Enough with the sewing already!

I need a break from it @_@ <— crazy-looking eyes emoticon. I’ll write about sewing instead. (Kinda like when my mum was writing a physics textbook, and she’s play computer games to have a break from, er, writing at the computer. Amused her offspring no end!)

I’ve been sewing hard all the lovely long Easter weekend. Mmmm! And I’ve well and truly gone over my (attempted) 3 projects only, at a time, rule. Oops!

Here’s the mischief I’ve been getting up to:

1) All the main seams done on the sunburst-pleated version of this New Look dress, in a “wedgewood” colour sateen. (God I love that cotton/lycra sateen as used in my red dress) All the fitting done, just need to finish off.

Interesting note: The sunbeam pleats looked pretty awful across my tummy. Woulda been fine if I had a nice rounded potbelly, or was 5 months pregnant O_O. So I turned the pleats into darts at my mum’s suggestion, the middle one stretching almost all the way across the waist, the others in proportion to it. Looks fantastic!

I’m gonna try making the collar/neckline wider so it will be cooler. Not sure how it will work. Wish me luck!

2) Sewn the main seams and partly fitted a dress in a mid-grey sateen, in this pattern. (Told you I loved that sateen!)

Interesting note: I’ve always wondered how a trapeze-y dress would look on my hourglass figure. Now I know:  sadly, depressingly loose around the middle, unflatteringly tight round the hip. Luckily I’d somehow managed to cut it out so that it was HUGE on me. It was when I took it in to the right size that I discovered the style looked  awful. Thank goodness I cut it out so huge. I’ve got fabric to play with, which gives me high hopes I can fiddle-faddle round with it and get the line and ease to work nicely rather than end up being an ugly paper-bag-over-the-head kinda affair.

It was, however, when I had to pull out yet another version of fitting-basting stitches that my brain went *click* “Can’t do this anymore! I need a break argh!”

Maybe tomorrow…

3) I’ve almost finished a long-sleeved blouse for my mother for our trip to the NSW Southern Highlands to visit family. (The significance of this is that we’ll need much warmer clothes than we ever wear in Darwin). The blouse is a lovely Monet-ish print (sorry, no photo yet) I received from … argh!!! I think it was Modern Vintage Cupcakes? in the recent Swap Your Stash project, (Such fun!)  The fabric  print was a smaller in reality than I’d envisioned from the photo. For some reason that made it a fabric that suited my mother far more than it suited me. Odd eh? But true!

Her go-to blouse pattern is Butterick 6085. I just extended the sleeves to full-length. I highly recommend this pattern btw. Easy, sews together nicely, seams all match well. It’s flattering due to the darts, including on plus-sized figures like mum’s. A rock-solid pattern. (Should do a review on patternreview.com, shouldn’t I!)

4) And now to my latest favourite pattern. I’m so in love with it!

I need a pair of trousers for the trip to the Southern Highlands *shivers*. Hopefully I’ll be meeting up with Amanda of Bimble and Pimble to sing 80′s hair band songs enjoy cake, coffee and fabric together! I’m so looking forward to it.

Anyway, trousers, yeah. I’ve done the main seams and fitting on a pair of trousers in black “mechanical stretch” polyester suiting. (Mechanical stretch apparently just means the stretch is in the weave, no lycra added.) I did all the flat-pattern fitting recommended – crotch depth, crotch length, hip width, leg width (not exactly an issue with this pattern ) before cutting, and when sewn, I discovered that yippeeee! It needed only minimal adjusting in the back crotch depth and it fit perfectly. I am a Trouser-Fitting Legend, guys! A Trouser-Fitting Legend!

I’m thinking of putting a waist stay or similar in it, coz I know from past experience any stretch round the waist will mean the trousers slide down an inch over the course of the day, lowering the crotch uncomfortably. Usually I just hide a bit of elastic in the waistband but the shaping on these might make a proper waist stay work better.

