Claimed!

Also.

With the demise of blogger, I will JUMP.  no LEAP.  no ... at least mention/claim/run like a lemming off the cliff:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Me, I'm going to use Feedly.  It seems simpler, somehow.

In lighter news, has anyone missed Thrift Shop?

I personally like the version with swearing and everything, and I'm not really a big curser.  It's my new favorite thing.  Much thanks to my brother, for the link.

Well.  It and chickens are my new favorite things.  More on the chickens later...

Pants. Slacks. Trousers.: A tragedy in at least 2, maybe three, parts

Here in the U.S.A. we refer to the long, loose fabric coverings for ones' legs as "Pants."  As it turns out, this has the potential to be an entertaining American faux-pas when travelling abroad -- specifically to the U.K., where "pants" means a woman's panties/underwear/unmentionables.  ... Now that we've cleared that up, the newest challenge is to make myself a pair of pants -- specifically, a pair of trousers. (which we Americans understand to mean a rather more formal pair of pants, although perhaps indistinguishable from slacks, but longer than shorts, which seems somewhat obvious). Where Jeans (always plural for some reason) fit into this whole situation, who knows?!?

Trousers are defined by the all-knowing Wikiverse as "an item of clothing worn from the waist to the ankles, covering both legs separately."  I decided that I needed to kickstart my sewing mojo with a practical challenge.  Being rather potato shaped, with tuber-like legs , I have never found a pair of trousers that fit properly.  I can find jeans that fit reasonably well, but they tend to be too tight and informal for work-wear.

My work wear has devolved into 3 dresses worn in constant rotation.  It's gotten to the point where, if it's Monday, it must be time for the purple dress!  Dressing has become super easy, but also super boring.  Clearly something needs to change.

So, I signed up for a sewing class through Portland Community College taught out of local (quilting mostly) shop, A Common Thread.  Jan, the instructor, is awesome.  She's beautifully practical.  She said we should try to limit ourselves to 4 or fewer pattern pieces so we can actually finish something during the short class.  The pattern I picked -- Simplicity 3688 -- has 2 pattern pieces for the legs plus a waistband.  By the numbers alone, this should be SUPER EASY.  Not even I can mess that up.

...or so I thought.

As it turns out, based on at least 20 minutes of internet research plus Jan's more thoughtful feedback, I need:

1. A round tummy adjustment (this, apparently, mostly involves moving darts)
2. A flat seat adjustment
3. A knock knee adjustment

I kid you not.

Stay tuned....

Purge

So, I noticed that I've been wearing the same three or four me-made dresses in almost constant rotation.  I have a closet full of clothes, which I apparently am not wearing.  Since I had run all my errands for the weekend, packed my gym bag for tomorrow evening, made a bunch of freezer burritos, and was generally ready for the week, I thought... let's take a look at what's in there and see why I'm not wearing it.

Closer inspection revealed a closet full of clothes that don't fit, what-was-I-thinking items (the teal jacket with zipper trim on every seam, including the princess seams comes to mind), me-made wadders, last minute purchases for one occasion or another, overly cute (kawaii!) items that I liked in concept but not execution, unlined polyester jackets that I purchased before I started sewing, jeans, and sweatshirts.  Notably, there were at least three pantsuits that ended up in the pile.  There were a few items that I feel a little sentimental about and will probably keep, but at the end of the hour or so it took me to go through everything, here's what I had:

It may not look like all that much, but I think the local thrift shop will be happy to have them :)  None of them are really worn-out, but they don't fit me or my life any more.  I thought about saving some of them for re-fashions, but it's probably best that they go to a new home that will love and appreciate them.

This dovetails nicely with what I've been thinking recently about my relationship to consumer-fashion.  The picture immediately above was taken at a local mall (Lloyd Center, if you know the area) a couple weeks ago when I had to go there for volunteer tax-prep training.  It has a vaguely temple-ish look to it.  Either that or a train station.  It also has a multi-level food court, several attached restaurants, a movie theater, and an ice-skating rink.  It also has the most ridiculous multi-level parking lot in the area.  Love it or hate it, the shopping center is a key part of American society.  Shopping has, in fact, become entertaining!  I'm guilty of this myself. Sometimes I have been so bored that I'll go poke around the shops and end up coming out with things that I don't precisely need and didn't know I wanted before I went in there. 

