Raspberry Lizard Redux

Another brief note, this one an update about that sweater I posted in the fall.  I finished it a year ago but didn't wear it until cooler weather in the fall.  The length always bugged me, as it wanted to ride up in the back and left me feeling cold!  I didn't end up wearing it much at all this past season.  

I decided to lengthen the hem an inch or so, and also fixed one of the cuffs that I had made a mistake on while I was at it.  It was a fairly fast fix.

I didn't want to make a turtleneck out of the neckkline, so I made a little cowl using the pattern as a guide so I can add it if I want to.  I did the first repeat twice (or maybe three times?) and the second repeat twice before purling a few rows and then a bind off.  I like how it came out!  It will definitely be warmer than the first iteration.  Fingers crossed I will wear it more this coming winter!

And yes, it really is cold enough for wools again today!  Go home, weather, you're drunk.

When the shoe doesn't fit...

 ...well, we just won't go there (anyone familiar with the original Grimm's Tales will know why).  I wanted to show a few things today that are modifications to existing makes.  

The first is my Poet sweater, that bane of my knitting existence.  I wore it a TON last winter, but the wide neckline always bugged me.  I had snugged it up with some yarn, but it really didn't stay, and even with that fix was still slightly too wide for my shoulders.  When I tried the sweater on in the fall, it was so big it was ridiculous.  I had a moment of panic: did I really spend all that time on a lace work sweater only to shrink out of it so much as to make it unwearable?  I put it away to ponder.  

Sometime in January I decided I was going to try to redo the neckline and add some short rows to raise the back neck, as that also sat a bit funny on me.  I pulled out the ribbing, put everything on size 5 needles and got knitting!  I did the short rows first in plain stockinette; in retrospect, I should have done that on size 6 needles, but I'm not going to try and change it now.  

For the neckline, I picked up half the number of stitches required and then knit the neckline as before, which seemed to pull it in enough!  The fit through the shoulders and upper back is much better now, and it was such a quick fix.  I need to remind myself to just do these things.  (I lengthened the body and cuffs of my Lightweight Pullover and Mackworth sweaters in the fall, also fairly quick fixes).  

I've definitely been happy with the fix and have worn the sweater a few times since.

And my Kazahana.  This was from the early fall, and the crew neckline was not helpful to me once the cold weather really set in.  For a worsted weight sweater, I felt cold in it, and because I probably should have knit a size down, it just sat funny on my shoulders.  

I decided to try adding a turtleneck and see if that would make for a better match of yarn weight and make.  I picked up stitches around the existing neckline on size 7 needles and knit twisted rib until I thought the fold was high enough to cover my neck without flopping around my ears.  

I did sew it down on the inside for a neat finish and like the result very much.  Objectively it isn't that cold right now, but man, I feel it, so this sweater came off needles and went right onto my body.  

I'm trying to figure out what to do with my Dark Moss sweater (if anything).  There are still some fit issues through the shoulders that bug me, and it is slightly shorter than I would like.  It is hard to find the right length for me right now.  Call it a Goldilocks issue.  But the sweater is still plenty wearable (although I really do need to make the sleeves longer).  The main issue is just past the divide for sleeves, so it would mean frogging back quite a lot; after reknitting that yoke three or four times, I'm just not sure I want to do it again.  Part of me wants to just make it again in a different yarn weight and size.  Decisions, decisions.

Off to Tech Week!  

Me-Made May Week 3

We are having a small run of mid-summer weather at the moment, so I'm in linen, linen, and more linen right now.   Supposedly it is going to rain later today and tomorrow and bring the temps back into a more normal range for May.  I just hope my fledgling strawberries don't cook!  

I'll list what I wore, starting upper left corner, going clockwise.

Sunday (upper left): Bluebird dress (made in 2016, altered 2020.  Probably oldest make still in my closet!)

Wednesday: lilac linen Remy raglan (just finished!), beet linen Free Range Skirt hack (2021).

Tuesday (upper right): dawn linen self-drafted drop shoulder shirt (2021), linen noil spruce Free Range skirt hack (2021)

Thursday (lower right): thrifted tank and jacket, linen/rayon black pepper Free Range skirt hack (2021)

Friday: Altered white linen Remy raglan (2021), sage linen/rayon M7353 skirt (unblogged)

Saturday: Meadow linen Sorrel shirt hack (2021), Purple Violet Squish skirt hack (originally made in 2019, hacked 2021)

Monday: altered thrifted tshirt, thrifted skirt.  This outfit was very meh.

