Stick a Fork in It: Alter It August

I've hit the wall with the heat, the summer, the news, everything, so I'll just say I've been sewing, altering things I made before to make them work for another season or two.  I have some things on my mind, but not enough bandwidth to write about any of it coherently (or with any kind of peace).

 

I decided to try to reinvigorate these two corduroy skirts after repeated washings meant they became a little shorter than I prefer.  The left skirt already underwent some major alterations in the late spring, but I've not really test-driven it yet.  I took off the waistband and did a Petersham facing instead, plus let out some of the back center seam that I had taken in quite severely in the spring of 2020.  If I like the waistband fix, I'll take off the waistbands of the rust and blue skirts too.

I've let down the 2" hems, but in corduroy especially it leaves an unsightly line, so I'm covering it with some folksy trim I had in the stash. 

I cut down the yellow dress I made in July for Birdie.  I was all set to cut it down for underwear, when Birdie wandered into the kitchen, saw my fabric pile, and asked with a twinkle in her eye: "What's that? Can you cut it down for me?"  I'm such a sucker.  I added the trim just because.

 

Birthday linen fabric with the last little remnant of a favorite piece of vintage fabric.  I'm not super into all-over florals any more, so a little accent will be nice.  I intend to toile a Terrace dress with it.

Gorgeous linen for future projects to make with or for other people.  I'm teaching a few people to sew or mend this month.  The fabric unintentionally coordinates together very well!

I cut down the Emerald I made in the spring; I just didn't enjoy wearing it at.all.  I had always envisioned a kind of slip dress for the fabric anyway (when fabric tells you what it wants to be, it is usually better to heed it...), so I altered the top for a pajama using one I like for summer as a guide on the top.  The scoop on the one side is slightly deeper than I intended; I might put a slice of the fabric back in on that side, but it is a lovely cool nightgown.

A few projects made for others (will blog about those when the recipients have them!) and a lot of textile dreaming.  And longing for cold weather.

Sewing Mysteries: Interfacing for Short Waists

This is my Alter-It August post (in September!) as most of these alterations were accomplished last month, although I finished the final fix this past weekend.

It is my experience, as a short-waisted person, that waistbands Do Not Behave.  They roll, they wrinkle, they scrunch and fold.  I've spent considerable effort trying to make a better waistband.  Some sewists recommend narrow waistbands (3/8" or less), or faced curved waistbands that finish the top edge of a skirt or pants.  I find these are fine for certain styles and body types, but my style preference is an attached waistband, because most of my bottoms have elasticated backs, and I have a 10" waist-to-hip ratio on a good day.  (Most modern skirts are sloped on a 6-8" ratio and gape badly on me).

My go-to for a stable (ish) waistband is to make a 1" finished waistband with Petersham for interfacing.  (I had to look back through old posts to find the tutorial link, and it looks like I started using this method in September 2015!  How much has changed since then...)  The trick is to cut a 4" wide waistband, and make the seam the same width as the Petersham (1" in my case), and then fold over twice before top-stitching or stitching in the ditch to finish the edge.  That way you have no lines from a seam allowance, plus the extra layers of fabric provide some stability, particularly in heavier fabrics like denim.  

Alas, it does not entirely eliminate waistband rolling, and in lighter fabrics like rayon or linen, it doesn't help at all.  The fabric can't stand up to the combination of body heat and sitting right under my ribs.  I was pretty frustrated with my skirts by mid-summer, as all had rolled and creased waistbands that washing didn't fix, and by the end of the day felt schlubby and terrible.  I decided it was time to crack this monster and figure out how to make a better waistband.

Petersham I removed from two skirts.  One of these was after only a day or two of wear; the other was after several seasons of wearing.

I did some reading about what others have tried.  My experience with fusible interfacing has been a joke--it peels right off and scrunches into a heap at the bottom of the band on the inside, and sew-in interfacing hasn't fared much better.  My best experience has been to use quilting-weight cotton as a stabilizer, but that still wants to wrinkle a bit (see the teal skirt, above).  

Someone suggested using lawn (which is very tightly woven) in conjunction with Petersham, so I decided to try that first.  My lavender skirt had stretched out badly on the first wearing (do not use jersey to interface!) and didn't even fit me.  It was more than 2" bigger than any other skirt I owned.  So I unpicked the waistband, put in Petersham and a strip of lawn, and made the waistband narrower to accomodate the 1" Petersham.  It was okay.  It did stay put better than Petersham alone, and seemed better overall, but it still wasn't quite the fix I was hoping for.

