On unicorns and linen

So.  There are some hard things going on that I'm not prepared to write about yet, but if you are a praying sort, please hold my extended family in your prayers if you would.  I'm sewing things I don't really need to keep my hands and mind occupied, so expect to see a fair amount of makes and not very much in the way of Deep Thoughts.  I suppose it is a good way to try out new things?

#sewnshownseated

I mentioned that I'm on the hunt for a unicorn of a summer weight skirt pattern.  I love my slim skirts in the late fall and winter, but the heavier fabric is totally unsuitable for our swampy (and long) summers, and I've never really been able to find something that worked well with linen, which is my preferred warm weather fabric.  

A few weeks ago, I was organizing my fabric bin (again) and saw the Purple Violet Squish dress in there, waiting for the chop.  I had no firm plans for it (just a vague thought of maybe cutting it down for one of the girls at some point), but decided that it might be worth taking off the bodice and making a waist casing and see if I can get a functional summer weight skirt out of it.  Not that I particularly need more skirts, but it was an experiment with low stakes.  Worse case, the thing could go back in the bin for a later cut down.  

Plus, another unicorn discovery: summer church shoe conundrum solved!  Dankso to the rescue again.  Thrifted Jacindas, possibly even more comfortable than my Birks. 

I had a decent amount of fabric left from the original dress, so I cut a waistband facing and some 1.5" elastic ban-rol. I used my Elemental skirt pattern as a guide for the elastic and application method, and am totally happy with the result! (I've worn the skirt three times since). I didn't think a fully elastic skirt would work, as my previous attempts have been utter disasters, but something about the way the elastic is applied in the Elemental skirt keeps it from looking bunchy and weird.  Plus, very comfortable!  I'm really digging woven fabrics right now.  They feel more put together to me than a knit, for whatever reason.  If I'm going to wear a knit, I like to pair it with a woven, but I'm enjoying wovens on top and bottom too.

Birdie was my photographer for all these photos, and this one cracks me up. 

As to the specifics, the dress was made with the M7353 skirt, which is drafted for a knit, but I've used it several times on wovens.  I think I still cut the smallest size in the packet, but possibly made the seam allowances 3/8"?  I made the dress long enough ago (and altered it several times after making) that I can't be 100% certain). 

The waistband facing came from the Elemental Skirt (or maybe the Free Range Slacks, I can't be certain), adapted for the width of this skirt, although I think they were quite similar.  I applied the elastic as with the Elemental skirt (Peggy's application instructions for this are genius, by the way), but then sewed down the bottom of the facing to the skirt itself as with the Free Range Slacks.  (Stay tuned for a future post on the Free Range Slacks).

After that success, I wanted to try a similar hack on the embroidered linen skirt.  Shortly after my post, I deconstructed the entire thing and put it back together on slimmer lines, but it still looked terrible.  I decided to try the faced elasticized waistband trick on it, thinking that it couldn't hurt to try.   

At that point I had a skirt that was totally unwearable, and I was even considering cutting up the pieces to use the embroidered bits on something else.  I kept the original waistband piece on but took off the ban-rol interfacing and removed the 1" ban rol elastic from the back and folded everything down to accomodate a 1.5" ban-rol elastic.  

I'm pleased to report that with about 30 minutes of hand sewing, I have a totally wonderful wearable skirt!  If anyone wants to replicate what I did, cut the Everyday Skirt side panels at half width and apply waistband with a 1" seam allowance, with tiny tucks near the pocket facing edges at the top.  Sew waistband to back edge and fold over to create a faced edge, then fold the edge under about 3/8".  

Hand or machine sew down the bottom edge, leaving a gap to insert elastic.  Cut ban-rol elastic to length (I like mine around 29", which includes a 1/2" overlap, and my waist measurements are around 33").  Alternatively, sew elastic ends together and sew casing closed after insertion.  The latter method is slightly trickier, but less tedious, in my opinion.  

And for those with keen eyes, you'll notice that I've altered my Remy Raglan as well.  I have been crushing on mid-18th century silhouettes again (blame a rewatch of Outlander), and wanted to modify this shirt into something evocative of a 1750s bodice.  Since I don't wear stays on the daily, I knew it was going to be an echo rather than the full concert, but I like the shaping on this, and have worn it a few times since, much more happily than in the spring.   

