Averting Disaster in a Denim DuBarry

Getting this made was a bit of a saga. It's meant to be a transseasonal piece, but it's only now been finished, at the end of October. The pattern is early 1940s, but the denim and shortened hem takes it via the 1970s.

The pattern is one I bought at a vintage fair about four years ago, but have been a bit scared to use. It's DuBarry 5265, and it's extremely elegant. DuBarry was a pattern brand produced by Simplicity in the 1930s-40s, and they're hard to find and often pricey. This is the only one I own, and it's from 1942, so I'd been saving it until I found something I really wanted to sew it with. And so obviously denim was the perfect match for a classy 1940s pattern. I kind of think that the designers of the DuBarry patterns might be a bit horrified at making a dress out of - gasp! - denim, but I'm really happy with the choice of fabric.

I've been scared of working with denim for years. I've used almost every other fabric happily, even tricky fabrics like lace, lycra, velvet, and sequins with no problems. But denim? I've taken up jeans once or twice and it was a horrible experience. But I decided I wanted to conquer that fear and be able to use denim myself. Seeing lots of other sewing bloggers who've made their own jeans, denim jackets, etc, I wanted to join in the fun.

This lightweight denim is from Spotlight. I chose it because of the criss-crossed diamond/grid pattern and its nice dark wash. I thought that I'd make the diamonds match up nicely along the princess seams of the coat dress, and it would look fantatic. Well, after much frustration folding the fabric this way and that, I discovered that the grid lines are completely uneven! It was absolutely impossible to fold the fabric in a way that would let me get even the same pieces to have matching lines, let alone matching each piece's seams to its neighbouring piece. Coupled with the fabric being cut on a slight diagonal and undersized by the sales assistant, fitting the pattern pieces on the fabric was going to be difficult.

And then I compounded it all by for some stupid reason cutting out four side back pieces, and missing the centre front pieces. I didn't have enough fabric left over for the centre front pieces, and the pattern piece wouldn't fit properly on the extra side back pieces, so I was a bit stuck. And I still hadn't cut out the front facings, either, or the sleeves.  I didn't want to trek back to Spotlight just to get another foot of the fabric, so I looked at the extra side back pieces as well as the scrappy bits of fabric I had left to see what I could do. I had one rectangular piece about 60cm long left, which was good for the sleeves. Because that piece was smaller, those are probably the only part of the dress where the gridlines of the two sides actually match.

The centre front and front facings were going to be harder. I couldn't fit either pattern piece completely on the side back pieces, and I didn't have any offcuts large enough for them, either. In the end I realised I simply didn't have enough of the denim to cut all four pieces out completely. The facings were going to have to be at least partly in another fabric. Because the top of the facings is visible as part of the collar, I wanted them to be denim, but the rest of it could be in another fabric. So I focused first on the centre front pieces. They were going to have to be cut as two halves, joined at the waistline. So I marked the waistline on my pattern piece, and then cut the top halves out on my extra side back pieces, and the bottom halves on some of the leftover denim. I was then able to use the last bits of the extra side back pieces to cut out just enough of the front facings for the collar and top button - genuinely the exact minimum fabric I needed. It pays to be economical with pattern placement and fabric use! For the rest of the facings I was planning to be sensible and use something neutral, but going through my box of leftover fabric I found this one near the top and just couldn't resist. But pink and blue flowers on a bright yellow background is just so much better than navy or black cotton.

I have to confess that when I cut out this dress I didn't actually own jeans needles. I had some new size 14 and 16 needles, and the denim is lightweight, so I thought I'd give it a shot with them.
No. Bad idea.
It worked okay to join the two centre front pieces, but when I tried to do a seam my thread broke after about 10cm. The pattern does say that the dress is meant to hang basted (or, in my case, pinned) together for a minimum of 24 hours so that the hem can settle. It ended up being closer to 24 days by the time I'd bought jeans needles, made mum's dress, and was able to get back to this. But once I had the jeans needles, it sewed up like a dream. I'm sure those of you who've sewn with denim before are rolling your eyes at my bad sewing laziness, but at least I've now been converted to jeans needles.

