A Hot Weather Sundress, and Making Spaghetti Straps

Posted on July 30, 2013 by Tasha

I’m catching up here. You know how sometimes, if you prepare carefully for something, it doesn’t happen? I made this dress for Me-Made-May, but didn’t end up wearing it until the middle of June, due to unseasonably cool and rainy weather all month long. This year I wanted to up my pledge for May, so that I wore at least two items of me-made clothing at all times. When it’s really hot out, I like to wear only two items of clothing period, one of which must be a sundress, which allows as much heat to escape from my skin as possible. My airiest one in particular was 1. wearing out and 2. not me-made, so I clearly needed to replace it before May. It had a couple of features which I wanted to replicate in my self-stitched version: just about the lowest neckline I am comfortable wearing in public, layers of very light fabric, and gathering at the empire waist.

I used my self-drafted sundress pattern again, altering it this time for a cross-over gathered front. Each time I make a new version of this dress, I change the back in an attempt to make it not pull up at the center back, and both times so far it has not worked. Any ideas? I’m pretty happy with how the front came out though. One thing I’ve learned: the key to keeping the bodice from immediately gaping open when I bend forward is to ease the top edges into a slightly shorter binding, so that I take some of the fullness around the bust out again. It’s especially important since I replaced the darts on this version with gathers.

This fabric is a cotton batiste, I’m sorry to say I have no recollection of where it came from, I just remember it being in my stash for a long, long time. My first idea was to use plain white for the lining layer. As I was cutting out the main fabric pieces, I dropped a piece in my fabric scrap pile, and it happened to land on top of a piece of felt in this light minty green color. I suddenly remembered that I had another piece of lightweight cotton in a really similar color, which might look great as the inner layer. It turned out there was just enough of that fabric for the lining and bindings, and I really like how the green adds a little hint of color under the main fabric, and how it looks peaking out at the hem, a detail I added to show off the second color. Even though I decided not to join any of the official fabric stash-busting challenges going on this year (despite this cool anime dinosaur logo) I have been making a conscious effort to use the fabric I already have, and making some good progress, in part inspired by all the other sewers who are doing the same.

Click on this picture (or any of the others) to enlarge for easy reading.

With all the sundresses and tanks I’ve been making the last year or so, I’ve gotten a lot of practice making thin “spaghetti” straps, and come up with a method that I like. If the fabric is lightweight, like this one, I’ll use two fabric layers for each strap. Since the dress will hang from the straps for most of its life, I want them to be fairly sturdy. I cut each one 1 1/4″ wide, and a couple inches longer than I think I’ll need. I get the best results when I zigzag the two strap layers together first, with a narrow zigzag right on the edges. It keeps the layers from shifting as I sew, and from unraveling as I turn the strap right side out. Then I press the strap in half, to get a clean even fold. I stitch the strap seam with a short straight stitch, 1/4″ from the edges. Then turn it right side out. I use a long wire, as explained here. The straps come out about 1/4″ wide, and somewhat thick and rounded. If you do the math, the extra 1/4″ in the width becomes the “turn of cloth”, the extra fabric needed to go around the seam allowances which fill the middle of the strap.

I decided to use light blue thread for topstitching the bindings and hems on both layers. I topstitched over the straps as well, to go with the look of the bindings. At one point, I started to wonder if I was going overboard using up things from my stash and adding more colors. But if I took a step back, I realized that if I saw this dress in a store window, I would want it immediately. So that was a good imaginary test! Since I’ve been wearing it, I’ve noticed that all the colors in the print go with lots of other things in my wardrobe too.

Special thanks to my aunt Barbara for taking the pictures of wearing the dress, and for letting me use the beautiful hollyhocks in her garden as a backdrop! That was the first time it was warm enough to wear the dress, as you can probably tell from my lack of tan here. . . What about you? Are you making anything for your current weather, or the coming season?

How to Hem Your Own Jeans, and Keep the Original Hem

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Tasha

Once you get started sewing, I’m guessing one thing you’ll want to tackle is to hem your jeans. You can definitely do it yourself, and keep that distressed hem just as it is. You’ll need just a few more pieces of equipment than for normal sewing.

(If you need to start with some basic instruction about how to use your sewing machine, check out my e-book for beginners!)

A zipper foot lets you stitch with the needle to one side of the foot, right next to the original hem.

Jeans needles for your sewing machine have a sharper point and a longer eye, for sewing through layers of denim. For the most part, you won’t have to stitch through too many layers with this method, but it still helps. If you don’t have jeans needles, use a sharp rather than a universal needle.

It really helps to have a spacer, something you can prop up part of the presser foot with as you sew over thick seams (you’ll see why below). This one came with my sewing machine, but you could also use something not too wide and about 1/8 to 1/4” (3 to 6 mm) thick, like maybe a popsicle stick.

A sturdy hand-sewing needle, and a thimble to push it with, is essential for the finishing of this method (I’ll go over that in the next post).

