Sarah Veblen Choose Your Own Focus Workshop -April 2022

 One of my favorite type of workshops is a choose your own focus workshop! The type where you choose the project and what things you want to focus on learning. In Sarah Veblen’s workshops this does not mean you are just “sewing”. Time is spent learning from the other participants and working on taking another step on the journey of exploration of design and construction. 

This particular workshop was 3 days long and i knew exactly what I wanted to work on! In the fall and winter I worked on perfecting the fit of a new French jacket pattern. Sadly I have given away all but one of my collection of French jackets and I was finally feeling like I had enough of a wardrobe built up that I could take the time needed to complete a new jacket. This time I really wanted to incorporate this beautiful butterfly guipure lace. I had everything I needed!! This spring workshop with Sarah was just what I needed to get my butt in gear to make the jacket. I knew what parts I could easily do by myself and then there were parts that I would have either had to do some research in books and the web OR I could bring them to Sarah.

I had some questions on the sleeve cuff. Actually lots and lots of questions! Of course many of the questions I had were around the best and correct way to execute the sleeve cuff. As expected there is no right or wrong way and it all depends on the design you want and how you want to execute… designers choice! It was really good to have a nice conversation with a sewing professional and several other experienced makers to play off ideas and pros and cons and just to share information. I find it always to be very inspiring and much less boring than just picking a pattern and following those directions! (Although there are times when just following a pattern is so nice and easy!)

Discussions were had around how to construct the sleeve cuff, how to sew on the butterfly lace and then to design where to put the butterflies. We also assessed different traditional French jacket trims and buttons as well. Turns out after spending a lot of time pinning and repinning that the trims, all the trims I brought, were just too heavy and then everything looked too forced and stuck on. So much better without the trim!

I also worked on two muslins, one a straight skirt. Just a front and a back, Sarah draped in the  front and back darts and perfected the fit. I later used this pattern to make a straight denim style skirt and was very happy with the fit!

The other muslin was for Vogue 9187 an armsyce princess seam shell. That muslin is still hanging in my sewing area waiting for all the changes to translated onto the pattern and a new muslin made. 

I think once the shell is perfected then I really only have 2 more master patterns to work on. A button down or button up shirt  and shirt dress. I cant believe it has taken me almost 2 years to remake my entire wardrobe of patterns after all that weight loss. Every time my pancreas acts up I just keep my fingers crossed I don’t have another mega weight loss! 

The 3 days were filled with so much good sewing and design time. Sarah gave us all several challenges over the time. One was drawing necklines on our coquis and exploring designs that we would normally not use along with the exercise of fast sketching. Sketch as many necklines as you can in 10 mins. 

Another exercise was to take inspiration from a nature photograph and put together a color palette that would be corresponding to the photo. I opted to use a photo taken at the Garfield Park Conservatory and use swatches from my big swatch collection for my palette.

We spent time every morning and afternoon gathered together talking, discussing our projects and any other design questions that come up. This discussion time is so key to learning from each other and often leads to lots of exciting discoveries and ideas.

I really enjoy spending creative time with friends new and old! It really is inspiring to see the amazing garments that these ladies create.

Happy Sewing!

Little Arya joined us one day and she enjoyed having her own muslins to work on! 

Notes on Mentorship- Developing an idea into a garment- Curvy Princess Seam Tunic- AKA The Inauguration Tunic!

 

The last tunic that I worked on in my 4 month mentorship project is what I am calling the Curvy Princess Seam tunic with a yoke OR more affectionately as my Inauguration Tunic!!

1.   Just a quick recap of how I got here.

2.   Started with a well fitting master pattern of my tunic.

3.   Used a sketch done in Procreate on my iPad to create design I really liked.

4.   Used an approx. ¼ scale pattern to practice the flat pattern work to be done to original pattern to get to new design.

This tunic development started a little differently. I worked in the mirror and decided how wide I wanted my yoke and then drew that on the pattern and then just sort of drew in curvy lines for Princess seams. When I tried to tape these out it was a bit of a mess, so I just went into muslin. However, when I was drawing these curvy lines on the pattern I wanted to accentuate the natural curves of my body so I made sure those were drawn with the thinnest part at the waist and then wanted to make sure the curves were smooth as well as being well defined and very curvy!

Some example drawings that I did on IPad in Procreate app. Playing with different ideas of color blocking and print blocking.

This design was symmetrical so I was able to modify the pattern on the half, I started with my flat pattern changes to get to my new design.

This is what I did:

Front Pattern (most changes)

• 1.   Kept the shape of the neckline the same
• 
  
• 2.   Drew in the yoke
• 
  
• 3.   Drew in the curvy princess seam
• 
  
• 4.   Added in notches along the seams and cut the pattern pieces apart
• 
  
• 5.   Closed the bust darts on the bodice to transfer them to the princess seam.

Back Pattern

• 6.   Added in back yoke to match the front yoke. Incorporated the back shoulder dart into the yoke seam.
  

Sleeve pattern – no changes

Once I had these changes made on the pattern paper. I once again pulled out the tracing paper and traced these onto a clean pattern paper and added seam allowances on the muslin.

I made only one muslin for this tunic. I did this for 2 reasons. One I was being a little lazy and 2 I had PLENTY of fabric to make 2 Tunics if I totally botched this one up. Also, seeing that all the changes were in the princess seams I felt pretty confident that I could accommodate changes made in the first muslin. Of course making sure that the princess seams walked and had smooth curves.

Used the muslin to refine both the fitting and the shape/placement of the princess seams.

As you can see in the photos of the muslin I made some changes to the shape of the curvy princess seams and carefully pinned these changes in. When I was happy with how it looked I then transferred the changes to the pattern.

The second question of this tunic was how to give it some punch. I wanted to play with highlighting the seams and adding some pockets. Making sort of a play off of Chanel designs.

The first design consideration that I made was to cut the center panel on the cross grain vs the length of grain. If you look quickly at the garment you may not even notice! However, I think it gives it a nice subtle effect and just gives your eye a change in pattern to highlight this center panel.

Second design consideration was addition of trim. This fabric was perfect for deconstructing and making into a trim. I started with cutting a piece both lengthwise and crosswise to see what it looked like. Pretty apparent which one I wanted to use! I then cut a couple different widths and did some tests with how to create the fringe. I made several long pieces and then just started with pinning them onto the garment and seeing how I wanted to proceed. I did actually pin some down the curvy princess seams but it was just a bit too obnoxious for this garment! LOL!!

After lots of playing around I finally decided on the fringe around the entire yoke seam and then around the sleeves.

 

Next up was playing with the pockets. I really likes the idea of the double pockets but due to the curvy princess seam I could not quite get the placement to look good in the space that I had to work with. So I went with a single pocket on each side and these were also cut on the cross grain to just get them to subtly stand out as well.

The internal construction of the garment is pretty simple. I wanted this to be a wash and wear garment, so I first serged the cut edges of the yardage and then threw it in the washer and drier.  After I cut out all the pieces I serged around the raw edge of each one, except for all of the yoke pieces which I fused with a soft loft fusible interfacing. I did serge finish the edge that was stitched down with a stitch in the ditch method on the machine.

The trim was placed on the seam lines and machine stitched in place with a zig zag stitch and the hem facing and sleeve hem were both also machine stitched. All of the machine stitching sort of just melts away into the texture and loft of the tweed, and gives me the secure knowledge that I can safely wash this garment on gentle in my machine and hang to dry with no worries about anything coming apart or unraveling.

I had this new tunic finished in time to wear for The Inauguration! It felt great to make a garment to celebrate a change of leadership for the good. Even though I was only able to wear this to my parents for a small dinner it was great to have something to celebrate during these difficult times!

Notes on Mentorship- Developing an idea into a garment- Asymmetric Gathered Tunic

After looking at all the sketches that I did I decided that I wanted to first work on what I am calling the Asymmetric Gathered tunic. 

1.   Just a quick recap of how I got here.

2.   Started with a well fitting master pattern of my tunic.

3.   Used a sketch done in Procreate on my iPad to create design I really liked.

4.   Used an approx. ¼ scale pattern to practice the flat pattern work to be done to original pattern to get to new design.

For the Asymmetric Gathered Tunic, I started by taking my base muslin and with it on my dressform I used red narrow tape to plot I my approximate design lines using my sketch as a basis to work off of.

With my design taped off I moved into flat pattern work. I started by tracing off my master pattern onto clean pattern paper. My master pattern is on cardstock with no seam allowances making it very easy for me to trace and make changes to.

With the clean pattern and the front cut as a full pattern, I started with my flat pattern changes to get to my new design.