This.  Can I just wear this on repeat?  Preferably in some place cold like Scotland?  Please and thank you.

I did two sets of 1/2" tucks on the front and one set of 5/8" tucks on the back, using the Sorrel dress bodice tucks as a rough guide.  It is still fine going on over my head.  I had thought about opening up the center seam and converting it to a lacing closure, but decided to leave this as is for now.  I may do it on a future iteration, however.  What it is about a laced bodice that is so appealing?  (There is a fine line between appealing 18th century laced bodice and costume-y pirate girl, and I want to stay on the side of the former and not the latter, obviously!)

So a few successes, anyway.  Right now, I'll take what I can get.

A rose by any other name...

...would be a Capulet.  Ha! 

Today's project was an attempt to salvage a skirt from last summer that I loved the fabric/color, but not the fit.  The linen was to that perfect level of softness, and I wore it a lot last year, but struggled to get the fit right this year.  The elastics were initially too tight, so I made them longer, and then the thing felt too big and schlubby. 

 

 

I submitted two designs to a crafting magazine in September that had a very specific palette, and the dusty rose of my skirt was one.  I had embroidery threads out already for the submissions, and the two worked so well together I decided to try embroidery on the pocket edges as part one of the fix.  

 

The embroidery design was from a packet of patterns I bought a long time ago.  I enjoyed the process of embroidery quite a bit, and like the result very much.

My attempts at alteration of the skirt's fit, however, less so.  I will say it does fit better than before, and I like the inverted pleats better than the previous iteration, but the pleats are uneven enough to make my eye twitch (something I only noticed after taking the photos--oy!), and the skirt still feels like it has too much volume.  Although, looking at the photos, it looks fine.  It's a feeling I have when wearing it more than the look of it.

After taking off the waistband and reapplying it three times in variations on the fit at the side seams, I gave up.  After this wearing, I washed it and put it in my fabric bin to deal with another day, as I'm out of matching thread and ideas (having started with a full spool, to give some idea of how many seams were applied and ripped out in the course of this alteration!).  My patience for the project is gone.  

I probably need to deconstruct the whole thing (except for the pockets) and recut it on a narrower pattern to see if I like that better.  What I really want to find is a summer skirt pattern that looks good in linen but is relatively slim and straight--i.e. the Elemental skirt in a woven, or my Anne Adams 9481 in the drapier linen.  This seems like an impossible ask.   I know, I know, I should just try something and see how I get on with it.  Maybe I'll find a magical unicorn!

Pink clay

Please forgive a rather frivolous sewing post in the midst of all that is happening in the world right now.  I find I do not have the words to address the pain and terrible things, but my heart is deeply grieved for all those who are hurting.  I am minded that all I can do is to tend the garden of my own heart, to continue weed out the evil that would root there.

 

So.  Another skirt.  This is the skirt I made first, before the teal and flame ones of my previous post.  I wouldn't call it a palette-cleanser exactly, more like a warm-up lap.  The fabric is 100% linen from fabrics-store.com in English Rose, which is a lovely pink-clay sort of color that was difficult to photograph accurately.  It is a bit more muted than in the photographs.  Before this month, I hadn't sewn a full garment since the fall, and I wanted something that I didn't need to think too much about, since these days I am sewing with utter distraction, in stolen snatches of time, surrounded by the demands and needs of my children all day, every day. 

I started with the Everyday Skirt pattern, which I've made enough times at this point to not think about it much, but I wanted to see if I could take the sweep of it down a bit with some gentle tweaks. 
This pattern runs quite big, and I also have wondered if it was time to size down again.  The first time I made this pattern, I made a size large, based on my body measurements, but it was too big, so I've been sewing a straight size medium with an inch of added length since then. 

The grade between sizes on this pattern isn't very much on some pattern pieces, and is 1/2" all around on others, so I decided to leave the back piece alone, since I carry a lot of my weight in my seat, and to take the side panels down to the XS size and the front panel to the S size.  (I should add, just for the record, that I can never wear these sizes on the bottom in ready to wear, ever.  Just to give you a sense of the sizing on this pattern). 