Every time I've tried to tackle this problem, I run across a Thread Theory article about Ban-Rol, but until recently, wasn't able to find it in anything but huge rolls for many dollars.  I didn't want to spend that much on a big roll if it didn't work and couldn't find anyone selling it by the yard.  

Original 1" Ban-Rol

Sometime last winter, I altered a pair of suit pants for my husband.  He's had this particular suit for a long time, and the construction on the pants was quite interesting to me--they were obviously made with alterations in mind (I suppose if you are going to spend serious money on a suit, you need it to last through body changes!), and the waistband was interfaced with something that looked like Ban-rol.  There is a whole discussion to be had about longevity in clothing, and how to build in the possibility of alteration down the line, but that is a whole different rabbit hole.

This summer, I did another search and found The Sewing Place, which offers several different types of Ban-Rol, at a reasonable price, cut per yard.  It was the perfect way to try both the original Ban-Rol stabilizer, and the elastic version, which is used on commercially sewn elastic waistbands.  (I noticed it on a pair of RTW shorts this summer.  The waistband is both comfortable and sits nicely all day).  

I started with my red and orange skirts, as they were both ripe for change.  I added Ban-Rol to the front waistband of the red skirt (swapping the center box pleat for the more flattering side pleats while I had the waistband off), and inserted the elastic Ban-Rol in the back to see how the two things played together.  I stitched three lines through the elastic to secure it.  What a difference!  The skirt looks so much better now, and I'm much happier to wear it.  I also shortened it by 2.5" while I was at it, to bring it to the length of my other skirts.

With elastic ban-rol all around.  The fit is weird.

The orange skirt was trickier because the waistband is put together a bit differently and the fabric had stretched a bit while I was making it initially, so it was already limp and unhappy.  I first tried running elastic ban-rol through the whole waistband, on the theory that if it worked well on my shorts, it should make my skirt better.  

Elastic Ban-Rol.  I think in the future I will have to burn the edges to melt them, as the cut elastic loops that run through the white fabric want to poke out.  Just sewing over the edge doesn't seem to cut it.

It was very comfortable, but it also felt too big and didn't sit right on my waist.  I worried about it falling down (groundless, given my waist-to-hip ratio, but there it is).  So I pulled out the elastic from the front part only, and installed regular Ban-Rol into the front waistband, absent Petersham interfacing.  It is...okay.  

Hard to tell, but the ban-rol front plus elastic back is better.

Earlier this week, I unpicked almost all the waistbands on my summer skirts (including the new Nutmeg skirt, shown below) and installed Ban-Rol alongside the Petersham, and that seems to be the golden ticket.  The Petersham provides stability for the fabric (I mostly wear linen or a linen-rayon blend in the hot months), and the Ban-Rol keeps the waistband firm and stable.  All.Day.Long.  

I'm still working out how to best use the elastic ban-rol, as it is much more comfortable than traditional braided elastic, but it is also much stretchier, so all my metrics about length and fit have to be redone if I use it in the future.  It also seems to behave better with several lines of stitching through it, but that also affects how much stretch it ultimately has.  The best skirts I have at the moment are my Nutmeg and teal linen skirts, both of which have Ban-rol waistbands in the front and a few channels of 3/8" braided elastic in the back.  The other little trick I find with Ban-rol (at least for a retro-fit) is to sew the edges down to keep it from sliding around at the side seams and possibly poking through the top. 

Perhaps this will be useful to someone else!  Let me know if you have experience with Ban-Rol (either type) and how you use it.

Alter It August: Part the Third

 I had a hard time posting these photos.  Not because I don't like the dress (I do!) but because I don't think these are particularly flattering photos of me.  My face feels puffy today and my hair is a hot mess from the heat.  Also: this is me with color in my skin.  I just don't tan (I don't mind, actually). #burnsinthemoonlight 

I keep trying to lower the carb load in my diet to get rid of the bloat in my gut and the puff in my face, but then I get stuck about what to eat since my options are still more limited than I like to admit.  I spent most of last month fighting a gastroparesis flare and was nauseated almost every day, no matter what I did.  I had to take Zofran for the first time just to stay functional.

