Twinkle Sews Flapper Camisole

A couple of weeks ago I came across the book "Twinkle Sews" when I was buying presents from the Book Depository.  Tell you what, I'm in looooove!  I can't stop looking at the pictures. I have not been this excited about patterns in a long time.  The patterns are designed by Wenlan Chia, who sends her collections down the runway at New York Fashion Week.  You can see some of the designs in the book over at Hazelnut's blog.

When the big pattern companies put out their collections, I always head for the tops and blouses, hoping for something special and mostly leaving disappointed.  I don't know what it is, but I just don't look good in T-shirts or in collared blouses, which eliminates a lot out there.  My favourite shirts are raglan sleeved, and Wenlan has a whole section devoted to these.  There is another section on dropped shoulder blouses.  I sewed up one of the patterns in the spaghetti strap section, because I had recently fitted and made a Vogue camisole, which I used as a comparison so that I would not get held up with fit issues (I was excited...had to dive straight in and even interrupted the sewing of 15 purple princess dresses for my daughter's dance concert).

Mine looks rather different to the one in the book because of the fabrics I chose.  I'll put all the details in a pattern review, so head on over there  if you want to find out more about it.

oops...I forgot to mention the beads.  At first I tried sewing on beads that I just collected up from around the house (surprising how many there were), but then a non-sewing friend suggested that after going to all the effort of making the shirt, surely I could go to the bead shop and select matching beads...and whilst I was at it, perhaps I could learn to sew them on straight!  Well, I did go and choose beads, which is not my special talent, but I never got them straight.  Oh well.  The beads are needed to hold the inner strips along the neckline and over the straps.

The top is gorgeous to wear and feels all floaty because it is made of silk...and I love that it is a truly one-of-a kind top.  A big thanks to Wenlan Chia and her team for making these patterns available to us.

A little piece of sunshine yellow

This little top started out as Style "m" in girly style wardrobe.  It was supposed to be a dress, but during a lapse in concentration, I cut it off at the wrong line.  I reduced the fullness and used pin-tucks instead of gathers.  I was taking in the armholes across the front chest, as I think many children's patterns are too wide there, and in another concentration lapse, kept cutting at the bottom of the armholes...so now they are cut a tad low  ("I think I'll just wear this one at home Mum, I don't want people to see my underarms"..."Yeah?  What about all those singlet tops you get about in?").  I swapped the patch pocket for one of my own design, and now that I'm looking at the photos, I realise that I've sewn it on the wrong side.  In spite of all that kerfuffle, it is still a pretty cute little top.

The yellow seersucker fabric is from Tessuti's Surry Hills store.  It is a medium weight seersucker, which would probably look good in those Burda WOF seersucker jackets that crop up at regular intervals!  The yoke fabric is an Amy Butler fat quarter.

Quick Cotton Camisole

I had some large triangular scraps left over from cutting the bias strips for this dress....just perfect for making a bias-cut camisole.  I like to try out camisole patterns as they come along.  One day I'll get around to drafting just what I want.  In the meantime, this is Vogue 2941, which is a DKNY pattern.  It is pretty straight forward with just one piece for the front and one for the back.  I like the wide placement of the straps, but would prefer seaming under the bust.  Although I am wearing it with a skirt today, mostly, I think it will be for sleepwear.  I wasn't going to show it to  you at all, but it is the precursor to a more exciting project that I have coming up...stay tuned!

Spring Florals

For many, the Melbourne Cup is a day to dress up in your finest frock and sip champagne whilst watching a televised horse race.  I had no plans for the Melbourne Cup this year, but it was my first "free" day in a while, so I thought I would spend it making a frock whilst everyone else wore theirs.  Then yesterday, I got a last minute invite to lunch.  I was kinda attached to the idea of sewing this dress, so I started it last night and finished it this morning (well, almost, the facings still need to be stitched down), and was only 20 minutes late for lunch.

The fabric:  A very fine, floaty cotton from Gardams, in Brisbane.

The pattern:  Originally I had planned to make this fabric into a tunic-style dress with long sleeves, but I decided that the print was a bit too bold for that much coverage.  Prints are always a bit tricky, so I flicked through some old Vogue magazines for inspiration and found a simple style by Dries Van Noten, in his SS2007 collection.  He uses the most gorgeous prints in his collections, to great effect.  I drafted the pattern myself, though I think that there are similar styles in the pattern books.  His model wears the dress below her knees.  Mine is not that long, but I have a very deep hem, so I could lengthen it easily.  Mostly I will wear this dress a summer every-day dress.

I have a close-up of the strap detail below.  It is actually a double strap, with the green strap cut on the bias, only because I patching together scraps to get enough fabric.

First swimwear for the season

 

A weekend away with friends got me started on my swimwear for the season...I was perfectly happy wearing last year's stretched swimmers at Noosa, where nobody knows me, and swimming in the backyard with family allows me to wear the bikinis that don't quite make it to the public arena...but a weekend swimming with people I know had me sitting at the sewing machine.

The pattern:  This is the halter neck style from Stuart's swimwear Pattern School site, adjusted for my personal measurements.  I had been planning on sewing up some of the more adventurous styles this year, but I needed this pair in a hurry, so went with a pattern I had already used.

The fabric: is a nyon lycra from Tessuti, at their Surry Hills store, which they sourced from a leading Australian swimwear label.  It is a gorgeous fabric.  Small, busy prints can be tricky to use, because they don't allow the eye to settle anywhere, which can necessitate the used of strong design lines or edging / piping etc.  The clever thing about this fabric is that it is like a print over the top of a print....the colours flowers over the top of the brown / white flowers allow the eyes to travel over the garment without getting "lost"...so it can still be used for simple styles.

