Drafting a Cowl

So I have taken my bodice sloper and made a knit sloper from it. I used some old knits to try as a muslin and was happy with the fit of the knit bodice. So I placed that on tag for future t-shirts.

I worked through the lesson for drafting a cowl neck from my bodice sloper.  My first mock-up was pretty good but the shoulder seams were too far back by 1 inch.  I lowered the front shoulder seams and dropped my armhole a bit to make up for the 1 inch I took off in the shoulder and cut the changes straight away from the same mock-up knit fabric that is a lovely polka dot brown.

This seemed to work out quite nicely. I proceeded to turn under the armhole edges and sewed them with a small hem using a stretch stitch.

For the hem on the bottom I used some steam a seam to hold the hem in place I turned it up 3/4 inch. I proceeded to try out my twin needle for the first time. I loved the results!

My Juki can be set up for a coverstitch but it is such a hassle that I would rather use the twin needle.  If I sew lots of knits in the future I think it would be worth investing in a coverstitch machine.  Switching back and forth to serging takes such a long time. I did however serg my side seams in a pretty blue…..because that was the thread still in there from my skirt project 🙂

Overall I am very pleased with this pattern, there is a facing in the front and back so the neckline is just a soft fold over and it stays tucked in quite well, I made the facing 4 inches long in the front and 3 in the back.  I may try a double cowl for a more dressy top in the future or better yet extend my side seams down and make it a dress 🙂

 

The next thing I would like to tackle is following along with the course and practicing more dart manipulation but in a woven…..looks like I have to break out the muslin again 😉

Check this out!  The El Nino’s is moving through the pacific ocean in South California and the tuna is coming close to shore. This has brought 1000’s of bright red crabs that have got caught in the surf and washed up on shore  😦 Such is the cycle of nature. They where last seen on the shores in 1997.  Along with the crabs, and tuna come the great white sharks too! So I will not be swimming in there any time soon!

 

The Abby A-Line Skirt

I use to love using contrasting colors and different fabrics to construct clothes for my daughter Abby and being like a kid myself I thought this design element would be a bit fun to bring into adult clothes.

Thus the Abby A-line skirt it is 🙂

I used a fun cotton for the pocket facings too because I’m such a kid:

The pocket backs are black as well as the band on the bottom of the skirt and unfilled piping along the waist band:

I lined this skirt with aqua to pick up the blue on the print of the skirt. Plus its my favorite color. My favorite thing to do is bring out the color I love about the fabric and use this in my serger as well!

Before committing to the side seams I baste first and try it on just in case it needs some tweaking:

I put in an invisible zip and I think I finally have this zipper thing down! I am going to make a tutorial on invisible zips soon.

There will be no raw edges showing, I will be hand sewing the waist band in place, as well as around the zip, and the bottom of the band. I usually hate hand sewing but when I did my pencil skirt with hand finishing touches it was kind of relaxing and enjoying. Wow did I just say that?

I love the lining in these skirts, it hangs better and feels fantastic!

And here is the skirt completed!! Yay, I spent 3 hours in total hand sewing and finishing touches AKA: button 🙂

and again I think a dark neutral top looks best with a busy print:

 

Boot Cut Custom Pattern

I have been working hard trying to get this pattern perfected from my sloper. I did a post on this here and used this book to draft a pattern.

 

Here are a few pics of my fitting stage, these are basted up with my dissolving thread that I can just iron out instead of unpicking!

So initially I wanted the waist band to finish at the waist but look like a low-rise …in the end it just looks like a normal waist band lol. Not sure how to construct a waist band,  I did my best and thought it didn’t turn out so bad. I added twill tape to make sure the waist does not stretch. I also interfaced the areas where the button and buttonhole will go for added sturdiness.

I designed these pockets by taking a wax paper impression of pockets from a favorite pair of jeans I have.  I blogged about that here.

I made these pockets extend all the way to the center front so that gives them some “tummy tuckin’ strength”  I used a pretty white swirly print cotton for the pocket lining.

I used a metal zip so it is nice and sturdy to go along with the tummy tuck pockets that will surely keep all my jelly donuts in place. The fly zip went in beautifully and I could not have had an easier time with that thanks to the craftsy course I just completed on pants. Check out that course here.

I wanted to do minimal topstitching so the pants had a semi dressy appearance to them. I used jean topstitching thread and a stitch length of 4.0.  completed with doing a blind hem. Again I love to hem them super long so with my everyday shoes they are just barely off the floor. Hoping it gives the illusion of lengthier legs.

Initially during construction I was going to attach the outer legs first and top stitch them in some pretty decorative stitch…..but I chickened out! Wasn’t sure if this would look good with a boot cut? Maybe it would have just looked cheesy lol.  In the end I did nothing creative and just topstitched the inner leg seam.

I love this button I found for these pants!!

These final pictures I decided to wear these pretty high heel beige sandals and it turns out there is way too much of a heel for the length I made these pants. So after boasting about how nice and long they are …..I’m wearing floods!! My go to pair of comfy shoes do look great with the length of these pants. I should have looked in the mirror first before I got my hubby to snap the photos!

