no longer winter sewing: Sew Over It Hackney shirt, round two

We're getting into the third week of self-isolation and the last few days have been extra stressful for me. I couldn't even tell you why, I've just been tense and frozen and tearful since Thursday. It's both impossible to do things and impossible to not do things, and speaking to people on the phone so often is really wiping me out. Don't get me wrong, I'm really glad to have people in my life who love me and want to stay connected (and really glad to be able to have a way to continue my therapy sessions during a time like this), but... I'm so bad at the phone. I was never good at it, and then I worked an entirely phone-based job, and now speaking to anyone who isn't my mother stresses me the hell out. It feels like a really stupid thing to complain about, but there it is.

On to Patrick's birthday shirt, which was part of my winter plan but it seems a bit silly to title things "winter sewing" when it's nearly April.

I had made a pledge that if my second attempt at a shirt worked, I would make a third out of properly fancy fabric. Originally I'd been intending to do this for Christmas last year, but he requested that I make him another hoodie (something he had a slightly more pressing need for) and reschedule the shirt for his 40th. 

I'd assumed this would be a Liberty print shirt, but it is not. We can't decide whether it's Liberty's prints or Patrick's taste that's changed, but we looked for months and couldn't find anything that was right. Eventually I found Storrs Fabric through someone else promoting it on Instagram, and they exclusively make Egyptian cotton lawn in a variety of very Patricky prints. This was the one he was most enthusiastic about, so this was the one I went for. Handily, he then instantly forgot he'd ever seen it, so it was still a surprise on the day! It's the Santorini print, which comes in several other colourways. I almost bought the pink, but happened to see it in person on a trip to Shaukat and the base of that one is a very definite peach that would not look right on a man of this skin tone. 

The Sew Over It Hackney shirt fit Patrick really well last time, so I made the exact same thing again. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but there's something slightly off about the fit at the back. I did notice a couple of his other shirts doing the same thing, though, so it's possibly that he's changed shape recently. 

Knowing that he'd want to wear this for special occasions and thus would want to be able to wear cufflinks with it, I changed the cuffs. The first shirt I made had double cuffs, but the one thing he complained about with that shirt was that the cuffs were too skimpy (rather than the correct answer, "this shirt is very bad and nobody should wear it") so I didn't want to use that pattern piece. I measured the cuffs on some of his pre-existing shirts and concluded that what I needed was the original Hackney cuff doubled in height plus 1cm and squared off at the top. This has worked really well and I'll probably use it on any shirts I might make going forward.

Obviously this shirt hasn't really had an outing yet (he wore it for a celebratory wine drinking session over Zoom on his birthday, if that counts), but overall I'm happy to claim this was pretty successful. The fabric is vibrant and soft, the fit is mostly still there, the double cuffs came out well, and it was much easier to do everything this time round. I've gotten the hang of buttonholes now (as well as button placement, which was a major issue the first time), and my progress on tower plackets from "what the hell is this" to "OK, if I follow these instructions very slowly and carefully I can probably get it" to "well, it's extremely obvious that you just do this and you're done" was actively funny to me. Shirt number four won't be happening for a while, but I'm sure it'll feel like much less of an ordeal when its time comes.

This photo is pretty blurry, and I'm only including it to tell you that this was the day we found out our next door neighbours are dealing with quarantine by getting a GOLDEN RETRIEVER PUPPY and we're furious that someone else has a puppy and we don't. Patrick here is seeing the puppy for the first time and possibly plotting to steal it. 

This is why he's my favourite.

Up next: I'm not sure. I've taken a break from the dress as it's been causing me no end of problems, so I'm trying to find a slightly less annoying project to get things flowing again. Whether I have a finished project or not I will post again on Thursday - I think I still have a couple of things from a while ago I never got around to posting about, and I'm also thinking about doing another round of "what the hell do I make this fabric into". Ideally, though, I'll have made something!

winter sewing: Amelia jacket toile

I'm finding that the things I'm motivated to do at the moment aren't necessarily the most useful ones, but this one really is a bit of a head-scratcher.

Not only did I choose to go with a toile of a spring jacket, i.e. the thing that should have been right at the bottom of my priority list, but I also decided to make it out of the most expensive per metre fabric I own. Weird. If you were reading last year, you may remember this post where I canvassed for ideas to use up stash fabric I didn't know what to do with. I got a lot of great ideas from people, including the suggestion to turn my super-expensive fabulous quality Ray Stitch barkcloth into a cropped jacket. The second I read that, my mind was made up. I did consider making a toile before I cut into £50 worth of fabric, but the mere idea turned my brain into a full-on Kevin the Teenager because I do sort of resent this fabric. I was extremely depressed when I bought it and every time I look at it I wish I hadn't spent so much money on it. That was three and a half years ago now, and the money I spent on it is long gone. At this point the fabric either continues to sit sadly in my stash or it gets cut up and makes at least a modicum of use of itself.

Fortunately, it is not a fail! I was almost 100% convinced it would be, because expensive fabric and untested pattern I also had some doubts about (we'll get into that), but it's worked pretty well! I will definitely get some wear out of it, although I've yet to work out exactly how versatile it's going to be in terms of colour and shape.

For this fabric, which is a very loose weave and thus frays at a rate of knots, I wanted to go for a jacket pattern with a lining. The Sew Over It Amelia jacket was the accompanying pattern for an issue of the now-defunct Lisa Comfort magazine, and when it came out I remember thinking that I liked the look of the pattern but was absolutely not going to pay £14.99 for Lisa Comfort magazine. When they reduced the price to £5 to clear out their remaining stock I decided to go for it. I had fully intended to put the actual magazine straight in the recycling, but it turns out you can't do that because that's where all the instructions are. So now there is a Lisa Comfort magazine sitting in my flat for my boyfriend to periodically make fun of. Hooray.

I cut a 16, blending to a 14 in the shoulders and forearms. I didn't do a full bust adjustment but I did do a full bicep adjustment - past experience has taught me that the SOI block has very narrow sleeves. I also added a couple of inches of length, partly to compensate for my boobs but mostly because my 18 inch zip was nicer than my 16 inch zip. Turns out this was exactly the right thing to do, as this jacket is SUPER cropped. Which is good! I spend large chunks of my life looking for actually cropped jacket patterns rather than ones that hit my high hip and look like shit on me! But if you have a large bust or a long waist, take note - SUPER cropped.

The zip, incidentally, was a major annoyance for me. The notions requirements say "We recommend buying a 22-inch zip and shortening it". First of all, no. Second of all, shortening it to what? What length of zip did you draft for?? I really hate this kind of thing. This made me very concerned that they'd drafted for, say, 21.25 inches of zip or something equally unpurchasable, but I pressed on. My jacket, as I said, ended up needing an 18-inch zip after I lengthened it. To make this jacket as drafted you'd have to take six inches' worth of teeth out of the zip, possibly more if you're making a smaller size. There is just no way that a 22-inch zip is the most convenient one to purchase. They suggest it's to give you leeway to make alterations to the fit, but I'm not buying that. Who is making six inches of alterations to a cropped jacket? Aside from that, adjusting my notions based on the alterations I make is my business, not the pattern's, particularly when the pattern does not contain any instructions for adjustment. Just tell me it's a 16-inch zip and let me do my thing, yeesh. Also if you work in either metric or imperial exclusively, this pattern will be very annoying to you as it skips in between the two constantly, as only British people of a certain age can. At one point it told me to subtract 2.5cm from my 22-inch zip.

The jacket has wide elasticated cuffs and an elasticated waist, the instructions for which I did not pay attention to. I feel like there's a lot of unnecessary slipstitching in this pattern, and I rejigged the instructions until I didn't have to do any of it. The instructions for the cuff elastic in particular I found baffling; they have you leave a hole in the cuff's seam, attach the cuffs to the sleeve, go ahead and make the rest of the jacket, then insert the elastic into the hole with a safety pin, yank both free ends out and sew them together, then slipstitch the hole closed. I just sewed the cuff, sewed the elastic, put one inside the other and carried on. This is how I did the cuffs on my Minoru jacket, which are basically identical to the ones on this pattern, and I do not understand why you'd do the stupid slipstitching method when this is easier, faster, and gives you a cleaner result.

(It's my very strongly held opinion that commercial patterns should try and avoid hand sewing wherever possible; I'm all for people going full steam ahead on the couture techniques if that's enjoyable for them, but neat and secure hand sewing is actually really difficult and requires being taught properly. A lot of my earlier projects had a much shorter shelf life than they could have because nobody told me you could attach lining to zip tape by machine.)

One thing I did like about the construction is that it's very easy to fit as you go. I've made jackets before where you have to get quite a long way in before you can see if the size is right, but on this one you have a vest with a working zip very early on in the process, so you can take in or let out as necessary. (The instructions say to make up each lining piece after the corresponding main piece, but that interrupts my flow so I just put the whole lining together at the point when I needed it. If you are following the recommended method the zip will be a slightly later point in the process.) I didn't need to alter anything, but was very glad to have opted for the full bicep adjustment.

I also really like that the lining includes a facing, so I can wear the jacket halfway unzipped as I prefer without having to worry about lining co-ordination.

Other things to note: the sleeve heads have to be gathered to fit the armscye, which is not my favourite detail; the pattern does not come with pockets; and the instructions needed a little bit more work. They aren't terrible or unusable, but the photos aren't that helpful and the bullet points are all on top of each other with no line spacing. Also, I don't feel there's enough information in the instructions to justify the sheer amount of them. In this format I'm actually pro lots of instructions - generally the people making a pattern from Lisa Comfort magazine aren't going to have a wealth of expert knowledge at their fingertips, and with that much space I would have liked to see explanations of things there isn't normally space for in instruction leaflets, like attaching the cuffs by machine (here you go). As it was, a huge chunk of the bullet points were dedicated to attaching the waistband, and it just doesn't need that.

I'm not generally this critical of a pattern that produced an end result I liked, and I've gone through my review several times wondering if I should take stuff out or soften things a bit. However, if I were a reader considering this pattern, all of these things are things I would want to know about in advance. Having read these things, I might still go on and make this jacket (it's hard to find cropped jacket patterns and they're the only jacket patterns I'm interested in) and I would have a much less annoying time as a result. My main problem, I think, is that I didn't really enjoy the process of this one, and so it's harder to find joyful words. I'm hopeful that when they do release this pattern as a main line SOI one, they'll redo the instructions and maybe even some of the techniques, leaving a much better pattern for other people to have a much better experience with. 

I will almost certainly not make this a second time, though I may try and mash it up with an unlined jacket at some point in the future. 

(Things were happening through the window. I apologise.)

I'm not exactly sure what will be up next. My sewing area has sprung a ceiling leak AGAIN so if they decide to fix it properly this time I will be out of commission for a little bit while they cut large holes over the Gnome's head. Also I saw Cats at the weekend and frankly I'm having trouble thinking about anything else. But something else will be coming soon, as soon as my flat and my brain are straightened out a bit! 

Sew Over It Amelia jacket

Fabric: Organic printed barkcloth from Ray Stitch

Cost: £50

Pattern details: Fully lined cropped bomber jacket with flat collar, zip front and elasticated waistband and cuffs

Size: 16 (14 shoulders and sleeves below the elbow)

Alterations: Lengthened by 1.5 inches, 1 inch full bicep adjustment

Would make again/would recommend: No/No

autumn sewing: a wedding guest dress

OK, OK. I can explain.

I know I said in my plans that I was definitely not going to do an Anna bodice this time, and this is... clearly an Anna bodice. However, this wasn't what I originally intended to do. This is what I originally intended to do:

This is a Cashmerette Upton bodice/Sew Over It tulip skirt mash-up, the second unpublished garment I made for the Minerva blog last month. I was really happy with the way it turned out and very pleased with the fit of the bodice. I fully intended to make another one of these to wear to the wedding, but my search for a mid-weight woven fabric that was both appropriate for an October wedding and something I actually liked was long, frustrating and fruitless. Eventually I bought a piece of stretch velvet, still intending to make this UpTulip, but then realised that a) it would need to be lined, b) I had no idea how to install the lining with no back seam, and c) I was absolutely not prepared to put a zip into stretch velvet. Not necessarily because I thought it would be difficult, but just on principle. What's even the point of knit fabrics if you have to put a zip in them?