I made a couple of changes to the pattern. As with all early 1940s patterns, the hem for this coat dress was originally below the knees. It's not really a length I like, not that I had enough fabric for it, anyway. So I shortened the hem to finish just above the knee, which makes it more wearable and fresh. I also decided on elbow length sleeves, rather than the short or long sleeve options of the pattern. The sleeves are also slightly narrowed in, because the original sleeves are gathered at the cuff. The sleeves also have fairly full sleeve heads which I was worried would be too puffy, but they're actually not all that big. But they do allow full movement in all directions with no pulling, which not all dress patterns do.

All the seams are once again French seams. Given this is a coat dress (and one that also works well as a coat), I wanted the seams to have a more polished finish, and I think the French seams do that. Of course it added a lot to the time it took to make the dress, and a bit of thought to the order I needed to do the seams in, but the final look is just right. The facings and hem are hand stitched, which took hours. In total there's got to be more than 20 hourse of sewing - both machine and hand - in this dress.

For the buttons, I decided that I wanted something that suited the denim more than that 1940s. This dress is basically vintage-modern, rather than vintage-costume, so I didn't think about matching the era. I briefly thought about metal buttons like jeans and denim jackets have, but decided they'd stand out too much, rather than blending in to the dress. So my next thought was dark wood. I didn't own any, so next time I was in the city I had a look in Lincraft at their button selection. They had some wood buttons, but they were all either too small, or too big, or too light. Then I spotted these coconut shell ones. I've actually used the back, rather than the lighter front, but they were just the colour and feel I wanted.

It's a coat dress, but making it with denim it really does work as both a coat and a dress. And yes, I am wearing it here with jeans so it is double denim - but at least they're maroon leopard print skinny jeans.

The wildly varying light levels in the photos are because of the weather. After storms yesterday and morning showers, I managed to catch a break in the rain, so the sun was sometimes out, sometimes behind the clouds, pretty much changing between every shot.

This took a long time and a lot of work to make, but final product does, I think, make up for the time and stress. And although it's a coat dress, it works as both a coat and a dress, so two items for the price of one! But definitely the effort of five.

Mum's Escher-esque Print Dress

Most of my sewing is selfish sewing. I started sewing to make things I wanted to wear because I found what was in shops boring or expensive, and have pretty much kept to making things just for me. But this year I've made a couple of things for others. This is the first one to make it on to my blog: a dress for my mum.

This fabric, as with that used for my beach romper and casual pants was bought in Benalla years ago when I was doing fieldwork there. I bought it even though I knew the colour really wasn't me - bright orangey-tomato red doesn't particularly work with my paleness - but the print, which looks like some sort of Op-Art/Escher mix is just amazing. And at $5 a metre, too hard to resist, so I bought some.

The fabric was always going to work best on my mum. Her skin tone, hair, and eyes really suit reds and oranges. But it's taken me a long time to get around to making this dress for her - the fabric was even sitting out near my machine for a good three months before getting started on making it. Part of that was choosing the right pattern. Obviously I wanted to keep the seam and dart lines to a minimum so they didn't distract from or mess up the print. That meant choosing a simple shift dress, but surprisingly I don't have many of those, and none that were quite what I wanted. In the end I used Simplicity 7380, a vintage 1967 pattern, as a base and made some changes.

What I liked about Simplicity 7380 as a pattern were the double darts, with both a normal bust dart and French darts, which give just a little bit of extra shaping while remaining relatively unstructured. But the pattern is also high-necked and with sleeves, neither of which I wanted. Changing the neckline was simple, I just cut the piece lower in the front, but for the armholes I wanted little fake cap sleeves. To do that, I used my French curve to taper the shoulder pieces out and down, and redrafted the armscye from the side seam up to the new shoulder seam. The pattern was also a smaller size than needed, so I did the terribly lazy upsizing by simply placing the two pattern pieces about an inch back from the fold and cutting it out like that. Horribly bad practice, I know, but it worked, so all's fine, right?

Another reason it took a while to get around to making this dress was that the fabric frays a lot. It's fairly structured with a thick but loose weave (a cotton duck, maybe?), so I definitely had to do something to stop it fraying. I decided the best option was to cover the seams in bias binding. And for the zipper, I double folded the fabric so that the raw edge is hidden inside the stitching. It meant it took longer to make this dress than it would have otherwise, but it should also mean it's wearable for longer and doesn't need repairs. And it means the insides look much prettier, too. The arm and neck facings and hem were also hand sewn so there would be no visible stitching distracting from the print of the fabric, to keep the clean lines.

I also did my best to try and pattern match the print when putting this together. I couldn't quite get it perfect to the point of being invisible, but I at least made sure the horizontal lines matched up for the back seam and the side seams below the darts. If I'd had more fabric I might have been able to match with the diagonal lines and triangles as well, but I didn't. And it would have been quite a bit of extra effort for something only noticeable if you look really closely. But the horizontal lines did come in handy for the hem - I didn't have to do any measuring, I could just fold with the line and knew it would come out evenly.

This dress was a simple make, even with the resizing and adjustments. And I'm really glad that I was able to put this fabric to good use, in making a dress in a style and print that suits my mum so well.

The Retro Cord Skirt

So it's spring in Sydney, and my plan has been to make a few transseasonal pieces, but the weather isn't agreeing with me. It's decided to go straight into summer, with the temperature being above 35°C since Saturday. So if the warm weather keeps up I might not get that many opportunities to wear this corduroy skirt. It's not exactly heavy, but it's not light or airy, either. Still, I at least got these photos taken one morning before the day heated up too much.

The pattern is vintage Simplicity 8363, from 1969, so it's another vintage pledge make for 2015. I found it for 50c at a local op shop - score! I've found a bunch of patterns, fabric, and zippers at that op shop, it's a real treasure trove. The pattern's a teen size pattern, 25 inch waist which is just bigger than me (I'm a 24), but the slight size difference didn't matter. At most it just means that it sits a bit lower on my waist than it was originally meant to, but it still sits at a completely fine level.

I made view 4 of the pattern, the mini length with one central inverted box pleat. My fabric, a pinky/purple narrow corduroy, is even pretty much the exact same colour as the picture on the envelope - I've basically made the example picture! My piece of corduroy was in my stash, I'm not entirely sure where it came from. It was also just the slightest bit too small for the pattern, so I had to shorten the length by 1cm so I could fit the pattern pieces on. Given I was already making the 'mini' length I thought the skirt may turn out on the short side, but it really isn't. I wouldn't even call the length 'mini'. I guess definitions and skirt lengths have changed since 1969.

The centre pleat normally sits closed and flat, which makes it look a little bit like culottes. But it means there's a bit more room for movement, without being bulkier or fuller. Because the pleat sits flat it was a little hard to photograph how it expands, hence the awkward pulling-my-skirt-open picture below, and the weird pointy toe one further up.

Sewing this up wasn't perfect, though. Am I the only person who has problems sewing corduroy? Although the final outcome of this skirt is fine, I had thread catching and breaking so many times while making this, even after giving my machine a full clean-out. It also frays ridiculously, so the seams are frenched. I had been going to try using my overlocker which I've had for ages but been scared of, but when I threaded it up and tried it out on a piece of scrap fabric, the bottom looper snapped in half. As in the actual piece of metal. No idea how that happened, but obviously there's no overlocking for me at the moment.

I used a metal zipper for the closure. It was another cheap find at the same op shop, also 50c. I thought about buying a matching pinky/purple zip, but I have a lot of zips so I figured I should probably use one I already owned rather than buying more. And I already had everything else that went into making this skirt, including an identical colour thread, so making a special trip just to buy a zipper seemed to be a bit too much effort.

The colour didn't quite turn out right in these last couple of photos, but the at least show some of the close-up and inside detail. The waistband in hand stitched, but the hem is machine stitched. 

Overall, this skirt is probably more cool-weather than I'd imagined, although the corduroy is fairly lightweight. But it's quite versatile, and would work in most weather apart from really hot days. And the colour's nice and bright, which is always important!

