an unusual array of tools

hi everyone! i hope you all had a lovely weekend! my husband is out of town this week so that means that i will be clattering away at the sewing machine during my evenings, trying to make decent headway on my spring wardrobe. it also means that i'll be nerding out with harry potter audio books - which i practically have memorized - all week long!!!

change of subject! you guys seemed pretty intrigued by my plans for the "draped leather jacket" so i thought i would share some of the behind-the-scenes action. i'd like to share some of my "design process" for this jacket, since i drafted the pattern myself, and also some of my experiences in working with the lambskin (i think in my last post i called it sheepskin, but its actually lambskin).

first - a disclaimer: you guys. i am not a designer. i have zero background in this stuff. i've never even taken a class. i have one pattern making book that i've had for less than three months and i'm the queen of google searches. thats the extent of my knowledge. so please don't think of any of this as some sort of tutorial, or of me as some voice of authority. i don't know what i'm doing! this is just more of a chronicle of my experimentation, and, despite the fact that i don't know the right way to do a lot of this stuff, i'm happy with the results - for me! the same is true of working with leather. this was my first time handling the stuff so it was all a learning experience...

now that i got that off my chest, lets talk about my fumbling experience with pattern drafting...

i started with my sloper. this was the finished state of it after many hair wrenching re-drafts. actually i think the sleeves on this guy are still sucky, but i gave up. also, please ignore the fact that all these muslins are a wrinkled mess - they've been living in a ball on the edge of my sewing table. aaaand please ignore the ripped "v" at the neck. in a state of fitting frustration i tore open the muslin - incredible hulk style - only to realize that it solved the majority of my fitting woes... sometimes channeling a bit of roid rage has its benefits...

using my sloper i was able to make a torso block (which is basically the same thing as the bodice in the first picture, except that it extends down to hip level) and from that i drafted a basic two-dart jacket. i added ease and extended the shoulders. this first try was really big all around so i pinched out excess fabric at the front and back darts and the side.

the next go-around was a bit more flattering, but i still had some excess in the front (you can see how i pinned it out). i also experimented with the construction on this one, sewing the sleeves in flat and then sewing up the side seam and underarm seam in one go. this worked really well for me.

this next version was sewn up in some creepy polyester stuff thats been hanging around for way too long. (side rant - why can't i get polyester to press flat? also, why does it smell like a 70's basement when i press it? that stuff is just icky...) here i converted all my darts to princess seams - which i had to take in because apparently i'm not as busty as i thought. i was pretty happy with this muslin and considered using it as my final draft.... except for the sleeves!!!

a word about sleeves... again (deeeep siiighhhh) so for this jacket i was very worried about the sleeve ease because i knew i was going to be sewing it out of leather and, well, leather doesn't ease. so i drafted a sleeve and armhole that had zero ease.

you guys. i'm sure a lot of you have read the article on fashion incubator about sleeve ease being unnecessary and its all about the shape of the sleeve cap/armhole? if not, you can read it here. but i caution you. after i read it i felt like i had entered myself into the extreme sports of sewing. all of a sudden it was like "sallie just parachuted into an active volcano - but can she draft a sleeve without ease?!?" i think it caused more problems for me than if i had just worked with the stupid looking sleeve draft that was in my book.

here's the thing - again, from my limited experience. to make a sleeve that had zero ease i had to extend the shoulder seam about 1/2 inch. and it worked. and it looked... okay. but i just felt that, design wise, the wide shoulder wasn't the most flattering. as you can imagine, it made my shoulders look wide. so i decided to shorten the shoulder seam again and add sleeve cap height to compensate for the roundness of the upper shoulder. i figured my leather would be able to handle some gathering, as long as it wasn't excessive. and... it worked! so while i think that perhaps sleeve cap ease can be eliminated it will alter the design of your look. i just can't figure out how you'd make a sleeve with zero ease work without having a wider shoulder. reading this post helped me disqualify myself from the extreme sports of sewing and just freaking make it work!!

so, the conclusion of my sleeve saga: don't get caught up in chasing the mythological sleeve. its not worth it and you'll end up trying to prove something to yourself, which is, in the end, pointless. just make a sleeve that works and move on with your damn life! my final sleeve? meh. i'm not in love, but it looks okay to me.

for this muslin i worked with the sleeve ease and shorter shoulder seam and found that it resulted in a very comfy sleeve (armhole looks weird here because i pressed it weird - promise). i almost started going down the rabbit-hole of fitting (over-fitting?) only to stop myself. i decided i liked the look of this jacket. it may not be the most "correct" fit in the world, but it fit the way i wanted it to and so i decided to focus my attention on drafting the draped front that i wanted. this was really the fun part. to do this i just cut a few triangles and pinned them together until i got the sort of shape that i had in mind. its certainly not an earth-shattering design, but it was fun to figure out.

