Linen Summer Shorts

Last year I bought a piece of linen in the renmant bin at Fabricana. Since I only had very little of it (less than a meter I think, my original idea was to make a safari-style vest with it. But this summer got unusually hot, unusually early here in Vancouver (unfortunately causing a lot of forest fires). So by end of May, I already had all my summer wardrobe out, and realized I needed a critical addition to it: a nice pair of shorts that i could wear to work (as opposed to denim cut offs :P)

For the pattern, I used Burda Magazine #115 from june 2010, which I already had in my stash. It is a cuffed pair of shorts with front pleats and single-welt back pockets.

(apologies for all the wrinkles...I tried ironing them in a hurry before the photos but i obviously didn't do a very good job. Also, it's linen, I doubt they will ever be wrinkle-free again)

I made a muslin first and managed to figure out alterations pretty easily. There was way too much fabric at the crotch (which seems to be a constant for me with burda pants patterns that involve pleats...actually any burda bottoms involving pleats, i don't know why I keep making pleated bottoms...).To fix that, I pinned a horizontal pleat accross the whole front, from side seam to side seam (about 2cm). I also took in about 2cm at CB at the waist, tapering to nothing at the crotch.

After that the shorts came together really nicely. I really took my time for each step. I made the welt pockets first, then assembled the front pockets. On my wide-legged pants, I struggled with the front pocket lining peaking out took much. This time I was careful to press it in properly, with a slight turn-of-cloth of the main fabric from the front, and careful understitching. The lining does tend to show a bit through the welt pockets in the back, but I'm ok with it.

A few weird things happened while constructing these shors. First, I thought that because I had shortened the front crotch, i also needed to shorten the inside pocket piece...but even after I'd done the alteration to the front on the pattern piece, the pocket still matched at the notch...I wonder if I traced the wrong size to start with...obviously not a big deal since it didn't create an issue, but I was a bit puzzled...

The secone puzzling thing that happened had to do with the waist band. I cut the outer piece and inner piece exactly the same, but after I attached the outer piece to the short, the inner piece ended up too short (the side seams didn't match at all). Again, pretty puzzled about that, looked like the outerpiece might have stretched out after i stitched it to the short or something, but I clearly had to recut the inner piece longer. I ran out of main fabric so I used the lining fabric instead (which was probably better anyway in the end).The lining fabric also came from my stash - remnants of the rayon I used for this skirt.

Aside from that, no big problems putting these shorts together. I did change the construction of the cuffs. In this pattern, the cuff pieces are integarted to the bottom of the shorts. (If I understood correctly) Burda will have you fold the bottom portion towards the inside, sew the edge to the inside of the shorts, then fold again towards the outside, and secure the pleat with a slip stitch. That's kind of a weird construction in my opinion as you technically end up with a seam accross the short leg, even though it gets hidden by the cuff.

Instead, I mesured where I wanted my cuffs to hit, and chopped off the necessary amount from the leg, and used it as a seperate cuff piece. I used the Inari Dress construction for sleeve cuffs to attach them back to the bottom of the shorts. Much cleaner.

In the end, I am so happy with these shorts. They fit perfectly, and they are exactly what I wanted: a pair of simple, work-appropriate (for my casual-dress work everonment anyways) shorts, that can be paired up with anything. I'm also feeling a lot more confident diving into my next pair of pants now that I have sort of figured out my basic alterations with Burda pants - although my next pair will most likely NOT involve pleats.

I finished these shorts back in early august, just in time to put them in my suitcase for my trip to Montreal. I've worn them quite a few times since then. We didn't get a chance to take photos in august though, and all of a sudden Vancouver weather changed from hot summer to cold, rainy fall (we actually had one of the strongest wind storm in recorded BC history that day, with thousands of homes without power over the week-end). I had kind of lost hope that we would be able to take outside pictures of them, but suddenly around 7:00pm, we noticed that the sky had cleared up. We rushed outside to our photo spot and managed to get this really nice sunset light (only lasted long enough for the photos).

