Red Knit Dress - Completed

Saying that I've been neglecting my blog would be the understatement of the year. Between completing my Master's Degree in Library and Information Science, job searching, and then acquiring and working four part-time jobs, I haven't posted since February. Since so much time has passed, I'd be lying to you if I said I had nothing to post here. I do have a few new(ish) makes. Not as many as I would have liked by now, and not enough to keep the Mistress of the Sewlutions Jar at bay, but hopefully enough to make up for my disappearance from the blogosphere.

My make from March/April is actually on the drying rack right now, so that will have to come later.

This dress was my June make. It was my first foray into knits, and I can't possibly tell you how happy it makes me. Every time I put it on, I feel good, and I almost always get compliments on it, which makes me feel even better. :) I wear it more than any other article of clothing in my closet, except perhaps the black wrap cardi I'm wearing it with today. (I must get the Coppelia pattern to make a replacement. This cardi is starting to die, and I'll be devastated when it goes.)

 

So. The red dress. It's Vogue 8787, view C with the cap sleeves from another view. I honestly have no idea what size this dress is, just that it spans several. 8-12? 6-10? No clue. I did shorten the bodice by 1 1/4", and I took in massive amounts of side and back seams. I also ditched the zipper because...knit. In retrospect, this particular knit probably could have used the zipper. But I do what I want!

I added the cap sleeves to this version of the dress to make it more work appropriate. Not that sleeveless wouldn't have been appropriate, but, well, I also wanted to make this dress a dozen times and have all of them look different. So there. Those were the only modifications I made to the dress, and it fits like a dream.

I love the interesting details on the bodice. The side gathering and the swooping asymmetrical neckline make the dress interesting, rather than it just being a boring basic knit dress.

 Also, pockets!

Onyx was fascinated by the whole photoshoot thing. Also a little miffed that I was up in his space when he was trying to take a nap.

Honestly, Onyx doesn't get miffed about anything. Ever. He's one of the most mild-mannered dogs I've ever met. Except on walks. And when there are cats. But our other dog can steal his toys, bones, etc., and he just looks at her and lets her take what she wants. In these photos, he looks more like a statue of a dog than a real dog. He hardly moved at all! :)
 

And just because when you make a full circle skirt, you have to have a twirly picture:

Two Altered Pairs of Jeans - Completed!

Okay. So. Y'all almost didn't get a blog post from me this month. It's been a crazy month. Three classes and an 8-hour-a-week practicum plus a part-time job and dogs, my wife, and friends have all made for a very busy semester. In spite of all of that, I did manage a tiny bit of sewing, and I'm here to share it with you. :)

I didn't actually sew these jeans from scratch. I feel obliged to tell you that. One pair is from Banana Republic, and the other pair is from Express. What I did was make basically unwearable items into super cute, perfectly fitting jeans. Sadly, I don't have before pictures, but they looked kind of like this:

And now, they look like this:

And this:

No more gape! One pair of perfectly hemmed short jeans for flats and long jeans for heels! Yay! So how did I work this miracle, you ask? You would. ;) I found a tutorial through sewing.craftgossip.com that shows you how. Basically, you rip out the waistband seams, cut out however much you need to in the center of the waistband, put a couple of darts in above the pockets (like below),

...then you stitch the whole thing together again, and you end up with this:

I took two inches out of each waistband and two more inches off the hem of my "skinny" jeans (the ones I'm wearing with gray flats...those are about as skinny as it's going to get around here). I hand-stitched the topstitching, because I wasn't super confident about my sewing-two-perfectly-straight-parallel-lines skills with the machine, but the darts, the center seam, and the hem were done by machine.

These are the first pairs of jeans I've ever had that fit properly, and I'm super excited about it. I couldn't manage to get the back beltloops back on prettily, so I just tossed them both, and I don't really care, because my shirts always cover the waistbands of my jeans anyway.

Just skating in with a February post. I hope you all had a wonderful short month and are looking forward to March and maybe some spring weather (or fall, for those of you in the southern hemisphere)!

