Marble Gingers

Jeans. I don't know about you but I looooove wearing jeans. A good pair of jeans is a must have for most people. However finding that perfect pair in the RTW world is tricky. Especially when you are on a budget and your body is not exactly on the same wave length with the standardized clothing manufacturing world. Which often is the case for me. I have been thinking about one day making my own jeans that fit me well and are reasonably priced(and obviously have good quality) for as long as I have been really serious about sewing. And it has remained as a future goal, a quiet  whisper in the back of my mind saying "One day" Today I am proud to say that the day has arrived and I made me some goddamn jeans. And what a pair are they.

Meet Marble Gingers. My first go at making real jeans and a wearable muslin for the Ginger Jeans pattern by Heather. When the pattern came out I thought "Yes, this is what I need in my life" and bought it right away. If you already have the pattern, you can't say the reason why you haven't made your jeans is "I'm too busy to make my own pattern" But it still took me a while to assemble the pattern and dive into the sewing process. But I got there. And instead of feeling the water with my toes first, I dove in head first and hoped for the best. 

What you are seeing here is proof of my insanity. I took some white denim that I had been hoarding in my fabric stash and dyed it. For a muslin. Yes, you heard me right. A muslin. (I'll explain the process for getting this coloring result later in the post) I got the idea of having jeans with black and red marble effect stuck in my brain and unlike Elsa, I refused to let it go! (Dated reference for the win!)

I cut out view B in size 10 for the waist and size 12 for the hips. Then I followed the instructions provided by the pattern and hauled my ass into the jeans once they were ready for the waistband. That was when I realized I needed to make a few fitting adjustments. I had to take in 1 cm from the waist and hips and 0,5cm around the calves. Then I chopped off 4cm from the hem and lowered the waistband by 0,5cm in the front, 1,5cm on the sides and 4cm on the back. I also had to tweak the shape of the crotch curve. I didn't get the perfect result for the crotch yet, but I'm hoping to get there with my next pair.

Overall I am very pleased with the end result. I've received quite few compliments on my jeans and people have been really surprised that I actually made these. Yay for sewing ego boost!

Though they are not perfect. The issue with these jeans is that the denim is stretchy, but not enough. Which means while they do give in a bit, sometimes they can feel a bit too stiff. But they look awesome and they aren't too uncomfortable, so I'll let it slide. No pain, no gain, right?

 So to get the marble effect for my jeans I went through the following steps. First I cut out the pieces I needed from the main fabric, then made these long fabric sausages by slightly twisting the fabric lengthwise and wrapping thread around it.

Then I made a batch of black dye, threw the sausages in the dye and followed the instructions on the dye package.

After I had finished dying the sausages black, I unwrapped them and prepared a batch of red dye. Then I threw the unwrapped pieces into that. And here's where I went rogue and hoped my gut feeling was right. As I was after the marble effect, I wanted the red to be blotchy and not even, so I made less dye than needed(about 75% of the needed amount) and didn't stir the fabric in the pot as much as instructed. Stirring the fabric makes sure that the fabric is dyed evenly, but that wasn't my end goal. So I kept the stirring at minimum to ensure the dye didn't burn to the bottom of the pot. And I was so pleased with my end result. I love it when a plan comes together.

So that's it. My first jeans. First but definitely not last. Though I think I'll keep the insanity at bay with next pairs. But who knows what weird things I'll come up with next.

Laurel The Muslin

Hi peeps, welcome back! Or if you are a first time visitor, I hope you'll come back in the future!

Sometimes a girl needs a simple dress from a simple fabric. Something to throw on during a warm summer/spring day. For a long time I have eyed the Laurel pattern for a while but kept doubting if the shape would flatter my body shape. But I decided to bite the bullet and pulled out the pattern, a piece of some cheap cotton I purchased some time ago for muslining and made a nice little wearable muslin.

I cut out Version 1 in size 10 and made a few fit adjustments. I had to take in the neckline at the shoulder seams by 1,5cm and the armhole at the shoulder by 0,5 cm. I also took in the back  by 2cm at the neckline, 1 cm at the waist and 0cm at the hips. As I shortened the armhole by 1cm in total, I also shaved off a bit from the sleeve head. But I think I didn't shave off enough, might have to do that for my next Laurel dress.

Instead of using the methods to finish the neckline given by the instructions, I finished the neckline with a nice little facing. I finished all other seams with overlocking and roll hemmed the sleeves and the hem of the dress.

Pardon the wrinkles, I wore the dress to a little family gathering before taking the pictures.

The dress fastens with an invisible zipper as per instructions. However I might put the zipper into the left side seam next time, we'll see how future me feels about that.

