Me Made May 2015 Day 14

I made my top using Vogue 1071 and a remnant of yummy cotton lawn that I purchased from Poppy Fabrics when I was an undergrad at Berkeley. It only took me 20+ years to sew up the piece.

I did not make my pants, socks, or shoes.

This Calvin Klein for Vogue Patterns top takes very little fabric.  I've made this view three times.  I made another view, but, sent it to Goodwill. Poor fabric choice and my inexperience (years ago) with bias edges in rayon crepe made a real mess.

I think that one of the hardest aspects of learning to sew (or knit) is pairing an appropriate fabric (or yarn) and pattern.  What did you find most difficult as a newbie?

In the background, I'm screening Precision and Accuracy in Geodetic Surveying, which uses surveying to teach the difference between precision and accuracy in general.



Lately, I've been thinking and writing a lot about geophysical data formats and metadata standards. To procrastinate do research, I see how others do it.  ;-)

Vogue 1071 Refashion

It all started with the salesman's question, "What are you going to wear with that?" I had worked a couple of short stints in retail during college, so I could recognize the (soft) upsell. I used to do the same thing. But, though I can afford to buy nice clothes once in a while, I can't afford to dress in head to toe Issey Miyake.

Check out the texture on this Cauliflower jacket.

I remembered that I had some gray handkerchief linen in a similar color. It also works well with white, navy or black bottoms like the skirt shown below.  Serendipitously, I found this men's silk shirt at my neighborhood Goodwill. I like the contrast of matte and shiny, crinkled and smooth.

I used this out of print (OOP) Calvin Klein pattern from 1993.

It buttons up the back, and my "material" already had buttons and buttonholes!

So I cut the blouse back from the old shirt front,

and the blouse front from the shirt back,

and added bias bindings, cut from one sleeve, to the neck and arm openings.

It was a quick and gratifying project. The only pattern change I made was to deepen the front neck by 1/2" so it didn't feel like it was choking me.  There was no buttonhole at the top of the blouse (which was the bottom hem of the shirt), so I used a snap there.

Because of the width of the cut-on cap sleeves, the only way I could fit the back pattern pieces was to turn it upside down.  The pocket is not functional, but I left it on anyway. 

I wore it to work on Wednesday with the jacket.

Addendum:
I made another matching blouse with the gray handkerchief linen in Handmade Homemade (Vogue 8392).

Everyday plenty AND make do and mend

I admit to purchasing an Eileen Fisher that I didn't need*, partly because the hang-tag describing the sweater ended with "Everyday plenty." It made me think about value in a different way.  How much do you spend on a blazer and how often do you wear it?  How much do you spend on a tank top and how often do you wear it?

I have enough blazers that sit unworn in the closet.  What I needed was cool and easy-care tops to wear around the house during warm days.  That brings me back to "everyday plenty".  How much time to you spend sewing a "couture" jacket and how does that translate per wearing?  Do the same for a tank top.

YMMV, but the investment return of a tank top beats the one for a jacket in my real life. 

My sister is returning to sewing and asked me to recommend shell patterns.  I was wary of recommending something that works for me and not for her.  For instance, I have excellent results with vintage Calvin Klein patterns from the 1980s and 1990s.  Iliana, who performs FBAs in her sewing, wrote:

I've always felt like Calvin Klein depended on having very flat-chested, boyish-figured models as there's not much shaping in evidence, and the people you see successfully wearing the designs generally seem to be that body type.

So, when my sister admired the Liberty lawn shell made up in Vogue 1071, I could not recommend it for her.  I like it enough to have made it three times, but I cannot recommend it for her very different figure.

I do unequivocally recommend Simplicity 2938.  I've made it three times.  The princess seams allowed me to make a SBA in the bust and a broad chest adjustment in the chest.  The end effect is a top that fits perfectly smoothly.  There are 31 reviews on Pattern Review.  Look at the variety of figures of women wearing Simplicity 2938 on Google images. Look how many are smiling! 

