Of course, it helped that I had found the perfect fabric for a Tira the time before last in LA at Michael Levine Loft. It’s a super-soft, probably-rayon knit and I love the variegated stripe with the white pinstripe in between. In a happy coincidence, the stripes happen to be the same width as the finished neckline binding, making square mosaic-tile-like stripes along the neck and sleeves. I do wish my stripe matching skills had risen to the occasion of this fabric, but sadly they did not and about 80% of my seams have ever-so-slightly mismatched stripes. But I’m so not the kind of person who rips out perfectly good, so I left it, choosing the better matched of the two center skirt seams to be my front skirt. Luckily the fullness of the skirt and my hair somewhat hides my laziness.

But let’s get right down to it: the pattern. I’m honestly torn. There are a lot of things I really like about this pattern – the general style, the height of the midriff, the play with stripes it allows, the shape and drape of the skirt (I tend toward full gathered skirts, but this might make me a circle skirt convert), the overall feeling of the instructions and design of the packaging (font choice is a bigger deal to me than I should admit, and Cake nails it). But I’m just not sold on the bodice drafting. I knew this going in – for every ten glowing reviews of the sizing and fit of the bodice from a full-(or normal)-busted gal, there was one small-chested lady saying “this doesn’t work”. And I’m another one.

The Cake sizing is unconventional, and I totally see what she’s trying to do here, but I think it’s solving a full bust problem while creating a small bust problem. I know I have an unusual body type (hey, that’s why I sew!), but I really fall through the cracks here. My high bust measurement is 34 and my full bust is 35, or 35 and a half with a padded bra. That puts me right between the Cake sizes. Measurements alone indicate that I should make a 30D, which is clearly crazy. But I worried that the 35A would be huge in the shoulders and side seams. Steph actually very kindly gave me advice on her website back in January that I should try the 35A and take it in if necessary, but I was still dubious. After reading a bunch of reviews and thinking about it and comparing pattern pieces, what I ended up doing was frankensizing the bodice. Starting with the size 30 bodice, I traced (really, I traced! I never do that!) an A along the neckline and bottom, a C at the shoulders and a B at the side seams to give me more torso room. I then cut a size 35 in the back bodice piece, as a cheater’s forward shoulder adjustment and to allow for my bigger ribcage measurement. And, well, it sort of worked. But even the A proved too big for my tiny bust, and at the baste-the-bodice-for-fit stage I took off about an inch more of bodice at the center front. Then after putting the whole front together I took the midriff-bodice seam in another 1/4 inch. Here’s my traced piece, as I cut it, with a pencil line along the bottom to approximate how much I took off (and I should have taken it as more of a straight line, since I still have some fabric pooching below the bust points along the midriff):

Yeah, not the perfect bodice pattern for me. I wonder, though, if all the unusual sizing just had me way overthinking the process. With a Big 5 crossover bodice, I just pinch out a wedge along the neckline as an SBA. I think if I’d just done that here, with the original 30A pattern piece, it would have worked better. Taking it in over and over at the midriff resulted in funny gathers at center front, where it’s clear the angle of the neckline hitting the midriff is wrong. That could also be from the fact that I changed the crossover quite a bit – when I basted it together the first time, with the center front as marked, it was possibly the most modest neckline ever. So I spread out my pieces until I felt like I had a more regular neckline. Probably if I had cleavage the crossover would have been fine as drafted, but I don’t, so the crossover came up higher than a regular t-shirt neckline! The last oddity, noted by several other reviewers and corrected by Steph on an update of the pattern, is that I didn’t need to gather really at all to match the bodice to the midriff. Because I decreased the crossover amount, I needed to ease the bodice in a little to make it fit, but no gathering stitches were necessary.

And then, with all that worry and care about making sure it was big enough, I ended up taking it in at the side seams like an additional half inch on each side. The pattern is drafted with zero ease, but this fabric is so stretchy that negative ease was necessary. I clearly didn’t need to cut the bigger back piece, though I like where the shoulder seam falls, so it worked out. The sleeves also ended up much longer than I had anticipated (I was thinking more of a wide sleeveless look would happen), so in future I’ll trim the sleeves down a lot (or add long sleeves, since realistically I won’t get around to this again in the current season).

I took about 2 inches off the length of the skirt (but I think I accidentally cut one size larger at the hem in the first place), and I haven’t hemmed it yet because the thought of hemming a circle skirt made of flimsy rayon knit makes me shudder, and I’m hoping no one will notice if I don’t. I might like it a little shorter, though.

So, conclusion? I don’t know. I like this dress. I will probably want to make another at some point, but should I use this bodice piece? Draft a new one? Use a different dress’s bodice? I really like the idea of this pattern, and the pattern line in general, but it’s just clearly not drafted with my shape in mind. Which is fine! I love the idea of independent pattern companies solving issues the designer has had to deal with their whole lives – I just wish there was someone out there shaped more like me drafting patterns! Frankly, so far I feel like the Big 5 pattern block fits me better than most of the independent companies’ blocks, and I know generally what adjustments I consistently need to make to those patterns. But I want to support my fellow sewists! So, any small-busted-big-waisted folks out there with an itch to pattern draft? You’ve got one customer already!