My Thursday outfit was for a meeting I had to run at school and I felt totally awesome in it.  I thrifted that jacket months ago but have struggled to find a way to wear it.  I'll keep this outfit in my back pocket!

I think I like the Purple Violet Squish skirt enough to keep it in regular rotation.  It goes very nicely with the sage linen top, and probably will go with some other linen tops I've yet to make.  I made the lilac linen Remy early this week (I think!) to get my feet into sewing garments again, since it's been a minute.   I had just enough left over from a sewing student's project to squeak out the Remy.  I had to piece a tiny bit of one sleeve, but it ended up inside the French seams, so it's all good.   The color can wash me out a bit, so I made sure to have interesting colorful jewelry on near my face and that did the trick.

The sage linen skirt that I squeaked out of the leftovers from a Remy last fall turned out to be a good skirt!  I was skeptical when I first made it and didn't even bother to blog, but I think it will be a lovely summer piece.  My only regret is that I didn't have enough fabric for pockets, but since I got a skirt and 3/4 sleeve shirt out of less than 2 yards, I can't complain.  The white linen top will be much more useful with short sleeves, I think.  I want to do some tone-on-tone embroidery on it, but I keep waffling about the design.  That said, I did really like it with the sage skirt, although I did risk blinding passersby with my burns in the moonlight skin and light colored clothes.  Ha!

I finished the embroidery on my sage Remy raglan and will try to get a proper post about it soon.  Since almost none of my summer clothes fit right now, I'm on a mission to make stuff and try new things.  Yesterday, I made an Isla wrap dress out of some Indian block print cotton and cut out a cap sleeve Hinterland this morning, plus a simple linen top, so I should have new some things to post soon! 

Beets

Remember the Platonic ideal of a summer skirt?  Turns out it wasn't Platonic or ideal.  I did wear it a bit this summer, but I felt the fit was off--like it was too big or something. I think it is because I sewed the ban-rol elastic in the back at tension rather than straight across, which keeps it stretched out but retains elasticity, if that makes sense.  For those wanting to use ban-rol elastic, if you stitch across the lines while pulling it taught with the fabric, you will have to cut the elastic significantly shorter to account for the held stretch.

 I was also disappointed that the waistband started sagging after the first wearing and creased right in the middle, despite my using Ban-rol to interface.  I think it was the fiber substrate, which has rayon in it, but still.  The skirt ended up feeling sloppy and like a last resort item in my closet this summer. 

That said, I still love the fabric and find it a useful part of my closet.  Particularly after finding the black pepper skirt such a great addition this fall.  I put it away with my summer clothes, but in the "not sure I'm keeping this" part of the bin.  I wanted to figure out a way to make that skirt work.  I had done French seams throughout and wanted to salvage a nice make somehow. 

My constantly changing waist measurement means that an elastic waist is my friend these days, so I decided the best way to rescue the thing was to convert it to a fully elastic waist, ala the Free Range skirt or my embroidered Everyday skirt hack. In order to deal with the bulk from the yoked pockets, I made the seam allowance for the waistband facing a small as possible, and pressed rigorously before applying the elastic, again using the Elemental skirt application method.  The pocket openings are slightly small, but I don't mind as they are still usable.

I also decided that I wanted to use up that beet colored linen to make another dropped shoulder top, since they are so useful to me right now.  The least little bit of humidity in the air and I'm sweating profusely (thank you, hot flashes), and my stripey knit cotton shirts are not robust enough to hold up to that kind of abuse.  So I'm wearing these loose linen shirts on repeat right now.  

Through careful cutting, I was able to get this shirt and another Free Range skirt out.  Three garments/three yards of fabric--not bad!  I've yet to sew the skirt, but it is on my list; Juliana's Therapeutic Sewing for Stress Relief program is going strong.  Cotton flannel is on deck after I get through the linen pile.  

 

But back to the beet linen.  There aren't any useable scraps left except as piecework, although I'm very inspired by Rae's patchwork Cleo.  I've had in mind to make a crazy quilt from my scraps (and I may still do that!) but I'd try a more structured scrappy skirt like that. 

