I'm back...

I don't know if you missed me or not and sorry to be absent so long. I've got a huuuuge amount of work lately, worked late and used my time rather for sewing than blogging. Plus, the NATO summit starts tomorrow in Bucharest (presidents from all over the world arrive today) and the city is a mess because of that: security restrictions, many institutions closed and an awful-awful traffic.

Thanks to all of you who commented meanwhile and sorry for not being able to answer. A special thank you goes to Nedra who delurked and noticed a very important error in my placket tutorial: the placket should be 1" wide, not 1/2! (the imperial system is sometimes a handful for me) . Thank you, Nedra, now it's corrected.

Dawn, thank you so much for tagging me and leaving such a nice comment at my blog. I promise I'll try to name 7 random things about me as soon as possible. Please bear with me!

I've finished meanwhile three SWAP items and I'm going to show them to you, each one in a different post (so it's easier to link to them in my final SWAP review) . I would also like to apologize for the not so good quality of some of the photos (in this post and the next ones). My camera is quite old and I don't know why, some of the pictures took with the self-timer are a bit blurry or too dark. I know I should try taking them in natural light, but I only have natural light during weekends in my home and weekends are already filled with many other activities.

SWAP item #7 - Not your usual A-line skirt



This is the skirt from my wardrobe pattern, Vogue 2813 - a Donna Karan pattern. It is a very interesting pattern, as you will be able to see below. The front has some very interesting details, (see the drawing), there is a slotted seam effect. Each front piece has facings that are sewn and turned under, then front pieces are joined by means of an underlay and topstitched, once at 1/4" (approx 6mm) and the second time at 3/8" (approx 1 cm). The back darts are treated the same: cut open, faced and then joined with an underlay and topstitched. Well, it is a bit hard to explain, hope the drawing and the pictures will speak for themselves. If not, tell me and I'll take a photo of the pattern pieces.



Side view of the skirt:



View of the front slot seams:



Back (the line of the front seams continue in the back):



Back darts



The skirt doesn't have a lining. I chose to underline it using the same nylon sheer that I usually use for that. I laid the nylon sheer over the assembled skirt (yet unclosed at the center back seam) and carefully traced the shape of the skirt on the lining, then pinched the excess with pins, shaping darts.



Tip: If you want to sew an easy hem on a flared skirt and you are willing to bind the hem, here's what I did: I used bought bias tape and when sewing it to the skirt's hem, I stretched it as much as I could. Doing this, the excess flare in the hem was eased into the bias. After pressing, you get a nice binding and when sewing the hem, you'll discover there's no more fabric to ease in, gather, make little darts etc.



I used a decorative stitching on the binding. The same stitching is repeated on the waist facing.



The zipper is finished with satin ribbon (I don't remember right now if I read about this in Roberta Carr or Claire Shaeffer).

Not your usual shirt placket :))

Well, I'm working on my second blouse (and third top) for my Timmel SWAP entry, which is the shirt from my wardrobe pattern, Vogue 2813, made in red silk twill (necktie silk).

The shirt is far from being finished (I added a bit of embellishment to the front, and I'm making French seams again) but I'd like to show you how I treated the shirt placket.

Regarding the placket, I know that some bloggers find it difficult, therefore I'd like to point you to two extremely useful tutorial (at least they were for me):

• Kathleen Fasanella's tutorial: part 1, part 2, part 3 (I've tried this tutorial and loved it, it works great and it is easy)
• Rusty Bobbin's tutorial for a shirt placket with continuous lap: I haven't tried this one but am looking forward to trying it. It looks easy, logical and the result is beautiful. Her method inspired me for the placket treatment that I'm showing today.
  
• I'm waiting for David Coffin's Shirtmaking. It's going to be here soon. As a parenthesis, I bought a few books lately and am currently reading them (Claire Shaffer's Couture Sewing Techniques and High Fashion Sewing Secrets from the World's Best Designers: A Step-By-Step Guide to Sewing Stylish Seams, Buttonholes, Pockets, Collars, Hems, And More, Roberta Carr's Couture: The Art of Fine Sewing and Tailoring: The Classic Guide to Sewing the Perfect Jacket). When I buy a sewing book, I read it page by page. I then re-read it many times, by sections, according to the project I'm working on and the information that I need.

Not your usual shirt placket



First, cut a piece for the placket. This needs to be cut on grain, the width is 1' (approx. 2.5 cm), the length is twice the length of your placket slit plus 1' (approx 2.5 cm).

On the wrong side of the sleeve, draw around the slit a rectangle, adding 1/4' on each side of the slit and a supplementary 1/4" at the top, where the slit stops (see my picture below; look at the indigo lines, drawn with my vanishing marker. The white chalk marks are the original pattern marks. And sorry for the wonky lines, they are actually straight, but I moved the silk by mistake before taking the picture).



