Building Eloisa and Adrienne

Three new makes for the price (blog post) of one. This skirt and two tops were made in the last few weeks, and bring my Whole 30 fabric usage to 7.5 metres. 

This skirt is one I've been meaning to make. I've had both the fabric and the pattern for at least a couple of years. The fabric was bought at Pitt Trading when they still had a physical store, and is a wool twill.

The skirt is fairly simple in design. It's a 1933 skirt from the McCall's Archive Collection. What makes it stand out are the overlapping triangular yoke pieces and lowered box pleats, both accentuated with topstitching. It also has a raised waistband which sits just above the natural waist. The wool twill has a good body to it, so it holds the shape of the pleats very well.

I raised the hem by about an inch to make it a bit  more modern and wearable. It's still very much a 1930's skirt but in a way that feels vintage without becoming costumey. The topstitching at the corners and top of the pleats isn't quite perfectly aligned, but the lines in a grey just slightly darker look great.

The first top is an adaptation of the Eloisa pattern from Named Clothing's new Building the Pattern book. The book's six basic patterns each have multiple variations to play around with. For this top I used the upper front, back and lower front 1 each extended approximately 10cm, the puff sleeve and the neckband. The top was still slightly too short so I added a hem band which I don't entirely like the look of, but if I wear it tucked in like with this skirt it won't be seen. The batwing shape of the top looks nice tucked into a waistband.

The fabric is a charcoal merino jersey from The Fabric Store. It's lightweight with tiny textural pindot perforations, but the pindots do not make it seethrough. This top was sewn up entirely with my overlocker with the exception of the channels for inserting the elastic at the cuffs. The Fabric Store's merino is always lovely to work with and this was no exception. It moved through the machine smoothly, and the curved front yoke seam presses into shape easily giving a nice curved line. 

The second top is the Friday Pattern Company Adrienne Blouse. The fabric is a leopard print rayon jersey from Spotlight. As with the first I sewed it up almost entirely using my overlocker. However unlike the merino this fabric was not the most cooperative. It is a very soft and almost slinky fabric which makes it lovely to wear but also very slippy to work with. It was not always easy to get it to move neatly through the machine as it would slip to the left away from the blades. I had to hold the fabric at an angle to compensate for its movement.

The pattern is a very quick and easy make, and probably would be quicker and easier with a slightly more structured fabric. The hem is a bit wonky because it wouldn't go neatly through the overlocker and didn't even out even with pressing so the twin stitched hem isn't quite straight to compensate. If I make it again I'll probably slightly shorten the front neckband so that it sits flatter against the body. But the top itself, with its elasticated cuffs and shoulders, is a beautiful shape.

Overall, I'm very happy with all three of these garments. They each have little imperfections but they've turned out really well.

Winter's Rust Dress

 

It's cold in locked down Sydney, and my flat is very chilly. So I've been making warm clothes to have something comfortable to wear and also have something to do while stuck inside. This turtleneck dress in merino from The Fabric Store is a great addition to my winter wardrobe.

 A few weeks ago I came across the #whole30fabricchallenge, a challenge to try and use 30 yards (27.4 metres) before buying any new fabric. I have a lot in my stash, and given we are in lockdown due to Covid I have a lot of time to fill, so I'm going to try and give it a go. I'm not sure I'll get all the way through, and I don't think I'll do the rule of starting again if I buy new fabric, but I will get as far as I can. At least until my fabric stash is able to fit in the drawers it's meant to be stored in. With this dress I'm two metres into the challenge.

The pattern is a vintage Simplicity from 1974, Simplicity 5965 and is described as "designer fashion" although it doesn't say which designer. The pattern can be knee length or floor length for a fancier look. I don't tend to wear floor length gowns, so made the knee length version. My version is actually slightly shorter than the pattern's short version because I only had two metres of fabric and the pattern needed 2.15 metres. Where a lot of newer patterns have a lot of empty space on the cutting layout and can be squeezed into smaller pieces of fabric, this one did not have much spare space so I had to shorten the dress front and back pieces by about 5cm. But the pattern gives a generous 2 1/2 inches for the hem and I kept mine to 1.5cm so the finished length is about the same as the original pattern.

