of the skirt (from the book Shape Shape) is fairly heavy, I love it, too.

A Manequim pattern that I spent a fair amount of time on. It's okay but somehow not quite right—I don't think I'll ever wear it a lot.

I had fun making this By Hand London Victoria blazer, and it can look good when I'm standing in the right position, but the lapels and the lining try to do funny things when I'm not paying attention. Still thinking about it . . .

The Simplicity pattern mentioned above. It's comfortable, I feel it came together nicely, but it is more form-fitting than most things I wear when I'm out in public.

I love both of these patterns: the Vogue 2900 dress and a Burda jacket from a couple of years ago.

Vogue 2900 again, in close-up to show off this fun Liberty of London fabric.

The Jasmine top by Colette patterns and a Vogue double-layer skirt. The top came out well, just feels a little girly for my station in life.

Yet another version of Vogue 2900, in brilliant purple. This dress is very, very comfortable and has a beautifully executed invisible zipper, if I may say so.

Both pieces are from the Japanese pattern book Shape Shape. I saved these for the end of the month because they feel most like me, of all the things I've made.


To all who participated in MMM and those who did not: Happy sewing!

Third MMM14 roundup

Next up in this month's reevaluation of some of the clothes I've made:

The tank top is Simplicity 5970. And really, it couldn't be any simpler. I've made several versions, but this houndstooth is my favorite.

This skirt and top, Vogue 1247, were really fun to make. The seams of the top are unusual, and the pockets of the skirt are constructed in a way I hadn't come across before. These pieces don't see much wear, as the top is very loose fitting and the skirt is very short, but I'll keep them just because I like them.

Cotton sweater from a free Ravelry pattern called Sea of Jeans. It's hard to see the detail in this dark photo, but it has some nice texture and cables. A keeper.

The blouse is from a 2006 Burda magazine pattern, and the skirt is refashioned. This blouse, with all its gathering, ruching, and ties, looks a lot better on the hanger than it does on me. Yeah, that's not generally what I aim for.

Butterick 4978. I'm pleased with how this dress came out in general, but whenever I put it on it just doesn't feel right. Too frou-frou and floaty for me, I think. Can't get rid of it just yet, though, as I'm still attached to the idea of it.

The sleeveless scarf blouse from the Japanese pattern book Shape Shape. No problem with this one; in fact, I love it. Maybe it's time to make a couple more versions in fabrics that I have only a small amount of.

A garden note:

Second MMM14 roundup

Here's a little summary of this last week's Me-Made-May 14.

Debbie Bliss's Lara cardigan, in her alpaca silk yarn. I wore this fairly often during our three years in the Midwest, usually pinning it closed with a brooch that I have lost track of. I pulled it out of the sweater drawer on this chilly damp Sunday morning and found that it is still cozy and warm.

This is the tunic top from Vogue 8914. I used a bit of a multicolored silk/wool panel fabric that I had in the stash. This make has always seemed a little off to me, but it got a surprising number of favorable comments on the MMM Flickr page. The fabric feels good against my skin, so as my son says, That would be a good thing to wear around the house, mom.

This skirt is a favorite, from an old Burda magazine pattern. Blogged here.

Doesn't look too bad in this photo, but this top (Vogue 7717) is never going to work for me. The fabric is so lightweight that it catches and rides up on whatever I am wearing underneath. That's okay, I can tell that the pattern is good for other fabrics. The pants (Vogue 2064) in ponte knit are pretty much like yoga pants—again, good for around the house.

This Friday's theme was the color blue. So this was kind of a throw-away day for me.

Still having fun with this project, but getting decent photos every day is tough. 

Nature note:

This is prime time for birds migrating through and showing up for the season in the northeastern United States. Though I don't know much about birding, I have been out and about with my binoculars, and aside from the usual suspects (including the beautiful rose-breasted grosbeaks), I was lucky enough to see a northern goshawk yesterday, doing an elaborate courtship display, shrieking and diving and all, high in the air above the woods next to our house.

Liebster and a little roundup

Back from Japan, and we had such a good time.

While we were gone, Nancy D, of Sewing in Surf City, very kindly nominated me for a Liebster award.

Thank you, Nancy! I grew up outside of Salinas, California, not too far from Nancy’s town of Santa Cruz, which my friends and I sometimes used to visit for a fun countercultural experience back in the day.

Nancy set a few questions for her nominees:

Do you have a current challenge you are hoping to master to improve your sewing?

Fitting. The method I use now, if it can be called that, is to make a muslin and then haphazardly tweak here and there, without really knowing what I’m doing, until the fit seems acceptable. I know there are systematic and effective ways of accomplishing good fit, but I have not yet managed to tap into any of these. My library includes Fitting and Pattern Alteration by Liechty and Pottberg, Pattern Fitting with Confidence by Nancy Zieman, and other fitting books, and I have considered getting Kenneth King’s DVD set on fitting. But somehow I get lost amidst what seems like a lot of confusing or even contradictory information. What I think I need to do is choose a class or book and commit to working through it. I’d love to hear what has worked for other people.

What is your motivation for sewing?

I love the doing part of sewing. Sometimes I get hung up in the planning stage (overthinking my pattern and fabric choices) and sometimes I don’t quite reach the wearing stage (many of the garments I’ve made hang in the closet—I’m happy to see them there but I don’t pull them out and put them on). But I always enjoy the craft of sewing itself: handling the fabric, cutting, stitching, pressing, handsewing . . .

What do you like to sew best?

Mostly tops, skirts, and dresses. I enjoy making patterns that include a little something different—maybe an unusual shape or construction technique.

Do you have a favorite pattern company?