Wool Flannel PJ Pants - Completed!

If you haven't yet heard about Karen's Sewlutions Jar, it's time to come out from under that rock! My Sewlution is in the jar, and like 21% of other Sewlutionists (new word? can I coin it?), I've vowed to complete at least one garment every month for a minimum of 12 garments, and post about them for evidence. My blog posts tend to be few and far between sometimes (all right, often!), but you're guaranteed at least one new make post every month, starting now! Yay!!

My first make is pj pants for my wife. They were part of her Christmas gift, but I wanted to make sure that I made the style she wanted, so I didn't make them until we came home after the holidays. I finished them two weeks ago, but the weather has been sucky for photos, so I didn't get any good ones until today.

Fabric: gray plaid wool flannel from Mood, maroon satin for waistband, tie, bias binding on hems
Pattern: none - traced my own pjs onto pattern paper
Notions: athletic elastic for the waistband, thread
Time to complete: 4 hours
First worn: January 26
Wear again?  Every day since, and hopefully a lot more to come!
Total cost: ~$33

The fabric is a gray wool flannel from Mood fabrics, and it's really just delicious. One side is super soft and slightly fuzzy, and the other side is smooth and looks like it could be used for a casual button-down (the fuzzy side faces inside, of course!). I have more of it (not quite enough for another pair of pjs), and I'm not sure what to do with it! I used a maroon satin (also from Mood) for the waistband, tie, and the bias binding on the hems.

 

Instead of using a pattern, I traced my own pj pants onto tracing paper and used that as a pattern. I also checked out the construction of my pjs as I went. I vaguely followed the instructions from the book Patternmaking for a Perfect Fit, which I got for Christmas, and I found it useful and pretty intuitive. I think the book will be even more useful for more complicated garments.

There was a minor problem with what I did, though. I couldn't figure out how to get the proper grainline, so I just kind of made it up, and I ended up with the plaid not quite matching up. So I forced the plaid to match, cut the waistband and hem to make up for it, and hoped that the pjs wouldn't skew because of my mistake. :) Next time, I think I'll use a pattern instead of going prancing off into Pants-making Land with no map. (Sorry for the wrinkly photos! The pants have been super well-loved!)

 

I used French seams for all four seams, so the pants are just as pretty inside as outside. Also, see how fuzzy? :)

Gender Expectations - Is Umbrella the Key to Equality?

It's been a while since my last post, but next week is finals week, and I'll have so much more time to sew and blog after the semester is over. You'll definitely get more frequent posts starting next week. For now, though, I do have one thing to share with you.

I've been thinking a lot lately about gender norms. It comes up everywhere I look, from class discussions about how male graduates from my program get higher-paying assistant-director and administrative jobs while female graduates get lower-paying reference librarian jobs, to the presidential debate question about equal pay for equal work, to the expectation of gender role conformity in lesbian relationships (I'm supposed to wear dresses, and she's supposed to wear men's button-downs and ties...she actually questioned whether or not I'd still be attracted to her if she stepped just to the other side of androgyny and started wearing women's clothing...my answer, of course, was to tell her I'd love her in whatever she wore, and to be honest, the women's pants and button-downs and sweaters she's purchased recently are really flattering), to shopping at Target.

Yes, you did read that right. Shopping at Target yesterday, I came upon some pretty awesome wall art for kids:

How amazing, right? Fun, bright, and educational (The alphabet! With animals! The names of states and their capitals and pictures of what they're known for! Dinosaurs!), these are exactly the kinds of pieces I would want in my (future) kids' rooms.

The three pieces above were on the right side of the aisle. When I turned to the left, this is what I saw:

Umm... Yeah. Flowers, fairies, and ballerinas, all in pastels. No one actually comes out and says, "this side of the aisle is for boys, and that side over there is for girls," but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say the right side of the aisle was almost certainly intended for boys while the left side was similarly intended for girls. Is there anyone reading this who disagrees with my assessment of the artists', distributer's, and Target's intentions for these canvases? For the sake of this post, I'm going to assume that those are the intended recipients of the above wall art.

