FO: Minnie Blouse

  

In preparation for my Matcha blouse, I decided to make a functional muslin in some medium-weight cotton I inherited from Sparklepants' stash. I fell in love with this step of the process during ballgown, when I constructed a fully lined and finished version of the bodice before I cut into my final yardage. It gave me more confidence in my techniques, and helped me figure out some of the nitty-gritty construction details in $3/yard cotton instead of $60/yard silk.

Although this weight of cotton isn't usually suited to garment sewing, this classic print seemed in keeping with the '40s aesthetic of the blouse. It has a cute, Minnie Mouse vibe to it, without being too frilly or costumey, and the bright print keeps it from veering too far into scrubs territory.

 

It just so happens that I had these buttons in my stash, bought during a trip down to the LA garment district a few years ago, as well as matching thread and interfacing left over from the fashion show in 2013. I wanted to make this entire project out of stash, and I succeeded!

Overall, I think this will become a summer wardrobe staple - the shape is very flattering, the fit is neat but comfortable, and the length is good for wearing with jeans or skirts.

Pattern: Colette Patterns Sencha
Size: Size 6 shoulders, graded to a size 2 waist (with size 6 length & waist line)

Modifications: No significant changes other than the size mods. A lot of people have commented that the neckline is a bit too high, but I didn't have a problem with it.

My measurements, for reference:
Full bust - 36.5 inches
Underbust - 29.5 inches
Usual bra size - 30DD/E
Waist - 28.5 inches

Matcha Blouse, Part I

In the last few weeks, I've been following along as several bloggers - including Doubleknit Podcast bloggers Erin and Jessica - have been working through Colette Patterns's Wardrobe Architect series. Although I haven't decided if I want to take the full plunge, it's definitely been fueling my desire to cultivate a more thoughtful wardrobe - and to finally make some of the projects that have been burning a hole in my stash for a while.

First up: the Sencha Blouse, which I'm calling Matcha after the fabric of the final blouse: a beautiful silk/cotton charmeuse with the luminous yellow-green color of matcha powder.

   

I cut a size 6 to begin with, and ended up making some changes. The size 6 was too big in the bust and waist, so I kept the shoulder & sleeve as a size 6, but blended the side seams down to a 2. (I like my garments very fitted, so this wasn't too surprising.) The final muslin has some ease in the bust with a figure-skimming fit through the waist and hip, which gives it a nice blouson shape. I can definitely see the 40s inspiration - I have a rayon dress from that era with a very similar silhouette in the bodice.

I'm already thinking of working this blouse up in multiple versions and fabrics, maybe in some Liberty of London Tana Lawn or silk crepe de chine. Once I've found the right fit, the possibilities are endless!

My measurements, for reference:

Full bust - 36.5 inches
Underbust - 29.5 inches
Usual bra size - 30DD/E
Waist - 28.5 inches

FO: Golden Rectangle Tee

  

I've had it in my brain for the last few months that I really wanted to garment duplicate my favorite striped tee: it's a great layering piece, it goes with almost everything, and it's comfortable without looking sloppy. It was also thrifted, has no tags, and is starting to pill, so I'd already started thinking about how to replace it in my wardrobe.

  

Finally, last week, I did a little patternwork and cutting, and yesterday, I put it all together! I started with some golden rayon/spandex (??) jersey I had in my stash, that I had intended to use in my collection but ended up nixing. I want to do it in stripes later, but I thought it would be a good idea to do an initial version to check the fit. I also decided to edge the sleeves and neckline in stretch lace, since I had a few dozen yards in my stash. (One of the hazards of designing a collection, on a deadline, in a city with no designer fabric sources, is that you end up with a lot of extra materials from panic-ordering three different options on the internet in hopes that one of them will work. Wheeeeee)

There are a few things I might tweak in my next version, but in the meantime, I'm really happy with my new shirt! It has a '70s sort of vibe, which has totally been my jam for the last six months or so. And other than some issues with my serger, this was only a few hours of very easy sewing, for a pretty great result!

