2 bells into the dog watch

Dear sewing blog,
hello neglected blog! i haven't really been sewing recently... this little called "a wedding" has been sucking up my time. Perhaps you've seen my friend, the wacom tablet. He's been hogging my attention for AGES while I draw nautical flags and tall ships and maps.

Here's what we have at the moment for our invitation... it will be a little booklet, with a cover, then the main page (this) inside, and a map and some guest information, and our RSVP cards inside. Lots of little things to draw and lay out and get arranged!



Why yes, we do have the latitude and longitude of our reception site on there. And two bells into the dog watch.... I LOVE awesome nautical terminology. We're still sorting out what kinds of sailor speak we can put onto the RSVP cards. As you can tell, we're not taking this whole thing super seriously. I'm convinced that the only way to survive wedding planning is to keep a very dry sense of humor and read A Practical Wedding frequently. We found our marvelous DOC (Day of Coordinator for the non-wedding-immersed) indirectly via that site- it's such a breath of reality.

I did have one break today... I went to the taco truck in Hoboken with my friend who got married last October and we discussed the wedding crazy. And java performance analysis. ;) We're hopeless nerds like that.

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Has anyone begun summer sewing yet, or is it still too cold?

A public service announcement for NYCers...

....today's Groupon is $15 for $30 fabric at Mood!


Valid instore only, so you have to be in NY or planning to visit in the next year. Definitely a great deal, though. I think mine is going towards some more blouse material, since I have my eye on the Market blouse from Sew Lisette for a spring top... ;)

purple flowers

I'm finally almost finished with taxes... which means, of course, that the kitchen is *sparkling*, the sewing room is somewhat more organized, and I sewed up something for myself. ;) Here's a little hint.



I stumbled over this fabric on Gorgeous Fabrics and fell in love with the really pretty flowers. It's cotton with a hint of stretch, and the surface has a slightly ribbed faille texture to it. SO pretty.

Here's another hint...



Yup... another Passport dress, since I had the pattern already out.





There may be a lot of dresses shown on my blog, but it's not really my normal clothes- I work in jeans and sneakers, and skirts with boots is really stretching the dresscode for my job. So I always feel a little like a kid playing dress up when I wear something fancy like this - right now it's slotted in for Easter brunch, when hopefully it will be warm enough to wear it without tights.

This one feels a little loose around the shoulders, which is weird because I didn't cut it any differently than the other one. I'm chalking it up to the bit of stretch in the fabric -it's not huge, just a bit loose around the neckline this time around. Other than than that, it's pretty much the same as the other dress. So for now it's getting tucked into the closet to wait for warmer weather!

Passport bliss

My passport dress is all finished! I L*O*V*E it, and I can't wait for warm weather to wear it, although I may try it out with some tights and a sweater soonish. This is Simplicity 2209, also known as the Sew Lisette Passport Dress.

Yesterday's post showed my bodice alterations, but it was too dark in the evening to get a picture of my muslin.

Not that it's any brighter today, but here is the muslin I'd made. One side has a dart pinned out for a SBA, the right side is unaltered. Unfortunately, the picture is not super in focus, so you may not see any difference.


When I made the actual dress, I ended up varying from the pattern and making several changes. I was a little wary of all the changes at first, because the instructions for this dress were excellent, and who am I to know how to properly sew a dress. My back alteration, though, made for a curved back seam so I could no longer cut the back bodice on the fold as in the original. At that point I figured I'd just do things my own way.

That led to making my own all-in-one neck and armhole facing, which let me use my favorite through-the-shoulder-seams sewing method. I learned that trick from Marji's old pattern review post on sewing a sleeveless dress lining.



Here's a view of the inside of the bodice front of the front angled darts and how they attach to the skirt:



I used an invisible zipper in the back. Here are my three necessities for invisible zipper insertion.... fusible interfacing in the seam allowance, a 3/8th inch seam allowance, and hand tacking the zipper in place.