The lower three pieces are very pretty, but what does this say about our expectations for our children? What does art like this tell our children about themselves and their abilities? Why is it that the colors that represent boys (and possibly the boys themselves) are expected to be bold and bright, while the colors that represent girls (and possibly the girls themselves) are expected to be soft and muted? When I looked at Target's website to see if maybe the best girl's art was online and not on the shelves (maybe it was all bought up?), I found that everything was very gender-defined. There was a picture of the solar system in "boy" colors, complete with the names of the planets, and there was a dollhouse in varying shades of pink, to list just two among several other items that implied through various images that boys are somehow worth more than girls. If we create things like this for our children and put them on their walls, we tell our children that boys are more athletic, more intelligent, more talented, and girls are only good for being pretty, empty-headed future housewives (and possibly pop music stars?).

How is it that we are still (silently but very clearly) perpetuating this idea and yet we say that the time for feminism is past? How can we expect to get equality as adults when we treat our children so differently? Boys are given engaging information about exciting and interesting things, and they are encouraged to read and express an interest in geography and science, while girls are given flowers, ponies, dollhouses, and fairytale castles. Obviously, this is a slight exaggeration; I know that many of us (girls) learned to read before any of the boys in our class, we climbed trees and played sports and became scientists and IT gurus and CEOs. I guess my question is this: Why, in a time when women have supposedly gained so much equality, does the art we create for our children's rooms still reflect a massive gender divide?

The need for feminism is still here, and yet the extreme feminists in our society seem to have given the idea as a whole a bad name. I say feminism and you envision a mob of angry women burning bras in street protests and forcing other women to leave their children at home and go work. It's this warped extremist idea of feminism that has women like Katy Perry, and Carla Bruni claiming that they are not feminists. Feminists do not want to force women out of their homes and into the workplace. Feminism is the belief that women should have the choice, and should be treated (and compensated) equally should they choose to work. You don't have to be an activist to be a feminist.

Anyway, off my feminism soapbox, if I had children right now, I'd buy all three of those top pieces along with the outer space one online, regardless of my children's gender. :) And I wish I'd had that wall art as a kid. I kind of want them in my room now!

Back to my search of Target's website, I did find one (and only one) semi-educational item that was directed toward girls. It was an alphabet piece, and the reason I say semi-educational is because I'm not sure I'd want my little girl to learn that J is for Jeans when it could be for Jaguar or Jet, Jar, Joust, Jade, Jack-in-the-Box, Jay, Jam, Jelly, Jellyfish, Jester, Jungle, Jupiter... I'll leave you to compare it with the equivalent boy-intended alphabet and wonder why the girl one has jewelery, clothing, flowers, and fairies while the boy one has monsters, outerspace, sports, and a treasure map. The only similarity is U is for Umbrella. Is the umbrella the answer?

 

 

Blogtoberfest Giveaway Winner

Hi y'all. I'm sorry it took me so long to announce the giveaway winner. I'm trying to keep up with more things than I can reasonably expect of myself. :/

Anyway, the winner is....

soisewedthis!!!

If you haven't yet checked out her blog, you really should.  She recently made an adorable Alma blouse. Some day, when I'm not being eaten alive by grad school, I'll make that blouse. :)

Congratulations! I'll contact you via email.

Blogtoberfest Giveaway!

As promised, I'm having a giveaway today, in celebration of Blogtoberfest. Today, you have a choice, and I hope I have something everyone would be interested in!

The giveaway is for a length of fabric and a pattern, your choice.

There are two options for fabrics, both a bit summery, but if you're anything like me, you like to sit on your fabric for a while before sewing it up. :) The first is 1 7/8 yards of a pale lavender linen blend. The photo doesn't really do it justice, since you can't see the color very well, but it's very pretty. It would make a great skirt. The second fabric is 1 1/4 yards of gray, white, and fushia striped seersucker. It would make an adorable top. Maybe the Sorbetto?

