Make 9 for 2019

I have watched people post their Make 9 choices over the past couple of years and considered planning out 9 patterns I want to sew for the year, but my sewing has been more capricious than consistent, so it wasn’t something I thought I could achieve. In the last year, I’ve been working on planning out my sewing, working on patterns that grow or stretch my skills. I want to continue this trend in 2019 and have been planning my makes even before the Make 9 posts started showing up. Nine completed projects that stretch and/or grow my skills in 2019 seems totally doable.

Pattern choices are always difficult at this stage. I am still trying to sew as much out of my stash as possible, but I am getting a few new pieces for Christmas this year. My intent is to use those pieces before the end of 2019 rather than hoarding them. With that in mind, I spent a good week pondering my fabric choices and pattern options.

I knew I wanted to make a coat or jacket. This has been on my list for a couple of years and I own an absurd number of jacket patterns considering my total makes from those patterns is a large scale zero. With that sort of selection, picking one to launch my Make 9 should be easy, right? Um...no. I opted to buy a new pattern, the Kelly Anorak from Closet Case Patterns. I have seriously coveted this pattern since its release. When the pattern showed up on Fabric.com, it went straight onto my Christmas list, along with the perfect brushed twill in a lovely orange called sweet potato. I am still debating things like lining or not and hood or not, but the pattern and fabric was waiting under the Christmas tree.

My second Make 9 involves my most coveted fabric - houndstooth. Fabric.com carries a lovely grey houndstooth in wool, perfect for the BurdaStyle 6380 vest dress (jumper?) pattern released this fall. I knew the instant I saw the pattern that I wanted to make it and it went onto my list of fall sewing, which was derailed by The Dress. Once again, it was a match made in fabric/pattern heaven. I’m planning to go serious couture on this one, which hair canvas and bound buttonholes and welt pockets, the whole works. Slow sewing and skill building all in one fabulous project. I’m really looking forward to this one. The fabric for this one was also under my Christmas tree.

Third up is a leather skirt. I’m kinda on the fence about this one. A length of beautiful Telio gunmetal faux leather from Fabric.com was waiting under the Christmas tree. This will be serious challenging, but I’ve already got a teflon foot, so I’m halfway there, right? My current plan is to stitch this one up in Tilly and the Buttons Arielle. I love the off center button band, although I’d go with some snaps for the leather. This is another slow sew, skill builder. I’m definitely targeting those for 2019!

On the other hand, I know if I do all slow sew projects, I’ll get impatient and screw something up, so I want to mix in some straightforward staples. The first of these is the York Pinafore from Helen’s Closet. This is another pattern I’ve been coveting since I first saw it pop up in my Instagram feed. I also want the apron expansion pack. I love the look and that kind of apron is awesome as a harvest apron, having lots of room to pull up the hemline and make a bountiful basket for cleaning out the garden. Thing1 has her eye on this pattern too, so I suspect there will be more than one York before it is all done. I’m thinking denim or maybe linen.

Some unexpected additions to my Make 9 came courtesy of the #sewfrosting challenge hosted by Heather and Kelli. I won one of the community prize packs, which in turn added two Tilly & the Buttons patterns to my stash (the Arielle mentioned above and the Cleo dungaree dress), along with a several True Bias patterns. The Cleo dungaree dress will get made up, although I’m pretty sure I’ll have to either make 2 or fight Thing1 off of mine. I have some sweet dark purple velveteen in my stash, which I have earmarked for this make. I’ll do one up for Thing1 out of linen or maybe some denim. (She has seen the pattern and already wants to know when hers will be done.)

True Bias will take on 2 of the remaining 9. While I’m doling out the denim, I’m planning on making the Salida skirt in denim, with loads and loads and loads of top stitching. I’m quite chuffed about this one! I also picked up the Southport dress, which Thing1 has already called dibs on. I’ve got some giraffe print double gauze in one of my various online wish lists. Giraffes are her spirit animal, and she has been requesting some updated giraffe themed clothing. I may try to get her to sew this one up herself, but I’m not going to hold my breath. She loves sewing and bragging on her makes, but getting her started is often painful.