And just to indulge in more pattern-love (And add a much-needed skirt to my wardrobe) I’m making the skirt out of a raspberry 100% cotton ribstop (ie it’s got pretty little squares woven into it, all in the one colour.). All I did was shorten the pattern in the hip a bit, and voila! it fits perfectly. YAY!

I’m seriously thinking of using this pattern to make something like this skirt in some dark grey cotton ribstop (I <3 ribstop as much as I <3 sateen) Channel my inner steampunk. And as I mentioned before, I need more skirts, especially after losing this one  *ponders the picture and the pattern* Might need to be a bit fuller, which wouldn’t be hard to do. I may or may not have the hardware stashed away.

Last but not least, (actually it may not even be last, I’ve probably forgotten something) I’ve been experimenting with undies patterns (aka panties or knickers. In my neck of Australia we call them ‘undies’), but that would take up an entire nother post.

***

Oh, wait! I knew there was something else! I’ve been sitting on a half-finished blue linen, calf-length version of this pattern for a while, not sure how to finish it off. I’ve decided on a ruffle round the hem, complete with pintucks, and ties in the seams to allow me to pull it up. Channelling my inner steampunk again, and here I was, totally unaware I had one till today!

Don’t mind me

Yes I too have been happily reading you all on google reader. *sigh*

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Simplicity 3673: It’s red, what more can I say?

It’s stunning. And apparently, so I have been told repeatedly whenever I wear this, red looks fantastic on me.

Hmmm. Looking at these photos, it looks a bit loose. I might check that out next time I wear it. It wouldn’t be much to take in the side seams a bit. And oh look! My new shoes. Naots, baby! My feet absolutely love them, even if my social conscience isn’t so sure about them (It’s an Isreali company with a factory in the settlers area of Palestine).

• Pattern: 

• Inspiration:

I’ve been having the time of my life on Pinterest. I don’t know about other people but I tend to have a few different distinct styles of clothing I really like, and Pinterest has been a great way of exploring this. One such style I called “Leafy Green” ended up with a whole lot more red than green, with pin after pin of plain red dresses in a variety of vintage styles.

But wait, I had 3m of red cotten/lycra satteen in my stash. And the above retro-repro pattern!

So I just put them together and love the outcome!

• Fabric/notions/trim used:

Cotton/lycra satteen which because of the stretchy nature of it, needed no zip.

Thread.

• Construction notes:

I hadn’t used this red satteen before because I bought it to make a proper dress version of the Sense and Sensibility1940′s swing era dress pattern I muslined in a very wearable way. (oh LOL!!! I just realised the title for that post is the 1490′s swing era dress. I’m dyslexic. Honest! And it is worst with numbers. Honest! I think I’d better go change it … ) uh, were was I? Ok the swing era dress in red satteen never happened coz the fabric is fairly heavy compared to the usual stuff I wear, and I was worried it might be just too hot. But I made another dress out of some gorgeous soft sagey green satteen (not blogged yet) thinking “If it’s too bad it can be a dry-season-only dress (the dry season is what masquerades as a Winter in Darwin). It turned out to be fine, not too hot at all! So I was confident about using the red satteen for this dress.

As noted, no zip needed. I did the tie-thingy on the neckline because I like tie-thingies on necklines. I did my usual FBA combined with taking miles out between bust and waist because I’m not miles tall. Other people who’ve blogged about this pattern mentioned it ran big, so I measured carefully, but I think it might need to be taken in a bit more, based on those piccies above. Stretch-wovens can be quite hard to get a satisfactory fit due to the stretch, I’ve found.

I did a machine-blind hem on this and I feel very fancy for it. Usually I just sew the hem with straight stitch. Sacrilegious I know, but look how many RTW clothes have a straight stitched hem. And besides, it’s a strong finish and clothes get washed to hell and back here (tropical climates *sigh*). However I figured if the blind hem stitch came apart from washing, I could just redo it. And it does look very nice…

• Cost

Hey, I bought the red satteen so long ago I can’t remember what it cost. Does that mean it’s free???

