Princess Seam Blouse Again

About a year ago I made McCall's 6035 button-up blouse with princess seams in five different colors and by the time I finished the last one I was way super sick of the pattern. Well, apparently it takes me a year to get over that because I just finished a new blouse. 

This one is made from the cotton lawn left over from lining my wedding dress. It is rather transparent so tank-tops underneath are an absolute must. So was fully finishing the seams because you can see them through the shirt. At first, that annoyed me, but I've successfully convinced myself that it's just a design feature. I do wish that I had realized how visible they were going to be. I don't think I like how lumpy the clean seams look on the princess seams. I don't know how hard it would be to do a flat fell seam on a princess seam, but I really want to try it now because I can't think of anything else that has a hope of laying prettily and working as a design element. I did french seams on the sides and flat fell seams on the shoulder and arms. The collar and cuffs are both slip-stitched from the inside. 

I did lengthen the shirt by two inches this time around. I have found the when I am working I'm constantly tugging on the bottom of my shirt because they feel a little short. This shirt is a bit too nice to wear to work but I might make a couple more at this length because it does fit better and the whole point of making my own clothes is to have clothes that fit like they were made for me.

One of the reasons that I keep coming back to this pattern is that it has multiple bust sizes. I really like that I can easily achieve a tailored fit without having to do a full bust alteration. It just makes life so much easier. 

I'm not sure that I'm ready to whip out another five of them, but I would like to make one more in a purple lawn because I want to try the different seam finish on the princess seams and because I found some beautiful purple buttons when I was looking for buttons for this shirt. I was inches away from sewing them onto this one but that would have limited what I could wear it with and the point of  a white button-up blouse is that you can wear it with just about anything on almost any occassion. 

Gathered Skirt

Today I thought I would do something a little different and finally move on from wedding related projects. I only have a couple more to talk about, and frankly, they can both wait. Instead, I thought I would talk about a skirt I finished recently.

I had some leftover poly-rayon "linen like" fabric from Jo-Ann's. It is nowhere near as nice as real linen, but it's also half the cost and doesn't have to be shipped to me. The color is much closer to Robin's egg in real life. I wanted to play with my ruffler foot and thought this rectangle would be perfect.

So first I cut out a waistband, then I cut the remaining fabric in half and sewed the two rectangles together using a french seam. Because of that, the skirt is a tad shorter than I would normally wear, but I wasn't sure how much fabric I would need and I didn't want to run out.

Next, I ran my length of fabric through my gathering foot. I set it to pleat the fabric every 6 stitches. I think I would have preferred more gather, but again, I wasn't sure how much fabric the gathers would actually eat up. 

After I gathered all the fabric I attached the waistband. I did so by lining up the center of the waistband with the french seam on the skirt, that way I could attach the zipper to the other side and have both seams be centered. (The waistband started off three inches wide, I folded up half and inch on either side and interfaced the whole thing)

After I sewed the waistband to the right side of the fabric I cut off the remaining fabric at both ends and attached the zipper. I used a clean seam to finish the seam on the zipper side. 

The skirt is cute enough and I had fun playing with the ruffler foot. The whole thing was a bit fast and dirty, for example, I machine finished the hem, although I still hand tacked the waistband to the wrong side to keep my stitches from showing on the right side.I also didn't measure a darn thing, which is why I'm not calling this a tutorial. But hey, the skirt only took about two hours to finish, I will wear it (actually I'm wearing it right now which is why I thought to write up a blog post about it) and now I want to play with the ruffler foot some more. If you have never used one, look them up on youtube. They are crazy looking feet.

Sometimes the Fabric Speaks

On Saturday I made an a-line skirt. I ended up having to draft the pattern for it myself because when I looked through my stash of patterns every skirt that I had was very full, but the flower pattern on my fabric had really clear verticle directionality that just wouldn't work with a circle skirt, at some point somewhere on the skirt I would have ended up with sideways flowers. It's hard to see in the picture, but the flowers all have stems.

I'm glad that I realized that before I started cutting out skirt pieces.