My last two patterns shouldn’t be a stretch for me, but the patterns/fabrics will require I take my time to do them right. First up is Simplicity 8746, which is a cute pleated wrap skirt. I have a very pretty plaid flannel in my stash that has been lingering far too long until the right pattern came along. It was the first fabric I thought of when I saw the pattern. I have done pleated plaid before. It is a study in patience to get everything cut properly, but totally worth it when it is all said and done. This one may get lined so it will play well with tights.

If I’ve done the math right, I should be down to my final pattern of the nine. I’ll be doing up Vogue 9333, a lovely button up blouse with fabulous pleats across the front and back to give it shape. It also has pleats at the sleeve caps. I’ll be in pleating heaven with this one. My friend Becky was horrified at the sheer number of buttonholes this one required. She is not wrong and I’m reserving the right to chicken out and do up some pearl snaps instead. The fabric for this one was also under the Christmas Tree. Pretty white snowflakes on a field of black. Collar and cuffs will be done is crisp snow white. I’m tempted to do up the fun, funky double look collar from view B while I’m at it.

I have a two extra patterns in the queue because a)I have this gorgeous wool challis in my stash that is begging to be made up into B6586 and b) I just adore the Jenny pattern and I've got Christmas pennies to spend on some lovely twill fabric. Thing1 is also a big fan of Jenny, so it may even get made up more than once. These are my alternates if one of the nine gets sick or breaks a leg or something. (I see you faux leather, cowering behind the sewing machine!)

52 Hours of Pure #Sewfrosting

When my number one never ending DIY project made state honor choir for the second year in a row, I knew she was going to need a nice dress for the performance. I could have raided her closet, or even mine for something that would do, but I knew she would also need a dress for her Christmas concert and for...well...Christmas. Will she wear it more than three times? Probably. She is still growing in the upward direction and I don’t doubt she won’t fill out a bit here and there, but I built in some grow room to give the dress some longevity while still making sure it fit her now.

So the decision was made. I was making a dress! I didn’t have to ask her if this was okay. She may be 12 and have a very distinct fashion sense, but she still loves it when I make her a dress. My only hard rule was as much as possible for this dress had to come out of the stash.

As of the first of the year, my stash had grown to the alarming stage of notice by The Awesome Husband, which we all know is horrifying. As stashes go, mine occupies 3 large bins that live in our storage container and a three drawer stack in my daughter’s closet. The problem was the bins in storage were full to the point of bursting and the drawers were having issues closing. The Awesome Husband made several comments about the bins. He had officially noticed. As a result, I’ve spent the last year going through my stash. I have recycled some, given away some more and sewn up more than either of those.

Living in the remains of my stash were two lengths which were very much special occasion fabrics. One is a very lovely silver-gold shimmer rayon, which I offered up along with the lovely green and black flocked acetate taffeta. I told Thing1 she could have both (skirt and blouse combo) or opt for a dress out of just one. She latched onto the taffeta without so much as blinking. Considering I bought the fabric a few years ago with the sole intent of making it into a Christmas dress for her, it was a match made in sewing heaven.

Fabric in hand, we progressed to my stash of patterns. These only get mentioned in a vague “you left a stack of patterns out” sort of fashion. I’m always getting more, but the sheer quantity seems to have escaped notice. After some discussion, we narrowed the patterns down to two, at which point, I made her choose which dress she wanted. New Look 6497 was an early favorite during the pattern search, so I wasn’t at all surprised when she latched onto it in spite of being sleeveless and we are heading into winter. The girl has very definite ideas about what she likes to wear!

We did some measurements, I did a lot of tracing and making a few minor adjustments to the pattern before spreading out the fabric. The most significant adjustment was length. The pattern offers knee length and floor-ish length. The Girl wanted mid-calf. She stands 5’7” these days, with quite a lot of that being in legs. I chopped 4” off the longest skirt length, figuring I would make more adjustments when she tried on the dress. The length held out to the end, with a 1” hem, plus ⅞” hem facing stitched at ¼” from the cut edge, so right at 1 ⅝” total hem.

