Little Pieces of Me

What do you do when it is a cold and windy April day with an ice storm in the weather forecast and all you really want to do is get started on the gardening?  Sulking is high on my list, followed by getting started on something sunny and summery. I'd been mulling over an idea for a white cotton tunic or shirt with watercolour-like painting on it. Considering that my painting skills are even worse than my drawing skills, this seemed like an overly ambitious undertaking. But what the heck. I had a good length of a nicely textured crinkle cotton in the stash to use and drafting the pattern and sewing the shirt was easy. But I was unsure about how to get the painting effect while still leaving the fabric with a soft hand and natural texture. I tried out a number of things and I decided on 2 options - very thinned out Colour Vie or watercolour pencil crayons. Watercolour pencil crayon on wet cotton Yes, pencil crayons. I had no expectation that these would work, ...

Last year there was some activity online around a pattern from Vogue (1312) which featured prominent angular structures in the skirt. Several bloggers offered up their own versions of this construction which came to be known as the tablecloth skirt or  ' garment formerly known as tablecloth ' although it really doesn't have much to do with tablecloths at all.  At the time I thought it looked fun so I bookmarked it for later. 3 of the 4 points showing here Now it's later, and with the teasing glimpse of warmer weather over the Easter weekend, I thought I'd see about making something like this myself. I thought I'd go for a dress with a fitted bodice, short sleeves and pockets.  I had 3 metres of inky blue (photos are lightened for detail) light-weight linen that I'd bought on sale which would be perfect for this project, which I call the Four Points Dress. Note: no tablecloths were harmed in the making of this dress! Having recently finished...

It must be the official (not to say in any way actual ) first day of Spring last week that made me have a bit of a tidy up of my closet. That or I was avoiding doing something else, which is when I usually find myself getting all organized. For example, at peak marking times I get the overwhelming urge to do things like alphabetize my sock drawer. All I did was re-group everything in the closet by length and then by colour which makes it much faster to find something to wear in the morning. (Really Gil? How exactly do you sort an all black winter wardrobe by colour?) As usual I found some items I hadn't worn for a while. Some were nice surprises, some were headed for the charity bag, others I still had hope for. One of these last items was this (cough) black H&M dress. When I really stopped to think about it, I realized I have only worn this dress once - about 4 years ago in LA. I'd needed something that could pass as a LBD for an alumni event, but seeing as I...

It was the best of times, it was the worst... no wait, it actually was the best of times in terms of sewing. This week I have been working to draft up a couple of properly fitting top patterns for woven fabric. The first one I did is a hip length tank with darts and neckline options and the second is a long tunic with slightly dropped shoulders, boat neck and deep side slits. I selected a grape coloured cotton linen blend from the recently reorganized stash for the muslins. Mostly I chose it because it was the right weight and I had a lot of it, likely 3 metres or more. And I remember paying very little for it at an end of season sale last year - or the year before! I figured I'd get two muslins and maybe one finished top out of it and wasting some of the fabric would not break my heart. Surprisingly (to me at least) I must have done a pretty good job on the pattern drafting because both the muslins were about 90% successful right off the sewing machine! The tank top just ...

I had decided that my next undertaking is to (finally) draft the perfect sleeveless tunic pattern for myself. You know, something that I could always go to when I had found a nice bit of linen, or to which I could easily add kimono sleeves, big pockets or inset side panels or that could turn into a dress if needed. It's something I've been meaning to do for ages, but never really got around to. For this, I knew I'd likely need to do a couple of muslins just to get everything right, so I turned to my trusty fabric cabinet. Surely I would find something potentially 'disposable' there that I could use for this job. And that was as far as I got ... Sidebar:  Like many art and craft oriented people I have a tendency to collect things.  I know people (and you do too) who have problems with pack-rattiness. People who keep everything and have so much stuff they don't know what to do with it.  Luckily, I don't fall into that category.  My collections are pr...

Last week I made my first garment of the new year. I'm calling it my Ladder Tunic. The design and drafting of the pattern went well. The fabric was entirely appropriate. My sewing machine and serger behaved impeccably. I only had to rip out one short bit of sewing. I discovered a wonderful new sewing tool. And I think the final product has worked out very well. So what was so scary? Well, the design in my head required me to mostly finish this top and then cut it up! WTF? After doing some texture samples on jersey last month, I knew I wanted to try out some of those techniques on wearables. And the one I wanted to use first was slashing to create a distressed fabric. Pattern: I used a self drafted pattern. This is a long, loose tunic with dropped shoulders, an asymmetrical hem and a double neck treatment. This has a classic "lagenlook" unstructured shape that works with leggings, narrow pants or a long skirt. In case anyone is interested in sewing s...

Following on from my previous post, I have also been working on some samples of the appliqué methods shown in the lovely book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design: A Guide to Hand-Sewing an Alabama Chanin Wardrobe by Natalie Chanin. Reverse Appliqué I have a little experience with reverse appliqué - which is when you have two layers of fabric, a stitched pattern and then cut away some of the top layer to reveal the bottom layer. I remember doing some sweatshirts with this, way back in the 80's. Yes, that was in the previous century. So for that reason I didn't do an Alabama Studio style sample of this technique. At right is an example from the Alabama Chanin web site which shows it very well. Essentially, the process is the same as I was discussing earlier, but in this case you cut out some of the stencilled design. Changing how much you remove, how you have done the outline stitching and the colour of the two layers creates many variations that make the pattern be sub...

This past week I've been quite absorbed by a new book - Alabama Studio Sewing + Design: A Guide to Hand-Sewing an Alabama Chanin Wardrobe by Natalie Chanin. Maybe absorbed isn't quite the right word. Possibly obsessed. Natalie is the founder of the clothing line Alabama Chanin. You can check out the company site here , but you'll actually see a lot more images if you just use Google Images. The clothing is quite remarkable. Although the actual garment designs are relatively simple, they are all completely hand sewn by women in Alabama, made from organic locally grown cotton, and feature a range of embellishments that are stunningly labour intensive. Here's a montage to give you an idea of what the surfaces look like. And these lovely things are every bit as expensive as you would imagine. But in an interesting turn, Chanin has made the clothing potentially available to a wider market by not only selling completely customizable sew-it-yourself kits and supplie...