Jersey basics

Just a quick post to show my progress so far on my Autumn Sew-Along. It's a bit slow as I had a flying visit to the UK at the beginning of October (Sussex-London-Reading-Cardiff in six days...), and my sewing room is currently mostly packed away as my mum is staying with us for a couple of weeks whilst her bathroom is being redone, so the slow progress is likely to continue until the end of October. I do plan to do some pattern tracing whilst she's here (and maybe cut fabric), but actual sewing time will be a bit limited. At least with my plan I know exactly what I want to prepare!

First up is another drape-front cardi - my second version of this is one of my favourites, so it made sense to make another. This is made from a super-lightweight rayon sweater knit (possibly a rayon blend), and is really really really soft. I didn't have a matching grey thread handy, so instead of hemming it around the edge and on the sleeves, I used the rolled hem on my serger.

This attempt at a rolled hem turned out way better than previous tries, mainly because I realised my clever lazy trick of just unthreading the left needle rather than removing it actually meant that it interfered with the the action of the loopers, meaning the hem had a row of little thread loops along one side. Doh. The shoulders and back neckline are reinforced with fusible bias tape, plus top-stitching along the back neckline, and the corner points of the collar and front piece are reinforced with small squares of fusible tricot.

The second thing to show is a boxy slightly cropped top. This is a duplicate of one of my favourite RTW tops, and I made it in this blue slub rayon as a trial to test my pattern. It's actually turned out very wearable (although it's changed shape ever so slightly as I hadn't pre-washed the fabric, but I was expecting this to happen). The hem is level, despite it looking wonky in the photos.

I finished the sleeves and hem with a narrow twin needle, and also used this to add the sweatshirt "V" at the front neckline. There's a couple of missed stitches on the V (and my stay-stitching wasn't entirely within the neckline seam allowance) but as it's a casual top and a trial, I'm not terribly fussed. I might try stitching over tissue or tear-away stabiliser next time as a single layer of such lightweight fabric is a bit prone to doing weird things.

So, two items done, neither very exciting, but both extremely useful and already worn several times! I've also made some progress on a couple of knitting projects, but I'll save those for another post when I've taken some photos of them!

Leopard surplice dress

So, another jersey dress - QUICK! BEFORE THE SUMMER ENDS! Hang on, did the summer begin??! This is another self-drafted jobbie, but more experimental than the previous stripy one, so involved a lot of unpicking and hacking.

Pattern description

Dress with surplice bodice with pleats, cut-on cap sleeves and A-line skirt with gathering at the front.

Fabric used

Medium-weight jersey, I think a rayon-spandex mix. In a rather understated print and colour.

Did it look like the sketch/idea when you were done?

Not really. I wanted elegant pleats in both the bodice and skirt, draping diagonally out from the waist. Well, it didn't look like that. No pictures, sorry, it just looked awful and I needed to IMMEDIATELY get the seam ripper out as it was offending my eyes. I think this sort of thing needs to be drafted by draping to see how it hangs (especially with a knit, which is unpredictable in how it drapes and stretches), but I was just doing it on the flat pattern. It ended up with the front bodice being way too long and loose, and the pleats on the front of the skirt somehow both hugging my belly and blousing over it. Nice. In the end the pleats were much less pronounced and the skirt became basically an A-line. At least I kept the surplice front!

Drafting details

This was drafted from my stretch block, with the bodice overlap having pleats at the waist, and the underlap being plain. The pleats in the skirt ended up being eliminated, but a bit of extra ease was added by a little bit of gathering at the centre front waist of the skirt.

Construction details

This was pretty much all sewn on my serger, with a bit of twin-needling thrown in. I made some bad judgements with my choices to stabilise the neckline, but I blame that on, erm, the hot weather. No, more likely the wine. The back neck was stabilised with bias tape, which meant it's not stretchy at at (normally I would have added a T-shirt style binding to this part). For the front overlaps, in a moment of madness, i decided to use clear elastic. Or to give it its full title Evil Elastic Of Doom. Do I have a crappy batch of elastic, or is it all lies that say you can stretch clear elastic as you sew and it'll rebound and gather up what you've just sewn? If I stretch it when sewing, it just seems to become permanently stretched out and ripply. Meaning using it in an edging is effectively a more annoying and bulky (if stretchy) way of interfacing the edge. What am I doing wrong?!

