Interlining/Underlining a Jacket

I'm sure it will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that the fall sewing patterns are out and I've started working on one by Gertie. Here is a photo of it that I pulled off of her blog.

To be perfectly honest I think it looks a little dorky buttoned all the way to the top like that, but it would be cute with the top button left undone and it's the perfect jacket for fall weather. 

I was recently gifted significant yardage of a black poly/cotton blend bottom-weight by one of my stepdad's coworkers and I thought it would work well for this jacket. I'm lining it with an anti-static polyester. I wanted some kind of cute print, but I couldn't find one that I liked at Jo-Ann's so I went with my signature shade of blue instead. 

In addition to lining the jacket, I am also underlining or interlining it (I've seen both terms used and I'm not sure if one is more or less correct than the other). 

I've never tried underlining a garment before, but I think it's a neat technique. Basically, you use a second fabric to change the characteristics of your outer fabric. So you can add opacity to a sheer fabric, or add body to a limper fashion fabric. It can also be used to hide stitches when hemming because you just pick up the underlining fabric. In this case, I'm adding flannel to my shell fabric to add warmth without adding significant bulk. 

Sorry, I can't figure out how to rotate the picture. Anyway, here you can see my lining fabric on top, my shell in the middle and the flannel on the bottom.

When you underline a garment you cut your outer fabric pieces, then you cut the exact same pieces out of your underlining fabric and hand baste them together. I maybe could have thrown on my walking foot and sewed them together that way, but you want the grainlines to match and it's easy for fabric to twist on the machine, so I took this as an opportunity to practise using a thimble. 

I've already sewn the underlining to the shell in my photo. The underlining fabric will be completely hidden in the finished garment, so it didn't really matter what color I chose, I picked the blue 1) because I didn't want to risk muddying the color of my lining fabric and 2) because it's easy to see at a glance which fabric is which. The underlining fabric becomes the wrong side, so the contrasting color makes that easy. 

And speaking of wrong sides, if your shell fabric doesn't have a right and wrong side, like mine didn't, you are going to be designating one here, so make sure that you have right and left side pieces, not two rights, or two lefts. 

I've got all my underlining fabric sewn to my shell, so now I'm working on actually sewing the jacket together. From this point on the underlined pieces are treated as normal fabric pieces. Because of the underlining I am having to change the lining too. The original pattern doesn't call for the sleeves being lined, just the body, but flannel doesn't slide well over other fabrics, so I'm adding lining to the sleeves. My next post will be about how I make that change. 

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. 

Tatted Handkerchief Edges

Man, I have been distracted the last two weeks. I had a big party for my fifth anniversary and I will write posts about what I made for it, but I haven't taken any photos yet because my mom and I were so busy having fun at the party that we forgot to take any photos. Oops.

In the mean time, I finished a tatted hanky edge a while back, and I'm almost done with another, so I thought I would throw up some pictures of those.

With this one I was practising rings, and reversing my work. It's a pretty simple pattern, 3ds p 3ds p 3ds for both the rings and the chains.

And here is a close-up of the corner of my current project. It's the same pattern as the last handkerchief, but this time I learned how to join the picots in the rings. It's just one tiny difference, but the whole thing looks prettier, flatter, and somehow more finished. I've just got one last edge to go on it and then I'll put up the finished picture. 

I think my favorite thing about both of these edges was putting the ring on the corner. It looks really pretty, if I do say so myself. 

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. 

How to Make a Rice Pack

I've been seeing a lot of tutorials lately for making your own ice pack, but have you ever thought about making your own rice pack? They are pretty much the most awesome thing ever. I love my rice pack because it can used hot or cold, it's already soft and snugly so I don't need a towel to protect my skin from the cold, they don't get covered in condensation as they warm up and if it gets cut/punctured/ripped the only thing it leaks is rice, instead of creepy blue chemicals.

This is my old rice packs.

I've had it for years, but it's starting to get a bit of a fridgy smell to it, so today I thought I would make a few new ones. All you need is some flannel, a needle and thread (or sewing machine) and rice.

I had some super cute flannel in my fabric stash that I got on sale for only 2.99 a yd. I only had a yd because it was all the store had left and I figured I could make some pajama shorts out of it, but I wanted new ice packs more. I used about half the yard and got 4 rice packs out of it. You don't have to buy any flannel if you have remnants already in your stash.

So decide on your size/sizes and cut your fabric. I went with two packs that are about 18"x8" and two that are 8"x8"

The longer packs are great for draping cold across your forehead or the back of your neck if you get migraines like me, and hot they work wonderfully for backpain/cramps. You can use the same pack or both, it just takes longer to heat when you start with it in the freezer. I'm only bothering to making two because I had plenty of rice and plenty of fabric.

So, after you cut your fabric put two pieces right sides together and sew around three sides, leaving the fourth side open.

Turn the pack right side out.

Repeat this for all of the packs that you are making.

Now fill them with rice. Any grain actually works, I think my old one has millet in it, but rice tends to be cheapest. A note on stuffing them: about halfway full is plenty of rice, you want the pack to have some give and me flexible with you are using it. I used an entire ten pound bag of rice stuffing these four rice packs.

Now sew up that last side. You could do it by hand with a blind/ladder stitch, which is what I did (great tutorial on how to do that here). I just used smaller stitches than usual to make sure my rice couldn't get back out.

You could also just fold the ends in and stitch across on your machine.

That's what I did on my old rice pack because I didn't know the blind stitch when I made that one.

And here are your finished rice packs

They are a wonderful, quick, easy, and useful project. I hope you enjoy them!

Linen Wrap Dress

Wow, it feels like it has been ages since I had time to write anything. I've been dealing with a crazy time-consuming project at work, which means I haven't been home during daylight hours for a while. I live in a basement so taking pictures is difficult at best and downright impossible if the sun has already gone down.

One of my recent projects was to make a white curtain in order to facilitate picture taking, but my boyfriend has not found the time to hang it for me yet, so I've been trying to make due.

Last Sunday I wore my wrap dress and had him take a few pictures of me while we hung around downtown waiting for my mom to get off the ferry.

I am so pleased with the way this dress turned out. The fabric was this linen/cotton mix from JoAnn's. With a coupon, it was a reasonable price. The fabric was kind of tricky to sew with because it was kind of "slippery" feeling. If you just touched the fabric you would never say slippery, if anything it has a kind of pleasantly rough textured, but when actually trying to sew with it the fabric just wanted to slip and slid all over the place. 

The fabric also wanted to fray pretty badly. Every seam is fully finished (flat fell on the top like I talked about in this post, french seams along the sides and waist, slip stitched neckline, rolled hem on the sleeves and a herringbone stitch hem). It was a great challenge to work with and I loved every second of it. I would totally work with this fabric again. 

(I'm giving some guys stink eye for trying to walk into my picture)

That being said, I don't think I will use this pattern again (Butterick 5030). Although it fits well enough, I am not completely happy with the neckline. I actually had to safety pin it shut because the line of the dress was such that I would have been flashing a lot of boob if I had let it fall where it wanted to. Maybe if I was smaller in the chest it would look better, but I'm not and it's only mediocre. I also would have liked a little more fullness in the skirt. My last issue was that I had to wear heels (and let me tell you, after a full day of walking around Seattle my feet were killing me, I was limping and whimpering a little bit trying to get back to my car) in order to get the line of the dress to fall correctly. I tried it on with ballet flats, but it just made my legs look short. If the dress was shorter so that it fell at or above my knees instead of below them I probably would have looked more balanced in flats.

All in all, I like the dress. I will totally wear it again. I like the forgiving nature of the wrap and I love the fabric. I just need to make a purse to go with it and I will call this a great outfit. Next couple of posts will be about the slip I made to go under the dress and the sweater. 

Oh, and I'm sure it goes without saying, but I am in no way associated with JoAnn's or with Butterick.

Tatting Borders for Handkerchiefs

My grandmother gave me a couple tatting shuttles so long ago that I don't even remember how old I was. I've made a lot of strings of rings, but I've never managed to stay interested long enough to actually finish a tatting project. That changed a couple months ago. I was in an antique shop with my boyfriend, he was looking for hand tools, I was just looking at the beautiful items on display. I found a handkerchief with the prettiest tatted border I had ever seen. I'm a fool, so I didn't take a picture. I am still kicking myself for not buying it. I've got no problem blowing my nose on a hanky or handwashing them later, but I do not like the idea of blowing my nose on something that a stranger has used, no matter who or how many times it's been washed since then. So I walked out without the hanky, but with a sudden desire to make my own.

I've used handkerchiefs for years, but I never thought about actually making them myself or adorning them. I'm not sure why. My personal philosophy is that just because something is meant to be functional doesn't mean it can't also be beautiful. And so I went to my local fabric store. I really wanted handkerchief linen, which they didn't have, but they did have some batiste. Y'all, I am now obsessed with batiste. I want to make everything out of it. I had never worked with it, or really heard of it prior to my trip to the store. I got cotton, although it also comes in cotton/silk blends. It's very lightweight, with an even weave and it is delightfully soft. My nose is so happy.

So I bought a yard, at all of $4.95 and I cut 8 12"x12" squares out of it so that I would have 10"x10" hankies. I decided to go ahead and hem them by hand using a hemstitch. I figured if I was going to tat edges for them I might as well really go all the way and hem them by hand too. I used this tutorial from Little House in the Suburbs to figure out how to actually do the hemstitch because I had never done it before. It came out really beautiful if I do say so myself.

It also took me about three hours per handkerchief. These are labors of love that I blow my nose on. 

So, having completed (all but one) handkerchief I decided it was time to start working on the borders. As previously mentioned I've done a lot of shuttle tatting, but I've never actually finished a project. I decided to do a youtube search to figure out how to attach a border to the hanky. And thus I found RustiKate. First I was a little jealous that she had come up with such an awesome play on our shared name, then I was blown away by how clear and easy to follow her videos are. 

Now, she doesn't shuttle tat, she needle tats. I had never tried needle tatting before, but I liked the idea of tatting directly onto my handkerchief because if nothing else it meant I couldn't get bored with/loose the project before I finished or I would loose my hanky and when you already three hours invested in something you don't want to give it up that easily. 

And so, on the 25th of January I completed my first tatting project.

I thought it would be best to start simple and learn only one or two new skills at a time, so for this handkerchief I just did an easy chain border. This one is just 4ds p 4ds p 4ds p 4ds. Despite it's relative ease I am pleased with how it came out. If I did it again I would space the loops a little further apart but by the time I realized it would look better that way I was already committed. It took me a couple days to finish the tatting, but never worked on it for very long in a sitting.

Having successfully completed that one I'm on to hanky number two. This time I wanted to learn how to make and attach rings, and reverse my work to attach and chain to a ring.

This is what I've done so far, I just started working on it yesterday. This picture also lets you see the hemstitch a little more clearly. Despite having barely started this one I'm already thinking about my next project. Next time I want to learn how to join the picots. Having discovered how quick and easy needle tatting is, I'm not sure I'll ever go back to shuttle tatting, but never say never.