You’ll also need pins and thread. The ones you use for regular sewing are fine. I didn’t happen to have matching thread, so I used black. It doesn’t show at all on the finished jeans. Darker thread colors usually blend in easier than lighter ones.

Once you gather your equipment, try on your jeans, and fold up the hem to figure out where you would like it to fall.

You can get someone to help measure how much you want to hem your jeans up, while you try them on. Or pin, try them on, and adjust until you get the hem where you would like it.

Figure out how much in total you want to take out of the length. Make a fold that measures half that much, starting at the inside edge of the original hem. You’re going to stitch right next to that original hem, effectively removing the fold of fabric from the length of the jeans. Whether you’re using cm or inches, the principle is the same, your fold should be half the amount you want to take out, since both sides of the fold are removed from the length.

Make sure your fold is on the inside of the jeans, so it won’t show when you’re done.

Pin the fold in place every couple of inches. Put the pins in perpendicular to the fold, or at an angle as shown, to make them easy to pull out as you sew.

Pay special attention at the seams, making sure that the original seam lines and topstitching match on both sides of the fold.

Set up to sew right next to the original hem, using a straight stitch (width 0), length about 2.5 mm. Use your zipper foot so that the foot can sit flat on just the fold of fabric. Move the needle position all the way over to your left, towards the original hem, so that you can stitch right next to it (and not hit the foot with the needle). Let the edge of the foot touch the edge of the hem as you sew.

When you get to the leg seams of the jeans, you’re suddenly sewing through a whole bunch of denim layers, instead of just two. When this happens, the presser foot ends up at a steep angle, which makes it much more likely to skip stitches (resulting in a weak seam). This is where the spacer comes in. When the front of the foot reaches the seam, prop up the back of the foot with the spacer to make it level. Then as you stitch over the seam, move the spacer to the front of the foot, to keep it level until you are past the bulky seam. Be careful to keep the spacer in front of the needle, so that you don’t hit it as you sew!

If your machine still skips a few stitches, try sewing in reverse and then forward again over the part that’s giving you trouble. Going slowly over the bulky parts will also help. You can even use the hand wheel on your machine to make just one stitch at a time. If it’s skipping a bunch of stitches in a row, check to see if the bobbin thread has broken. If so, stop and cut the top thread too, then start again so that you overlap a few of the last stitches before the thread broke, to hold them in place. If the leg seams are giving you a lot of trouble, you can also try flattening them as much as possible using a steam iron, or pounding them with a hammer.

When you get all the way around the leg, sew over the first few stitches that you made, to hold them in place.

Do not skip this step: once you sew around the hem, try on the jeans again to check that the length is where you want it. If not, at this stage all you have to do is pull out this one line of stitching, and start again. If the length looks good, you’re ready to finish off your hem.

If you took out more than about an inch in total, it’s likely that your folded out fabric is long enough to show below the hem if you turn it down. If so, trim it to about 3/8″ (10 mm), or a bit smaller than the original hem (I repeat, try on the jeans and check the length of the new hem before you do this). To keep these cut edges from unraveling, overcast them with a zigzag stitch.

Use a regular sewing foot for this (zigzag and a zipper foot don’t mix). Stitch close to the edge.

This whole process is pretty darn simple once you get the hang of it. You can also use this method to hem other pants, when you want to keep the original hem intact. It will be even easier if you don’t have think layers of denim to sew through.

In the next post I’ll go over my method for tacking down the extra fabric to make the hem look natural. In the meantime, if you have any questions, just leave a comment!

In Which I Read My Diary From Last Year, and Re-Up for Me-Made-May!

Posted on April 22, 2013 by Tasha

If you were reading this blog this time last year, you no doubt remember that I signed up for Me-Made-May ’12, hosted by the fabulous Zoe. I just think this is the best idea, it encourages all those of us who make clothing to actually wear it in our everyday lives, and thus think about what we make and use and why.

I had a great time doing it in 2012, and learned a lot. My pledge was to wear one item of me-made clothing every day, which I succeeded in doing. Sometimes you would not have been able to tell, since I made underwear count. I also pledged to blog about something MMM related once a week, which I almost succeeded in doing. I did draw and post a cartoon of my summer wardrobe, an extension of the way keeping track of what I wore for the month helped me clarify what I wear and what I would like to wear. My overall favorite thing I did was to get three other lovely bloggers/sewists to share their thoughts on style and how sewing allows them to express themselves, in this post.

I knew that I wouldn’t take a picture of every outfit I wore, so I decided to also keep short notes for each day. I dug them out recently and I was surprised at how much is in there, about my thoughts and how far I’ve built up my me-made wardrobe in a year, so I thought I would share some of them. If you are bored by reading other peoples (very brief, not edited for grammar) diary entries, please skip to the bottom of the post. I’m going to include a couple of explanatory notes – May was as usual for us, a busy travel month, and even with the notes it’s going to feel pretty disjointed.

