FO: Black Dress

Oh man.  This one has been a long time coming, and you can probably tell that I'm pretty happy about it!

This black dress was originally sketched on the back of a piece of notebook paper sometime in February or March of last year.  Nine body muslins and six sleeve drafts later, I finished the fit; last week - five months after cutting the pattern pieces out of real fabric - I sewed on the hook and eye and gave the dress a final press, and here we are.

This dress is by no means perfect - and I'll leave out the juicy details of every little thing I would do differently if I were to make it again, and all the little fit issues that would drive me nuts if I let them - but I am really proud of it.  It fits me beautifully through the bust and waist, two of my most difficult areas to fit; it's wonderfully retro without being too literal; it's actually pretty simple, but still looks designed.  I can imagine wearing it to a job interview, or a party, or a funeral - all in all, it's a very functional little black dress.

Thanks to Lumberjack for the pictures!  Happy Friday!

Cutting Cloth

 

A month or two ago, I was starting to get really antsy about one of the fabrics that I hadn't been able to find yet.  I scoured local fabric shops, asked about special ordering, and looked online.  I finally got a swatch in the right color from an online fabric retailer, only to find that the fabric was twice as thick as I wanted and $85 a yard.  For some reason, the fabric that I was looking for - bubblegum pink in a wool crepe, or really any blend of natural fibers - was just... non-existent.

So I enlisted my mom's help, and she ended up taking a day trip down to Portland to look for my elusive pink fabric.  And she not only found my color, she found it in two different fabrics: a wool with a textured stripe, and this cotton & silk damask with a rope pattern.  I ended up choosing the damask, since I felt as though it would fit the collection better.

So Sunday night, I stayed at school until midnight cutting out the new dress.  It's a sleeveless pink version of my black dress, and I'm hoping that it will read as a kicky retro cocktail dress - just a little bit more fun than the black dress.  I'm going to start sewing it tomorrow, and I'm excited to see how it works up.

Sewing All The Things

   

Things are happening!  This has been a tough week personally, but a very productive one at school.  Lumberjack went down to Portland for a work trip, so I've been sewing my little face off every day.  In the last two days alone, I've cut and sewn an entire garment - the little blouse above.  Hopefully I can do a real finished object post soon. 

It was originally going to have a mesh yoke, but I decided as I was cutting it out that using my extra cream jersey would eliminate the problem of finding a bra that fit properly underneath it.  This way, it maintains the feel of the illusion sweetheart neckline, but the cream is a little higher contrast, and there won't be any bra straps showing through.  Overall, it's a punchier look than I had originally imagined, but I love it.  Bonus: it looks like a strawberry milkshake.

I've also made progress on my second sweater prototype, which is a cropped version of Ondrea.  I pinned it to Ondrea today to double-check the length, and it hits in just the right place.  I've actually already started the Loft version already, but I'm actually loving the prototype version a lot.  It's knit in Malabrigo Arroyo, a gorgeous sportweight merino yarn.  I've been striping the skeins, since there was a slight color variation between them.

I haven't knit in a few days, but I'm hoping to remedy that this weekend!

In general, I'm really enjoying how each garment I make is subtly related to the others in the collection - a neckline here, a color there.  I am getting more and more excited about seeing them come together, and it's pretty cool to have them lining up on the rack all cute and finished.

Total count: 2 skirts, 1 dress, 1 blouse, 2 camisoles, 1 not-quite-finished cardigan, and my black dress, which only needs a hook & eye and a final press!

To go: 2 skirts, 2 dresses, 1 blouse, and 1 cardigan.

Not bad, eh?

FO: Emma Dress

  

I finished hand-tacking the facings onto the first dress in my collection this morning - stick a fork in her, she's done!  (Except for the hem - that comes after model fittings.)  I'm calling her Emma, since her shape is based on my beautiful vintage Emma Domb wedding dress.

 

She's the least complicated of my dresses, which makes me a little nervous, but I worked really hard to get the fit to where I wanted it, and I'm very happy with the result.  I absolutely love the fabric, and I think that the style and color of the dress fits in my collection perfectly.

One dress down, two more to go!

On The Rack: Two Dresses, Two Skirts, Two Camisoles

Well, technically I haven't finished the dresses - and the black dress is for me to wear the night of the show! - but above is a sneak peek of the garments I'm working on: two skirts, two identical camisoles, and two dresses.  Each piece creates its own problems to solve.  Cotton doesn't like to ease!  Gapping in the waistband of the skirts (now fixed)!  My grey wool fabric is very thick, so the seams it makes are ridiculously thick!