The fabric is a double faced merino from The Fabric Store in a deep rust. It is slightly more brown than I thought it was in the store, due to the lights in the back end of the store being slightly warmer than the clearer daylight closer to the windows at the front of the store. However this is a 1970s pattern, so the rust colour matches the era well. The fabric is double faced, so either side could have been the "right" side, but mostly it's thicker, warmer and has more stability. I chose to use the plainer side, as the other side had a very faint stripe which would have been hard to match well on this pattern, especially given fabric amount constraints. It likely wouldn't have been very noticeable, but I wanted to keep this dress looking simple to just have focus on the design lines.

The construction of the dress was quite simple as there are only five pattern pieces: two each for the front and back, two piece sleeves, and the collar. The collar is just slightly loose, so it stays high but doesn't cling. I'm not a fan of tight turtlenecks and skivvies so was a bit worried about how this one would feel, but this is very comfortable. The dress front is gathered slightly along the shoulder seams which gives a small bit of detail and interest while still keeping the simplicity of the dress. There is also a pattern piece for stays to stabilise the gathers on the front where the raglan sleeves join, for which I used bias binding. This was a bit of a deviation from the pattern as it meant I didn't press the seams open, but it keeps everything neat and there is no visible stitching of joining the stays to the sleeves. 

The pattern is a size 8, 31 1/2 inch bust and 24 inch waist and sits comfortably, with a neat fit but not clingy. The pattern has a centre front seam, which I often don't like but works well for this dress. Given it is a knit dress and relatively fitted to the waist, the centre front seam allows for some subtle shaping that wouldn't be possible if it was one piece cut on the fold. The dress would still work either way, but the centre front seam just makes it sit better and look that little bit fancier.

The dress closes with a zipper down the back and buttons for the collar. I was unsure exactly what buttons I wanted for this dress, whether I wanted something to closely match the fabric or have a contrast. I also needed to have at least three buttons for the neck to sit right (the pattern actually recommends 5 buttons) so I went through my button tins and pulled out a whole lot of different options and laid them on the dress to see which I liked best. I chose these vintage pearl buttons out of a tin I inherited from my grandma. They are simple buttons, but the cream colour both complements and stands out from the fabric in a way that works really well. The pattern suggested creating fabric loops for the buttons but the small size of these buttons made that difficult, so instead I've used black hat elastic.

The only thing I'm not entirely happy with is the zipper. I have a large collection of zippers, but didn't have any in shades of brown, deep red or dark tan which would have blended in to the fabric. Given Sydney is currently in a hard lockdown I can't go to a fabric or quilting shop to find a better zipper, and it's not worth ordering a single zipper as shipping would cost at least three times the price of a zipper. I looked through what I had to see which zipper might work and decided on this beige as it's neutral, but it isn't the best zipper installation so it shows more than I would like. I might try and see if I can press the fabric better to lie flatter against the zipper, or if it still annoys me when I'm able to go looking again I might replace the zipper with one in a better matching colour.

I'm very happy with how this dress turned out. It's comfortable, warm and has just a little bit of elegance. I'm certain it will get a lot of wear.

Amber and the Swing Coat

 It's been a long time since my last post. So much so that I've gone from a quintessential summer item to very wintery makes with nothing in between.

The jacket pattern is Simplicity 1319, which appears to now be out of print. It is a 1950s short swing coat with shawl collar. I made the longer length, although it still hits near the top of the hip. The fabric is a beautiful vintage wool I picked up at a Sydney Spoolettes fabric swap a few years back. It's very warm and has good structure and was relatively easy to work with. The lining is basic lightweight voile-weight cotton from my stash in pale baby pink. 

Overall, this pattern was reasonably good with only a few difficult elements. The way the shawl collar is constructed is designed to create pockets, with all the seams hidden inside. Both the lining and self fabric are folded over here, meaning there are four layers of fabric and the instructions for which pieces to fold which way were a bit confusing. I sewed one side what I thought was the right way but when I tried to turn it back the right way around it was twisted, so I had to unpick it, recheck and redo it to get it right. 

