Where did summer go?

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Diane

I’ve noticed that it’s stone dark now by 8p, and that can only mean one thing. Summer is nearly over. On the other hand, the weather has been so wonderful the last few weeks that I’m starting to realize that September and October are the best time of year out here. The fog isn’t as heavy and, with the inversion, it’s a nearly constant 73F outside. Granted, we were 30F cooler this morning (hello FOG!), but it’d mostly pulled back by 9a and was already warming up. Too bad I had to go to the office because this is still sitting on my worktable:

From Garment Class

Yup, after another weekend down with Barbara, Suzanne and Jeane, my shirt fabric is cut, overlocked, interfaced, stay-stitched and ready to assemble. It was a lot of work to get here, and it’s worth noting where I started.

The goal for last weekend, for me, was to learn how to modify a commercial pattern in order to make a shirt. There are benefits to doing this – in particular, having arms, cuffs, collar, and other fiddly pieces already addressed seemed like a real benefit when we were working on the jacket. Plus, it’s a good skill to have. So, prior to the previous class, I hit JoAnn and found some likely contenders. I settled on this:

I liked the fitted look of the front and the non-traditional collar. Plus, I was pretty sure I had enough fabric! So we laid out the pattern and got to work. Once again I don’t have pictures of the whole process because we work pretty fast and furious. But, it essentially went like this:

  • 1. Open the pattern and check front/back for fit against the sloper. Move the shoulder seam accordingly, increase the Front-to-waist, move darts. Leave all other parts the same and make a muslin.
  • 2. Try on muslin, confirm “good enough” and then attach collar and sleeves. Move dart points (again), change armhole curve, reshape sleeve, try on again, realize I need another full muslin.
  • 3. Make second muslin, try on and confirm WTF!?!? on where we moved the darts, slash/open sleeve cap to add more ease, make another round of sleeves, try on again, and then come up with final dart placement and agree that sleeves are “good enough.”

It’s now mid-afternoon on Sunday and I need to get back that night. It’s a 7h drive, so we sat down and talked through the details of the finer points of sewing up the shirt (collar attachment, cuff easing, button bands, etc.) and then I jumped in the car and headed home. I had notes on what needed modifying one last time on the tissue paper pattern so I felt confident when it was time to get going.

The next weekend, I picked up woven interfacing and the other things I’d need to sew up the shirt and then spent the day on Sunday doing cutting and prep. I made it a point not to fuss. The stripes aren’t perfectly vertical/horizontal. The unfinished edges may still end up a bit wonky, but they’re overlocked so they won’t move. I’ve interfaced where the fabric needs it and even preshrunk the interfacing before putting it on.

It’s just sewing now and I’m feeling confident. The classes have shown me so much about the process that none of it seems intimidating. And, this being the third bit of fabric that I’ve cut up, I think I’m over it. I’ve also picked up some really, really good books on tailoring that will remind me of the steps I went through with Jeane, so I think it’ll all be just fine.

The other thing we learned was that it’s probably easier to just make the pattern from our slopers rather than trying to modify a commercial one. My homework is going to be drafting a shirt pattern based on my sloper between now and our next meeting in December. In December, we’ll make arm slopers and then we’ll transfer that to my shirt pattern. Perfect.

And Chris is even up for me taking all his measurements because I’m feeling confident enough to start sewing for him. He’ll get a shirt for sure, hopefully a jacket as well in the near future. And it’ll look great over a knitted vest.

I’ll make a mental note to take more pictures as I’m sewing stuff. And hey, there’s that tapestry thing we’re doing, too.

So, Lynn – how’s that blanket coming? And Sarah, what this I hear about cotton singles for tablet weaving?

I know I’m not the only one who’s been productive.

Posted in Weaving | 2 Comments

The Benefits of Fit and Help

Posted on May 30, 2012 by Diane

Sorry, Lynn, this isn’t about tapestry, cut pile or card weaving. I did two of the three of those last week, and hoped to do the third, but this past weekend was really all about pattern drafting, pattern layout and sewing.

Installment three of the “Fit and Style” class I’ve been taking in Palm Springs was just Barbara and I – our other two classmates ended up having conflicts. Rather than trying to reschedule, Jeanne was kind enough to go ahead anyway and the session ended up going in a very different direction. We both had fabric ready to be cut and sewn, so after we drafted, tested and finalized our skirt basics (that went fast, BTW), the three of us started talking about what we really wanted to do. Barbara was hell-bent on making her skirt as she’d never really warmed up to making the shirt, plus that fabric wasn’t woven off, so her choice was easy and small enough to be finished before heading home on Tuesday. I was also having second thoughts about the simple shirt now that my production fabric was done. I wanted something a little, well, MORE from that fabric, so we decided to use the Horoscope Shawl and companion fabric to make a casual jacket.

