BWOF 03-2009-102, Empire Waist Knit Dress

This 03-2009-102 dress was yet another casualty of BWOF's nonsensical styling, so I didn't even give it a second glance in the glossy portion of the magazine. Seriously, what is that? Scarf, paint splatters, pretty hair, and oh yeah that appears to be some kind of dress. However, when I got to the line drawings I was intrigued.

When I get a new issue I am always itching to go straight to the line drawings so I can really find out what's in the magazine. The photo preview at the beginning generally doesn't do anything for me and the editorial content is nonsense. But, I am one of those delayed gratification people. So I patiently page through the magazine, reading the hilarious descriptions, trying to discern styling details. I don't go so far as to skip over the line drawings to finish the glossy portion, however. Once I get to the nitty gritty then I'm allowed to see what these things allegedly are. It's kind of fun.

This is the sewing course for March. I always think that will make it easier to trace the pattern because the pink shading stands out easily, but it's a little hard to see the size lines. At least I didn't have to size this one down, as it comes in a generous 10 sizes, 34-44. The instructions are clear and the illustrations useful, although this is certainly not so complicated that one couldn't do it without the course.

Fabrics:
-An ITY polyester knit from Fashion Fabrics Club, purchased in June 2008 for $4.75/yd. I haven't bought fabric online yet this year, but this print is tempting me back onto the internet. Interestingly, this was part of the first internet purchase of last year. I can't believe I held out until June! I thought I was doing so well to make it through April this year.

-The contrast midriff fabric was purchased from G Street Fabrics' $2.97/yd table in April 2008. This was leftover from BWOF 04-2008-128.

-The white knit used to line the bodice is too old to know where it's from. It's just a cheap-o poly, either from Joann or Hancock.


I made only a few changes:

-In tracing the back neckline I saw that it was nearly straight. I don't like a low scoop neck paired with a high back neck, I think it looks unbalanced. So I lowered the back neckline 1.5 inches.

-I did a swayback adjustment to the back skirt pattern as for 10-2008-115. This added a back seam, which breaks up the print, but I'd rather have broken print than swayback ick.

-Rather than use bias strips to finish the neckline, I lined the bodice as for the 02-2009-119 bubble sleeve dress. I sewed the shoulder seams of the bodice and lining, placed them right sides together and sewed the necklines together, trimmed, and turned. Then I trimmed the lower and armscye edges of the lining so turn of cloth would keep it under.

-Left out the zipper. Knit dresses do not need zippers. Really they don't.

-Contrast midriff instead of grosgrain belt. I like this, but I needed to tone down the pleat area a little bit so I put a butterfly pin that is about the same color as the midriff over the pleats, which you can see here, and it's perfect.

-I had to shorten the elastic for the sleeve quite a bit from the recommendation. I have fairly large biceps (based on past fitting experience), so I suspect this will be universal.

OK, added up that sounds like a lot of changes but it really wasn't!

I totally love this dress. One thing that's not evident in the line drawing or the picture is that the skirt lays sort of diagonally from the pleats on the right down to the hem on the left. You would think this would be annoying, but I think it creates a flattering line that skims over a tummy and keeps the eye moving past it.

I enjoy having my quirky Retro Fantasy style, but sometimes I just want to look like everyone else. This dress is perfect for that. It feels like me, but is completely on trend and blends in on a city street. I wore it on a date and it was quite a success. The guy not only noticed it but said, "You look good in a one-piece dress." I'm not sure there is any other kind of dress, but it was a sweet compliment.

All photos are here and the pattern review is here.

Podcast and Stashoholism Confessional

I started to make the 03-2009-104 high waisted pencil skirt and found to my horror that I had no medium weight white interfacing at all! I would have used a heavy weight, but my fabric has some stretch that I wanted to preserve. So I had to take a trip to the Joann for some white stretch interfacing and some medium weight white interfacing.

I looked at the fabric while I was there, as this was not my normal Joann and it seemed a little larger with a little better selection. There were some cute cotton prints, but nothing I absolutely had to have (especially at Joann's inflated prices) so I picked up some patterns and headed to the cutting table with my interfacing. The woman in front of me was buying a bunch of denim, and one of the bolts was a great medium weight stretch dark denim and I suddenly had the vision of 04-2009-115 made up in denim for a flirty going out dress and had to have it.

I didn't have time to sew over the weekend, alas, so no progress on the jacket. I was going to do it Sunday night, but then Cidell called and said she was on her way over! Very exciting. DC and Baltimore aren't so very far apart, but far enough that we don't get to see each other in person very often so it's a real treat when we do. Our main goal was to get pizza at Pete's New Haven Pizza, but before we headed out to dinner we did a podcast!

After a few requests, here are some show notes:

Tracy Reese Sally Hanson nail colors from All Lacquered Up

Cidell's post on the Anthropologie Dress

Vogue 1086 Tracy Reece sun dress design

Burda [World of Fashion] April

Burda [World of Fashion] May

Cynthia Rowley for Simplicity

You can listen to the podcast below, download it on Podbean, or subscribe to us on iTunes.

Powered by Podbean.com

UFO Watch: Suit Jacket

So for the conference I ran in March 16-17 I had the idea of maybe making a new suit-like outfit to wear. My time was limited as I was needing to work on the weekends, so I wasn't totally optimistic (especially considering that jacket tailoring is not my usual type of sewing), but I figured I'd give it the college try.

I decided to cut into some really nice fabric I got at Paron about a year ago when I went to NYC to see Xanadu. It's a gorgeous color of crosswoven teal and peach that has a lot of depth. The fabric content is a scrumptious silk/cotton/wool/lycra.

I love the idea of dresses with matching jackets. I say idea because (1) I have never actually made or owned such an item, (2) I never wear jackets unless I'm speaking or meeting with opposing counsel, and (3) I really hate making jackets. There are so many steps involved and it's such a time-consuming project for something that I never wear and resent wearing when I do. I don't know why I hate having to dress in suits so much but I really, really do!

I actually finished the dress, BWOF 05-2008-128. I'd been wanting to make that one since the issue first came out, and when considering what would be a nice looking sheath to go with a jacket it immediately popped into mind. It actually didn't take unduly long and is indeed very cute. But I didn't get a chance to wear it because I did not have time to finish the jacket.

For the jacket, I was drawn to BWOF 12-2008-116. I like the shoulder princess lines (easier to ease in a heavier fabric than an armscye princess) and the single button closure, which will make the most of the fact that I'm wearing a dress underneath. A jacket that closes higher up makes it hard to tell if it's a dress or a skirt.

I actually got pretty far on the jacket. I traced it and cut it out, which was quite a chore because I wanted to make the dress, jacket, *and* a skirt out of my not quite 4 yards. My reasoning for this was that I didn't want to feel like I could only wear the dress when I was also wearing the jacket. So if I had a skirt to go with the jacket, it wouldn't render the jacket useless to wear the dress more often and have it look noticeably worn/faded with the jacket. But getting all the pieces for all three items to fit onto the fabric was a huge challenge (and the skirt will have an interesting "design feature").

OK, done. Then I fused all the pieces, which is another boring chore. Then I sewed the body seams of the jacket and found it to be HUGE. I had to grade down a size because the smallest size is 36, which is fine and I did so at the tracing stage. The style doesn't look oversized but really it was gigantic. I had to take in all the seams 1/4" (meaning 1/2 inch total per seam) and I think it's still a little big. Ugh. It was a lot of ripping.

The next step was to put in the welt pockets with flaps, something I've not done before and I just ran out of steam. I was too stressed about the conference to undertake such a stressful sewing endeavor. And I am not at all confident that it's going to end up fitting well or looking good.

I have basically done nothing since (I made the pocket flaps, that's it), and it's been over a month.

However, I now have a speech to give on May 7 and am trying to motivate myself to turn this from a UFO back into a Work In Progress.



Things left to do
-Mark pocket placement and do all the fiddly markings on the welts etc.
-Put in welt pockets with flaps.
-Sew shoulder seams
-Figure out collar and facing
-Cut out lining (double/triple/quadruple ugh, as I have chosen a beautiful but fiddly silk that squirms around while I'm trying to cut it)
-Construct lining
-Insert lining

==========================

This is sort of compounded because I have not been sewing too much lately. In my end of year post from last year I said I might experiment with sewing less and I've been doing this. I'm not being any more productive in any other area of my life (*ahem* cleaning) so I don't know if I'm serving any particular end. It's not really a lack of mojo, it's just a slowdown. I don't want to feel obligated to something that is supposed to be a fun hobby! And since I'm not sewing as much as usual, I'm not interested in something tedious, drawn out, difficult, fiddly, and draining like a jacket.

But it would be nice to wear it May 7.

I will make a goal of doing the pockets this weekend. I will be at a volunteer event all day Saturday, but I should be able to find enough time the other days to do the pockets.

It will be a (re)start.

BWOF 02-2009-119, Bubble Sleeve Dress

This was my last minute sewing for my trip to Miami with my sister. I planned the trip tp run Monday through Friday so that I would have a weekend on both ends, figuring I would want to sew up my wardrobe the two days before I left! I had finished the McCall 5752 dress by Sunday late morning and decided I'd go ahead and get this one started. The February issue of BWOF was one of the best ever, in my opinion, and I was excited to sew this dress 02-2009-119 and get started using the issue.

I bought this fabric in August from (of course) G Street Fabric's $2.97/yd table. I was drawn to the large, somewhat abstract floral motif and the colors. I don't wear a lot of purple but theoretically I like it. I don't wear a lot of large prints either. And there are ink stains all over the fabric, which I didn't realize until after I'd washed it. So this sat on the shelf for quite a while, and sometimes I would regret buying it and sometimes I would like it. I figured that the print was either going to work for this fairly simple t-shirt style dress or it wasn't going to work at all, so I might as well get it over with.

The print fabric is quite thin. I made the Tippi Hedren dress out of a similarly thin cotton-ish knit print purchased at the same time and found that the fabric really did not have enough body to be a dress. Here, I felt like I was going out on a limb with a t-shirt style dress anyway because of my self-consciousness about my belly, so I underlined it with a fairly heavy cotton/poly knit (also from the $2.97/yd table) so it wouldn't be too clingy or show too much.

Although it is oddly complicated, enough people had made it before me and shared their tips and tricks (including Dawn's photo tutorial) that it wasn't too hard to figure out. Not that the directions were very helpful. "Lay inside sleeve pieces down and stitch to seam allowances"? Huh? It took me a while to work out that they meant "Understitch."

I didn't want to try to install piping into the neckline of my flimsy fabric, knowing it would just stretch out and plus I was lining the whole thing so I sewed the shoulder seams of the yoke fashion fabric and lining and then stitched together at the neck, right sides together. This created a clean finish. I trimmed the armscye and lower edges of the lining about 1/4" so the turn of cloth would keep it from showing and then treated it as an underlining for the remaining yoke seams.

I did a swayback adjustment as I did for BWOF 10-2008-115, knowing that otherwise the puddling above my booty would be dreadful. This added a center back seam, which broke up the print some, but with this large abstract print it wasn't much of a problem and the fit is so much better than it would have been without the adjustment. You can see the wrinkle-free back here.

My only gripe with this pattern is that the sleeve and stay are the same length. A bubble shouldn't be drafted that way! I cut the stay out of my underlining fabric, so I needed to make sure it wouldn't show. To do that, I took a double-width seam allowance when stitching the armscye edge of the stay to the armscye seam of the sleeve/yoke, as you can see in the photo. If I make this again, I will lengthen the sleeve by 1.5 inches so that the bubble gets a nice overhang and poof over the stay.

I totally love this dress. I was worried about how the t-shirt style would look on my figure and figured this would be sort of a throwaway project. But it works quite well. I think this is to do with (1) my heavy underlining, that smooths over lumps and bumps, and (2) the relaxed fit at the waist. It is my general inclination to fit narrowly at the waist to emphasize that I have one, but had I done so here it would have emphasized the width of my hips and stretched the dress across the belly.

All photos are here and the pattern review is here.

BWOF 12-2007-117, Pleat Sleeve Blouse

We have been having somewhat unseasonably cold weather in DC the past couple weeks. I am trying to transmute my bitterness about it into excitement about one last chance to wear my favorite Fall/Winter clothes before they go into the closet for the season. I made this blouse late in the season (January or February, I can't quite recall now) and only had a few opportunities to wear it, so I wore it yesterday. I still love it!

You may remember the hilarity of BWOF's helicopter photo shoot for this one. Despite the more ludicrous than usual photo styling, I totally loved the blouse and lots of people made really cute versions of it so it went on my someday list. When sort of planning a sort of mini wardrobe centered around my thrift store Bennetton jacket and Simplicity 5419 skirt, I definitely wanted to include a blouse or two. I found this fabric in December on the $2.97/yd table at G Street and I can never leave shirtings behind. It goes well with the skirt, though the giant sleeves are a little too uncomfortable underneath a jacket.

My dumb move on this project was not clearing the pieces out of the way while I was still cutting, as a consequence of which I clipped into the hem of the front pieces. Dumb. I fixed the clip by carefully lining up the cut edges and fusing interfacing to the back side and then doing a narrow zigzag/satin stitch over the clip. The fix was almost completely invisible.

When I was planning this project, Cidell warned me that the sleeve pleats hadn't really worked for her--they were too narrow and the sleeve was not as fitted to the arm as pictured. I first put in the pleats as drafted and I think there is a misprint in the pattern. The drafted pleats are about 1/4" and even though there are many many (many) of them, they barely make a dent in the sleeve volume. I went through and doubled the width to 1/2" and that created the look shown in the magazine. The sleeve is not too tight in any way--though it is rather stiff with all the pleats--and the poof at the sleeve cap and above the wrist look just right.

I made my first sleeve vents on this project! BWOF does blouses as the illustrated sewing course often enough that I had read the directions on how to do them many times. Since this poofy sleeve doesn't require the vent to lie flat or look perfect, I decided it was time to try a new technique. I clipped into the sleeve (deliberately this time!), worked my magic with some bias strips, sewed the little "dart" at the top of the binding, and voila! They are not perfect--nothing like Karen's amazing shirt-tailoring skills--but they are not half bad either. I don't think I'm ready to take this technique to prime time, aka a blouse with a traditional sleeve that is supposed to sit flat, but I'm glad I took a stab at it.

There wasn't too much tricky about this blouse, although I had a bit of a time with the length. I still have not figured out the ideal length for a woven blouse, but since I have a relatively long torso I generally lengthen to give me room to maneuver when it comes to hemming. This blouse has a curved hem at the center front, which is formed with the front facing, which extends along the hem to the front dart. So to lengthen the blouse I had to add length not only to the body but also to the facing. I found that I had lengthened it too much at the end and had to cut and overlap the facing, so it's a bit ugly on the inside but doesn't affect how it looks on the outside.

I made this before I had my conversion to "I must add a center back seam to anything fitted for a swayback adjustment and that's all there is to it." So the original back was pretty bad--if you click on the photo to enlarge you will see that there are not just wrinkles but an actual fold of fabric along the swayback. I went in and added a second set of darts to the inside of the first. This improved the fit, but did not eliminate all wrinkles.

This is designed to use snaps; the right front has an underlay and the two edges of the placket are supposed to meet instead of overlapping. I have not had consistent success installing snaps and didn't want to risk it on a blouse. I was going to sew the buttons to the underlay, but then it turned out to be just large enough that I needed to overlap a little to get it to fit well. This sort of defeated the purpose and difficulty of that curved center front hem, alas.

It has BWOF's usual low neckline. My small bust, while creating fitting challenges, has the benefit that I don't really need to worry about that because there's nothing to show. If you have something you want to keep under wraps, you'll need to raise the neckline.

I think this blouse is really cool. The sleeves are totally crazy and outrageous, but the rest of it is pretty normal so the sleeves don't look unprofessional. Made in a sober, traditional shirting it is completely work-appropriate (dressier than my usual work attire, even) but still expresses my personality. It's too late in the year for most of us (Southern Hemisphere excluded!) to get started on this blouse, but don't forget about it! This is another pattern well over a year old that is aging very well.

All photos are here and the review is here.