Right now I'm working on some fit issues with the blue cherry blossom dress, but other than those tweaks, I'm really excited about it.  It's a tea-length boatneck dress with a full skirt and a deep v back neckline.  The fabric is incredible to work with - it's Liberty Tana Lawn that I first showed you here.  (Plus, I am getting awesome at putting in invisible zippers.)  And today, I figured out the answers to not one, not two, but four questions about garments in muslin or fashion fabric.  A pretty solid day, even though it means way more work for tomorrow.

Last week?  Was not such a triumph.  I discovered the waistband problems in both skirts, which took me three work days to fix.  Everything I worked on sucked.  I was feeling the same way yesterday, so this morning I felt like putting some actual effort into my appearance to make up for crappy progress.

 

Judging from my face, fashion is serious business.  But hey, I put on makeup!  And braided my hair!  And accessorized!  That's about 98% better than my usual day, which involves rolling out of bed into a pile of t-shirts and questionably clean pants.  Gold star today, Adult Cory!

FO: Alicia Skirt

 

It's been almost a week coming.  I cut early last week, consulted the tailoring teacher for tips on constructing the pocket on Thursday, and planned to finish it on Saturday.  (That totally didn't happen.)  So today, I came in with determination.  I finger-pressed hot seams with my hands for almost an hour.  I sewed; I ripped and re-sewed; I cursed; I serged; I pressed, and pressed, and pressed, and pressed.

And now, the Alicia Skirt is done.

I love it.  I want at least five different versions of it in different colors in my closet.  It's the perfect balance of waist definition and hip exaggeration.  It has pockets.  It is, hands down, the coolest thing I have ever made.

 

I designed it.  I made the pattern.  I sewed the muslin.  I cut it and sewed it and it's done and it's mine.  Seeing it on the hanger tonight suddenly made the fashion show feel very real, and it made me realize that doing this is huge and scary, but it will also end.  On April 13th, I will be the designer of a collection - for better or for worse - and what I do with it from there is up to me.  Even though it's mostly terrifying, it's also pretty exciting.

So this skirt isn't perfect; the other clothes I'm going to make won't be perfect either.  But I can forgive myself for that, because the important thing is that I'm learning, and that I'm constantly trying to make something better than the last thing I made.

And in the meantime, I'll accept this one as a win.

Pretty Thing: Vintage Crocheted Shawl

  

Whew!  I've been making a lot of progress at school (and some at home, too - I finished the second Ondrea sleeve this morning), which I'll share soon.  I'm hoping to get at least one skirt finished save for hemming this week, possibly two.  Hooray!  Hooray!

In the meantime, here's a very pretty thing that I received in the mail last week from Etsy seller vintagefindsetcetera.

A little over a week ago, a friend linked me to a list of gorgeous crocheted shawl patterns.  As usually happens when I find websites devoted to yarn and/or crafty things, I fell down the rabbit hole pretty hard, and in my wanderings, I found a picture of this vintage shawl.  It was listed on Etsy, and I popped over figuring that it would be long sold.  But it wasn't.  So, of course, I bought it (at one am, on a weeknight, because I have priorities) because it's one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

I sort of want to design a little crocheted sweater with this same motif and beads - it has such a lovely drape because of the heaviness of the crochet thread as well as the beads, which I think would be really well suited to a fitted v-neck top with swingy sleeves.  I also may want to plan my entire wardrobe around its color palette.

In other news, I've decided to try to design a shawl and knit two versions of it in Prairie for the fashion show.  Because I'm clearly not busy enough.  Hah!  Hah!  Let's file this under "things I think are reasonable past 11 pm while hungry and exhausted and completely out of touch with reality," shall we?

The Politics of Hemlines

Okay, so this is a difficult post to write.  And perhaps more than you wanted to know about me.  But I also feel compelled to talk about it, because it's been a long, long time coming.

Part I: A Picture

Recently, this photo by a flickr user named roseaposey went viral on Tumblr and the internet in general.  Understandably, this has some connections to the fashion and sewing community, as hemlines are both a practical and a stylistic concern.  It's started a conversation on these words: what they mean, who gives them meaning, who gets to use them, and who is hurt when these words are used against her.

It also strikes a major chord for me, because I'm always and forever an Oberlin student.

But more importantly, because I'm a survivor of sexual violence.