My full pattern review can be found here.

Addendum: I just had to share this. I love WordPress, it’s terrific in almost every way… but the spell check leaves something to be desired. I grabbed a screenshot of what came up when it didn’t recognise “Tiramisu”:

So, yeah, I get why a blogging platform might not have a traditional Italian dessert in its dictionary – but why on earth would it think what I really wanted was “bigamist”?! Too funny.

Huge credit for that goes to Ms. McCall of Brown Paper Patterns, for her awesome tracing advice. She even gave me two sheets of the magic carbon tracing paper she uses when we met up in LA! Basically, her method involves putting your blank pattern paper on the bottom (I used brown painter’s paper, which I got in an 18 inch by bajillion foot roll at the hardware store for like 5 bucks), then the carbon paper (colored side down) on top of it, and the Burda pattern mess sheet on top, then tracing the pattern lines with a tracing wheel. She uses a fancy double tracing wheel to add the seam allowances as you trace, which is brilliant, but of course that’s not the type of thing they sell at Jo Ann… so I improvised. I bought two cheapo tracing wheels and taped them together. Hey, it works! I measured the distance between the wheels and that’s my seam allowance (it turned out to be about 3/8, which is fine). It’s a cool setup, and I’m so glad it allows me to trace with the pattern sheet fully visible on top, rather than trying to pick out the right lines through a layer of tracing paper. And frankly, I think the whole tracing operation is still somehow less annoying than printing out 50 pages of a pdf pattern and taping them together, cutting out the pattern, and then still having to add seam allowances! I might be a physical Burda mag convert.

As for the pattern itself – it’s number 107 from the March issue (which I bought in LA from a real newsstand!), the gathered front cardigan that was pretty much the reason I bought the issue. I knew the front bands would be fiddly, but I liked the design so much I was willing to deal with the hassle. And I was totally correct – the bands were fiddly, but not impossible. I ran into some trouble at the bottom where the hem encounters the bands, but it worked out okay. Honestly, I have no idea if what I did at the hem was what was instructed or not, since I find Burda instructions so impenetrable that I confess I didn’t even read them. All-text (and translated text at that) instructions just make my eyes cross, and I didn’t want to put in the effort when I understand already basically how to construct a cardigan. I made the bands first, sewing the outer (interfaced) and inner bands together, sewing just the outer band to the body, then topstitching the band to secure the inner band and sandwich the seam allowances into the band. At the bottom I sewed across the bottom of the band right sides facing then turned them out, inserted the edge of the hemmed body into the band, and topstitched in place. It wasn’t the neatest thing ever with this thin knit, but it worked okay.

The fabric I chose is yet another yellow striped knit from Girl Charlee that’s too thin to make into a dress (I went through a crazed striped-fabric-ordering phase last year and about half of them turned out to be more lightweight than I anticipated). I like really thin cardigans for our cool summer evenings, and I thought the gathers would be fun with the stripes. And while both of those things are true, I think this cardigan would’ve worked a bit better in a heavier knit. I prefer open cardigans, but this one is really designed to be closed, I think. I haven’t put buttons on this, but I probably should. It would make the shaped neckline make a lot more sense! There’s also a lot of fit-and-flare through the waist and hip, which works for a cardigan that you wear like a shirt but not so much for an open cardigan – there’s like little flaps below my waist on the sides. I will also agree with most reviewers that this pattern runs small; or, rather, it’s designed small. I prefer a cardigan I can wear, you know, over clothes, but this is drafted to be a tight shirt on its own. To be fair, that’s what it looks like in the magazine, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. If I make another one of these, I’d probably size it up a bit, straighten out the side seams a little, and make it in a slighter heavier knit so it wouldn’t be so fiddly to put together. I still like the shape and the idea, and, well, I went to all the trouble of tracing it so I feel kind of obligated to make it again…

At any rate, I’m glad I got over my fear of Burda magazines. Thanks to the Wellington Sewing Bloggers for hosting the sewalong and getting me to actually crack open that crazy pattern sheet! I don’t think I’ll be subscribing to Burda anytime soon, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled for pattern magazines, and hopefully eventually make something else from this issue. Of course, the keyword here is eventually.

When I brought home my pieces of mustard colored knit from Fabric Planet last fall, I was struck by how well it matched a mustard stripe knit I had gotten some time ago from Girl Charlee. It was one of the (sadly) several knits I ordered from them that turned out to be too sheer to make into an unlined dress, so I didn’t really know what to do with it. With this solid match, though, I started to ponder reversible garments. I toyed with the idea of a reversible tank dress or something, but when my SQUIRREL popped up I knew they should become a reversible easy jersey skirt.

I was hooked on these simple yoga-waistband jersey skirts a couple summers ago, and I made like 5 of them. All with slightly different proportions, of course (consistent I am not). Here’s the diagram I made at the time.

