VACC part 4: Thurlow

Yeah, it took me a while, but I got them done eventually.

At the beginning of the year I said I wanted to find my trouser pattern this year, and I pretty much assumed it was going to be this one. The Sewaholic Thurlows are designed for a small waist, larger hips and larger thighs, and they come with a special back extension gizmo to help get the fit right. There didn't seem to be any way this wouldn't work for me. And because of that, I was incredibly nervous about starting them and didn't get round to it until November.

I had never done a front fly zip before and my only previous attempt at welt pockets didn't go very well, so I followed Lladybird's Thurlow sewalong from 2012, which was incredibly helpful. Despite all the various bits and pieces of this pattern, with some in-depth instructions it was actually quite straightforward. I think my nerves probably helped here, because I was too anxious to marathon my way through making something like I usually do and split it over three or four days instead. I left off the belt loops because I have never owned a belt that goes through loops in my life, but I made up everything else as instructed.

I got this material in Fabric Land. It is a super soft suiting and was named "Cods Wallop Herringbone" so I don't see how I was supposed to resist buying any. It was great for a first attempt at these trousers - it behaved exactly as I wanted it to and gave me a finished pair of trousers that are incredibly comfortable to wear. Yay!

WELT POCKETS. Thanks to a super useful tutorial, my second attempt at these has gone from "they may not look like welt pockets, but they look like pockets" to "they may not look like perfect welt pockets, but they look like goddamn welt pockets". For my second ever attempt, I will cheerfully take these.

The front fly had a bunch of steps but was much less difficult than I was anticipating. Much to my surprise I didn't have to redo any of it. It's slightly more visible than it should be in these photos because my hook and bar needs shifting across a bit, but I can and will do that later. I switched out the inside button for a popper - I still haven't done buttonholes because I literally never wear anything with buttons and I wasn't prepared to learn for something that would be completely hidden, or mess up the whole thing at the last minute.

Having the back extension is a small piece of genius. My trousers are always too loose in the waist if they fit through the hips, and on both my Chataigne shorts and my Ultimate Trouser-shorts I had to take a big wedge out of the waistband to get them to fit properly. Having that built in as part of the pattern was amazing, and I don't know why more patterns don't use that. It's possibly my favourite part of the whole thing. This fit is straight out of the envelope with a bit of playing around with that back seam. I am thrilled.

(I'm sorry all my pictures cut the hem of the trousers off. I didn't notice my frame was wrong until I got back inside, and you couldn't have paid me to go back out and reshoot everything. My apologies.)

I consider these trousers one of my biggest accomplishments yet. They're not perfect, but for a year and a half of sewing experience I think they're pretty damn good. They feel very much like work trousers, though, so I'd love to make another pair for daywear, possibly in some kind of tartan. I'm also wondering how easy these are to make style adjustments to - I don't have a huge amount of call for flared-leg trousers in my non-work life, but these fit amazingly well and I'd much rather alter these than buy a different style and make eight million increasingly frustrating toiles. More research required. 

FINALLY.

VACC part three: 1940s wrap dress

So, first things first. I made a commitment to myself to be honest about the things I make, and sometimes I'll need to do that retroactively. I learn more, I get better, I understand more about fit, I become better able to evaluate my projects, and some things just cannot go unremarked upon. With that in mind, let me say: my first 1940s wrap dress was one of the worst things I've ever made.

Even at the time I knew it was pretty bad, but it was the reason I started sewing and I was not going to allow it to be terrible. In a way I was quite grateful that the static was so insane and made the dress unwearable, because it meant I didn't have to confront how uncomfortable I felt in it. Nothing about it worked for me; it didn't fit me anywhere (though some part of this was probably the stupid static cling), I thought it made me look frumpy, and while I loved the colour in theory, when combined with the collared style it made me feel like a dinner lady or a travel agent in the early 90s. It was a terrible, horrible, no good very bad dress and I was glad to see the back of it. I wrote fairly positively about it at the time, because I wasn't prepared to accept that after all that fuss I didn't even like the dress. Ah, denial. 

However, it was also my original sewing goal, and I didn't really feel I could consider that goal met unless I had an actual wearable version of the dress. Sew Over It have said that they're releasing it as a commercial pattern next year, and I felt that I ought to make a proper version before then; I didn't really get that much out of the class and if I didn't make the dress until the paper pattern was released I might feel like I'd wasted my money. Let's not look too deeply into that one.