<3

Cory

3 Projects

 

1.  Line & Proportion Notebook

This week, I've been holed up on my couch - once until 3 am! - tearing examples of pleats, sleeve plackets, silhouettes, and colors from a pile of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar magazines. The pages above are for a Fall moodboard and a page on Tucks & Gathers, and I have approximately a billion other pages to complete.

Leafing through these magazines, mostly from 2010-now, is really interesting as a study of trends: in the past few days, I've found out that it's nearly impossible to find an example of a sailor collar on a contemporary garment, and that models Karlie Kloss and Laura Stone work a lot, and that the rest of the US must wear a lot more wool jackets and coats than we Northwest folks do, because the pages of Vogue are absolutely littered with them.

So if you stop hearing from me, it's probably because I'm lying in a pile of Vogues, page protectors, and thousands of little pieces of cut-up magazine paper on my living room floor, alternating between cackling maniacally and softly cooing at Dolce & Gabbana ads.

 

2.  Tailoring Techniques

I was halfway through my Tailoring Techniques class when I started the fashion show last year, so I jumped in last night to work on one of the final techniques I need to get it signed off: a patch pocket with a flap.

There's something really wonderful about the methodical care of tailoring: pressing seams with the heat of your fingers; gently pulling a basting thread to ease a seam; topstitching just a thread over the edge of the pocket to secure it. It reminds me that it's okay - and even desirable - to take time to do things correctly, and to enjoy the process, not just the result.

 

3.  Line & Proportion Illustration: Vintage-Inspired Plaid Dress #2 

I did my first illustration for this project a while back, and decided that I wanted to try different illustration techniques for each of my designs; I started with colored pencil and ink, and planned to illustrate the other three with Copic markers, paper cutouts, and watercolors. This is the second technique, Copic markers. The fabric is a check rather than a plaid, on an Hourglass figure with a Romantic style. It took me three hours of watching Dollhouse to fill in the check pattern, but in the end I'm really happy with it. It almost has a watercolor-like look, but it feels slightly more precise.  And this is a dress that I would definitely wear if it existed, which is kinda fun!

Welcome to new readers from Untangling Knots' recent post on Seattle knitters - if you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend checking out the other bloggers she mentions, as they are super great.  Thanks for reading, and happy Friday!

Small Victories

 

This week I started working on some of my large projects for school, and it's been surprisingly great and productive - and much faster than I had anticipated.  I was working on my pants and jacket slopers back in October, right before Mackie got sick and Beetlegate 2013 started full-force.  I was almost finished with the pants and had done one muslin of the jacket before everything went kablooey.  Then I went and lost a bunch of weight, and all my muslins went into the freezer, and the whole concept of school projects went into a big, overwhelming pile of stuff to blatantly ignore.

But then: you know how sometimes you think you've forgotten how to ski because you haven't done it in a long time, and then you actually go skiing, and you do just fine, and you realize that just because you can't explain how you did something, doesn't mean your body has forgotten how to do it?  Well anyhow, this is a real thing, which I'm gently reminded of it every time I can sit down and play a sonata I learned when I was in middle school, or when I can do a Continental cast-on myself but have to think pretty hard to teach someone else how.  How do you do it?  I dunno, you just... do?

It's with this in mind that I've come back to the actions of design: pulling muslin on grain; walking in side seams; easing a sleeve cap.  I thought that I had forgotten, but it's only that I got caught up in other things for a little while.  Yesterday, I finished my jacket sloper, and then spent the better part of an hour tracing out the pattern pieces for my Jasmine blouse and cutting them out of a length of quilting cotton as a muslin.  There's something really nice about sewing things slowly and thoughtfully, even if it means I don't have much to show for it.

I'm hoping that I'll have something sewn up next week, but we'll see.  Right now, the small victories are pretty intangible, but I'm hopeful that they'll keep happening until they're big enough to share.

Happy Friday!