I have had some good successes with patterns from Burda magazine. Vogue patterns work well for me, too, provided I take their large amount of ease into account. I especially like some of Vogue’s designer patterns for their interesting and unusual construction and techniques (Ralph Rucci!). I've made a couple of patterns from the Japanese pattern book Shape Shape by Natsuno Hiraiwa, and I look forward to trying more.

Do you have a favorite sewing trick that you think everyone should know?

Well, this is more of a general approach than a trick, and I suspect that everyone else already knows this, but it took me a while to discover. I used to think that getting better at sewing would mean I'd sew more quickly and with less effort, but it’s just the opposite. For example, hemming is usually a multi-step process now: put in two rows of machine basting, fold and press along those rows of basting, baste a third time to hold in place, topstitch or hem by hand, remove all basting. It takes longer than what I used to do—press folds in, stitch—but the result is so much better.

Me-Made-May 2014 is on! I only have two days’ worth on the Flickr page (my pledge was to wear something I’ve made five days a week, and we just started on Thursday), but I’m still going to do a mini roundup and evaluation.

Top, Vogue 8535: More wearable than I thought. I just finally posted a pattern review of this.

Dress, Burda special issue from 2000: The fit is not bad, but the length is off. I could shorten it, but there are five topstitched overlapped vents around the bottom hem and it would be a lot of work, for a dress that I probably still wouldn’t wear much. (The theme this day was cocktail hour.)

MMM: For me this counts as a real challenge

I have been coughing and febrile for days, and we are leaving for a family vacation in Japan tomorrow morning, so it is possible that my mind is not working right . . . but I have decided to join Me Made May 2014. I had such a good time seeing what people did last year, and I found a few of my favorite bloggers this way. Why not join in the fun and camaraderie?

My version will be a scaled down one, appropriate to my developing sense of how to connect what I sew with what I actually wear. For the month of May, I will make a point of wearing something that I have made — sewn, knitted, or refashioned — at least five days a week. In some cases I may not wear it all day, but I will put it on, whatever it is, and give it a chance to speak to me. Many of the garments I have made hang quietly in the closet. This will give me a chance to see which of them work, which of them don't work and what I can learn from that, and where I can go from here.

The other key part of this challenge for me is taking and posting pictures of my MMM garments. I have a really hard time with pictures of myself, and at the same time I do realize that that is pointless and vain. I'm hoping that the push to get pictures out there to the community for this fun monthlong project will help me get past the silly self-consciousness.

I'm so looking forward to seeing everybody's contributions.

Pretty poppies

Lots of photos ahead; if you don't like poppy prints, look away now.

In mid-March, my husband and I made a quick weekend trip to New York. (Digression: I love our house in the woods of New Hampshire, but I lived in NYC from 1986 to 1992 and have never really gotten over it. At least once a week I have a sweet dream in which I find myself living there again. Visiting every now and then makes me very happy.) We packed a lot into a day and a half: the Trend-ology and Fashions of the 1930s exhibits at FIT, Charles Marville's photographs of Paris at the Met, a Broadway play in previews, gallery hopping in Chelsea, an absinthe at a tavern on St. Mark's Place, some real Chinese food, and . . . a trip to Mood Fabrics, of course.

My plan was to find a soft cotton print, maybe a floral, for Vogue 1350. I looked with no special color or print in mind, thinking I would just know it when I found it, and then, bam, there it was. I could feel the tag tucked way down inside the tube and got my husband with his long fingers to fish it out. Turned out that was the wrong end of the tube—no price or content information, just a small brown piece of paper with Oscar de la Renta printed on it.

So later, at home, I searched for Oscar de la Renta poppy print online and found my exact fabric made up into dresses.

Well, maybe not my exact fabric. The red print dress is in cotton stretch, and the yellow is silk twill. My fabric is a cotton/silk blend, no stretch. With the information that these dresses were from 2012, I looked up de la Renta's spring 2012 fashion show, and there was my exact fabric again.

Okay, again, not so exact, but it's the same general idea. Let's take a closer look:

Can you see that the leaves are appliqued/embroidered, and the poppies have frills sticking out around the edges? What I bought seems to be one of several "flat" versions of this gorgeously intricate three-dimensional fabric. I'll take it!

I cut a square and gently, gently squeezed some mildly sudsy water through to see how it would react. It didn't shrink, but look at the fraying on those edges. Since it is such a lovely fabric, I will call it fragile rather than flimsy.

My muslin of V1350 came out nicely but on the snug side. (I usually go down a size in Vogue because of the large amount of wearing ease but didn't do so this time; when they say "close-fitting bodice" they mean it.) I've decided to save this pattern for a sturdier fabric that can hold me in where I need to be held in, haha! Seriously, I thought the poppy fabric would work better in a dress with more flow to the skirt, so I'm going instead with #124 from the April 2014 Burda magazine.

My version will omit the batting, piping, lace edging, and the shirring on the sleeves, as ruffles and frills just do not look right on me. I'm still agonizing over experimenting with replacements for the sleeves. Same pattern piece but droopy instead of shirred? Little half-moon cap sleeves? Two-piece short sleeves cadged from another pattern? Leave the sleeves off altogether? I'll need to tone up and tan my arms; fortunately my last post worked and spring has showed up.

A nature/garden note:

This snap out my sewing room window shows why we will have very few flowers this spring. The azaleas and rhododendrons have lost all their tips; even the crocuses are just nibbled stubs poking from the ground. I haven't been able to bring myself to shoo this group of three does and two teenage deer away often enough (especially because one of the does has only three legs), and they have taken up residence. Disaster for the garden.