There is a connection between these disparate thoughts. Don't save your "best" sewing techniques for things you wear on special occasions. Take the time to do it on the pieces you wear the most often. It's my version of everyday plenty.

My most recent version of Simplicity 2938 began as one of my father in law's old shirts.  The collars, cuffs and center front placket were worn, but the rest of the fabric had enough life in it to become this top.  The two fronts became the side front panels.  The shirt back became the tank back and one sleeve was cut up into bias strips for binding the neckline and armholes.

The other sleeve would have yielded a large enough piece for the center front panel, but I opted for a double layer of this delicious piece of preconsumer waste cotton lawn.

The front panels can be sewn into a burrito as shown below.  Then pull the blue pieces out through the openings at the top or bottom.

The straight-ish shoulder seams can be sewn with a flat-fell seam.

The curves side seams can also be flat-felled into submission, but I opted for easier French seams here instead.

2" bias strips were then folded in half to 1" wide, seamed at the short ends into tubes, and then applied in the round to the openings.  The finished product is completely smooth and clean-finished inside and out.  Everyday plenty out of make do and mend.  See it out on the town in Carmegeddon 2 adventure.

* I wore that sweater enough times to obviate any guilt over an impulse purchase.  The color, texture and feel of the sweater all sing to me.

FIFO or LIFO?

How do you use your collections?  First In-First Out?  Last In-First Out?

Sometimes, I sew the latest fabric purchase on top of the stack.  Other times, I rummage through the bins for a specific color and unearth pieces purchased long ago.  This project is LIFO because it was sewn up within a week of arrival.

I purchased this costly Liberty of London Tana Lawn during my last visit to Elfriede's Fine Fabrics in August.  (BTW, though the fabric is costly by my standards, it was only $40/yd at Elfriede's for the 54" Tana Lawn vs. $50/yd I've seen elsewhere for the exact same thing.)

I purchased 3/4 of a yard, or $30 worth because it perfectly matched a cardigan I was knitting at the time, I love the feel of Tana Lawn, and the shell in Vogue 1071 uses the fabric very efficiently. 

The last time I made this blouse, it rode up slightly at the hips.  For this version, I added about 1.5" around the hips and it fits much more smoothly.  Of course, I only have photos of it worn tucked in so you can't see that. ;-)

You can see the nice buttons that I recycled from an old and (sadly) shrunken linen blouse (another Calvin Klein pattern).  The front is lined with red/white cotton batiste rescued from the SBQG share table.  I like this blouse so much, I pulled out a cotton lawn remnant purchased from Poppy Fabrics about 25 years ago to make another!  If that is one of the oldest fabrics in my collection, does that make it FIFO?

It's a high-low outfit because I purchased the skirt fabric from barrels at Trash For Teaching for $1/pound. The fabric is factory waste from American Apparel; their factory is only a few miles from T4T.

At T4T we strive to source wonderful, clean, safe, interesting items that local businesses discard in abundance, and make them available to shoppers at the warehouse. Over the past 8 years we’ve collected materials from over 200 companies, most of those original manufacturers still donate to T4T today. Since we first opened our doors in 2004, T4T has diverted over 50,000 pounds of materials from local landfill. Those materials include an abundance of plastic and cardboard thread cones, in all colors shapes and sizes, beautiful wood from a shutter company, plastic color chips, glass tubes, fabric and trim, colorful rubber mats, tiles, tubes, Styrofoam….and the list goes on.

BTW, if you are visiting LA and have a rental car, it's worth visiting T4T and exploring their warehouse neighborhood (near the intersection of I-110 and I-105) to learn just how much (besides celluloid) the region manufactures.  T4T also sells science "teacher kits" made up of trash with lesson plans at bargain basement prices.  The kit for teaching optics is genius!  I say that in earnest.

Anyway, the linen was celadon green and the jersey was light olive green.  I dyed the linen to match the jersey and then lined it with gray rayon lining, which deepens the green of the linen.  Notice also that the hip yoke has darts incorporated into the seams.   The linen is cut on the bias.  I drafted the pattern.  I made a bias top to go with it.  The set deserves it's own post at a later time.