Day 1 – wore green Deva yoga pants, blue Henley. I felt more proud and self-sufficient than I thought I would!

Day 2 – I wore Henley & pjs to clean, then grey pants & ‘Bethan t. I thought about the various imperfections of those pants and vowed to make better ones. (On this day we flew from home to pick up our truck and continue our summer art show circuit. I promise to write a post about what exactly that means and what it’s like, soon.)

Day 3 – Wore cropped drawstring pants and strapless top. Found myself wishing I could wear all me-made outfits! Wanting more time to sew since this month is good inspiration. (When we are on the road I am separated from my sewing machine by hundreds or thousands of miles.)

Day 4 – wore all me-mades! Shorts & blue tank to set up, then new sundress + undies.

This is my standard booth-setup outfit, shorts that were a test make, and a tank that’s near the end of its life.

Day 5 – washed undies the night before to wear, wore those under too hot for anything else dress. Thought about need to make another airy dress, fabric is key.

Day 7 – laundry day. Repeat of plane ride outfit and thoughts about pants. (We are camping out between shows, as we drive to the next one.)

Day 10 – wore B’s jeans & mm pink top in anticipation of City Museum. Maybe I should make some jeans? Would it be more work to find or make? Is either worth it – probably I will stick with the no jeans plan. (We stopped off at City Museum, in St. Louis, which is like an amazing cross between mixed-media sculpture and playground. It’s awesome. Wear sturdy pants. I once lost a fair amount of corduroy on the multistory slide.)

Day 12 – blue skirt/jeans for hiking with mm black tank. Dressing this way may mean laundry sooner. It’s cool and I’m wishing I brought mm hiking pants/another sweater. Thinking about how what we wear is a compromise between what we’d like, what’s available and the weather.

Day 13 – still camping, wearing mm tanks with alternating skirts & B’s jeans. Kicking myself for not bringing mm hiking pants.

Day 14 – now wearing B’s socks as well with more of the above and freezing! Raining out and did laundry.

Day 15 – with fresh laundry! Wore grey mm pants, tank & sweatshirt. Thought about the ideal summer wardrobe – two pairs of pants, one for setup/camping, one nice enough for town/at show if cold. Thought that I have as much affection for the non-mm clothes that fit well, color I love, etc.

Day 18 – all mm! Shorts and blue tank for setup, wedding test dress for show. Thought of a plan to shorten/line dress. (This show is in Reston, VA. I love the DC area – the picture above is at the Air and Space Museum Udvar-Hazy Center, and the one below at the MLK Memorial.)

Day 21 – lounging/computer work/groceries and cooking at friends – good day for mm cropped pants & berry T.

Day 23 – same outfit as day 16, boring! Me made pjs for laundry.

Day 24 – sorely tempted to cheat, but we are almost done & I can stick to my pledge. Mm black tank & pink stripe skirt. Stuck in Floyd Bennett Field.

Day 25 – in NYC. Mm linen skirt (loving it!) & dk blue top stitched tank with blue cord jacket.

Day 26 – poor packing leads to undies only today – with ‘bethan top and blue tea dyed skirt with flowers. Also no bra – but fabric shopping in NYC!!!! (This really happened. Maybe I’ll tell you about it some time, we had quite an adventure.)

Day 28 – Mm drawstring pants & pink shirt w/ mm bra. Good for driving/hanging out with nieces. Wishing I could wear all mm pieces for the rest of May but don’t think I have enough.

Catching tiny frogs with our little nieces at a pond in MI

Day 30 – grey pants even got a compliment from Mandy! With pink mm shirt and sweatshirt.

Day 31 – same as day 30 – camping out – cool again. Even though at times frustrating, I’m a little sorry to see the end of mmm.

So, um, there you have it! Reading these over, I think I should make another shirt like the pink one, it was probably the most-worn item. I’m certainly glad to report that my me-made wardrobe has grown by a few of the pieces I most needed last May – now that I have good me-made pants I shouldn’t end up wearing Bryan’s jeans this summer! I also thought more about what I would pack this year (we’ll be on the road again for most of May), there are plenty of me-mades in various layers ready to go. And I made a new airy dress, which I hope to show you some time during Me-Made-May – knowing that I wanted to up my pledge this time was an incentive to get it done in time.

My pledge for this year is: ‘I, Tasha of Stale Bread into French Toast, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’13. I endeavour to wear two handmade garments, of which underthings may count for only one, each day for the duration of May 2013’

I’ll definitely take some pictures, although probably not every day, and put them up at the MMM Flickr group. It was really fun last year checking out what everyone else was wearing there. I’ll make notes again too. I’m looking forward to seeing what new ideas I come up with during this year’s challenge. There’s still time to sign up, until the 30th, and all are welcome, so go check it out, I highly recommend it!