This was a good start, but I was looking for the magic proportions which would give me enough ease in the skirt to not pull across my bum, but not so much ease that I would have to run gathering stitches to ease the skirt into the waistband (these measurements require gathering). So I lengthened the waistband and shortened the top of the skirt… And you know what? I think I’ve finally got it! For this version, I made my waistband 34 inches long (I cut one piece and seam it in the back rather than have side seams), and I made the top width of the skirt piece 20 inches. Taking into account my 1/4 inch seam allowances, this made for 5.5 inches of ease, which I was able to deal with just by stretching my waistband to fit as I sewed it. Hooray! The waistband on this skirt could be an inch or two smaller, but I wear this style of skirt pretty low on my hips, so it’s fine.

For the reversible version, I cut two skirt pieces in each fabric, and a waistband in each fabric, making the waistband pieces half as tall as usual (6 instead of 12 inches). I basically sewed two skirts, attaching the matching waistband to each one, then sewed them together along the top of the waistband. When the skirt is laying flat it’s all one fabric, because I wanted the contrast to show when the waistband is folded down.

I also sewed the waistband seam allowances together on the inside to keep everything in place better. (Which you can maybe see in this picture – this is the previous view but with the top layer of skirt flipped up over the waistband.) The seam allowances are sandwiched between layers to keep both outsides neatly finished.

I didn’t hem the skirt(s), because I couldn’t conceive of a way to do it that wouldn’t negatively affect the drape of the skirt. I just cut them neatly to match as best I could. Does a little solid hang out on the bottom sometimes? Maybe, but I’m cool with it. This is a casual skirt, after all!

I’m actually pretty happy I was distracted by this squirrel. I wanted more colored bottom pieces, and this one is like two skirts in one, right? Honestly, I’ll probably mostly wear it striped side out, but it’s nice to have the option. Reversible is way more fun than just wasting the solid fabric as a lining.

So head on over to crafterhours and check it out – just beware you may get SQUIRRELed. There’s a ton of tutorials and great inspiration over there, if you’re in the mood for skirts… or even if you’re not! And if you want to whip up something to enter into the contest, well, hey, you’ve got like 3 hours left. Why, no, I never cut these things close at all.

I’d had this dress in my head for a long time. Well, not the dress as it ended up, but this pattern and fabric combo. I picked up Burda 7739, one of the somehow-associated-with-Simplicity Burda envelope patterns, a good while ago at a (rare) Jo Ann sale, and attached it mentally to some gray doubleknit that I’d had in the stash from one of my first fabric.com orders ever. It got jogged to the front by Cation Designs’ Stashbusting Sewalong: impending seasonal change challenge (doubleknit is a great season transition fabric, right?). When that month came and went, I still wanted to make the dress, so I shifted my goal to May’s knits challenge. What I didn’t really consider was how that would change what I wanted out of the dress. The pattern, which I like in theory, features an empire waist and a high neck with faux button placket and a collar. I had the brilliant idea to make big covered buttons, but I hadn’t really thought about it other than that. And, well, the buttons were pretty much all that made it through.

Not exactly like the pattern picture, right? Well. It was going to be when I started. I cut out all the pattern pieces exactly as drafted. I attached the faux placket first, making it a smidge wider to accommodate my 1 inch covered buttons. I sewed up the collar, interfaced it and topstitched it and everything, then suddenly stopped and thought about it a little. I don’t wear collars. I have very few high necked anythings. And my style, as it stands now, does not accommodate a cutesy empire waist collared puffed sleeve dress. As much as I like the idea, it’s just not me. Plus, the weather was warming up and I couldn’t imagine adding a collared, sleeved dress to the rotation right now. So I threw out the collar. I scooped out the neckline by 3 inches and just turned and hemmed it (doubleknit is so easy like that). I threw out the sleeve pieces and turned and hemmed the armsyces too. I pulled out the midriff piece from Simplicity 2281 (of previous sweatshirt dress fame) and cut out a midriff, since it occurred to me that a wide midriff would be so much more flattering than the drafted empire line, and I inserted it between the bodice and the skirt (still pleated as drafted). And, you know, it all worked out. This is a dress that feels like me.

Oh, it’s not perfect. The neckline gapes a little, because it’s not actually that good an idea to just cut a tank top on the fly from a high necked fitted bodice. I should have made the neckline narrower and scooped out some fabric from the armsyces. The pockets are too low, since I only moved them up an inch and a half when I changed the waistline and I should have brought them up more. I randomly took three inches of length off the skirt without carefully pinning and measuring first, and it ended up a tiny bit shorter than I wanted it. But in the end, I’ll wear it, and that’s all that matters. I don’t know if I could have said that if I had ignored my instincts and sewed it up as intended.

But more than a wearable dress, what I got out of this experience was the realisation that I can actually change my mind midstream and make it work. I’ve never been very good at improv of the theatrical variety, but it turns out I really like pattern improv. Something not working out? Change it! Frankenpattern that sucker until it’s what you want. Follow your instincts. Sounds basic, but it was kind of a revelation to me that I could change my plans if they weren’t working out. Patterns are not sacred, so why was I treating them like they were? That’s why we sew, to personalize designs, right? And I’m so excited to start doing even more of that.

My full pattern review can be found here.

