Driftwood

In my new pattern making frenzy this spring, I stumbled across the Driftwood dress by Twig and Tale.  Ordinarily, this pattern would have been a hard no for me, as the gathered bodice style usually doesn't look good on me, but I had seen a version on Kate that I really loved, and thought it might be a pattern worth looking into.  

(She makes a lot of really cool stuff, from wire weaving, to spinning, to history bounding clothing, etc. I stumbled across her account whilst looking for ideas to spruce up a plain sweater).  The hashtag on Instagram* provided a lot of different samples on different body types, so I took the plunge and bought the pattern.  

NB: I get my pdf patterns printed at Pattern Printers now since there is no minimum order and the shipping and cost-per-pattern is very reasonable. (I used to use a different online service, but the minimum order cost meant I had to wait to print a whole bunch of patterns at once). I buy my Ban-rol and other elastics from The Sewing Place, which is run by the same company and they will combine shipping, so it is a win all around.

I toiled the dress with Indian block print cotton voile, and I admit this color scheme is not the best for me.  I wore it for Ascension with the sleeve bands in place but found them restrictive.  I even resewed them with a smaller seam allowance for more room, but after I made the second version without them, quickly removed them and rehemmed the sleeves.

I like the flutter sleeve, but the dress makes me feel pretty meh.  I was hoping it could be my "white" summer dress for the two white church holidays in the summer, but this isn't it.  I took off the buttons and put it back into my fabric bin to reassess for one of the girls at some point.

My second version came out better, and I've worn it a few times.  I like the print better, and tweaked a few details for best fit, but I'm just not sure about the silhouette.  Maybe a slightly shorter hem would do it?

I used the Hinterland skirt piece in size 6 to get the volume of the skirt right for me, and used the Isla wrap dress pocket piece since it anchors in the waistband.  

I used knit elastic measured roughly around my waist, and added an additional line of elastic for better waist shaping, but am thinking I could use an additional 1/2" on the elastics.

This dress might work better for my style in a rayon challis with long sleeves for shoulder seasons.  Or even in a solid linen without the button top for summer.  There are some nice features to the pattern, and the gathered neckline looks better than I expected, but I think the drape of the voile isn't quite right for the combination of pattern and my taste.  

In any case, I'm glad I tried the pattern.  I learned some things and tried a new silhouette, and the second dress is an okay church dress, so there's that.  Being short on the summer church dress department, that's a good thing.

*Instagram has become so unusable in the past few months that now I tend to use it to look at sewing patterns and other samples instead of looking at my feed. Social media increasingly seems like a bad idea all around, so I'm wary of too much engagement anyway. I've been off Facebook since 2016 and haven't regretted it once, and I enjoyed Instagram when I first joined in 2017, because it was just chronological pictures of the people I followed, but no longer.

A win for the home team

Amongst all the not-quite successes of the late spring, I had a spectacular win: the By Hand London Anna dress.  I know, I know, I'm very late to the Anna party, but this dress is the stuff.  

I used some super cheap rayon challis, thinking it would be a toile, since the pattern is pretty fabric-hungry, and ended up liking it so much that I'm good for a while.  I've worn it several times for occasions that called for being more dressed up and it was just the thing.  

The liquid drape of the challis is what does it for me, I think.  Even linen wouldn't be quite right for my taste on this.  But it is nice to have a go-to pattern for some nicer things.  

I followed the pattern directions and cut a 12/16 on the top and a 14/18 on the bottom.  At least, that's what I think I did.  I may have cut a straight 12/16 so that the seams lined up as they should.  Construction was unremarkable, as the instructions are very good.  

Pro tip: mark the skirt pieces with the letters in chalk so you can keep track of them because they are quite similar.  The invisible zip instructions were good too (although it must be said that I don't love wearing invisible zips because they aren't as sturdy, but this fabric wouldn't have worked as well with a regular one).

In any case, I really like the fit and flow of it, and enjoy wearing it.  It's very swishy!  (And these photos are now several months old, as my garden is in a very different state these days!!

In other news, we are just back from a brief Shore visit.  A friend owns a house there and offered it to us to use for a few days.  

My husband and I are not particularly beach people (sensory issues with sand) but it was a lovely time, and the Atlantic sand didn't bother me the way other sand does because it was so soft and powdery.  

(It did, however, get into everything!  I was very grateful for the outside hose at the house to rinse it off before going inside after our beach jaunts).  

There is something about sitting by the water (or standing in the surf) and watching the waves roll in.  

The water was cold, but the kids were undeterred and spent a fair bit of time frolicking in the water. Lots of laundry to do now, but I am very glad we were able to take the trip!

Necklace embroidery

After the success of the embroidery on my white linen blouse, I decided to work out a design for the collar of my Biking Red linen blouse.  It is a color I generally like, and have made several garments from it, but I was struggling to want to wear it for whatever reason.

