autumn sewing: the triumphant completion of my white leather jacket (and bonus Vogue 9199)

Look!

I'm not going to lie, when I got to mid-October and still hadn't even started this I thought it just wasn't going to happen. The test version was super-draining to my sewjo in general, particularly when I realised that it was too uncomfortable to actually wear, and I still haven't quite recovered (as my much less frequent posting has probably given away). When I put it on the list in the first place I knew that making a second jacket so soon would either clear away all the residual YARGH and let me get on with things normally again, or would stall me completely and utterly. And for ages, it was the latter. I made plans for getting everything going again nearly a month ago, made the Magnolia dress and then stopped. A week later I spent the entirety of Monday sitting on the kitchen floor cutting out a dozen things. Two dresses, a pair of trousers, a HUGE pile of jersey tops... and two versions of this stupid Burda jacket. Two. What is wrong with me? But it turned out to be motivation enough to get on with it.

Thankfully, this version is WAY better than the test one. The fabric is much thinner and softer, so it's comfortable to wear and isn't such a pain to do up, the hem isn't wonky, the sleeve heads aren't huge and puffy, and the zip is the right length. Also, all the zips match this time. I bought the front and sleeve zips from the same eBay shop I used last time, but bought the pocket zips in person to make sure the teeth were the right colour.

I bought this fabric from myfabrics.com. I'd been dreaming about it for a few months before I bought it, but I misunderstood the description and thought it was actually embroidered. It's not, it's just a pattern printed on. It's very different from my first fabric - it's a super thin, super soft plastic-like sheet bonded to backing fabric, which seems to be more the norm than the other faux leather, which was just SOLID. Much to my immense confusion, though, the backing fabric is 100% unresponsive to Superglue. It absorbs and dries the glue literally instantly, leaving you with a small hard crusty spot that won't bend. This was a problem I just hadn't anticipated. No glue, no pins, no tacking stitches. I just about managed to get round that for attaching the zips, but for the hem I literally had to resort to tit tape, and I don't think it's worked that well. My third piece of faux leather, also a thin sheet on backing fabric, has no such issues with Superglue, so I don't know what the hell this stuff is made of.

So, having now made this jacket again with some idea of what I was doing and only one major fabric issue to deal with, I feel more confident in saying that Burda instructions really aren't very good. Certainly these ones weren't. Everything I've read prior to this suggested that the biggest Burda point of contention was the lack of seam allowances on the pattern pieces (I get both sides of the argument - my biggest problem is that I cut out/trace on autopilot and always forget I have to add stuff), and instructions were only mentioned as being "sparse". I don't feel like I'm in a position where I need too much hand-holding, so I wasn't concerned. If I get stuck on a thing, there's usually a more in-depth tutorial lurking around somewhere. However, these instructions weren't so much "sparse" as they were "confusing and occasionally outright wrong". At one point it instructs "sew lining to jacket" when what they mean is "sew lining to facing" and they absolutely do not want you to sew the lining to the jacket, because you haven't done the collar yet. I'm also really not a fan of the way they put about three hours' worth of work under a single bullet point. It means things that sorely need diagrams don't get them, and it's really easy to miss out a step. I didn't topstitch the collar and lapels when I was supposed to because it was under the "Hems" bullet point and I'd finished all the hemming. Luckily that wasn't too hard to correct after the fact.

I'm much happier with the overall construction of this jacket, but a lot of the finicky details still aren't great. I don't have a ton of pocket lining showing this time, but you can see way too much zip tape. The stitching line on the lapel isn't quite where it should be because I wasn't sure how to effectively work round the zip stop. The lining is right at the bottom edge of the jacket, presumably because I don't fully understand the hem instructions. Or possibly it's just that the tape didn't work. I've nearly finished version three and I'm planning to put a leather-look ribbed waistband on that one instead of wrangling with the hem again, but there's a horrible, horrible part of me that wants to try making a fourth version, out of a cotton I don't really care about, so that I can work on the techniques in a fabric that will allow me to pin stuff and potentially work out where I'm going wrong.

This is not the most practical thing I've ever made, but I think it's great. I've got a lot of neutral stuff I can throw this over, and also because there are so many colours in the print it actually ties in well with a ton of other colours. I enjoy having the occasional piece of statement outerwear (see also this) and it brightens up the "black top and silver jewellery" phase I seem to be going through at the moment. I do need to make a different style of trousers to wear it with, though, because it doesn't work so well with giant waist sashes.