So what do you guys think? Do they look wonky because it is my own pattern or do they look like normal pants?

I must say they are super comfortable and have become my new favorite pants!!!

My next course I started is making your own bodice pattern. Yes it is yet another Craftsy course!! I hope it is as successful as my pant sloper.

I did try to graph out the bodice sloper from the book I have: How to make sewing patterns.

I must have done something wrong though, because the pattern even looked wonky. When I cut out the muslin and tried a pin fitting, well…….lets just say it had me in stitches(I know what a groaner of a joke) hardy har har!! (to embarrassed to even show you a pic) So maybe I will get a more visual idea of what I am doing with this course!

I am in love with the drafting process of making a pattern! I find it as much fun as sewing!! So as I mentioned before if anyone wants to send me measurements for me to construct a pant sloper for you with your exact measurements you can email me at nicole.grigor@gmail.com and I will let you know what measurements I need. I will do it free of charge of course I am no expert and I just want to practice and get better at doing this. You may fall in love with this book as I have 🙂

Happy Sewing

Princess Seams Dress

When I first bought this pattern McCall’s M5890 I was very excited about it! If you make all pieces from this one envelope you have a complete wardrobe that would be fantastic for travel!!!

This is the story of how I became so frustrated with commercial patterns and the desire to sew was zapped out of me for about a month! So according to my measurements I would be size 16.  When I tried the dress as is it was absolutely huge! I was using the right fabric, right size, right needle, right thread, ……(you get the picture)

Turns out I had to re-baste this savage beast 3  times!!!! Arrghhh! I think this made the armscye all wonky because when I went to turn the raw edges under and make a baby hem the tips of the shoulders had a weird shape.  I calmly unpicked that  I threw it in the corner and lost ambition on fixing yet another problem!

So I picked this back up recently and unpicked the sleeve hem and cut off the wonky parts.  I re-hemmed them using my dissolving thread.  Turns out I liked the armscye and sewed them with permanent thread.

On some scraps I tried tweaking my serger to get a rolled hem just right. Turns out Sally Serger was being difficult. The edges were not laying flat and looked horrible. View exhibit A below. Scandalous I know!

So I resorted to cheating and used strips of dissolvable stabilizer but hey…..check out exhibit B below.

A word on rolled hems.  My lower looper thread keeps breaking when I fool with the tension too much. It doesn’t seem to be rolling under so I tried to tighten it and  SNAP!  I did buy some below quality thread that was on sale when I first bought a serger so that might be it. Anyone else have a hard time with this looper? I may get a good brand name thread for that problematic looper and see if that makes a difference.

Here is the finished product. I love the print on this knit and it has a beautiful soft hand to this fabric.

Linen Jacket with Flounces

I have been working on the linen jacket that matches the skirt I made. You can see the skirt post here.

 

I love the way it turned out. I like girly feminine stuff and the flounces on the jacket are so fun, they match the skirt flounce in the back.

The construction of this jacket seemed to take forever I originally wanted to put just the bemberg lining into it but the material is so heavy around the neckline that just the flimsy rayon would not hold the collar in firm place without the interfaced linen facings.

So I thought what the hell, I what the jacket to be smokin’ hot on the inside as well!…… so I put both inside:

I under stitched the peplum flaps, and all along the ruffle to ensure this bad girl behaved herself and not flash to the outside lol. . I hand stitched the bottom of the lining along the peplum seam line. I didn’t want any raw edges so I choose the same polka dot fabric I used as a facing for my skirt band and made bias tape. I used the bias tape for a Hong Kong finish.

The biggest issue I had was cutting the fabric flounces …….4 pieces completely identical……..  and sewing them as equally careful…….. so they were mirror images of one another.

Should be a piece of cake right?

Well lets just say this project is challenging and there was no “scooby snack drinking”  going on while I made this.

I quickly realized they were wonky when I pinned them to the front panels of the jacket.  Check this out:

 

way off eh? Damn these got scrapped!

I then pinned the hell out of them and cut out 2 pieces at a time using scissors instead of my rotary cutter which I think was moving the fabric around a little too much on that dreaded bias.

Much better:

 

A good tip is to also sew each flounce in the same direction this will make a huge difference in getting them to be on the same curve.

I  compared the two flounces to see if I needed to re-sew any curvy areas to get them as perfect as I could 🙂 To get nice clean edges  I trimmed my allowances, clipped my corners and curves. I pressed them flat first, then opened up the seams before turning on my wooden pressing tool.

After turning them I ironed them again and got a very nice smooth curve.  What do you think?  It’s as good as it gets because I am not making another set of these lol !

All in all I did do some alterations, I didn’t want it too tight and overfitted  but now looking back I wish I would have taken a bit more out from under the arms and shorten the back to waist seam line. I still like it and I learned a lot from making my first jacket. Here are a few more pictures my hubby took for me.

What do you think? Have you ever made jackets before and if so what advice do you have for the next one I make? I really need a sewing buddy that can help me with alterations on myself if I could have seen the back better and pinned out some of that fabric it would have looked nicer.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend 🙂