I made the pattern with my usual modification for a 1" waistband, and used two lines of 3/8" elastic to make the back waist width line up with the front (I've handled the width discrepancy between the front and back waistbands in different ways since making this modification, and I think I like this one the best).

I think I cut the elastics to 11.5."  I tried it on, and did not like the fit at all.  The sweep of the skirt still felt too big, and the fit around the waist was just off somehow.  It felt too long, too big, just Too Much Skirt.  In the meantime, I had made the teal skirt and liked the sweep, so decided to use that as a guide to take off some width to this skirt. 

This is probably closest to the color.

(I should add: I think I may have cut this one at pattern length instead of adding my usual inch, and then doing a 1" hem.  This is one of the challenges of my proportions: long rise, long femur, itty-bitty shin bones.  My height is all between my natural waist and knees--ha!  The trouble with that is, if I make a skirt to industry-standard "knee" length--21" say, it tends to hit me at mid-thigh.  But if I add too much length to get below-the-knee in a non-pencil silhouette--say, 25-26"--I quickly end up in frumpy-town because the length plus short calves means the visual proportions are off.  24" is often a good right-at-the-knee length, but it doesn't always look good for one reason or another. Tricky, that). 

 

At first, I thought I'd have to totally deconstruct the skirt, and maybe even recut parts of it, but in the end, pinning out a wedge from each side panel was enough.  I measured the width of the teal skirt (48" all around), and then measured this skirt (around 62", I think) and decided the best place to take out the width was the side panels, since that was where most of the A-shape comes from.

I needed the waist measurement to stay roughly the same, however, so the width needed to come out in a wedge rather than just trimming the seam allowance down.  In a way, it was an easier alteration since I didn't have to unpick the waistband. 

I unpicked the hem for a few inches to either side of the seam allowance and measured out a 2" wedge on the fold along the seam allowance, and tapered it to nothing, ending at the waistband seam.  That way when I sewed along the new seam line, the old seam allowance was captured inside the wedge.  The finished sweep is one I'm happy with, and taking out that wedge fixed whatever was going on with the waistband fit, so there you go. 

An outtake!  Photos by Birdie today.

I'm not sure I would make a skirt on this pattern on purpose in the future, given that I like the Rose hack and it is slightly fewer pieces to sew, but there are some nice features about this pattern that I could see making it again with the narrower side panel, or altering older makes to mimic this one.  And I think that's my skirt sewing mostly sorted for the summer.  I have a dress hack that I think is going to work well, so will show that soon too.

A Tale of Two Skirts

I've long lamented my warm weather wardrobe.  A lot of this is a function of my basic unhappiness with hot weather, and my inability to find clothing that ticks all the boxes for me: cool enough to wear in 80% humidity and 90-100 degree temps + hot flashes without central AC all summer, fitted enough to feel like "me" but not so fitted as to make me sweat a lot or be grumpy when bloated, covers my arms and shoulders for skin cancer avoidance reasons, but doesn't look frumpy or oversized, not too short, not too long, yadda-yadda-yadda.  My skin is fair enough that I have been known to burn through clothing, so I have to watch sheerness too.

One of my chief complaints about summer skirts (and dresses, really) is one of volume--as in, I don't like a lot of volume.  I generally don't like big billowy skirts, fit and flare doesn't really suit my style or proportions, and maxi skirts annoy me because they are always too long (and, by the way, trap heat around the legs).  The fitted pencil skirts I prefer the rest of the year are often too heavy for summer weather (or too fitted to be cool).

The other issue with summer-wear is that it tends not to last more than a season (or two at best) because of the above-said weather.  Summer clothing tends to need washing after nearly every wearing, and no fabric is meant to stand up to that kind of wash and wear for months on end.  Which is how I found myself staring down hot weather this year with a skirt and dress shortage.  Again.

I had a few lengths of linen that I intended to make summer skirts with, but the fabric languished as I suddenly found myself on lockdown with all my kids, homeschooling, being ill for weeks and weeks, and trying not to lose my mind.  We are still homeschooling for another week and a half, but we had a long break over the holiday weekend; I was able to eke out some drafting and sewing time. 

My first thought was to make more Everyday Skirts to avoid having to fit a new skirt block on limited time and patience, but sometimes I find too them too voluminous with bare legs (it's a weird thing I have about having feedback from my clothes against the back of my legs--if I can't feel my skirt against my legs and my skirt is knee length or slightly above, I worry that I'm flashing someone). 