Building an Intentional Closet

Recently, I lost a pretty significant amount of weight for my frame, taking me from a US size 8/10 to a size 6/8.  It's the smallest I've ever been in my adult life and I have all sorts of weird conflicting feelings about it, which I might write about later.  But in the meantime, it's caused some sudden and troublesome logistical issues with my closet, namely that absolutely nothing fits.

Between this and the havoc wreaked by Beetlegate 2013, my closet is having an identity crisis!  So I'm hoping to take this as an opportunity to reevaluate and plan some sewing projects to fill the gaps.  I have a cute little fabric stash nowadays, and pretty much all of it is wonderful: romantic printed cotton voiles and lawns, cheery plaids, and soft, drapey jerseys.  It's an inspiration just to go through those drawers and see what sort of aesthetic I was thinking of when I got these fabrics, and it's giving me a good jumping-off point for building a wardrobe to fit my new size.

 

My first thought is to work through my mini-stash of Colette patterns.  I want to make Hawthorn in all three views - the peplum top in floral cotton voile, the 3/4 sleeve dress in cotton seersucker, and the sleeveless dress in a multicolor-striped linen from Sparklepants's stash.  (The joys of sharing a studio: regular fabric swapping!)  I also want to make Jasmine, a little bias-cut blouse, with some Liberty Tana Lawn I got in Portland ages ago.

So, despite losing the ability to wear the majority of my vintage and handmade clothes - which is a total bummer - I'm excited for the opportunity to build a more intentional closet.  For daily wear, I'm thinking about wearing a uniform of skinny jeans, draped tops, and vintage cardigans; for work and dressed-up days, vintage or vintage-inspired dresses, skirts, and tops.  (And of course, kick-ass shoes every day!)  I want to strike a balance between comfortable and tailored; edgy and romantic.  I've always loved to combine vintage and contemporary pieces, so I'm hoping that this will give me a chance to explore and integrate these two different aesthetics in an interesting and cohesive way.

Ambition, Thy Name is Brocade

 

Because I clearly don't have enough things to do already (...hahaharr), I stopped by the super cute and wonderful District Fabric in Fremont today and fell in love with this gorgeous 70/30 silk/rayon Indian brocade.  Many years ago, I found a turquoise and gold sheath dress from early '60s that fit perfectly, but had some damage.  Because I didn't sew at the time, I let it slip away, and I've deeply regretted it ever since.

Fast forward to now, and a friend mentioned that she'd love to do a New Year's dress sewalong, and I realized that I didn't have anything fancy and quick to make up in my fabric stash.  So the minute I saw this fabric, I thought - hey, I could draft a pattern for my One True Sheath Dress off my sloper and sew it up in time for New Year's!  Yeah!

Unreasonable?  Most definitely.  But what better time to make a tight, sparkly-ass dress than the holiday season?

Patternmaking: Basic Tee

 

This morning I was doing a bit of laundry, and as I was folding my clean shirts, I realized that my drawer of basic tees is pretty sad.  I have less than a dozen t-shirts that I wear on a daily basis, and of those dozen, I probably only really like two or three of them.  These are the tees that I grab whenever they're clean, and then have to wait until I do another load of laundry so I can wear them again.  One of them is a shirt I bought at Powell's in Portland about five years ago, and it's looking pretty sad, but it fits so well that I can't bear to part with it.

So instead of wearing it today, I decided to garment duplicate it.  So far, the Garment Duplication series has been one of the most interesting courses I've taken at NYFA.  It's really taught me to look at commercially manufactured garments in a different way, both for appreciating the patternmaking and construction tricks used, and for recognizing the failings and inaccuracies of mass-market clothing.

It's also changed my thinking about the nature of originality and the ethics of copying.  It might seem like cheating to duplicate a favorite garment, but if the manufacturer has changed the process or the design of that garment, or it's very old and no longer produced, it may not be possible to buy that exact one again.  There's a reason we choose favorite t-shirts and sweaters in our closets, and I think it's perfectly reasonable to use those favorites as templates to design or create new things.  It's always easier to start with something pretty good and change it than to start from absolute scratch - it cuts a lot of time and muslins out of the fitting process.  Although I think it's disrespectful to copy an unusual or innovative design wholesale, I think garment duplicating basic items can be a very useful exercise, especially if the designer uses it as a framework to build upon rather than as an end point.