The fabric is an actual crepe, as opposed to the previous static polyester they sell as "luxury crepe", but it's not like any other crepe I've worked with. That's not a compliment.  It is not at all static, but it feels really quite harsh and also it does not iron even the tiniest bit. The collar in particular was a massive pain in the ass - I would put a steaming hot iron on it and it would just bounce back up like nothing had happened. This is my second attempt at photographing this dress, which I actually finished over a month ago. I decided I could deal with how it looked, took photos, realised all the problem areas looked eight times worse on camera, and hung it up until after my holiday, when I pressed the shit out of it again. It's still not perfect, but it's less embarrassing.

The instruction sheet I was given in class is fairly bare bones, and when making the first dress we didn't actually follow it. One of the things they don't include is a pattern layout diagram, and for this reason I initially only cut one pair of collar pieces misremembering the collar to be much narrower than it is. Gah. Other than that, I'm at the point now where I can get through most things as long as I have a vague construction order and some idea of what to Google.

Something else I hadn't remembered was how bulky the dress gets around the neckline. There are seam joins and pleats and collar pieces AND bias binding to finish the seam, and since it's self bias binding which needs to be folded in, there are a crazy number of layers at certain points. The Gnome handled it all with good grace, but it's something to bear in mind. 

I switched out the gathers at the sleeves for pleats (I will always switch out gathers for pleats if I can because few things make me more reluctant to sew than knowing the next thing I have to do is a bunch of gathering, and also I don't like puffy gathers at the shoulder). If I'd remembered that the sleeves were this slightly awkward length I'd have made them a bit longer.

When I tried the dress on looking to sort out my popper placement (something else that went wrong with the first dress) I realised I didn't really like the shape the dress was giving me. For something with all these tucks and gathers and waistbandness, it was curiously lacking in waist. I was worried I was going to completely hate this version too, but after taking the bodice in about an inch on each side and raising the hem to knee length, I felt much better about it. I do think if I were to make it again I'd take out some of the gathering and blousiness from the back piece, and cut smaller front pieces with a bust adjustment.

Getting the poppers in the right place was actually fairly easy this time, which I must attribute to a combination of improved skills and less awful fabric. There's a tiny bit of stretch in this crepe and I think that helps a lot with the comfortable fit. If I ever decide to make another one I will definitely use something similar. Though preferably something that irons better.

I now consider my original goal achieved. Even if I don't wear it very often, this dress is actually nice, and has an elegant vibe that may come in handy every now and again since I do move in the kind of circles where someone occasionally says "Come to this thing, and do so in 1940s drag". I think my next goal is going to be a particular vintage evening gown, but I'll write more about that once I've had a look at the pattern. 

I was in a hurry to take these photos (because end of November), so this is more amputee than land girl. Eh. 

VACC part 1b: another birthday present

Part two of Mum's birthday haul! As you may have come to expect from me, I made something a bit different from what I originally intended.

(It's crappy iPhone shots galore and I apologise. I was only making a flying visit home and it seemed like overkill to bring a DSLR.)

My initial plan, you may recall, was to make the Colette Selene skirt, but I kept going back and forth on it. The pattern didn't quite match the fabric style-wise and the samples on the website don't look especially great, but most damningly - and I know this sounds bad given that it's a present - it seemed like an awful lot of work for not a lot of skirt. I bought the pattern originally for the version with the big notched pockets (which I will try one day), but Mum was emphatically against pockets of any kind for her skirt. Which leaves a basic panelled straight skirt. With the lining and the lapped zip and everything, it would take quite a chunk of time. And given that I'd already made her a jacket... nope. I'd rather make an easier skirt with nice seam detail that wouldn't require quite so much work to remake if it turned out the fit was off.

So I went shopping and found two patterns. One of them was the exact skirt I'd had in my head when Mum picked out the fabric, but there was a small amount of fullness round the bottom and she'd said to me repeatedly that she didn't want any fullness anywhere in the skirt. So I put that pattern down, and went with the slimmer option, Simplicity Amazing Fit 1541.

My first big mistake was looking at the European sizing on the front of the envelope, seeing those same numbers on the back of the envelope and assuming it corresponded to sizing. When I got it home I saw a different set of numbers and realised the pattern was going to be way too small. I should have remembered that this is why I haven't really bothered to look at Simplicity patterns, but I got lulled into a false sense of security by all the Butterick and Vogue patterns in my stash that go up to a size 22. There's no way the straight size pattern would only go up to a 30 inch waist, surely! What a fool I was. However, buoyed by my last experience with rudimentary grading, I did the same thing again. This being a fitted skirt, I was a bit more worried about how it would turn out. I managed to cut the skirt from only half my piece of fabric, so I reasoned that if it was all too disastrous I could always have another go. The pattern comes with different pieces for slim, average and curvy fit. I cut the curvy pieces; size-wise Mum's measurements correspond more to the average fit, but I thought I'd take the extra leeway.