Anyway, moving on, the neckline, sleeve hems and skirt hem are all finished with a twin-needle, and I also added narrow (normal) elastic to the waistline seam for support, zig-zagging it to the seam allowance after serging the seam. I also made a tie-belt from the same fabric, although I've actually been wearing the dress with a plain black belt.

Would you sew it again?

Hmm, maybe. It needs rather a lot of refining to get to the vision I had of it. I might re-start with either a commercial pattern, or by draping (although the latter means I need to pad Wilma to mimic my shape a bit better). I do really like this style of dress on me, so it's probably worth persevering with. I think the pleats would be more flattering with the excess going into the side seams rather than the waist seam, so I will try this next time.

Conclusion

Although this didn't turn out as planned, and despite being rather hacked together in the end, I have actually been wearing this a fair amount. I really like this fabric, it holds up well to wearing and washing and is comfortable to wear. I'm taking it as a learning experience!

PS A word about the photos... I've been trying to take my photos in some more interesting places. These were taken on the way to an ENORMOUS brunch. The first lot were taken by some of the cool graffiti near the river, which include most of the best ones. But then I got worried that this meant something really rude in French, so I took some more in front of a lovely ivy-covered wall, although I ended up having a sour face in most of the second set because it stank of piss. But a pretty backdrop! Oh the sacrifices for art.

Stripy T-shirt dress

Well hello there strangers, long time no see... Isn't it scary how quickly the last couple of months have gone by? Or is that just me? I actually have quite a few finished makes to blog about, but I've not really been enjoying having my photo taken lately, and blog posts without photos aren't that exciting. However, I did get a few pictures of me in a very recent make during our Sunday afternoon stroll last weekend, so I'll start with that one!

Pattern description

T-shirt dress with cut-on cap sleeves and A-line skirt.

Fabric used

Rayon-spandex knit from Fabric.com. This stuff is sooooo soft and not too lightweight, so this very much falls in the category of secret pyjamas!

Did it look like the sketch/idea when you were done?

I've been in need of a few basic-ish jersey dresses as my favourites are starting to wear out a bit. This turned out pretty much exactly how I hoped.

Drafting details

This is based on a cap-sleeve T-shirt I made a while back. I refined the fit by raising the front neckline and lowering the back neckline, taking in the back at the waist, and curving the shoulder/sleeve seam down after the shoulder point to narrow the sleeves. To make it into a dress, I simply extended the front and back pieces downwards and outwards from just above the waist line.

Construction details

I stabilised the shoulders with fusible tape (for some reason straight grain not bias, so they're a little weird and stiff), and all the seams are sewn by serger. (I only had two cones of navy, so I used these in the left needle and lower looper so that any visible thread from the right side would blend in, using an off-white for the other two threads.)

The neckline is my usual T-shirt type binding with topstitching, and the sleeve and skirt hems are finished with a twin needle. I've finally worked out how to stop tunnelling with the twin needle (at least on knits that aren't super lightweight) - take the tension reeeeeeaaaaaaally low. Like the other end of the tension dial low. The only problem with this is that the back doesn't look so neat, but I think this is a trade-off that I'll have to make, at least until I get my pressie of a coverstitch machine (hint, hint, Mr Dibulous...). The belt is simply a long thin rectangle with two sides sewn up, turned right side out, and the remaining short end slipstitched shut.

I did attempt to match the stripes at the side seams, although as I couldn't be faffed with basting the seams before sewing them on the serger, the matching isn't perfect, but is plenty good enough for this sort of quick make.

Would you sew it again?

Yep, I'm definitely going to be sewing up a couple more versions of this dress. I might add a bit more at the front waist and hip as it does cling a little to my belly (no, I'm not pregnant, that's just a food baby...), but other than that I'm pretty pleased with it.

Conclusion

This is a good "transitional" piece (ooh, get me, I sound like Anna Wintour) with the cap sleeves, and can be layered with tights or leggings now it's getting a bit cooler (not that it got particularly warm this summer...). A very handy dress that has already been worn many times since finishing it.