And the verdict? Well, what I learned here was that the reason I haven’t made a previous foray into self-stitched bike-wear is a good one: the fabrics kinda suck. This is Poly with a capital P fabric, and the waffle weave that’s supposed to be cooling and wicking (I assume) in fact just makes the fabric thicker and poufier, not exactly traits you want in close-fitting athletic wear. It also pulls off that great double trick of cheap knits in that it manages to feel thick and at the same time still cling and show every lump and bump. In my test ride with the jersey, the word that sprung to mind was “cozy”, which, again, is not my ideal workout shirt descriptor. But I guess that means it will make a good winter jersey with one of my boleros! (Seriously, these bike boleros are maybe the best bike clothes invention ever. They don’t slip down like armwarmers and they California-winterize a sleeveless jersey perfectly. I have like three.)

But as for the pattern itself? I do think I was right that it’s a good candidate for a bike jersey. It has a sporty look about it to start with (this bothered me on the shirt version, and I think I’ve figured out what makes it that way – no bust gathers. If the bodice were gathered a little into a midriff band I think I would like it better. That’s totally my next hack of this pattern. But I digress) that works well for a jersey, and it has a somewhat looser fit through the torso, something that you sometimes want in a jersey, actually (or at least one that’s made from insulating waffle polyester). And it already has a zipper, obviously. So I didn’t really make any mods to the basic pattern. The only change I made was lengthening it in the center back about an inch to create the curved back hem all my favorite jerseys have. This is a pretty long top, though, so I ended up actually taking off an inch all around before hemming, still preserving the curved back edge.  I like my jerseys long, but not that long. (I also managed to sew a dreadful meandering hem. Oops.) The only other adjustment I’d consider making to the pattern if I attempt bike clothes again would be to try to figure out how to reduce the amount of fabric at the back neckline. I like a little collar on my jerseys, but this is a little too tall.

The main way I jerseyed it up, though, was to add pockets to the back. Back pockets are an absolute necessity for me, because I need a place to put my phone and any food I might need for the ride. I sort of drafted a pocket piece off an existing jersey, but it was really just a very slight trapezoid shape that was about 6 inches narrower than the back piece. I zigzagged elastic across the top edge of the pocket piece, turned it down and twin needled (all my jersey pockets are elasticized across the top). I attached it to the lower back piece by flipping the pocket piece upside down and sewing along the bottom, right sides together, then flipping it right side up and topstitching along the bottom for security. Then I topstitched along the side edges and up the middle in two places to create the pockets. I did this before I sewed the side seams of the jersey to make it easier. I placed the pocket piece about two inches from the bottom edge, but I find the pockets a bit low. Next time I’ll attach the pocket piece an inch and a half higher at least, so the stuff in the pockets will sit in the small of my back.

So, would I try this again? Honestly, it all depends on the fabric. If I ever stumble across a nice, real athletic knit that’s breathable and has food recovery (something this fabric definitely doesn’t have, hence the wibbly zipper), I would totally go for it. But I’m not committed to the idea enough to order dozens of swatches online in a quest for the ever elusive fabric-as-nice-as-RTW. And frankly, I seriously doubt I can find a fabric for sale anywhere that lives up to the awesome proprietary performance fabrics my RTW jerseys are made of. I mean, really, have you ever found yardage that you’ve touched and thought, hey, I could sweat in this for 100 miles? I know I haven’t. If something perfect does just walk into my stash, though, I have lots of ideas to real-jersey-up this pattern – reflective piping along the underbust seam, back pockets finished with contrast fold-over elastic, grippy paint along the inside bottom hem… But as it is I will wear this jersey occasionally, I think. And it’ll just motivate me to ride faster, so no one will be able to see all the terribly wonky topstitching!

On one last bike-related note, I can pass off at least a little of the delay of this post (just a little, mostly it was just my traditional procrastination) on the fact that I spent last Saturday riding the Tour of Long Beach Cruz Gran Fondo, a pretty flat 100 miles going down the coast and back. It was my third century and by far my fastest at 7 hours 20 minutes, mostly because it had almost no hills. (Though needless to say, I still did not wear this jersey.) I was very happy with my time, and even more happy about the craft beer garden at the finish! That, and the fact that when we rode past the Pageant of the Masters sign in Laguna Beach I totally yelled “There are dozens of us! Dozens!” Yeah there are.

First awesome news: I was lucky enough to win Amy’s Drape Drape 3 giveaway! I’ve been casually entering these giveaways as they’ve popped up around the sewing blog world because I’m morbidly interested in making at least one of the designs – I’m fascinated by crazy knit draping methods and this would definitely fit the bill! A quick flip through the book (it came so fast – thanks, Laurence King Publishing!) shows that my all my complicated pleating needs have been forever met, and I’m already daydreaming ways to modify the giant crazy pattern pieces to make the garments more, uh, my everyday style. It’ll certainly be an education in draping, if nothing else. And happily, the knot-neck dress seems to be just my thing as-is (though of course it’s one of the non-jersey patterns, so I suppose it’s not totally perfect… but I do so like to make woven patterns from knits), so hopefully I will be attempting at least that one sometime this summer.

Thank you Amy!