As a side note, and in the spirit of the recent #UnsungSewingBlogHero trend on the blogosphere, I just wanted to reaiterate my thanks to B, for being such a good sport in not only taking my blog photos - especially that day, when the poor guy was still sore all over from running a 50km trail race a week before, but also for spending the time processing them so I really get the best result (and by processing I mean enhancing brightness and colors and maybe hiding a couple of blemishes here and there. No crazy body enhancing photoshop action here, this is really what I look like :P).

There's always a bit of bargaining when it comes to processing:

Him: Really, you're going to put 20 photos of your shorts on your blog? These four are basically all the same, except for the direction of your face!

Me: But they're all so great (cause you're such a talented photographer, wink wink), it's hard to choose!

Him: well, let's try to cut it down to 15 at least.

Me: ok, fine...I guess i can live without this photo of my (cut-off) face looking to the right...

I'd done a post about B. a few years back, to acknowledge how grateful I was that he took all these photos, but it can't hurt to say it again, can it :)

Now I'm currently finishing up my Inari Dress, and then I have a bit of a crazy project of sewing up running gear for the both of us for a race in October...and potentially pants in the mean time...yeah my sewing list isn't getting smaller anytime soon...

Finished Project: Knit dress

This is Vogue 1315.  I found the pattern in the $1 bin at Fabrics, ect... in Vancouver. It's a loose-fitting dress with elasticated dress, with pleating and slouchy pocjet design which make it a bit more interesting than just plain knit dress. I bought it thinking it would go into my stash to be made at a later time, but when I saw this fabric on the top of my stash, I thought it would be a could match, and an easy project to complete.

The fabric is a wine-coloured cotton jersey bought at Gala Fabrics shortly before they closed down.It's a medium weight with a good balance of body and drape.
The most complicated step when making the dress was figuring out how to fold the pleat on the skirt before attaching the pocket. The instructions where pretty straight forward but I mistakenly made the pleat on the wrong side, which I only realized later on when trying to line up the sides of the dart and they didn't match up. Fortunately I was able to reverse the darts without having to undo all the pocket seams.

The top was a no brainer. The only thing I modified was the neckline. The neckline is supposed to be finished with two ovelapping bands with raw edges, which, when using the proper fabric weight/content, end up rolling down. I liked that design detail but my fabric would just not roll (it was either too heavy, or maybe 100% cotton doesn't roll the way lycra does?). Anyways, I didn't want to waste the pieces so I ended up sewing both bands together along their longer edge. Since one was narrower than the other, when folding in half lengthwise, the seam did not end up on the fold, but on the inside, which was perfect to conceal it.

I then attached the band to the neckline and finished it with a pretty stretch topstitch.

I attached the sleeves to the shoulders first, then sewed the sleeve seam and side seam in one go. Adding the elastic at the waist was easy,. The casing for the elastic is created by folding the seam allowance from the bodice down towards the skirt and top-stithing in place. I finished the hem with the same stretch topstich as the neckline.

Confession: I haven't actually finished the sleeve hem yet ( I was too eager to wear it). I don't think I will leave it raw, but because I like the look without any top-stitching, I might try to use an invisible hem.

Fitting-wise, I made the following pattern alterations:
Added 2.5 cm (1 inch)  to the bodice length
added 2.5 cm to the skirt along the cutting line, as well as 7cm at the hem (and boy am I glad I did, the original length would have been a tunic on me).
Added 2.5 cm to the sleeve length.
I also took out about 1inch at the armhole, tapering to nothing at the elbow and waist.

If I make this dress again I might try to cut the bodice in a size 8 instead of 10, or maybe remove 1.5-2cm from the center front and back, to make the necline slightly less wide and bring the shoulders closer to center.
Overall I'm quite happy, this is a very comfortable dress, easy to wear, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a regular in my clothing rotation.