Oh ok, the satteen available in Spotlight at the moment is around $10 on special (They always have specials at Spotlight. NEVER buy anything full-price there, that’s my shopping advice.) So 3m @ $10 – $30

A reel of thread @ $3

Pattern: that must be free too, coz I can’t remember what I spent on it. Maybe $10? I do know I got it from Spotlight on sale…

Total $43-ish

• Final word:

Eeeeek! Such a great dress and soooo easy to fit to my hourglass figure. (I totally LOVE vintagey patterns for that reason.) I have some lovely lovely blue roses satteen fabric I’m seriously considering doing in the straight style -or do I want to use the skirt part of the straight dress and turn it into a high-waisted blue rose dress? Decisions, decisions…

Oh, and apparently, red really suits me

Camo skirt!

One of my TNT patterns is Simplicity 9053.  Almost all of my skirts ever since I got it have been based on this pattern, and half of my trousers. I love it!

 

Here is the latest incarnation – a camo skirt! I added a few cargo-style pockets on the side and back for good measure.

• 

 

I’m really proud of this pocket! And you can see the purple topstitching. Well… it IS purple, honest! I wanted something contrasting but not predictable red or orange. Purple was my solution.

• Inspiration: I was in love with the camo fabric, and wanted something less predictable than a pair of cargo-style trousers in it. A long, fairly straight skirt with side-slits to the knee is actually quite practical (though I wouldn’t want to wear it bowhunting of course!

• Fabric/notions/trim used:

Camo-print cotton drill, plain khaki green cotton/linen from my stash for the belt. Doubled ordinary sewing thread in purple for the top-stitching. Invisible zip at back. Button and pattern from my stash. The button looked pretty boring and plain, and not the right colour (dark blue) so I dry(ish) brushed purple nail-polish over the top. Worked really well! And it survives washing just fine.

• Construction notes:

I put the cargo pocket on the side but at the front at first. It looked really strange so I unpicked the whole lot and repositioned it evenly over the side-seam. Looked much better.

• Cost:

2m cotton drill @ $9pm

Invisible zip @$3A

Button, thread, pattern from stash.

• Final word:

Well, the story of this skirt didn’t have a happy ending It worked well, fitted nicely, and looked great. I got plenty of admiring comments on it when I wore it. What more could a girl want?

I’ve thought long and hard about writing the rest of the story then decided I will, because it’s not talking about these things that allows it to keep happening, leaving children so terribly vulnerable, and people in ignorance (or denial) about the impact of such abuse on the child and the adult they grow into (if they survive to adulthood and don’t commit suicide). It’s also been easier to talk about it ever since I gave evidence in the family court to make sure my much younger half-brother was kept safe from my father (I, and all the other people trying to keep him safe, succeeded, thank goodness).

Cutting a long story short, my father is a sadistic pedophile, and as a result of his severe abuse of me, I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and am on a disability pension because of it too. He worked outside most of his life and wore army-issue style clothes for work. Mostly in khaki.

The colour of this skirt was just overall so much like my father’s standard workwear it ended up triggering me really badly. Some triggers are easy to work through. Some go really deep and are almost impossible to sort out. This colour trigger was one of the deep ones. It hasn’t ever really triggered me when I see others wearing it, and because this colour doesn’t really suit my colouring, I’ve never really worn it, but I figured in a skirt it wouldn’t matter if it didn’t suit me.

I just hadn’t realised I’d react so badly to it. *sad*but wearing it myself and seeing it every morning in my wardrobe when getting dressed was causing really bad memories to come up. I ended up deciding the kindest thing I could do for myself was to send the skirt to the op-shop and hope it finds a Forever Home with someone else who didn’t have that trigger-reaction to the colour.

It wasn’t the only piece of clothing I reacted to that way. I had some green and black gingham I was making into repro 1950′s dress in this pattern was triggering me the same.