But the arrival of this book (by the way, as the third book in the series I keep feeling like it should be called Drape Drape Drape, right?) is not what has been keeping me from my sewing machine. No, sadly, it’s this: I have discovered another new hobby. And unlike my last new craft adoption, knitting, this one I’m really excited about! (Sorry, knitting, I just don’t think we’re going to work out. It’s not you, it’s me.) So what is it, you ask? (Or maybe you don’t – apologies, sewing will resume shortly, don’t worry.) I am making jewelry! Simple, modern silver jewelry! And it’s (relatively) easy!

I never intended to make jewelry. I’ve made some forays into beading in the past and it’s never caught my fancy, probably because I don’t wear beaded jewelry. I’m pretty picky about my jewelry – I basically only wear necklaces (no pierced ears, watch instead of bracelets), it must be silver, and I gravitate toward simple, modern geometrics. It never occurred to me that I could make that kind of jewelry without taking up silversmithing or something, so I was totally satisfied amassing said jewelry slowly, mostly at museum gift shops and local craft galleries. Then, last month in LA at one of said local craft galleries, I bought a necklace that the clerk informed me was made with “silver clay”. I had never heard of such a thing, so I googled it. It’s totally a thing. It’s actually called precious metal clay, or PMC. There is even – get this – a Craftsy class on using it. (Man, there’s a Craftsy class on everything now, isn’t there?) Basically, tiny particles of silver are suspended in an organic binder material that makes it a clay-like substance that can be rolled out and shaped, then it’s fired with a handheld torch for a couple minutes, burning up the binder and fusing the silver together. You then shine it up (or not) with a series of fine sandpapers. It’s pretty cool. So I took the Craftsy class and went for it. Here are a few of the things I’ve made so far:

On the left is a shiny square with a brushed circle on top of it – they’re two separate pieces on one jump ring. On the right is a string of three circles, the center one is shined up and the outer two are matte, though it’s kind of hard to tell so I just may make them all the same (and I need to get smaller jump rings to connect them, but this was all I had at the moment). In the middle is a piece I textured by stamping the clay with a rubber stamp before cutting out the square shape. After firing I patina-ed the piece using the hard-boiled egg method and then scrubbed the patina off the surface with fine sandpaper for a brushed finish, leaving it in the indentations to make the pattern more obvious.

I must say I’m having fun coming up with all the jewelry designs I’ve always wanted but have never been able to find for sale. With sewing, I’ve never considered myself to be a designer at all – I’ve always been good at seeing something and duplicating it, or modifying something to be what I want, but not ever pulling a design wholesale out of thin air. So it’s been interesting that with the silver clay I do seem to be thinking of a lot of original designs, which is exciting for me. Or maybe it’s just a subconscious backlog of all the jewelry I’ve ever seen and liked but not bought? Who knows? It’s cool either way. But seriously, like I really needed another crafty suck on my time… gah.

I’m hoping anyway that the jewelry making and the sewing can happily co-exist. And after spending the last couple weeks immersed in the world of PMC, I miss sewing. So return I shall to the two items I cut out before the jewelry lark began (one of which is where the scrap of gray doubleknit the necklaces are sitting on came from). But I think I’d better stop making promises about when things are going to be done, since I just seem to break them immediately. May will be a mixed bag, with another Los Angeles work trip dominating the month (meetup, anyone?), but I’ve also signed up to participate in the curious kiwi‘s Burda Sewalong, to attack that magazine I bought last month. So there will be clothes, sometime. That’s as specific as I’m willing to get right now – for your own protection.

And finally, here’s some proof that not everyone in our house is sad about my temporary sewing hiatus:

How nice of the Orange Terror to help initiate my newest fabric into the stash! Because, obviously, it’s not real stash fabric until it’s been shed on. Thanks, buddy.

But as I was sifting through the pattern box for oldies but goodies, I pulled it out, and immediately my eye was drawn to the turquoise poly knit on top of the pile of my recent LA haul. You know, that fabric I bought with no project in mind at all? The fabric I assumed would be the last of the haul I’d get around to? Yeah, well, suddenly it had to be this dress. right. now.

This pattern, along with the ubiquitous 1250, were the popular 3-piece Vogue designer dresses that everyone and their mother were making a year or two ago. And with good reason – who doesn’t want to whip out a dress in a day? I certainly do. I washed and cut the fabric one day, and sewed it all the next, though certain fiddly bits did keep me at it for more than just the couple hours the three pattern pieces would seem to indicate it should take.

I started off quite well, whipping out the five pleats at the neckline in record time. Sidebar: does anyone actually do pleats as instructed by the pattern companies? These instructions would have you “crease” along the line with small circles (how do you crease poly jersey, pray tell?), bring the crease to the other line, then baste on top of the pleat close to the crease. What? I just fold along the middle of the pleat and baste down the marked lines. I don’t generally even mark the lines on my fabric, I just baste straight down from my clip marks a little ways. Then I unfold the piece and press the pleat in whatever direction is indicated by the instruction illustration and baste across the top. I feel this is not only easier than the instructed method, but makes a neater and more accurate pleat too! I know I didn’t come up with this method myself, which means that at least some patterns instruct you to do it my way, so why the “crease” rigmarole here? Vogue just trying to be obstinate, I guess. Anyway, end of rant. Here’s a comparison shot of crazy complicated instructions and super fast easy pleats (and you can also see the cool textured stripe this fabric has):

I attached the cowl easily (again ignoring the instructions to just attach one side then slipstitch the inside down… not gonna happen. I just folded the cowl in half and attached it as one; the seam is totally hidden when worn), but where I got bogged down was the armhole finishing. The armholes as drafted were way too high and tight for me. I first attempted to finish them using clear elastic as instructed (hadn’t I learned not to trust these instructions yet?), but that just made them tighter. I cut them down a little and tried again, same thing. After yet another trim and elastic attachment I called uncle, cut them down another half inch and just turned and twin needled, which is what I should have done from the start. I probably took the bottom of the armscye down about an inch in all (my low armpits strike again!), but in the trimming process I also whittled away the sides of the armscye too much, making the section between the armhole and the neckline narrower than I’d like. Whoops.