Three Long Sleeve Tops, and Experimenting with Sewing Knits

Posted on April 17, 2013 by Tasha

So, here is the sewing update I promised! I finished all three of these shirts months ago, but I haven’t got around to photographing and putting this post together until just recently. The snow you see here has all melted away, in fact it’s almost warm enough to wear just one shirt outside! Well, some days yes and some days no.

After I finished my fabulous purple pants, I was ready for a faster and easier/less fitted project, and also getting desperate for some long sleeve knit shirts of any kind in my wardrobe. I had one looser, comfy knit top in cotton with a little lycra, definitely on its way out, but I liked the fit and decided to copy it. It also helped that I found two big pieces of cotton knit fabric in the stash I share with my mom.

I made this grey version first, and was overall pretty pleased, the fit isn’t totally perfect, but it’s, um, a knit shirt! Since it was something I needed, I started wearing it right away and it’s lovely to have a soft new long-sleeve top. It went together like lightning, no edge finishing, some double needle stitching for the hems and it was done. And I thought it was close enough to what I was going for to try in silk.

I bought this silk knit fabric at Promenade Fabrics in New Orleans. That store is such a treat to explore, it’s full of the loveliest wools, linen, ribbons, it’s very NOLA in that it’s unusual, but high quality. There aren’t rows of the same thing next to each other in different colors, I swear each bolt I looked at was totally unique, so naturally I had to dig through as many as possible (which was a lot, since luckily I had all morning). I knew I wanted to make more long sleeve tops, and I was hoping to find some wool knit, which I didn’t really, but I did find this rather amazing silk, knit in two layers, shiny inside, heathery soft and slightly fuzzy outside. “Where did you find THIS?” the owner’s son asked when I went to have it cut. Score!

So, having tried out the pattern, and curious to see the differences, I got out the silk. Only three problems; one, it raveled! I guess I’ve been spoiled in a way by stable cotton knits, you can imagine my horror when I pulled on one edge and tiny runs immediately started down the fabric, as the two layers peeled apart! Fortunately, if I zigzagged the edge it seemed to hold everything in place, even when I tugged on it, so I decided to play it safe and overcast all the edges of all the pieces, before sewing them together.

The second problem wasn’t really a problem, more like me being thorough/not having enough knowledge of silk knits to dive right in – I just took a lot of time making samples. Since this fabric is incredibly slinky, plus stretchy, I knew that it would be easy for the seams to come out either baggier or tighter than the rest of the fabric, which would make my finished shirt look decidedly amateur. So yeah, I made a LOT of samples. I definitely recommend making as many test seams as it takes, especially if you are working with an unfamiliar fabric! I decided to tag all these with a little bit of muslin so I could write down what I changed. I think the most interesting thing I learned was that by increasing the stitch length, I could get the seam to pull the fabric in a little more, shortening the seam. The colored stitching is my first, just to make sure the silk would not get runs as I washed it (by hand). See how the other edge goes from stretched out to pulled in? I also found that some stitches worked well on one layer, but not as well on two. Eventually I settled on using a mock-serger stitch to overcast around the pieces and sew seams, and a regular zigzag for topstitching. Although I have to admit that I decided matched seams and a total lack of skipped stitches were too much to ask for in this project, overall I’m really pleased, the seams neither draw in nor pooch out, which is exactly what I wanted to achieve.

Oh, the third problem? I totally didn’t have enough fabric. This seems to be a theme of mine lately . . . I ended up cutting the sleeves in three pieces each. Eight more edges to finish, four more seams, but the first thing that Bryan said when he saw it was, “I like the sleeve seams!” Still, next time I’ll try to remember to just get two yards, having enough for full sleeves and a matching tank top is NOT a bad thing.

When I first finished it I couldn’t decide if it was worth all the extra effort for the fancy fabric. But, the more I’ve worn this top, the more I’ve been bummed when it’s in the wash. It has the kind of drape that makes wrinkles disappear or just look elegant, it feels divine on my skin, and it looks like something just a little special. In short, I’ll be hunting around more fabric stores for unusual silk knits.

While I was at it, I decided to make one more shirt from stash fabric, and play with the fit a little. I narrowed the back around the waist, and flared it out again over my hips, to try for a little less puddle of fabric at the back high hip area. It did help some, but I’m left wondering if I need a center back seam to make a big difference, and if so, wouldn’t princess lines work better and look better? Or should I just reserve this pattern for slinky fabrics – this one is decidedly not. It’s a lovely color-grown cotton, but the fabric has very little recovery from being stretched, meaning it tends to hang a little bit loose, and it’s kind of thick. I made a few more samples before sewing it, mainly to try for a stitch that wouldn’t stretch out the seams. I like this shirt and I’ll definitely keep wearing it, but it’s not a perfect match of pattern and fabric.