Now cut your slit open with really sharp scissors. You cut a straight line which is the length of your original slit (without the additional 1/4" at the top) and then, at the top, you cut diagonally to the top of the rectangle, like you would for a welt pocket.

You can see the cut below. I spread the sleeve so you can see accurately how I cut.




Now, take your placket and fold 1/4" on one long edge. Press.



Put the placket's right side (the unfolded edge aligned to the slit) to the sleeve's wrong side , and sew continuously: one side of the slit, the cut triangle, the other side of the slit. See the result below (the circle points you to the sewn triangle).



Press your seam allowances towards your placket. It should look like this:



Now fold the placket and wrap it over your seam allowances, bringing the pre-folded edge to the right side of the sleeve (make sure you cover the stitching).



Press. At the top of the rectangle, form a peak with your finger and press in place. It should look like this:



Now you're ready to sew. Edgestitch (an edgestitching foot helps) the placket and you're done.

Finished placket



Wrong side of the placket

SWAP item #6 - Not your usual white shirt

Not your usual white shirt - Burda WOF 01/2008, blouse 108



Untucked (I prefer it tucked in)



Blouse lying flat



I had another shirt in mind for this fabric but Christina's blouse (which I liked very much) and a blouse worn in Dirt 113 - Ite missa est by Laura Allen (cream silk with black piping) "fermented" in my brain and led to the present entry.

The fabric is white silk (I don't know what kind of silk, but here's a close-up of the fabric):



I did a petite alteration to this blouse. If you speak or understand German, here's a link to a pdf file explaining petite alterations on the Burdafashion website. Actually even if you don't speak German (I don't) I think the drawing speak for themselves. Also, here's a link to a thesis for a master degree. It is titled "Petite women: fit and body shape analysis" and it provides a lot of details concerning petite alteration. It's a very interesting paper, if you have the time for it.

I decided to use French seams for this blouse - I like this type of clean finish plus my silk is a tiny bit sheer.





The armhole seams are finished with satin bias binding. The same satin bias was used to finish the hem.



I've used Dawn's tip for perfect darts (I've been using it all the time since she posted it) - so logical and clever to position your fabric to have a straight line from the needle, to the dart tip, to your nose!

And I've used Sigrid's tutorial for the collar with stand. Great tutorial, the result was a very nice collar.



I wanted clean lines of piping and didn't want any topstitching (either white or black) near my piping, therefore the sleeve cuffs and the button stands are finished by hand on the inside, with the tiniest slipstitch possible and silk thread.



Close-up of piping



To add piping to the button stand, I cut two separate pieces for each stand instead of cutting the stand on fold. I've also made oblique buttonholes.

I've used black satin piping (store-bought) and for the buttons and tie, a piece of polkadotted satin that I used for pipings and bindings (see my toreador pants)

This was a time-consuming project, considering the French seams and the hand finishings. But the most time-consuming and annoying task was to cover the buttons in satin. The buttons were metal and the satin was sooooo slippery (starching didn't help too much). It was a pain to center the white dot on the buttons. I used temporary adhesive spray and it helped a bit.



I didn't care for the bow at the neck (showed in the Burda magazine) so I'd rather wear my tie straight, without any bow. However, a word of warning for those wanting the bow: my tie is already 7 cm longer than the Burda tie and it would still be a bit too short for a bow. So if you want a bow, you should add about 10-15 cm to the tie.

SWAP item #5 - Not your usual coat

More than two weeks have gone since my last post. My working life has been so busy and stressful that I ended up having some health problems last week, that got me a bit worried. I'm quite alright now, taking some pills, lots of vitamins + minerals. A discussion with my boss concerning my workload and stress levels also helped so I do hope that the next weeks will be a bit easier on me.

I've worked on this coat on and off for two weeks. The pattern is BWOF 11/2007, coat 115.
You can see the jacket version of this pattern made by Paco Peralta here.


(I was in a playful mood last night when I took the pictures and I decided to imitate Jackie O :) )

Why is this not your usual coat?

• First, because of the print. The red/white/black boucle from TimmelFabrics gives a different touch to this coat. It looks more cheerful and less formal to me, plus it ties in beautifully with my SWAP wardrobe. I only have coats in solids but this coat made me think about other prints (well, plaids, houndstooth) for coats.
  
• Second - it is all in the lining. The lining is a wool jersey, very soft and thin (I've read about Coco Chanel using wool jersey in her jackets). I think I've said it many times lately that I've become very partial to underlinings. After making my Chanel style jacket, I was absolutely thrilled with the softness and lightness of this jacket (after all, the Chanel technique of quilting the lining to the jacket is closer to an underlining than an actual lining), with the way the lining moves together with the garment, and not as a separate body joined at some seams. Read here an online Threads article by Sandra Betzina about lining versus underlining.
  