Also, what I'm wearing underneath:

This is the remade version of the black Vogue 9199 I made last year (I never blogged that one, but here is my original dress), which was super useful but also made of terrible fabric. It got to the point where I was putting it on and taking it straight back off again several times per week because I so badly wanted to wear a simple black dress that would be a good backdrop for accessories, but the actual garment hung so unattractively that I couldn't face wearing it outside. It lost shape within a couple of months and then just became a giant hole in my wardrobe. I've been looking for the right fabric to remake it ever since, and nothing had presented itself until I went to the Knitting and Stitching Show a few weeks ago and found Stoff & Stil selling precut lengths of very black, very substantial ponte. So I bought one. In hindsight I wish I'd bought three.

Full disclosure: the fabric is not 100% perfect for this dress. It's got the thickness, the colour and the stretch, but not quite the drape. It's a quibble not a dealbreaker, but it does mean I'm not going to buy the fabric in every colour it comes in to buy more. (I am, however, almost certainly going to buy more of this exact stuff to make some smart-looking slim fit jersey trousers, which I didn't know I wanted until I saw this fabric.) I adore this pattern, but fabric choice is absolutely key to making it work. I've made more than one version of this dress which were totally unwearable because the fabric was a tiny bit wrong. Not quite enough stretch, not quite enough thickness, not quite good enough recovery. 

You can see above that I ended up doing a vaguely high-low hem on the skirt. I feel like this dress needs to be mini-length on me - more than once I've cut the pattern pieces longer to make a more versatile dress, and every single time I've cut it right back off again because it just looks frumpy. However, if a skirt has any amount of flare or fullness whatsoever I need to be careful about how short I make the back, because I have got a LOT of ass. In a fabric like this that doesn't have a ton of drape, if I made the skirt mini-length all the way round (even making it longer in the back so that the hem looks even when it's on) there's not enough fabric to cover my bum and then drop down straight again, so it just kind of stays sticking outwards, resting precariously on a bum-shelf that then opens the door to a world of potential wardrobe malfunctions and embarrassments. So after a couple of hours of pinning and re-pinning the hem to see if there was a happy medium place, I just gave up and went for the look I wanted in the front and the coverage I wanted in the back. It's a tough world for a super-curvy woman who actually really likes the shape of her thighs. 

I think I'm going to get year-round wear out of this dress. It's a great shape for me, it goes with everything, and I can wear it with bare legs or extra thick black tights and boots. It does make me want a bunch of really long silver necklaces, which I now don't feel like I can go out and buy because I can make simple silver jewellery myself. Maybe if I get a few different lengths of chain and work out a set of themed pendants? I don't think I have enough time left in my current intermediate class but I could probably book a studio day at some point. 

Next up: for the first time in ages, I'm actually a week ahead of myself in posts, so I'll have a pair of trousers and a top to show you next week! Hopefully I can keep the momentum up now that the stupid jackets aren't hanging over my head. 

summer sewing: McCalls 7789 is a SURPRISE WIN

When I put M7789 on my summer plans, I had literally no concept at all of it being any good. I mean, look at it:

When I first saw that blue thing, I thought it was hilarious. I thought it was so hilarious I called my boyfriend over to laugh at it too. The giant trousers and basically non-existent top look so unbalanced together, and I just couldn't imagine where anyone would wear this or how they'd get it to stay up when they got there. And if it looks that ridiculous on this tiny beautiful woman, what chance do the rest of us have? But then I was thinking about high-waisted trousers and scrolling through Sew Direct, and I found myself looking at this pattern again thinking "actually the trousers themselves might be exactly what I'm after". Then I thought "hey, the view with the higher coverage top is actually not that bad" and before you could say "stupid unnecessary cut-out" I'd put the pattern in my basket. And instead of just leaving it to disintegrate in my pattern drawer, I got on with it pretty swiftly, with the full expectation of writing a hilarious comedy post about it afterwards.

However:

Look at it! This is actually fucking great. There is nothing I don't like about it. It's swishy and easy and comfortable and glamorous and I am one hundred per cent here for it. I'm still amazed. That blue thing! Can become this!

Originally I did make the jumpsuit with the cutout, but a combination of extremely large boobs and an extremely short waist means that I literally do not have sufficient space there for a cutout that size. There was a LOT of underboob (well, underbra, which is possibly worse). I filled the gap in with a piece of self fabric and topstitched it down, which works fine. I also had to put some fairly hefty darts into the bodice - I did a kind of cheat's FBA which ended up putting more space horizonally than vertically, which it turns out is not what I need. I also shortened the straps by several inches, which is pretty standard for me. What I did not have to do is size up in the hips. There is a ton of volume in these trousers.

Look at that EXACT bra coverage. This has never happened to me before in the whole course of my life. 

The top and waistband are lined, and I French seamed the trousers (including the pockets, which I haven't done before and which worked like a charm, to my surprise), meaning that I have a pretty clean finish on this everywhere except the zip tape. What's an attractive way to finish fabric there without adding a ton of bulk to it? The pattern instructions call for the waistband lining to be slipstitched in place and then topstitched, which is way more work than I am prepared to put into a casual summer garment. Why slipstitch if you're going to immediately topstitch anyway? I stitched in the ditch and it's fine.

I will be making another one of these ASAP. I love it, and more than one person has basically ordered me to make myself a second version, so the black viscose I was planning to use for a maxi dress will probably become this jumpsuit instead. I am going to attempt making a pattern piece the size of the cut-out and putting that in from the beginning this time. 

I will probably not post next week. This week is going to be stupid busy and my next project is likely to be... complicated. I've been trying to force myself to get on with making the cotton moto jacket I wrote into my summer plan, and realised a few days ago that the reason I wasn't getting on with it was because I couldn't visualise ANY outfit it would work with. So I'm abandoning that idea and replacing it with something much stupider - making a toile of the leather jacket I've been talking about making all year. I will need to trace my very first Burda magazine pattern, get to grips with cutting and working with leather, and learn all the new techniques I will have to use to make a biker jacket! Solid plan, Jen. 

summer sewing: red Kielo and bonus Wanted hack

I don't think the internet needs any more Kielo posts, but hey:

Meet the new Kielo, same as the old Kielo. Actually that's not true; making a pattern a few times allows one to refine things and this is the best finish I've achieved on this dress. When I made my first one I put neck and armbands in with extreme incompetence and ended up folding them underneath and topstitching them down with yet more incompetence. My second Kielo was finished by turning and stitching, and it's kind of OK for that one because the jersey isn't that stretchy. This jersey (another Rolls and Rems purchase), however, is extremely stretchy and wouldn't have lasted five minutes with a turned-under neck hem, so with some trepidation I decided to try bands again. It turns out my sewing is much better now, so the bands went in nicely, laid flat and were as simple and unobtrusive as you could wish for. It's funny how unaware you can be of your own progress. 

I also experimented with using water-soluble tape in the hem to get nicer twin needle stitching. It's definitely a huge improvement and something I'll be doing all the time with awkward fabrics from now on, but it's still not as nice as I'd like and I think I'm going to have to start experimenting with tension settings more. Ugh. 

The one issue I have with this version is that in person, the fabric is kind of see-through. It didn't look see-through when I was checking the fabric, but made up into a garment and on my body, it is very possible to tell what colour my underwear is. It's easily fixable by wearing a vest top and bike shorts underneath (although not right now because it is 32 bollocking degrees and extra clothing is deeply uncomfortable and WE ARE NOT SET UP FOR THIS there is no aircon in this country and we're all dying), but I didn't realise that when I took the photos. It hasn't photographed too badly from the front, but let's just say there's a reason I haven't posted a back view of this one. 

I also have another jersey maxi dress to share, and it may well be the last one of the summer. I'd planned to make a Butterick 5181 woven maxi, but I finished my toile this weekend and I hate it. The back is too low, the skirt is too bulky, and the waist is just weird. I still want my fancy black viscose to become something, but it won't be that. (I now have a couple of toiles that look horrendous on me and I'm considering putting them into one "fail post" so that the information is out there but I don't have to spend too much time looking at terrible pictures of myself.)

Anyway:

This is another Vanessa Pouzet Wanted top hacked into a maxi. When I made my first one back in May I loved it and had immediate plans to make a second... except none of my fabric was right for it and I didn't want to make a "maybe" dress. Then a couple of weeks ago I went to Walthamstow looking for toile fabric and this was just sitting there. Perfect maxi fabric that also happened to be in my summer colours. Win!

Originally I thought I would make the top in horizontal stripes and the skirt in vertical stripes, but after making the top part (which I had to do twice because I hadn't fully anticipated how much more annoying these stripes would be to match than regular stripes) I did some experimenting and realised it didn't look quite right. I think the variation in stripe width and unequal amounts of colour made it look unbalanced. So I just did the whole thing horizontally, which looks better but was way more annoying because I had to match these stripes all the way round. In most cases I'm not overly concerned about pattern matching, but I HATE when stripes are off. 