Since I was playing with different fabrics, I thought it would be fun to show the tops with a similar contrast in pants. They’re the same pattern (another one I copied from an existing thrifted garment) of no-side-seam drawstring pants. The green pair are a textured cotton, I wear them to yoga a lot, and sometimes to lounge around in. The blue pair (which aren’t quite as electric blue in real life) are wool crepe – the result of a time when I really needed some new pants, hadn’t fit regular ones well enough yet, and had some lovely wool just hanging out in my stash. I’ve worn them teaching a lot, and to swing and tango dancing, and they’re great for travel, but I would definitely not wear them to yoga! Again, I think it’s the drape and the body of the fabric that makes them look so much more elegant.

Next up for sewing: summer stuff! Especially a dress, for Me Made May ’13 . . .

I’m in a Fashion Show at Flagstaff Photography Center

Posted on April 1, 2013 by Tasha

Look, my name is on this poster!

I know what you’re thinking, I’m too short to be a model – but it’s not like that! Actually, there’s an eclectic show at FPC this month, celebrating fashion, photography, and the intersection between art and what we wear, and featuring some of my work!

If you are in town, come by, I will be there this Thursday night for the fashion forum, and Friday during First Friday art walk. I have a lovely selection of one of a kind purses, scarves, and wallets in the show, all made from recycled and handmade materials and totally unique! Plus the work of four different photographers, and some totally wild and amazing macramé masks made by Sheree.

If you’re not near Flagstaff, I’ve also been working feverishly on my latest project, which will be available worldwide, very soon if all goes well!

All’s Well That Ends Well, but Please, Don’t Put Your Wool in the Washine Machine

Posted on March 12, 2013 by Tasha

At one point, I considered not writing this post at all, because I’m pretty embarrassed about how this skirt got to the point where it needed remodeling in the first place. But in the end, there was no way to not write about it, especially since I ended up wearing this once-shameful skirt to dressy Flagstaff event (maybe the only dressy Flagstaff event? We always joke that people here wear jeans to everything) . . .

I made this skirt, as near as I can figure, about 10 years ago! This was a time before I knew much at all about wool, other than the basics; it comes from sheep, it’s been used since ancient times, people say it’s lovely, etc. It may be worth pointing out that this was also years before I had felted anything, on purpose or otherwise. You probably see where this is going. I put a sample of the fabric though a normal cycle in the washing machine. Nothing happened, the fabric looked just about the same as when it went in. “Great!” I thought. I made up the skirt using the Folkwear Walking Skirt pattern, one I love and have used a lot. And, I continued to wash it in the machine. It never went in the dryer, thankfully, or what happened next probably would have been a much shorter process. As it was, the fabric continued to look like nothing happened, for many years, for dozens and dozens of washes. But eventually, all that agitation inevitably started the fibers felting together. By last winter it was impossible to ignore.

Since I now know quite a bit about felting, once I could look past my obvious horror since I had ruined some lovely fabric, I found it fascinating that the places on the skirt where small parts of the fabric were stitched to each other (the waistband, hem, and back placket) were still unfelted, while the big skirt pieces were noticeably felted, thicker and fuzzier. Actually, it was the contrast between the two parts that made the skirt look weird, especially the unfelted hem, which looked almost gathered against the felted skirt. My current theory is that since the hem and placket fibers couldn’t move as much, they couldn’t interlock to felt like the others did.

The skirt sat in my to-fix pile until I figured out a plan, actually a pretty simple one, which I think is essential to not spending inordinate amounts of time remodeling something. I would cut off the not-as-felted hem, waistband, and placket, fit the remaining felted skirt to a wider and lower waistband facing, make a new placket, and re-hem it. Above you can see my chalk lines for what to cut in the back, I continued the line of the wider side of the placket down to the hem, and cut a symmetrical amount from the other side of center back, to keep the back pieces the same size. I got little pieces of felted fabric to use for my new placket from the extra cut off below the old placket.

While I working on this project, I was also trying to figure out what I would wear to the Viola awards. They’re Flagstaff’s yearly art and science awards for teaching, exhibits, and community outreach, and they throw a big Oscar-like party to give them out. Bryan was nominated for one this year, for the exhibit of his In a Big World Wandering work, for which we also made the giant silk cyanotype. I’d never been before, and I wondered what would everyone wear, what should I wear, should I borrow something, is it more like a costume party, should I wear something shiny?

I am not a shiny person. In the end, I decided not even to go to my friend’s and try on formals to borrow, but instead to wear something that reflects who I really am. Not only that, but I realized I could actually wear the lovely tailored skirt I was working on – if I went ahead and finished it! I took the photos of my outfit right before we left, and I think you can tell I was pretty thrilled with my decision. If what we wear tells everyone we meet a lot about who we are and where we stand, shouldn’t it be even more important, at an event where people are actually paying attention to my clothes, for me to wear something that shows my values and my heart?