 

I have a couple of patterns up for grabs. The first is Simplicity 2996, a 1959 pattern for pants in four lengths. The pants have waistline darts front and back and side zipper closing. there's a pocket int he right side seam that's optional. It fits waist 25 and hip 34.

The second pattern is one that I posted for a giveaway a while ago but was never claimed. Oh, sad, beautiful vintage Vogue pattern! It's Vogue S-4067 from 1950, and you have to admit, it's just stunning. It's drafted for a 32" bust and 35" hip.

Pattern number three is Simplicity 5134, a shirt dress pattern from 1963. It's for a 33 bust.

If your taste runs a little more to the modern patterns or you prefer multi-size patterns (I do, just because my body spans about 4 sizes), I have something for you as well. Vogue 8787, in sizes 6-14.

The rules:
 - Leave a comment below telling me which fabric and which pattern you would like.
 - You must be a follower of my blog.
 - You have to have a way I can contact you (email, or a link to a blog profile with your email in it).
 - If you win, please don't sell the pattern. If you decide at some point that you no longer want it, pass on the sewing love to someone else in a giveaway or gift. :)
 - The giveaway will be open until noon (Central Time), Tuesday, October 30, and I will announce the winner on Halloween.

Muslin for Craftsy Couture Dress - Vogue 8648

This month is just flying by! I missed the last two posts, and suddenly it's the end of the month and I'm planning my giveaway post for Friday! :) I finished constructing my muslin for the Couture Dress course, and I'm pretty excited about it. It took me a while to fit it, though, because it's not possible to do that for myself. :) Anyway, some photos and thoughts about my muslin.

 

The front. Here, you can see there's some weird wrinkling at the top of the midriff band, and you can also see a ton of horizontal lines across my hips. I need to do an FBA, take in the top of the midriff band, and let out the side seams in the skirt. The waist is a little too high, but it will be lowered when I do the FBA.

On the side view, you can also see a little fold pointing toward my bust point from the armhole, which is another indicator of the need for an FBA. You can also see a little bit of the diagonal lines at the top of the midriff band and the top of the skirt. These indicate a massive need for a swayback adjustment, which you'll see more of in the other two photos.

If ever I had any doubts that I was a pear shape, this photo has put them to rest. Damn! I need to let out the princess seams along my butt to make a little more room for it, and in this photo, you can see a whole lot of those swayback lines. I'm thinking about adding a vent in the back as well.

This last photo shows the lines at the hip and back as well as the way the side seams pull forward, which I'm hoping will be fixed with the swayback adjustment.

Do you see anything I don't see? I'm pretty happy with this muslin, even with all its issues.

The Internet vs. Real Life

In class this morning, we had a conversation about the Internet and web-based communities, and the difference between the web and real life was a huge topic of conversation. I, of course, immediately started thinking about it in terms of sewing: sewing blogs, the online sewing community, etc.

Online, there is this wonderful, thriving, growing community of sewists. We share our completed projects, works in progress, thoughts about sewing productivity (or lack thereof), wardrobe building, garment planning, exciting pattern and fabric finds, and sometimes parts of our personal lives. The more experienced among us generously write tutorials (for which the rest of us are so, so grateful!), which adds an element of learning and reference to the online sewing community. Sewing has become an underground movement, and the Internet has enabled it.

At the same time, a lot of us talk about time wasted browsing the web, reading blogs, posting on our own blogs, etc. So much time is spent in front of the computer screen instead of the sewing table, and I definitely have a love/hate relationship with the Internet. Love the information and the connection to other sewists, hate the way I lose time online.

The thing is, I don't know the first thing about finding the same kind of community in real life. How do you find other women (or men) who sew in your area and want to share their experiences with you (especially if you live in a small town)? How do you find someone to help you pin on your muslin to check for fit? Or someone to go fabric shopping with?

