Stashbusting: the olive crinkle top

Oops, the camera caught me cheating . . .

. . . trying to arrange the folds of the front pleat to hang just so, and maybe if I hold very, very still, I'll be able to get at least one photo in which this doesn't look like a maternity top.

Oh, okay, maybe not.

This is view B of Vogue 1412, a loose-fitting pullover top with some nice details.

It's all right, really, as this was one of my stashbusting exercises. I take a pattern that I think is unlikely to work well for me (no fault with the pattern usually, just not a good match for my body), and I use a fabric that I would like to see disappear from my stash. The pressure is off, and I most often learn something.

What I see here is that I could use a different fabric (I've been disenchanted with crinkle rayon since the first time I used it but already had this in my stash)—something more drapey, with some slip, that won't get hung up on whatever I'm wearing on the bottom. And, crucially, I could remove all that pleat business in the front and just make a center front seam below the buttoned section.




The back has some nice gathers where it meets the collar band.






















Another thing I learned was how to insert a little placket in the sleeve opening. But if you look closely at the first photo of this post you will see that I somehow got it backwards; the cuff should wrap the other way, but I couldn't make it happen because of how I put the placket in. That's okay: I get the idea and will get it right next time.

A couple of ideas on things to watch:

Seeing the movie Boyhood recently (which I liked a lot, by the way) reminded me of a very different but also longitudinally filmed series of documentary pieces that my husband and I watched obsessively some years ago. It made us laugh, it made us tear up, it made us squirm, and I still think about it surprisingly often. If you have not seen the Seven Up series, which follows the lives of a set of British children of various backgrounds over the years, do yourself a favor and take a look.

Also British and also really interesting: Whoa, have you seen Black Mirror? It’s like a Twilight Zone about where technology might take us, with a new story and different characters every episode. We’re watching it on Netflix. It is superbly done and absolutely addictive. But it’s dark, and when I say dark, I mean it. The first episode in particular could be difficult to stomach: I will just say that it goes where TV in the U.S. would never dare to go.

And an update on my mother-in-law’s cave house, for anyone who saw that note in my last post:

Danielle has had exactly one potential buyer show up to take a look at her home. And that was . . . Kat Von D. Not to namedrop, but I couldn’t resist telling about it. Apparently the tattooist liked it a lot, but she is looking at a number of properties in southern Spain, so we’ll see. We think it would be kind of hilarious if she buys it.

Wiping away the cobwebs

. . . from the blog, that is. I'm still here, still sewing, and still aspiring to be a participating member of the wonderful online sewing community. I see that I took a long break from October to January last year as well, which makes me wonder a bit. Seasonal inertia?


Anyway, we had some snow yesterday.

(A potting table and a barbecue grill lurk somewhere deep beneath those humps.)

It looks impressive, but the truth is that the very cold temperatures made the snow so dry and light that it was not a disruptive storm here in seacoast New Hampshire. No trees or branches down, minimal power outages—just find a place to put all that snow and you're back in business.

So, in late fall I made a blouse and skirt that I am happy with.

The blouse is my second version of Vogue 8535, which has unusually shaped pieces that are quite gratifying to put together. Look at the line drawings, not the odd renderings on the front of the pattern package, to get the idea. Those curved seams along the bottom of the sleeves are even more extreme than in the line drawings, though, and had to be trimmed back.

My first version of this blouse is unblogged, but I did post a pattern review, and this photo featured in Me Made May last year.

The new version is in a scrumptiously soft black wool-and-Tencel blend from B&J Fabrics. The black doesn't show the details well in my photos, but I think this blouse is a good use of the fabric and will go with, um, pretty much everything I have that can be worn with a blouse.

The skirt is (another) Vogue 1247, but with something like 10 inches added to the length(!). As detailed in this post, I had to make a few changes to the skirt after I thought it was done, because of the thick, stretchy fabric I used, but eventually I got what I wanted.

Oh, I have been away too long! I can't wait to take a look at what all my many favorite bloggers have been doing . . .

A couple of notes today:

Internet: Check out scoutingny.com. This blog is a real treat for anyone who loves New York City half as much as I do.

Some family real estate for sale: My remarkable mother-in-law (or belle-mère, as she prefers, for obvious reasons), Danielle, wants to move on from her cave home in an isolated but beautiful part of Spain. A reporter from the International New York Times (formerly the International Herald Tribune) contacted her, wanting to do a feature on her home. She never asked how they found out about her, because that's just how she is. I wish they had included more photos of her really very beautiful and unusual home, but here's the piece.