So I wore the rescued skirt, in it’s newly tailored glory! Note the buttery folds. And a nubbly cream silk tank top I made to wear to a wedding last year (same copied pattern as this linen one) which has proved more useful than I thought it might. The shawl is something I started knitting for our wedding, realized would never be done in time, and eventually finished later. (It’s a longer and wider version of the Fiber Trends Cocoon Lace Wrap, in a wool/alpaca blend lace weight yarn.) It’s drapey and surprisingly warm, enough to keep me comfortable outside while I took the photos. The pin holding it closed was my grandmother’s. I didn’t make the tights or shoes, but I still love them . . . topped off with my winter coat, and I felt like I had stepped back to the ’40’s.

Proof that we went and I wore this outfit! If you are curious what others wore, or what the event looked like, there are lots and lots more photos on the Facebook page for the organization. We didn’t win (Bryan’s photo exhibit was up against the opening of the Discovery Channel Telescope! And the winner, a recycled art exhibition that’s been going strong for 10 years here) but it was a really fun party, and I got lots of compliments, especially on the shawl.

But back to the skirt, and I might as well confess one more thing, I feel slightly guilty but I can’t help it; I like this fabric more now than I did in it’s new/intended state. It’s so soft but with so much body, and it tailors like a dream. In fact, making the new placket and waistband gave me the itch to sew with wool again, it’s just a pleasure to work with. This has got to be the flattest-laying, easiest-pressed-in-place placket I’ve ever made. And the buttonholes – I made them by hand with a single strand of waxed black cotton sewing thread, and it was as if I sealed the cut edges with a magic wand. Not only can you not see the stitches here, I couldn’t see them in my studio while sewing in broad daylight. Note the pockets! Another benefit of me-made formal wear.

I also thought about how much I’ve learned in the last ten years. I was able to add several refinements to this second round of the skirt, including using rayon ribbon on a lot of the edges to reduce bulk, adding a contoured waistband that fits my figure, and using catch stitches to secure the hem and placket so they wouldn’t show from the outside. Now that it’s on a strictly hand-wash-only plan, the new and improved version should last me another ten years at least!

Morals of the story: please wear your heart on your sleeve, especially to formal events. Sometimes a silk purse is lurking inside the sow’s ear of your mistakes. And people please, no wool in the washing machine!

Update: How to Fix a Small Hole in Knit Fabric

Posted on February 10, 2013 by Tasha

When I published this post about fixing small holes in sweaters and other knit clothes, I realized I didn’t really have pictures of repairing a hole in the middle of the fabric, not near a seam, and I said I’d add some if the opportunity came up.

Well, it did. One of the lovely things when word gets out that you work with a certain material (in this case recycled cashmere garments) is that every now and then, someone just gives you some. The best thing about this as far as I’m concerned, better than the free stuff, is that I have absolutely no obligation to use the donated items for business purposes unless I want to. Therefore, when someone gives me not-yet-felted cashmere sleep pants (thank you thank you Lauren!) I get to yell “Cashmere SLEEP PANTS!” try them on immediately, and wear them myself!

They also had one small hole, a perfect example to fix. It was perfect but, um, fuzzy and a little hard to see (who’d have thought, right, fuzzy cashmere?) so I also snipped a hole in my sample from the how to pick up a dropped stitch in knitting post, fixed it, and included those pictures as well. Click on the link above to see the updated post.

Here’s to enjoying the materials life gives you! And happy mending!

Me-Made Purple Corduroys—How Life is Like Fitting Pants

Posted on January 27, 2013 by Tasha

Where to begin? I think I could talk about these pants and all their glories and implications well past what you would read. Well – I think I’ll begin with why they are purple, which will lead right into why they are fitted, which will lead right into why they are the best pants I’ve ever had.

So, a few years ago now, my aunt got this pair of purple corduroy pants, and for some strange reason I fell in love with them at first sight. I’m not usually into purple, or brightly colored trousers, nevertheless I’ve wanted my own pair ever since. I found 1 1/2 yards of, get this, lavender hemp and organic cotton corduroy on the NearSea Naturals clearance page! (It had a “stain” on it, which washed right out.) Update: although I love love love the idea of this fabric, the color of this fabric, and the resulting pants, the fabric is just not sturdy enough. I got about a year of good-looking wear out of these before the corduroy pile started coming out, even with washing them inside out and not once putting them through the dryer, and that is just not enough for something I made. If anyone knows of a source for sustainable, long-lasting fabric, please let me know! The good news: all the work I did on fitting (keep reading) is already transferred to the pattern and waiting for me to find the next fabric!

I thought this was the perfect amount of fabric. I planned to make another pair just like my grey pants, even though I wasn’t sure that wide leg would be the best look for purple corduroys, I would figure out that fit first, and save more close-fitting pants for another day/next fall maybe. Well – it turned out that all the wide leg pattern pieces would not fit on this much fabric. To fit them in I had to narrow the legs quite a bit. Well. I just tapered the tops of the pattern pieces from the grey pants into the narrower legs, cut them out, and this is what I got.