Where I spent money - lining and velveteen. I had a few pieces of lining in my stash, but I wanted either black taffeta or satin for the lining. In addition, I offered up the design option of velveteen in the front bodice v-section and the back bow. The girl was delighted by the choice, giving instant approval into my design changes. JoAnn’s had both taffeta and satin, but after fondling both, I opted for the satin. Cost of lining and ½ yard of velveteen was exactly $13 after coupons. I later discovered I had four navy zippers but no black ones in my stash. I have never sewn anything navy, so I don’t know why I have zippers in that color. I’m blaming sewing gnomes. I picked up a zipper at Wal-Mart for $1.82. My last expenditure was a sparkle buckle for the bow. I had one in my stash, but managed to break the center bar while threading the velveteen through it. Hobby Lobby, with coupon - $3. If I factor in the original cost of the fabric from Fabric.com of $15.92, the total cost for the dress is just under $34.

Construction -

The last time I sewed a fancy dress of this scale was for my senior prom/4H/Home Ec project between my Junior and Senior years in high school. The dress consumed most of my teenage free time that summer. I had a month between pattern selection on choir concert, between work and family, I had four weekends to sew up a dress out of a fabric I knew was going to require a ton of fussy sewing and finishes.

Skirt left to hang while I worked on the bodice.

The skirt went together quickly; all ten panels of it were done up with French seams. I left the side zipper seam open and moved onto the bodice. Since the bodice was fully lined, I didn’t have to worry about French seams, I could plow through it with a standard seam allowance. Damn the torpedoes and full speed ahead. Except, my standard seam allowance these days is ⅜” because I serge off ¼” to finish all my seam allowances. I haven’t sewn ⅝” in forever and it was princess seams. Both princess seams on the fashion fabric AND the lining took two tries each. The worst part, the problem wasn’t even in the eased area at the bust. It was at the lower front. There was swearing. Thankfully, all four times the error ended up falling inside the seam allowance, so the lovely little holes the needle left in my fabric after I pulled out the stitching are neatly concealed inside the bodice. I had enough of both fabrics to recut the front side bodice pieces, but I sure as heck did not want to and I couldn’t guarantee I wouldn’t screw them up either.

All those pretty french seams!

The pattern calls for the bodice to be stitched up except for the shoulder seams and the zipper seam, then stitched together at the neckline, with understitching up to about an inch on either side of the shoulder seams. Then the shoulder seams are stitched on both and the lining stitched in place. I have never had good luck putting a lining in this way. My shoulder seams never look fabulous and I’m never happy with how the lining looks. I opted to stitch the bodice complete, except for the zipper seam, and join the two completely at the neckline, understitching the whole neckline. I knew this meant more handwork on the armholes, but I knew I could make them look good, so I went for it.

Armhole at the top, understitched neckline at the bottom.

Stitching in the lining at the armholes can be tricky. It takes patience and planning. First step was to machine a line of basting stitches onto the fashion fabric. I used the standard ⅝” seam allowance the pattern called for, but shifted my needle two ticks into the seam allowance, which put the mark at just a smidge less than ½”. I clipped the curves to my stitching line and pressed the armhole to ⅝”. The lining was the same, except I shifted the needle two ticks outside the seam allowance, which put it just shy of ¾”. I clipped to the line and then used the line as my pressing guide. The lining was now right at ⅛” smaller at each armhole, neatly fitting into the shell of the fashion fabric without anything showing. I fell stitched the armhole lining into place.

The inside bits, lining all stitched down.

I attached the skirt to the bodice before I did the hand stitching on the armholes, and Thing 1 slipped it on. She only managed to stab herself twice on the various pins in the lining. I knew this was my only opportunity to make any fit changes. Beyond this point, changes were going to put holes in obvious places. The dress fit like a dream! The time I spent measuring her and all the pattern pieces and making tiny little adjustments on those bits of paper were well worth it.

Hong Kong finishes always look so pretty.

My next challenge was the zipper seam. I knew doing a french seam could be done below where the zipper would be inserted, but I have been less than pleased when I have attempted this. I decided to do a Hong Kong Finish on this seam. I have loads of fat quarters. I stock up when JoAnn’s runs them for $1 or less a piece, washed, pressed and folded away. I pulled out one with a black and white swirl print that mimicked the flocking on the dress and turned it into bias binding. There are loads of tutorials on Pintrest for this, so I won’t go into the process. I get around 5 yards of bias from one fat quarter. More than enough for two runs down the one long seam. This was the first time I did an invisible zipper in a side seam and it took two stabs to get it straight and even. Once again, I managed to have all my screwups fall inside the seam allowances!

The zipper is so invisible, you can barely see it!