(Rae's post on fall outfits was also inspiring to me; maybe I'll post something like that as well!)  I wore these two outfits over the weekend, for what it is worth, although the yellow scarf only lasted through Liturgy on Sunday morning.  I did despair that actual fall weather was going to be a tease for the rest of my life, but these past two days have been delightful.  I might even put on a sweater today--imagine that!

Racing Stripes

I mentioned last week that I had taken apart my spruce Elemental skirt to add some extra fabric to the side seams, since it had come out slightly too snug for comfort.  There was just a bit of fabric left, but enough to cut out two 1" strips that followed the curve of the side seam.  

From the experience of making my Woodrose skirt, I knew that I needed an extra 1/2" on the sides, and figured a 1" strip with 1/4" seam allowances on both sides would get me there.  I wouldn't do it on purpose, but as a fix with no alternatives, it worked pretty well!  

I'm hoping it looks like a design element, but even if not, the skirt is so much more comfortable that I don't actually care that much.  I wore this outfit over the weekend and it was supremely comfortable.

 

Sadly, I think yesterday was my last day for tights until fall (and even yesterday was a bit of a stretch).  The temps are climbing again and the humidity is back (wahh!  I had just got rid of the 3 pounds of water I was holding from the last heat wave.  So it goes).  

But I'm grateful for the brief reprieve anyway.

Mending: That Corduroy Skirt

Recently, Kate Davies reposted a chapter from her last book, Wheesht, entitled Mend.  I read the chapter about a year ago and found it quite resonant then.  I have been darning my tights for a number of years now, and mending my own clothing, but I had started to darn my kids' and husband's socks by then as well.  I've always repaired mine and my kids' clothing (holes in knees, or those irritating places in tshirts that get little pin holes over time and wearing, holes in sweaters), but I liked the intentionality of Kate's chapter.  

 

 

That said, last month, the kids all needed bigger socks, plus the darned socks were to the point of more darning than socks, so it was time to replace for all of them. 

 

 I confess I heaved a sigh of relief. 

It's one thing to romanticize mending as a slow fashion way to keep your footprint light on the earth, but it is quite another to keep up with the darning for six people and everything else that needs doing for four kids, special needs not withstanding.  It had got to the point where I had to spend about a day every week or so doing the darning or else it piled up beyond doing.  This on top of the increased load of cooking and baking, and everything else that became harder last year with the extended lock down.  It seemed like every laundry cycle added to the never ending pile of mending.

 

 

 (I still think it is worth it to mend most things if possible, buy used, and pass things down within the family, but the cost of this approach is labor- and time-intensive for me, a cost that I think is largely ignored in these sorts of conversations).

 

So with that in mind, remember the dark blue corduroy skirt I made in the series two years ago?  I wore it twice before realizing the fit was really off and the fabric and pattern were a poor match, so I dumped the whole thing in my fabric bin, hoping to salvage the fabric for something else.  Sometime last year, I thought to put ban-roll elastic into the waist band to see if that fixed the fit.  I unpicked all the darts (all six!) and threaded the elastic and whomp, whomp, whomp.  Still really poor fit.  Back into the bin it went.

 

 

Fast forward to January and I thought maybe tightening the elastic would help.  Lo and behold, that worked!  The slightly less structured body of the garment works better with the light weight cord.  I won't say it is the most flattering thing I own, and it isn't warm at all, but it is light and comfortable for these days of chilly mornings and pleasant afternoons.  I have some dark green baby cord that may become another skirt like this.  Just as soon as I can muster some sew-jo, which has been in serious short supply round these parts.

 

My thoughts are slowly turning to warm weather garments (even as I have three sweaters on needles.  Three!  I make no apologies...)  I have two dress lengths of rayon challis from past birthday presents that have been waiting for the right pattern.  I thrifted a maxi dress last fall (that you can just see the top of in the pic above) that I love the fit of, and can replicate by doing a bit of frankenpatterning, so I intend to get to that at some point in the next couple of months. 

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.

Butterflies for Ponchik

I think it is obvious to anyone who's been around for a while that my style has evolved quite a bit since 2012, when I started sewing seriously for myself.  A lot has happened in that time!  When I first started, I was really into novelty prints and made a lot of dresses.  These days, I tend to gravitate more toward texture over print, and separates before dresses.  It's fine--just part of getting older, I think.  But sometimes I forget that and buy a print that I would have liked a couple of years ago, but now just doesn't really suit my style. 