I'm not, strictly speaking, anti-shopping.  I think it has a part to play in the economy, and it provides a generally safer place for teenagers to hang out in and find employment in than a lot of other places.  (Recent events at another local mall, not withstanding).  It's certainly convenient to buy your shoes, books, and kitchenware all in once place.  I'm a big fan of efficient and convenient.

I think it's safe to say though, that I'd like to be more conscious about what I wear, and buy to wear.  The idea of induced desire for an item is a little troubling to me.  If I need something, I would think that I would know about it before I go shopping.  I'd also like my clothing to last, which the aforementioned unlined polyester suit jackets are unlikely to do.  Finally, I'd like to have a better dollar to wearability ratio in my closet.  I don't really mind spending a couple hundred dollars on a jacket if it fits beautifully and I can wear it regularly to work.  The odds are though, for considerably fewer dollars, I could make myself something that fits a lot better.  Similarly, I don't mind buying t-shirts, since you can almost always buy them for less than you can make them for. 

I think it might be time for me to do a mini-wardrobe SWAP to fill in the holes left by this afternoon's wardrobe purge.

*pondering*

Sewing in a rut

Dear readers --

How do you distinguish between sewing tried and true, the ever popular "TNT", garments and sewing in a rut?  So far this year, I've made three dresses. 

All in different fabrics and using different techniques, but with the exact same pattern.  A self-drafted circle skirt with a princess seamed bodice front, darted back, and a side zipper that doesn't extend all the way to the armscye (which I generally think is the easiest way to get in/out of dresses.  Two are lined, which I really prefer in the winter

For the first, the houndstooth, I created separate facing pieces and tacked them down by hand to the bodice itself.  The other two are the ones that are lined.  The purple dress is lined using the ever popular technique espoused by most pattern drafters where you leave part of the armscye unsewn and then flip it rightside out, finish the shoulder seam and slipstitch the armscye closed.  The grey/copper brocade is lined using the technique that  Green Apples advocates and is found in most Colette patterns.  I remember thinking that it was kind of a genius technique when I made my brother's last Negroni shirt.  Having done both methods in short order, I find that I still prefer the Colette roll-up the sides technique. I think it results in a stronger shoulder seam, which can be important when you're dealing with fussy fabrics.  I also think that once you get the geometry straight in your head about how it works, it's easier to carry out and get a clean result. 

It occurred to me though, that this may be a bit of a sewing rut for me.  The dress is easy and I've gotten the kinks worked out of the fit.  So, it only takes me a day or so to knock one out.  It takes 2 days of actual construction, but that's mostly because I like to hang my circle skirts before I hem them so I don't have weird bias issues down the road -- especially with the lined ones.  I don't think I'm worried -- I know that I can always sew other things -- but I find making these dresses to be a little meditative, which I'm not used to when it comes to sewing.  I may even make another one (or two) since they've become a staple of my work wardrobe.

Since it's been getting colder, I have been wearing my mint green trench coat pretty much nonstop.  I need to take it to the cleaners, but can't bear to part with it for the short period of time that they'd need to clean it up for me.  Maybe I'll take it to the 1 day cleaner in my office building.  They'll charge an arm and a leg, but at least I won't be without it.  My next project may another lined/interlined wool coat so I can rotate them...

My next sewing project, I think is going to be to read all of the BabyLock-sponsored "Stretch Yourself" sewing with knits tutorials at madmim.com and onelittleminute.com and try to draft a decent t-shirt pattern for myself.  I wear knits all the time, but have been way to intimidated to sew with them.