I rummaged through my stash and found two rolls of ⅞” wide black polkadot grosgrain ribbon. Sometime in the last year, Sewing Artistry did a piece on Instagram or her weekly email newsletter on grograin ribbon as a hem facing. I can’t remember which, but the post stuck in my head and I’ve been using it here and there with great success. The poly grosgrain ribbon tackles curves like bias, and with a careful application of heat (and a good press cloth), the ribbon can be formed to your hem curve without needing a lot of easing on A-line hems. A bit of measuring told me I had 5 ½ yards of a-line shaped hemline which I knew would be the perfect application of a ribbon facing because easing acetate taffeta and making it look good was not something I wanted to attempt. I didn’t have plain ribbon in my stash, but no one was going to see the facing and Thing 1 thought the ribbon was fabulous, so polka dot hem facing it was! I ran a line of machine basting at ¼” from the edge of the skirt, lined up the ribbon and stitched it into place.

I was still dreading the hem on this dress and put it off to stitch the lining into place at the waist and along the zipper. There was nothing left but to tackle the hem. My biggest fear was the stitching showing on the face of the fabric, but I could not see a way around it. This time, Bluprint to the rescue! There are so many wonderful couture sewing classes available. I highly recommend the ones by Kenneth King and Alison Smith. One of Alison’s classes tackled heming a lovely skirt. She put a woven interfacing into the hem allowance, which gave the hem extra body and a bit of weight, plus when the heming was done, it was stitched to the interfacing and not the fashion fabric! I could do this! I took a medium weight woven fusible interfacing and bias cut it into 2” strips. These were fused to the fashion fabric with a press cloth and a ton of steam. This process gave me a very pretty hemline on the outside, along with permanently curving the ribbon to the right angle on the inside. I let the dress hang for 24 hours after all the fusing/pressing. I carefully stitched the ribbon to the interfacing with a stitch I learned watching Kenneth and Alison, but heck if I can remember what it was called! All I know is not a single stitch of my hem shows on the face of the dress, and the hem is neatly secured and pretty on the inside!

Thing1 loves skirts and twirl and particularly, skirts that twirl. Ten panels of skirt with 5 ½ yards of hemline equals serious twirl. Each fitting required a twirl session. I knew early on that a waist stay was probably going to be a very good idea to help carry the weight of the skirt and all the twirling. I used the same grosgrain ribbon from the hem facing, adding a skirt hook just inside the zipper opening. It was a pretty simple change but it really helped the way the skirt hung the next time she put it on. Little things!

The last thing to do on the dress was the bow. The pattern calls for the bow to be removable and placed at the upper back of the bodice of the dress. It snaps into place. I had enough velveteen for a small design change so I gave Thing1 the option, she could have the bow as designed or we could put it at the waist on the front. Sparkle bow buckle on the front won before I even finished explaining the options. I cut a 3 ½” wide strip of velveteen to make a waistband with a ⅜” seam allowance and a second strip of the same to make the ribbon “ties” to dangle down the front. The waistband was stitched in place from the bodice dart, all the way around to the zipper opening. The remaining band wraps across the zipper opening to two giant snaps to close the waistband after the dress is zipped up.

My only other construction struggle on this dress was thread. The entire thing is stitched in black thread because I could not find a green to match. The olive green is super pretty, but none of my local thread options came anywhere close to matching up. I stitched up several seam samples and confirmed the black wasn’t going to show or be obvious on the front of the dress, so I went for it.

Give me model!

This dress is serious frosting. It is gorgeous and completely impractical for day to day wear. Thing1 absolutely adores it. I enjoyed the heck out of making it! As an added bonus, the dress was 100% complete a full 4 days before she needed to wear it. I didn’t spend frantic hours in the depths of the night to get it finished. I took it slow, approaching each challenge with very little stress. I was blissfully relieved and hugely pleased when it was done and immediately sewed up a maxi skirt in less than an afternoon, which I rocked as choir chaperone. I want to make another time consuming, mentally taxing sewing project, but this time for me. I have my eye on a tailored vest out of a wool houndstooth.

Thanks to Heather (Closet Case Patterns) and Kelly (True Bias) for their #SewFrosting challenge. I'm not sure if I would have jumped headlong into an acetate taffeta dress without a bit of subtle sewcial nudging!