Backlog and hop blog

Hmmm, it has been a while. I can't show my latest project because my progress on it is going in a negative direction. Literally. The waistband has come off, pockets have been taken apart, and I'm considering redoing the bottom of the invisible zipper to get rid of that nasty bump. Sooo . . . it's not the finished object I briefly thought it was.

But wait: Let's look a little deeper in the closet, where some unblogged pieces still lurk, for a weather-appropriate outfit that I can show. The top is Vogue 8248, a Very Easy pattern. I did post a review on Pattern Review quite a while ago. Doesn't it look like the exact same shirt as the one I'm wearing today? It's not. The fabric I used for that first version was too stiff, so I remade the top in a nice soft wool that happened to be the very same shade of deep red.

The skirt is Simplicity 9825, a set of slim and A-line skirts with yoke and front center seam. Below you can almost see, behind the unexpectedly well defined tree shadows and in front of the disaster that is our yard at this time of year, the pocket flaps that I lifted from Version B for my A-line skirt. They are fake. No actual pockets here. Not only did I choose this version of the skirt my own personal self, but I also substituted some pieces of black twill tape I had lying around for the suggested (and somewhat classier) leather strips. Fortunately, all the tops I would wear with this skirt are long enough to cover up my cheap trick.

Sue of Fadanista has kindly invited me to join the blog hop. I very much enjoy seeing Sue's elegant and oh-so-wearable makes, reading her posts that are full of insight and touches of humor, and getting to make virtual visits to other parts of the world through her photo-filled travelogues. I'm flattered that she has passed the baton to me.

Why do you write?

Honestly, I started to feel strange about how often I was lurking on other people's sewing blogs without actually interacting with them. I'm sure I could have commented bloglessly, but I somehow felt that having a blog would give me a more legitimate base from which to engage with other sewists. As in "I, too, spend some time trying to make clothing. May I be part of this community?" Looking back, this seems an awfully humble motivation, but I am an introvert who verges on downright social awkwardness, and my humble blog has been working well for me.

Of course, my posts also give me a way to keep track of what I'm sewing, reflect on which of my makes work for me and which don't, and figure out where to go next.

How is your blog different from others of the same genre?

I don't think my blog has any unusual features (except maybe that my posts are so few and far between). My usual format is quite basic: make a piece of clothing, take photos of it, and think of something to say about it. I do try to add one or two notes at the end of each post about something not related to sewing that interests me. This might be a museum exhibit I've seen, something I've cooked recently, or just an animal that has turned up in our yard here in the woods of New Hampshire.

What are you working on now?

The project mentioned above that's not going so smoothly is a midi version of Vogue 1247. I've made this skirt up before, as have many others, and aside from being excruciatingly short, my first version fit and looked pretty great, I thought. I did wonder whether adding an extra ten inches to bring the skirt well below my knees would look wrong, but I think that part works. My fabric, though--an otherwise lovely stretch wool tweed in a soft brick color from Gorgeous Fabrics--does pose a couple of problems. The extra length of the skirt combined with the stretch and the springy thickness of the fabric results in a saggy-baggy look that is not at all what I had envisioned. I'm taking it in all over the place, replacing the pocket facings with a thinner fabric, and adding a lining.

What is your writing process?

The photo taking is the hardest part of blogging for me, so once that's done I don't agonize too much over the writing. This is not to say that sparkling text comes flowing out with no effort(!) but rather that I'm content with cataloguing what I've made, describing any particular problems or insight I had, and throwing in anything else that seems appropriate.


I'd like to see how Maggie of Stitch-n-Thyme would answer these questions, so I invite her to join the blog hop. Maggie happens to live right down the road from me (in U.S. terms, anyway), and I appreciate her vintage/classic aesthetic.

The other person I'd like to invite to continue the blog hop is Cecili of Sewing and so on. Far from just down the road, she lives pretty much on the opposite side of the planet from me. I enjoy following Cecili's quirky, youthful, tropics-friendly makes.



Yet another note on food:

Are these not adorable? I should have put something in the picture for scale. The man I buy eggs from also sells these little quail eggs, and I finally caved and bought some. A big part of their charm for me is the spotted shells, so I just boiled them for us to peel at the table and eat with flavored salt.