Although the green was a nice kelly green, with the black it kinda smudged into khaki out of the corner of my eye. I did myself a favour and stopped sewing it up and sent the whole lot to the op-shop as well. I’ve got a lovely apple green with roses on it, that isn’t triggery at all. I’ll make that into the dress above instead.

Pattern drafting dreams

I am become more and more interested in drafting my own patterns. I’ve tended to be more interested in the construction and sewing than the actual drafting. But in the past few years, instead of buying yet another new pattern, I’ve thought “I could tweak that pattern I already have just a bit here and there.” I always did plenty of frankenpatterning and even tweaking but I’m doing more significant changes now – and succeeding in getting it to work too! (Always a bonus )

My curiousity about drafting increased when I started teaching a plus-sized friend to sew. Her measurements are just a few inches toobig for the plus-sized patterns to fit. So I have had to teach her how to draft her patterns to be big enough to fit her, alongside teaching her the absolute basics like sewing a straight line. It really hasn’t helped that “Plus-sized” is usually ”A bit bigger but still fitting within the shape and mindset towards bodies as ”normal” patterns do. Which is woefully inadequate and inaccurate for most people I know with “plus-size” bodies. Crazy.

To add to the difficulty, she’s in Melbourne, I’m in Darwin, a whole continent between us. And don’t get me started on how slow my internet is. Regional Australia internet is CRAP. Skyping with video is almost impossible. Believe me, I’ve been thinking it might just be easier to draft a few basic patterns for her myself, and then work out how to tweak them to get different styles, than to do such big adjustments to existing patterns.

Then I started a pinterest account and through that I’ve found so many things about drafting, or tweaking patterns and I’m even more keen. The ones I’m drawn to the most are vintage and historical garments. Like this hat pattern I have from Mrs Depew  which consists of really simple instructions for drafting the ensemble. I haven’t made it yet but I’m really clear in my head how to make it. Although now I know how to do it, I’d probably just tweak another cloche pattern I have, to get the same effect.

 

A step up from that is this 1889 chemise pattern from Tudorlinks.com (This is about as big a picture as I can get.)

The most complicated bit would be the yoke and sleeve. Here is the pattern draft. It is only one size but I’m pretty confident in resizing things to fit my own sweet self’s body. These diagrams make perfect sense to me – presuming they’re in inches. In cms they might be a nice draft for a chemise for my daughter’s dolly

 

The only real snag is that I’ll have to work from the computer screen because Stupid Printer is being Stupid aka it won’t print. I think the error message was saying the moon was in the wrong zodiac house for it to be able to work.

The next step up (As I see it) I’ve already done – drafting a straight skirt to fit myself. I think I’d be more inclined to try drafting my own version of something like these. I could do with a pair of “Step-ins” I’m sure

 

Also regarding Pinterest, I did something really rash and created a board for my sewing list. It’s HUGE!!! And it is missing a few things like the above chemise and hat. I’m not sure if I feel overwhelmed and intimidated when looking at that board, or just excited

I wish…

I didn’t get a chance to do the whole “new year, what am I gonna make of it” (no pun intended post. Real Life took over. I really thing Real Life ought to be banned from taking over Online Life. I’m trying to get back into the swing of blogging, with a goal of one blog post a week at least.

Anyway I was going through my stash looking for a particular fabric. White broadcloth. I have a separate stash of white fabrics like muslin and japarra (Weirdly good as a sew-in interfacing) and I thought the white broadcloth was with them. It wasn’t, but in looking for it, I came across a UFO that I honestly think is going to forever be a UFO. And I just thought wistfully  ”I so wish I could just throw out the things I’ve sewn that were mistakes, or don’t fit into my lifestyle or just never quite worked as well as I want to.”

I tend to hold onto that kinda stuff in the hopes that I’ll refashion them into something that does work. Sometimes I do. Sometimes quite spectacularly well. For eg this skirt here just didn’t work too well in its original incarnation but I turned it into something that though I don’t wear it very often, certainly works in my wardrobe, looks good and makes me feel good when wearing it. Win! But there are other things like the UFO I saw today, that just won’t. Or I’m so totally OVER I don’t want to.

I have to explain what this UFO is. It’s a pinky-lilac silk dupion skirt and top from this pattern here (The outfit on the right):

 

A friend was getting married at 11am on the foreshore overlooking the sea. Beautiful location! Imagine that pathway is actually grass (Like it is further along where the ceremony took place.) Nice place to get married huh? (That path is so beautiful to ride along, for the record! One of my fave haunts.)

In addition to making my own outfit out of very expensive silk dupion, I was doing a few adjustments to the bridesmaids’ outfits. My friend had ordered them when they were down south and the hems of some of them weren’t quite the right height, so she asked me if I could take them up. They were polyester and if you’ve read much of this blog you’ll probably have noticed I mostly sew natural fibres. So there I was, about to press one of the hems and I forgot my iron was on the cotton setting. I burned a huge hole in the front of the $900 bridesmaid dress 3 days out from the wedding. Oh. My. God.

I ran into the bedroom and literally curled up on the floor in the corner and cried and shook and basically had a little nervous breakdown. Then I called my mum. (I’ve told her she’s not allowed to grow old and die, coz I don’t know what I’d do without her!)

Mum dropping everything straight away and came to the rescue. See why I don’t want to live without her in my life? She’s awesome! And she was even more awesome coz she found a fix for it. The dresses had a sort of mock-wrap-around front that curved up to the waist. I’d burnt a bit of that about 4 inches in. Mum said “You could just adjust that curve, cutting out the burnt bit, and it wouldn’t look too different from the others.”

I’d rung the bride too, and Confessed All. She was so totally over the whole wedding preps she said she just didn’t care, it was fine. And she came over to see what could be done. But by the time she arrived mum had already worked out what I could do. And in the end, especially because all three bridesmaids, though wearing the same style of dress, were all very different body types and heights, you could only see it looked a bit different if you already knew it had happened.

Oddly enough I never got my own outfit finished, and it’s still sitting there in all of its $80 worth of silk dupion glory, unfinished. And since I was still quite ill in those days and skinnier, it’s probably too tight on me now too.

For the record, it would be around a size 10 Australian. Anyone thinks they could do something with it, please comment and let me know. I’d be very happy to send it on its way to a better life than I’m giving it at the moment.

Hmmm. That last sentence might describe why I hang on to things so much. I feel for them. I’m anthropomophising my sewing projects! The point of the whole post was just a wish that I could let these things go more easily. In fact that is kind of like one of my new years resolutions I made about sewing. That I wouldn’t sew stuff I didn’t like sewing, like yoga pants for pilates in fabrics that don’t last very long because that is all I can get. Go buy a pair from K-mart already!!! If I don’t like sewing it, it becomes a chore and I love sewing too much to do that to it.

Maybe I need to make another new years resolution (or this could be a birthday resolution, a present to myself, seeing how my birthday is saturday!) If something just isn’t working or isn’t really getting finished coz I’ve lost enthusiasm for it, no matter how much work I put into it and no matter how much the fabric cost, then let it go.

Not sewing, painting!

It was one of those occasions I should have got a photo but was too upset to remember to. I wanted to laugh but I could only cry, even though inside I was like “I want to laugh, why am I crying?”

I’m painting my bedroom lavender, and had the paint tray on the top of the ladder to paint up high. Then as I got down very very carefully the paint tray fell on me in spite of my care. All over me, and through my hair, all over the ladder and floor (ceramic tiles, it’ll clean off ok).

One of my friends suggested calling me Lavender Locks. Gees thanks Rose! (I did manage to get it all out of my hair thankfully, but my very curly hair hates shampoo and I don’t generally use it (This is very normal for people with curly hair. Shampoo = frizz.) I just use conditioner, it washes the hair and scalp fine but doesn’t make it frizz. But it got a good dose of shampoo last night and it’s wildly frizzy today!)

I so wish I had thought to get mum to take a photo of me covered in lavender paint. *sad*