As the pattern's main selling point is the fitting, the instructions tell you to baste most of the seams in place to begin with, try the skirt on and fit from there. So I basted, tried the skirt on to make sure it was big enough (Mum and I don't have the exact same measurements and we definitely don't have the same shape, but we're similar RTW sizes and I know enough about our differences that trying it on myself gives me an idea of whether or not I'm wasting my time) and waited for her to come and visit me. Which was a planned visit. I didn't just baste a skirt and then hold it ransom until my mother came to see me. I'm not that weird.

Much to my complete astonishment, I put the skirt on her and it appeared to fit her perfectly as it was. I hadn't put the zip in so there was a chance that the back wouldn't be quite right once it was finished (it was, as you can see, fine), but I couldn't see anywhere the skirt needed taking in or letting out. I was beyond amazed. Mum had asked for a midi skirt and due to my preoccupation with my rustic grading I'd forgotten, so I was worried about that, but because she's quite short the skirt was almost the exact length she wanted. I compensated for the extra by bias binding the hem and making it smaller than the pattern directs, and we ended up with her preferred "wearing with boots in the winter" skirt length.

You will observe here my bias binding and the results of my first ever kick pleat, which took me a couple of goes but I think it's come out really well. 

The fabric was quite a loose weave and frayed all over the place as I was sewing it up, so I used bias binding on as many internal seams as I could. Which I think was a good decision, because:

You see the really dark seam on the right there? Yeah. We didn't notice when I was taking the photos, but it turned out that the fabric had started to pull apart at the top for absolutely no discernable reason. Luckily Mum has a sewing machine and it was an easy enough fix, but it does make me worry about the skirt's longevity. It's not the seam pulling apart, it's the fabric just deciding it didn't want to remain woven. Ugh. 

I will probably have a go at making another of these skirts. I still have some blue suiting fabric left over from raiding my friend Micky's fabric stash which I think work. I still have the other half of this black and white wool-type stuff and was considering making a skirt for myself (in a different style) from the remnant, but now I'm not so sure. It might be toile fabric only.

So the jacket was definitely the more successful of the two birthday present projects, but I'm glad I got both done. I learned new things from each, Mum was happy with them, and frankly I'm amazed at my own ability to create two well-fitting garments blind from patterns that were substantially too small. I must remember not to abuse this power. 

Kick pleat!

VACC part two: 1920s coat, or ARGH

Hi! I'm not very well at the moment, hence the lack of post on Monday. Way less sewing than usual plus general dissatisfaction with state of face is making it difficult to queue up content in advance like I usually do. Also, this month has been a BITCH and everything keeps going wrong. As I am about to demonstrate with this half-completed extreme fail of a project. Ugh.

Behold the incomplete coat. Let me tell you its story. 

I started making this coat at the beginning of June, and got as far as constructing the outer shell of the coat and pinning together the facing and lining pieces before I got too frustrated and shoved everything into a corner. I couldn't make sense of some of the instructions (I expect because I'd never made a coat before and so didn't have a decent base of "this is how it normally works" to start from), I lost my sleeve lining pattern piece and then ran out of lining fabric, I was really concerned about the way it was fitting. I was determined enough to make it work that I went back to Fabric Land and bought the last of the remaining purple coating to make the matching cape, but not determined enough to do the work. The bits of coat got put into a bag, taken from Old House to Temporary House to New House, and still no more got done to it.

When I was making my September/October project list, I realised that the constant presence of a half-finished coat was getting on my nerves and I needed to finish the thing one way or another. So in late September, the coat pieces and I spread ourselves out on the floor and tried to work out what was going on. My unpicker worked very hard that day. By mid-afternoon, I had a coat with lining mostly attached, and I had to confront the fact that it simply did not fit.

This is what's known as Unimpressed Face. 

I don't know if I did something wrong. Honestly, it's quite likely that I did. But what I have doesn't match the pattern envelope at all. The finished measurements of the largest size are supposed to be 47 inches, and the photo has the front of the coat wrapping over to the opposite hip, so I assumed that 47 inches was the hip measurement of the coat when closed to that point. What I appear to have, based on my normal hip measurement, is a coat that is 47 inches edge to edge, so it barely wraps over my hips and looks very strange. I'm actually really hoping I did something wrong, because if that's the way it's meant to be then nobody in the largest few sizes will be able to get their coat to look the way it does on the pattern. I tried it on my skinny-ass boyfriend who has a good ten inches less hip than me; while we did get to wrap over, it was still pretty tight.