a whole mess of discarded patterns and one dorky kitty

at this point i made all the final changes to my paper patterns and wrote out some instructions for myself to i could walk myself through the construction in my head.

then i cut out the leather.....

yes that is a brick up there on the right. it is my most favorite of pattern weights...

as i mentioned, this was my first time working with leather. i blame it all on amy from cloth habit for casually mentioning that she was going to be making this fabulous coat with leather trim. before this - i had never even dreamed of sewing with leather. but because of her the idea impregnated itself in my brain, and - after the usual gestation period - i now have a leather jacket baby!

here's some of my thoughts on working with leather - in no particular order:

• this stuff is awesome!
• really, a dream to work with!!
• imagonna make everything out of leeaaathhhherrrrrrrr!!!!!

so yeah. i liked it.

i traced my pattern pieces onto the leather hides (it took 4 hides to make my jacket) i followed this advice, once again from fashion incubator, on how to lay out your pattern pieces. then i just cut the pieces with my rotary cutter. no weird shifting, no fraying... easy peasy lemon squeezy.

i did a few tests with some scraps, figuring out needles and stitch length and top stitching. since the leather i was working with was pretty thin and drapey my regular universal needles worked okay, but the leather needle made a cleaner hole and i think it handled thicker layers better.

i had read in a bunch of places on ye olde worlde wide webb that a teflon foot was recommended for sewing leather. i didn't have one and didn't feel like buying one so i used my even feed walking foot. worked like a charm.

the same world wide web told me that pinning leather was not advisable since it will leave permanent holes in the leather. a few sites suggested to clip the leather pieces together with bulldog (binder) clips instead. i tried this but found that the clip would get caught on the edge of my throat plate on my sewing machine and yank the leather as it was being fed through. so instead i decided to just use plain old masking tape and taped my seams together. also (shhh) i used pins. yeah. i did. freaking rebel over here. i just made sure to pin in the seam allowance.

pressing seams was another switch up from your standard fabric sewing. i didn't even try to iron the leather, i just assumed it wouldn't work. so i bought this little ink roller (brayer) and rolled it over the seams to flatten them a few times, then used a thin layer of rubber cement to tack my seam allowances down. fun!

some other firsts for me on this project - working with rayon bemberg (ambience stuff) and bagging a jacket lining (had to modify this a bit since i left the front edge of the jacket unfinished because leather doesn't fray!!!).

really, the whole thing came together quite quickly and without any drama. maybe its because i essentially sewed the jacket 3 times before i set to work with the leather, or maybe it was just an easy pattern. but whatever. i finished the jacket last night (at the same time i finished listening to deathly hallows for the 455th time... me and harry potter, we're so in sync!) and i really like it!

i'll post pictures this week - scouts honor!

xx

wildcat

mee. yow.

so i may have spent a good chunk of this past weekend watching cleopatra on netflix instant. which is basically like spending four hours of your life being seduced by elizabeth taylor. not a bad way to spend a sunday, i'd say. her eyes are largely responsible for the seducing in that film. okay, well her eyes are, like, 5% responsible and the rest goes to her cleavage - which is outstanding! i mean, all perviness aside, her cleavage deserves a mention... as does the costuming which did such a fabulous job enhancing her... assets.

so minus the cleavage, my look today was somewhat influenced by liz taylor circa cleopatra. i may have achieved more of a mrs. robinson look, but oh well... must be something in the air...

you probably wouldn't believe it from looking at it, but this little box dress took me the better part of two weeks to make. two weeks?!? good god, sallie, what did you do? weave the damn fabric?! no. no i did not. in fact if you think you saw this fabric before on this blog - you did. this is the same rayon challis i used to line my red jacket. i liked it so much i bought extra yardage to make a dress. actually, now might be a good time to tell you that this print is not actually leopard print (gasp!! the lies!!) according to the roll at the fabric store, its jaguar print... duh.

okay, so why did it take me so long to sew three seams and stick some sleeves on 'em? because this was the result of my first experimentation in drafting a pattern based off of my sloper (which is still a work in progress, but more on that later). really, it was the sleeves that was the major hold up. my first draft revealed some unforeseen problems with the armholes of my bodice. the second go around had too much sleeve cap ease. i'd like to say that i was just having a case of the goldilocks and that the third try was just right, but thats not the case. i went from too much ease, to too little ease, to a forward thrusting sleeve, to a tight bicep, to not enough cap height... i am so sick of sleeves!

the version that finally made it onto this dress is still far from perfect. the armholes are a bit tight and, though you can't see it in the pictures, the sleeves swing forward a bit and there is an annoying little "puff" right at the shoulder line. between the sleeves and the fact that the muslin for this dress was so very very unflattering (think amish) its amazing this dress even got made! but i had a hunch that the busyness of the jaguar print and the drapey quality of the rayon challis would cure most evils. and lo and behold - it did!

pattern drafting = fail!

fabric choice = win!

here i am with my trusty steed. believe it or not, but this little dress passed the biking test. meaning i can physically bike in this dress. whether or not it passed the public decency test is another story...

i had a lot of fun with the camera today. we've been getting these crazy fogs that roll in around 4pm that are so thick and heavy and give such an ominous feeling to the place. i tried playing around with my depth of focus and settings, trying to capture that. mostly i just ended up with some blurry pictures, but hey, i'll take what i can get!

i was particularly fond of this picture. it looks like a still from some b horror film! something bad is definitely about to happen! what do you think? abducted by aliens? i seem kind of okay with that...

well, friends, this was my last and final hurrah for winter-ish sewing. from here on out i will have my nose to the grindstone with one thing in mind: spring!

xx

sloping and revelry

you guys. its mardi gras.

fun fact: galveston has the second largest mardi gras celebration in the u.s. after new orleans, of course. i'm pretty sure its a distant second, but still...

not so fun fact: mardi gras is happening right outside of my window. and it goes on for twelve freaking days! wtf!! so. much. revelry! truthfully we don't get the revelers-in-the-midst-of-revelry outside of our window as much as we get the revelers-stumbling-to-their-hotels-and-cars. so. much. broken. glass. if you live anywhere near the downtown galveston area you will find your daily routine... impeded.

i think the world might be divided into mardi gras-ers and curmudgeons. i fall into the second camp. i've found myself putzing around my apartment and muttering to myself "don't these people have jobs?" more often than i care to admit. and yes - i realize that is the same thing that the grumpy 90 year old ww2 vet is doing too. i may also sigh and say "kids these days..." under my breath too. i always did feel a kinship with the over 60 crowd...

so to drown out the sound of blaring classic rock and drunken raucousness i've been doing what any sane sewista would do. i've buried myself up to my eyeballs in my patternmaking book, surrounded myself with measuring tape and pattern paper and colored pencils and erasers and rulers and muslin, in an effort to draft a sloper.

fellow sewers, do you slope? do you find it helpful to have this basic, made-to-your-measurement pattern on hand?

i am curious because i've always somehow felt that if i actually sit down and draft a sloper (or pattern block, whichever term you prefer - i don't really know if one is more correct than the other...) that it would magically open the door of designing to me. like all i needed was this flat pattern and then the world would be my oyster (sartorially speaking).

but the actual drafting of the sloper seemed so.... boring to me. first, you take your measurements. and these measurements aren't for the faint of heart. we measure things like bust arc and shoulder slope and new strap length (whatever the hell that is - i certainly don't know - but i measured it). you need these measurements for your front AND back. and this is where it gets tricky. unless you are skilled in the ways of dislocating your shoulders - getting accurate back measurements is impossible to do on your own. i asked my husband to help take my back measurements as i stood as naturally as possible while still craning my head in the mirror to see if he was doing it right.

then you do a little magic with your pencil and ruler and a little while later - you have a flat pattern of your upper torso. or so you think. i had to fudge some of my back measurements a bit because somehow my across waist measurement was bigger than my across back. i may not have the sveltest of waists, but even i was pretty sure this was a measuring error and not some quasimodo like proportions.

and this is where it gets deathly dull. because even though you thought you were all careful with your measurements and stuff - you have to test it. so you sew your sloper up in muslin. this is, without a doubt, the most boring garment sewing ever. but whatever, at least it goes fast. then you try on your sloper to see how it fits.

prepare yourself for awful photo booth pictures (and say hi to my messy apartment and winter belly - hi!)

this is my second test fit. the first was a good 2 inches too big all around. not sure how that happened - but rather than remeasure and redraft i just pinched and tucked out the excess then transferred those markings back to my flat pattern.

i'm pretty happy with the fit of the front. i may trim off a teensy amount in the shoulders to fit the slope of my shoulders more accurately. you can see the little bit of drag lines from the neck to the armpit in the first photo. when i lifted the shoulders just a smidgen (we're talking maybe 1/4 inch) the drag lines disappeared.

but this...

edit: perhaps you can see the wrinkles better in this equally bad photo?

is the back... i mean... whats going on back there? ignore the weird flipped up bottom. i'm running into the same problems fitting my back as i did trying to get measurements. unfortunately, my husband (bless him) isn't really much help in this matter. last night i thought perhaps i could talk him through helping me fit the back. it didn't go so well.

me: can you see where the big wrinkles are?

him: yes.

me: can you maybe locate where they are the worst?

i got an impromptu back scratch. perhaps to signify they were everywhere?

me: can you maybe find the big ones and pinch them out?

he pinched my butt.

well fine. this is why i have the internet. fellow sewinas (i just made that up) can you help me figure out whats wrong with the back of my sloper? is it too long back there? is it just too big all over? how do you fit the back of your garments? and most importantly - does anyone else use photo booth to help them assess fit?

if you're into mardi gras - may you have a fun filled and safe twelve days - and for gods sake keep it down!

xx