I used a lace elastic on the neckline and armholes.

I got the lining from Beach Bubble Swimwear, at a very reasonable price.  I stocked up on elastic from them at the same time.

Pants Fitting - the missing link??

I've just had a pants-fitting A-Ha! moment, and I want to capture it before it escapes my brain....

This week I bought "Fitting and Pattern Alteration" by Elizabeth Liechty, Judith Rasband and Della Pottberg-Steineckert.  I haven't had a good look at it yet, but last night I glanced through Chapter 6,  where it shows you how to alter the crotch curve on pants using your own body space, which you find by holding a flex-curve to yourself.  I already had a template of my body space (strange, but true), which I made up after reading the Threads articles on this topic.  The diagrams in Threads showed that I had  tilted pelvis, but did not really show how to correct for this.

Anyway, I thought I would follow the Liechty et al method and compare my body space to patterns that already fit me well (for the purposes of understanding the process, rather than to start with a pattern that doesn't fit and try to correct it).  I compared it to 2 patterns, my Alice & Olivia wide-legged pants and my Marfy close-fitting jeans.

Figure 1 is a mud-drawing of the body space sitting inside the Alica & Oliva pants.  It fits really nicely inside the crotch curve.  The only problem I have with these pants is strain on the CB seam below the waistband, and I guess I correct this by adjusting the slope of the CB Crotch seam. It also seems I have a slightly "receded pubic area", which is a new phrase to me!

Figure 2 is a mud-drawing of my body space inside the Marfy jeans and it shows that there is not enough room.  How can this be, when the jeans fit beautifully?  I came up with a few different possibilities

1.  The jeans are made up in a stretch denim.  True, but I got out the muslin, which was made in a woven, and it fits too.

2.  Jeans sit between the bum cheeks and not over the top of them.  Again, true, but doesn't seem to account for all the missing space.

3.  This body space theory has not been fully explained, because the crotch curve changes from being parallel to the body at the CF, perpendicular to the body through the lower crotch curve and back to parallel to the body.  So I put the muslin on, found the point where the fabric moves from parallel to perpendicular and compared that to the the shape of the bottom of the crotch curve.  Still not enough length.

And 4....stick with me...this is my A-Ha! moment.  The diagrams in this fitting book, and Threads, always show the pant front and back with the grain line vertical on the page.  But this is not how the fabric sits on the body, because the curved leg seam will put strain on the fabric in this region.  Not so much in wide-legged pants where the inner leg seam is fairly straight (and hence the Alice & Olivia scenario) and much more so in tight fitting pants.  So I slid the back pants piece around so that the leg seams on front and back sat next to each other.  Finally, the crotch curve matched my body space, except for the section where the jeans sit between the bum cheeks.  This makes sense (well, to me anyway) because jeans follow the bum curve to a much lower point than wide legged trousers, which will hang from further up the curve.

So, did anybody follow this?  What do you think? 

Japanese Girly Skirt

 

I have been longing to get hold of some of these beautifully photographed Japanese sewing books.  I am sorely tempted by "Pattern Magic", but thought I would ease in with "girly style wardrobe".

The styles in this book are timeless and simple.  I am not the world's fastest sewer.  I am not one of those people that can disappear into their sewing room and emerge triumphant several hours later with a completed garment.  I sew children's clothing when I need my sewing fix and don't have time to sew something for me.  From start to finish, including tracing the pattern and studying the instruction diagrams, this took me 2 hours.

 

You can see the bias binding waist ribbon tied in a bow at the back

The fabric:  A Japanese cotton, Mustard Blooms,  from Tessuti.  The fabric has a gorgeous texture, which you can see in the photo in the Tessuti on-line shop.  It is hard to tell, but the little flowers are pale pink and white, which makes for easy matching of t-shirts.

I used a pre-formed pink gingham bias trim, from a local quilting shop "The Tinkers Cart".  And why wouldn't you, when it is so cute?  I also bought it in blue and yellow.

The pattern:  Style "d" from girly style wardrobe.  Only, I used less pleats at the front of the skirt because I had a different pattern in mind when I bought the fabric and did not have quite enough fabric for this style.

Here are my tips for working with these patterns

• Open out the pattern sheet.  Have a look at it, then go and have a cup of tea.  There are a lot of lines.  They will still be there when you get back.
• You can find translations for the Japanese symbols on the web, but I found it was easier to think about the pattern pieces logically than to match symbols (see here).
• Seam allowances are not included.  The diagrams in the book show recommended seam allowances to be added to each pattern piece.  There is usually no seam allowance when you are finishing an edge with bias trim.
  
• Identify the pattern pieces you need by looking for the style letters.  A bodice piece may be used for several patterns, so it could be labelled with multiple letters.  I did this outside dance class, and some non-sewing people helped me find the pieces I needed, once they realised that I was not looking at house plans.
• On the pattern sheet, the front bodice is positioned above the front skirt, and the back bodice is positioned above the back skirt.  See?  Logical.  Fronts generally have a lower neckline than backs. 
• On the instruction diagrams, the big numbers indicate the order in which the steps are sewn.
• Children's sizes are generally selected on the height (given in cm in this book).  Because my daughter has little hips, I chose a pattern based on hip measurement and then added to the length.  I probably didn't need to add so much length because she likes to wear her skirts under her belly.
• There are lists in the instructions for how much elastic to buy etc.  It may be helpful to translate these symbols (see here).  Because I was custom-making for somebody, I just inserted the elastic and then adjusted it to fit, before sewing it in place.