In other news, I broke the family motto and hired someone to do something that I could do myself.  Only, I don't think that I could have -- at least not as well.  The guys from Jose's Quality Lawn Care took my yard from this:

To this:

in one day!  (and a lot of hard work).  It makes me almost embarrassingly happy.  Maybe I'm getting old?  I feel like I can start my garden this year with a clean slate and don't have to spend weekends upon weekends digging out invasive blackberries and pruning things before I get started gardening.  I've already gone online to Territorial Seed Company and Kitazawa.  At a minimum, I'm going to re-do the automatic watering system so that it doesn't look parched by August.

It feels like this year is starting to open up with a lot of potential on a variety of fronts... which is lovely. 

Happy Sewing!

2012 into 2013

Although the Chinese "Year of the Dragon" doesn't end until the lunar new year on February 9, 2013, most Japanese-American families observe western new year, which has 2012 ending on Monday (tomorrow).  I'm ready for it.  2012 has been a ridiculous year from a personal perspective and a very haphazard year from a sewing perspective. 

2012 started out well -- I was sewing (although I have to admit that my first few garments have not seen a lot of rotation), working away, and volunteering with the local low-income taxpayer clinic.  In April, my father had open-heart surgery and then in May, he lived with me for a few weeks while he was recovering.  In June, I decided to leave my old job and found a new one, which I started October 1.  Through all of this, I sewed a little, but inconsistently.  I appreciated the suggestions on how to style the polka-dot dress to wear to a good friend's wedding. 

We've also been taking my mom's beach place from this:

(sadly, I don't have any "before" pictures that showed the mushrooms growing out of the carpet because of the huge leaks in the ceiling -- the Oregon coast is rarely temperate).

to this:

(Believe it or not, that's the same corner -- the new door is where the window was in the first picture.)

It's been a huge project and we worked with a really great contractor.   But, more-or-less weekly trips out to the coast to do fiddly little details and work with the contractor took an awful lot of time. 

Also, it's always exhausting to start a new job -- I adore the folks I work with though, so it doesn't usually feel like work.  But, it has left me with very little energy for sewing.  I did manage to sew my nephew's cute panda costume and a couple of winter-weight dresses, sadly, unblogged about. 

But, here it is, December 30, 2012 and I have been thinking about the things we survived and the things we've yet to do.  To the extent that I make resolutions, they tend to be modest and more self-improvement focused than goal-oriented (which is a self-improvement goal, in and of itself!).  Which all brings me to my (rather modest) resolutions for 2013 sewing:

1. Spend more time blogging -- even when I was exhausted, I was reading what other folks are up to.  I needed to know that other folks out there were dealing with similar issues and still finding time to be creative.  I've got several ideas for 2013 including every-other-month give-ways.  (I've got to do something with all my extra patterns!).  I am probably also going to share books and recipes I like as well as the progress of my yard here, so apologies in advance.  I'll try to find a sewing nexus...

2.  Learn to make a pair of pants.  Every single pair that I've tried so far has been a disaster -- something about the fit and my weird curves.  I'm still resisting signing up for the week-long intensive class at Palmer/Pletch, but I think I should be able to figure this out with sufficient dedication.

3. Figure out if there are separates that I actually look good in and like.  Recently, I have discovered that dresses are much much easier to wear/style than separates.  I used to wear a lot of separates though, so I'm wondering if it's just that I have yet to make a top, skirt, or pant that I like.  Colette patterns will be very helpful in this project I think.

4. Forgive myself for wadders.  I'm afraid that the hand-tailored jacket that I've spent at least a hundred hours on this fall is destined for this category.  Much like when I was first gardening, I am trying to resign myself to the "if you don't kill any plants, you're not stretching yourself as a gardener" approach to sewing.  Being rather type-A, it's not easy to forgive myself for anything other than perfection (which I wouldn't need to forgive myself for!).  So, this folds into my bigger spiritual journey.

5. Continue to practice gratitude.  Although not specifically a sewing goal, I wake up pretty much every day and think how lucky I am that I have the time, disposable income, and health to do the things that are important to me/interest me.  There may always be things that I wish were different about my life, I think that's true of everyone.  However, mostly I recognize how incredibly fortunate I am and need to continue to make that recognition part of my daily life. 

