In praise of gussets

Sometimes the old ways are better.  Actually, the old ways are often better because they've been tested and tried over a long period of time and hold true. 

Take the lowly gusset.  A small triangle of fabric, applied to the underside of a sleeve.  It doesn't seem like much--such a small scrap!  But oh, what a difference it makes to comfort and fit in a woven sleeve!  I've always wondered why I struggled to get dolman sleeves to feel comfortable in a woven fabric.  

I like the look, but not the restricted arm movement.  Ditto for most inset sleeves.  These guns need room to move!  But I am finding myself drawn to wovens more often these days, and so it was worth finding a fix.

Enter the shift.  In 2016, I completed a full 18th century working woman's outfit--the equivalent of jeans and a t-shirt.  It includes a shift, stays, pockets, modesty petticoat skirt, 2 regular petticoat skirts, a short gown, fichu, stockings/garters, cap and Berege hat.  When I made the shift, it was after much trial and error with the geometric period drawings; in the end, I modified the American Duchess 8161 shift pattern to fit onto a half width of linen so I could cut two out of the yardage I had.

One of them didn't fit well at the time, so I gave it to a friend who wears it for a night gown and loves it.  Mine was in the box with all my other 18th century trappings, but I got it out in September to try as a nightgown for myself.  I was experimenting again with 18th century silhouettes, and wondering how to get more linen into my life. 

I loved wearing the shift so much that I bought another length of bleached linen from the doggie bag section of Fabrics-store.com and set to work.  Unfortunately, enough time had passed that I forgot a few things I did to maximize fabric usage, so I only got one full-length shift out, plus a top.  But oh, that new shift is even better, if that is possible.  Making two in a row reminded me about the brilliance that is the sleeve gusset. 

So when a Frankenpattern experiment with dolman sleeves turned out badly, I tried a gusset, and it fixed the sleeve fit (but not the rest of the problems with the make, so I'm trying to recut it into something else today). 

 

I immediately applied the same to my dawn linen and arctic linen dropped shoulder tops, which fit well but pulled slightly under the arm, restricting movement.  The gussets totally fixed the problem, and they are possibly the most comfortable tops I own right now.  The top is a mosh of several patterns: the Sorrel Dress bodice, the Potrait blouse, Coco dress, and Carson dress.  The bodice is mostly Sorrel, with some shaping at the bottom from the Portrait blouse; the neckline is Coco, and the sleeve is Carson.  A true Frankenpattern!

Talking Tuesday: Fragmented life

Image via

Max Lucado tells a story about a village full of worriers, who have a collective freak out any time anything happens and are quick to rush to conclusions and judgement.  There is also a poor man in the village who does not join in, but rather rebukes their foolishness again and again.  

When the poor man's valuable horse goes missing, the villagers moan and groan, telling the man he is a fool for not selling the horse and living off the proceeds, but the man says merely, "All we know is that the horse is not in the barn."  He reminds the villagers that we cannot judge a situation in the midst of it, as life comes in fragments.

Later, the horse returns unharmed and brings back many more horses with it.  The villagers are quick to say what a great thing it is, that he now has all this wealth in these horses, but the man reminds them that they cannot say one way or the other; it is too soon to judge.  

Much calamity befalls this man (and the village), and each time the villagers come to him to worry and commiserate, he calmly replies that "all we know is x."  Sometimes the thing turns out well and sometimes not, but each time, the man remains calm in the face of the storm.  

We have told this story in my mom's family for years, and it has become a kind of shorthand in times of distress: "All we know is that the horse is not in the barn."  So I keep reminding myself of that when my fears and grief about my dad threaten to overwhelm me and carry me into the deep.

All we know is that the horse is not in the barn.

Free Range

I'm mostly a skirts and dresses gal, but every now and again, I find myself wanting to wear pants.  And am not able to find anything that fits my proportions properly.  I have one pair of skinny jeans with a flat waistband that is just okay, but the fit in the seat still leaves a lot to be desired.  Since this is my year of Sew House 7, I figured I might as well give the Free Range Slacks a whirl.  I'm trying new things, and since the Remy was basically designed for the Free Range Slacks, I figured, why not?

Trying it out on My Body Model

After stalking the Instagram hashtag for a few weeks, and dithering about which view to make, I finally decided to go with the straight leg version, as I was kind of crushing on the silhouette, even though I know it isn't my best look.  Then I dithered a while about the fabric, before going with the Brussels Washer Linen Yarn Dye in black.  Again, not a color I would normally gravitate toward, but I saw another blogger with similiar coloring to mine make the pants in that substrate/color and thought it read nicely on her. 

Straight leg with Remy Raglan

The sewing was relatively straight forward, and like all my Sew House 7 makes so far, I find Peggy always has some clever construction bit that I've never done before.  This pattern was no different, as the yoked pocket is constructed without a facing, which greatly reduces bulk in the front, a nice feature on a pant with an elasticized waist.  I also liked that there were a lot of seam lines to make adjustments if need be (although in truth, I needed no modifications except for length).