The hem that’s called for is a full 4 inches, and I like the idea of a deep hem on this design a lot. However, a 4 inch hem is not easy to twin needle, let me tell you. My hem is a little wonky, since even though I pinned the heck out of it, that still didn’t make me good at keeping my stitching line straight without a seam guide. But I don’t think the slightly uneven hem is too obvious when worn. I added an inch and a half to the length when I cut it out, but once it was together and I pinned up the hem I wanted it shorter so I took the extra off again, so it ended up the drafted length. Any longer and it exacerbated the flowy-fabric-catches-on-giant-thighs-and-pooches-out-over-stomach problem I’ve been having a lot lately. It’s still happening even with the shorter hemline, but to be fair I can kind of see it on the pattern envelope picture and I think it’s just a tendency of the design. I really should have cut a bigger size from hips to hem, I guess.

Overall I’m not sure this is the most flattering dress in the world (all the back pictures were appalling with the amount of fabric pooling above the butt, but how can you do a swayback adjustment on a sack dress?), but I sure like it. It’s a sack, but it’s a really elegant sack that can be dressed up with heels or down with leggings. I’ll admit that I’m a bit puzzled by the idea of a cozy cowl neck on a sleeveless dress, but it works. Of course, I’m totally going to be putting sleeves on it come fall. A girl needs a fancy sack for every season, right?

My full pattern review slash contest entry can be found here.

As you may have gathered, I was down in Los Angeles for work for about three weeks in March. My schedule there leaves me free in the evenings, so I did my best to cram in as much LA-specific stuff as possible. Which mostly amounted to buying things. By things I mean fabric. Oh, what, you want to see it? Well okay then:

The pieces on the left are from F and S Fabrics, which is a lovely store along the line of Mood but not as big. They also offer sewing classes, one of which was happening when I was there – I’m glad the fabric stores are making an effort to secure their future by luring more folks into sewing. I managed (not on purpose) to buy two polka dot fabrics: the pink dot is a rayon remnant that will probably become a flowy sleeveless top (if I ever sew a woven fabric again, that is), and the other is the graduated dot poly knit I mentioned that I will certainly use to copy Amanda’s awesome dress. And what’s that behind them? Why, it’s my very first Burda mag! Found at the newsstand next to F and S. The stand was like a Burda jackpot, actually, with multiple copies of the January, February and March issues. I chose March because it contains a gathered front cardigan pattern that I’m dying to make up.

The middle row is my haul from the Michael Levine Loft, where everything is $2.50 a pound so you don’t have to count your yardage! Turns out this is important when you’ve arrived at the Loft only 20 minutes before closing after literally running there from the Metro stop. (Yes, LA has a very nice Metro, that will get you within about 7 blocks of the heart of the fashion district. Provided you are starting from somewhere with a Metro stop.) From top to bottom: an avocado doubleknit for a summer version of my sweatshirt dress, a textured deep turquoise poly knit for some kind of dress or other, a random colorblocked stripe fabric that will maybe be a Cation dolman top, and like 4 yards of a striped rayon knit for a Tiramisu finally (that pattern needs kind of a lot of yardage – I mean, not that much, but better safe than sorry, right?)

FInally, the last piece is the one thing I allowed myself at Mood. I only had about a half an hour for Mood, and without a specific need for anything I told myself I would only buy something if it was a statement fabric that I loved. And when I spotted this modern graphic ITY I knew I had to have it. I got enough for a maxi dress, and I’m excited about it. Black/white/gray/chartreuse modern art print? How could I not?

But hey, I didn’t just shop. (Well, mostly I did. Discount Swedish furniture is almost as hard for me to resist as discount fabric.) But I did manage to get to LACMA, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, which is a really, really nice museum. It’s open til 8 on Fridays and after 5 LA residents are free! And if you’re visiting LA, I highly recommend you skip the tourist junk in Hollywood and go to LACMA. They have a huge, very diverse collection and a lovely facility. I love their contemporary art building in particular, and was thrilled to be able to see the super cool sculpture/construction Metropolis II in action. It’s basically a little city that has thousands of Matchbox cars rushing through it. It’s loud and beautiful and complicated, just like a real city, but less stressful since I don’t have to drive in it. (Man I hate driving in LA.) Anyway, I can’t recommend LACMA enough. I also recommend the restaurant/bar at the museum, Ray’s/Stark Bar, where I had a good pizza and a fantastic cocktail afterwards. Do it!