I stitched the back facing down against the zipper to neaten the inside:



The hem is double folded and hand sewn down so that I could ease in the fullness.




So here is a headless shot of me in it. I unfortunately didn't quite manage the flower placement perfectly on the bodice. Ooops. And you can't really see the bodice darts with the busy print.




Another change I made was to put in a pocket in the right side seam. I envisioned wearing this dress to work, and I always want a pocket to hold chapstick or a few dollars for lunch or whatever. Excuse the silly face here... I always feel funny smiling for the camera when there's no one behind it. ;)



Here's the back, in need of a hook and eye above the zipper:



It came together really nicely and was a dream to sew up. There will definitely be more versions of this dress this summer, since it's nicely fitting without being too tight or too baggy. Especially with the pocket addition. ;)

Passport Dress - Simplicity 2209

I was so excited when the new Lisette patterns by the same designer as Oliver + S were announced last week that I bought two of them, and I made up a muslin of one today. :-) I picked the Passport dress, which has some very neat darts and tucks and a classic shape to it.



There's a Lisette blog which has a post which explains the dress and jacket in this pattern. I thought the dress darts were really neat looking, but I was wondering how difficult they would be to sew. Here's the bodice front pattern piece:



They are actually quite simple to sew, it turns out. I had to make two alterations to the bodice to fit a little better:



The overlapping from the armhole is a quick and dirty proto-SBA, since the muslin was kind of poofy in my upper chest area. Otherwise, it fit quite nicely. I'll be making this up in a purplish linen blend from the Valori Wells Jenaveve line.



My raincoat is mostly finished, although I'm likely to go in & add the waist drawstring to shape it. It fits OK, but it would be good to have a little shaping in there. And, of course, it needs me to go into the city with it at some point to have buttonholes made up for it.

our etsy wedding

I haven't had a chance to work on the raincoat this week, but I wanted to share a few wedding details. I'm leaning *very* heavily on etsy for these, and so far it's working out nicely.

Our escort cards (aka little cards that tell people where to sit- I never knew that word before) are from etsy by cuddlecreature. Imagine 100 of these set out on the table... it will like a sweet little regatta!



Our favors will be envelopes of wildflower seeds, and I had an etsy vendor, Toast and Laurel, make us stickers to put on the envelopes:



And, of course, I've been buying milkglass bowls from the site for the last few months to make our centerpieces, which will look like this:



My nieces, who will be flower girls, will be sporting little blue and white hair decorations from etsy as well:

from Lovely Gifts


from Sweet and Sassy

And finally, to save us from writing our address over and over and over, we bought a custom return address stamp from Paperfinger which looks like a calligrapher wrote our address. LOVE IT. This was easily the smartest purchase we made... it got used a lot for christmas cards and other things as well ;)

Last month, on a whim I picked up a new wedding crafts book by a Martha Stewart editor which has been fun to look through as well:



Handmade Weddings: More Than 50 Crafts to Personalize Your Big Day

It has some simple sewing projects, invitation designs, and fun stuff like that. I love flipping through it, althought I haven't really done any of the featured projects in it yet.

So there you are, a small wedding design update :)

Spring Showers

J. Crew had a cute little rain jacket in their spring catalog this year. I certainly have a ton of raincoats (I did live in Seattle for many years (; ), but they're all of the patagonia/REI hiking type, and I feel kind of underdressed in them out here sometimes. Here's the J.Crew coat - it's a bit fancier than most raincoats.



I posted on artisan's square last month asking if anyone could remember seeing a BWOF pattern that was similar, and a few hours later I had my pattern! BWOF 01-2009-123.



Yesterday I decided to visit BJ in the garment district for some nice raincoating material, and I bought 3 yards of absolutely gorgeous eggplant colored waterproof cotton raincoating. It's a dream to sew, presses really nicely, and although it was crazy expensive ($20/yard) it's still half the price of buying the J. Crew coat, so I feel like I'm coming out ahead here. ;)

Here's the muslin I had sewn up earlier today:




I have the coat mostly finished except for the front bands, the hem, and the sleeves. I ended up leaving it unlined, since the fabric doesn't fray at all. I did insert a back stay, though. It's flannel with horsehair canvas fused to it.





Instead of upper & lower pockets my version has the lower pockets and then on-seam pockets for my hands directly behind them. At the moment I'm leaving off the waist drawstring, and I instead narrowed the back and side seams a smidge.


I went through my button collection and picked out a few botton options, then showed them to the sailor, who had been amusedly following the "let's make a raincoat" adventure all day. What, normal people don't just up & decide to knock off designer rainwear over a weekend? ;) Anyway, he liked a set of navy blue & gold anchor buttons that I had. Of course. I don't have quite enough of them, so I'll have to hit up Pacific Trim to get a few more.

Perhaps I'll actually finish this up before the torrential March downpours start up!

so sweet

My dad finished up the cake topper he made for us! I bought a somewhat generic military groom cake topper off ebay, and he painted it for us to match my sailor's uniform exactly. How sweet is that? :-) He took a picture at the change of command ceremony this summer, then carefully copied all the ribbons and every last little detail. Wow.





Of course the bride's hair is much longer than mine and dress doesn't exactly match my dress, but we decided to just leave it as is, especially given the molded flowers on her skirt. It is, after all, a $10-from-ebay wedding cake topper, so we're happy just to get the uniform right. ;)

The restaurant where we're getting married is making a simple cake for us, so we'll be dropping this off for them to place on top a few days before the wedding. Until then, it will dancing away on a bookshelf waiting for the big day.

project catchup

When my grandmother died 2 months ago, my grandpa said that he wouldn't live another 5 minutes. Well, he did make it a little longer, but just a few weeks. He passed away Friday, so I guess he's back with grandma again. Am I the only one who turns to a lot of fiction when they're really sad? I needed a good book to lose myself in last week, so I downloaded a new novel to my kindle, which I ended up really enjoying. I don't read too much fiction, but after loving the Harry Potter and Golden Compass books, I'm a bit of a sucker for anything involving magic and Oxford. A Discovery of Witches was pretty delightful- great book to lose myself in for a few days.



Since I haven't done too much sewing recently, I'll post two projects I (mostly) finished up a few weeks ago but was too busy to blog.

First, in need of Jonathan Embroidery buttonholes, my Built by Wendy jacket from Simplicity 4109. I also need to sort out how to get off the waxy mark for the stitching line on the front - the wax really settled into the wool, sadly.



I love this jacket, although the sleeves are a bit long for me. It's warmish without being too heavy, and a great length.

And here's another twist dress that I made up from New Look 6802.



My sailor ended up suggesting that I make this - I had a bunch of pieces of fabric out a few weeks ago and was trying to match them to patterns. He said that he liked this print, and that he really liked the twist front knit dresses, so I took his suggestion and made this one. The hem on this dress drove me bonkers, though - I couldn't chalk mark it as I usually do. I'll show you in a post soon the new vintage toy I ended up purchasing to deal with the hem.

a hint of spring

The sun is out today! And it's warm! (-ish (; )

After a week of ice rain and frigid temperatures, any bit of warmth is a great thing in my book. I took full advantage of the sun and had an Upper West Side adventure this afternoon. I rode the subway up and stopped off at Zabars for a babka, and pistachio macarons, and a few cheeses. Mmmmmm. It was a total zoo, of course.

A sunny block near W80th:



Then I walked a few blocks to Joe for a proper latte to sip on a long stroll down Central Park West. You know what really drives me bonkers about NYC? Very few places out here know how to make a latte correctly. Joe, thankfully, is one of the few that make a very nice one. I had a loooong walk with my coffee in the sunshine, and it brought me hope that spring might really be just around the corner.



To celebrate the spring-like weather, I made a little shirt for Ana and a dress for Kate with some spring-ish fabrics. These are from the Delilah line by Tanya Whelan. The pattern for both is the Oliver + S Ice Cream dress, which is a very quick & easy pattern to whip up.






I decided I'd go for Kate's favorite look, the intentional clash, with these, hence floral + plaid. Not too bad... they should be good for running around in the backyard once the snow is gone and it warms up!

fashion model

A few weeks ago I posted a picture of the polka dotted Tulip Dress from the Sewn With Love book.

Kate modeled it for me last weekend when we were taking pictures of my dress muslin. I think she wanted to get in on the posing for the camera business, too. Hence the fashion accessory fan. ;)





She reports that she likes the tulle in the skirt so that it's "really twirly" and it's just the thing to wear to a birthday party.

pattern alterations

If flat pattern alterations bore you, you might want to skip this post!

In the last post I mentioned that I'd like to make a lace jacket to wear over the simplicity dress, and we had picked Vogue 2979, which has a really retro Grace Kelly look to it. Today I was home sick, due to an upset stomach all night, so I felt kind of run down but able to sit at my dining room table with pattern paper and a ruler. I decided a good project was to make this lace top fit me.

Here's my first muslin on my dressform. The front closure in this muslin is a separating zip. The real thing will have a row of buttons, but I wasn't doing that for a muslin. You can see that it really doesn't fit, especially at the top where it "floats" above the shoulders. It's also too tight in the lower bodice (darn holiday cookie eating! trust me, it was worse on me, that's why you're seeing it on the dressform. (; )



I rather expected the neckline issue, I have very small, somewhat rounded shoulders. To fix the float and get the muslin to lay correctly, I made a series of alterations that I make to nearly every pattern. Here's a comparison of the pattern pieces I ended up with compared to the original.



I'll walk through each adjustment - you should be able to see the cuts or redrawn lines below.



* slashed and overlapped the pattern from the shoulder seam to above the bust point
* redrew the upper neck curve
* inserted a half inch of length in the armhole
* inserted an inch of length in the lower bodice
* added 1/4 inch to each side seam
* redrew the waist dart



Same alterations to the back

Yes, this is a little tedious, but necessary. I was taught to make these alterations to the pattern pieces, rather than draping or pinning directly on a muslin & then tracing the muslin, so this is the method I'm most comfortable with. Any of those, however, will lead you to the proper fit.

One thing that this string of ENDLESS MUSLINS has led me to see is that I really do need to make the same alterations to each pattern. Previously, I would scattershoot apply these techniques, and not always make them all together. Having done these to several patterns, from different pattern companies, over and over, I'm seeing how they all work together and getting a better idea of my body shape. It's been very educational and well worth doing even if there wasn't a well fitting wedding dress at the end of all this.

Better muslin pics

Wow, you guys are very sweet- thank you for all the kind comments, and on a muslin no less!

My mom had a go at the bodice and helped me tweak the paper pattern to remove the smidge of excess fabric in the upper bust. We took a slight dart shape out of the armscye tapering to nothing at center front. So I need to re-cut a bodice and stitch it up to try it out. Likely with the same skirt, since I'm NOT sewing those pleats more than I have to. ;) (Scary thought, how am I going to transfer those markings to while silk?? Oh man.)

Anyway, mom really likes this dress pattern as well, but she was concerned that the overblouse in the pattern would be too boxy. We looked at the other choices and decided to make an overblouse from Vogue Pattern 2979. Here's the short sleeved version:



In the pattern it's attached to the skirt, but we'll make one that is not attached.

Here are some more pictures with slightly better light. I had my mom take these, but I had a vintage, fully manual lens on my DSLR. So it was fun taking these. My poor mom.

Back view...



Side...



Front.... serious face because I'm worried she is changing the settings of the camera!



So, there we are.

I also finished up the flower girl "pomanders" aka "balls of flowers on ribbons that flower girls carry" made with silk hydrangea, styrofoam balls, greening pins, and ribbons. I figured these were easiest to make from fake flowers, as I doubt any wedding guests will notice or care that Kate & Ana are carrying silk flowers down the aisle. ;)