Stabbed In The Back Seam.

So remember my new French friend?  And how I was so excited to meet her?  And my big plans to corrupt her?  And how she was going to help me fit my clothes better and stuff?

Yeah.  Know what?  She is not my friend.  Oh, no.  She is not.

Because, really.  She insisted on messing up my intentions to corrupt her into gaining a size or four.  She had an annoying tendency to collapse in a faint at the slightest bump or knock.  She absolutely refused to be my height and seemed to enjoy towering over me.  And she would persist with Gallic perversity in having an upper chest measurement that was 3" wider than my own.  Three inches, people.  And she's a size 4.

(insert much cursing and maligning of the French here)

Most of it I was willing to overlook or accept.  All I asked was that she meet me halfway, that she compromise just a little.  But I just could not convince her to have a smaller upper chest.  I begged.  I pleaded.  She would not listen.  So after many days fraught with tears of anger and a deep sense of betrayal, I finally succumbed to the inevitable. I dumped her. 

Au revoir, bi-atch.

Distraught and dismayed, I searched for solace. And impulsively reattached my affections on my new best friend.  

She was on sale.

At first I was a little nervous about her.  Would she be sturdy enough to not fall over every time I walked past her?  How would she take to corruption?  Was she short?  And most importantly, what size was her upper chest?

Because that's the question you always want to know about your new best friend.  Right?

Well, I can tell you: she's perfect.  She is sturdy enough to hold her own in a fight to the death with things like denim and linen.  She corrupts really well with a little padding.  With a simple adjustment, her shoulders are at the same height as my shoulders.  And best of all, her upper chest is a nice dainty 33".  She's my soul mate.

Because check it out!  I totally padded her out under my custom-fit sloper and voilà!  She's just. like. me.

Unfortunately. 

It's like a sweet potato with a neck.

There is a possible chance that I may just hate my new best friend a tiny little bit.  We may have to be frenemies.

Girlfriend, That Is SO Camp.

I’m on a sort of roll for making stuff for myself.  Here’s my next project. 

Turn this:

Into this:

Source: sundancecatalog.com via Bean on Pinterest

Camp shirt into tunic.  Because despite my absolute loathing of camp shirts, I have a fitted camp shirt pattern.  And because this particular camp shirt pattern fits me perfectly.  And I mean, per.fect.ly.  Um.  Because Marta Alto fitted it for me.  That’s pretty much the only reason why.

But still.  Camp shirt.  Into tunic.  I can totally do it!  You just watch.

No.  Really.  I can.

Quit looking at me like that.

Seriously, don’t believe me?  This tunic is actually a camp shirt with gathers instead of darts.  Right?  Right.  Rotate the darts and convert them to gathers and add some width to the front and back bodice for flowiness, remove the collar and draft a facing instead, change the button placket to a center-seamed opening with ties, extend and add some flair to the sleeves… do some smocking…. 

Easy-peasy mac-and-cheesy.  As TLo says.

Quit looking at me like that.

Seriously. I Said Rotate. So Let’s See Some, People.

So there was another dart rotation pin floating around the interwebs a while back, which Lin3arossa pointed us to in the comments last week.  I'd been eyeing that one with trepidation as well, because it's pretty interesting but also highly pixilated.  I was also a little more concerned about the copyright issue on this one, as it's clearly from a book, it's not just some sort of reiteration of common knowledge but an actual illustration, and so far I haven't found anyone who's credited it.

I mean, I don't want to steal something from someone.  Especially without credit.

On the other hand, I really hate pixilated images.

So here you go: 

I actually redrew this one by hand… with a pen.  You know, pens?  Those pointy stick things that people used to write with?

No really.  People used to write things by hand. 

I know.  Shocking.

This is the same as the last one, just click on the image above to download or print.

 

PS:  If anyone knows where the original image is from, please let me know and I’ll add a credit.

PPS:   If you clicked to download or print the file from last week sometime before yesterday afternoon, you probably have a piece of text on it that says something like "Ruby's Super-hot Salsa Dancing".  Or something like that.  Just FYI.  You might want to re-click and re-download that particular file, which no longer sports that particular mystifying piece of text.

Don't ask.

Lift… Lift… Lift… Aaaaaand… Rotate.

M’kay, so several people have pinned a nice little copy of a dart rotation chart on Pinterest in the past couple of weeks.  Which is, y’know, what I just said: nice.  However, it’s a small image and pixilated and hard to read and just plain annoying.  In that respect.

