Brown Flowered Blouse

Most people who know me know I'm not prone to wearing floral prints. Ok, maybe no one has noticed, but it's true. There are very few things in my wardrobe that have flowers on them. I usually prefer a nice geometric print, but I saw this fabric on deep discount and it seemed perfect for another go at my new blouse pattern. 

And I actually remembered to take pictures this time. 

One of the goals I had developing this pattern was for it to be quick to put together. In fact, I wanted to see if I could do most of it on the serger and be able to whip out a shirt in an afternoon.  For a slow sewer like me that would be quite a feat.

Turquoise Blouse

A while back I showed you a small glimpse of a shirt I'd been working on:

Well, with some minor tweaks I've made another go at the pattern and I'm happy enough with it I traced all of the pattern pieces out onto something that would last a little longer through multiple uses:

Stretch & Sew 1582

While my posts here may have been spotty at best over the last couple of months, I've certainly not been lax in my sewing. In fact we are just starting to reclaim the living room from what was beginning to look like a sweatshop from all of the giftmaking. With the holidays over and most of the gifts given I can start to show you some of what I made.  

One of the first was this Stretch & Sew pattern from the late 1970's.

Blue Shirtwaist Dress: Part 3

So I know I haven't posted in like a week. Sorry about that. Here, finally, is the last part of the shirtwaist dress.

Where last we left off I was trying to figure out what color to make the collar and cuffs. So I started off by painting the colors on digitally, just so get an idea of what they looked like.
 

Blue Shirtwaist Dress: Part 2

With tweaks to the muslin complete I made a pattern for the dress. Now I know I usually use junkmail for my patterns, but several years ago my grandmother gave me a bag of bits and pieces that included some of the oldschool pattern material. I don't usually use it as I'm not often sure of whether I've really got a pattern I'm going to reuse. Now I think I might have something worth reusing, so I went for it.

laying out the pattern pieces

Blue Shirtwaist Dress: Part 1

I've been wanting to make a shirtwaist dress for myself for a couple of years now but just had never eked out the time or shelled out the money for the yardage of fabric involved. In fact, I knew that just the fitting of such a garment was likely to take more time than I usually care to expend on something I'm keeping for myself.

The original idea was for a 1940's era shirtwaist dress: simple, everyday wearable.  But as time has progressed and I've amassed a huge file of pictures of patterns and dresses made by other bloggers, my ideas shifted around slightly.  In looking at many pictures of 1940's dresses, the skirt portion is often very smooth in the hip area and the sleeves often have that nice little poof.

Alterations etc

I've taken a short break from finishing up the final bits of my Dr Who cosplay to spend some time with my grandmother while she is in town.  

She brought with her a whole host of items to be altered, though, so I've been sewing like a madwoman in the few hours I've spent at home.

some of the items she needed altered

I spent several hours with her making notes on what needed to be done on each item and pinning & re-pinning till she had a look we were both happy with.

skirts: hemmed!

The skirt hems went pretty quickly, the blouse alterations, not so much.  The first one, though, didn't actually need any change in shape, just a style adjustment.  The knit blouse had an open cutwork design around the neckline which was pretty.  But my grandma found it felt too revealing and asked if I could do something about it.

When I hemmed the blue patterned skirt that went with it I had enough extra to lay behind the cutwork, which she also found to be scratchy. I handstitched the edges down, carefully cutting it to shape.  She's very pleased with how it turned out and even wore it yesterday!

The other thing we did sewing-wise while she was here was to take a bunch of measurements and also create a sloper for her.  I'm planning on doing a bit more sewing for her long-distance and want to know I am sewing for the correct shape.

The first project is going to be an old pattern of hers: Stretch & Sew 1582. The original was a rust-colored dress, but I'll be making it a two-piece ensemble out of a dark green for the fall and winter months.

In other news, we finally got a tiny bit of rain. yay!

tree is happier, but ground is still pretty parched

That's all for now. Hope you have a good Monday!