To start with, I made a clay-colored linen skirt as a straight Everyday skirt make, just to get back into the swing of things since I've not sewn a full garment for months, but despite some size fiddling, I didn't love the sweep or fit.  I set it aside to deal with later (and have since fixed it, but not worn it yet).  Will blog details when I have photos to share. 

Next I set to drafting, which requires more mental space for me.  I decided to use Helen's tutorial on converting culottes to a skirt, since I really liked the narrower sweep of the skirt, but the ease that suggested it would work with linen or rayon.  Readers who have been around a while will also remember that I altered a pair of RTW culottes last summer on the same principle and really liked the sweep of the finished skirt (just not the length or overall fit).  I don't have the Winslow Culottes pattern, but I do have the Made By Rae Rose pants (total fitting disaster for me), and I like the pleats and volume on them, so decided to start there. 

I was nervous about the sizing, since the finished garment measurement chart and the body measurement chart on that pattern are a bit bonkers.  Compare the XS sizes to see what I mean: if your waist measures 26", how is a finished waist of 34" ever going to fit at the high waist?  My natural waist is somewhere in the neighborhood of 32", give or take, and a 34" finished waistband is going to gape on me, who never fit an XS anything in my life.  I had cut an XL based on my hip measurement (although I'm closer to 42" at the hip, but would rather have to take something in than let it out on a tiny seam allowance).  I did some measurements after folding out the crotch curves and truing the lines, and decided to stick with the size and keep the seam allowance on the center seam, but cut on the fold, just for an extra bit of wiggle room.

The result was a great teal linen skirt that is comfortable in the heat and I'm happy to wear.  My only complaint is that the waistband is slightly too tall--I'm very short-waisted, so even 1" waistbands tend to roll on me, because my ribs end less than an inch above my natural waist.  I may go back and redo it as a 1" band, just to reduce the rolling, but I kind of like the look of the higher one.  I did three lines of 3/8" elastic to match the width of the front waistband, instead of the elastic width recommended by the Rose pattern, and I like it.  I cut to 14" long, which was perfect (instead of the 16" recommended for the size).  I like all the ditch stitching on this pattern too.

I also experimented with interfacing on this skirt, since I wanted to see if something worked better than Petersham.  (I've tried elastic, fusible interfacing, waistband interfacing, grograin, and Petersham, and Petersham tends to behave the best over time and feel the most comfortable, but it does wrinkle slightly with washing).  I ended up interfacing with quilting cotton, which is okay.  After doing some alterations on my husband's suit pants over the winter, I'm curious to try a stiffer sew-in interfacing, like what was on his pants--Ban Roll, I think is the trade name--but it only seems to come in huge rolls for lots of dollars, so I'll wait until I see a small amount somewhere to try it.  I suppose horsehair braid might work too.

My next skirt on the same pattern hack was a Brussels Washer Linen in "Poppy", which isn't red at all, but a nice deep flame orange, exactly what I wanted.  I decided to take the waistband down to 1" and see if it rolled less, and interface with Petersham again.  I cut everything out, pinned carefully, and tried not to let the fabric "hang" to keep the rayon from stretching and the linen from growing, but something happened between cutting and sewing, and I found myself with a front and back skirt piece that didn't match at all--1/2" off on one side, and more than an inch on the other. 

Rather than just truing the edges as I should have done, I tried to ease in the side seams, to disastrous effect.  The pockets gaped badly and somehow pulled back from the front, the waistband looked really weird; I thought the project was a wash.  The skirt went into the naughty corner to sit for a day before I could tackle it again. 

It turns out that unpicking most of the side seams (from the pocket bags to the hem) and repinning with a bit of hang to the fabric, as well as truing the hem, was the way to fix it, and I'm pretty happy with the result now.  The fabric is slightly more sheer than I expected (and than other colors in this substrate) but I always wear a slip anyway, so that's okay. 