As a reminder, here are the two fabrics I used:

The warp yarn is the same in both – Webs 14/2 Alpaca/Silk. I started with the light grey (the light warp yarn in the left-hand fabric) and dyed in 12 colors to match Bonnie’s warping plan. For the original shawl, I put a stripe in between each major section of the plan using the dark grey and wove it off with the same. For the companion piece, I used the leftover dyed warp, threaded in some-what random stripes and filled in the gaps with the undyed light grey. I wove this off with some single, tweedy, navy blue wool. They both went into the washer but the shawl received a brushing to soften the fabric and raise the nap. Sett was 24epi for both, plain weave.

After having made one kimono, without any special sleeve treatment, I knew that I wanted something just a bit more fitted and without as much bulk in the sleeves. I’d also come armed with four yards of muslin so Jeanne had me draft a simple jacket starting with my basic so that we could try it on and see where we could make simple modifications to give it a bit of fit and shape but still finish it before the weekend was over. I drafted the body, incorporating my shoulder slopes, and attached a simple rectangular sleeve. Neither of us liked that, so we went straight for a modified-T sleeve.

Again, a simple modification, so I attached that to the muslin on the other side, sewed the whole thing together and we looked again. The last modification before diving into drafting the final pattern was to taper the sleeve rather than having a simple rectangle. Overall length would be driven by how much fabric was there and that didn’t need to be done until the body was sewn. We pinned the muslin to get the sleeve shape in the ballpark and then used that to draft a paper pattern.

So, pattern pieces in hand and a test-fit out of muslin and it was time to go. We did some calculations for the button band and decided do a separate facing piece for the collar. Bottom hem would be addressed when we got there – either self-facing or with scraps from around the studio. Time to cut.

I don’t have pictures of the cutting/assembling process as we were moving really, REALLY quickly. I was up against it in that Sunday was cut and sew and we were still doing a bit of winging on the pattern. Jeanne was ever at hand to help me think through both the cutting and the piecing. I learned how to do the button band properly (something that absolutely eluded me when making the first kimono), we prevented mistakes by talking things through, figured out why the muslin was behaving oddly in the sleeve corner in front (my front is 1/2″ longer than my back due to shoulder curve) and just generally talking about how garments worked. While this was a “simple” pattern, it was nearly at the extreme of my ability. Given my pace, she offered up part of Tuesday morning to finish things up to where I’d be confident to complete it at home and that spurred me on enough to get the body sewn, button bands and collar facing attached, and the sleeves cut and attached before going to bed. That left closing the side seams/sleeves and addressing cuff and hem facing in the morning.

Next morning, we started bright and early at 7:30a and, by 10a, I had a finished jacket. Button bands, cuffs, collar facing and hems needed to be hand stitched down, but the rest was done. Button holes could be done on my own time. I jumped in the car, had a long and heavily delayed drive home (accident on I-5). I unloaded, had dinner, turned on the Tivo and started hemming. By 11p it was done, ironed and placed on a hanger. Today, I woke to this:

Honestly, I love it. It still has the overall fullness and shape of the kimono, but the bulk under the arms and on the body are gone. The jewel neck gives it a wonderful finished look and doesn’t disturb the overall vertical feel of the jacket. The two fabrics are absolutely different, but work together in a subtle and pleasing way. I’ve one minor issue with a seam under the left arm, but I can address that at my leisure. It’s totally wearable as is and I expect I’ll be wearing it a lot.

Detail of the set-in sleeve:

There are a lot of seams coming together here, and once we incorporated the difference in front/back length, it all worked out. Symmetry point of the sleeve is NOT where the shoulder seam hit – we had to bias it toward the back by 1/2″ and then all was well. I also learned about releasing this seam so that the fabric could lie flat.

Button band/hem facing:

The button band has interfacing to help stabilize as well. Sewn at the top and bottom, right sides together, before turning inside-out to give the sharp corner. Bottom hem facing was simply tucked inside the button band before tacking down. Facings all came from the companion fabric where possible, and are symmetric where possible.

Stripe sort-of matching:

When deciding how to cut the sleeves, I chose to mirror the overall colors of the horoscope shawl in an effort to disguise the set-in cuts as well as give a flow to the garment. I’m really happy how it worked out and looks deliberate – because it was! I also took pains to ensure that stripes matched at the shoulder seams as a misalignment would drive me absolutely batty. It wasn’t hard at all and I’m glad we did it.

So there you go. A busy weekend, lots of fun and learning, and I now have a pattern that I am confident I’ll use again and again. I need to raise that armhole opening by half an inch to better match the sleeve as I had a lot of easing to do, but I’ll do that when I make another one and then I’ll transfer to tag board. And, I’m already thinking of another one. And, AND! I feel confident enough that I could alter it a bit further to even take out more of that sleeve bulk. Yeah, this has been so worth it. Just fabulous.

And now I need to go dye some yarn. What did you guys do this weekend?

Posted in Sewing | 4 Comments