As a bit of an aside about the photos, the ones on the bridge show where the Rhône and the Arve rivers meet, and you can see the difference in colour (the Rhône is clear after travelling through Lac Léman, whereas the Arve is very silty). On a day when the rivers are a bit higher, you get cool swirling patterns as they mix. The stroll took us through the "zoo" near ours, hence the ibex in the other photos. Ibex!

Split sleeves from Christmas dress

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Trena asked if I could share how I drafted the sleeves for my Christmas dress, so here it is! This dress was made super quickly as a bit of an experiment, so the drafting was rather rough and ready... Rather than redoing the draft to show the steps, I've done a pretty picture to show the main steps!

The red outline shows the original sleeve shape (after my adjustments for forward shoulder, and removing the ease), plus the "centre" line, which is dropped from the shoulder point. I decided how much to have the pieces overlap and marked these lines parallel to the centre line (shown in grey), then drew in the curves for the new shape (shown in blue). After that, it was simply a matter of tracing off the two sides, with balance points marked, and adding seam allowances.

You'll notice that I ended up with two pieces. This is because I decided to shape the underarm seam slightly. This was really completely pointless (and possibly contributed to the halves pulling apart too much when wearing the dress) - I would recommend just putting the two pieces together at the underarm seam (remember to mark this as a balance point on the pattern piece!) and cutting the sleeve as one piece. I would also probably increase the overlap. I think these would also look nice with a pleat or gathering in the overlap to add a bit of drama to the shape.

Hope this is helpful!

A quick top and two quick dresses

A couple of things from the end of 2013 to catch up on, all quick makes.

Sweater-knit batwing top

I'd been fiddling around with a skirt that ended up being a time-consuming wadder, so I wanted something quick and palate-cleansing, and a knit top always fits that bill. I also like doing this sort of quick thing between longer projects as I'm trying to replace my RTW basic tops with nicer and better fitting self-made ones. This was super simple: just the sleeves from a Burda dress frankensteined onto my stretch block, with a low-ish round neckline.

This is made from a rayon-poly sweater-knit from Fabric.com. The neckline is stabilised with fusible bias tape, and finished with a strip of self fabric turned to the inside and topstitched (the same way a bias facing would be applied). This looks nice, but was a bit fiddly with this fabric as it doesn't press terribly well, so needed basting, which sort of defeats the purpose of a quick top... The sleeves and hem are finished with a three-step zig-zag. You can see me wearing this top in the picture from when I met Melissa.

Doubleknit dresses

These were whipped up before going back to the UK in November, with the intention of being warm and comfy travelling outfits. The bodice is based on the Burda peplum cardie-jacket, and the skirt is just a simple A-line. I left the darts in the back of the skirt, but used my usual method for a dart-free bodice. I think in this heavier and less stretchy fabric it would have been better to add bust darts.

The shoulders in both are reinforced with grosgrain tape and the waistband with clear elastic. I've actually replaced the clear elastic with regular elastic in the grey dress - it's a slightly lighter weight fabric and the clear elastic just made it look ripply and horrid. The neckline is stabilised with fusible bias tape and has a (purchased) bias facing, which is finished by hand to avoid visible stitches on the right side. I decided to finish the sleeves and hem by hand as well, to keep the look nice and clean.

I think the black one works better than the grey one, there's something about the latter that just seems a bit frumpy. I'm trying to put my finger on it so I can change it - I think I will make a matching tie-belt to soften it a bit, and possibly shorten it a bit. I haven't actually worn these as much as I thought I would. One reason is that they could really do with having pockets, and the other is that they don't look very good with the winter coat I have. It's an "egg"-shaped one (as Burda like to describe it), so anything that's not slim at the bottom gets all bunched up. Maybe time to make a winter coat...?

Burda Challenge

Err, yeah. I got stuck on November's issue. There were several things in there that I liked well enough, but nothing I really needed enough to want to spend time on. And then I felt I couldn't do December's until I'd done November's, and then Christmas came along and blah blah blah... So, November still hasn't been done (although I did cut out the ponte trousers: disaster), but I've made December's. A full review coming up, but here's a sneak preview: