Another Corduroy Dress for Winter!

So, here is dress #2! (I'm modeling it in the new kitchen.)

I finished this a few nights ago & I love it.  It's more on the 7501/7051 theme.  I readjusted the neckline ...and added the collar from 6081:   

I used old silk from a kimono scrap to make the neckline facing.  In the photo below, #1 is the silk for the facing, #2 is the underside of the collar, so it wouldn't be too thick.  

And used up lots of scraps someone from freecycle.org gave me to make the bias tape to finish the sleeves and to face the collar. 

The only thing I'm not sure about is the length.  I'll try it once with boots (once winter is here) and see about it then.  I did a halfway decent hand-hemming job, so it should be easy to re-do, if necessary.

Mix & Match Fashion Design

When I was little (many years ago), I received a used fashion design kit.  Essentially it was a light board (small lightbulb) at an angle good for drawing.  It came with pages & pages of different clothing items & they could be mixed & matched via tracing to create different designs.  The pages must have been thicker, I don't remember them wearing out, but I do remember hours of fun playing with collars, sleeves, shoes, hats, etc., to get the look "just right."  (BTW, I have tried to find what it was called or a picture of this toy online, but NSL.)

Anyway, this brings me to my current project, which is one of the corduroy dresses for fall/winter.  And for the first one I just put on a regular collar, which I had to design myself because I bought the wrong pattern (see the 7051/7501 tale here).  Here's the collar I put on the first corduroy dress.

But then I decided I wanted the collar that is on this 1960s dress pattern my mom sent.

And I remembered my mix & match fashion fun childhood & decided to change the collar myself.  In this next photo you'll see (barely) the blue paper that was used for the original collar I drafted, and on top of that the curved collar in the above photo pinned & modified so it will fit the neckline but retain the curviness.

It worked quite well & when I get the dress hemmed (probably tomorrow), I'll be sure you are the first to know!  ;-)

Me vs. the UFOs: 1 down, 4 to go

So I finally finished 7501/7051!  (Clicking on that link will get you the saga of trying to modify the pattern, then having to take a private sewing lesson to get it fitted correctly.)  And in order to finish it I had to redraft the neck facing & the collar (because the fitting involved taking a lot off the shoulder seams).  But it's done!  Totally ready to wear for this fall with tights & my brown leather boots!  Cannot wait.  

More red checkmarks coming soon!

UFOs sighted! Or, a Hall of Shame

Okay, we are back from Catalonia.  It was amazing...got to see all our friends (and their families & children), so that was wonderful.  We were fortunate that 3 different sets of friends were in the same part of the world at the same time. And it meant we traipsed from one end of Catalonia to another, from mountains (hiking/birdwatching) to the seashore (the Roommate worked on his tan while I stayed inside & read--I'm a white girl!) to river deltas (more birding), and managed to bask in the amazing Modernisme architecture that is all over Barcelona. Our next project will be to rent some movies filmed in Parc Guell!


And while I was gone, of course I missed Bella, who is as sweet and adorable as ever. And I missed my machine & thought of about 50 more projects I want to do...but made a vow that I would finish up some UFOs before I move on.
Most of them are almost done, so really, it would be a little work to get a BIG feeling of accomplishment before I move on.
And what are those UFOs, you dare to ask?  Well, let's get started...from oldest to newest the UFOs are:

1. Simplicity 1011A, which you probably recognize from Tilly's logo.  This is a very good lesson in why muslins/toiles are so important.  It is a little too small (wouldn't be if I'd lose that stone I gained since we moved to DC!), but could be let out.  But the real problem is that the bodice is really too short in the front--and I refuse to take out & re-do the zipper--this was back when I wasn't so good at them and I remember it being he** to get it in).  I need to do some playing (maybe not have it overlap so much at the double-breast in front?) and get it into shape.  I love the pattern & the fabric, so really want this to work out.

2. 7051/7501 - This has been going on way too long.  I have fixed the weird fitting issue, thanks to Allison, but have to remake the collar & facing as that required cutting off quite a bit at the neck-side shoulder seam.  I really can't wait to have it done, and winter is sort-of coming, so it must keep its place in the UFO order.  

3. Copy Your Clothes: Pants - I took this class with Allison at Bits of Thread, DC in April.  Here we are 4 months later & though I made a toile (with extremely ugly sheet fabric as you see in the photo), and bought some super cheap $.99/yard fabric, I haven't finished them.  They didn't quite fit right & I really have trouble adjusting & playing with fit as I mostly hate my body (Candy Says...) & therefore inspecting it closely for fitting is icky.  And I'm not sure I want to tackle the lining that will be required.  But I do want a few colors of these pants...it will be great.  And, I want to make my Starlet Suit a pantsuit!  Must achieve!  