I was going to write something up about how I drafted the pattern, but I forgot to take pictures of that part of the process. The skirt was pretty simple, basically just the front and two back pieces. I made a facing, rather than do a waistband. I used french seams on the side seams and a clean seam for the back seam with the zipper. Because I drafted it myself I gave myself very generous seam allowances, The back I used a 1" SA so I could turn over the edge of the fabric and still have plenty to work with while sewing in the zipper.

I did end up having to finagle the fit a little at the end, it was good through the hips, but a little loose at the waist. Either my math was bad, or my measurement. I'm not sure which.

All in all, I am really pleased with my finished skirt. 

I had a heck of a time taking pictures though because it was super windy. 

Also, I love this outfit, everything I am wearing here I made myself, and that is a really incredible feeling. I talked about the sweater here, the collared shirt here, and the cami under that shirt here. I'm also wearing a rayon slip that I know I made within the last year, but that I apparently never bothered to write about, so it looks like I've got another post about my underwear coming up.

Green Dress

Have you ever found that once you learn the "right" way to make something you can't go back to doing it "wrong" even if the wrong way is faster and easier and you are in a hurry? That was totally the case for me on the green shirt dress that I posted about briefly last Monday. I wanted to wear it on a Saturday and I started it Friday night, but I still made sure that every seam was fully finished even though it doubled the amount of time it took to make.

It's McCall's 7084 view D. I'm really happy with how this dress turned out. I feel like it's professional enough that I could wear it to work meetings, but it's not too dressy to wear hanging out with my friends. Here is a shot showing the sleeves and collar a bit more.

And I added pockets!

The pattern included pockets for the version with a narrower skirt, but I wanted a full skirt and pockets, so I just went ahead and added them. I'm really glad that I did because pockets are awesome. 

If I were to make this dress again (and I might because I really like it) the only other change I would make would be to make the button band wider or to not add interfacing to it. I had some problems with the buttonholes/sewing on the buttons because of how thick the band ended up. You end up having to sew through 5 layers of fabric and two of interfacing with the narrow band. 

I used french seams for all the straight seams and clean seams for the curved seams, except the seams with the pockets, that one I zig-zagged because it was late at night and my brain just wasn't processing right and wrong sides for the seam finished. I used quilters cotton for the dress and the lack of right and wrong sides can make things both easier and harder. But I just couldn't resist the green. I'm not normally one for posting selfies, but look at the way the color makes my eyes pop!

Oh, I almost forgot, I did change the sleeves a bit. They are meant to be folded up and then buttoned in place. I was running out of time, so rather than do a button hole and sew on the button and make it so the sleeves could be rolled down I just sewed a narrow hem, folded up the sleeve and sewed the button on through all the layers. I would not do that next time, not that I would ever wear the sleeves unbuttoned, but I think it would be easier to iron if they could be unbuttoned.

This is totally my new favorite dress and I think I am going to wear it so much that Fiance is going to get sick of seeing it. It fits well though and makes me feel gorgeous, what more could I ask for in a frock?

Linen Pencil Skirt

Last post I talked about my linen pleated skirt that didn't go according to plan, this post I want to share with you a linen skirt that worked out just fine.

Even though I really like the company that I work for, I was trying to make a nice outfit for job interviews because Fiance and I wanted to move back down south of Seattle to be close to our friends again and it didn't look like I could move and keep my current job. But I totally lucked out because a position within my company opened up in Tacoma, so now I don't have to find a new job. Hurray!

However, having a nice professional outfit ready to go is not a bad idea, so I decided to continue with the project anyway. I had some black linen left over from the pleated skirt, and pencil skirts don't really require a lot in the way of fabric. I used the McCall's pattern 5523 view d. It was a super simple pattern to make. I used french seams to make sure everything was nice and clean and neat on the inside.

I am pretty happy with the way the skirt came out, but holy smokes that thing about linen wrinkling is totally true. I had the skirt all nice and pressed when I finished sewing it, but it was too dark for pictures at that point, so I hung it up. When I took it out to take pictures less than a week later this is what it looked like.