You can see in these two photos that by pulling the coat to the position where it would be fastened, it's so tight that it's making the pockets bulge out. This is not what I want in a coat, and particularly not in a 1920s shaped coat. And if I don't fasten it and just leave it to hang open, it a) is insufficiently warm and b) just looks like I'm wearing a blanket.

BLANKET. Also it looks mega-wonky here, but that's because it hasn't seen even a hint of an iron. And nor will it ever. I'm done with it.

I'm not going to finish this coat. It's straight-up unwearable. I don't like the way it looks worn open, and if I put any kind of closure on it at all it pulls at the hips when I walk. There's just no point in putting the effort in to complete it when I already know it's destined for the bin. I'm quite sad about it. I really wanted this coat, but there's no way I'll be trying the pattern again. Since it's already cut out I will have a go at making the cape (why not have a purple cape, I always say) and just chalk this one up to experience. I bought another coat pattern recently, and I'll be having a go at that next month when I come back from my holiday.

It's all lined and everything. What you can't see is that I got very confused around the neckline area and some of the lining is attached inside out. FAIL COAT. FAIL.

VACC part 1a: a birthday present

So despite the fact that I have made AT LEAST four garments for other people (so generous), I have so far not featured any other models on this blog. Mostly that's because I get all excited about giving things to people and then forget I have to take pictures. After I gave my grandmother her jacket (long story, but I did eventually manage to remake it in time for her birthday), I caught myself thinking "it's okay, I can just take the photos when I get home" because I apparently think I still have access to things after I give them as presents to people who live in other cities. Anyway, I was determined not to do that this time, and so this post will contain actual photos of another person. Organised Jen!

I offered to make my mother two garments as a birthday present this year. Well, I offered to make one, but then she picked out two bolts of fabric and I didn't have the heart to make her pick between them. I don't begrudge extra sewing for my mum; she does far more than she should for me and also is one of my best friends in a sharing-far-more-than-we-should way. She picked material for a jacket and a skirt, and I decided to start with the jacket. I still had some reservations about the skirt pattern I was planning to use, so starting with the other one to give me more time to think seemed like the safer option.

And here it is:

The pattern is Simplicity 1467, which seemed to fit most of her requirements. Light, no closures, enough detail to make it interesting without crossing over into weird. It has princess seams, a lightly gathered peplum, and optional shoulder pads that I quickly opted against, because Mum doesn't need any extra structure there. The fabric is an embroidered cotton that we got from Fabric Land.

The jacket is unlined, and I didn't want ugly-looking seams showing on the inside, so I flat felled them. I've never flat felled a seam before this jacket and I really like it as a finish, though I wanted them to be the other way round (flatter part on the outside) and I thought that's what the tutorial I was following was directing me to do, but apparently not. I tried asking some questions online and I am none the wiser about this, so I will need to do a bit of experimenting before I try this again.

Hey, look, an insides shot! Other people seem to do this a lot, so I'm going to try doing it occasionally too because I am a giant copy cat who doesn't really know what she's doing.

Also, this was the first garment I took the iron to after moving. The iron I've been using for the past year was my former landlord's, and it was the WORST. It couldn't press worth a damn but would imprint the pattern on the bottom of the ironing board permanently onto the fabric, the steam function only worked once in every twelve times, and filling the water tank would result in one giant gush of steam and several days of leaking on everything before going back to being way too dry. I never ironed stuff before I started sewing, so this was basically my only experience of irons. Using Patrick's iron, which is just a bog standard one he bought because it was purple, is quite a different experience and I managed to actually press the jacket seams. I could not get the collar to do what I wanted it to do, though, and it's my one regret about this jacket. I did interface it, but I feel like it needs something else and I'm not sure what. Mum doesn't seem to mind, though.

She was really happy with it. It's versatile, casual but still pulled together, and it fits her well (hooray for guesswork grading!). Mostly I think she's happy that she can now stop going jacket shopping and hating everything she tries on. Jackets are really hard to find. Everything that isn't super casual is a blazer, and I'm sure I don't see blazers on enough people for them to be the only jacket available. Maybe clothes shops and I just don't understand each other. 