I decided on a more delicate scheme that repeated all the way around the neckline, using a motif from another pattern.  My original color scheme was all shades of bone and off white, but I was sorting colors for another project and the dark green seemed like a good fit with the others.  While sorting colors, I realized that in embroidery, subtle is better than bold in terms of color.  I think that was one of my mistakes with the sage Remy.  I was trying to perk up the color since it washed me out, but perhaps a more subtle color scheme would have accomplished the same thing and I would have liked it better.  Or not.  I dunno.  

The embroidery on this one is all two stranded, as opposed to the white one, which is mostly three strand, with some six strand work on there.  So that one is much denser.  I like the more subtle look of this piece for the scale of the embroidery.  

I worked on this piece while at my parents' in June; it was a nice size project to have along, and since I finished it before I left, I was able to wear it too!  I started the third project on the way home from that trip.  The third one sort of grew exponentially, so I've only recently finished it.  

In any case, I've worn this blouse a bunch of times since finishing the embroidery, and it was definitely the right way to perk it up.  It bears saying, however, that I'm not super eager to repeat that motif again any time soon!

*Obviously, these pictures are from June, as my garden is currently in the jungle stage!

Leave No Craft Behind

That is to say: Embroidery.  Specifically, embroidering clothing.  It's not my first go at the craft; I did some embroidery on clothing back when I was experimenting with early 20th century styles.  And then there was the Remy I embroidered in May to try and make it more wearable (spoiler: it didn't work and I still don't like it).  

The upshot of the failed Remy was that I was inspired to embroider other garments, particularly blouses, for summer.  I planned out a white blouse with a big floral collar, adapting a hoop pattern for it.  

The color scheme in the pattern sample was close to what I wanted, but I made a few color swaps to get the screen colors rather than the actual colors, which were much duller in person.  It is a little bit more purple-y than peachy now, but it suits my palette well and I'm happy with it.

The wagon-wheel roses were quite fiddly, and they do mean I have to hand-wash the piece, but it isn't a big deal on such a small blouse that is linen.  The experience did make me decide to avoid wagon wheel roses on future clothing, however.  There's only so much hand-washing I want to do.

This was my first project using a stick and stitch printable stabilizer for the pattern.  It is brilliant--you print your design on the printer, cut it out, stick it on the fabric and stitch, then wash it out.  

Much better than my old tissue paper method, and even better than the iron-on transfer method, as it isn't limited by what you can find in iron-on transfer.

I love how this came out and have worn it a bunch of times already (shown here with my agave linen skirt, but it looks great with the beet linen and the sage linen as well).  I immediately started another project and planned out a third, both finished now (stay tuned!)  While I've done a bit of knitting this summer, the embroidery hoop has my attention at the moment.  What garment can I embellish next?!?  Idle hands and all that.

Hinterland

I've been putting off this post because it feels like a failure.  I made the popular Hinterland dress earlier in the spring, and I really wanted to like it.  I did!  

But I just felt like 1995 was calling and wanted its dress back.  

It may have been my fabric choice--the Indian block print cotton was perhaps the wrong thing for the pattern, and a solid color may have felt differently, but who knows.

I think I cut a 12 on top and an 8 on the bottom, although I could have gone with a 6 for the bottom.  I didn't want much volume in the skirt and that seemed okay.  I will say that the bust *just* fits and I'm barely a B cup.  The pattern is drafted for a C-cup, and the 12 should have given me at least three inches of ease all around.  It's not tight, but there isn't a lot of extra room in the bust area.

I cut a faux button placket because the print seemed to need some breaking up.  I interfaced it with knit interfacing, which was about right for the fabric and structure.  It was a good experiment, and the buttons were a perfect match, but the whole dress was just not the right thing.

The good thing to come out of it was a decently fitting bodice block with inset sleeves that I can use to make a 3/4 sleeve button down woven top at some point.  

I did end up adding gussets under the sleeves for better range of motion and comfort across the back, and I think I did a forward shoulder adjustment (more on that in a future post).  

I did take it partially apart and remade it into a two piece ensemble for Birdie, who is thrilled with it.  

I changed out the buttons for yellow ones and she likes that very much!  I think it picks up the yellows better.  I could stand to take it up slightly more in the shoulders for better fit and may try to do that this week.

One of the side effects of all her health issues is that she can't tolerate binding around her middle, so she wears all her bottoms below her belly.  The peplum top is a good style for her in that way.  It does mean all her skirts look off in the hem (lower in front) and I realize I could hem it differently to make it look better, but she wears these clothes so briefly it hardly seems worth the effort.  But maybe I'm just lazy?  

In any case, I'm glad she loves the outfit, and that the fabric will get good use.  After several not-wins and sort-of successful remakes with sewing projects (about which more later), I was starting to feel rather wasteful.  I'm still purging the house and going through stuff, so there is this tension in me about stuff-usage.  I always have that to some extent, but it feels particularly acute right now.  I'm trying to let it go and take my own advice to get rid of things that I'm not going to get to any time soon.  It is tempting to hang on to everything because I could theoretically make use of it at some point, but I just don't have the space for what if projects.  The kids are home all this coming week, so we'll see how much I get done!