A giveaway, because my son knows how to tell it like it is

But first, let's take a look at my latest woven tee:

It's the top from Simplicity 1366 (again), but this time made from one of my treasured silk scarves. The fabric was produced by the Ban Napho Weaving Group in Thailand. I cannot say enough good things about their beautiful work. I felt okay about cutting into the scarf only because I still have a second scarf from them, in even more luscious colors, and because the top took practically every inch of the fabric. It is underlined in black habotai for a little extra strength and stability. This top ranks right up there among my favorite makes ever.

This photo is closest to the actual color of the fabric, though it doesn't show the beautiful sheen very well.

So, on to the giveaway.

Several years ago I bought 3 1/4 yards of silk chiffon from Mood Fabrics. My plan was to use it for Butterick 4978, but since that dress pattern is cut on the bias, the chiffon, with its lined-up rows and columns of cherries, was not going to work. It has been sitting in my stash ever since, and every once in a while I pull it out and try to get myself to do something with it. I thought maybe I could picture something like a longish six-gore skirt with black silk lining.

Butterick 4978: flowers, not cherries

Partly because I'm dubious about wearing this particular print, though, and partly because I have found working with chiffon to be a royal pain in the past, I always put it back on the shelf. A few days ago I had it out on the table when my teenage son came into the sewing room. Though his thing is computer programming and robotics, he also has a strong artistic streak. In a kind but matter-of-fact tone, he said: Mom. Whatever you make out of that, it's not going to look right on you.

Yikes! But I think he was right. And now I am ready to let it go. If anyone thinks they can use this fabric, I will happily send it off to them, any place in the world. It will be worth it to me to get it out of my stash and into the stash of someone who can appreciate it. You can let me know in a comment or email me at pfarr at comcast dot net if you are interested.

Silk chiffon with cherries on a black background, sheer and lightweight, 56 inches wide.

A smorgasbord of notes today because I haven't posted for a while (yes, it's a Swedish word, but close enough for my purposes):

Watching: Borgen is a surprisingly enthralling Danish political drama series on TV about a woman politician. It's hard to find in the U.S. (we ordered the DVDs from Amazon), but certainly worth watching if you have the opportunity.

Reading: The Uncommon Reader, by Alan Bennett, is a short funny delight of a book that involves the Queen of England and the pleasures of reading.

Eating: Delicata squash! It's dense, rich, delicious, and easy to prepare. Cut into half-moon shapes and roast with some olive oil and salt; no need to peel. I can't provide my own picture here because we keep eating it before I remember to get a photo.

The woven tee for me

I have been keeping an eye out for a woven tee pattern for a while. Finding a good woven tee would be great for plenty of reasons, but my particular reason is that I have a small shelf of very special fabrics. I don't mean my single yards of Liberty lawn, or the kind of offbeat and overly pricy pieces I sometimes end up buying on impulse at B&J Fabrics in New York, though those are certainly special enough and I do hesitate to cut into them. The special fabrics I'm referring to are from when I traveled more in my younger days as a single woman and an English-as-a-second-language teacher, supplemented by the beautiful fabrics my mom continues to send me from her many travels (and she turned eighty this year). Handwoven silks from Thailand, Laos, Bhutan. So special I can hardly cut into them--but what am I going to do? Make something to wear and appreciate, or pass them on to my son who is interested only in coding for robotics? (What would you do? Seriously, I'd like to know.)

Fortunately Sara of Mixed Emotions drew my attention to this pattern with her beautiful versions of it. I have enough other favorite pattern sources that I don't usually look too closely at the Simplicity offerings, and even if I had come across Simplicity 1366, I believe that I would have been too distracted by that crazy skirt to even see the tee.

Now I have made two versions out of ordinary fabric: one out of the scraps (blue with white print; Mood Fabrics said cotton but I don't think so) left after I made a version of Colette's Jasmine, and one out of the scraps (rayon, charcoal with white print) left from an unsuccessful skirt made many years ago. So you see, this pattern doesn't require much fabric at all, especially if you don't worry about sewing the bias binding from several short lengths.