The biggest problem was with the length of the sleeves on the lining pieces. The instructions say the sleeve lining should be stitched to the seam allowance where the sleeve joins the cuff with the cuff then folded back in half and stitched down. But the sleeves of the lining piece are at least an inch too short to reach. Fortunately the cuffs are wide enough to fold in and stitch to the lining while still having part of the cuff visible, but it does mean the sleeves are a bit shorter. The pattern envelope shows the sleeves as being this slightly shorter length so I'm not sure if the problem was the illustration or the pattern pieces, but either way it didn't quite work how it was supposed to. 

The dress is the Named Patterns Amber Pinafore. The fabric is a viyella from The Sewing Basket in West Ryde, picked up on another Spoolettes outing. I've used viyella before and it's always been very soft, but this one is slightly stiffer and has a tendency to crease so requires a bit more ironing and effort to keep neat. I actually started making this dress a couple of years ago and never finished it, but pulled it out a few months back.

The waistline sits at just above the natural waist, with the deep v-necked bodice. The bodice pieces are all fully self-lined, but I left the skirt unlined as I didn't have enough of the fabric and didn't want to use a different fabric and possibly change the drape.

The back of the dress is racerback shape and does up with a buckle, but the fabric is prone to fraying so I only installed one eyelet. Only one is needed as it needs to be in the right place for the dress to sit properly and any more eyelets would just be cosmetic. Still, I would have liked to include a few more if the fabric was more stable and I was confident it wouldn't come apart.

The bodice being fully lined meant I was able to play around with how I wanted the check to sit, whether to have the centre front on the straight grain or on the bias. I decided the straight grain looked better, with the horizontal lines matching up more evenly. It also matches well to the skirt, which is approximately a half circle with the lines at the centre of the skirt matching the centre of the bodice and then curving with the bust seams.

I like the shape of the bodice pieces, but they do gape a bit at the sides. I initially thought I might have stitched them in the wrong way around (with the side edges in the centre front and vice versa), but when I tried changing them over the gaped more so I changed them back. I think if I trimmed the side edges to be shorter they would sit flatter, but it's a relatively minor issue and I decided it would take too much unstitching to be worth it to fix.

Overall I'm happy with both of these makes, despite a couple of small setbacks. I've worn the jacket several times already and found it a very good weight for transseasonal Sydney. The dress is something that can probably get wear through much of the year. 

The Tidal Cardigan

This is my first proper piece of knitting! 
Late in June, after over three months of working from home and with my flat feeling very cold, I decided to try and learn to knit. As a leftie I'd tried to learn to knit a few times before but had only been taught by right handers which just didn't work very well. So I looked on YouTube for a tutorial and found this one from Noble Knits. It's very clear and easy to follow, and I found surprisingly that knitting wasn't too hard once I watched a left hander do it!  

First I knitted some simple squares, then a scarf and beanie just to get the hang of it. But part of why I'd wanted to knit is my flat is extremely cold, so I wanted to make myself some warm woollens. So I started looking for some free patterns with chunkier wool, so it wouldn't be too hard or take too long to make. I also didn't want to spend a lot, so went to Spotlight to see what I could find. The yarn is Moda Vera Mawson, a 50% acrylic, 25% alpaca, 25% wool blend. It's soft and warm and very slightly fuzzy. The colours are denim and peach, although the peach is closer to a washed-out burnt orange.

I was originally planning to make a jumper and had downloaded some patterns that were right for the yarn I bought, but then I decided I don't have enough warm cardigans, so I searched for a cardigan pattern. I'd already bought two colours, so was looking for a two tone pattern. Unfortunately I couldn't find one for the right needle size, so instead I did the very sensible thing when completely new to knitting and combined two patterns: the Berroco Estuary and Berroco Clem, using the Estuary for the pattern and the Clem for how many stitches to cast on.

Knitting the cardigan itself was pretty basic as it's just basic ribbing and stocking stitch, with simple decreasing and increasing for the different pieces. It took me a few weeks to knit, but was mostly straightforward. I did make a few errors and have to redo some sections, one side I accidentally made too long before changing colour and had to undo several rows. Then on the right sleeve I ran just short of orange and had to start blue a row early. Fortunately because it is a slouchy cardigan it doesn't matter too much and isn't too noticeable.

Making buttonholes was a little more daunting and the instructions in the pattern didn't really explain it at all. So I looked at a few more YouTube videos of different ways to knit buttonholes. I did eyelet buttonholes which the pattern asked for. Because my buttons are large I was initially unsure they would be large enough, but surprisingly they do stretch wide enough for the buttons to fit through. The buttons are dark wood, and stitched on with topstitching thread.

