A month of months

I just finished reading Overdressed by Elizabeth L. Cline (2011). In it she talks about how fast fashion is bad for the environment, workers, and, well, fashion.  One of the ways to she says we can mitigate the effects of fast fashion is refashioning. It was timely because - I did that!

I have been doing that with my clothes and thrift store clothes for years, decades at this point.

Earlier this year, I went through my closet and sorted things into piles: keep, toss, mend, I want a new one, and I wish this were something else.

I made McCall's 7439 c. 1964 size in black corduroy with Bemberg Cupromonium Rayon underlining a few years ago.


I made the collarless version. I thought it would be a nice basic wardrobe piece. It was not.

I've had Simplicity 3369 c. 1960s size 14 on my to-make list for a long time.


Could I get this jacket out of the dress?!?

Since the dress had raglan sleeves and the jacket had set-in sleeves, it looked dicey. I held the jacket sleeve pattern pieces to the bodice pattern piece and kind of held it over the dress. (Suuuuper not technical or precise.)

Surprisingly, the finished dress bodice was pretty much the same exact width as the jacket pattern.  The jacket pattern just had straight side seams. I could just reuse the bodice! 

The sleeves looked ok? So they could stay attached!

Which was weird because it was a really fitted dress. They were both a size 14 - maybe the pattern companies all used the same fit models and slopers?

But oh well, I just wanted to make something, so I dove in, removed the side zipper, ripped the side seams, took out all the darts, took off the skirt, and started laying out pattern pieces.

I still had scraps in my stash.

So, would there be enough to make it? Yes! Sort of.

The skirt made the jacket longer (with pieced lengths), filled in the side seams, and lapel facings (which are pieced).



The sleeves were almost long enough as is - the cuffs, when undone, were a lot of extra length.

Scraps made up the collar and finished the lapels.

And the corduroy was done. Slivers were leftover.

So sturdy cotton pajama fabric lined the collar and pockets, and extra lining to cover horse hair canvas that should have been under the underlining.


Because the lapels had so many pieces, it's super bulky and won't iron flat. Do the buttons and buttonholes work? No! But I wouldn't be able to button it anyway because it's a little snug.

But I don't care! I love this thing. I've worn it approximately 34 times more than the dress. It's exactly the sort of crumpled, vintage-y looking jacket I wanted.

I can't say that I ever feel dignified on a regular basis. Or on an irregular basis.

The translated title of this book is Garments of a Dignified Lady. Um. Can I actually wear these if I'm not dignifired? Or will it turn me into a dignified lady. Do I want that? 


Regardless, I fell in love with the blouse on the cover of this book by Koji Takiguchi published in 2014, and bought it without knowing what else was included. There are so many other wonderful garments in here that I started making dresses before anything else. And these are not my style of dresses - asymmetrical and arty.


I decided to test the "Dress with Handkerchief Hem" with some of the vintage fabric a coworker gave me. It fits fine - it is unstructured and loose enough that choosing to make size ML, instead of M, probably didn't make too much of a difference in the end result.


The fabric is 100% cotton broadcloth and tends to stick to itself and wrinkle. I was going to dye it, since the red and greens are not my colors, however under the chiffon dress, it looks lovely. It adds depth and dimension to the colors. As usual, I have yet to take pics of the chiffon version.

Probably the hardest part was translating the instructions. I figured out, for the most part, using the google translate app and this helpful Japanese sewing terms translation list, what the instructions said. The only part I couldn't really figure out  were the instructions on finishing the hem. A friend who studies Japanese figured out that google translate's "throwaway sewing machine" actually meant staystitching. So the hem is left raw and staystitched, as it is all cut on the bias.

And I did keep my sewing machine.

I interfaced the entire front bodice of my circle dress based on the example dress I deconstructed. I found that Pellon 865F Bi-Stretch Lite was closest in look and feeling to the interfacing in the RTW dress. 

Also, it did not have the normal sewing industry interfacing instructions - hold the iron on one area for 10-15 seconds. They said to glide the iron across the surface. And I had just read Fashion Incubator's "How to apply interfacing", in which Kathleen Fasanella said basically the same thing, but much more in depth. I used to hate fusing interfacing because it took so long! Just ironing it on is such a relief.

After I figure out whether I need stabilizers on my back darts, I intend to construct the dress using a combination of what I learned from the RTW dress and, again on Fashion Incubator, articles about "A better way to sew linings and facings" part 1 and part 2.

The article "Interfacing, 10 tips" has good info, too.

I sewed the circle dart and the CF seam. The circle seams are 1/4" and the CF seam is 3/8".  Sewing a curved seam with 1/4" SAs is so amazingly easy. I did not have to clip anything and it went together so smoothly. SO SMOOTHLY.

Oh, and I may need to trim the back darts?

I stayed up late taping this together:

It made me giggle.

Next up is drawing the style lines on the dress and cutting it back apart to get a sense of what the pattern pieces will look like, as well as where the seamlines will be so I can figure out how to arrange the fabric design.