Finished Project: Peplum Top Knock-Off

Spring's here! (well, on paper anyway). I've been holding on to this post for a while because it felt so out of season until now. Truth is, this top has been finished since last fall, but I didn't take photos of it until a couple months ago, and I had more winter-ish projects I wanted to blog about first.

I fell in love with this Tibi top when I first saw it on the Glamourai's blog. I decided in the back of my mind that I would knock it off somehow. When I found the flowery cotton fabric at Dressew, I thought about the top right away and decided to go for it.

The original Tibi top has black trim going down the front and back, from neckline to waist. It doesn't seem to have any visible bust shaping, so I assumed the trim was covering all the shaping.

Rather than trying to rotate darts on a simple bodice block (which might have been easier, but who knows), I went on the search for a top pattern that would already have shaping at the neckline. Eventually, I landed on Burda pattern 121, from August 2012. It included darts at the waist, and pleats at the neckline, both of which could be turned into one princess-type seam. 

I did quite a bit of pattern hacking with this:

-Attached the shoulder yokes to the main bodice.

-turned the neckline pleats into darts

-rotated new neckline dart and waist dart slightly, so they would align more

-split front bodice in half lengthwise by turning darts into a princess type seam

I also made my usual set of adjustments:

-lengthenned bodice 2.5 cm

-added shoulder dart to avoid armhole gaping

-forward shoulder adjustement

-added an additional 1.5 cm to back harmole, this I think due to the style of the pattern and how far in the sleeves seemed to attach.

I didn't add any "princess" seam to the back, instead I just added the trim on top of the dart and continued it to the neckline.

 

After the first muslin, I noticed some gaping in the front armhole, and extra fabric accross the bust. I just pinned the excess and it seemed to work. I slashed the pattern from armhole to apex at an angle and overlapped the top and bottom about 2cm. On the center panel, I overlapped the same amount parallel to the hemline. I basically made a variation of a small bust adjustment to a princess seam, but reducing the armhole size at the same time.

That's quite a bit of pattern tweaking, but I don't remember it being that tedious, in the end I think muslin #2 was good, and I was able to go on to the fashion fabric pretty soon after.

But first I had to figure out the peplum portion. Looking closely at the original, I noticed that the peplum was pleated, with the folds lining up with the front and back trim, as well as the side seams. After a couple of tries, I finally figured that I needed a half-circle shape so it would have the right amount of volume (but not too much).

I started by measuring my waist (71cm)

From there, I determined that I wanted to add 6 pleats of 5 cm each once folded, so 10 cm unfolded, so 60cm of additional length. Total =131 cm at the waist.

I then used this fancy calculator to figure out the radius and other dimensions I needed.

I obviously didn't have any markings so putting the pleats together properly took a bit of fiddling, but in the end I managed to get what I wanted, with everything lining up nicely

The bodice and the peplum are both lined with cotton broadcloth. The lining of the peplum part was first sewed to the main fabric at the hem, then folded under and attached to the bottom of the bodice (main fabric & lining) with top stitching. the black trim around the waist covers the top stitching.

 

I'm really hapy with how this turned out. The fabric isn't as graphic as the original top, but it still looks pretty colorful. When I first cut the fabric, I spent some time trying to figure out how to line things up. I ended up lining the pattern somewhat in the back. In the front, I wasn't happy with the flower placement on one of the side panels, so I decided to forget about lining up the flower pattern (the trim creates a break anyway), so I recut that panel to get better flower placement.

If I'm completely honnest, this is definitely an "icing" piece. I don't wear a lot of sleeveless tops at work, because of AC and also I don't love showing my skinny shoulders and upper arm at work anyways. So I don't know how often I'll be wearing this, but regardless, I'm glad I made it, it was a very interesting pattern-experimentation type of project, and I'm quite proud of the finished garment...I might even leave it out on display on a hanger somewhere, I'd be fine with that.

