This Is a Persistent Worry

Double-checking for the 20th time to make sure I don't end up with two left sleeves.

What I'm Working On

I made the braided rag rug for our new apartment in Chicago (a year ago now!), from scraps I had lying around and some pieces of quilting cotton that I think came from a garage sale.  There are pieces of this dress, this apron, and the polka dot lining from this jacket that never was.  It's just a coiled braid, pottery style, with each coil stitched to the one before in a spiral and then the whole thing hand-sewn to a felt backing.  Not fancy but satisfying to make and a nice place to sit when I'm cutting out pattern pieces.

This shirt pattern is copied from a men's Gap shirt that I found in a thrift store and liked the fit of.  The original was short-sleeved and this white version has long sleeves, so I drafted a placket and cuff.  This will be my second time ever making a shirt-sleeve placket (I did a couple of practice runs yesterday before I cut everything out).  I've made quite a few short-sleeve men's shirts, though, so the whole collar-and-stand-and-yoke-and-flat-fell-seams thing is old hat by now.  The process is almost zen at this point--no fitting, no wrestling with fussy fabric, very little handwork, just long easy seams and crisp topstitching.  And I look sharp in them when they're finished.

For my fellow shirtmakers, here's a list of the resources I always turn to when I start a new project:

• This sleeve placket tutorial from Off the Cuff, a custom shirtmaker's blog.  I love advice from the professionals--I would never have thought to finger press but it's easier and more effective than heat-pressing on tiny fiddly seams.
• Four Square Walls' guide to sewing collar stands.  She offers it as an alternative to the standard method suggested on most sewing patterns; it's the only one I've ever tried, and it works for me.
• Peter's Men's Shirt Sewalong on Male Pattern Boldness.  I usually end up reading this in full before I start a new shirt, as a refresher course and a guide to construction order.
• And, if you can find it, the book Shirtmaking by David Page Coffin.  It's the definitive text for good reason.  

If you've missed me, you can see my Me-Made-May photos for this year at my Flickr page--mostly selfies in the full-length mirror in my department at work.  How has everyone been?  Happy sewing?

Blouses, Hats, & Weddings

As you may have noticed, things have been slow around here--I'm not the most regular blogger at the best of times, but wedding planning, work, and long unstructured days have been really getting to me lately.  It's not for lack of sewing, though!

The blouse that I talked about drafting last month came together quick and easy, and looks great:

It's wound up in at least one outfit a week and always gets compliments.  I'm particularly happy with how the sleeves turned out:

I widened them a bit so they could be comfortably rolled up.  The sleevecap pleat, though, was a happy accident: I was aiming for a regular pleat but got mixed up and made an inverted one instead:

I love the way it looks!  For a long time I thought I hated sleevecap ease--I kept picturing those weird pouffy leg-o'-mutton things from the thirties--but with a nice crisp pleat like this, it does really nice things for my shoulders.  At least that's what Dear Fiancee says.

Speaking of--we've set a date for our wedding, and it will be October 6!  Our wedding website is up at AdventuresInGayMarriage.com, so please visit and leave us a nice guestbook comment.  :)  There's a blog there as well, so as my wedding dress comes together (the next big project on my list...) I will likely be updating there as well.  I'm hoping that more blogs = more blogging.  I guess we'll see.

P.S. The last photo also documents my second shot at millinery (the first being here).  I may have mentioned before that my landlady used to work in theatre--she was the previous owner of my beloved dress form, Dottie--and she just happened to leave a wooden hat block in the house, conveniently sized to my measurements.  I used it to make up the pattern for this sun hat and it was a total breeze--just like draping on a dress form, but in miniature.  There was a refreshing lack of math (all too present in flat pattern designing).

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with it--though the next iteration will probably have wire in the brim for shape, and definitely ribbons to tie under my chin so the wind doesn't blow it away.  I'm not too proud to look like a doofus if it means my ears won't get sunburnt.

Forties Blouse, Take Two

It's nearly a year now since I started this blog, and a little longer since I started sewing in earnest (i.e. with the intent to make durable, street-wearable garments).  In even that short time, I've learned at least a couple of things, both technique and personal preference.  I can make a machine buttonhole, I can put in a lapped zipper, I can topstitch denim and flat fell a seam (sort of).  I no longer have to write out the order of operations for each garment before I start--my instincts are better, and I trust them more.  And now, when I set out to design a new garment, I rarely have to start from scratch; there's so much already in my collection to adapt.

Take this blouse:

It took a very long time, and countless re-reads of Peter's men's shirt sewalong posts, to get that pattern to work.  I was, and am, incredibly proud of it.  But with the benefit of hindsight, I can see all the things I could do better.  For one, I hate facings on button-up shirts--they're a pain in the ass to iron.  The collar is okay, but I've since realized that I much prefer more assertive collars, like this one:

I'm excited, too, to try some techniques I'm no longer afraid of, like flat-felling the sleeve and side seams.  Wish me luck everybody!