The Circle of Top

So in one of Papercut Patterns' sales a few months back I bought a few patterns. I had planned to get some of their most recent collection, but ended up going with older patterns instead. This is the first one I've sewn, the Circle Top.

I love cardigans and jumpers. Honestly, it's a good thing I can't knit because I'd be wanting to make so many cardis. Overflowing piles of fabric and patterns are enough to deal with without adding a yarn stash in. So I'm going to make what I can with sewing instead. I haven't yet made much in the way of cardigans because I haven't found patterns I like, but this one is really good.

What appealed to me about the Circle Top is how cosy it looked. I do like fit and some level of structure in my other clothes, but I'm a big fan of cardigans and jumpers that can be pulled around oneself, sleeves that I can pull down over my hands, and generally having cardis that are as blanket-like as possible. This pattern being a giant circle with long sleeves basically is a wearable round blanket, so it's great. It can be worn with the top half of the circle up like a hood or down like a cape collar, so it's nice and versatile.

The fabric is just a basic dove grey ponte from Spotlight which I bought for this pattern. I wasn't entirely sure on how the size of this pattern would affect the drape, and I also wanted something that was still solid enough to definitely be durable. I thought a ponte would fit the bill well. And it didn't hurt that it was on sale. I chose a plain fabric because I wasn't sure how a print would turn out with this top, and the dove grey because it's nice and neutral but not drab. Although it does look a little like the killer in I Know What You Did Last Summer when viewed from behind with the hood up.

The pattern is rated rookie, and it really is. It'd be a great choice of pattern for a newbie sewist looking to learn how to use knits. Honestly, it took longer to cut out the pattern than it did to sew it. And half of the sewing time is attaching the binding to the enormous circular hem. Even setting in the sleeves, often really frustrating to do, was very simple. The stretch of the ponte definitely helped with that. but the sizing and shape of the sleeve piece was just right.

This was also my first time sewing with a ponte, and it was a good experience. I had previously sewn lycra and double knit, so it wasn't entirely new. And just like those fabrics, it flowed through my machine with pretty much no problems. The only slight issue was on the hem binding, which is made of three pieces then sewn onto the top. That means that at the seams there are quite a few payers of fabric. My Janome handles those sorts of things, but it does let me know they aren't it's favourite thing to do. But, as long as I slow down and pay attention, it works fine.

I really enjoyed this. It's a quick make, comfortable and easy to throw on with anything.I most likely will make this again, and probably experiment with something other than a ponte. I also might move the sleeves up an inch so that when I put it up on my head as a hood it doesn't fall all the way in front of my eyes. If I make a summery lightweight version I'll also move the sleeves in a teeny bit so that the seams sit on my shoulders, rather than just off as they do on this one.

Hot Pink Merino

The weather is warming up, so this might be the last winter item I blog this year. The pattern is an adjusted version of the Fave Top from Tessuti Patterns. It's a one size pattern and designed to be oversized, so was initially far too overwhelming on me. I trimmed it in, also giving it slightly longer sleeves in the process. This was a bit of trial and error, cutting off a bit more and a bit more until it no longer seemed like I was a toddler playing dress-ups.

I added cuffs to the ends of the sleeves to make it properly long sleeved and wintery. I did initially stuff up the neckline, though. I wanted to make it more of a boatneck but cut it a little too wide so it was wanting to slip down off one shoulder. Combined with the batwing top it was all a bit too '80s, especially as my hair doesn't take much to be '80s fluffy! So I added a small foldover pleat to the centre front and a neckband to bring it in a little and keep it on my shoulders. It's still a loose neckline, but not falling off any more.

The fabric is a merino from The Fabric Store, and is lightweight but still relatively warm. I was a little daunted to sew with it, but it wasn't too bad. It behaved itself very well in my machine. Plus, it was on sale so I hadn't spent too much money on it!

