scorched

Hey everyone! I am currently sitting, staring at my computer at 9:30 pm on a Saturday night (because my social life is off the hook). I think I've written these first couple of sentences a dozen of times, only to delete each one. I told myself that I wasn't allowed to write about the weather, or the fact that February seems to have gone by very very  fast, and as a result I'm finding myself with absolutely nothing to say. It's at times like this that I wonder if we're given a finite quantity of creativity in our lives, and if I've squandered all mine on dramatic readings of Us Weekly performed for my cat...

To be fair, those readings have been some of my finest work, but don't expect Mister Muscles to back me up on that because he's a tough critic!

Well, since it seems like the insides of my brain currently consists of one, long, obnoxious, fart sound, I'm gonna take the liberty of skipping the niceties and jumping right into the sewing talk. Trust me, it's better for everyone this way. Besides, I have a lot to say about this silly, flowy, voluminous dress!

This was my February make for the Mood Sewing Network (you can read that post here, which is probably way more informative than this post is going to be).  I had initially planned on making a spring jacket, which is much needed in my wardrobe, however our crazy 'winter' turned unexpectedly balmy for a week or two there and I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to sew outer wear.  So instead I made what is essentially my ideal spring dress. Of course, it has since returned to being cold and drizzly, and now I'm really wishing I had that jacket - so back to the front of the queue it goes!

This dress was made using this White and Gray Striped Linen-Blended Woven from Mood online.  I'm not totally sure why this fabric caught my eye, as it certainly isn't the sort of rambunctious print I usually gravitate towards when I'm buying fabric with my Mood allowance. But I do know that when I saw it I thought of light and airy spring dresses with a sort of folksy, bohemian, Ladies of the Canyon kind of vibe.  The kind of thing you wear with minimal sandals and lots of jewelry (bonus points if you're lucky enough to own some genuine turquoise...) and long, flowing locks. The finished look might veer more towards 'a man's sleep shirt from the 19th century' or faintly Laura Ingles Wilder, but I'm actually pretty cool with that too! 

I'm going to reveal something incredibly nerdy about myself right about now - when I was a kid (and probably a little older than would have been considered 'cool'... like, oh, say 15) I was in love with American Girl dolls. My favorite doll was/is Kirsten (R.I.P. Kirsten, as you are no longer available) who was the 'pioneer doll.'  I mean, pioneers are pretty badass! I even had matching dresses so I could dress up like my doll and pretend that I, too, was a pioneer girl. Well. I would be lying if I said that this dress doesn't make me feel a bit like my 8 year old self, playing dress-ups with my Kirsten doll. And after doing that google image search I'm realizing just how much it resembles Kirsten's nightgown (which I also had in my size). Sigh. I mean, aren't we all just trying to satisfy our inner 8 year old? 

Another fun fact - my nieces are just getting to the age where they are getting into American Girl dolls, and I swear, this past Christmas I was almost as excited as they were to receive their first doll! I literally had to stop myself from being like, "here, let me show you how to brush their hair..."

But I was trying to write about sewing here (see above, re: brain = fart sound). So I saw this fabric, I decided I wanted to make a folksy, springy dress, and I chose a pattern, like you do.  This is Burda 10/2010 #122, the same pattern I used to make my green dress. I love that green dress so hard that it only made sense to add another version to my closet.  However there were a few changes I wanted to make. For clarity sake, I'm gonna go with the list format:

•  Lengthen the entire dress by about 3 inches. The curved hem makes for some scandalous thigh moments on my green dress, so this length is much more modest.
• Narrow the shoulders by 1/2 inch (using this method). My green dress actually fits very comfortably through my shoulders, but optically I feel like it makes my shoulders look wide(er). Since this is such a roomy dress I felt like I could get away with narrowing the shoulder so the shoulder seam sits in a bit more, which I find visually more flattering on me.
• Used a different method to sew the front placket because when I followed the instructions from Burda on my first version of this dress I felt like the placket got really gross. I don't remember now exactly what I did, I just kind of made it up as I went along. I'm sure if you were to have watched me sewing the placket it would have been like watching a chimp perform brain surgery. No offense to any primate surgeons out there - but it was definitely touch and go there for awhile! But we got there in the end. I'm actually really pleased with my placket on this version.
• I used the same wide, gathered sleeve pattern that I made for my first version, but this time I added 1/2 inch to the overall length, and changed the sleeve to an exaggerated bishops sleeve, so it's a little bit longer in length at the back of the arm than it is at the front.
• I omitted a lot of the topstitching and interfacing on this version because I wanted a very soft, rumply look.
• And finally, I left off the pockets. I'm generally a fan of pockets in dresses when they fit into the overall design of the dress, but I often think in-seam pockets seem like an afterthought, and they always flap around uncomfortably when you wear the dress. So out they go!