As the school year winds down, I'm finding it easier to carve out small bits of time for my things here and there, but it is still going to be a long summer.  For sewing, I'm finding that leaving my sewing machine case and thread box in an easy-access place next to the kitchen (where I sew), but not in the way of foot traffic, is a good way to allow small snatches of sewing.  Normally I have to do a big set up and take down of sewing stuff, to keep the living room clear of clutter, so the trade off is more stuff around, but with the home school books and things littering the living room anyway, it's not much more mess to add.  It's worth the mental boost I get from some creative activity.

Next up: Emerald tops from the leftovers, plus a few things for the girls.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Palette

Happy Bright Week!  We celebrated Pascha over the weekend, and are now limping through Bright Week in an ordinary fashion befitting middle aged adults who stayed up half the night and then had to care for children all day and then start homeschooling again bright and early Monday morning.  Which is to say:

Image from GIPHY

Right.  So.  How about we talk about color, hey?  Gillian at Crafting a Rainbow has been talking about colors and palette this week, revisiting a favorite theme of hers.  I thought it might be interesting to write about that here, since I spend a fair bit of time thinking about color.  Some of it is an old habit from paper crafting days--what colors work well together, what are unusual color combinations to make with this card or project, etc.  

Some of it is making a lot of my own clothes for past few years--in order to have a harmonious wardrobe, not create wardrobe orphans, and find what looks best on me requires thinking about colors and tonality.  Some of it is the artist in me is just drawn to color.  (I did some coloring with markers during our spring break and I'm thinking about drawing some of my own designs, based on Slavic folk florals and running with it). 

Three season palette

I'm particularly drawn to saturated jewel tones, but I also like the dusky earth tones that are popular right now (they just don't look good against my skin tone, which is probably best described as "burns in the moonlight"--ha!) After filling in the boxes with color using Gillian's method, I decided that I really needed two palettes, as I tend to wear one three seasons (Fall-Winter-Spring) and the other in summer.  This is why my summer wardrobe is a source of constant irritation to me.  I really prefer my three-season palette and wardrobe, but can't quite replicate it in the summer (for a variety of reasons).  That said, I am liking the summer palette and hope it will guide my thrifting a bit.

Summer palette

There is a small amount of color cross-over between my spring-summer and summer-fall (I have a bright orange cotton sweater I've been wearing a lot this spring, for example, and tend to wear that bright raspberry color well into the fall, along with the jade green and teal).

Jade green with mint and brass and brown neutral accents.

 An interesting discovery for me is how to make color combos I love on other people work for my skin tone and wardrobe.  Last fall sometime, Meg at Sew Liberated had an Instagram post about her favorite color palette: vanilla, copper, and mint.  She is more olive-toned than me, and her wardrobe is full of gorgeous earth tones, anchored in ochres and muted neutrals, with teal, indigo, and clay accents.  I love her palette, but it would look terrible on me in that particular iteration.  

I thought about how to work with the palette, but in hues that better suited my skin tone.  (This was about the time that I decided to make another rust cord skirt).  That saturated rust gave me the earth tone I was craving, but in a nice deep jeweled shade that suited my skin.  Since white and vanilla tend to wash me out when they are right next to my face as a solid, I paired it with mint on top and accented with copper, or vanilla/white with a teal-toned scarf and copper jewelry.   

A few of my favorite things from the last few years.  I don't have all these clothes now, but I still love the color combinations or the outfit.

 Another one is yellow.  I love yellow, but can't easily wear it near my face in a flattering way.  I love the mustards and complex honeyed colors that are popular right now, but they really don't suit me at all, even if I wear it on the bottom and pair it with something saturated on top.  At best, I can wear them as a small accent somewhere away from my face, like in a patterned scarf or amber jewelry.  That said, I like yellow as a neutral, and have found that certain shades of yellow are fine for me--a bright buttery yellow is generally good near my face; I have a summer cardigan in that shade that I wear quite a bit.

I have that jump rope rhyme about Cinderella dressed in yellow stuck in my head now.  (Stock images from pantone.)

 Likewise, my marigold heavy linen skirt is a nice yellow for fall and spring (the color isn't as good with bare legs, but perfect with tights).  It's in the direction of mustard, but brighter and more saturated.  I've tried pairing it with blush and dove gray (such a great color combo!), but it doesn't look good on me.  If I'm going to wear marigold, I need to pair it with a bold blue-toned accent color like raspberry or bright navy, or jade green.  