Sew Daring

It's a knit dress! I feel like there should be some shouts of excitement. Perhaps some dancing about. I sewed a knit dress. What's more, it's a Franken-Dress. A combination of two very lovely knit patterns, McCall's 6957 and 7092. GillianCrafts of Crafting a Rainbow dared me to stitch up a knit dress as my sewing dare. Dare done.

I should be excited, but I'm not. I don't like this dress. I didn't enjoy sewing this dress. In fact, toward the end, I was powering through just to finish the dress and get it the heck out of my way. I managed to stop and try it on just short of the hem. The low part of the high/low hem was too low, so after a few photos, I hung the dress and walked away.

Let me go back three weeks, when the dress was just a pile of pieces and I was looking forward to tackling a new adventure. Okay, I was somewhat leery of attacking a knit. I managed to actually rethread my serger in pink thread because I knew the back seam was going to show through to the front because of the lower back hem. There was excitement. I managed to thread it right the first go and it took barely five minutes! A few tweaks and adjustments later and I was ready to go.

The moment of excitement and bliss.  This is going to be
the most awesome dress ever. Ha.

This is where things started to go horribly wrong. The back pieces serged nicely. Happy sewist. The front modesty pieces folded in half and again, serged up like a dream, as did the top bodice pieces. It wasn't until I went to put the pleats into the front that the swearing began. Since the pattern calls for the bodies pieces to be folded in half and THEN the pleats neatly folded and stitched, there are four layers of super thick scuba knit in six spots across the front of the bodice. These layers then layer on top of the modest pieces, which are also folded in half and then layered on top of each other. So in a four inch wide spot, there are no less than eight layers of scuba. Both machines staged a mutiny at this point.

Don't ask.  Just don't. It's terrible.

I responded to the mutiny with suggestions that are not even anatomically probable for a human, much less a machine, and rethreaded the sewing machine with the super heavy duty denim thread and after a few more tries I switched to the denim needle. More swearing. More unflattering and highly unlikely suggestions. I resorted to hand sewing a couple of spots just to get everything to hold together and declared the front empire waistline complete. Rethreaded with the pink thread and the needle for knits, the machine and I tackled the center back seam. Two simple layers of scuba and the machine skipped it's way down the seam. Literally skipped. There were spots here and there with two and three stitches that didn't sew. Yet more swearing. I tried several different needle combinations before I just went back to the jersey needle and restitched the entire seam over the top of the first run. It still skipped, but in different spots.

Every single seam in this dress has been stitched through twice, sworn at the entire length of stitching and in some places, I still had to go back and run it through again. I looked at my work and sighed mightily. Not a single seam lay flat. This is scuba. It is not iron friendly. I tried on a scrap, just in case, with a press cloth and because I'm a glutton, I even hit it with steam in hopes of finding something, anything to get it to flatten out. Short of going through and stitching each seam allowance down, it ain't gonna happen. The whole thing has a sloppy look because of it.

By this point, my animosity toward the fabric was pretty high. I still thought the dress looked pretty on the hanger. Honestly, more than anything I was just relieved that the assembly part was pretty well done. I tried on the dress and hated it. The back portion of the high/low skirt was so long it brushed the backs of my ankles. I drug the hubs out to take pictures and get his comments. He was confused by the back length, confirming my own concerns that it was too long. After looking at the pictures, I was more sure that this dress was horrible. So I did what any self respecting sewist does. I posted it on Instagram and begged Gillian to convince me to not hate it.

It didn't' work. My feelings were so strong that I hung the dress figuring I would come back in a day and hem it just to have it done. A day turned into an entire week. The dress hung off the curtain rod in the dining room. I would walk by it every time I went to the pantry and glare furiously at it. Finally, I was more tired of having it hanging unfinished, so I went back and cut a full 8" off the lowest portion of the high low skirt on the pink dress. The skirt back at a more comfortable length for me, I put a 3/8" hem around the whole thing.

The white is 6" of pattern I cut before I decided
it wasn't near enough off the back. I cut
above the line of washers.

Finished and done.

I took the finished dress outside to take a few pictures in the sunshine...and found some lovely pull lines on the surface of the front of the skirt. The final nails in the coffin for this dress.

Ignore the white bit of fuzz.  Just look at those stupid pull
lines!  I haven't a clue where they came from.