I'm totally jealous of all of you who have had the opportunity to meet up in person. I would love to do that, and am totally there next time there's one in Chicago.

Do any of you have sewing friends in real life? Do any of you live in Champaign-Urbana and wish you had someone to help you with fitting or go to our one little fabric store with? :)

Five (or Seven) Things I Love to Wear

In The Colette Sewing Handbook, Sarai suggests picking 5 things out of your closet that you love to wear, so that when you're planning your wardrobe and your sewing, the things you make reflect your personality and are things that make you comfortable and happy. I think this is a great idea, but I couldn't narrow it down to just five. I tried to pick five things. I really did. But I have seven, and I hope that's okay. :)

My seven things: my wedding ring, navy linen shirt dress, red Mary Janes, multi-colored scarf, jade bracelet, and Fossil necklace.

My wedding ring is my favorite piece of jewelery I've ever owned. I'm sure a lot of women say that, but for me... My partner and I each got completely different rings. Hers is a single sapphire set in a white gold puzzle ring. Very Celtic. Mine is, obviously, a very organic circle of vine, leaves, and buds set with miniscule diamonds, and it was made by a very talented artisan on Etsy. I would have picked out myself to wear as a right-hand ring if I'd seen it before my partner did (and could afford it!).

I've had this dress for so long I don't even remember when I bought it. I actually got it at H&M, which boggles my mind, because I feel like most of what I've gotten/seen from there in the last few years is the same quality as Forever 21, which is to say, it falls apart quickly. This dress has obviously not fallen apart, and I've had it at least since 2003. I think it's flattering, and it makes me feel feminine and pretty when I wear it.

Quite a few years ago, I went to see a play with my mom and some of her friends, and the main character went through several costume changes, but she always had on these spectacular red Mary Jane heels. I immediately started looking for them, and after just a week or two, I found the exact same pair. They're Nine West, and I'm really sad I didn't buy two pairs. These are the greatest shoes I've ever owned. Comfortable, feminine, sexy, red(!), and high-quality. I wish I had known anything about leather at the time, but I didn't, so they haven't been well cared for, and the leather is discolored and starting to crack. I've been looking for another pair, but so far with no success. 

When my partner and I had our wedding ceremony last year, one of her family members gave her this jade bracelet. Jade is a pretty traditional gift for a Chinese wedding, but since it wasn't quite something she would wear, it went to me instead. I love the color and the speckling, and I wear it all the time. It reminds me of family.

This necklace is the best piece of jewelery I've ever purchased for myself. It's large enough to draw attention but not so large it's overwhelming. The color is possibly my favorite color ever, it has a tiny bird hanging from the chain and a tree on the back.

Me being goofy. This scarf gets worn more than all my other scarves combined. It's versatile, lightweight, cotton, has a lot of the colors I love in it, and it has a sort of abstract natural motif that I love.

All right. So. The leather coat. It's from AllSaints, and when I put it on, I become a total sex bomb. Couldn't you tell? All that hotness just oozing off the screen? Well, it is. This jacket boosts my confidence like nothing else I've ever owned. I put it on and start strutting around like I own the town. Not kidding. I really do. :) It's the most expensive non-jewelery (really, non-wedding-ring) item in my closet, but when something makes you feel that amazing, you buy it.

What does all of this say about me? I like monochrome garments for the most part; I like navy, light teal, and red; I like things that are closely fitted; I love things that reflect nature in some way. I like to feel feminine, competent, and attractive, and I like to wear things that have emotional significance to me. I also like people to see certain things while I keep other things to myself. No one sees the back of that necklace but me. When I was younger, I had a pair of jeans with "You are beautiful" embroidered into the waistband. I bought them like that, and every time I pulled them on, they made me smile. If I ever make pants, I'm embroidering those words on the inside of the waistband. :)

If you picked out five (or seven) things in your wardrobe that made you feel good every time you put them on, what would they be? What do your favorite things say about you?