Late Night Hodgepodge

Well, I couldn't sleep, so I updated my other blog (specifically the list of Gluten Free restaurants in the area) in case anyone attending GenCon needs to find it). But it's 2:30 am and I'm still awake, so now I'm here.

I keep a few odds and ends lying around my blog folder that are things I'd love to talk about but don't have enough of to make an entire post. (or if I did it would be long and boring and ranty...)  So I thought I'd just throw some of them out here tonight (this morning?) in a sort of catch-all post. 

one of my grandmother's aprons

There was a really interesting discussion lately on a topic that has long intrigued me: the dualistic quality of home sewing and staying fashion forward but maintaining respect for old ways/traditions/techniques.  I'm really not as eloquent a writer as Gretchen Hirsch even when I'm not sleep-deprived, so maybe pop over to her post herecalled "It's Not Your Grandma's Crafting (Or Is it?)" and take in some food for thought.

One Lovely Blog Award

Last week I was given the One Lovely Blog Award by Vala of the blog Vala Sews, with whom I am always amazed that I have so much in common.

And I did a nice little writeup about it right away.  Unfortunately I accidentally deleted all of the text from that post, and I lost every bit of it... /sigh Well, I've finally eked out enough time to give it another go, so here you are:

Dobuku

A couple of months back I saw this fabric and knew I had to have it.  Finally it went on sale, and I snapped up what little was left of it.

I already had a general idea of what I wanted to do with it. So, naturally, I turned to the web to hone the idea down to a fine point where I settled on this:

Dobuku via Sengokudaimyo

Skulls Corset Finished... ish

So, it's been a while since I shared anything about the corset I was working on. You probably have forgotten about it, or thought that I did. Well, I didn't forget; it's just more that I never completely finished it... on purpose.

When last I left you hanging the corset was ready for flossing and grommets.  The grommets went in without incident. I had to do the flossing on the back bones before adding the top and bottom grommets as they overlap the edges of the bones slightly.  I do this on purpose to maximize stability.

I did a decent job making the flossing look good both front and back (sometimes)

Inspiring myself while I sew

When I sew I like to listen to or watch something.  Sometimes it's the news (BBC & NPR podcasts are my usual), sometimes a book (I've just finished Neil Gaiman's American Gods), but often it's a show or movie. 

It may seem odd that I would have something visual on while I'm doing a task that requires (for me) that I use my eyes constantly, but it works for me.  Sometimes I put in a disk or pull up a show that I've seen lots before so that I'm actually listening to it more than watching it; sometimes I intentionally put on something I need to be more visually aware of. I find the latter is nice for keeping eye strain from setting in.

A couple of days ago I watched Pygmalion for the first time. Sure, I've seen My Fair Lady a good number of times and even have the soundtrack on vinyl but this is the first time I'd seen the 'original.'

I was really taken by the coat Elisa wears at the close of the film.

screen capture from Pygmalion on Hulu

I like how the collar doesn't have the traditional collar roll at the back of the neck (which I always hate with my short-ish neck) but still manages to have all the gusto of a collar & lapel.

screen capture from Pygmalion on Hulu

I've been wanting to make myself a new coat for a while; maybe this fall I'll have the time & money to do so. I think keeping the stylings of this coat in mind would be a good starting place for me.

The other thing I've been watching while I sew lately is a Korean show called Fashion King.  It's a bit of a challenge to watch while I sew because I have to read most of the subtitles, and it's a bit overly dramatic than my usual taste, but I like it.

I like it like a run-on sentence

While the styles are not all that inspiring for me, like watching (realistically only the first few seasons of) Project Runway, there's something about seeing sewing or fashion-creativity on the screen, even if just pretended, that keeps my sewing juices flowing.

the heroine: so talented her fellow seamstresses ooh and ahh over her work...

Well, back to the sewing machine for me. With several projects wrapping up soon, I'm hoping to get back to the regular thrice a week blog posting very shortly.

Hope your week is going well!

More New Patterns!