(Something else I've learned: I love to make sew-in interfacing out of contrasting quilting cotton.  I'm thinking of calling this the Secret Owl Blouse, for this reason:

Happy Monday everyone!)

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.

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

The Bowling Shirt, Vintage Style

I lied--it's not really a bowling shirt.  I ran out of fabric due to my own short-sightedness, then decided to go for a contrast yoke a la New Vintage Lady.  It looks awesome.

Blouse: short-sleeved casual button-up with convertible collar, six-button front, and contrast saddle yoke.

Shirt Progress

It's a shirt!  I have spent so long on this project just trusting the books--"yes, David Page Coffin's Shirtmaking, of course a yoke should extend no further than the fullness of the shoulderblade; yes, Dress Pattern Designing, unquestionably that is what a collar ought to look like"--that to see it actually come together is just heartwarming.  It's like that moment when a baby's cute useless legs become functional walking machines.  Or something like that.

(As you can see, my shoebox system is still in play.)

Doesn't Dottie look handsome?

Also, I baked this peach cobbler the other day.  Super easy: four chopped large peaches, half a cup of sugar, a splash of sherry, and a nice cakey cobbler topping, 375-degree oven for forty-five minutes.  I do not peel my peaches because I think they are better this way.

XOXO
Jessie

Back On the Horse!

Oh, sewing setbacks.  You might recall that I ran out of fabric for this blouse; well, I went back to Joann's to grab an extra half yard and they'd sold out of it.  Sigh.  (Also, I need to just suck it up and buy online--yes, the delayed gratification is killer, and paying for shipping always makes me sad, but I am so sick of choosing between the same five shirting cottons.  Plus their seersucker is all coarse and unpleasant lately.  Joann's, you are now notions only as far as I'm concerned.  We are breaking up.)

Because I am excellent at rolling with the punches, I picked up some similar-weight cotton for future shirts (which makes me sound much more confident in this pattern than I actually am) and decided to do a contrast yoke for the current one.  New Vintage Lady does it all the time!  It is a totally valid choice, and very period accurate!  This is what I am telling myself.  Anyway, what I've got looks like this:

Shirtmaking--It's More Difficult Than You Might Imagine--& Some Gender Thoughts

I have a full pattern for what I am calling The 40s Blouse (for lack of a better name)!  Do you know how many pieces go into a men's-style tailored shirt?  A lot!  Is the answer!  I've got a back body, front body, collar, facing, yoke, and sleeve.  (I hit a bit of a roadblock when I ran out of fabric for the outer yoke--whoops--next time I will definitely buy more than a yard and a half!)

The thing is, I started this project without any real idea how a women's tailored blouse is put together.  The RTW shirts that Dear Partner and I own haven't been very helpful, since we shop at the decidedly low end of the spectrum and our clothes take all kinds of labor-saving shortcuts that (David Page Coffin claims) are big no-nos in bespoke tailoring.  I decided to construct mine much like a men's casual shirt--without a collar stand--which my Reader's Digest guide says is done with a facing.  What?

Some Things I Am Doing This Week

• Drafting a blouse!  I'm thinking saddle yoke, notched collar, buttons up the front and a slightly longer version of the sleeves on my Sweetheart Dress--all in all something much like the blouse to the right.  I've got David Page Coffin's Shirtmaking and I'm not afraid to use it!  I picked up some cheap purple gingham in the quilting cotton section, so I'm thinking my first try will be sort of a wearable-muslin--I won't be too awfully disappointed if it's not perfect.

• Making an apron for (with) Dear Partner!  Neon bikes on one side, adorable owls on the other.  It's all happening.

• Failing abysmally on what should have been a relatively simple six-gored skirt!  Everything that could go wrong has.  First off, I picked exactly the wrong fabric--an incredibly loose, ravelly wool-silk basketweave that would have been much better suited to a pattern with fewer seams.  You live, you learn.  The waistband wound up uncomfortably tight, which wasn't the end of the world--I figured I'd just construct it with less overlap than planned.  Then, I somehow made the zipper opening a full inch and a half longer on one side than the other.  What?  To top it all off, even with a very narrow zig-zag finish, the seams still look awful and are dropping threads all over the place.  Six-gored skirt, you are banished to the Box of Shame.

• Aaaaaand teaching high schoolers how to read and write short stories.  It's harder than you'd think, guys.  I keep looking wistfully into my sewing room, wishing for the time or energy to just test out this new yoke pattern--but it is not to be.  I'll be back with y'all next week, I promise.