I can live with the wrinkling, I'll just have to allot extra time for ironing whenever I wear this skirt. I should have pressed it before I took pictures, but I was in a hurry, so we are pretending that I did it this way to show the wrinkle factor. 

And the back is so cute. I love the little ruffle details. It is professional and fun at the same time. 

All in all I am happy with the way it turned out. It fits me well, the length is good, and I can totally wear it to interviews or to the once a year meeting that requires more professional attire. Or any other semi-nice occasion. I will need to make a black slip to wear underneath it though. The skirt isn't lined and I feel like the fabrics got just a hair too loose a weave to risk not having a slip. 

How Not to Make a Pleated Skirt

I swear this is my last post about the weekend at the Wooden Boat Festival. I wanted to keep my boat themed outfits going so I wore my t-shirt with anchors on it. I made the t-shirt ages ago, but the skirt was one I had only recently finished.

When I started the skirt I had intended to make a tutorial on how to make a pleated skirt, but I pretty much did absolutely everything wrong, so instead I'm calling this how not to make a pleated skirt. 

 First: fabric choice. I used a mid-weight linen from fabric-store.com. I chose linen for a couple of reasons:
 1) I thought because it wrinkles easily it would hold a crease for the pleats. WRONG. The pleats were totally invisible, like, 30 minutes after I pressed them in. The wrinkles stayed just fine though.
2) There is a dress I want to make that incorporates pleats and before I used up four yards of linen on it I wanted to know if my finished object (FO) would look any good. I've now learned not to use linen for that dress.
3) I figured even if the linen didn't hold the pleats I would still end up with a cute, dirndl looking skirt, so it as a fairly low-risk experiment.

I will say that this linen is absolutely scrumptious. I love it. And I was at least right that even though the skirt didn't come out the way I envisioned I do still like the FO. Next time though I will skip the pleating and just gather the waistband like I did for my pink skirt.

So, I cut out a rectangle of fabric, carefully making sure that it was on grain and started marking my pleats at the top. Those white lines are 1/2 inch apart.

And here I'm about half way through gathering all the pleats. There ended up being 52 pleats. I pressed them all down once they were pinned. And this is where I stopped taking pictures because things started going wrong. 

My fabric managed the slip off grain, so when I sewed in my pleats they looked crooked. Bummer. I also sewed them down four inches and then realized that it looked ridiculous and unflattering, 2 inches would have been plenty. I solved that my nixing the waistband. Instead, I just folded over my pleated section. The pleats made the fabric plenty stiff and stable, so I didn't bother with interfacing or anything. That part actually went rather well. 

A note on zipper installation: linen unravels like crazy, so I gave myself a full inch of seam allowance for the zipper and did a clean seam finish before installing the zipper.

I had wanted the skirt to sit a couple inches below my waist and come to my knees. But it ended up too small to sit that low. I tried adding fabric, but I added too much, then realized the couple inches I needed to add looked ridiculous so I took it back off and just decided to wear it at my waist. That's the fashion now anyway. It's also shorter than I wanted because I'm wearing it high, and I lost two inches doing the waistband. My butt isn't hanging out though, so I can live with it. In fact, I think it's still longer than similar skirts I've seen in stores, and again this makes it more in keeping with current fashion. 

All in all, even though everything went wrong I'm still happy with the FO. It'll look cute in the fall/winter with tights, or in the spring/summer without which was part of my hope. I probably won't make a skirt this way again, but at least this one worked out alright.

Sailboats Galore Again!

Yesterday I posted about Fiance and his friends building a boat. Today I'm going to talk about what I wore while they built.

Their competition started on Friday, but I couldn't join them until Saturday because I had to work. So rather than sit at home and just pout that I wasn't with the boys I decided to make myself a new nautical themed dress.

Normally I avoid Simplicity patterns because I always end up swimming in them if I make the size indicated on the package, but they were on sale and I didn't want to spend a lot so I was leafing through the lookbook and I found Simplicity 1080 (I made view A). They called it a "Granny Chic" tunic. I don't really understand why. Maybe because they posed the model holding some yarn? (Let's all try not be offended at yet another implication that knitting/crocheting as a thing only old people do) It certainly doesn't look like anything my grandmother would wear.