Clearly those fabric saddle bag areas on the sides had to go straight away, that was the easy part. Getting a better fit through the seat/inner thigh area took a lot more work. Every day for weeks, my sewing time consisted of: ripping out and re-basting in a slightly different position some part of the crotch seam and/or inseam and/or side seam, trying the pants on, deciding what to rip out next (often the same part). Although I worked on these only a little bit each day (partly to keep myself from getting frustrated and doing something hasty/stupid), I thought a lot about how life is like fitting pants. The baking equivalent might be yeast bread, or even macarons. There are a lot of variables, and each one seems to affect all the others, so that a small tweak in one area can change all kinds of things I would not expect. But, if I just keep plugging away, trying things, seeing what happens, I will eventually reach a place where I am very happy with the results.

Well – I really could not be happier with this result! Although I have tweaks to make in the next version (pants are clearly a journey, not a destination) they are the first pair I’ve ever had that really fit and flattered my figure, they’re incredibly comfortable, and I’m ridiculously satisfied with myself when I wear them.

If it wasn’t for the fact that things need washing, (Ok, and I do love skirts, and some days are for grubby clothes, etc.) I might conceivably wear these straight through until they wore out.

Some sewing and fitting things I figured out while making them:

I took out all that extra I added to the back inseam of the grey ones, and then some. Clearly a different fit requires a different shape.

See that diagonal wrinkle across the back hip in the first fitting? I tried all kinds of things to get rid of that; letting out the side seam, unpicking the waistband and pulling the pants up, but nothing worked, until I saw something in Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph-Armstrong (which is one of my all-time favorite sewing books, expensive but worth it, I asked for it for Christmas one year). It was one of my cousin’s textbooks at FIT in San Fransisco, and it shows you how to draft a pattern for just about anything you could ever want to make, plus all kinds of construction techniques. It’s designed more for the fashion industry that for home sewers, and there’s not a lot about fitting, so I guess it says something that there is a section on pants fitting, where I found an illustration of a similar wrinkle with this note, “insufficient dart intake for dominant buttocks.” That’s not how I’d like to think about my derriere, but the part about the dart totally worked! I had been leaving that dart alone since I fit it in the last pants, but clearly it’s not a good idea to start think of any part of the fit as “finished” when I am changing the rest.

I used my edge stitching foot for the first line of top stitching (with a size 100 topstitching needle, moving the needle slightly to the left), and it worked great! It was much easier to get an even stitching line with that little guide riding right on the edge. I am now trying to figure out how I can use a similar guide for for the second line of topstitching, further to the inside.. Anyone know of a foot like that? I used two colors topstitching and I really like it, one pair of Bryan’s jeans has that look and I decided to try it out.

I trimmed a bit of the waistband lining before applying the rayon ribbon to the bottom edge, next time I’ll trim a bit more, but I like this finish.

If the legs look a bit long, I left them that way on purpose. I keep noticing that the hems of cotton pants tend to creep up just a bit over time with washing, usually after I fix them just how I want them. I’m not sure what the shrinkage of hemp is, but if these don’t get any shorter after a while I can always hem them up a bit more.

By the way, the above shot of the inside waist is probably the closest I got to the actual color, for some reason this purple seems to be hard to capture.

That’s about it, I guess, unless of course you want to talk some more about sewing, body image, and the power of DIY, etc. . . . if you see me around, I’ll be wearing these pants, and feeling happy!

Yarn as Jewelry

Posted on November 28, 2012 by Tasha

I bought this yarn at a tiny shop in Albuquerque’s Old Town years ago. It’s hand spun, and there was such a tiny amount on the skein (which I didn’t realize at the time) not even enough for a whole hat! I ended up using it in part of a hat for Bryan.

But, it’s totally gorgeous! Just look at it, there are parts that are spun so tightly that it’s basically too much twist, but those parts also give it a bit of shine, and highlight the natural color variations. I fell in love with it right away, and I was still in love with this little bit I had left. At some point it occurred to me to wear it as jewelry. To me this wool yarn is just as beautiful as anything else you might put around your wrist. So . . .

If you’d like to make one too, it’s quite easy and quick, I made this one (including a small sample and pulling that out) while talking to friends and waiting for dinner! Just be sure to use a very stretchy cast on and bind off, because the whole thing must stretch over your hand and still fit close around the wrist. I like “Jeny’s Stretchy Slipknot Cast-On“, I’ve been using it for all kinds of things lately, as it looks good in addition to being super stretchy. “Jeny’s Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off” is a little bulkier, but perfect for something like this, or the top cuff of a sock, etc.

I wanted mine to fit close, so I used my wrist measurement minus 10%. Multiply your desired size by how many stitches per inch you are getting in your yarn, and that’s it! Mine is 20 stitches around at about 3 sts/inch. The pattern is purl 3, knit 1, repeat until desired length, or until you run out of yarn like I did.