 All in all, I think the dress is awesome. True, the cotton fabric does wrinke a lot, but that's okay. And despite my doubts about the shape looking flattering, I think it looks great with a belt thrown on. Besides, during the summer I'd rather have something slightly too loose than too constricting.

Bruyére the First

Hello to all of your beautiful faces! Spring has officially sprung and I can't wait for when I can shove that coat deep into the depths of my closet, hide my boots somewhere I can't see them and bask myself in the sweet-sweet warmth of the sun. Maybe, just maybe, I can even get a tan again this year! That would be two years in a row! And I know that everyone asked "What tan?" when I said that I had the best tan I had had in my life last year but that's the glory of being pale. You tan, feel super proud of your tan and you could still be mistaken for a swan. Anywhooooooo. That's not what I wanted to share with you today, but whatever. Not deleting that sooooo... Meeh. Here's the real post.

This is my "wearable" muslin for the Bruyére shirt by Deer and Doe. When it came out last fall, I was instantly loving the look of it. A simple buttonfront shirt with pleats and that is long enough to cover your bum so you can wear it with tights? Don't mind if I do. I didn't feel like making a real muslin so I decided to use a fabric I wouldn't feel sad about if the shirt ended up being a huge fitting fail or if the fit was kind of off and it got demoted into a "at home" shirt. So I took a piece of dark blue polyester fabric and a bit of bright blue to make the shirt look more alive.

After consulting my measurements and size chart, I traced and cut out size 42 and made no modifications to the pattern pieces. I followed the instructions exactly like they were written and thought they were relatively clear. I did jump between the English and French instructions because the English instruction had all the measurements in inches and I feel a lot more comfortable with cm but now I've written the corresponding cm measurements to the English envelope with my own little shaky hand so no going back and forth between the two in the future.

I decided to serge all the seams instead of french seaming because ain't nobody got time fo dat, if it's a wearable muslin. And let me tell you, I am happy I did not put that much effort into this thing. Because whatever is going on with the dark blue fabric, it makes my skin itch. So far only organic wool yarns have made my skin itch like that but that fabric does not have any wool in it. It is flat out polyester and feels like yuck on my skin. I've tried to suffer through a day in this shirt but unless I put a longsleeve under it, I will want to scrape my skin off with a sandpaper.

Okay. So about the fit. The waist is a bit too big under the bust, so I'm going to have to take in the front waistband and play around with the shape of the bust dart. The shoulder was a bit too long, so for the next version I'm going to have to shorten the shoulder by 1cm. The sleeve is also a bit too wide. You can clearly see that the sleeve is Fifty Shades of Baggy around my arms and it also had a bit too much ease at the armhole. So it didn't really ease into the armhole and really wanted to have tiny gathers. And a fabric that is a bitch like this one, it really shows. So if you are making your first Bruyére, I recommend you make sure the sleeve eases in well and you might have to take off some of the excess ease. I also recommend considering using snap buttons instead of regular buttons because opening and closing this amount of buttons every time you wear it is really time consuming and annoying.

So. Will I be making other versions? Heck yea. I actually already have made more. And I have seriously considered burning every little piece of the itchy fabric I have left. Because nothing is worth that amount of itch. Good thing I got it from Gran S and didn't pay for it.

Hawthorn - The wearable insanity

What do you call a person who not only makes her muslins both wearable and double sided? Insane. I guess that's what I am because I did that. 

The story begins with this thing on the right. Somewhere around July and August my Gran M gave me this wrap skirt/apron thing. And I thought it looked absolutely hideous. I tried it on once and I felt like I was being eaten alive by a weird skirt monster. Not only was it way too big, it was also too long and looked awkward on me. Let me tell you, four layers of this thing was anything but flattering. So I threw it into the "Nope, not wearing that" pile with the thought of using the fabric to create something that looked decent enough to wear. Which was kind of doubtful as I didn't like the colour either. I guess one can only hope. A little later I started to toss the idea of turning it into a reversible top.

So I kept that idea in the back of my mind and one day I found the Hawthorn dress pattern in my stash and I knew that this was it. So I traced the size 10 pieces for the blouse option and decided to omit the sleeves as I didn't have enough fabric for them. After that I cut out the pieces from the fabric and sewed them together. Then came the tricky part. Fitting. I knew this would be the part where I want to toss it all aside and never finish the blouse because it was all wrong. There bodice was too long for me and it made a huge mess around the shoulders. The shoulder line was too high and it was a hot mess. The other big issue was the shape of the bust dart. The shape was wrong and I needed to adjust them. So I lowered the shoulder line by 2,5cm from the neckline and 1,5cm from the armhole side. So not only was the shoulder too high for me, the angle was off as well. Blame my short torso and weird shoulders(I have the shoulders of a man, haha) I also took in the side seams by 1cm.

As you can see in the picture above, the original bust dart shape(grey) is really different from the one I ended up with(green). This right here is the reason why most RTW fitted tops and dresses don't fit me. The darts are wrong for me. 

So here's the final result. Right now the fit is a bit too snug. Damn you, holiday food! But I'm working on losing all of that extra padding so, it should fit me better again soon. On this side, I made the floral peplum layer a bit shorter(I ran out of fabric). This is a bit more modest side, I think with only a bit of floral pattern on the collar and peplum.

I used snap buttons instead of buttons. Mainly because buttons are tricky when you need them to function both way. And because I am lazy and find myself hating the process of getting dressed every time I have to close SOOOOOOOO many tiny buttons. Ain't nobody got time fo dat.

And this is the side that I think looks more loud. However as the color itself is kind of quiet and not all up in your face, it's still not really that loud. I love how the floral peplum still is seen through the solid layer. Plus it eliminates all possibilities of my tummy flashing itself. Which is another win in my eyes. On this side the snaps are little silver rings while on the other side they were white little dots(Almost like buttons). 

As you can see, I topstitched the collar and the front. I finished the hem with teeny-tiny baby rolled hem. To avoid any serged edges peeking through while wearing, I finished the peplum seams with flat felled seams. 

Also. The story is not over yet. Picture me in my sewing room, all giddy about finally finishing this thing and still unsure if I would ever wear it for real because of  my dislike of the color. I had just attached the peplum to the bodice(I had sandwiched the bodice between the peplum) and done the topstitching over that seam line. And here I was, trimming down the waist seam allowance so I could do the final topstitching on the front seam and then attach the snap buttons and then.......................

THIS happened. You know when everyone keeps telling you that you should be super careful when trimming seams. This is why. I had been reckless and I was staring at the result of that. I did not know what to do, to cry, yell, laugh or chuck the whole thing into the bin as it's clearly cursed. So I did what anyone would do. I Instagrammed it. And then took a lot of deep breaths and took my good friend seam ripper to rip up the waistline seams. Then I lowered the seamline on the bodice by as little as I could to hide that notch but still maintain the length I wanted. Everything after that is ancient history.

I have been trying to think what the real moral of this story is. And I can't say there is only one. There are three.

1. Don't hurry and pay attention to what you are doing, dum-dum

2.Use interfacing that is more similar to the main fabric when working with slightly sheer fabrics. I really should have used a purple/pink interfacing instead of white.

3. Never say never. I actually like this thing. I still dislike pink/purple/blue but I really like how this blouse looks on me. I might be actually crazy. Probably left the last bits of my sanity to the part where I nicked the fabric while trimming down the seam allowance.

Simplicity one-eight-zero-fail

My pc is fine now! Yay! Back in June I made a wearable muslin for the Simplicity 1803 dress I made for the Outfit Along. For it I used a gray linen and polyester blend with orange roses.

I used the view A pattern with cap sleeves. The dress has pockets and I decided to add the narrow tie belt pieces as well. The fit was good overall but I needed to make the yoke and top of the bodice a bit narrower as I saw that the fabric was bulking a bit. All the seams are overlocked, for hemming the sleeves and bottom of the dress I used rolled hem. For the facings and pocket fabrics I used white viscose fabric I had a few scraps lying around.

Now let me tell you why this project is a fail. The fabric is a nightmare. If the seam goes wrong and unpicking is needed, the fabric gets holes and pulling where the old seam line was. And that with a 75 needle. The fibers of the fabric start to shift really easily and once they do, the fabric looks like poo. I guess the linen and polyester don't really like each other and they fight a lot and make the fabric look ugly where a battle of wills has taken place. Luckily I got the fabric from the "treasure chest" in the local fabric shop so it was dirt cheap. But I've worn the dress three times and the fabric has shifted around the waistline and in some of the skirt seams so now it just looks ugly. At first I thought that the shifting was only in the waist line and maybe the waist was a bit too snug, but I didn't feel like it was too snug and when I found the shifting in the skirt areas where there's no pulling, I realized that the fabric is at fault here.  I still like the print tho, it comes in yellow as well, I want to get it but I'm scared it'll ruin my work again. *sigh*

Sooooo. This is happening all over the place. :(

But I still love the pattern. I guess I have a dress for wearing at home when I feel like dressing up but don't want to risk my other clothes with food stains or whatever stains I might encounter(I'm clumsy, stains happen)

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Have you ever encountered something like this? Has a fabric quality ever ruined your projects?