Secret Christmas Blouse Part 2

My sewing career has been a strange and uneven one.  I spent a lot of time on the Craftster forums in high school, posting pictures of my hilarious, lopsided halter tops; then I made a few things in my college dorm room that were reasonably wearable, if you don't mind mismatched plaids and unfinished seams.  (I know I made an A-line skirt in some kind of wool blend fabric with tiny dogs embroidered on it--I hope I didn't get rid of that thing.  It was kind of awesome.)  Essentially, I sewed at about the same (beginner) level for five years or so, before I finally sucked it up and learned how to draft patterns by a method other than "eyeballing it."

This is all to say that I am finally, finally skilled enough to make a stupid back-button blouse.

Secret Christmas blouse: back-button blouse in wool jersey.  That's about it really.

I'm Naked Under This Photoshop Filter (Not Really)

I've been meaning to make a croqui of myself, a la Ali from Wardrobe Reimagined, for a while, and tonight I finally got around to it.  I asked Dear Fiancee to take some pictures of me in my skivvies (quite the hardship, I am assured), and then I ran the Photocopy filter on it in Photoshop and traced the edges.  It came out like this:

My croqui is flexing.

24 Hours Into My Career as a Knitter...

Secret Christmas Blouse

I'm just about finished with the back-button blouse I've been planning for months--it took me so long to get around to it, but the construction has been a two-afternoon affair, basically.  When you draft your own patterns, the hardest part is often getting started, since that's where the bulk of the mental work is: looking at vintage patterns for inspiration, picking which of my own patterns to adapt for this project (mostly this blouse pattern, since I wanted a fairly boxy silhouette that I could then tuck in at the waist), and then laying out all the pieces and tracing and measuring and tracing again and adjusting and measuring something different and double-checking seam allowances and etc. etc. etc.  By the time I finished drafting, I knew this blouse inside and out, and it came together in no time at all.  (It helps that wool jersey doesn't need seam finishes.)

I'll have finished pictures up soon, but for now, I wanted to explain why it's called the Secret Christmas blouse.  See, I needed to interface the button plackets, and I like to use leftover scraps from other projects to make sew-in interfacing for this sort of thing.  The first thing that came to hand was this bright red quilting cotton, which, next to the sort of army-green-ish wool jersey, looks like this:

Secret Christmas!

XOXO,
Jessie

I'm Taking Another Challenge That I Don't Really Need!

In my long and storied tradition of signing up to do things that I've really already been doing for quite a while:

I, Jessie Roy, am taking the Seamless Pledge until the last day of classes for this semester, May 1. Since I can’t remember the last time I bought new clothes (last August?), I’d like to make this harder by challenging myself to make my own lingerie. Possible exception: bras, if I find them too far beyond my skill level. I may even learn to knit. WHAT.

I'm serious about that knitting thing.

I Feel Like Someone Will Get Mad At Me For Calling This Steampunk...

...but at least I used thread and not glue?  

No matter!  Friends, the only steampunk thing about this skirt is the buttons.  It's much too short to be convincingly nineteenth-century.  Incidentally, I mark two hemlines on all my skirt patterns: just below the knee, or "summer length," and this mid-calf style, or "winter length."

Steampunk skirt: four-gore A-line skirt in the leftover wool flannel from these trousers, with a side zip, belt loops, notched back waistband, and Steampunk Buttons!

Crafty Christmas & How to Make Handkerchiefs

I went minimalist this Christmas: nuclear family only, all homemade, nothing fancy.  I didn't post any process photos, since let's face it the primary audience for this blog is my mom and I didn't want to spoil anybody, but now that Christmas is well over, here's a recap of what I made!

The Year in Garments

Laid out like this, it almost makes me look industrious!:

Separates

Pencil skirt & backless shell	Sailor pants
Sailor shorts	Bowling shirt
Bowling shirt pt. 2 (unblogged)	Maroon blouse
Dustbowl skirt	Sweater!
Lace-up trousers

Dresses

50s dress	Chemise dress
Sweetheart dress

Other

Robots/skulls apron	Dressing gown
Chemise dress, pt. 2

Happy New Year, everyone!