More insides! Flat felled seams and invisible hem. Yes, the invisible hem is a bit wonky on the inside, but it's on the inside so nobody's going to see it unless I put a photo of it up on a blog for some reason. 

Overall, a success. Hopefully birthday present Round Two will be equally successful. I did the fitting this week, so it should be ready soon. Timing wise I'm not sure if I can get photos of her wearing it, but we shall see. Yay unselfish sewing!

PAPMAP part four: Tania

WE ARE HERE! THE INTERNET IS WORKING!

Technically this isn't a legitimate PAPMAP post because I made these on Tuesday. I had every intention of rushing through making them as soon as we moved in so they were done in August, but then my printer refused to work without internet even when it was attached to my laptop with a cable so I couldn't print the pattern. Sigh. But these woes are behind us, and I now present to you my amazing palm tree garden:

Look at it. Look at that. That is our actual garden. I may have been living out of boxes for three weeks and without the internet for another two and a half, but we are pretty damn lucky, all things considered.

Anyway. Sewing. Tania culottes! These were a really quick make, probably not more than a couple of hours overall. The zip and waistband construction were exactly the same as my beloved tulip skirt pattern, so I can basically do that in my sleep at this point. Other than that it was a couple of pleats, a couple of crotch and side seams, and then eight miles of hemming. Just one of the reasons I haven't made a circle skirt in nearly a year and have no plans to do so again. Ugh, hemming.

I like being able to swish around and still be protected from chub rub (though of course I would like it more if there were pockets. Everything is better with pockets). It's way more floofy than I generally go, but I wanted to make these for the specific purpose of being comfortable, practical and non-restrictive on really hot days. Since they fit that bill, I will deal with the floof. Swishing away my reservations. 

Frond fondling. 

My major concern was "I don't know what on earth I can wear with these." I'm having a bit of wardrobe dissatisfaction at the moment, which I'll go into in another post, and I'm lacking in tops especially. With something really full like this, I don't want any extra material around my waist, but I don't feel especially comfortable in vest tops right now.

This is a toile for an Anna T-shirt that I whipped up at 11pm on Tuesday from a remnant I'd decided I could justify bringing with me. It suddenly struck me as a great idea - I love the way the shape looks in jersey and if I could have a few T-shirts in that shape to wear with high-waisted stuff, it would be a pretty cost-effective way of making my existing clothes a bit more useful to me.

I would want to add a bit of length for the actual T-shirts, but in an interesting development I reshot these pictures with an actual T-shirt and didn't like any of the photos enough to use them, so I might need to do a bit of experimenting.

It is entirely possible that yesterday was the last nice day of the year, so these might not get a huge amount more wear. However, we have finally booked our ridiculous trip-of-a-lifetime holiday, so in November they will definitely be in my suitcase and coming to the insane mountainside resort in St Lucia. I am VERY excited.

In conclusion: yay everything! Especially palm trees. 

PAPMAP part three: Sallie, or ARGH

SO.

I'll start off by saying that I really like this. I added an inch or so to the length of the bodice and I much prefer it that way. The trousers are made of bamboo jersey, which I've never used before but is amazingly soft and comfortable, and having a different fabric on top means that this one is going to be a bit more versatile than my first Sallie. I've already worn it a lot.

However, it took me several screw-ups to get here.

My original plan was to make trousers from this bamboo jersey and use a monochrome floral print jersey for the top. I started making that, and it went entirely wrong in all the ways it could have. The lining wouldn't fit inside the top properly, I managed to sew the ties on backwards, the neckline went funny, and I couldn't unpick it successfully because the elastic wasn't having it. I got very annoyed, went out to buy something similar, couldn't find it, and bought this blue Art Gallery knit instead.

The top went together fine the second time, and the trousers also made up OK. But then the time came to attach one to the other, and AAAAGGGHHH. First I sewed the elastic channel the wrong width, then I redid the whole thing and realised at the end that I'd attached the top back to front. When I sewed it together for a third time, the seam allowances were off and it was really difficult to get enough fabric to actually sew the channel shut. Then I hemmed the trouser legs and the thread kept separating and snapping. It took ages. I had to picture a calm blue ocean.

But it is done. It is done, and it is wearable. Much as this was a pain in the bum, I am totally sold on the whole jumpsuit thing. I think I'm about done for summer sewing, but I'd quite like to make an eveningwear jumpsuit (possibly not this pattern) at some point in the nearish future.

To mark the final set of photos ever taken in my old garden (two days til we finally move in to our shiny new flat!), a dance party. Because what else are you going to do in a jumpsuit.