The pattern is Vogue 9712 and includes a petticoat pattern.

I found another dress I like - this one is a little more casual and would work for daytime gigs.
Although it's sleeveless, I like the line of this dress.  I think cap sleeves could be added and still look good.

I can't figure out what kind of mesh they are using. Or how the denim is attached to the mesh. However, it looks like the stretch denim is cut on the bias. It also doesn't look like they used darts to shape it, which would make sense if the whole thing was very stretchy.

This fabric-making technique would maybe work well in other styles of dresses, as seen here in EvaDress's 1939 gown. A blog post about the original dress that inspired her, as well as how she made the fabric is here.

ETA Oh! And Lorelai's dress from "They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?" dance marathon:


I should look through my vintage patterns to see if this would work for any patterns I already have.  Another thing to add to the to do list.  Or the TADA! list. :)

So, now we know why Ichabod will be staying in period clothing and where he gets them.  So clever and not just a little hilarious.

And now...
I'm currently working on finishing up the seventh item¹ in my "sew one piece of clothing a week" collection... from October.  Things keep getting slipped into the queue as they have a higher priority.  Like resewing the buttons on my pants again because I'm either losing weight or they are stretching.

And putting gussets in the underarm seam of the sixth item - a basic short-sleeved button-up blouse¹ - after completely finishing it, because it was one of those situations where the entire shirt comes up when you lift your arms.  Which is really the point of this post.

After reading Kathleen Fasanella's post about how sleeve cap ease is bogus and what a sleeve cap should look like to follow the actual shape of a person, I wanted to try drafting something like that on the next shirt I made to avoid the shirt-rising problem.

The seventh item is indeed a basic long-sleeved button-up blouse from the same pattern as the short-sleeved.  I took the gusset from the short-sleeved and marked the points where it starts and stops on the arm scye. It makes the bottom of the arm scye over 2" (5cm) higher! And it's not exactly parallel to the floor. It slopes slightly down toward the front.  Not quite as much as some of the pictures in the tailoring forums:But like this:

I can understand shaping the armhole opening, but the sleeve is beyond my understanding at this point.  Measuring my arm around the deltoids and comparing it to the pattern measurement makes me think I need to add about two inches more in width? Which sort of could correspond to this picture?


Anyway.

And then there are these which are lesser priority, but frustrating me to think about.

I had to cut myself out of my black and white skirt. Have you ever been able to un-jam an invisible zipper? And it really isn't as full as I originally wanted, so I want to add gores and a new zipper. Which means taking off the bottom black band and making a new one of those.  And I could probably line it this time instead of underlining it. Basically, I would like to make an entirely new skirt. Urg.

The black dress I made from a pattern I thought fit me is exceptionally tight because the waist is too high and I should have lined it, not interlined it.  The corduroy and rayon lining really need to move independently.  Which means, basically, making a whole new dress.  And taking the collar off because it looks a little too... churchy?  Wednesday Addams?

^{1 From fabric bought for me while visiting home. :)}

The shoes have been put on hold while I waited for the book to come back to the library, so I switched to...

Making a swimsuit for a vacation that was also, however, put on hold while I waited for the fabric to be pre-washed, so I switched to...

Making things from my stash, which was what I had originally planned to do in January, but was sluggish and unmotivated at that time, which worked out ok because pattern review is having a stash-busting contest.  Based on the person who's already sewn 24 yards¹, and the next who's sewn 14, I won't win, but whatevs.

So I've:
- gotten to the point where I'm going to finish the upper and wrap it around my last
- croquised my swimsuit and decided on a design
- made a beach cover-up
- finished the pinstriped dress
- re-fashioned a mohair sweater
- shortened another sweater
- made a headband
- made 3 t-shirts


I'm also working on getting some music I recorded about 7 or 8 years ago up on bandcamp. I need to make some sort of album artwork, and I think I'm close to being done with that.

1 Oh, pardon me, it's actually 36.

A few days ago I was croquising (really, it's a word) some vintage patterns to see what might work for some weird, pink, faille, cotton/rayon? fabric I have, which will be dyed, thank you, as I'm not too much of a pink person. Why do I have this fabric? It was super cheap and I used it to line the back of a quilt I made *mumblecough* years ago¹. So I have decent yardage.  One of the dresses I thought about making was Retro Butterick 6632.


The bottom seam of the bodice has an exaggerated curve, which is probably a culprit in the skirt not hanging properly, as well. So my next tasks are to try to redraft the skirt and straighten the waistline, and see if I can get the bodice to both fit and look proportional.

Writing this all out highlights all the problems I'm having with this pattern, and usually I'd be hyper-annoyed by this, but it's actually keeping my interest, so much so that I'm avoiding other things that usually keep my interest³.

1. Note: when using slippery fabrics as the backing for quilts, they tend to, well, slide, and you end up waking up in the middle of the night shivering.
2. Originally slated for a dress I saw in a magazine in 1999 and still have not drafted the pattern for.
3. Sorry, harp. Really, I'll be interested in practicing again someday.