So I made a new version.

I’d say I was worried about infringing on someone’s copyright or something but I mean… c’mon.  It’s a dart rotation chart.  I have one in at least four different sewing books.  It’s not exactly the Colonel’s Secret Recipe or the formula for making yellowcake uranium.  Which actually you can get at Wikipedia. 

My blog suddenly just jumped up on someone’s “This Might Be Dangerous, Watch This More Closely” list.  Right?

You know how cloak-and-dagger those international food companies are.

My point being, this is all well and good except that I can’t ever seem to find a rotation chart when I’m looking for one.  This actually happened to me just last week.  Again.  It was irritating.

So I made a new version.

If you click on the image, you can download a high-res PDF.  And then print it out.  And then keep it in a binder labeled “Dart Rotation” so you can find right away instead of digging out six different books and sobbing in frustration for an hour because not one of the books has that chart in the “dart” section or listed in their index but you know they are in those books.

Um.  Or, y’know.  Whatever it is you want to do with it.

I really didn’t have anything else to say about all this.

Um. 

I guess go rotate something. 

Shoo.  Go. 

I Bought A New Friend.

Her name is Fifi.  She’s French.  La. Dee. Dah.

Actually, I don’t like her much.  I mean, look at her.   She’s a size 4.

Sheesh.  Some people have all the luck.

Of course, I’ll probably like her better after a few weeks of my corruptive influence, after which she’ll end up looking Just. Like. Me.   That’s my plan anyway.  I’m all about corrupting bi-atches with hourglass figures who are a foot taller than me.  They will go from a size 4 to a size, uh, Not 4.  (You might think I’d at least be happy that I have size 4 shoulders… I’m not.  This just means the rest of me looks that much more Not 4 in comparison.)

Hmmph.  Stupid size 4 French friend and her 24” waist…

‘Course, I didn’t pay much for her.  I guess you get what you pay for in store-bought friends.

I’ll keep you updated on the ongoing corruption.  It requires quite a bit of effort from me, so y’know… it’ll be slow going.  I don’t like effort.

Knock, Knock, Knock-off, Moth… er… You Know The Rest.

I have Beyoncé the Giant Metal Chicken stuck in my head today.

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So check this out: “Beyoncé” is in Microsoft’s Spell Check.

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The mind boggles.

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I’m trying to think up other famous people with made-up unusual names so I can Spell Check them too.

Um…. Condoleeza Rice was the only one I could think of.  She’s in there. 

That is awesome!  Yep.  I think you’ve really made it when you can be generically Spell Checked.  (I can’t.  My life sucks.)

 

Anyway to continue with our story:  I was going to knock off this top from Modcloth.  Honest.

I figured I could use my custom-drafted knit top pattern with the smocked neckline, keep the neckline unsmocked, cut a binding the full length of the unsmocked neckline, make a nice little twisted-binding, run a pretty ribbon or tie through it and gather it up to the desired neckline length.  Easy-peasy.

And I could have done that, of course.  But I didn't.

Because I forgot that I was going to do that and I went ahead and gathered the neckline and then cut the binding strip to the finished length.  At which point I was highly tired of the whole thing and just wanted to get it over with already, so I just went with what I had.  I finished the neckline, tacked a silk tie to the front and called it skippy.

Hence, my version isn't quite so fun as the original.  And also not sleeveless.  Um.  If you didn’t notice.

On the other hand, it has a silk bow on the front.  That can't be a bad thing.  The bow looks better in person.  Trust me.

Of course, the first day I wore it to work my co-worker's immediate response was, "Oh that's cute.  And you can always change out that bow for a black one!"

Which I took to mean, "That top should have a black bow."

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However, today the garment-and-shoe combination seen above elicited (from the same coworker) a heartfelt, "Well look at that nifty outfit you have going on there!" and a ten minute conversation about where I got the jeans, so... meh.  What can you do?  I guess it's working.

I'm going with that.

In Which I Remember That My Hair Sucks.

So I thought I’d take pictures of the second knit top I made using the same block as before (which, by the way, is not the horrible tunic pattern I was struggling with- this block is very easy to work with since I custom-fit it last year… all I had to do this year was remove about 4” from the hip to account for the 4” I, uh, lost from my hips).