• I therefore decided to use for this coat a technique described by Shannon Gifford - click here for the Threads online article. She calls this technique "Line and Underline in one step", but I've also saw it called "flatlining". I won't insist on the technique as it is clearly described in the article but feel free to ask if you have any questions. I did however some things differently: 1) I didn't cut the seam allowances to 1/4 inches (approx 4 mm), as I'm using boucle and this ravels so easy that you don't want to take that chance; 2) In my opinion, topstitching the seam is not absolutely necessary. After pressing the seams well, I could have left them like that. I decided to topstitch because I thought a supplementary stitch will help even more in stabilising the boucle and preventing raveling and because the boucle is forgiving and all the stitching is "burried" in it any way. 3) I wanted to get closer to the Chanel technique, therefore after lining the entire coat, I quilted the lining to the coat. Yes, I get crazy ideas like that some times, must be all the work stress :) This time I spaced my quilting lines at 2 inches apart (approx 5 cm) instead of 1 inch (the way I did in my Chanel style jacket) and I've used again silk thread and my walking foot. And lots of pins. There are three rows of quilting on each panel, this makes for 24 long lines of quilting. It was difficult and time consuming because this time I was working with the entire coat sewn, not with one pattern piece at the time and my sewing table being quite small, my pins kept hitting other things on the table and coming loose and the coat was hanging all over the place. Well, I managed and to my surprise, the wool jersey burries the stitching even better than the boucle!
  
• What was different from making a Chanel style jacket: I taped the roll line, I taped the center fronts and the neckline, I staystitched and taped the armhole, I've interfaced the hem, extending the interfacing past the hemline. I didn't use a chain in the hem but still I needed something to weigh down this very light and drapey coat. Therefore I borrowed another technique of Paco and inserted a curtain weight cord in the hem - see here the photo on Paco's blog of the cord and the way it is inserted.
  
• The facings, the hem and the sleeve seams are bound with satin bias tape. The facings are slipstitched by hand to the coat.

• Changes made to the pattern: I ditched the pockets (you cannot have in-seam pockets with this underlining technique). I first thought of making patch pockets but I didn't think they would go very well with this design so I gave up pockets altogether. I don't use coat pockets very much anyway, they go out of shape so easy. I also ditched the zippers inserted in the sleeve seam.
  

The result is an incredibly light coat, feels lighter than a cardigan and is very good for spring. Despite the lightness, is surprisingly warm, due to the wool jersey used in the underlining.

Timmel SWAP items #3 and #4

The top that I'm going to show you was done a week ago but I was under a very tight deadline with a boring and loathsome report and didn't take pictures. The jeans were done over the weekend.

So, without further ado, item #3 - NYU (not your usual) wrap top: Burda 01/2008, top 116

It's a blurry picture, sorry for that. I say it is not your usual wrap top because the panel in front that simulates a camisole is cut out of a black cotton/lycra, the rest is cut in a black and white knit and, to tie it on with my general black-white-red theme and in order to avoid too much black, I bound the entire neckline and the sleeves with red cotton lycra. I took a picture to show-you a close-up of the binding but I don't know how, the picture simply disappeared from my camera! How is that possible?

The ties were a bit too short (wished I read the reviews on PR and found out about that before I cut it... ) so I'm tying them in the back not the front. Also, I wish I didn't finish this top before Debbie Cook finished and published hers - look what an ingenious idea for the ties! This is great, Debbie, I'll surely use this for the next top.



And here is a better picture of the top. For a more extravagant look, it can be tied in front, with a bow.




Even with the application of binding, it still is a quick and rewarding project. But... it does require quite a lot of fabric, I had to be really creative about it as the black and white knit was a remnant.

Item #4 - NYU jeans



These are copied from my favorite RTW jeans. I had them for more than 4 years and I wore them to death. The most flattering jeans I've ever had. They will soon be unwearable and I plan to make at least two more pairs this year. I decided to make the first pair in black, with tone-on-tone topstitching and embellishment (see below for embellishment) because I wanted a dressier pair of jeans, one that I could wear with anything, including my Chanel-style jacket.

Why are these not your usual jeans?
First, because of the fabric - it is denim but made out of linen, viscose and elasthane. Looks pretty dressy and has a bit of sheen.
Second, because of the back pocket treatment. Stole an idea from another pair of RTW jeans and instead of applying patch pockets, I made inseam pockets (in the seam joining the back yoke to the back jean), with a pocket bag in the shape of a jean pocket and with only partial topstitching on the right side - take a look, pictures speak better than my English :)



The wrong side of the jeans, showing the pocket bag




And third, because of the embellishment done on the pocket, using heirloom/hemstitch techniques by machine. I found this great resource, containing a wealth of fact sheets (pdf format), I've printed almost all of them and made a separate file. They are so great that last night, when I finally got my copy of Handsewn by Machine (ordered at the end of December) I found I already knew almost everything in the book, thanks to these fact sheets. Here is a link to the techniques (you'll get a list of files not your usual website, but the name of those files is pretty relevant). And here is the link to the fact sheet that I've used - it is a heirloom hemstitched applique.