I made a straight size 12 (I was between a 12 and 14 on the size chart, but a look at the finished measurements convinced me that I was better off sizing down).  I ended up with a 2" hem instead of the 1" specified, and possibly could have gone another 1/2" or so, but cropped pants are so tricky!

The waistband construction is to make a casing with waistband facing and insert the elastic, but I like the Elemental Skirt elastic application because it prevents the elastic from bunching or rolling around, so I did that instead, and then sewed down the edge of the casing as instructed.  I originally tried turning the edge under as with the Elemental skirt, but it looked weird on this pattern.  

The fit is superb, I have plenty of room in the seat, the rise is great, and I felt really great in these pants, for about three wears.  In my quest for skirt unicorns, I had wondered about converting this pattern to a skirt, and had done so with some wonderful silky noil. 

You'll notice that I shortened the 3/4 sleeves on my Sphinx Remy to short sleeves.  I figured I'd get more wear out of it in the summer, when I actually wanted to wear it, but was too hot in anything but short sleeves.  I did the same to my white one and am reasonably pleased with the results.

After wearing the noil skirt several times (stay tuned for pics), I decided I would be happier if the pants were turned into a skirt.  It didn't hurt that the weather stayed gross well into October and I found the pants slightly stuffy, which was not my intention for this make.  

I'm not sure I got the length quite right, but it is just below the knee, and similar in silhouette to the purple skirt from last week.  It's not my favorite thing, but I'll wear it.  I don't know if converting the pants was the right thing, but I'm also not sure that I would have continued to wear them, so it's hard to say.  Maybe just call me Meg?  Perhaps the slim leg option might be a better silhouette for me, as evidenced by my playing around on My Body Model:

But maybe I just need to embrace the fact that I don't enjoy wearing pants all that much.  On the upside, I do really like this pattern as a skirt (another unicorn!), and I will use the clever yoked pocket application in other contexts too, so nothing is wasted.

The top is a true Frankenpattern in handkerchief linen, part of Juliana's Sewing to Keep Breathing campaign.*   I used the Sorrel dress bodice for the shoulders and the Portrait blouse for the waist shaping and length, the Coco dress for the boat neckline, and the Carson dress for the sleeve.  And I got it out of a yard.  The color is amazingly rich.  I plan to make a robin-egg blue one today.

  

*On a personal note.  Things are pretty tough right now.  My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer last week, having never smoked a day in his life, and is in hospital on a lot of oxygen.  They are trying to get him stable and move him to the oncology unit to map the tumor and give a round of radiation so that he can maybe go home in a week or so.  Through Divine Providence, he's at one of the best hospitals in the world, and I'm grateful for all the ways that we see God's hand in this, but it is also agonizing.  Please continue to lift us up.

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.

Wildwood Sorrel

Long time readers will know that I used to wear a lot of prints.  Like, a lot.  Enough to think of myself as a "printy-utilitarian" in my style preference.  These days I gravitate more toward texture than prints, and am very careful to be sure a print it is something I want to wear and not just look at.  So I've gone tactile-utilitarian, I suppose?

In August, I was looking for fabric for something else and saw the new Wildwood collection from Rifle and Co., and got completely obsessed with the pink/burgundy Garden Party fabric.  Incidentally, if you are looking for the same, the keywords Wildwood and Garden Party will not get you there, as I discovered to my consternation when I went back to find it later.  The fabric also comes in a petite version that has a smaller scale, but I preferred the larger scale.  

My mom sent me this pic around this time, and I had to laugh.  Add yarn and knitting, well yep, pretty much!

The fabric in question was quilting cotton, however, which gave me pause, as I also rarely wear it any longer.  My first thought was an Obi-belt to go with the beet linen I had yet to make up.  But I still wasn't convinced I wanted to make another Terrace dress (although I may still do it with the remnant left).  I thought about making a duvet cover for my bed, but the amount of fabric needed and resultant cost gave me pause.  I decided it was worth the plunge to get the dress length that would hopefully get me another church dress.  

The Sorrel dress pattern has been languishing in my stash since 2018 since I supported the kickstarter campaign for paper patterns.  Button-down front skirts and me don't always get along well, and the sheer number of buttonholes put me off, as I was still doing them by hand at that point.  But one of the tester samples stayed with me (Ellie in the needlecord), so I hung on to the pattern for future experimentation.  Fast forward to 2021, and I sew buttonholes and buttons by machine now, and felt that the fabric and pattern would be a good match.  I did a bit of futzing around* with My Body Model to check first, and pleased to report that the sketch is pretty close to the finished dress!  

Based on the size chart, I cut a B-cup/14 and added 1" of length to the skirt with a 1/2" hem to get it to a length I was comfortable with.  The bodice fit is spot on, but I'd maybe add a total of 1.5" to get it to the bottom of my knee.

The make was not without issues.  I picked some 1/2" pine green buttons from an old make that were an okay match, marked everything using the buttonhole placement guide included in the pattern, sewed the button holes, cut them open, applied the buttons, and ....whomp, whomp, whomp.  I thought the overlap seemed kind of big, but it has been a while since I sewed anything with a button closure for myself, and well.  I don't know what the deal is with the pattern piece, but the markings are for 1.5" from the edge, which is...ridiculous.  It made all the buttons sit slightly off center, which was just off enough to look unintentional.  