So I was looking at the pattern and I spotted something I had never noticed before (probably because it's been so many years since I made a simplicity pattern and when last I looked at them I didn't really understand ease). At the bottom of the envelope was a list of finished garment measurements. And no wonder I always ended up swimming in my finished garments because they give, like, four inches of positive ease. I mean, it's a pull over in a woven fabric, so you need some ease, but four inches seemed truly excessive to me, so instead of making the large the pattern said I needed to accommodate my bust, I went with a medium, and low and behold the fit was perfect!


Here I am in Port Townsend wearing the dress. It was an absolutely beautiful sunny day with tons of adorable sailboats in the water behind me all day, but I couldn't pull Fiance away from his build long enough to take pictures then. So instead you get a gloomy twilight shot with my sweater on because it was cold and windy by that point. (Also, do you recognize the bag? It's the one I talked about in this post. I brought it with me because it was all I had big enough to carry two meals worth of food for four hungry men)

And here is a badly lit shot of the whole dress so you can actually see what it looked like. Isn't that nautical fabric adorable!

The pockets were a huge reason that I picked out this pattern. Normally I'm not a big one for patch pockets, but these were cute and big enough to actually be functional. And most importantly not right over my breasts. I don't understand why designers seem to insist of putting pockets on nipples like I need to be drawing any extra attention to my boobs. Anyway, I'm a sucker for a dress with functional pockets. 

The dress had some interesting construction details. The neck, shoulder, arms and hem were finished with single fold bias tape. I've never used it to finish a hem like this, but I rather liked it for the neck and arms. Next time I think I will skip it in favor of a narrow hem on the bottom because the dress is just wide enough that you need a second package of tape for the last four inches of hem. 

This is also the first pattern I've seen that includes instructions for finished seams. In this case, it called for french seams on the sides. Even if it hadn't I would have done them anyway because I like my clothes nice and neat and finished on the inside, but I liked seeing a pattern that agrees with me.

Another note of interest on the pattern, the pieces were not nested so you had to hunt out the size that you needed for each piece. It certainly made it easier to cut out, but it also makes for a very thick envelope when you are trying to put all the tissue away. 

And last but not least, this dress illustrated the importance of back-tacking. I was tired and in a hurry and I somehow completely forgot to back tack the tucks on the front of the dress, so by the end of the day they had pulled completely out. It's a good thing the back ties were attached first and then hidden by the tuck instead of doing it all in one seam or I would have lost the ties on the dress too. 

If you look closely in the picture you can see the needle holes where the tuck used to be.

I followed those holes to quickly fix the tucks before I washed the dress. It was a bit fiddly to do the second time since the back was attached to the dress now, but I got it and now it is fixed, and back-tacked so it won't be going anywhere a second time. 

Overall I am super pleased with this dress. It's comfy, it fits well and it was really easy to make. I think it only took a couple hours Friday night. Oh, and don't let the thought of turning those long skinny ties turn you off, they are folded lie bias tape and top-stitched, so no turning required! I am totally going to make this pattern again. Next time I think I'll do it in the tunic length. 

Done with McCall's 6035

I am not a big fan of shopping so when I bought clothes I tended to find a shirt that I liked then buy it in about 5 different colors. Apparently that tendency does not go away just because I'm now making my clothes rather than buying them. 

And I can now definitively say that I am 300% DONE with this pattern. 

I don't regret making five of them because they are absolutely perfect for work. But I am way sick of the pattern. I talked about the green shirt here, and in that post I mentioned the blue and purple fabrics. I made the blue shirt almost immediately after finishing the green shirt. Then I went to the store looking for some other fabric and came home with the white and black cotton fabrics (they were 50% off and I am a sucker for sales) so I made the white shirt next. 

Going to work, whee!