I've finished quite a few projects lately, but haven't been able to take photos. In the meantime I've been trying to switch my sewing queue from winter to spring. I bought two more issues of Burda (because I needed more to pile up :P ), and I've already set my eyes on this particular dress, and maybe the cute summer raincoat from the "easy-2015" issue.

WIP: (Recently and currently) on my sewing table

I opened an instagram account back in November when Sewvember was happening. Since then I've been posting photos of my work in progress projects. Until I get around to taking proper photos of the finished items, I thought I'd do a quick round up of the recent photos and elaborate a bit more on what's been recently & is currently on my sewing table...(please excuse the instagram-cellphone-lowlight qulity photos)

Pajamas
I've always wanted a nice pair of comfy pajama pants. I found the flanel-like fabric in the sale corner at Dressew and couldn't resist. I figured I should do a top as well and actually found some jersey knit I had in my stash. I actually remember purchasing the jersey a few years ago because it reminded me of ...my favorite pair of pajamas growing up.

 

The pattern for the pants is 127 from BWOF December 2007. Since I had enough fabric, I decided to knock out a pair of pajama shorts, also from the same pattern.

 

For the top, I would have used the Renfrew pattern, but I couldn't find my copy. I've either stashed it away in my storage space downstairs, or it has unfortunately been thrown away with a bag of scraps, along with most of my sewing machine accessories...:(

So instead, I downloaded the free "Tonic 2" pattern, by Skinny Bitch Curvy Chic.

 Camisole
A little while ago, my friend gave me this loose jersey dress, made of a really soft, nude coloured knit fabric. The shape of the dress wasn't quite right for me, but I figured I could transform it into something else. I wanted to make a camisole. I have a couple of RTW one, and they are really great for wearing under tunics and blouses, for that added layer of warmth in the winter/fall. I used pattern 128 from the same issue of Burda as the pajama pants.

For this project, I tried for the first time the stretch stitches on my sewing machine. The one I used for the hem is a decorative stitch that can be used instead of twin needles (the extra spool holder that came with my machine, to hold the second spool when using twin needles...also gone with the bag of scraps...)

Random refashioning
I'd purchased this home-made skirt at Value Village a couple of years ago. I love finding home-made items as I feel they are so much more special than RTW. The skirt was midi-length, and I wore it that way for a while, but I didn't love it. Finally last Sunday night, I decided to chop 20cm off the bottom and re-hem it knee-length. Thankfully by then I had received replacement for my overlocking and blind hem feet (which also happened to be part of the scrap bag tragedy)...so I used both to finish the edge and re-hem the skirt to its new length...

I have a couple more "RTW" projects on my queue, a shirt to take in, a lining to shorten, that sort of thing...Althought those projects may not feel very exciting, I have come to appreciate the "instant gratification" that comes with them and I see them as a good way to get some sort of sewing done when time is limited.

Watson Bra
I have been lurking at this pattern for a while now. I'm not one to jump on every new indie pattern that comes out of the blogosphere (how many boxy/loose knit tops patterns do I really need?), but I was immediately attracted to this soft, casual bra, perfect for week-end wear. When Caroline at Black Bird Fabrics (Yeah, Vancouver sewing scene!) came out with her most recent bra kits, it was the perfect excuse for some impulse online shopping.

Since then, I've made two muslins (one from the suggested size based on my measurements, and the other from the size that I usually buy for RTW bras). None of them have turned out satisfactory, and I sense a bit of fitting challenges in the future of this bra....

At least I'm having fun with muslin color-blocking...

Speaking of boxy/loose jersey tops ...
A while back I cut the pieces for pattern 128, from BWOF December 2013. After putting the body together, it sat unfinished for weeks as I was waiting for that second-spool holder (to use with my twin needles) to arrive...until tonight when I realized didn't need the twin needle to attach the sleeve bottoms, and since I didn't have enough brain power or motivation to knock out a third Watson bra muslin(let alone figure out fitting), I put this one back on the sewing table...

So that's it for my round up. I haven't blogged much but I sure have been sewing! I don't know yet what will be next, another knit top, a pair of pants, or should I start looking into summer projects?

Finished Project - One last summer dress

On a trip to Fabricana in early July, I was supposed to only get some swatches of fabric for a special project...But of course, I fell into the remnant bin and came out with 3 random pieces of fabric.

One of them was this pink/purple cotton with a mix of tie-dye and batik print. I couldn't resist. I knew it was going to be my last summer dress of the year.

 

The piece was fairly small (about 115x140cm), so I had to keep it simple. I really wanted an easy dress, the kind that you just slip on on hot summer day, that's effortless and breezy, and doesn't need any addition. 

It had to be sleeveless, but I wanted to be able wear it to work, so I ruled out spaghetti straps, and I didn't want something too loose or flowy - the fabric has a nice body and wouldn't really work as well with a flowy shape anyway.

I had a lot of criterias in mind but couldn't decide on an actual silouette.

I actually looked at a lot of dresses online, hoping to pinpoint what I really wanted, and thinking I would know it when I saw it, which didn't totally happen. Eventually though, i decided it would have a v-neck and some sort of a mock-wrap bodice - I couldn't do a real wrap since I didn't have enough fabric.

For the pattern, I decided to go with pattern 108 from April 2010 of Burda magazine, which matched my idea of faux-wrap with the under-bust seam. The main design detail on that pattern are the pleats, which I removed completely by taping them out on the pattern piece. The pattern starts with size 38, so I had to grade down to a size 36.

For fit alterations, I did my usual:

-Sway back alteration

-forward shoulders adjustment

-back shoulder dart to prevent armhole gaping

-took in at the the center back seem 

-lowered bust dart by 1.5 cm

For design changes I:

-left out the sleeves and didn't add seam allowance on the armholes, so that the shoulders would end up a bit narrower.

- designed a low neckline in the back.

 

I wanted it to be a fast and simple project, aka, no muslin. I've been using the swedish-type tracing paper, which is great for pattern fitting, since it doesn't tear.  I was able to check the fit by pinning the pattern pieces together and putting them on, and it was actual quite good right off the bat.

I didn't have to adjust the bust length as I often do, and I didn't need a small bust alteration either. There were actually some pulling lines under the bust, which I managed to get rid of by lowering the bust darts about 1.5 cm.

I cut the fabric and basted all the piece together to check the fit in the fabric. The fit of the front was actually very good, if only a little loose, but I was ok with it.

I decided though that I wanted the neckline a little lower, so i recut it.

Then I proceeded to sew the garment for good.

Unfortunately, once all sewn back up, i realized the neckline was now massively gaping on the right side. Not sure what happened, I cut both side symmetrically, or so I thought, but somehow something went wrong. To fix that I had to slip the left bust piece to hit higher on the righ side, to get rid of the gapping. This meant I had to take in a good 2cm on the left side below the bust seam, tapering down to nothing at the hem, to accomodate for the now offset pieces.

In the end, the fix worked. The dress is slightly more fitted than I originally intended, which is actually fine as I can wear it without a belt. It does mean that the main front piece is now technically a little off-grain, so i guess the side seam could start turning after I wash it a few times. This is a pretty sturdy cotton fabric with no stretch though, so I'm hoping it won't happen.

The neckline ended up slightly off (the point of the V is not quite centered), but it's not too noticeable.

I did french seams on the inside and finished the neckline and armhole with bias tape and top stitching - I'm actually quite pleased with my finishing of the neckline point, it's very neat.

In the end, I'm very happy with this dress, it's pretty much what I had in mind (even though I wasn't quite sure what I had in mind). the faux wrap is barely visible (but I know it's there! )

I made sure to complete this dress just before flying to Montreal for a long week-end at the end of August, as I knew Vancouver weather was already getting too cool, and that week-end might be one of the last opportunities to wear it before fall came.

These photos were in fact taken last tuesday on what seems to have been the very last day of summer, as the rain has now started to fall on Vancouver.