My first version of this dress has stretched out quite a bit at the neck from heavy use, so I made the back neckband a little smaller on this version. I also haven't elasticated the waist (just gathered the skirt fabric), though I still might go back in and do that depending on how its first week in my wardrobe goes. 

I'm super pleased with this dress. The fabric is somehow classically summery without having any of the traditional summer prints or colours, and the dress is a statement piece while also being super-casual and comfortable. With these two done I now have six maxi dresses I love, which I'm pretty sure will be enough to get me through the summer. I'm not saying I'm definitely done, just that if I don't get any more fabric/pattern inspiration, I'll probably be fine.

Up next: the jacket, hopefully? Maybe better not to plan for that during a week where the heatwave is having a heatwave...

summer sewing: Asaka kimono

July is here, and so is the first project from my summer plan!

(Please excuse my weird glowing photos. I've been trying to get them done for over a week and I never wake up early enough to avoid the glaring sun. What is going on?? This is a goddamn weird actual summerlike summer we're having here.)

I made this one first because it was the one I was most excited about. The Asaka kimono was the first Named pattern I ever wanted to buy, but I was suffering from a weird kind of sewing imposter syndrome at the time (along the lines of "everything you make is bad, even you think so but you force yourself to wear this shit anyway so you can keep deluding yourself") so I talked myself out of it. Totally impractical, I said. You'll never wear it, I said.

When I found this fabric (an Italian crepe-type from my perennial favourite, Fabric Store in Walthamstow) I immediately had visions of the Phryne Fisher loungewear I used to promise myself I'd make but then never did, and realised that the Asaka really isn't that impractical. Since I'd be wearing it as a dressing gown most practicality concerns don't apply, and there's not much I could make that would get more wear than a fancy black floral robe. It may be the height of summer but still nobody is going to persuade me that what I want is a light floral.

Look at these sleeves! They're actually much less of a pain to wear than you'd think - since the vent sits above the elbow, when you bend your arm the material just quietly drapes out of the way. I'm not saying I'd make pancakes in them, but for general day-to-day activities they're pretty well-behaved. 

Named no longer sells the paper pattern for this design and I couldn't be bothered to track it down even though I know I could have, so I bought the PDF. Thankfully this one wasn't an overlapping layout like some of the Named PDFs I've bought before. I understand tracing paper patterns (even though I don't tend to do it myself) but I cannot fathom why anyone would create a PDF that you had to trace. I've found a couple of old reviews mentioning that the pattern only gives you two sizes nested together, and that's not the case anymore; this one has been updated to match their current releases and all sizes are nested into one. The seam allowance is still 1cm, so I added a tiny bit extra to allow me to do French seams the way I'm already comfortable with.

The insides are all French-seamed, including the seam that splits into the sleeve vent. That took me a while to work out (and tutorials aren't plentiful, though there are approximately one shitbillion telling me how to sew a straight French seam), but it turned out to be a fairly simple "clip into the seam allowance and tuck under" job. I also lengthened the whole thing by about 10 inches, and I'm glad I did. I'm not normally one for this kind of length, but for loungewear it's perfect. It gives me both coverage and swank factor without creating any kind of tripping risk. After experimenting with the tie belt I decided to double the length, using four pieces instead of two, which lets me wrap it twice round and tie a big long bow at the front. Overall it's a pretty simple project which took me about a day start to finish, with no major difficulties beyond trying to press this fabric, which was so bouncy I probably could have hosted a four-year-old's birthday party on it. I've forgiven it, though, because damn it is pretty. 

This is one of my favourite things I've made in a while. I'm not sure if I'll make it again - there's a fairly limited amount of space in my wardrobe for kimonos, especially given that I still want to make a proper version of the Victory Patterns Trina - but if the right fabric came along I don't think I'd protest very hard. I've tried several times to make a dressing gown for myself and each one has been a colossal failure, so this feels like an achievement that's been a long time coming. I shall bask in this feeling until it gets cold and I decide I need a winter dressing gown as well. 

Next up: an incredibly uncharacteristic pink dress! 

sewing plans: summer 2018

Yeah, I know we're nearly a month into summer already, but we're still doing this. I've been trying to write this plan since May and it's been WAY harder than it usually is because my fabric stash is not very coherent at the moment. Most of the things I have are either a) remnants that require very fabric-economical patterns or b) expensive (relatively speaking) fabric that I bought because it was beautiful without any real idea what I was going to make with it. This is something I'm determined to never do again, and since I realised the problem I've been very good at leaving the pretty stuff in the shop if I can't visualise it in clothing form. As it is, however, the size of my fabric stash doesn't correspond with the number of viable projects I have. I've done an emergency shopping trip which went quite well, giving me enough of a starting point to pull a plan together and enough hope that the fabric and patterns I'm still missing will find their way to me over the next month or so. It'll be fine, right? Right??

Anyway. Since I've missed most of the first month, this plan is slightly shorter than normal and divided into two: red items and black items. I know red and black isn't the most traditionally summery colour scheme, but I haven't made very much of either and it's what I fancy right now. I almost called this the "playing card edition" but that kind of implies some use of hearts and spades and shit and I haven't put that much thought into it. Maybe I could just sneak some terrible card game puns into the posts and that would count as a concept?

Red pieces

A relaxed fit linen dress. I bought one solitary piece on my trip to Mood (I found the whole place super overwhelming and almost didn't buy anything at all); a piece of raspberry red linen for a chilled-out summer dress that's been in my head for a while. My original pattern idea was a Papercut Sway dress, but I made a toile this past weekend and while I don't hate it, it's not good enough for a special piece of fabric like this. I'll keep looking.

A Named Kielo. Yeah, I thought I was done with these for a while too. Surprise! My green Kielo is one of my favourite things ever and I want to follow in its footsteps for this one: plain, comfy and unfussy while also being vibrant and unnecessarily glamorous.

A light jacket. I have a piece of printed terracotta twill which I'd like to turn into a cropped, probably unlined summer jacket that's more casual than a Chanel-type jacket but less casual than a hoodie. My instinct is to go for some kind of cotton moto jacket, but most of the patterns I can find are more complicated than I'd like for this project. I'll maybe see what I can do about altering one of them.

A denim Yoyo dress. I tried this before and loved it, but ended up having to recycle it because the fabric wrinkled so badly (and so permanently) that it was all I could see when I wore it. DVF is currently selling a red denim zip-front dress, and I've decided I want one too. I'm not going to copy that one (which would involve changing the shape and putting studs on it), just make a standard Yoyo with a few fitting adjustments based on my last one.

Black pieces

A ridiculous OTT kimono. My attempts at fancy loungewear so far haven't worked out, but I still want it, so I'm going to try a different direction. Last week I bought five metres of a lightweight black Italian crepe with giant peach florals and the Named Asaka pattern (thanks to their convenient 20% off sale) and I'm quite excited about it. I'm thinking I'll lengthen it at least a bit, possibly a lot, depending on how annoying it's going to be to alter the length of the neckband.

A viscose maxi dress. A few months ago I bought a fairly expensive piece of black viscose with a busy multicoloured print, and it's just revealed to me that it wants to be a maxi dress. I've ordered Butterick 5181, which is a really nice shape and I think ought to be a good match. I'm going to make the one with more coverage, but I am tempted to at least toile the strappy version at some point to see how it looks on me.

A jumpsuit or pair of high-waisted trousers. I want a black-based pair of trousers in a woven fabric that I can layer up with my wrap cardigans as I've taken to doing with one of my Sallie jumpsuits. All the cardigans I've made are super cropped, so my instinct is to make a jumpsuit to avoid the unexpected squished strip of flesh which invariably happens when I try to wear shorter tops with trousers, but I'm also open to just making a pair of ridiculously high-waisted trousers. I've ordered McCalls 7789 for shits and giggles, and if it doesn't look comical (it will probably look comical) I could definitely adapt it into a regular trouser pattern.

A black jersey dress. What I really want to do here is remake my black Vogue 9199 (which I'm not sure I ever posted here, actually), a dress I love in concept and can build a ton of different outfits around from spring through to autumn, but is made of shitty quality jersey that takes all the joy out of it. Finding the actual good quality black jersey is going to be the biggest hurdle of this whole plan, I think.

I'm interested to see how this plan goes, given my extreme lack of inspiration up until last week. Most of it is fairly simple; I didn't want to give myself a complicated project I wasn't in love with, so that's going to wait until the autumn. What I am going to do is try and start my autumn plan asap, since I find dressing stylishly for cold weather WAY harder.

It's fine. I can do this.

Up next: Papercut Sway dress, in all its not-quite-rightness!