I'm wearing far fewer prints than in previous years, and many more stripes, but I'm a lot happier in my clothes these days.  At the moment, I mostly prefer texture to prints and separates to dresses, which is a new place for me sartorially.  When I put an outfit together, I try to look for interesting ways to combine texture with color and interesting accents.  

I'm still trying to work out the best hot-weather clothing that doesn't make me want to die of heat stroke but also doesn't increase my risk of skin cancer any further by exposing my arms and shoulders.  Last summer, I wore lightweight 3/4 sleeve shirts with shorter skirts or shorts, but it wasn't really quite right.  I liked what I wore from a style perspective, but my hot-flashy self had trouble coping with the sleeves, and sleeveless is just not a good idea for my skin.

In the meantime, I'm thrifting for saturated colors, and enjoying the cool pause before the heat of summer descends.

Wool Crepe Everyday Skirt

Let me tell you a tale of bottle green wool crepe.  When Sunni at a Fashionable Stitch shut down her fabric store, she had a great sale on her inventory to get rid of it.  This included a wonderful bottle green wool crepe that she had used to make a Hollyburn skirt.  At the time, I had recently made a Hollyburn, and thought I'd like a wool one too.  

The pattern is very fabric hungry, so I got the 3 yards it requires.  By the time the fabric arrived, I realized I didn't like the Hollyburn on me at all (too much volume!) and the crepe languished in my stash.  I'd pull it out occasionally, look at it and think about what to make with it, but I always put it back, the cost of the fabric a deterrent to casual use.

After doing some sketching on my Body Model croquis, I got interested in the idea of a winter jumper.  There are a lot of patterns available for pinafores right now, but my sketches were along the lines of a sleeveless Washi, so I decided to work with what I had.  *cue ominous music*  I squeezed a half bodice lining out of some rayon bemberg remnant and set to work.  The result was horrid.  So horrid in fact that I can't bring myself to show you a picture of it on my body, so you get to see it on a loveseat in my living room.  Ugh.  

I threw it in the naughty corner and sulked about the whole thing for a bit.  After I thought more rationally about it, I decided that I should make what I had originally intended for the fabric: a skirt.  I had cut my Washi carefully enough to preserve yardage (the fabric is 60" wide) and so had more than enough left over to cut an Everyday skirt.  The drape of the wool crepe seemed a poor fit with a more fitted pencil skirt, even though I'm really into slim skirts right now.  I took apart the original garment and stored it with my scraps in case I try it on a pencil skirt at some point.

I ordered additional bemberg to line it, since I figured it would make for a nicer finished skirt and set to work.  I remembered that lining my orange wool skirt was kind of a pain, and this time was no different.  The problem is the waist band construction isn't done in one piece.  It is clever for the insertion of the elastics, but it makes putting in a lining very tricky.  I also ran out of dark green thread and had to wait for more to arrive, only to find that when it arrived, it was slightly lighter than my previous green thread (even though they were supposed to be the same) and shows more on the hem and top stitching.  I stitched in the ditch on the waistband, and the gathering around the elastics hides it in the back, but the hem is rather obviously a different color.  I may take out the hem and blind stitch it instead.

That said, even though this was a tortuously slow make (more than 2 weeks start to finish because of waiting for supplies and time to sew), I think I like the finished skirt.  It isn't as warm as I thought it would be, but I think it will be a great spring/fall skirt. 

I did a 1" petersham interfaced waistband again, but also did a 1" elastic in the back.  I may end up taking that out and putting in the double line of elastics as on the spice cake skirt, since I like the fit better.  This one still feels slightly too big on me even though I've cinched it and cinched it.  1" braided elastic behaves so differently from 1/2" braided elastic and I don't really understand why.  It is 10" or less at this point and still feels too big.

  I also did the same pleated pattern as on the spice cake skirt and I really like it.  And even though the lining was a serious pain in the patootie, I'm glad it is there, because it just makes the skirt feel more luxe and professional.  That hem, tho.  I'm definitely going to fix it.

So while the make is a successful one, and I'm glad to have it in my closet, I need a little space from the process of making it before I'm ready to really wear it.  (Apologies for monotonous styling decisions--I took all the photos for this week's makes on the weekend and couldn't be bothered to completely change my clothes again.  Looks good with this shirt anyway!)