But the best part about being in LA was that I got to hang out with a fellow sewing blogger! I met up with Ms McCall at F and S (where I convinced her to buy a totally awesome red-orange stretch velvet, under the condition that if she hadn’t turned it into something in one year that it would pass to me!), again (brief as it was) at the Loft, and on my last day we checked out Golden Road, a great brewery/restraunt in Glendale. Sadly, my only photographic evidence of our awesome time is this really embarrassingly bad picture. Was I already 2.5 beers in at this point? Entirely possible. Anyway, the magic of the internets never ceases to amaze me, and I’m so glad I live in an age when sewing can connect two people who end up having a lot more than sewing in common, to drink beer and talk for hours and have a great time. Hooray for technology! And I know there’s more of you sewing-types in LA, so I hope I can meet up with you too the next time I’m down.

As fun as it was, I’m glad to be home and back with my sewing machine, though I’ve been sadly neglecting it since I’ve been back. But this month? April’s got a lot of potential, I can feel it. And though my new acquisitions are sorely tempting me, April is the stashbusting month – Cation Design’s Vibrant Color Stashbusting Challenge and the Pattern Review Pattern Stash Contest are calling my name! Now let’s see if I can undo some of my March Madness…

The pattern is, of course, McCall’s 5974, the Palmer/Pletsch pattern that they actually call “the perfect knit dress”. Ordinarily I would take umbrage at that sort of labeling, but you know what? It is pretty perfect. It’s the classic crossover bodice with just the right amount of pleating, a skirt with lovely front pleats that give it the perfect amount of swishy fullness, and a tapered tie/belt/thing that defines the waist nicely. The only thing that’s not perfect about this pattern is how much fabric it requires! This sucker, with its long waist ties, cannot be squeezed out of 2 or even 2 and a half yards. Ask me how I know that. The reason it’s taken me so long to actually make it up is that the 4 or 5 previous times I thought I’d found the perfect fabric and laid it all out to cut I’d come up short. Finally, when I saw a bolt of this awesome print rayon knit at the crazy Solvang store, I thought of this pattern and cut off 3 yards and some change. Just to be safe. And so the perfect knit dress finally happened!

I made only one adjustment: on Amanda’s sage advice (sidebar: I love her graduated dot version! I thought I would have to be content with admiring it, since it’s such a unique fabric, but I just happened across a very similar fabric down here in LA and I nabbed it! I feel a copycat dress coming on…) I narrowed the wide end of the ties so they don’t come up as high on the side seam. I cut a 10-top-12-bottom as usual and I just took it in a little in the upper arm/armpit/upper bust area. I do wish that I had done my usual wrap top SBA by pinching out an inch or so along the neckline, since it does gape a bit when I slouch. Well, next time! I finished the neckline my usual way, by zigzagging clear elastic to the wrong side along the edge, then folding it under and twin needle topstitching. It’s by far my favorite v-neck finishing technique because it’s very easy and much more foolproof for me than a self fabric binding (and I sure hate cutting long skinny strips of fiddly stretchy rayon knit).

The back is not broken up by a midriff, and has a center back seam, both of which I thought I would be annoyed by but I’m not. If I ever make it without the tie belt, though, I would probably want to add a back midriff for balance and eliminate the seam, since the midriff would serve the same swayback-shaping purpose.

One last thing of note about this pattern – it may be the perfect knit dress pattern, but it’s far from the perfect knit instructions. As it has been extensively noted on PR (wow, I’m pretty sure I’m the last person on earth to make this dress), these instructions are like out of 1988. I mean, I am not slipstitching the midriff lining down over the skirt seam, thank you very much. And in what universe would this dress need a zipper? Honestly, I really only glanced at the instructions anyway, since I’d heard they were not great and I’ve assembled about a million of these type of dresses anyway. One thing I did notice was that the layout diagram told me to attach the two pieces of piece 8, the tie, together before cutting, but my tie pattern was all in one piece. I must have gotten a newer printing of the pattern tissue and an old instruction sheet. I was suspicious because I felt like the tie was a little short, but it’s like that on the pattern photo so I think I cut it the full length. (Not that you can see it in this busy print, but trust me that it’s on the short side.) I may make it a smidge longer next time.

If I have ever have enough of one fabric to make this pattern again, that is.

But it’s funny how after a mad rush to finish something for a deadline, I almost always fall into a slump of inactivity… I have completed a couple things, but a random cold sidetracked me from finishing (or, ahem, well, starting) my trousers before I was separated from my machine for a couple weeks working away from home. So to make up for my sad lack of posting in the last two weeks, pants or otherwise, here I present three garments in one post. Shocked? You should be. But probably just by the terrible, terrible pun I have committed in the post title. I apologise, but it had to be done.

Because, yes, these three knit dresses are all patterns I have made before! Also shocking, I’m sure, (well, mostly just to me) since I’m generally not a pattern-revisiter. Too many shiny new patterns out there! But for some reason, in January I pulled out three patterns I’d made before and took another stab at them.