A note on what I'm watching:

Have you seen High Maintenance? It's a low-budget but well-done web series set in Brooklyn whose episodes are tied together only by the presence of a particular marijuana deliveryman. I beg you (that sounds kind of strong, but I think it's worth it) to watch the episode titled Rachel. It can easily be found online and will take only 13 minutes of your time. It features the handsome and talented Dan Stevens, and has an appearance by Rachel Comey. Warning you, though, it just might serve as your gateway episode.

That Manequim top

Some months ago I mentioned that my sewing plans included making up #266 from the May 2013 issue of the Brazilian magazine Manequim. I finally did it. The top is a drapy pullover V-neck with lots of details that I liked, and some that I wasn't so crazy about: my version has no epaulets with "spikes."

The muslin I made last summer was not promising. (Rant appears here, in case you are interested.) Basically, the muslin revealed my misunderstanding of how Manequim works. I had assumed that, as in Burda, the clothes shown in the photos were actually sewn from the included patterns. Instead, Manequim's photos feature ready-to-wear clothes (clearly labeled with manufacturer and price, by the way), and patterns have then been drafted that are more or less similar to the RTW. In this case, it was less similar . . . though Melissa of Fehr Trade, who has much more experience with Manequim than I do, seems not to have had this issue, so I may have just been unlucky. The main problem was that the V-neck was quite a bit smaller than in the original:

Once I got over my surprise, this was an easy fix. I recut the pattern pieces so that the neckline was a little wider and considerably deeper. I also tapered the side seams in, from nothing at the underarm to a total of 4 inches at the hem, so I can wear it out sometimes, as opposed to tucked in, without looking like I'm swimming in it.

It's worth noting that this is a size 40, two full sizes down from what my measurements call for according to Manequim (not the same as Burda sizes). Like many Manequim patterns, this one comes in only one size. Looking at the photo below, I think it's too wide through my shoulders even so. I know this top is meant to be a loose-fitting style, but it would be beyond loose on someone who normally wears a 40.

This top needs a very drapey fabric. The version in the magazine was made from microfiber, and my first thought was to use silk, as I so often do. In the end, though, I thought it was a good use for a length of peachskin I had picked up at a Pattern Review swap several months ago. Maybe everyone else knows what peachskin is? I didn't. It's a drapey polyester fabric with a brushed finish that makes it feel somewhat like suede. I generally prefer sewing with natural fibers, but this was a pleasure to sew with and feels good.

Pattern review is here.

A note for TV watchers:

My husband and I obsessively watched the first season of a French TV series recently. The Returned (Les Revenants, in the original) involves dead people who start showing up, alive and well, in a beautiful alpine town . . . but it's not just another zombie show. The series has subtitles, lots of interconnected characters, and a delightfully eerie, creepy feel that reminds me a little of Twin Peaks.

Ratty old sweatshirt redux

I try to look decent when I'm out and about, but once I'm in the house, comfort trumps all. My usual at-home uniform consists of yoga pants worn with a favorite tank top, T-shirt, sweatshirt, or sweater, depending on the temperature. Sadly, my go-to sweatshirt is nearing the end of its life. It is still wearable (just), so instead of taking it apart to make a copy, I rubbed off the pattern pieces. Ta-da! I have reproduced the favorite sweatshirt in all its baggy, threadbare, drop-shouldered glory. Okay, not threadbare yet, but it will get there; I have been wearing it for three days in a row now.

To attach the bands, I followed the method described here by Jorth. My neckband sits differently because I wanted the grain on it to run opposite that on the body of the shirt. The fabric (a French terry from Fabric Mart) has very little stretch on the cross grain, so the neckband stands up rather than lies down against my neck. I basted first just to see, but turns out I like it better this way.

I stabilized the shoulder seams with silk organza selvedge to help this top keep its shape. And if the overall shape is a little less than flattering . . . well, so was that of the original.

Audio files: One of my favorite podcasts to listen to while sewing is Slate's Culture Gabfest. Here I go now to listen to the latest one.

Vogue 1310: So this is what they mean

. . . when they say working with silk charmeuse can be a challenge. It was tricky to cut out, and sewing a decent seam took total concentration. Most of all, though, as the judges love to point out on Project Runway, charmeuse highlights every imperfection in the final garment.

This is the top from Vogue 1310, a Chado Ralph Rucci design. The minimalist simplicity (or apparent simplicity anyway!) of this top pushed all my buttons.