This is what I did:

Front Pattern (most changes)

• 1.   Moved the neck line in at the shoulders by a ½ inch
• 2.   Changed neckline to a soft V
• 3.   Cut pattern in half along the diagonal line
• 4.   Closed the bust darts on the left side and transferred them into the diagonal seam line.
• 5.   Closed the bust darts on the right and transferred them into the gathers going into the seam line that runs under the right breast. This is a starting point and is then fine-tuned through muslins.

Steps 1,2 and 3

Step 4

Step 5

Back Pattern (minimal to accommodate front neckline changes)

    6.   Move neckline in by ½ inch

Sleeve pattern (changed hem shape- different from sketch)

    7.   Added a shaped hem

The shaped sleeve hem

Once I had these changes made on the pattern paper. I once again pulled out the tracing paper and traced these onto a clean pattern paper and added seam allowances.

Final pattern with seam allowances and the change indicated below to gathered area.

Then I moved into making a muslin. For my muslin I knew I needed to use a test fabric that would mimic the type of fabric that I wanted to use in the final garment. Luckily I had some poly silky from a fabric swap that I took to use for making test garments. The biggest unknown here was the gathered area along the diagonal seam line. I had several decisions to be made. The amount of gathers and if I needed/wanted to add additional gathers, the size of the area to gather into, the placement along the seam line to put these gathers. I did my best guesstimate by playing with the fabric in my hands and seeing how much gathers looked good. I started with a 4:1 ratio. SO I knew I wanted my gathered area to be across 4 inches so I slashed and spread to get to a total of 12 inches of fabric to be gathered.

The important part to remember here is that I knew this was just going to be a starting point and that I would end up making several versions and several muslins to come up with the final design. I also knew that there was a possibility that it would never go to garment stage and I was OK with that!

Version one was so bad and looked so frumpy that I just laughed!!! Basically the gathered area was in the wrong place and too poufy! It was in-between my breasts, not a good luck! The muslin/test fabric I used was not conducive to pics, it was all I had so I used it.

I unpicked the seam and redistributed the gathers to a better placement. This helped a lot and I felt like I was on the right track. In the photo below you can see the progression of the placement and amount of gathers. Red was first try, green second and blue final success!

 

I still had to move the gathered area further down the seam line as well as removing some of the fullness and reduced the size of the gathered area down to about 3 inches. To reduce the amount of the gathers I did a closed wedge so reversed my slash and spread to a slash and close to the amount of fabric that I had pinched out.

I made another muslin and realized that I still had too much poufiness in the area. I was starting to think that maybe this was not going to work for me. Then I decided to unpick the seam line and see where the fabric in the upper area relaxed too. Basically I let it fall under the seam and pinned it. This worked!! I realized that when I first converted the darts to the gathers that I had too much length. Not so easy to true up this area.

The fabric underneath was what I originally had and was causing poufiness. You can see how much "length" I removed to clean up the fit!

With that change to the flat pattern made I then made 2 more muslins in 2 different fabrics to check the fit. SO MUCH BETTER!!!

One of things that I really like about this design is how the drape of the fabric is also affected asymmetrically. It has a super pretty drape coming off of the left breast and down the side front of the garment. SO soft and lovely.

With the final muslins looking good I decided to make it up in real fabric.

I am trying to NOT buy any fabric, I have so much already. I used a rayon challis William Morris print. It makes the detail of the gathers and seam line a little hard to see but I was okay with that. The fabric is so soft and lovely. Feels so great to wear!

In using the patterned rayon challis, I had some considerations I had to make when cutting it out. I wanted the right and left backs to mirror each other so I carefully cut them on single layer. Very happy with how this worked out! I also wanted the outer sleeve seam to mirror each other. I was less successful in this. However, I am okay with how they turned out.

Center back seam lines up so nicely!! Made me very happy!

On the front I wanted to make sure that Center front remained along the same line in the print down both upper and lower pieces to maintain continuity where it could be maintained. On the side seams I just made sure that the horizontal lines or bands of print were maintained.

I am very happy with the outcome of the print placement on this design! The neckline is also perfectly placed on me, no wardrobe malfunctions. This is definitely a benefit to designing your own clothes!

Now to find a solid-ish fabric in the collection to make this in to really show off those design details!

The pics of me in this tunic are not the best. We have been having lots of rain and grey cloudy skies- not the best for taking pictures but these will have to do! Does anyone else take all sort of strange pictures of themselves in garments?

Happy Sewing!!

I caught this smirk of a smile on the princess the other day :) She is getting do big!