I blocked each pattern piece to set the size. The sleeves ended up longer than expected after blocking, even thought I'd measured the length while making them. At first I was slightly annoyed by that but once I stitched it together I liked the extra length. I feel that it adds to the slouchy cozy warmth of the cardigan. I often like to pull the sleeves of my jumpers and cardigans down over my hands, so this cardigan just already has the sleeves pre-stretched.

I'm incredibly happy with how well this cardigan turned out. When I'd previously tried to learn to knit it didn't work well at all - my stitches were uneven, twisted and tension far too tight. But this is even and neat and has a great slouchy fit. I've been wearing it regularly for most of the last month.

The Out-Of-Office Work Dress

This dress was meant to be a new office-appropriate winter dress for resuming normal work. But we're still working from home for the foreseeable future, so instead it's office-appropriate dressing for my desk in my lounge room at home.

The lovely fabric is from The Fabric Store, and was a remnant I picked up last winter. The fabric is double sided orange and ruby, so it obviously needed a pattern that would show both. The orange side is merino, the ruby is nylon. It's a stable knit, so it's very easy to work with and maintains its shape very well.

I had initially been thinking of making a 1960s mod-style dress with contrasting bands at the neckline, waist, sleeve bands and hem, but I couldn't find a pattern that matched the image in my head. As the fabric is a remnant piece I had a limited amount of fabric, so I was a bit unsure about coming up with a dress without a pattern. So I decided to do some image searching for two tone dresses for inspiration, and found a few wrap dresses that looked really great.

After looking through different patterns, I found one that I thought would work well in two colours. The pattern is a Nancy Zieman wrap dress for McCalls, M7893. This is version A with an asymmetrical hem but with the longer sleeves of version B. The two sides of the asymmetrical hem are designed to reach a neat point, but as soon as you stop standing perfectly still they do move out of place.

While the dress is two toned, the pattern isn't. The back piece in the pattern is cut on the fold, rather than as two pieces. Cutting the back as two pieces was easy enough, but making sure I laid out the left and right fronts and each sleeve correctly so all the left side would be orange and the right side red took a bit more care. I also used matching threads for each side, changing over when I reached the centre back.

 It's unfortunate this dress isn't quite getting the wears I intended for it this year because I really like it. I'm still wearing it a bit, but it's not really an at home dress. Luckily the fabric is lovely and great quality, so even if the weather is starting to warm up now, there will be many other winters for it to be worn.

Ruska Jumper Dress

Another new make that's been in my wardrobe getting worn for more than a month. It has already been getting a reasonable amount of wear, and is comfortable for working from home while still being both relaxed and presentable for video meetings. 

This is the Ruska Knot Dress from Named Patterns' book, Breaking the Pattern. It's a great pattern book, with lots of options for each pattern and some potential for mixing and matching across patterns. My version is the straight knot dress but with the longer sleeves. 

The dress has a double front. The under dress is fitted and cut in one piece, while the knot overlay is cut in two pieces, stitched together down the front until it reaches the ties. It's connected in together along the seams, which means taking care to ensure no layers slip out of place, especially when connecting the sleeves and neckband. 

The fabric is a jumper knit from My Hung Fabrics. It's a lovely baby pink and charcoal mix - it definitely looks more pink in reality than in the photographs. It's quite soft and stretchy, but the ribbed fabric holds its shape well enough to work for the pattern. It's reversible, so there's no worry about the "wrong" side showing on the knot section. 

Unfortunately the fabric was absolutely terrible to work with. It falls apart and frays very easily, which means it had to be overlocked. But at the same time all the bits of fluff coming off got caught in the overlocker, almost clogging it. A couple of times on the longer seams I had to use tweezers to remove pieces of  thread caught behind the bottom blade. Once I finished sewing the dress I completely opened both the sewing machine and overlocker up in order to give them a thorough cleanout.

This dress is very comfy and cosy while still looking put together, very much a secret pyjamas pattern. Especially made out of this knit, it really does feel like a giant fancy looking jumper. And a giant fancy looking jumper is always great to wear.