I puzzled a bit over how to fix it.  I already had the buttons placed as close to the inside edge as I dared.  I thought about trying to get bigger buttons that would require bigger button holes that I could then cut closer to the edge, but I wasn't sure that would look good either, given that there are 12 buttons on the dress.  I tried switching the overlap, thinking that I could recut the buttonholes on the opposite side and figure out how to close up the holes on the underside neatly.  

It turned out that the deciding factor was that the look of the dress greatly improved with the overlap switched--something about the edging of the fabric on that side, so I decided to unpick all the buttonholes, and use fusible applique to cover them.  I spent quite a long time one afternoon pattern matching so that the edges would be as invisible as possible, and then applying the pieces.  I ordered new buttons and remarked the buttonholes on the other side.  

By this point, I was feeling paranoid about the whole thing and cut into the holes with fear and trembling, because there were no more options if this didn't work.  Thankfully, it was fine!  My only complaint is that the space between two of the buttons is off by 1/4" or so, but it isn't noticeable to anyone but me, I think.

  

I used proper fusible interfacing for the button band and neckline facings, which I'm pretty pleased about.  I've always used a different type of fusible interfacing that Did Not Behave, so I often skipped it or subbed Petersham or Ban-rol when a pattern called for it.  The stuff I tried this time is Pellon brand and seems to work as it should.  The guts of the dress are completely clean, as I was able to use French seams throughout.  I also lined the skirt with a bit of white rayon bemberg from the stash.  I wanted it to be something I could wear without a slip in hot weather.  I'm noticing that my hot flashy self cannot tolerate a nylon slip in heat, so I'm working toward having hot weather garments that are lined with bemberg or can be worn without a slip like linen.  

After one full day of wearing, I can say it is a nice and comfortable dress, particularly for church, although I think I should catch the stitching on the waist bar slides all the way through to the front of the fabric so that it doesn't pull at the edge there.  An easy fix.

I'm very pleased with the dress, and particularly with the sweep and fit of it--slim skirt and comfortable!  With pockets!  Wahoo!  I'll probably use the skirt pattern again as a stand alone.  Maybe the bodice too.  Yay for a new pattern--Jennifer Lauren Handmade's patterns are going high on my list after this (and the general success of my Trixie unders).  

*By futzing, I mean using Canva and Lunapic to digitally "draw" all the pieces.  I usually do this by hand, but with specific fabrics like this, I wanted to see it with the actual fabric at scale, and couldn't draw that well enough in a short time.  I've done it with several other things since and enjoy the process a lot, despite some basic limitations in the tech available to me.  I still enjoy drawing/coloring by hand but use each process for different things.

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!

Redwood Terrace

Whelp, it's been a crazy month.  Three church feasts, two weddings (that the girls were in), one birthday, one baptism, the start of school, writing and giving a speech at Back to School Night, Juliana's Sewing School for several students, several gatherings with friends, two church picnics, keeping up with the garden, a nasty gastroparesis flare that lasted almost two weeks, two hurricanes and a flood, plus my husband was traveling for work the better part of three weeks.  No wonder I'm tired!

So I have quite a backlog of projects to share as I did a fair amount of making in that time.  There is some serious writing I want to do this fall, but I need to get my feet back under me first (and pour my brains back into my head--ha!)  In August, I taught several people how to sew or mend, and one of the sessions was with a delightful high school girl who is a friend of the family (and a classmate of my kids).  

She wanted to make a simple dress to get started with, and I dithered about patterns a while before settling on the Terrace dress by Liesl and Co.  (Can I just say that the long sleeve sample is terrible?  I would never make the pattern if that was all I saw of it.  Thankfully the Instagram hashtag was most helpful.  I've long said it, but what is up with terrible samples on pattern envelopes from larger companies?  It's like they don't want anyone to buy them or something.  That's why I look at line art instead).  

 I wanted to work out any kinks in the pattern before I made it with her, so I threw together a quick version with my birthday linen the week before.  I had only two yards, so it was a squeak to get the whole dress out, and I had to piece part of the obi belt, but I made it!  I used a little scrap of one of my favorite vintage fabrics for one side of the belt so has different looks to it depending on which side is facing out.

The dress doesn't have my usual nice finishes because I was in such a hurry, but it turned out relatively well, and I've worn it a bunch since, including one of the weddings and Back to School night (where I picked up another adult student for Sewing School).  

Word to the wise: the obi-belt is meant to be worn almost right under the bust to look right.  It took me a few times to figure this out.  The belt also works as a sash (see below).  Also, reinforce the back seam at the seat or you'll have problems.  I caught it before disaster struck, but bears mentioning.

 

For size reference, I made a straight medium, which is about right.  The finished garment measurements had me considering a small, but I think the shoulders would have ended up too tight in a small.  I'm not sure if I'll make this again.  I like it, and it is a good church dress, and I've worn it a bunch, but I dunno.  It's not my favorite thing in the world.  I have three yards of beet colored linen that I thought I might make up the 3/4 sleeve version, but I keep dithering about it, wondering if I should use that linen for something else.   Watch this space!