A note on the fabric requirement: When I went fabric shopping in NYC a couple of weeks ago, my list said that this top needed 2 1/4 yards of 60" fabric, and I felt certain I had noted it down wrong. For a simple sleeveless top? I bought 2 yards of 45" fabric. Of course, it turns out that the top is cut on the bias and self-lined, and it does take that much fabric. I wanted to keep the self-lining, so I experimented and found that shortening the top by 2 inches made it so I could fit everything on the fabric I had. The shorter length seems fine in the finished top. The hem does flare out a little more than I would like, but I suspect this is from my inexperience with charmeuse and with fabric cut on the bias, so that I unintentionally stretched the fabric while hemming it. Here it is untucked:

Sewing on this fabric was especially difficult because the bottom of my presser foot looks like this:
Can you see that pieces of the finish have peeled off? No, no, no. Not the way to sew with charmeuse. I pushed on through, so to speak, but I also finally ordered a new #1 foot, along with an invisible zipper foot, which was not easy to find for my old-style mechanical Bernina.



Considering that the pattern has only two main pieces (plus two for interfacing), this top was surprisingly labor intensive. Basting sew-in interfacing (silk organza) in place, basting twill tape to the neckline and armhole edges to stabilize them, understitching the lining by hand, and basting the hems of the shell and lining, all on this very slippery fabric, meant that I spent more time than expected with needle and thread in hand. I actually like hand sewing -- just didn't realize there would be so much of it.



I'm not thrilled with the results I got with the stabilizing twill tape. I stitched the 1/4" tape right down its center over the seamline when stitching the shell and lining together at the neckline and armholes, as the instructions say to do. As I feared, though, this meant that when I turned the lining to the inside and pressed it, I had to either press the twill tape in half lengthwise (hard to do and looks bulky), or let the shell project 1/8" past the lining, which means there is an excess of lining fabric in the shoulders. Maybe it would work better to stitch along one edge of the tape rather than down its center? Also, curving the twill tape to fit the curve of the seam made the tape try to stand up on its edge, for lack of a better description. Just not at all convinced I did this part right. The armholes in particular came out a bit wonky. If I make this up again, I'll make the armholes bigger, too, since I don't have twig arms like the model on the pattern envelope.


















And there we are: another piece of clothing for my life in rural New Hampshire ;-)

Pattern review is here.




Book notes: Trying to read more novels that have come out recently, instead of lagging behind by at least 10 years as often happens. I'm well into A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan just now, and I'm finding it moving, surprising, and delightful.

Estou um pouco desanimada.

No, I don't speak Portuguese. It's just that I've been spending some time over the last couple of days with a Portuguese-English dictionary. (Why do we even have such a dictionary? For the same reason we have a Serbo-Croatian grammar, and a Tibetan phrasebook: You never know when these things are going to come in handy, and I have trouble getting rid of books.)

I was looking forward to trying my first piece from the Brazilian pattern magazine Manequim, but I ran into something odd with it. First I want to stress that, after seeing four issues, I really like this magazine. To my mind, the clothes are beautiful and stylish, and many of them have interesting details that could be picked up for use on other garments.

My choice was #266 from the May 2013 issue, a loose-fitting blouse with a nice open V-neck, but minus the epaulets with spikes.











I made a muslin since I wasn't sure how a Manequim pattern would fit me, and I'm glad I did. Certainly I'm not shaped like the model, but the neckline I got is simply not the same. It's considerably higher and smaller. This is not an issue of sizing, because like most Manequim patterns this one comes in only one size.

I wasn't convinced about the construction of the strips down the front, either, which was my favorite part of the blouse as pictured. At the point shown here, the facing is already attached at the neckline; now you're supposed to turn under the edges (at the lines traced in black thread) and topstitch it into place along the neckline and down the center front. Even with all those seam allowances and edges trimmed and neatened up, this seems like an awful lot of fabric trapped inside what should be a very clean design element.



Here's what I think: The version modeled in the magazine is a ready-to-wear blouse, whereas the pattern provided in the magazine was drafted after the fact to resemble the original but does not reflect its construction or even its exact shape. Maybe only some of the patterns are treated this way? Not sure. I don't think I'll make this blouse up, at least not just now: the neckline is fixable, but the armholes are also tight on me etc. etc. I'm not going to give up on the beautiful clothes in Manequim, but you can be sure I'll always make a muslin.




And now a peek into the stash for a little cheering up, courtesy of Gorgeous Fabrics: