the very mild experimentation series: a chiffon kimono jacket

(I thought I'd scheduled this for last week, but apparently I didn't. Oops.)

Learning to work with chiffon has been on my mind since I started sewing. I actually bought a piece on one of my very first raids of the remnant bin, but got rid of it six months later when I realised I didn't know what the eff to do with it. Not in the sense of "oh God, I can't work with chiffon, I'm rubbish", more "oh God, why did I buy this print that would only look right on a Masonic wife tightly sipping a glass of sherry and glaring at anybody under 45" (I'm a Mason's daughter, just trust me on this). I didn't buy any more to replace it because by that point I'd stopped remnant bin raids and started looking for stuff I might actually wear, and that rarely includes chiffon.

But then June hit, and temperatures of up to 34 degrees were mentioned.

I bought this particular piece of chiffon from The Textile Centre at the end of last summer. I had grand visions of a flowing layered maxi dress, and only recently admitted to myself that a) I didn't have anywhere near enough fabric and b) the dress in my head would almost certainly require complicated underwear arrangements, meaning I just wouldn't wear it. Fuck strapless bras. The idea of the kimono came to me when I was trying to find something to throw over my shoulders that wouldn't also cause me to sweat to death, and I realised I had a gap in my wardrobe.

The pattern is the Sew Over It kimono jacket, which I've made several times before. I still have and get tons of wear out of one of the two I made for myself, and I've made several more as presents since. It seemed like a good first-chiffon project because it's just a bunch of straight lines. I wanted a little bit more flow to this one, so I cut it longer (I'm not sure how much longer, just as much as the fabric would allow). The insides are French-seamed, and the hems are scratty. Next on my to-do list: learn how to do a half-decent rolled hem.

(I call this the "holding arms out awkwardly" series.)

I had very definite ideas about how I wanted to position the flowers, and due to the way the flowers were laid out on the fabric it wasn't all possible. The most important thing for me was to get a large flower cluster slightly off-centre on my back, and the way I had to fold the fabric to do that meant there wasn't as much choice as I'd have liked for the rest. I wanted flowers on the front pieces, but not in identical layout, and a plain black collar piece, so I did that as best I could and then the sleeves just had to be cut from whatever was left. 

I think this is cute. However, I wasn't getting quite as much wear out of it as I'd hoped, so I bought a semi-acceptable black jersey from Fabric Land and made another V9199.

I really like the way this looks over an all-black outfit, and it's making me want to make some black shorts (which I'm not going to do unless it's a pair of tailored wool shorts to wear over tights in the winter, and there's no way on earth I'll be wearing chiffon in the winter). The dress is only a couple of weeks old, but I've worn it like this a couple of times when the weather allowed, i.e. when it wasn't pissing down with rain in the middle of bloody August WHY IS THIS A THING, and it's cool and breezy and stops my arms sticking to themselves, so it does the job. 

This is the dress on its own. I don't like it as much as my stripy one, mostly because the fabric isn't quite right. Also it's too big in the back, but I'll take that in next time I have black thread in my machine. I screwed up my first attempt at the neckband, so I just cut it out, meaning that the neckline is a little bit wider. It doesn't bother me at all, but I won't go out of my way to do it again. 

The dress is okay, and I will get some wear out of it. The kimono is also okay, but very much for hot days and holidays, so I probably won't wear it a huge amount, but will keep it for next summer. Chiffon was exactly as annoying to work with as everyone says it is, and I probably won't be using it again in a hurry. I will if I'm inspired to, but for something I'm not bouncing around with excitement about, I don't think it's worth the faff. 

Next week I'm doing my autumn sewing plan a little early, to give me time to give Mum her dresses and photograph them on her properly. I'm a bit nervous about the fit, but mostly I'm just happy I got them done with time to spare. 

Smugface!

Me Made May week two

Week two collage:

(Left to right and top to bottom I am wearing: By Hand London Anna dress; Gertie Sews Vintage Casual cropped sweater and Sew Over It kimono jacket; Colette Moneta dress; Sew Over It Doris dress; Sew Over It tulip skirt; Sew Over It 1940s tea dress; Gertie Sews Vintage Casual cropped sweater with extended sleeves and Sew Over It tulip skirt)

I feel like "collage" isn't the right word. I need some kind of portmanteau or pun which indicates that this is both a collage AND complete crap.

Yesterday I repeated a garment for the first time. I basically made myself wear that skirt again so that I didn't get it into my head that I couldn't do that, though I'm still determined not to repeat an entire look this month. I had a couple of days when I couldn't decide what to wear because a) I wanted to wear an outfit I'd already worn or b) I was worried about "using up" a particular dress too soon, and I'm not sure whether this means I don't have enough stuff or I'm just being a bit silly.

Observations Week Two:

1. This week gives a better overall impression of my style than last week.
2. I don't see the unexpected level of traditional femininity here this time.
3. Holy crap, I have a LOT of Sew Over It stuff.
4. Leaving my camera set up on the tripod pointing at a clean corner of my room made the picture taking way easier.
5. More than once I REALLY wished I had some loungewear - a handmade pair of PJs or a dressing gown.
6. I am close to a point where I could wear different combinations of cropped sweaters and tulip skirts for a whole month and never wear the same outfit twice.
7. At the halfway point I have still not exhausted all my "better made" things, which is encouraging.

So far so good. Still enjoying it, still Instagramming, still excited for all the tedious analysis at the end.

Kimono games, round two

(I almost called this post "Kimo-no-you-didn't". I'm sorry.)

The day after I made my first kimono, I started making another.

 

This is another of my remnant bin spoils, a lightish jersey, and I'd had it in mind for a jacket for a little while. I like the sparse print - it's enough to make it interesting without taking it too far away from 'neutral' territory and thus out of the Zombie Hoodie Replacement Race. I'd had a plan from the beginning to make my mother one of the kimono jackets for her birthday, and I wanted to do a practice run in jersey to see which fabric would be better for her (spoiler: she got jersey).

Here it is, and here I am, on an actual beach on the actual sun on a holiday in the UK. I'm not quite sure how that happened.

I had a very definite idea of how the print was going to work on this jacket, and it was quite difficult to get it to do what I wanted with the bit of remnant bin fabric I had. I knew I wanted the massive print on the back, but not exactly centred, and I wanted the edges of the print on the sleeves. I had to fold my fabric in an odd place to get the print on the back, and with what was left I couldn't get both sleeves the way I wanted them (the right sleeve worked better than the left). There wasn't enough for me to fit the collar on the remnant as it was, and I had to do a fair amount of stretching to get it to fit. Yay jersey! 

This is my new Most Useful Piece, and I can wear it with most things. However, as it's quite loose-fitting, it doesn't fulfil all of Zombie Hoodie's functions. I'm starting to worry that I'm going to have to make a literal copy of Zombie Hoodie, and I'd really much prefer to have something... I don't know, more stylish, more interesting? Not inspired by a 20-year-old Miss Selfridge velour zip-up hoodie that was probably never meant to fit the way it currently does but has been stretched beyond all recognition? Yeah, that.

My boyfriend was quite insistent on getting a picture of my shadow showing the sleeves off. So here is Shadow Jen, wide on sleeves and short on legs, apparently wearing a croissant for a skirt. How lovely.

Apologies for the massive gap between posts. I'll try not to do that again, I promise. 

kimononess

In my continuing quest to find a replacement for Zombie Hoodie, I signed up to Sew Over It's kimono jacket class and made a pretty blue thing:

This project was quite straightforward. The class ran from 10am - 5pm, and I spent a good two hours of it finishing my sleeves, collar and hems by hand, because I'm swanky like that. It's the kind of thing I could have done on my own without a class, but I'm glad I went because now that I've done it, my fear of overlockers is gone. I've used them a few times before, but the voice in my head yelling "OH MY GOD there's a BLADE and it's KILLING my fabric it's going to EAT IT ALL" made them... somewhat intimidating. But the instructor was great, and now that I have a better understanding of how they work and how best to negotiate tricky bits, I'm not nearly so afraid of using one again. 

The fabric is a lightweight viscose that feels lovely, but as you might have spotted, wrinkles extremely easily. So it's not going to be the kind of thing I can ball up in a bag just in case, like Zombie Hoodie is. The search continues. 

It's great for spinning in, though. 

...and possibly it smells? I have no idea what I was going for here. 

Oh, hey, remember that "dancing like an idiot" thing?

Well, here's me doing the Charleston in an outfit that really doesn't go together (but all handmade!) to a medley of songs from Mary Poppins. 

You're welcome.