Now granted, I chose to take my pictures in the morning while my hair was still wet.  But still, I’m realizing (for about the one-thousandth time in my life) that hair is an evil, terrible, horrifying thing and human beings should all (yea! verily! all!) be bald.  Because my hair sucks.

Anyway, here’s the second version I made of the knit top.

Wonder Wo-maaaan!

This is a combination of knits I also got from Golden D’Or (I think).  They’re nicer quality than the last shirt.  I was a little worried it was going to be too Patchwork-Patti (I just made that up-- you like it, admit it) but I think the end result was ok.  I got multiple compliments on it, although that’s always a little suspect around here since we do not live in what anyone could call a Fashion Haven.

And for further proof of just how much trouble it is to get a photo, here is what else happened in the one and a half minutes I spent trying to get a decent picture.  There was this:

not one person in this photo has combed their hair

and this:

“Hey, I’m taking a pict---“

Lovely.  I look like I have no neck.  I seriously did not want to post such an unflattering picture, but it was just too funny.    I wish I could have gotten a simultaneous shot of the Husband’s befuddled expression.

Regardless, this is way too many people in my personal space at 7:15 am.

 

Meanwhile, SHOE-OFF!

I Told You So.

 

I have been sewing.

custom block knit top, possibly modeled by Wonder Woman wannabe

 

I just haven’t been photoing.

 

Possibly because I usually get this:

oops! timer.

 

Or this:

This Person Has Absolutely No Sense Of Humor

 

Or possibly this:

what do you mean, "camera settings"?

 

Oonaballona, rather annoyingly, usually gets something like this:

oh my!

 

Or this:

no, you don’t say!

 

Except she looks cute and adorable in hers.

 

I did get a perfectly reasonable shot of the cute shoes I was wearing.

even if they were hawked by the Olsen Twins

 

vital statistics, somewhat randomly-

pattern:  custom drafted knit shirt block (as first seen here)

alteration: reduced original side seams at hip by 4”, “twisted” neck binding, elbow-length sleeves

fabric: cheap mystery knit from Golden D’Or

Polo Cubana… I think we had that for dinner last night.

You may recall that the Evil Monkeys were removed from my presence by the Grandparents for 10 days.  Or you may not.  I certainly do.  Ah, those peaceful, tidy ten days.

Now, you might think that I spent this time sewing.  Or (if you are Big In Japan) you might think I spent this time doing, you know, that stuff that grown-ups do when there are no Children of the Damned around… all over the house.  Sadly, in both instances you would be mistaken.  I am old.  I spent this blissful ten days alternating between frantic chore-doing and abject slothfulness in front of the TV.  Heavenly.

However, I did sew one thing.  And it was even for one of the Monkeys, which I think is pretty big of me, really.

‘Member how I was whining about not making any polo shirts this summer?  Well, I actually did make one polo-type shirt.  In fact, it was making this polo-type shirt that caused me to realize the true cubical nature of TLo.  Check it out. 

I used the custom block I drafted for TLo this spring.  My first version was a square-neck t-shirt so I had to alter the pattern to accommodate a collar.  I also was using an old long-sleeve shirt I got from my mom for the fabric and apparently I’d already used some of it for something else (I have not one clue what that was) so I didn’t have quite enough fabric.  Solution?  I made a yoke out of an awesomely matching poplin that I had in the stash.  Seriously.  Exactly the same color.  In the stash.

I would like to note that this almost never happens and you should be totally in awe of me.

Here’s the pattern with the original t-shirt on the left, the new yoke and collar on the right:

And here’s a close-up of the yoke and collar, which I did with knit on the top, poplin on the under-collar and no interfacing at all.

Here’s another cool thing: I didn’t have to do a real polo placket because of the seamed yoke.  Again, you should be envious of my mad dezign skillz, people.  Plus, for using a RTW shirt, so I didn’t have to hem the sleeves or the shirt hem.  Flippin’ genius. 

And if you’re wondering about TLo’s cubicalism, I think this pretty much says it all:

The nifty thing about drafting her own block is this:

When you put a Cube Shirt on Cube Girl, you get a nice flattering fit.  Go figure.

 

(That’s a First Day Of School crown on her head.  Everyone’ll be wearing them this year.  You’re jealous, right?)

Call Me Quasibeangirl

I've completely given up trying to get a photo of myself with decent hair.  It's apparently just not possible.  Um.  I guess it would help if I quit taking pictures of myself with wet hair.  But at 6:30 in the morning, time is limited and you have to grab two minutes with the camera when you can.  

