Copy Your Clothes! Finished Item!

I finished it!  And actually, today was the 2nd time I wore it.  I got a good friend to take this photo of me at work, because I also wanted to show of my new standing desk.  The desk was out in the public part of the library (it's ancient), and was about to be moved downstairs to be given away or tossed, and I thought, well, I've been wanting to try a standing desk.  So I put it in my cubicle, rearranged my computer & screens and now I have plenty of places to lay projects I'm working on because my computer no longer takes up that space.  

I mostly like standing, but my legs are tired at the end of the day!  (I do easily get to 10,000+ steps every day now.) 

The first thing I did was buy an anti-fatigue mat...the cement floor underneath the thin carpet is not comfortable at all...much like standing in museums all day (which I love, but I always end up with lower back pain).  The mat helps a lot.  

Oh, but....back to the dress!  This was my first successful attempt at applying what I learned in the Copy Your Clothes class at Bits of Threads.  Below you'll see the original, which Mohammed made from a photo I had brought him.  I wore the dress for more than 5 years, so definitely got the use out of it, but it was faded and beginning to look beat up.  So, time for a new one!  

I took it almost completely apart and traced all the pattern pieces.  That's the easy way to copy your clothes--when you don't take them apart it's much more difficult to get the pattern pieces traced.    

I had a few bumps along the way, mostly because the original fabric was quite thin with some give, while the fabric I got from Windham is a bit thicker cotton and doesn't have as much give, even though I was careful to place the princess seams on the bias.  But it still looks great (I think) and I like it because the color's great (and goes with lots of my turquoise) and it also goes with my new black sandals!  

The original dress, that I took apart to
make a new pattern...

I also did a tiny bit of lining, mostly inspired by Ms. Scruffy Badger, who seems to line just about everything.  It's a summer dress & summer in DC means hot & humid, so I figure anything that helps the dress (and moi!) looking nice a bit longer is worth the effort. 

So you're looking at an example of the mini-lining I put in, using the poly/cotton blend I picked up on a super sale at Hancock.  I lined the sleeve completely, then cut shorter pieces for the front & back side pieces.  The dress & lining fabrics are just the right weight: they work together but you cannot see the lining at all when I'm wearing the dress.  I am hoping this will protect the dress a bit and let me wear it a long long time.  

Palestinian Embroidery

 Quick post about a pillow we have covered with extremely distinctive & wonderful Palestinian embroidery (a.k.a. tatreez fallahi/cross-stitch embroidery/عبر غرزة التطريز).  Often it's used as decoration on bodices, cuffs, hems, headdresses.  There's a great picture on that second link of 2 women pulling up their white sheilas to show off their amazing bodice embroidery, which they probably did themselves.  Amazing detail and wonderful graphic designs.  We have another pillow (which I can't find!), but really, I should have bought 10 or 20 of these.  I was always kind of waiting to find an actual dress somewhere at the souq, but that never happened, and I ended up with very little instead.  Big mistake!  ;-)

However, who cares if I have enough samples of this amazing work?  What matters is that Bella loves it, finds it a cozy place to hang out, and it flatters her lovely coat.

3 Long Skirts, Upcoming Reveal, & It's June Already?

How did that happen?  1/2 way thru 2013 almost!?  

First of all, I wanted to show you the latest vintage sewing gadget I just got from ebay, a Dritz Skirt Marker, in perfect condition.  See the cork at the bottom (the circle)?  It's for pins!  Cool, huh?  There are a lot of skirt markers out there (old and new) that combine wood & metal, but I wanted this older one, which is mostly wood.  (The Roommate & I have a weakness for wooden items, because they tend to be handmade--and seem warmer/cozier.)  

And to the right you'll see a picture of the Skirt Marker in action, which should get you all excited for the big reveal.  I'll get the Roommate to help mark the hem for the dress I'm copying, and with any luck I'll have a new summer dress to wear to work next week!  

It does seem like summer may finally be here (up in the 90sF this week) so I brought up my summer dresses yesterday (another finally is appropriate here).  I think I brought them up in March last year!  No complaints...it's nice to have a long lovely spring.  

And speaking of Abu Dhabi, when bringing up summer dresses yesterday, I found 3 long (ankle-length) linen skirts I used to wear all the time when I lived & worked in the UAE, Oman & Turkey (detail of the fabric in the 3 photos at the left). They just seemed appropriate there.  

I wore them with sandals, but having my legs covered served 2 purposes:  protected me from the sun (I wore long-sleeved, light jackets a lot, too) and showed some respect for my employers and students.  I never covered my hair (I tried it once at a party and was amazed how quickly I was hot & sweaty), and since I'm not Muslim, that was never expected.  More important was to dress modestly.  I always feel like there's so much of me anyway, plus I do NOT tan, so dressing modestly was never a chore.  

Now, back in the USA...I still dress fairly modestly, but I can't imagine wearing an ankle-length skirt, unless I was going as a gypsy to a Hallowe'en party!  So I am planning to cut these off by about 18".  They are all linen, and the light one and the black one are lined with lovely thin cotton.  

Mohammed made the brown one for me, while the other 2 are Liz Claiborne. (Were these ever sold outside the Middle East I wonder? Hard to imagine a market for ankle-length linen skirts in Europe or the US...)  Needless to say the sewing is quite nice on all of them & that's one reason I haven't done anything with them, though I've been back in the US for almost 4 years:  I hate to ruin someone else's lovely hemming & chain-stitched lining tacks...knowing full-well I won't do nearly as nice a job.  My mom is lucky she doesn't live closer--her handwork is amazing.  All those tiny stitches--exactly alike.  

And here's one example of that amazing work, on a store-bought item: 

And here's Sunni, from A Fashionable Stitch showing how to make a thread chain w/ a machine or serger, though I usually make mine by hand.  

I'll be closely examining my new One-Yard-Wonders books to figure out how to use the pieces I've cut off (each approximately 18" x 60")!  It's lovely linen & of course we love fun prints in this family.  

Music; sorry for the pun, but here's Jeff Beck, Hi-Ho Silver Lining.  

Me-Made May Miracle: One Evening, Three Items

My hapi-coat inspired
summer housecoat &
slipper-socks

Believe me, all of you amazing sewists, who are showing off your creations for all 31 days this month, I am so impressed & following along avidly.  A whole wardrobe of things I've made?!  I'll call that Me-Made-Maybe, A.D. 2045 edition!

A first attempt at copying
a store-bought nightgown.

In the meantime, after spending the day running errands, going to yoga, going to the gym, fighting w/ a sewing pattern (which is what I feel like I do about 90% of the time), and needing a shower, I finally took one after we got dinner ready and just before we ate.  

BTW, We've joined the community garden nearby and our sweat equity has really paid off...the greens & herbs have been abundant, fresh & delicious the last 5-6 weeks.  Rainbow chard, beet greens, spinach, every possible variation on lettuce, cilantro, etc.  Yum!

Anyway, we made an amazing salad, and I got dressed and it just so happened that all 3 items I put on were me-made!  I'd call that a me-made miracle.  It all definitely came together because it got quite cold yesterday, so I needed the fuzzy slipper-socks, in addition to the nightgown (never blogged) and the hapi-coat (not really a yukata because of the length).  

Here are a few photos (sorry they're not the greatest quality), with my own tiny tribute to Me-Made May.  

Enough Already! 4 Pair of Roommate Knickers!

Okay, I finally got the fly figured out!  And I've made the Roommate four pair of knickers now, all using the pattern I got from One-Yard Wonders...

I must admit I didn't figure it out by myself.  I ended up going to one of the open studio classes at Bits of Thread and getting some assistance from Rosalie, who, despite her tender age, has amazing sewing skills.  

The top pair (turquoise/burgundy/yellow) is using up some of the printed Kente we got in Ghana, lo these many years ago, and the bottom pair is flannel; the other 2 pair are actual one-yard pieces I got at a quilt show.  BTW, it's a rainy cool weekend and the Roommate reports the flannel pair were very nice to put on this morning!  

I have many projects in the pipeline, using some fun fabric I just purchased, plus getting some inspiration from a concert we were at on Thursday...but first I must finish up quite a few things.  More on that later!

More One-Yard Wonders: Roommate Knickers v.2

I mentioned I'd found 2 great books in my public library, and ended up buying them both.  You'll see here the 2nd version of boxers from Fabric by Fabric: One-Yard Wonders, which I actually made with less than one yard!  Boy is my life exciting.  If you're interested, the original book is One-Yard Wonders.  Both are written by Hoskins & Yaker.  

I am about to start a 3rd version, with a look to really perfecting the fly, something I've always known was difficult, but I got interested in really trying to get it right after watching my friend Tilly on the Great British Sewing Bee from BBC2.  I have become addicted to Project Runway, so #GBSB was fun because it was soooo different.  (For one thing, much more emphasis on sewing skills, not as much on design...which makes sense, but nice to see a different focus.)  

One of the projects was to make a pair of men's pants...something I will probably never try. But they mentioned how difficult a zipper fly is and I remember that I had done a just-barely-acceptable job on the first pair of knickers for Mr. Roommate, so was enthused to try again.  The verdict?  Well, not quite right, but better.  

I had a lot of fun playing with the stripey fabric on this & if you look closely at the left edge of the photo, above, you'll see that I went all the way to the selvage.  We saw this a lot in West Africa & I think it's a great way to use as much fabric as possible! 

More Copy Your Clothes

Green dress at Great Sand Dunes National Park

You may or may not know that the main reason I started making clothes again...and stopped quilting...is because I no longer live in Abu Dhabi & no longer have my tailor, Mohammed, to make clothes for me.  We left Abu Dhabi in 2008, so the wonderful cotton dresses and skirts and jackets I have are beginning to wear out.  

This green dress, in particular, wasn't all cotton to begin with.  (One of the hazards of buying fabric for 27¢/yard is not knowing exactly what that fabric is made of.)  Anyway, it's faded horribly, and it's time to try my hand at copying it & making another...

If you're wondering what it will be made of, check out this amazing fabric from Windham Fabrics.  I love it & broke down last week and bought 4 yards (there's a discount if you buy more than 3, so I HAD to).  

After taking the pieces apart, I marked
them so I wouldn't get confused. 

The green dress is mostly taken apart at this point--it's quite a good thing to do if you're watching a movie, as we were last night (those old Columbos are great fun!).  There were 10 homemade buttons (fabric + plastic) on it and Bella is loving those--they bounce & skitter extremely well on our hardwood floors!  

The next part will be turning these dress pieces into pattern pieces.  I don't think Mohammed used a 5/8" seam allowance!  But I have plenty of old maps from work to make pattern pieces out of...so here I go.

I've traced the piece, but need to add
the 5/8" seam. 

I pieced the pattern piece for the sleeve, I didn't
want to start cutting into a new map! 

BTW, the copied skirt is coming along nicely--lined and everything, I just haven't felt like tacking the hem.  Will probably wait until my friend gets back in town so she can help.  Explaining to the Roommate what I want is rather a chore, but Heidi will know exactly what I want...

Bella is devoted to Project Runway, too!

Overseeing the efficient use of fabric.