On a sewing note, I've finished putting together the muslin for the Couture Dress class dress, and my partner's going to pin me into it today or tomorrow for a fitting, so I'll be posting about it later this week. I'm so excited to be moving forward, even if it is slow going right now. :)

Sewing Book Review - The Party Dress, by Mary Adams

After my last post, I started thinking that for someone who adores books and libraries as much as I do, I don't talk about them very much. I'm going to write a little bit about some of the books I borrow from the library, and if it goes well, I might make it a regular feature on the blog. Let me know what you think!

Since I talked about The Party Dress Book on Wednesday, I figured I might as well write my first review about that book.

I first found The Party Dress Book on a shelf at Borders (a mental toast to a dearly departed bookstore...I feel so much sadness for the slow demise of so many brick-and-mortar bookstores) and found myself unwilling to put it down and unable to fork over the cash for it. When I found it at the library, I had to take it home and pore over every page.

The full title of this book is The Party Dress Book: How to Sew the Best Dress in the Room. Some people might criticize the book for containing too much fluff and not following through with enough how-to information, but I would have to completely and utterly disagree with them. I adore this book unabashedly. So much so that I might actually reach into my tiny pockets and hand over the change so I can own my own copy.

As you can see from the Contents, Mary spends a lot of time discussing her own career, where she got her ideas, and what events/things were instrumental in the development of her unique and beautiful style.

The book begins with a forward by Amy Sedaris, and it's the perfect introduction. She describes her first view of Mary's shop as "a pastry shop full of cakes dripping in colorfully dyed buttercream icings. It was a deaf person's dream."  Just look at the photo of the shop and try to disagree:

Mary spends the next 30 pages or so talking about color, which is clearly very instrumental in her own sewing. If you want the best dress in the room and you want people to notice it, the color has to be perfect. Interspersed with the text are tons of gorgeous, colorful, inspiring photos.

Remember how I said the most amazing, stunning, gorgeous dress I've ever seen in my life is on pages 58 and 66? Here's page 58. To see the details of the dress, you'll have to check out the book yourself and flip to page 66.

The next three dozen pages are all about the techniques that Mary uses to create what I would call amazing works of wearable art. She discusses French seams, piecing, quilting, applique, pintucks, ruffles, and bias strips. The woman can work magic with bias strips, I'm telling you. She teaches the technique with clear photos and instructions, then gives examples of some of the amazingly creative things you can do with them (French seams are not just for hiding inside a garment!)
 

The majority of the book - almost 50 pages - discusses sewing your own version of the dress. Did I mention there's a pattern in the back of this book? There is. Actually, there are two, and they're awesome, and I really, really, really want to sew one up. I've only been able to find one blogger who's made this dress up (check out The Little Red Squirrel), but her dress is stunning, and her posts about the pattern make it seem like the pattern is pretty well-drafted and easy to put together. My one criticism of this book is that the range of sizes of the patterns provided is not very great, since it only covers size 4 (33" bust) to size 14 (40" bust). However, I think that this book is worth the money I'll spend on it even considering the fact that I'll have to grade the pattern down slightly, and if you have to grade it up or down more significantly than I will or don't even end up using the pattern at all, I would still say it's worth it for the inspiration, information, and sheer volume of gorgeousness.

Anyway, moving on from the pattern, Mary covers the planning phase, focusing especially on fabric, and then goes on to discuss measurements, yardage requirements for different fabrics and versions of the dress, and fabric prep. Then she gets into the pattern itself, showing how to make up the dresses in three different ways. She provides thorough instructions for sewing the dress, and there are tons of photos to show as well as tell.

So. I don't know about you, but I'm definitely buying this book. Or asking for it for Christmas. I'm planning on sewing lots of cake this year, but after reading this book, all I really want is frosting. And I'm going to have some. Maybe for New Year's Eve? I think that means I should buy the book myself, since I can't start a New Year's Eve dress after Christmas. :)