 

Such was the butterfly lawn that I bought in May to make a dress from.  The price was too good, and the colors were all in my wardrobe palette.  Even though I had a long think about the butterflies, I thought maybe they would work.  And half price lawn is nothing to sneeze at, particularly in all those great colors!  

That said, it just wasn't my jam.  The dress is just okay, and the shirt ended up feeling too much like scrubs.  (What is wrong with me??)

I decided to transform the shirt into another dress for Ponchik, since she wears the first shirt-to-dress iteration I made her so much that I figured a second would get good wear too.  I still had plenty of the orange mystery fabric I used for her first dress, and it was a good match for the orange butterflies, so off I went, using the original dress as a guide.  I took the shoulders up an inch and adjusted the facings accordingly, but left the width the same.  I took off the hem facing and added the contrast skirt with a waist casing and contrast tie.  I ended up adding 6" of elastic to the middle of the tie to lengthen it and give the dress a bit more stretch for wearing and it is great now--she really loves it.

I admit, the finished dress is very similar to the first one, but Ponchik likes it, so that's what counts!  I did put the Lepidoptera dress into the fabric bin to cut down for one of the girls at some point, so she may end up getting a whole butterfly dress next summer.  I think at this point in the season, she can get through on the clothes she has, but the fabric will not go to waste, and it will be a nice new thing for her next year!

Refashions for Ponchik

I mentioned in my Emerald top round-up post yesterday that I had toiled the pattern last summer.  In general, I don't keep excess fabric around for such endeavors (although I have an old sheet that got holes in that I use for the purpose), but I did have a short yard of Rifle and Co. Birch rayon that I had bought at some point for refashioning my earlier Dottie Angel frock of the same, but ended up not doing before the dress left my closet for greener pastures.  I used the yard for the toile, but because the selvedges on Rifle and Co. are extremely wide and white (why??), I couldn't quite make the Emerald work as a wearable piece.  I had a similar problem with my Menagerie remnant and had to piece a bit of the side seam.

My main complaint about toiles is that you end up with fabric that is basically unusable for anything else, and it feels very wasteful to me.  The Emerald toile was just such a piece--I couldn't use it for anything else for me, and it seemed like a waste of decent fabric, albeit fabric I wasn't particularly keen to have in my closet again.

I decided to see if I could cut it down for Ponchik and add a skirt in a contrast fabric.  In my quest to find the perfect orange for my Poppy Rose skirt, I ended up with a skirt length of orange rayon-linen blend mystery fabric that wasn't quite the right orange for me.  

Fortunately, it went very well with the Rifle and Co. Birch fabric, so I cut a 12" length, seamed the sides, gathered it up, and popped it on the bottom of the (cut-down) top and Bob's your uncle.  (Well, not quite, but close enough).  I added a little self-cased belt too.  The nice thing about the contrast skirt is that I can cut it off and add a new one, or add another tier of fabric if it gets too short.  The top part is roomy enough she may get another season out of it if I do that.  She is in love with the dress and wears it constantly.

The other cut-down I did was to my Octopus dress.  I had made my octopus-loving girl a birthday dress a few years ago, and myself a matching one at the same time, but only wore mine a couple of times that year.  

It was really a bit too kitchy for me, so I've had it in the bin to cut down for her ever since.  She wore the original dress at least two summers (maybe even three) before we couldn't squeeze her into it any longer.  She's been longing for another octopus dress since.

I decided to cut it down from the top rather than cutting out a new pattern from the bottom, so I unpicked all the bias and kangaroo pocket, and pinched out the excess at the shoulders first, and then the side seams, which I think gave me more usable fabric to work with at the end then the usual way I cut down things for the girls.  I'll likely do this method again.

I think I ended up bringing the shoulder seam down 2", and in 2" all along the side seams, plus a bunch at the hem (14", maybe?)  I made a casing and waist-tie to mimic my own dresses this summer, and made the whole thing roomy and a bit overlong so she can get extra wear out of it.  I also made a matching mask at her request, out of the pocket piece.  She found it a bit hot compared to her normal jersey mask, however, so she might save it to the fall. 

Not a bad use of time and fabric!  I had made a small mountain of fabric leftovers to try and make stuff like this (and work through my fabric stash), but I realized a) the girls have enough clothes for now, and b) I mostly have enough stuff for now.  The only thing I may try to do is eke out another Emerald from the leftover Purple Violet Squish dress fabric.