 I recognize the condescension and mock-concern in these words; the gross subtext that the length of your skirt says more about your sexuality than your words and actions do.

I recognize the slut-shaming words, because my best friend at the time used them to describe my experience to me, and thought that it was okay to do so.  I doubted my own feelings for years because of words like these.

I recognize the desire to believe that longer hemlines will protect you.  I changed to a simple wardrobe of slacks and different colored t-shirts for years after it happened, thinking that I could make myself invisible by changing what I wore.

I also recognize, almost seven years later, that a layer of fabric cannot protect you from someone who wants to hurt you.  That was a long and difficult lesson to learn, and ultimately not a very uplifting one.

In general, the older I get, the less okay the whole thing seems.

This picture says so many complicated things, and it makes people angry.  And maybe they should be angry, because it's absurd that these words are acceptable ways to talk about - or to - women.  They are not an okay way to pigeonhole women's experience, whether it's "slutty" or "proper".  Words on both sides of this spectrum are insulting, because they imply that sexuality is the only reason a woman would ever wear anything, and that sexuality is relegated to the young and stereotypically attractive, and that different levels of skin display are quantifiable levels of sexual availability.

All of this is bullshit, and I think the artist is doing a beautiful job of calling it out as such.

Women have different reasons for wearing what they do. Maybe she has a hormonal imbalance that makes her overheat in everything she wears, so she wears camisoles under her blazers.  Maybe she's a teenager and loves cut-off shorts because her unbearably cool older sister wears them.  Maybe she loves wearing historical clothes because she finds the story behind them fascinating.  Maybe her partner just died and she's wearing the dress she wore to their first anniversary.  Or, maybe she just feels comfortable and beautiful.

Any one of these reasons is reason enough.  No matter what a woman is wearing, she deserves not to be judged and shamed for it.

Part II: A Life, Complicated

I have very mixed feelings about writing about this.  But it's also hard not to talk about it, because the experience shaped my life profoundly.

My life pretty much fell apart when I was raped, and it was further complicated when the man who hurt me was murdered during a dispute between him and my former landlord.  I was 18 and naive, and that made me feel responsible - for both my own trauma and his death - for a long time.  He wasn't a great person, but he also deserved to live.  I struggled between compassion for him and hatred for a person who no longer existed.  Sometimes I still do.

When I think about my 18-year-old self, I just want to hug her and tell her that she'll be okay.  I want to tell her that other people's disbelief doesn't make her anger and despair any less real.  I want to tell her that this won't happen to other women.

But I can't.  And that will always be hard.

Since then, I've pulled my life back together.  I distanced myself from former friends who mocked my story rather than believing it.  I went to college and graduated.  I started making friends again.   I like to think that I've made a better life for myself than the one that fell apart.

But sometimes the weight of this story is too much.  It feels like I'm keeping a secret because I don't want to be shamed, when the real problem is that my survival is seen as shameful rather than strong.

In the end, I think that this is what the photographer was trying to critique: that in this society, silencing women with sexualized shame and judgment is as easy as using the right word to describe her hemline.  And this has to change.

Off The Needles: Ondrea Sleeve #1

Sleeves.  They are sneaky little things.  First, you think, "Oh, it's just a sleeve, how long could it take?"  It starts out innocently enough: you cast on fifty-something stitches, finish the ribbing in less than an hour, and feel very smug that you are knitting the sleeves first, as they seem to be the downfall of many a sweater knitter.  "Why does anyone give a crap about sleeves," you think.  "These are easy."

Then, the next thing you know, entire days are lost in a haze of wool; you're picking bits of yarn out of the strangest places (your boyfriend's pants?! the dishwasher?!); you daydream about going to the dentist as a pleasant alternative to knitting more sleeve. 

Then, all of a sudden, it's over.  Somehow the black hole of knitting that has consumed your every last braincell for the last week is suddenly and magically finished and ready for a warm bath.  After which, you know that it's going to be so cute and fluffy and you won't be able to stop petting it and admiring how well it turned out.

....all right, Sleeve, you are pretty adorable.  But don't think this means we're friends.

Good Morning!

Mr. Boo is getting a little slower in his old age.  Even though he's still a little rocket-butt in the evenings, in the morning he's sleepy and a little sluggish.  This morning he kept on poking his nose out of the blankets and actually sitting still for a minute or two, which was too cute not to photograph.

Then Lumberjack picked him up, and he decided that he was fully awake.

Nothing like a little parental humiliation to get you moving in the morning!