So, now I'll get back to the plans for my basic tee.  It's pretty typical for t-shirts to be slightly off-grain - the shirt I'm duplicating today definitely is - which isn't the biggest problem ever, but is annoying nonetheless.  I'm hoping that my duplicated version will be just a notch better than the original by fixing little details like this.  I'm also thinking about changing the neckline treatment to a lace edging instead of ribbing; it will dress up the garment a little bit, while keeping it washable and easy to wear.

To start with, I'm creating a pattern map for both the front and back of the garment on a cut-up paper grocery bag.  (What can I say - inspiration struck and I realized I didn't have any butcher paper or sturdier craft paper, so I improvised.)  I have a feeling that I'll have to tweak the pattern once or twice after the initial draft, but I already know that the body fits me really well, so it's likely that the sleeves will cause the most trouble.  I have some warm yellow rayon/lycra jersey in my stash, so I'll probably use that to start with, then move on to a gorgeous nautical-stripe bamboo blend once I get the pattern perfected.

Vintage Fix: Printed Sundress

  

I bought a little sundress back in December or so, in that twilight time before I started preparing for the show when I was still dreaming of spring.  It was a cute shape, but what really grabbed me was the print: stylized trees, hearts, leaves and polka dots in one of my favorite shades of green.  The dress was in great shape, but the hem was coming apart in some places, a patch near the armhole sewn on by the previous owner was falling off, and there was a little hole on the left shoulder.

So finally, last Saturday morning I took a few minutes to iron and re-sew the hem, apply a bit of strategic interfacing, and re-tack the patch back on.  It was fun to look at the inside of the dress - it's very well-constructed, and even the patch is clever.  I barely even noticed it was there except that the stitches were pulling out.

  

The hole was probably the most difficult to deal with.  I cut a little scrap of fusible interfacing, placed it over the hole on the wrong side, and hit it with some steam, then satin stitched the hole closed with some black thread.  It's not perfect, but it's enough to keep the fabric together.  It's not in an area of high stress, so I'm not too worried about it.

 

I think vintage repairs are my favorite type of sewing project.  It's always a fun puzzle to figure out what the garment needs to be functional, especially without compromising the original work, and I'm a lot less fussy about leaving stains and patches in vintage pieces than I am with new things.  Vintage treads the fine line between old clothes and artifacts, and I love that there are so many secrets and skills hidden in each one.

Plus, I'm pretty excited to have this dress ready to wear this summer!

Final Stitches

  

Just a few minutes ago, I finished serging and topstitching the straps of my camisoles down - the final stitches in what has been a monumental, overwhelming amount of work.  In the end, the skills I've learned, the friends I've made, and the beautiful clothes I've created have all been more than worth it, and I'm so excited to see it all come together. 

Now, all that remains to do before Saturday is errands, pressing, breathing and sleeping.  And maybe I could fit some knitting in there too!

The show is this Saturday, April 13th, with showings at 7 and 9 pm.  Tickets are $25 in advance or $30 at the door, available on Brown Paper Tickets, or in person at the school:

New York Fashion Academy

5201 Ballard Avenue NW

Seattle, WA 98107

It's going to be an amazing show, and I hope to see you there!

FO: Krista Dress

Whew!  Today, I'm over at my friend's house finishing the last bit of hand-sewing for the show.  The last two months have been really intense, so it's really great to be almost done!  I sewed the hem on this dress last night and tacked the lining to the zipper this morning.

This is one of my favorite dresses from my collection.  It's called the Krista Dress, named after one of my dear knitting friends.  It's made of wool crepe, so it's a lovely medium weight - perfect for spring when paired with a little cardigan, or on its own in our cool Seattle summers.

Happy spring!