But I'm trying to live in my brave, and to understand that my body is my body and this is how it looks.  And will probably look no matter what I do.  Pffft.  I had an interesting conversation with my kids' therapist this week about how to think about body image and how to communicate with them about their bodies and weight and so forth (this is something I'm very aware of, given my own issues, and it was good to discuss it with her too).  She basically said, don't talk about weight or size or anything like that.  Just talk about healthy habits, and how bodies change and grow, and that all bodies are good.  No qualifiers, nothing.  I like that because it goes so well with the lesson I keep trying to drum into my own head: ALL BODIES ARE GOOD BODIES.  Have a body?  Good.  

I keep getting stuck in my head about the cultural female ideal, and struggling.  Even though I try to make sure my visual diet is full of women of all shapes and sizes, and to avoid the cultural visual ideal, I still have trouble.  Maybe I always will, but I'm starting to see light on the tunnel, that I can think about it differently for myself. 

 

Anyway.  An alteration, albeit a very gentle one.  I thrifted this dress from ThredUp (it is from Old Navy, and a linen/rayon blend that is really nice).  The dress fit very well except in the bodice, which had a whopping four inches (4! inches!) of fabric around the bust area.  I almost returned it, but the color really spoke to me, and I like the style and unusual details, so I decided to have a go at altering the bodice to fit better through the bust.

It was a surprisingly quick fix!  I think it took all of 20 minutes to unpick the bias binding for a couple of inches to either side of the side seams, pinch out the excess fabric (2" on either side) and then sew a seam that tapered to nothing at the waist seam.  So basically I made a big wedge on the side seam.  I could have trimmed it, but I just folded it to the side and resewed the bias tape back over it.  It isn't as neat as the original because I had to lap the excess bias, but it looks much better on me now, and I've worn it twice already since altering it! 

Alter It August Part the Second

 

This week has been a rough one.  I ended up with a less-than-ideal camp schedule due to booking things too late (apparently, around here, February is too late for camps in August), so I had two kids on one end of the city and two kids on the other end all week.  I have basically been living in my car.  

 

In the brief moments of home time, I've tried to squeeze little projects in here and there (or editing a few lines here and there).  I decided to alter these ready-to-wear culottes I thrifted in June.  I bought them new with tags, and took them to visit my parents.  I wore them several times that week, and while I enjoyed them, they didn't quite feel like my style, as well as the fact that the rise was just a bit short.  (My rise is crazy long, so this isn't a great shock to me).  Fast forward to me washing them the first time and suddenly the rise was uncomfortably short.  Every time I put them on after that, I couldn't stand the fit, so I would immediately take them off.   (Sorry, I don't have any good photos of me wearing them as culottes.  Just take my word for it that they were awkward).

I had the idea to alter these into a skirt after seeing Helen's Winslow hack.  This is a hack to make on the front end of a sewing pattern, but I figured if I picked apart the center and inseams, I could make it work.  And I did!  The longest part (which wasn't that long, really) was unpicking the robust seams+serging/overlocking.  Once that was done, it was a simple matter of pinning the center seams together and cutting off the excess from the crotch curve.  I'm actually pretty pleased with the resulting skirt--it is cooler than the pants and more comfortable, plus it has pockets!  I think it will be a nice transitional piece in the fall too.

In other news, I finally watched Chernobyl, and you must run, not walk, to your nearest HBO provider and watch it.  The show is stunningly well done, morally complex, amazingly acted.  It draws a bit on Svetlana Alexievich's excellent book, Voices from Chernobyl (I highly recommend it), but many other sources as well.

Alter It August

*I normally do a big crafty post all together with my Yarn Along, but I ended up with so much sewing stuff that I thought I better split the posts in two.  You can find my Yarn Along post (with current knitting/reading here).

~sewing~

I rescued a Washi maxi I made in the late spring that I thought I hated (and never blogged--it went right back into my sewing bin for future cutting down).  I don't love it, but it is proving a useful late summer wardrobe addition.  The fabric is a mystery cotton I got on an instagram sale.  I made Birdie a little blouse out of the leftovers and could probably make her a skirt as well.

Another rescue from the bin was my Gzhel skirt from last year.  I didn't alter it at all (although I considered shortening it several times, left it in the end).

 But! I have worn it a few times in the last two weeks, so I think that's another good late summer addition!