Thoughts

Today, and many days in the preceding weeks, have got me thinking about a few topics that seem to keep coming up: the relationship between failure and progress; the role of fantasy in creative life; challenging situations that are still completely worth it.

Failure and progress.

Today I sewed a zipper, and that's about all I did, and I feel pretty good about it nonetheless.  I pinned and sewed and ripped and re-pinned over and over again until finally, my waistband seams were meeting on the left and right and my dress zipped up in the back, just like it should.  Every time I had to rip the seams out and do it again, I had to take a second or two to be angry before trying again.  But then I would do it again, because even though I get frustrated, I wouldn't be happy with it in the end if I didn't.

And earlier this week, I made two different and very awful muslins of a skirt before figuring out what the design needed.  I walked away frustrated as shit when the second muslin in a row turned out ugly, and as I walked up the street to get a cup of coffee, I suddenly realized what needed to change.  I had to sacrifice an element of the design to keep the original intent, but then the skirt turned out exactly how I had envisioned it.

I've had this thought before - particularly as it relates to knitting, which is much more forgiving a medium than fabric - but this week I have felt it every day.  Failure can be constructive.  Failure means you've found out which direction not to go; failure means not accepting what is not good enough; failure speaks to the integrity of your creative vision.

At least, this is what I tell myself the seventh time I have to sew that $*##(@* @#*$ing zipper.

Fantasy.

I have yarn and fabric dancing around in my head, yarn and fabric that have absolutely nothing to do with the fashion show.  Grey cashmere and black & white checked cotton and grass green tussah silk... frabjous day!  I am queuing projects like crazy, and taking stash pictures, and designing things in my head that can't possibly exist for months and months and months.  It's both deeply satisfying and frustrating as hell.

Challenges and worth.

Today I thought about my trip to Indonesia in any sort of depth for the first time in a long time.  I'm not sure I've talked about it before, but Bali was a difficult, exhausting trip.  I also had an amazing time.  I watched rain come in over the mountains and out to sea for hours.  I heard Sanskrit prayers projected off the next mountain in the middle of the night.  I rode on the back of a motorbike down rolling hills covered in banana trees.  I saw some of the most beautiful coral reefs in the world.  I also left with a massive staph infection that took two months to recover from, that I still have scars from.

But in the end?  I am so, so glad that I went.  My world grew ten sizes bigger from that trip.

And so: the fashion show.  I doubt that the fashion show will leave scars - although I am pretty awesome at stabbing myself with pins! - but I have a feeling that after the daily struggles with stress and uncertainty have faded, my world will be a few sizes bigger.

And that can't be a bad thing.

Loft Ondrea, Cast Off

Four days later, a sweater front.

Now, to start a sleeve!

This Is Just To Say

All this yarn

All this yarn I can't knit

It's so pretty

The End

WIP: Ondrea

 

Yesterday I finally finished the first sleeve for the Ondrea prototype and immediately wanted to cast on for something new.  I have a ban on non-fashion-show knitting, so I decided to start the real Ondrea sweater!

I actually have 8 skeins of Loft total, but I was too excited to wait until the morning to take photos of the full sweater's worth of yarn.  This sweater is working up very, very differently so far; where the Ondrea prototype is heavy and crisp, the Loft Ondrea is light, rustic, and visually soft.

So far it's been super pleasant to work on - it's really nice not to need to design as I knit!

WIP: Gala Skirt

 

Today I did a lot of patternwork, but still wanted to play with fabric a little bit, so I tried out some draping on the Gala Skirt.  It's based off of the skirt muslin I shared the other day, but I shortened it since then and I'm much happier with the length.  I love circle skirts both long and short, but I want my line to have a contemporary feel as well as a vintage inspiration, hence a shorter skirt.  It shows just a little bit of knee, which I find to be a flattering length for me.

The draped fabric is a gorgeous silk eyelet georgette - I only have a little bit of it, so I have to be careful with how much yardage I use!  I think I'll do the real draping to make the pattern pieces in some extra nylon mesh, since it's about the same weight, but I wanted to see if the fabric I bought in August was going to have the right look.

And it does.  I have a very clear picture in my mind of what this skirt looks like, and this is almost exactly it.  I still need to pick up some zippers and the cream silk crepe that I'm making it in, but then I think I'll be ready to start sewing the actual piece.  Good thing, because I had a nightmare the other night that I showed up to the fashion show with nothing but muslins... egads!