After spending so much time glaring (and swearing) at it, I've decided that I don't completely hate it. However, the pull lines are pretty obvious, so it really isn't a wear out of the house dress. It is a good stay at home and lounge around the house on a Saturday sort of dress, while still being presentable if company happens to drop by. I don't really have any of that, so I guess that's something.

Inside back, the seam that annoys
me the most.

The seams that just refuse to lay flat.

I'm coining a new sewing phrase just for this dress...Wearable Wadder. Frankly, I think that translates into I put far to much sweat and swearing into the dang thing to throw it away in spite of its incredibly obvious problems. Do you have any wearable wadders?

Dedicated

Recently, I've been reading posts about people's sewing spaces. I think it is wonderful to have a space dedicated to sewing. My space is also dedicated...dedicated to feeding my family. Once upon a time I had an rather large sewing space in a spare room. When Thing 1 arrived on the scene, my space was split in half and shared with the hubs. Thing 2 came along, and we knew it wouldn't be long before both Things would need their own space. My space was once again reduced, this time to a bit of room in Thing 1's closet and a few bins for fabric out in our storage container.

There are some real positives to sewing at the dining room table.
1 - I have to be neat. Everything must be picked up and tucked away in time to put hot food onto the table. It forces me to keep tidy, or waste precious sewing time in cleaning up.
2 - My sewing is almost super organized.
3 - I love my sewing tools, but I'm less likely to waste money on tools that take up tons of space. Which leaves me more money for fabric.

The things that I consider essential in my sewing supplies have been reduced to one basket and a small, flat storage case. Let's check out the pieces.

First, the basket. Overall, this is not a very large basket. It is large enough to hold several of the square mason jars, my box of machine bits, some interfacing, bias binding, ribbon and a couple of patterns that are next up in the sewing queue and need to be cut out.

I can also tuck the foot pedals and cords for my sewing machine and serger in along one side. One of the large square jars has the flat portion of the lid removed so I can use it to hold my collection of scissors and marking tools. The small square box at the bottom left is my hand sewing kit, consisting of some needles, a needle threader and a thimble.

Top shot. You can see I have a couple of spools of thread tossed in and the spools of ribbon change based on what I'm working on.  Currently, I'm down to the wide spools of white and black. There are four jars in the basket.  Two of them in the lower center are 8oz, and are stacked one on top of the other.  The bottom one holds coils of horse hair and stay tape, while the top one holds my pins. In the lower left is a large jar that holds 100 Wonder Clips.

The second, open top jar holds my cutting/marking tools. From left to right, they are a Nancy's Notions seam guide, Fiskars 45mm Rotary Cutter, Fiskars spring loaded snips, Gingher Scissors in 8" bent dress maker shears, 5" craft scissor and 8" pinking shears.  On the far right is assorted marking pencils in white, blue and silver. Underneath all of this is my Olfa 24x26 cutting mat.

My jars. The left is 16oz, wide mouth, square. The right is 8oz, wide mouth square. Pins are glass head so I can iron over them. I used to have some plastic headed pins but after an ironing incident, I switched to glass head.

My sewing box, which holds my bobbins, measuring tape, machine needles, assorted small tools and an empty pill bottle which doubles as my sharps container for bent pins and used needles.

A close look at the assorted tools.  Left to right they are a Dritz mechanical marking pencil, Gingher seam ripper (LOVE this!), flat blade rotary marker, 4" ruler, bamboo point turner, 6" ruler.

One of the things that helps keep me tidy when I'm sewing is this bowl.  It's nothing spectacular.  I made it years ago in a pottery class and until recently, it's greatest achievement was the near sentient colony of dust bunnies that was living in it's rather shallow depths.  These days, it is my sewing version of Rachel Ray's garbage bowl. Snips of fabric, bits of elastic, the loads of trimmings from the serger and whatever else gets clipped, snipped, unpicked, etc while I stitch goes into the bowl. At the end of the day, I can just dump the bowl and save myself loads of time picking up all those little bits.

And this is a gratuitous shot of my able assistant who is nearly always in the middle of my sewing business.  She likes to lay right next to the foot pedals of whatever machine I'm using, hoping for a quick rub between seams. She looks a bit grumpy here, but that's because I woke her up and made her sit on the table for this picture.

So that's my space. Do you share your space with the rest of your family? What do you consider your essentials when it comes to your sewing tools?