From 7th grade through college I pretty much lived in all black all the time. I was really surprised when I started working on this shirt and realized that I didn't actually own any black shirts anymore. Then I realized it's because black is hard to see when you are working on it. Especially in a dimly lit basement. I had to go outside to get a picture of the shirt that didn't just look dark. 

Despite the difficulty, I think my love of black has been rekindled, so expect to see more black clothes in the future, especially as we head into the winter. Side note: what is it about shorter days and colder weather that makes darker clothing more appealing?

And here is the purple shirt. I took the picture the moment I sewed on the last button so it's still all nicely pressed and everything.

A few last construction notes: by the time I got around to the black and purple shirts I was tired of the clean seams, so I just overcast the edges. I don't like the amount of bulk it added to the seam, but I did like that it took way less time and effort to do. I'm calling it an experiment to see if any of the various seam finishes hold up better or worse to repeated washings and wearings. 

I also slip stitched the collar band and shirt cuffs rather than top-stitched them. I think they look prettier without stitches showing on the right side. I am honestly not sure why I didn't do that on the first three shirts because slip stitching is normally my go to for finishing collars. I was so over these shirts by the time I made them that I didn't take detail pictures. Sorry. I'll be better next time because next time I won't make fifty-million of the same shirt. 

Unless it's t-shirts. Then all bets are off. 

Quick and Cute Skirt

I have noticed while talking to other sewers that there seems to be a widespread fear of sewing with knits. This is not a fear I really understand. I love knits. I find them to be a bit more forgiving to work with this woven fabric because the fit doesn't have to be as perfect.

I also find knit projects tend to work up faster. Case and point this skirt (which is a McCall's pattern, but I can't find a link to it on their website):

This skirt literally took me less then 30 minutes to cut out and sew together. If I had felt like dragging out my serger it probably would have take about 15 minutes. And that includes the time it took for my to make sure that the strips would line up when I was cutting the fabric.

I'm actually pretty pleased that they lined up because I was still taking valium for my neck injury when I decided to make this skirt and I had actually meant for the strips to go the other way so clearly I wasn't actually thinking that clearly when I cut the fabric. 

I'll freely admit that part of why it was such a quick project was that I didn't bother to hem it. When I started I had intended to hem the fabric, but I decided that I liked the way it curled at the bottom, I think it adds to the fun, casual, flirty feeling on the skirt. And that is part of why I love working with knits. Don't want to hem it? No problem, it's not going to unravel, and you don't end up with awful dangling bits of thread. 

And speaking of not unraveling, that means I don't have to bother with any sort of clean finish for the seams. I just run two lines of zig-zag and call it good. 

Yep, knits are pretty much my favorite. I've got one more knit skirt that I made this same weekend, I'm going to write about it next.

McCall's 6035 Revisited

In my last post I wrote about McCall's 6035. I was attempting to make view A: a short sleeve button up with princess seams and a mandarin collar. As I said in that post the pattern was fine, but my own need to complicate my life lead to me literally screwing up every seam and calling my shirt a muslin. Today I revisited the pattern and am proud to say that this time I am very pleased with the results.

The fabric store was out of the pretty robin's egg blue cotton that I used last time, so I went with more of a Kelly green. I also picked up a nice purple and a light blue with brown polka-dots, both of which I also intend to use for short-sleeve button-up shirts. I decided to cut the green first because 1) it was the cheapest fabric I bought ($4.99 a yd 40% off) so if I screwed it up again I wasn't out much money and 2) it was my least favorite of the three fabrics so I wouldn't be that upset if it didn't work out.

I am really happy to report that I didn't screw it up this time. Here is a picture of the flat fell seam on the sleeve cap. As you can see I did still get a little bit of puckering, but it is world's away better than my last attempt. I think it even looks better than the shirts that I made with plain seams. 

And here is a picture of the shirt turned inside out. I used the clean finish for the princess seams this time and I have to say they are not bad. They don't lie perfectly flat, but then what would? They do look better than the mock french seams and they were easier to execute. Unexpected bonus: they were also easier to deal with when hemming and attaching the sleeves because they are less bulky. Not that I was surprised by that, I just hadn't thought about that aspect. 