What I did: starch well (I finally found a good spray starch) a piece of organza, hooped it (if I don't hoop it, I get a lot of channeling), drew with chalk a rectangle that would fit into my machine (that rectangle was enough to cut out two leaves - I've used the leaf in the fact sheet as a template) and covered the rectangle with a Venetian hemstitch (sorry, but I cannot find a drawing of this hemstitch), using silk thread in the needle. The first rectangle took forever (you need some practice) but the second rectangle took only 30 minutes. Oh, and I couldn't find a wing needle here (I absolutely must find an online supply for wing needles and white silk thread, they are impossible to find here) and I used the largest needle that I have - size 11o. Worked just fine - the idea is to have a needle large enough to leave holes in the fabric.

Here is the unhooped rectangle, with the stitching done:



I then drew the leaf shapes on the rectangle, stitched around them with a straight stitch and cut them out, just outside the stitched outline. Used a spray adhesive (another thing that I must find online) to attach a piece of wash-away stabilizer to the back of the pocket. I then appliqued the leaves to the pocket. It is a corded applique and for that I've used my three hole cording foot, a strand of black pearl cotton and a satin stitch (2.5 mm width, 0.4 mm length) to stitch the leaf to the jeans. I then outlined the entire applique with a pinstitch. Isn't it beautiful?



And a close up of the front pocket. I used again snaps instead of rivets - can't find decent jean rivets here, but these snaps work just great.

My famous blue raincoat :)

(title of a Leonard Cohen song that I love)

Now... some girls have a Birkin bag. Some girls have a Kelly.
But I am the happy owner of a Tany trenchcoat!

When I saw this picture, I thought immediately of the midnight blue taffeta that Tany sent me a while ago. This is one of the reasons for which the trenchcoat is named after her. The other reasons... do I really need to mention them? Besides being an inspiration for many of us, she is such a warm, supportive, lovely person.

Burda WOF 02/2008, 117 Coat:



I loved the "runway" look of this trench the minute I saw it. The volume in the skirt (a big trend for this spring/summer) , the shirring in the waist, the lapels with a collar with stand... all these details attracted me. The 20 rows of topstitching on the hem portion of the coat give the effect of a petticoat underneath. If you don't want that much volume on you, you could easily skip the topstitching on the hem. Without it, the coat drapes at the hem instead of standing away from the body and it looks beautiful that way too.

Speaking of topstitching, this was a very time-consuming project (I again forgot to keep track of the time I spent on this project):

• There are 8 rows of shirring in the waist. I used a tubular elastic for that, encased in a zigzag stitch (4 mm width, 3 mm length). My pearl and piping foot helped a lot, the elastic fitted in it perfectly
• There are 20 rows of topstitching on the hem (spaced at 1 cm apart/approx 3/8 inch), plus 10 rows of topstitching on each sleeve cuff. I used a silk thread for the topstitching.

• To make my life even more beautiful, I decided to add another 10 rows of topstitching on the collar and 10 rows on each lapel. It did seem like this project will never ed (sooo much topstitching) but it was worthwhile to add topstitching on the collar and lapels. Not only it ties in with the hem and cuffs, but it gives better shape and structure to the collar and lapels. If you look in the Burda pictures, you can see that their lapels are a bit floppy.

• This coat is unlined. At first I wanted to line it with a beautiful blue satin I had in my stash, but I realized that with all the shirring at the waist, lining the coat could mean some bulkier stiff gathers and I didn't want that on my petite frame. The coat being unlined, I used a Hong Kong finish on the seams (cutting bias strips from the blue satin) and I bound the pockets.

• The trench is fastened with snaps, handsewn. I eliminated the first two pairs/rows of snaps because I knew I would never wear my coat buttoned to the collar, I want it to have lapels. But I did add another three pairs of snaps after the last one (the Burda snaps stop at mid-thigh) because guess what... This trench can easily be worn as a dress as well! I wouldn't want to show that much thigh :), so more snaps were in order.
  
• I've added another snap at the waist, at mid-way between the bust row of snaps and the second one, which is a bit below waist. If you look at the enlarged Burda pictures, there is some strange gaping at the waist. I got the same gaping, it is due to the snaps placing, but the additional snap at the waist solved this problem.

Not MIA

Have you seen the Spring and Summer 2008 Fashion trends report on the Fashion-Era website? If not, go here. And go here for the Wardrobe planning tips for 2008.

I've just finished a project (non-SWAP related) that really got me hooked and I hope to take pictures tonight.

I'll also take pictures of two SWAP garments and post them. Tomorrow hopefully.