Earlier this year I posted about getting some new patterns and trying to organize them.  Well, we've had another friend gift a big box of patterns!  I'm excited about the patterns and excited to share them with you.

The majority of patterns come from Stretch & Sew.  They used to have a store near here and I already have a couple of patterns from both my mom's and my grandma's collections.  I was excited to find out that they are still around in the form of this website here, but disappointed to see that their innovation and sense of style seemed to stop in the 1980's. 

Anyway, in the grouping that I found in the box, I was super stoked to find a bunch of men's patterns. I don't have many and I really am just beginning to delve into menswear.

S7236 Finished

Today amid a torrent of rain and hail (ok, a very very brief torrent) I finished the Simplicity 7236 dress and managed to get a couple of decent pics of the finished product.

Armscye pinned to lining

S7236 Not Quite Finished

Well, as much as I had hoped to have a finished dress to share with you today, it's just not going to happen.  I have an inherent ability to take what should be a simple straightforward pattern and add one or two extra elements that means a ton of extra handsewing. lol oh well... 

Here's what I've got for you...

S7236 Lining

Monday I posted about beginning work on Simplicity 7236.  Today I'll continue with the lining.

I have in my stash a couple of yards of a basic brown polyester lining.  By now you know how much I abhor polyester, but more expensive linings aren't in the budget and this dress (in the wool i've picked out anyway) really needs a lining.

S7236 Pattern and Muslin

This year I am working hard to sew through my stash of fabrics in order to drastically reduce the volume of fabrics we have around the apartment.  The first big project I found to do for myself towards these ends is Simplicity 7236.

1967

Organizing Patterns and Fabrics

This winter my mother and I received a gift from one of her quilting friends: a big bag of patterns.  After wading through the wonderfulness of all of the patterns I pulled out the ones I'd like to keep and brought some of them home with me.

adult patterns

Mom and I have decided to share the patterns back and forth; it just seems to make more sense this way.

kid patterns

I was actually thinking it would be good for us to share *all* of our patterns, not just the 'new' ones we just got.

 

patterns my husband gave me last year

So I started getting them all organized so I know what I have and can catalog them somehow. (anyone want to gift us a copy of MS Access?)  I used to have all of them very well organized, but after several years, a lot of sewing, and two moves they were all mixed up and in boxes and bags in various locations in the apartment.

omg so many patterns

The box above just has the Simplicity and McCall/ McCall's patterns, but at least now they are in numerical order

shameful

But then there is this growing pile of pattern pieces and instructions sheets that have become separated from their envelopes for one reason or another.  I've managed to get about half of these reunited so far. 

boy-ish fabrics from my stash - one of these may become an apron

I've also been going through all of my fabric and weeding out things I know I will never use.  This is especially hard since some things have come to me from other people's stashes and I have held onto them for sentimental reasons.  Nevertheless, with encouragement from both my husband and from my best friend, I have managed so far to pull out a large basket full of fabrics etc to put in the growing donation pile by the door.

wool and lining patiently waiting to become a dress

I am hoping to photograph and catalog the remaining fabrics in my stash so I know what I have.  When I'm done, hopefully it will be easier to pair the patterns I have with the available fabric in my stash.  While I'm happy to be working again, even if just part time and with a nice discount on fabrics, I really need to continue to sew down my stash both for the benefit of our budget and our limited space, and I'm hoping this will help.

Hope your week has started off nicely!

Aprons

Today I have a special treat for you. My mother is the keeper of our family's treasured heirloom aprons and is graciously sharing with us photos of them and some thoughts about both aprons and life.

Thanks, Mom!

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Some of my favorite childhood memories include the aprons that my mom, grandma, and aunties wore.  Back then it was a part of a lady’s working garment – the part that kept a lot of soil from landing on her dress.  I wish I had the apron that Grandma used to wear, or at least a picture to share. It covered the front of her dress from just below the neckline to nearly her hem.  It had a loop that went over the head and around the neck, then tied behind her back at the waist.