Perhaps the change I'm most pleased with is the sleeve adjustment I made.  The bishop sleeve really does fall in a very lovely way around the arm, which I think is really key for making this kind of poet sleeve work.  And it's just really fun to wear! I'm actually already imagining other patterns I can slip some bishop sleeves onto, and next time they're going to be even more exaggerated! Puffy sleeves for all!

Perhaps after all this rambling you're wondering why I would title this post 'scorched' (or maybe you've just caught on that my post titles are only tenuously related to what I'm talking about and you've just learned to ignore them, in which case, who can blame you?) Well! That has to do with a little lesson I learned about my new iron. Oh, I never told you I got a new iron? Well I did! For Christmas I got a Sapporo gravity feed iron and it makes me feel legit. I also love knowing that I will never have to buy another iron - or at least not for many many years (fingers crossed anyway, appliances are always susceptible to giving up the ghost, but from what I can tell, these things are lifetime companions). Although it hasn't been all sunshine and roses with my new iron. There's definitely been an... adjustment period (we're still getting to know one another). This thing is just way more serious than any other sewing appliance I own! Take, for instance, the sewing of this dress. While working I decided I needed a cup of tea, which of course turned into a snack, and then I sat down to check my email, and read some blogs... Anyway! An indeterminate amount of time later I returned to my sewing room only to find that in my negligence I had flung my work-in-progress across my ironing board, leaving the corner of the dress to rest against the iron! Now, as I've said, this iron ain't your mama's Rowenta! This sucker gets hot. And the whole base gets hot, not just the underside. Also, there's no auto shut-off like there was on my old conventional iron, which means the entire time I was lolly-gagging about, my dress (which I had just painstakingly manhandled a beautiful front placket for with all the precision of a chimp surgeon) was being scorched. I've never had an iron burn anything I was working on before! While I did want to cry when I saw the ugly, brown scorch mark on the front of my new dress, in retrospect I actually feel really lucky that I didn't start a fire! 

So! I would like to offer myself up as lesson to the sewing community! Do as I say, not as I Do! Learn from my mistakes, dear ones! Take care with your works in progress, and beware hot, powerful, irons!

And this picture is for Nick, who really liked the scale of me in amongst all these palmettos and tropical greenery. 

Until next time friends!

xx

the seuss is loose

Welcome to winter in Galveston! Seriously, the weather in these parts has been so topsy turvy I can't even keep up. One day I'm wearing a sleeveless dress and dreamily meandering the streets on my bike on the way into work, the next day I'm bundled up in my handknitted woolies and bumping up the heat! But one thing is definitely for sure, this time of year always gets me thinking about planting things, growing things, digging my fingers into cool dirt, watching anxiously as seedlings start popping their little heads up... I guess in some parts of the continent it's still a bit early for that sort of thing, but round here we're just on that cusp before everything decides to burst into color again (color besides green, of course). 

Anyways! How's your winter going?? Hopefully if you're in the cooler climates you've managed to stay warm. As much as I love our relatively mild winters here, I do sometimes get a bit nostalgic when I see pictures of people all bundled up in their wooly layers and snow boots.  Or when I see people like Sonja making freaking fabulous faux fur coats!!! Seriously, I'm considering braving heat stroke and the proverbial sweating-of-bullets just so I can call such stunning, muppet-y outerwear mine...

Where was I...? Oh that's right, I have something new(ish) to show you. I say 'newish' because this was my January make for the Mood Sewing Network and chances are you may have already caught a glimpse of it, but I like to make sure my MSN makes make an appearance on my home turf as well. 

So for this go around I’ve got a fun new skirt to show you.  I’ve realized a bit of a pattern with my fabric purchases in the last year – if I don’t have a specific project in mind that I’m buying for I tend to just zero in on the wackiest fabric I can find at that moment.  This Marc Jacobs floral print, poly double-cloth-what-have-you was one of those purchases for me.  (It is now, of course, sadly sold out – but check out all these amazing Marc Jacobs fabrics from Mood’s online selection.  Marc Jacobs is seriously one of my favorite fabric designers, he just comes out with such fun stuff, like this vintage inspired floral silk, or this cuh-razy wool knit.) I know this fabric probably doesn’t look all that wacky at first glance, but trust me, its weirdness abounds…

First of all, you have the print. We start with a nice, sedate, oyster colored backdrop, all cool so far, right? Right. Then there’s a medium scaled floral print – also nothing amiss. But hold up! Now we take a major detour into Dr. Seuss-land because those flowers have stripes all over them. And all of a sudden a nice, normal, floral print turns a little trippy and weird. (And gives me inspiration for the title of this post - in case you were wondering. You probably weren't.)

Then there is the fabric itself.  The face of this fabric is a smooth, satin-like poly with a dull sheen, very soft to the touch.  This is fused to a heather gray poly knit on the backside, also smooth, but still… a knit.  Am I the only one that thinks this is weird? The fabric has no stretch and is a medium weight. I’m just so curious what this fabric was originally used for? Any ideas? One commenter on the MSN site remarked that it may have been used for a knit garment with the floral print satin used as a fun lining, which definitely would work, as this fabric could totally be reversible. It definitely made finishing my skirt really easy! I didn't worry about lining, but rather just serged all the raw edges. This step was actually almost just a formality because the raw edges didn't fray at all. 

Well, whatever the original use for this fabric was, I thought it would make an awesome pencil skirt, but I wanted a pattern with a little bit of a twist to match the fabric.  I eventually landed on the Zoe skirt from Style Arc.  I really liked the longer length and unusual style lines of this skirt – the angled side seam, and the long darts in the back most especially.  I added black faux leather piping (leftover from these pants) to the side seam to really highlight that line.

This was my first time making a Style Arc pattern.  I've always been a bit nervous about these patterns because the sizes aren't nested, so when you order the pattern you have to choose your size, and you only get that size. Doesn't leave a whole lot of wiggle room for fitting cock-ups (did I just type cock-ups??) In addition, the sewing directions are minimal. Like, the instructions for this skirt are not even 1/4 of a page. However the styles are always so intriguing, and just a little bit more fashion forward than what you normally see offered by the Big 4 pattern companies, and even many indie pattern designers, so I was just too tempted to not give it a go! 

Now, you'd think with all that trepidation I would have been careful to make a muslin, wouldn't you? Uh no.  I decided to throw caution to the wind and live dangerously! Jump on the back of that motorcycle and ride into the sunset... hair blowing in the breeze. Where will we stop? Who knows! Who cares! It's all about the ride, man, the riiidddeee.... Where was I? Oh yes. It probably would have been prudent for me to do a little basting test fit prior to stitching everything in place because I definitely am getting some fabric bubbling around my high hip area. This is a pretty standard issue with me and fitted skirts. I think it has something to do with the fact that I have a pretty narrow upper hip/pelvic area, but a full lower hip... I believe the conventional (and rather degrading) term for that would be saddlebags. It's an easy adjustment to make, and one that I'll make a note of if I make this pattern again. As is, I don't intend on this being an everyday type garment, so I'm not too fussed if the fit is not quite perfect.

I feel like no one is going to believe me when I say this – but I actually really agonized over print placement with this skirt.  Don't laugh! It's the truth! You see, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to attempt to print match those center front and back seams or not.  In the end I, obviously, decided not to, as I thought the visual jar of the mis-matched print along those seam lines actually fit the print better, and also helped to highlight those style lines without me putting the faux leather piping into all my seams, which I felt might be a bit much. Also... lazy.

All in all, this was a fun, quick, and painless make, and I think the results are equally fun. Will this skirt get a ton of wear? Probably not. But it will be great to pull out for the next gallery opening or fancy event I have lined up. And I love how well it pairs with my faux fur top. I actually bought this Marc Jacobs fabric at the same time that I snagged this Black and Blue Faux Fur that I used for this top thinking that they might make a cool outfit together. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that I actually saw my plan through! A rare thing, indeed!

And on a final end note - I wanted to thank you guys for all your kind, encouraging, and heartfelt comments on my last year in review post. It's such a pleasure to know that when I put something out into the world it's being received by the nicest group of people this thing we call the 'internet' has ever seen. You guys...

xx

Disclaimer: the fabric for this project was provided to me as part of my monthly fabric allowance from Mood Fabrics in exchange for my participation in the Mood Sewing Network. All other supplies, and obviously thoughts, are scrounged together using my own resources.