All in all, I am totally pleased with this shirt. It fits well and I managed to have all clean seams with minimal headache. I'm calling it a winner. I am going to make it again, although I think that next time I will add a folded down collar.

McCall's 6035 Pattern Notes

I know this isn't what I said I would post next, but I was working on a new shirt today and managed to screw up so many things that I'm now calling this one a muslin and I wanted to jot everything down before I forgot and screwed up the next one too.

I was trying to make McCall's 6035 view A. Now I want to start off my saying there is nothing wrong with this pattern. Everything that got messed up was just me screwing up!

So, the first thing I did was decide to do a mock french seam for the princess seams. My justification was that french seams don't work well on curves, but I had read that a mock french seam would.

The mock french seam really doesn't lie well on the curve either. I thought it would at least look okay, but it just isn't as pretty as a real french seam either. Next time I make this shirt I am going to just do a clean finish on the princess seams. It will probably be easier, quicker and prettier. Sometimes I have to remind myself that the most complicated solution is not always the best one. 

I do think I'll stick with the french seams at the side seam because they seem to lie well enough and they are still my favorite seam finish. 

And speaking of seam finishes: the next thing I screwed up was the flat fell seam at the shoulders. The first shoulder went well enough, but when I was trimming the seam allowance to finish the second I managed to cut a hole in my fabric. The picture is from the inside of the shirt where the hole is still visible. 

I was lucky that I cut the hole before actually cutting any of the seam allowance so I "solved" the problem by trimming the other side and pushing the seam toward the front of the shirt instead of the back so from the right side you can't see the hole. Unfortunately, I had already done the other side of the shirt and had pushed the seam allowance towards the back on that side, so now my two seams don't match. 

I know most people wouldn't actually notice it, but I think you can see it even in this picture, and I would know it was there and it would bother me. Not enough to not wear the shirt, but enough that I might not enjoy wearing it. 

It's about at the next picture that I started thinking this shirt was not going to be wearable when I was done. 

I've done flat fell seams on the sleeve cap before, but I've never done one where there was actually extra sleeve to ease in. I had it in my head that the seam should push up onto the shoulder, rather than down onto the sleeve. Not only did that emphasize the horrible job I did easing the sleeve, it actually made the puckering worse. 

Here is the second sleeve. I pushed the seam allowance down onto the sleeve for this one, and as you can tell the finished seam looks much smoother. I don't know why I thought I needed to do it the other way. After I did this sleeve I pulled out one of my boyfriend's ready to wear flannel shirts and saw that on it the seam allowance was on the sleeve. It also pushed the shoulder seam allowance forward toward the front of the shirt, but I think it looks better facing the back. I guess the big thing on that one would just be to have them facing the same direction. 

 So, the sleeve bands managed to have three issues (which I personally think is pretty impressive for such a small section of the shirt). First, at a 5/8 seam allowance the band is too tight around my arm, so mental note add half an inch to the band when I cut it out next time. Next, normally on a sleeve band or cuff I would stitch one side than slip stitch to secure the other side, just like bias binding, because I really don't like the look of top-stitching and I can't ever seem to get a nice straight stitch 1/16" away from the seam. In the fist picture, you can see that I was way too far away. What is harder to see in the picture is that the band is also trying to twist, like it was off grain, even though I know it wasn't when I cut it out.

For the second band I managed to get that nice 1/16" edge stitch, but when I attached the sleeve I realized that I'd attached the band backwards, so the wrong side was up with the sleeve put in correctly. 

I'll admit that was when I really decided that I was calling this shirt a muslin and not doing anything more with it. I safety pinned the front to determine that the bust did fit, so at least I made the right size, but I just did too many things wrong to try and fix it all. At least it was cheap cotton bought with a coupon so I'm out less than $10. Especially if I use the buttons I bought for this on my next attempt. Still, totally frustrating headdesk moment because I can blame no one but me for everything that went wrong. If I hadn't tried to be so fancy with my seam finishes I would have a wearable shirt right now.

Focusing on the upside: now I know how not to finish the seams for this shirt, and next time I will do better.