 In the spirit of Alter It August, I also altered two dresses from last year that have been languishing.  (I found Mia's Instagram last August through this challenge--I highly recommend following her.  She is a total delight, and a Minnesotan to boot!)

Anyway, my Magic Tulips dress just didn't fit great in the arms, and it has never been the right weather to wear it--it is too thin for cool weather and the long sleeves and longer length made it too hot to wear in the summer. 

I cut off the sleeves using my Washi bodice as a guide and cut little caps out of the cut off bits with the Washi sleeve pattern.  The original sleeves were pieced, and I didn't have enough to cut them on the fold, so I used the seam line instead.  I think the print hides the piecing and the seam line is hidden on the underside of the sleeve, so I think it isn't noticeable.  

I also shortened the dress by 2.5" and Bob's your uncle.  Well, not quite.  I did a sort of slapdash job on my first pass (this is why I can't do this kind of work around my kids) and then went back the next day to fix it, adding in some small darts just above the bust to control some excess fabric that was flopping around there (remember that the original bodice on this dress was the M7353, which is designed for knits, but I modified it for wovens, but it was very unfitted as a result).  

I'm much happier with it and will wear it during these dog days of August.  It also feels like a dress a woman my age would wear (I turned 40 last month).  I struggle a lot with feeling like my clothes are either too "young" or too "old."  This one kind of hits the right spot in the middle.  I hope.

Likewise, my blue check linen dress was in my sewing bin to be cut down into something else.

In an effort to make the dress work for me for this summer, I had tried shortening it 3" sometime in the late spring, but it still just didn't suit my aesthetic, and I didn't feel good wearing the dress.  So into the bin it went for further mulling.  Sometime in June, I cut the top off to make the bottom into a skirt, but couldn't work out how I wanted to do it, and left it sit. 

After the Magic Tulips dress worked out so well, I went ahead and unpicked everything and put the dress back together and lopped off the sleeves and made caps from the scraps.

It was a bit of a squeeze to get the sleeves out!  But I think it is mostly wearable.  There is a bit of extra fabric at the high bust on the sides (where I put the little darts in on the Magic Tulips dress) but I think darts would look strange in the linen, so I'm just going to leave it.  The nature of linen is to be a bit unfitted and rumpled anyway.  It is thin and cool, though, which is just the thing right now.

~watching~

I caught Mary Poppins Returns on Netflix just before our trip to Greece in July, and while I thought it was cute, I didn't think it matched the original, particularly the song and dance numbers.  Emily Blunt was brilliant as Mary Poppins, but I didn't love the Bert replacement character.  I also thought at least one of the song and dance numbers was a bit questionable in terms of content.  But still.  A decent family movie.

(I will not bore you with a lot of vacation photos, but I will share three, just to give some flavor)

On Aegina, one of the Saronic Islands

On the flight to Athens, I saw Bohemian Rhapsody, and it completely blew me away.  The performances were amazing, and the story was compelling.  I put Queen on my regular playlist for the next bit.

Parthenon, obviously.  There was a lot of history here I didn't know and was pleased to learn this time.

On the return flight, I also watched Can You Ever Forgive Me, which I liked a lot more than I expected to.  Weirdly, it felt like it was of a piece with Bohemian Rhapsody.

At the Acropolis, overlooking Athens.  It was super hot.

When I got home from our trip, I caught up on Grantchester (I am enjoying Tom Brittany as the new vicar!  I loved him in season one of Outlander). 

From a Marvel costume exhibit at a local museum that the kids and I went to in April.  It was a super cool exhibition.

 I also finally caught up on all the Marvel films that comprise Phases 1-3, except Captain Marvel, thanks to a Prime Day promotion on the ones I hadn't seen yet (I confess I rewatched Thor and Avengers as well because I love them and they were in the promotion).  I enjoyed Ant-Man and Ant-Man and Wasp way more than I thought I would.  Super fun and mostly family friendly.

Also saw an indie German film that did well at one of the festivals this year called Toni Erdmann, which is a strange trip of a film (and super long!), but the last half hour or so is hilarious.

So that's it!  I am editing the manuscript like mad (I've been given a hard word count target of 80K words.  I've edited down from 113K to about 87K on the first pass or so, but still have to keep whittling.  It's picky work). 

I am going to try making a Misty Cami this week with some Rifle and Co. rayon I have in my bin (it is going to be a squeak to get it out, yardage wise) so we'll see how that works.