Bonus: I also look like a deranged serial killer.  (Now you know why most of my pictures don’t have heads, Angie A.)

These are photos of my second attempt at version 2 of my Perfect T-Shirt Pattern (the one with darts-converted-to-smocking).   It was pretty clear from the outset of my first attempt that the fabric was going to be difficult.  The results proved that. 

For the second attempt I decided to try sturdier fabric, so I used a very pretty cobalt blue ITY that I found on sale at Hancock's.

This was helpful in terms of fit and drape.  Unfortunately, this fabric is nigh on impossible to hem without a coverstitch machine, which I couldn't be bothered to set up.  Mostly because I didn't have matching thread.  So I didn't have anything to set it up with.  Hence, I hemmed it with my sewing machine.  Rather disastrously, as it turns out.  Clearly I'm going to have to pick out that hem and do something else with it.

That photo also points out the major flaw with my Perfect T-Shirt Pattern: namely that because I am a hunchback (i.e. I have to do a rounded back and rounded upper back adjustment) I ended up with my usual extra 1" at the neckline.  Normally in a woven I would either take a smart dart under the collar or do a center back seam.  Neither of which is so great for a t-shirt.  I was hoping I could ease the extra into the neck binding, but as you can see it didn't work.  I'm going to have to rethink my plans for this.

Otherwise, this top drapes much better than the other one which is all the result of fabric... since they're otherwise identical. 

 

I'm willing to keep working on it, at any rate.

 

I still hate hair.  I think baldness is highly underrated.

Even Genius Takes a Holiday Every Once In A While

You know how sometimes you think "Damn!  I look good!"?  And then some evil person shows you a picture of yourself?  And you realize that you are hopelessly delusional?  I just did that to myself.

I was hoping this second draft of my Perfect T-Shirt Pattern would come out, well, perfectly.  And when I put it on, it certainly felt perfect.  Silky-soft cotton jersey? Check.  My bestest color, hot pink? Check. Low-but-not-too-low neckline? Check.  Perfect fit? Che-- uh.  Well...

Not so perfect.  This shirt is the perfect example of how choice of fabric really does make a drastic difference in overall fit.  I was hoping that this fabric wouldn't be as clingy and unflattering as I suspected it would be.  My hopes were, alas, dashed to the ground like so many shattering crystal vases flung from the hands of distraught and frustrated housewives.

Sorry.  I've been ready trashy romance novels this week.

Anyway, here is the second version of my Perfect T-Shirt Pattern.  I decided to rotate the dart up into the neckline and then convert the dart to smocked gathers. (I have a BWOF top- that I have literally worn to pieces- that has this same treatment, so I foresee making this version in about twenty different fabrics.)

For those of you playing along at home who aren't so up on your drafting techniques, here's how you do the dart-to-smocking conversion (I totally made this up myself, so if it doesn't work for you I take absolutely no responsibility for it):

1) rotate the dart up to the neckline (see various sewing books on how to rotate a dart)

2) measure the total width of the dart at the widest point (distance x)

3) multiply distance x times the amount needed to make up the difference in width when gathered (I didn't do a test strip on this, I just guessed that the gathering would need to be about two times the width of the dart... this ended up being slightly too little gathering, so I'm going to try 2.5 times on the next one).  This is distance y.

4) measure distance y from the center front and draw a vertical line parallel to the center front

5) draw a horizontal line (perpendicular to the center front) down from the neckline equal to about 2/3 to 3/4 of the length of the dart

6) draw in your stitch lines for the smocking/gathering (I chose to do five lines of smocking)

 

Here's the end result (warning! giant boob picture ahead):

Everything else in the pattern is the same as my first version. 

And here it is, in all it's unflattering, clingy glory.   Absolutely enhanced by my half-wet hair, of course.  And the fact that I should have pulled the top down at least an inch in the front  before I took the pictures.

 

Ack.

Why the hell my husband let me walk out of the house like this, I have no idea.  The only explanation is that my husband's version of a "good look" for me is exclusively one that he can see down the front of.  And hence he probably thought this top was... perfect.

Genii R Us

I finally have had a chance to get to some sewing this week.  I really just can not tell you how much I hate May.  But now it’s June and we’re all ready for summer to start--  oh wait.  It’s been over 100 degrees for the past week.  I guess summer started a while ago.

In any case, I finally got around to looking at my custom-drafted t-shirt pattern ala Cal Patch’s Weird Custom Drafting Book, a.k.a. Design-It-Yourself Clothes.  Which I wrote about in this post.  To recap, after some serious fitting adjustments I basically ended up with a sloper with side bust darts.  And that’s where I left it.

This week I picked up that pattern and decided that I would try adding some wearing ease (not present in the final pattern), some adjustments for my hunchback (always present on my body) and see what happened (usually a nerve-wracking experience).

What happened is I created the perfect t-shirt.  No.  Really.  It’s perfect.  I am a flippin’ genius and you must bow down and worship the ground I, uh, sew on.

Don’t believe me?  Fine.  Be like that.

Here’s the final (blurry) result, in which I added a more scooped neckline and left the bust dart in place.

I  used a light-weight poly knit of some mysterious type which I bought from Emma One Sock about four years ago.  It is awesome.  Here’s a more color-appropriate swatch:

Here’s the (burry) side view and the (blurry) back view.

OK, so it’s maybe slightly too loose around the middle.  I wasn’t sure how the fabric would hang and I didn’t want it to be clingy.  I could take it in a quarter-inch on both sides probably.

And OK, it was really hard to get a good picture on my own (but significantly easier than trying to get The Husband to understand what qualifies as a “good” picture). 

So you might not, in fact, be able to appreciate my genius sufficiently.  But trust me when I say that this top is the best-fitting and most flattering top I’ve owned in a while.  Plus, because I have the darts in place, I can now move those around into gathers or pleats or whatever and make about a bajillion different styles.

Genius, I tell you.  And now I’ll have time to do some more.  I love June.

The month of June.  Not, you know, June Cleaver.  Although she could wear a mean pearl choker while, you know, baking cookies. Or whatever.

Right.  So when I Googled “June Cleaver” this is what I got:

Plus, this:

 

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I think “yummy” pretty much covers it.  I don’t know who this woman is that’s posting this stuff, but I loooove her.  She is my new hero.  Clearly, she is a genius. 

Takes one to know one.

Sleeveless

adjective

1. having no sleeves
2. unproductive; a fruitless search; a vain attempt; “a sleeveless errand”
   

Right.

In a previous post I mentioned that I used my first attempt at a customized pattern block for TLo to make a  sleeveless tunic.  Well, here it is. 

I had the idea that if TLo couldn’t wear it, maybe The Big One could (remember her? Bet you thought we’d left her at the zoo or something).  I mean, what could be more clever?  Surely a garment made from a pattern block custom fit to a child who is a size 10 in the chest will look just fab on a child who’s roughly a size 4 in the chest.  Right?  Right?

 

Right.  This was an ill-formed idea.

Here’s the tunic on TLo.

Then I tried it on The Big One.

When my mother saw them, she immediately said “They look like Hutterites.”  Yes.  That is totally the look I was going for.

I think the biggest problem is that this fabric is relatively stiff and I was overly cautious in adding flare to the A-line shape.  I should have added quite a bit more and as it is, it doesn’t drape well at all.

Needless to say, this garment was less than a success.  Which is a shame, because the front placket is a pretty nice idea.  I pulled the pattern for that straight out of David Page Coffin’s iconic Shirtmaking book.  That is one awesome book.  Here’s a link to his blog: DPC Making Trousers.  And here’s the placket.  (The color is off.)

Not brilliant construction, unfortunately.  I didn’t mark the reinforcement rectangle and you can see that it came out crooked.  Duh.  Stupid lazy mistake.  But since no one is likely to wear this much I guess it doesn’t matter. 

This is what the back of that application looks like, it’s a very nice clean finish (despite my crooked sewing).

My understanding of DPC’s instructions has always been that it should end up like this, with the top line of stitching hitting above the slit where the two bands fit into the shirt.  But next time I do this, I’m going to make it come out with the stitching below that so that it’s a sealed seam.  That just makes more sense to me (and it’s totally possible that I’ve misunderstood the instructions and that’s how it’s supposed to be in the first place).

The plus in all this is that I have a New and Improved Block to work from for TLo, which hopefully will result in more successful (and fewer “sleeveless”) garments.  Plus, I still have at least one yard of this fabric left so I should be able to make something else out of it, because it’s awfully darn cute.  Fashion Fabric Club.  Gotta love ‘em.