4. Starlet Suit Jacket! - It is actually about done.  That is, if you consider w/out a lining about done!  I've really enjoyed all that Gretchen has taught in this class.  I've learned lots of stuff I'll use again, a few things that were interesting but probably won't use much, and had lots of questions & terms I had about tailoring answered/explained.  


5. Probably not the best idea I've ever had.  I really wanted this dress, but I'm not sure it's really for my body type (even if I did lose that stone!).  This is Simplicity 6081, which my mom recently found & sent.  (1966!).  It is so cute & I love the fabric I've got, but goshee gollee, I am not having much luck w/ fitting it.  Did anyone say toiles/muslins are important?  This may get made into something else--like a book bag or cover for my tablet computer...


Next post I'll tell you why I'm so anxious to get all these crossed off my list...

Miracle Worker or Magician?! Thanks, Allison!

Okay, you know that I've been going to classes @ Bits of Thread in DC.  Although I've been sewing for years (40?!), I still have a lot to learn & have only just recently been proud of my zipper installations, rather than thinking, "Hope no one notices that." (Again, thanks Allison!).  


So a while back I booked a private one-hour lesson to have Allison help me with Simplicity 7501 (which all started when I mixed it up with Scruffy's 7051).  You can read all that blather, which started here.   I had a few problems with that hasty ebay purchase!  First, it wasn't the right size, so I had to make it bigger and move darts around like crazy.  Second, I wanted that collar, so had to change the neckline & design & draw a collar.  It all finally worked out, sort of.  This photo doesn't show the gapping at the front & back waist, which I partly covered up w/ the belt.  

Corduroy for 2 more 7501 dresses;
leaning a bit to the purple side!

But it didn't (work out, that is).  I really wanted to make a bunch of corduroy dresses because they are so perfect for winter & look great with boots, and are so different from what you see in stores.  But it really did not fit too well and there was no way I was making up my other corduroy fabric until I had a pattern that was worth making at least twice more.

Taking off the blue at the top
made such a big difference!

So I went to see Allison, and within about 5 minutes of my arrival, she had figured out that the best fix would be to whack off about an inch from the shoulder (more at the neckline, less at the armscye).  The pattern (which I re-drew from the dress after I'd made the change) is laying on a 1" grid so you can see that the lopping off was rather dramatic.  


I had done SOOO much fiddling with darts and the waistline, but never even thought that the shoulder seam needed adjusting.  Having had other similar fitting issues with patterns & clothing I've bought, I will definitely keep an eye on this area in future.  


This dress is a UFO, which may not be finished until we're back from Spain.  I still need to re-draft the neckline facing & a collar as the first one I did won't fit anymore because of the neckline change.  Stay tuned...

7051/7501 Grand Finale!

Well, the most important item on today's post is, of course, our cat, Bella, who likes the new layout in the sewing room.  She immediately found an empty drawer to hide in and looked adorable.

And the next item is the 7501/7051 dress!  Finally...por fin!  If you remember the beginning of this saga was Scruffy Badger's blog about 7051 way back in October (2011!).  I thought, "I MUST have that, too!" And got online & bought a very large 7501, thinking, well, I can size it down.  Not realizing that I was buying the wrong pattern, being old & forgetful & when I got it into my hot little hands I quickly realized, "Uh oh!"  I'd transposed the numbers & bought the wrong pattern on ebay.  So I set about trying and trying and trying to turn the too big wrong pattern into the just right 7501.  (Can I just say here that after getting me started SB still has NOT made her version--and she has the right pattern & started all this?)

I then decided to use my new dress form & lots of extra pieces from my stash & leftover bits to try to make a toile.  I made 4 eventually and cut & sewed & stitched & restitched & and put in darts & moved them & resized them and ripped out stitches & did it again & again & again.  I won't go into the rest of the story (which involves canibalizing another pattern that does fit & then changing the neckline & sleeves).

But at least you can see that it's finished.  I wore it to work today & got lots of compliments! It goes especially well with all my turqouise jewelry.  It's not perfect, but it's good enough.

I'm not dumb enough to think that pattern making or alteration is easy, but I had no idea how hard it was...I just kept feeling like I'd get it--but I really never did.  Another thing is that unlike the Slenderette/Simplicity 2847, this one rolls back on my shoulders.  That is a problem I often have with tops & dresses I buy readymade, but I've never had it happen with a dress either I made, or Mohammed made.  So that's a bit weird.

Hopefully some of these questions will be answered as I take some classes at Bits of Thread & online with Gertie.

Extreme Pattern Modification (or, 4th time is the charm?!)

Just to give you an idea of what I HOPE is going to be the last time I show you these pattern pieces..and an idea of what I've been working on...a bunch of made-up & super-modified pattern pieces.

This first one, you've seen.  It's what the Bonus Basic Pattern recommended I do to modify the pattern so it fits better.

The 2nd shows how I had to move the point of the bust dart down.  And up close you can see that I added close to an inch along there to hopefully ease in enough fullness.





The 3rd photo shows what I think the new neck facing should look like (front & back) based on the modifications to the bodice pieces (you'll notice in photos 1 & 4 that it's gone from a round neck to a V-neck).  Also in this photo is the pattern for the collar.  On the other 2 or 3 versions (I've lost count!), this was actually the one thing I made up that worked quite well (here's one example).

However, in that first version, the collar looked great & the facing worked well, but the neckline was quite big (lots of skin showing--not really what I wanted for a cozy winter dress). It's quite cold out at the Reference Desk--there's always a stiff breeze from the A/C, winter or summer, so I really didn't want direct air-to-neck contact, at least not in my cozy thin-wale corduroy dress.


And in the 4th photo you'll see up close how I modified the front neckline.  Then I just used this to create the facing you see in the 3rd photo.

Do I know what I'm doing? Not at all.  Am I going to get to the dress before we leave on vacation?  Probably not.  Will I have a ton of free time when we get home to finish it?  Again, probably not--we'll be moving into the new south wing, a friend is visiting from the Netherlands to do research at the Library of Congress and we're headed to California to celebrate the Roommate's birthday w/ his family.  Hmmm.  But I've heard the winter is going to get quite bleak come Jan/Feb here on the East Coast--so that might motivate me to finish.

Wish me luck in the new year!  And thank you for your kind attention this year...I'm mostly enjoying blogging, but do find it a chore to keep my sewing up in order to write about it! Not really, I love sewing, but am starting to pine for the days I only worked part-time!

Music?  B.i.l.l.i.e H.o.l.i.d.a.y by Warpaint

Breaking News! Sewing machine freezes as latest version of Simplicity 7051 is begun

I think this may qualify as an epic fail! I was all ready to start sewing my 2nd try to create Simplicity 7051 out of Simplicity 7501, and my sewing machine went berserk.  The bobbin holder moved, a lot, and I cannot get the screws out of the needle plate!  This actually came up a few months ago, and right after I got it (15 months or so ago), as I usually clean out the machine when I start a new project.  I couldn't get the screws out--they don't budge a bit--and thought, well, they'll loosen up.  I've tried a few other times over the last year+, to no avail.

Two months later...they are so amazingly tight that the Roommate, with all his brute strength didn't have any luck either, even after leaving some WD-40 on for 30 minutes. We're going to try a few more times (knocking on the screwdriver lightly with a hammer and trying with the screwdriver bit on the power drill).  And if nothing works, I'm going over to Sun Sew & Vac, as tomorrow is my day off, and see if they have any luck.

I had already taken a photo of my pattern additions, as part of my I Just Can't Make It series:

As you can see from above, I had to make a collar, and then make front & back facings as I changed the neckline a bit.  (I made it a V-neck to accommodate the collar, and wanted the back to not be quite so high.) I had just sewn up one of the 2 collar pieces when the machine stopped working.  Egad--will I ever get my narrow-wale corduroy dress?  Waaaaaaa!  That is a very wide-wail you're hearing!

As Ms. Sewaholic had her readers write in about their favorite online fabric shops last week, I just wanted to mention that I bought 2 more yards of the fabric you see above (remember this is at least my 2nd or 3rd try on this dress), which was on sale for 1/2 price at joann.com.  I had checked the store, but they were out of it.  It came quickly, and I was pleased with the service, but then I'm not a real test-case as I had seen the fabric already in person.  I'm not so sure about buying fabric completely online, though many Sewaholic commenters seemed to have quite good luck & have done it often.

Instead, today, the Roommate & I went to see 2 Warhol exhibits that are on the Mall right now & are closing soon.  It's one of those, "We'll get over there soonish" things & that was 6 months ago. Last weekend when we were in DC to go to the Kuba/Kasai fabric show at the Textile Museum, we happened upon a brochure reminding us that if we didn't get to the Warhol exhibits at the NGA & the Hirshhorn we'd be out of luck as they are ending in early January--and we're going on our xmas trip soon. (A hint: the only place in the world where you can see Darwin's finches!)

So the Warhol stuff was great & great fun, especially Shadows.  And certainly distracted me from the broken sewing machine!  Not really broken, just frozen...

And the fish tacos we made when we got home?  That totally took my mind off winter corduroy dresses!

Music?  Since I mentioned an (English) Beat album in the earlier, I feel compelled to use one of their songs, which fits quite well with this post, too:  Save It For Later!

If at first you don't succeed...

Remember this?  It's 7501, which I bought by accident, thinking I was getting Scruffy Badger Time's 7051!?  Well, tucked inside (you'll see it mentioned on the front of the packet, too) is a Bonus Basic Pattern (in women's sizes).  I'm not sure what that means, because I think it sounds like there's another pattern inside.

But what it does mean is that there is this groovy chart about how to get a pattern to fit.  It has these cool drawings of 6 women (with wonderful haircuts--I want the right hand model's please), and you pick what usually happens to you when you put on a dress made from a pattern: Does it pull across the shoulders because yours are broad? Do you have round shoulders or a small bust?

Then pick a drawing, and follow the pattern adjustment instructions to correct the dress so it's right for you.

Now, if you've been reading about my struggles w/ 7501 (which is too big for me) and trying to turn it into 7051, you are probably wondering why I didn't go straight to the Bonus Basic Pattern right from the start.  Well, I did read thru it, but then defaulted to my (rather lazy) typical response--things usually fit me pretty well and I've never had to make many adjustments except for hems & sleeve lengths (I have short arms).  Also, the Bonus Basic Pattern is really about adjusting or enlarging a pattern, and I needed instructions for downsizing.  So I read thru it & neatly folded it back up & put it into the packet.

Weeks went by and I went thru 3 sets of toiles, trying to get the bodice right.  (Read all about it here, here, here, here & here.) I finally gave up and decided to modify this pattern, Simplicity 9602, which is from my mom (I remember when she made it for an Xmas party) to give it a collar like 7051.  And that  ended up too small.  So I added where I thought I should to make it bigger.  And it turned out way too big!  Honestly, I almost feel as if I've never sewed before.  I have to keep looking at things I have made, that do look good to remind myself I'm not a beginner!

So now I finally decide to read the instructions!  So here they are (this is the obverse of the page above):

See the top right where it says "very full bust?" That's me. So that's what I did, lots of slashing (I worked up my nerve by reading Tilly's Sleeve Slasher post a few times) and taping.  I couldn't find any pattern tracing paper nearby (haven't been to G Street yet, though) so just made do with used printer paper.  I drew 1" lines on the paper so that I knew things would match up, and started slashing.  I reassured myself that if I totally screwed up, 9602 comes with a 2nd bodice pattern, which is a bit different at the neck, but is the same for the sleeves & darts.  

To the right you'll see my masterpiece, with all the bits measured & taped together.

I found some weird polyester pale green stuff in a box downstairs...a real "Where the heck did that come from?" moment.  But it should be fine for my 4th (yes, fourth) muslin.  I've cut out the bodice & put all the markings on it; we'll see if I get to it this weekend.

It's all over now, Baby Blue!

I woke up this morning with this song in my head:  Blue Sky, Allman Brothers, Dickie Betts singing.

Actually, I'm pretty happy, so I almost always have happy music in my head.  But that inspired me to try one more time...well, 4 more hours.  I just keep finding that if I made the darts big enough, it really messed up the bottom & sides.  And taking up in the middle (adding a 1/2" seam down the middle of the front on the muslin), just didn't seem to do it.  I also found (and am finding with the pattern I'm now adapting, too) that what fits on Helen, when cut out & sewed doesn't fit...sometimes not even close!

I never thought pattern making was easy; a friend in NYC does this for a living, and she's very much in demand, but I was right--it's difficult.  So I gave up & went thru my vintage patterns & found this one, Simplicity 9602, from my mom.  It's the right size--a 12 in the old size; 1971.  I still have to modify it a bit because I want a V-neck & a collar (still trying to get Scruffy Badger's Simplicity 7501!).  But since I'm starting with the correct size, not 6" too big, I'm hoping this will go better & faster.

I am finding that sewing with corduroy is a bit of a challenge.  I have to pin more & sew slower or everything crawls around.  And I'm used to pressing cotton, or linen, which is so hardy.  I'm using a very light hand so I don't mash the corduroy.  Here's the fabric in case you've forgotten thru all this what it looks like.  I was in Hancock again today (forgot a zipper, so I bought 3), and they still had the pincord (thin corduroy) on sale, so I got more...purple this time!  Another print, of course!

I've missed this class (ends 11/30): Bits of Thread Pattern Making class - Bodice, but this experience has definitely made me interested in taking the same thing, hopefully in the spring.