Clear Sky Princess Coat

This coat has been a long time coming. I made my first winter coat back in 2006, when I had minimal experience and had never attempted anything at all comparable in terms of difficulty. It turned out pretty well and I have worn it ever since, but there were errors that I noticed more and more as I got better at sewing - the sleeve is caught slightly, the hem is not very neat, the thread I chose doesn't quite match the fabric, it's not quite warm enough. But making a coat was such a big task and battle with my machine that I put off making another one for a long time.

This coat is made with an Australiam Home Journal pattern that looks to be from the mid-to-late 1950s. Unfortunately Home Journal patterns aren't dated so I can know for sure. The coat has princess seams, a round collar and full-ish skirt. The sleeveheads are fitted, but the sleeves are slightly gathered at the cuffs. I've had the pattern for a few years, but had been daunted about making a new coat. I also wanted to make sure I found the right fabric to use. It needed to be thicker than my older coat, but also in a nice colour - just because it's winter doesn't mean coats have to be muted and dark colours. Wool is normally pretty expensive, too, so I wanted to be very sure and ready before I bought (and potentially ruined) pricey fabric.

I found this wool at The Fabric Store in June. It's thick and warm, and at $42 was surprisingly cheap for wool coating. I loved the crisp winter sky colour, and the fact that it isn't a flat blue. If you look closely, you can see that it's a yarn dyed fabric with some variation from a light blue through to a grey. There's also a bit of pinky grey in the fabric according to all the fluff I cleaned out of my machines. The differences aren't large, but enough to give it some more depth.

Being a vintage pattern, it came in only the one size and did not include seam allowance. Markings on the pattern pieces are almost non-existent, so I had to make sure I paid close attention. I kept the fabric pinned to the pattern pieces until I needed to sew them to make sure I didn't get mixed up. I made only one change to the pattern, lengthening the sleeves as the original is bracelet length. I added about 3 centimetres, so they are long enough to keep my wrists warm but not too long to bunch up on my hands.

It took a long time to get this coat finished, partly because I took a three week break in the middle of making it. I'd been following the instructions closely, but vintage patterns don't give much detail, and no illustrations of the steps. When I got to the cuffs, the instructions just made no sense at all. The weather wasn't cold despite it being winter, so there wasn't a need to get a warm coat finished quickly, so I put it to the side. I reread the instructions every few days but it never made any more sense, so I didn't do any more work on it until the weather was predicted to turn cold again.

In the end I ignored the instructions for the cuffs and just worked it out for myself. They're probably the least neat part of the coat and might have been better if I'd followed the instructions, but I didn't want to run the risk of making a mistake. They still look fine, and I think anything I did to try and 'fix' them would probably end up looking more uneven, so I will just leave them be. And apart from the cuffs it was a smooth - if slow - sew.

Originally I was planning to use a different lining for this coat. I have some vintage 1950s lining with orange and blue roses that perfectly match the wool. Unfortunately, the piece was too small. I tried any and all pattern placements but simply couldn't get them to fit. Luckily I also had this cream and black polkadot lining in my stash, and the piece was big enough for the coat. The polkadots also match the buttons better than the floral lining would have, so I got over my disappointment of not being able to use it this time.

The buttons are also vintage, although I'm not certain when they're from. I found them at Rozelle markets about five years ago. I decided to do snaps rather than buttonholes because the thick wool was hard enough to sew seams, let alone doing buttonholes. I didn't want to run the risk of ruining expensive wool when I could just as easily have decorative buttons and snaps. Hand sewing on eight buttons and snaps did take a lot of time, but I'm happy with the neatness of the end result.

All seams and facings are overlocked to stop fraying. I stitched the princess seams down flat to keep them neat and reduce bulk. Stitching the seams down also accentuates the shape of the seam lines. The side seams aren't stitched down, however, because I added in pockets. In terms of time, there's probably as many hours of work hand sewing as there is machine. The eight buttons and snaps are sewn by hand, as are the facings and cuffs. I considered machine sewing the hem but decided to hand sew that too to keep ot neat.

I am extremely happy with how this coat turned out. It definitely shows the benefit of all the experience I have in the last 13 years in the quality of the stitching and attention to detail. But my machine still wasn't very happy with me making this, so I suspect it will be another 13 years before I make a third winter coat.