So, I went back to my old faithful. Obviously I then realised I was going to have to line that too, and managed to do so easily enough that I probably could have managed the Upton. Sigh. 

(I'm aware that the bust pleats are behaving very strangely in these photos. I promise it doesn't look like that in real life.)

Because of my fabric issues I made this fairly last minute, and when I realised I would need to line it I didn't have time to go and find a lining-weight navy blue jersey. So I used the only even vaguely appropriate thing I had to hand, which is the mustard yellow I was intending to use to make a bodysuit. I've since come to terms with the fact that it's terrible bodysuit fabric, and if I really want a yellow one I'll need to find something a little less... well, a little less likely to scream "THIS IS WHAT BRA I'M WEARING TODAY", put it that way. Mustard yellow is not the ideal lining colour for this dress; you can see it a little at the shoulder seams here, and the combination of shades does remind me somewhat of the five terms I spent in Catholic school (after the nuns stopped running it, but recently enough that other kids still remembered being taught by said nuns), but I did what I had to do. 

It was pretty easy to line this top without needing a back seam - I sewed the necklines together first, then closed up the armhole seams with a proto-burrito method, and then the side seams. I cut about 5cm off the neckline and armholes of the lining so it would sit on the inside, which has mostly worked except for that bit on the shoulder there. Rest assured I went back in and did some hand stitching on the neckline to keep the lining hidden for the actual wedding. 

I didn't put pockets in the skirt this time. I thought it would be more trouble than it was worth, and much as I like the idea of having my phone on me for stupid dancefloor photos, I also know I'd have been paranoid about it falling out and would end up dancing with hands in pockets. That's a tough look to pull off. 

The front pleats on this skirt are much bigger than on the pattern as I accidentally cut the front skirt too big. D'oh. 

For the wedding itself I wore the dress with my ancient ice blue pashmina that seems to work with many more colours than it should. I love mixing blues. It was probably too cold for a short sleeved dress and pashmina, but one thing I just do not own is a wedding-appropriate jacket. I don't go to a lot of winter weddings and it didn't occur to me that I might need one until my mum asked me about it four days prior. This should spur me on to put "wedding-appropriate jacket" on my to-sew list, but chances are it will do no such thing. I also wore my silver and navy shoes, which I did not put on for these photos as I was rushing to get the pictures taken in between rainstorms. The full look from the day itself is on my Instagram if you're curious. 

The wedding itself was really lovely. I actually ended up being grateful for the stretch fabric as the wedding breakfast was IMMENSE and they were incredibly generous with the wine. (I really appreciate large amounts of carb at weddings, so that I can be less ill the next morning.) We were all bussed out to a barn in the middle of the countryside, where we found cava and lollipops and a fire pit with marshmallows on sticks and fancy gins and an evening hog roast and both regular cake AND a cheese wheel cake. And dancing. Lots of dancing.

Here is my best visual representation of me at a middle-class wedding disco:

I'm currently in the process of slightly reworking my sewing plans for the rest of the autumn. The yellow bodysuit probably isn't going to happen now (as I mentioned above), and since deciding to make a brightly-coloured leopard print maxi skirt suddenly every third person in London seems to be wearing a brightly-coloured leopard print maxi or midi skirt, so my enthusiasm has dimmed somewhat. I still want to make that fabric into something, but I'm less sure about what it should be now. I also think I've missed the window where a light autumn jacket would have been useful. I want to finish my Sirocco this month and then see how much inspiration and energy I have left.

Up next: more velvet! In jumpsuit form!  

actual shirt attempt two: Sew Over It Hackney (plus Stitch School experience)

Hey, everyone, look what I did!

The glow up is real. I'm amazed at how much better this is than the first one. I enjoyed the process way more this time and I'm actually happy for him to wear it in public and claim it as my work. It's been a while since I've felt this strong a sense of accomplishment after making something. 

I would never have started on a second shirt so quickly if I hadn't got the no-minimum-period Stitch School membership, but I thought it might be helpful to make a second attempt while I had access to videos of the skills that aren't really in my repertoire yet (and I wasn't going to pay for a second month of access). If I'm honest, the slightly more in-depth written instructions were helpful to me but the videos weren't really. I'll go into a bit more detail on this further down.

I cut an XS in the shoulders and lower sleeve, and an S everywhere else. Patrick tends to wear his shirts very slim fitting and the finished chest measurement of the XS is about the measurement of his normal shirts, but the Hackney pattern isn't specifically slim fit and I was worried it might look weird. These sizes were largely guesswork but fortunately it's spot on. I think the XS would have been too small through the chest, but the S would have been too big in the shoulders. He says it actually fits better than most of his regular shirts because the shoulder seam sits in the right place rather than hanging slightly off the edge of his arm. So yay me!

This fabric was an Abakhan order and it's a really nice cotton lawn. It became clear to me very soon after starting this shirt that my biggest mistake last time was using the viscose. I was only thinking about print and breathability at the time, but I very quickly realised how much more I was enjoying sewing this version because the fabric wasn't being a git. Also, having the extra stability in the fabric means it looks way more like I was expecting a shirt to look. After a full day of sewing I hung up the cuffless, buttonless, unhemmed shirt and had a feeling I can only describe as pride. And then, of course, fear that I'd screw it up.

I'm still not completely sure about the placement of buttons and buttonholes. They do align properly this time (I put the shirt on him after making the buttonholes and poked a pen through each one for placement) but I think the horizontal placement is a tiny bit off. I'm probably hyper-aware of it because I think the rest of the shirt is so good and it won't be a thing most people will notice. BUT I KNOW.

Patrick is very happy with it. So happy with it, in fact, that he refused to take it off after we checked the fit for the final time and promptly spilt curry on it. So if you can see small yellow stains in these pictures, that's why. Running it through the wash didn't help and we're now on a stain remover mission. Sigh.

He's lucky he's cute. 

Here's a couple of detail shots:

I did also watch all the Stitch School videos that accompanied the pattern. Beyond a couple of handy tips I'm not sure I got much out of it. That's probably to be expected given my experience level, but after watching a video over my shoulder Patrick pointed out that they don't use anywhere near enough camera angles of the actual process. He worried I wouldn't be able to do the cuffs properly because the video hadn't really shown the actual cuff-making process (as opposed to Lisa talking about the cuff-making process). The written instructions explain everything in what I think is plenty of detail, but if you couldn't get what you're supposed to be doing from that I really can't imagine the video would have been much help.

(I also watched one of the fitting videos they did with Julie, one of their teachers who I've taken classes with in the past and is a genuinely awesome font of knowledge, and they... didn't make a properly fitting toile in advance? I assumed they'd show the fit of an unaltered bodice first, talk through some adjustments and then show the final version, but instead of making a final version together they got their subject to bring a bodice with an FBA and just recorded Julie telling her she'd done the FBA wrong and probably needed to start again. It was very strange.)

I also have to say that the platform itself isn't fantastic. It's not like Craftsy where the whole tutorial will play through if you let it; each individual step of the construction is its own separate unlisted Vimeo video and you have to click on each one to go through. It's also pretty slow and clunky; it feels like the server is overloaded at all times. It's very new and of course they won't yet know how popular it's going to be, so I hope that if it's profitable for them it can be optimised to be a bit smoother and more user-friendly. £15 for a dozen patterns was an excellent deal for me though, and I definitely plan to have a go at the vast majority of them.

I will share with you the couple of useful shirtmaking tips I got from the videos:

In order to get a neat triangle for topstitching the tower plackets, they advise using Pritt Stick to hold everything in place, so I went out and bought the first Pritt Stick I've owned in 25 years. It does the job and I will probably continue to do this in future. I am astounded at the leap in quality of my tower plackets and the construction makes a LOT more sense to me now.

The other useful thing I learned was to press 5mm of fabric to the right side of the sleeve cap before sewing it to make it easier to flat fell the seam, and it's a really good idea. Once the sleeve is sewn to the armhole the flat fell is basically just ready to go and all you have to do is pin it down. I do love a good flat fell but curved seams are a bit of a pain; this made it so much easier and I'm going to do it forever.

Nothing about this experience has made me want to make any shirts for myself, but I do think I'll continue to make them occasionally for Patrick, most likely using this pattern with double cuffs grafted on sometimes. Not just because he'd appreciate it, but also because it offers me opportunities I don't usually get in making things for myself. For example, it's nice to actually work with cotton. I don't tend to use it because I don't really wear it, but damn is it nice to sew. It just sits there and does what you tell it to do. It's nice to be able to do more precise sewing and produce something that looks the way this does. I'm also interested to start playing around with detailing a bit; Patrick has shirts that use a contrast fabric for the inner collar band or inner cuffs, different colour stitching on one or two buttonholes only, and various other subtle or hidden things that he's really into and would be a great way for me to use up scraps. I think between us we could come up with some really cool stuff.

(Approximate visual representation of me finishing an accomplished piece of sewing without having to deal with body issues once.)

I realise I've posted two men's shirts pretty close together and that's not what people generally come here for, but it's not going to be a regular feature (I will make maybe a couple of shirts per year, depending on how often I stumble across really Patricky fabric) and I was just so proud of how fast my skills improved. Next up will be something for me!

Sew Over It Hackney shirt

Fabric: Cotton lawn from Abakhan
Cost: £12
Pattern details: Classic shirt with collar and collar stand, tower plackets and cuffs, back yoke and box pleat, and chest pocket
Size: S with XS shoulders and forearms
Alterations: Chest pocket omitted
Would make again/would recommend: Yes/Yes

autumn sewing: peacock skirt (and bonus Givre)

I didn't post last week for two reasons. One, I'd decided to start about five projects at once and so had five half-finished things as opposed to one or two actual wearable garments, and two, I was having an especially bad time with sewing and self-image. I've put on a bit of weight recently so a lot of my clothes fit awkwardly, and I couldn't get my head around picking a size or taking photos of the finished product. But equally, not sewing was making me sad, so on Friday I decided to make my peacock fabric into a Sew Over It tulip skirt. It was in my plan, I've made the pattern over a dozen times and I know it fits, and I had enough fabric that I'd be able to remake the skirt if my size changed drastically any time soon. Also, it takes me about 20 minutes these days.

(In these first three photos I look like I don't have any legs. Please ignore that. I do still have legs.)

I got this fabric from Fabric Land in Bristol, and it was the genesis of the whole peacock theme thing. I usually breeze past the printed cottons and stretch cottons in Fabric Land, but I saw this from the other side of the shop and I knew it had to come home with me. Colour is king in my wardrobe, and the saturated blue and yellow with tiny hints of red and purple is just too perfect. 

Unusually for me, I opted not to put pockets in it. I might regret that somewhere down the line, but I wanted the skirt to be as simple as possible and I didn't have workable pocket fabric immediately to hand. It should fine - it's autumn now, so I'll be wearing this with a jacket more often than not. I used a regular zip instead of an invisible zip, because all the invisible zips currently in my notions box are 22 inches long and bright salmon pink. When did I buy a job lot of salmon pink zips? 

(I took these photos in our stairwell. I'd got myself all geared up for photo-taking, then realised it was raining and the flat was a mess. I think it works and I'll probably do it again - apart from anything else, I look way less murderous making eye contact with the camera from this angle. The struggle with RBF is an enduring one.)

While we're here, let's talk about the top:

I decided to make another Deer and Doe Givre dress, because much to my pleasant surprise I've been wearing the first one all the time. This one isn't quite as successful - the fabric doesn't stretch quite as much so it's a bit restrictive, and also something about the combination of colour, texture and overlocking (my friend Micky fixed my overlocker, and I managed to do this one dress before it did something weird and now I don't know how to fix it again) reminds me of the sleeping bag I used to use as a duvet at my nan's house when I was seven. I don't even think that's a bad thing; it's just that the association is so strong that it's all I can think about when I wear this. I do LOVE the colour, though - this orange-yellow-gold needs a bigger place in my life. 

I'm super into this outfit. It's very "business casual Rainbow Brite" which is an aesthetic I could stand to explore a little more. I've been spending a bit of time on personal style forums lately and there's something tremendously appealing about the pithy little style phrases people come up with. I'm thinking about doing a short series on styling and wearing things differently, because I'm sure my wardrobe could be way more versatile than it is. 

I managed to get a couple of things finished and photographed this weekend, so up next: a dress that has nothing to do with anything I planned. Hooray!

Autumnal!