I finished this top over a month ago, but it's taken me a while to put it up. Honestly, it's turned out just how I'd envisioned it, but when I put it on after finishing it I wasn't excited by it. It matched pretty much exactly what was in my head (the sleeve cuffs were meant to be maybe half an inch shorter, but that's it) but I didn't feel as good about it as I thought I would. I'm not normally one to wear oversized and untailored styles, so this top is a departure for me (apart from it being bright and colourful), so it took a few wears to get used to the shape.

This is actually the second lot of photos I took for this. The first were taken at a different spot and on a very sunny day and were all either far too bright or completely washed out. This time it was a slightly cloudy day and I waited for the sun to be off to the side behind some trees, and they've turned out much better.

The pink is very pink. It's been a while since I sewed a pink this bright, but I have sewn with a lot of pink fabrics in the past. At one point I banned myself from buying any more after noticing my excessive pinkness in the line at Lincraft. It was winter, so I was wearing my coat which is fuschia lined with hot pink satin, my phone at the time was pink, I was wearing pink tights, and two of the three fabrics I was buying were pink. I decided I needed to stop being the pink sewing Barbie, and didn't allow myself anything pink for a year. I do now try and be more varied in my colour choices, but was never going to be able to resist something as fabulous as this.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this top. A few things I've made this year have been outside my normal style comfort zone, and it is fun to experiment with different shapes. But it does take getting used to. And because I am, well, child-sized I do need to do adjustments when making something loose and oversized like this. Still, it's turned out well and is very comfy, which is the most important thing.

Hand-sewn Guipure Top

Lace is pretty, but scary. I think I've only sewn with it once before, and it was a cheap piece I found at the local Salvos, only costing $5 for 4 metres of it. It also seems less versatile, so while I could find something to do with a printed cotton, finding something for lace is harder. But when I saw this remnant piece at a local fabric store, My Hung Fabrics, I couldn't go past it. It was $15 for the 40cm piece, so that was an amazing bargain I had to get.

I knew pretty much immediately I was going to make a top with it. The lace is 90cm wide, so it's about the same as the circumference around my shoulders. All I needed to do was stitch the sides together to make a tube, stitch it on either side of the cut edge of the tube so that it left enough room to put it over my head, and clip out around some of the flowers on either side to form the armscye/cap sleeves. So easy on paper. And it was actually surprisingly easy to do, although a bit terrifying to cut in to.

The shape of the top is very basic and simple, given it is just a tube with arm holes, but the simplicity means it drapes really well. It's comfortable and unfussy, but looks really nice. The bottom edge of the top, which would have been the bolt end of the fabric, is uneven as the flowers fall to different places. I did remove one flower from the bottom which was much lower than the others, but left all the others as they were.

One thing I like about hand sewing is that it lets you be so exact. It takes longer, and you have to force yourself to be patient, but you can stitch everything completely hidden. I had a thread that was almost the same colour as the lace to use for this top, and now I can barely find where I stitched the sides together. Machine stitching doesn't let you do that, especially not with a fancy delicate fabric. The neckline is probably where you can most easily found where I've sewn it together, because I had to add in a couple of extra flowers and leaves where the fabric had been cut through. I removed the flowers and leaves that had been cut in half, and added in pieces I'd cut out for the front neckline.

As the whole top is hand sewn, I spent a lot of time watching Netflix while making it (like an excuse is needed to watch Netflix!). I managed to watch the entirely of The Thick of It, which makes a kind of weird juxtaposition. Sweary Malcolm Tucker and fancy fancy lace, probably not a normal combination.

When I bought this lace, the woman at the fabric store told me it was an amazing bargain because Guipure lace normally goes for $100+. So after I finished this top on Saturday night I had a bit of a look online at other Guipure lace, out of interest at its price and because I enjoyed working with it. The few examples on My Hung Fabric's website start at $120. Tessuti fabrics has one that looks pretty much identical except for the colour which is $253 a metre!. That gave me a slight heart attack to see. Honestly, I think if I'd seen that before I started making the top I never would have dared touch the fabric.

But I'm glad I did buy this fabric and make this top, because it's gorgeous. And the fabric is just another reminder that remnant bins are THE BEST PLACE to find fabrics you'd otherwise be too scared to buy.