Let’s start with Vogue 1194:

This was one of the first knit dress patterns I ever made, into maybe my first true-love-success! knit dress. I made it up in a nice ITY print from Gorgeous Fabrics for an anniversary dinner a couple years ago (almost exactly 2 years ago, since my anniversary is at the end of March), and I have worn it a ton since then. It’s my go-to cool-weather-dress-up dress. So when I was looking for a practical winter work dress to make from this super nice jersey I got at the FIDM store, I thought this pattern would be perfect. I mean, I didn’t want to screw up a great fabric on a pattern that didn’t work! So I went for it. And it worked, for the most part. I cut the same size as before (including cheater SBA – folding out length in the neckline), but somehow the elastic in the waist bands ended up tighter. Stiffer elastic? More careless with measuring? Both possible. It’s tight but still wearable, though since the front band is somehow much less wide than the dress front, it pulls and gathers the sides of the bodice a bit so it looks like there are more pleats than there are.

Also, I used the pockets on this version, omitted in the first one because my fabric was so light. The instructions for sewing them are really weird, but I went with it because, well, it must be like this for a reason, right? Wrong. They have you sew one pocket piece to the skirt front, understitch it, sew the other pocket piece to the first one, then sew the skirt sides, catching the back pocket piece while avoiding the front. Not necessary at all. I should have just done the usual sew-the-side-seams-including-around-the-pockets method. Because of the weird construction as well as the understitching stretching out the pocket seam on the front, the pockets gape and stick out a bit. Oh well. Another keeping-hands-in-pockets-at-all-times dress.

FInally, I think this pattern is better in a heavier, more drapey jersey. This fabric has the most wonderful soft and smooth hand, but it’s still on the light side so it poufs just slightly more than I’d like it to rather than falling flatteringly from the waistline. Still, it’s a solid pattern and I’ve already worn this version a bunch.

Next up, Butterick 5246:

I made my first one of these last winter out of a random cheapo jersey and I wear it all the time. It’s a really good casual dress to wear with leggings for a bike commute in cooler weather. One such day in January when wanted to wear it and it was dirty, it suddenly occurred to me that I should make another one (duh)! I had a thick, super stretchy striped jersey from Girl Charlee that I wasn’t sure what to do with, and equally suddenly it latched itself to this pattern in my mind. But when I washed the fabric, like several other striped knits I’ve gotten from them, sadly, the different colored stripes shrunk at different rates and I ended up with what looked basically like seersucker. That was still heavy and super stretchy. There was also almost not enough (it went from 2 yards of 60″ to like a yard and a half of 45  inch!) to make this pattern at all, but I did some of my best desperate pattern puzzling and barely got it all cut out. I made the sleeves as long as the fabric would allow, which was not very long, so I added bands to the sleeves to lengthen them a little. (The contrasting stripe direction was more about available fabric scraps than a design choice, but a happy necessity. The fabric is so stretchy in all directions that I didn’t need to worry about grainlines!) I did not line the bodice, instead finishing the neckline with a self binding strip.

Ultimately, though, this fabric proved a little too heavy for this pattern. The weight of the skirt pulls both the empire seam and the neckline lower than they should be. And because it’s so stretchy, even after taking it in on the sides a bunch, it still pulls away from my body at the underbust seam because of the weight of the center gathers (which makes it maybe the least flattering dress ever from the side). I wonder if going back in and sewing elastic to the seam allowance would pull it in a little? I may try it at some point, but for now I’m just wearing it as is. It’s more casual than I was envisioning, but the thick fabric is warm, anyway.

Finally, here’s Vogue 8511, a pattern for woven fabrics that I (quelle surprise!) made up in a knit:

I was inspired to pull this out when I saw a houndstooth doubleknit version pop up on PR, and I was reminded of a similar baby houndstooth doubleknit I had gotten from Fashion Fabrics Club eons ago that I didn’t know what to do with.

Again I just cut the size I had cut before (since my previous version was in a stretch poplin, and this fabric was a stable knit, they stretch about the same). Bonus to reusing patterns: you don’t have to cut through the pattern tissue when you cut your fabric (yes I cut out my pattern tissue. For commercial patterns that I get on super sale, who cares? Also I am lazy, in case you hadn’t noticed). I saved the center back seam for last, basting it first to be sure I could squeeze the dress on over my head, and success – no zipper necessary! I did sew the waist seam with a legit “stretch stitch”, the triple straight stitch, to make sure it didn’t pop with the stress of pulling it over my chest (luckily there isn’t much chest to strain it). I didn’t line the bodice, just turning the neckline under and topstitching to finish it.

I will say that this version has the same problem as the last version: the waist seam allowance is annoying. It wants to lay facing up because of the bulk from the skirt pleats, but then it’s visible slash creates unnecessary waistline bulk. This dress really wants a belt, I think, but none of my belts look good with this fabric. So I wore it without and tried to forget about the bulky waist seam. Just goes to show that I almost always prefer a midriff on my dresses!

So what did these three dresses show me about remaking patterns? Well, honestly, that I can see why I almost never do it. I have to say that I don’t like any of these dresses more (or even as much as) my original makes. Maybe it takes three tries at a pattern to get it perfect – the first to get you excited, the second to show you what you did wrong or need to fix about the pattern, so the third time’s the charm? Oh boy, I’m pretty sure I don’t have the patience for that.