In garden news, look at my cute baseball-size watermelon! I'm thrilled to see it grow.  I put up additional trellises this week to support the expanding watermelon and cucumber vines and moved two potato plants into another planter since the first two seemed crowded.  Just have to keep hilling them now!  Fingers crossed for a good harvest.  

Talking Tuesday (on a Thursday): Wild and Wonderful

This week, I heard Psalm 53 chanted in Aramaic.  (It the language spoken by the Jews at the time of Jesus; it is nearly extinct, but there are a few places in Georgia that still speak it).  I can't even describe the sound or the wild place it conjured for me.  There are some definite affinities with Georgian music, which has similiar tonalities, but this is beautiful even beyond that.  Listen to the end; it is worth the time!

Interchange

Mix-n-match wardrobes are a useful thing as they tend to avoid things like closet orphans and the like.  In my observation, however, as with capsule wardrobes, these mix-n-match pieces tend to be neutrals in white, taupe, gray, or black.  Not really my jam.

Setting aside the fact that those colors make me look like death, they just don't suit my aesthetic.  But I do try to make pieces that work within a palette so that most of my closet goes with everything.  And although I didn't set out to make a mix-n-match set, I ended up with a nice one!

When I was deciding what to make with that Indian block print voile I bought last fall, I went back to the same etsy seller to have a browse.  As you do.  In browsing her shop, I found a few more prints I liked and bought dress lengths of three of them since the shipping was free and the price-per-yard was good.  

Admittedly, I don't wear prints like I once did, but I liked the hand of the fabric and thought it would be cool in the heat.  (I guess that means I'm no longer a printy-utilitarian and have turned more straight utilitarian).  

On the screen, the print looked more violet and green, but it turned out to be that lovely beet-purple and green turquoise that are in my color palette.  By the time I got to sewing this fabric, I had made several dresses from new patterns, and hadn't really found a dress pattern that sang to me, so I decided to make a two-piece set that I could wear as a dress or separates.  (As an aside, I seem to keep trying to find a magic dress pattern and mostly failing--I had one spectacular win this spring--but I just don't reach for dresses much outside of Sunday mornings.  Maybe that is a sign I should stop looking?  I dunno).

I made my simple woven tee pattern for the top and the Free Range skirt hack for the bottom.  My only complaint is that I have to wear a slip with the skirt because it doesn't hang well otherwise, but that is minor.  I've tried to make things that don't require slips because the nylon just makes me hot, but the voile is thin enough that it is okay.  

The print top goes very well with my beet linen skirt, and after wearing the matching 3/4 sleeve top as a two-piece dress a bunch, I sort of wanted a short-sleeve version for the heat.  The Peppermint wrap top I made in the fall didn't fit me by the spring (and frankly, wasn't a great fit for me style-wise), but I couldn't figure out how to reconfigure it to make it wearable.  

I tried a bunch of things to restyle it but to no avail.  I ended up unpicking the entire top twice before giving up and deciding to make a pieced simple tee, which was what I really wanted anyway.  I wasn't sure I'd like the finished piece, since the piecing is very, uh, piecemeal (ha!) but I do! 

I've worn it a lot since finishing it. It's a bit hard to see in the photos, but I did some decorative top-stitching to make the piecing look more interesting, so there is a wide zig-zag down the center panel, and two triangles that radiate out from the side panels. It looks good with the voile skirt and several others in my closet, but I also like it as a two-piece dress with the beet skirt. So 4+ outfits out of everything! (Plus using up almost every scrap of that beet linen--super happy about that).

In other news, the water pipe that connects our house to the main is broken and we have to have a major plumbing repair this week.  The water department shut our water off on Friday morning and we had to wait until Saturday afternoon for the plumber to make a temporary connection to our awesome next door neighbor so that we can have water until the main fix is accomplished.  I'm very grateful to have discovered the leak when I did, since it came in under the front steps in our basement, where there is little to damage.  I don't go back in that corner often but had to retrieve something from back there when I noticed the standing water (almost 3" in the corner!  The floor slopes slightly toward the street so it pooled at the front of the house under the steps by the old coal access).  

The upshot is we now have an outside bib on the back of the house--something we've talked about doing for years but never got around to--so I'll be able to water the garden much more easily once this is all over.  My awkward hose-attached-to-kitchen-sink-running-out-the-back-door setup was getting a bit old. 

While the wheels of the water department churned a bit slowly, once we determined the issue and who was responsible, we were able to find an emergency plumber right away. They are working on the permits and will hopefully fix it all this week.  Thank God for small mercies!  On reflection, I do think that pipe has been struggling for some time, as our water pressure is greatly improved with the neighbor's water, and that pipe may be the original one from 100 years ago.  

But enough about that!  Our berries are producing well (although the blueberries are still immature) and I'm still fighting the good fight against the aggressive birds.  Double netting has helped, but I still lost two berries yesterday to the thieves.  The summer heat has arrived, so I'm trying to keep up with watering but trying to avoid waterlogging the strawberries--such a careful balance!  The watermelon has a tiny watermelon on it, about the size of an olive, plus another nascent one, so we'll see what we get.  

The plumbers have just arrived to start breaking up the sidewalk, so off we go!