Bryan called this my “warrior sheep woman cuff”. I’m, um, calling that a compliment!

What unusual things do you think are beautiful? Would you like to display or wear them somehow?

Fitting Pants (Trousers) – At Last!

Posted on November 16, 2012 by Tasha

Let me just say this has been a long journey. I’ve never had ready-to-wear pants that fit me, if they fit Ok through the thighs and seat, they’ll be ridiculously baggy around the waist, etc.

I also haven’t had a huge amount of luck making my own pants, until now that is! I’ve definitely made pants, lots of trial ones and some real ones, but there are just so many variables that sometimes it’s been hard to tell exactly what to change for my next pair. This pair, however, is really close, and I learned a lot along the way, mostly thanks to my internet friends. I just feel so self-sufficient wearing these pants, it’s fantastic! On their very first day I wore them to hang a show of Bryan’s work at a restaurant here, climbing up and down ladders and carrying things around. Then the next day I wore them with a nicer sweater and looked totally presentable (ok, after wiping off some grime from the day before . . . )

I’ve definitely learned some sewing lessons along the road to pants that fit. Among them:

It’s possible to draft a pattern from scratch from your measurements and still not like the fit.

If you copy a pair of pants made in a stretch fabric, do not try to convert them to a non-stretch fabric, the “fit” you like will probably disappear.

Using top stitching, and thick top stitching thread, really makes your pants look more professional.

For this pair, I worked from a copy of some corduroys I thrifted last fall. I liked the fit of them pretty well through the hard-to-fit booty area, and I knew I could taper the waist to fit into a contoured waistband. I had made one previous test version out of thin nylon for hiking, which were wearable but a bit tight. So, my first idea, which I should have thought of a million years ago, for these was to use 1″ seam allowances all around to give me a little room to work with. I’m totally doing this on every pair of pants I make from now on, and it turns out it’s also recommended in this genius book (more about that in a minute).

The second thing I learned on this pair is that it’s amazingly helpful to take pictures while you’re fitting. I NEVER would have thought to do this before I had this blog, but I can’t recommend it highly enough. You don’t have to show the pictures to anyone, but you can go back and see exactly what you’re working on, long after you’ve taken them off.

The third thing I learned was that there’s great info about fitting pants on the web! Even though I scoured every single mention I could find in Threads magazine, again, the most useful stuff I found was on other blogs. Thanks especially to Tasia’s post of fitting resources (her pattern would be a good place to start on pants if you’re pear shaped like me), where I linked to Sunni’s enormously helpful trouser sew-along (my pants looked remarkably like hers in the back picture here).

She also recommended the book Pants for Real People. I had passed this book by at the library before, since none of the models are shaped like me. But, don’t let that deter you, the illustrated fitting problems and solutions in this book are total GENIUS! I have probably never been more happy that a book was at the library just when I needed it, and I ordered my own copy as soon as I read it. And I quote, for full derriere,

Generally, you need to add only to the back inseam, but rarely you need to also add to the top. Deeper, or additional, back darts may also be needed.

The back inseam?! It would have taken me at least another decade to figure that out on my own. Check out my pants on the left above, then I let out the back inseam for the middle picture. On the right, I used another tip from Pants for Real People, taking out my dart and making it deeper, and taking out part of the waistband so that I could pull up the back to get rid of those wrinkles at the hip.

Maybe I could let out the inseam a little more in the back, but I ran out of fabric to try it, even with my extra seam allowance. Next time!

These pants are supremely comfortable in any position except sitting straight in a chair, when it feels just slightly like I’m being cut in half. I have a couple of tweaks in mind for the next pair, but let me be clear: I am 100% OK with these pants not being 100% perfect. In fact I’m thrilled that both:

I MADE the best fitting pants I’ve ever had, and
The next pair will be even better!

I have been frustrated along the way by making lots of test pants in muslin which I don’t wear around much, so it’s hard to figure out how they really fit, and I knew I was close enough this time with my copy that I’d end up with something wearable, so I went for “real” fabric. I also like this approach because it lets me see how a more substantial fabric will behave, and because as I wear the finished pants in real life, I get a much better idea of how they work and what I’d like to improve.

Just a couple of construction notes: I used a rayon ribbon to bind the bottom of the waistband, which I quite like, although next time I’ll try to get it closer to the bottom waistband seam so that it doesn’t flip up. I debated whether this was too much top stitching, but on the pants when worn it doesn’t stand out much at all. This is my third try at a vintage button, the first two did not survive a trip through the washer, by which I learned that if a button looks crumbly, it probably is, and if it snaps in half like a fortune cookie in your fingers, well, it wasn’t going to stand up to much.

Ready to tackle DIY pants? I’d say there’s a lot of great resources out there, go for it! I’ll mention one more pattern which could be a good starting place, Juniper from Collette, which just came out, with a similar shape to these.
Whatever you’re making, I hope it’s giving you that “I could conquer the world with this” feeling!