Do you have any sewing resolutions?  Do you object to resolutions in general? 

Happy New Year!  Best wishes for a peaceful-prosperous 2013 to you and your family.

What I did on my summer vacation...

So... it's been awhile.  Not awhile since I sewed anything, but awhile since I posted.  You see, I was fortunate enough to accept a new job that started on the first of October (last Monday!).  So, in order to not be a crazy, burned out person I decided to take 2 weeks off between leaving my old job and starting the new one!  My grandma turned 92 at the beginning of September and, because I was still running around trying to wrap everything up, I missed all 3 of her birthday parties!  So, I took about 10 days of my vacation and went down to hang out with her in central California.

She lives out in the country, surrounded by fields and (relatively recently) right next to my Dad's cousin's husband's almond orchard (he's renting the land from my Grandma).  It's so peaceful, and definitely one of my favorite places on earth.  When we weren't playing cards, napping, or eating, I sat out on her enormous deck in the lazy, hot summer afternoons and worked on pad stitching my lapels.

I also went to visit my brother, who is currently living in the bay area.  I went to Stonemountain and Daughter (very nifty Berkeley fabric store with a great sale section on the second floor) and to Britex Fabrics in downtown San Francisco.

I was a little overwhelmed by Britex -- they have some really lovely Missoni knits that I was tempted to pick up, but my recent wool binge has left me with negative space for fabric storage.  I've started piling it on top of the shelves that hold my cookbooks since the regular "fabric storage" is packed full of lovely fabrics.  One of these days I'll have to share pictures of my fabric "storage"... but not today.  So, instead, I managed to escape with a dozen cards of buttonhole twist (So I don't have to pay shipping!) and a buttonhole chisel.  Also known as a buttonhole opener. 

My brother is a vegetarian, so we ate dinner one night at a really nice vegetarian place called Millenium.  It was a little expensive (~$100/person, including pre-dinner cocktails and wine), but a fun experience.  I'm willing to occasionally pay for a good experience.  It's located off the lobby of the "Hotel California", which is actually a Best Western.  I'm not sure that it's the "real" Hotel California of Eagles fame.  I think that one is in SoCal.  We then went to a fun, slightly dive-y bar in Oakland called "Merchant's".  This was painted on the ceiling and illuminated by black lights. 

I love a good dive bar!  There were a whole bunch of drunk Finnish guys at a table next to ours -- they were very fun and looked like they were having a great time.

We also went up into the hills around Berkeley to get a great view of Oakland/San Francisco and the Marin headlands.  We ended up at this great place called "Indian Rock" which is a big rock with an amazing view right in the middle of this residential area.  From there we could see the clouds roll into the city. 

All in all, it was a really nice, relaxing vacation.  On the way back, I even achieved luggage perfection:

(For those of you who have not had to suffer the indignity of air travel in the US recently, 50 pounds is the maximum your checked luggage can weigh before they charge you an extortionate overage fee). 

Since I got back, I have been working on a top secret project (my nephew's Halloween costume), and can't post pictures here, since I want my sister to see it first.  Mailing it out on Monday!  I was planning on going in to work tomorrow, but just learned that the marathon is tomorrow morning, so I'll probably just fiddle around the house.  Maybe work on my jacket some more!  I still have to pad stitch the collar, but can assemble the rest of the shell.

I hope that you had a wonderful summer!  What's your favorite place to visit?

Happy sewing!

Vogue 8333

I'm not really sure where my "practical" side has gone to -- what I really need in my wardrobe right now are slacks, skirts, and tops to wear to work.  What I ended up starting this weekend (instead) was the Claire Schaeffer Vogue tailored jacket.

Image from here

The Claire Schaeffer patterns are said to be worth the cost for the instructions alone.  Well, I had the instructions, but had somehow misplaced the pattern!  Fortunately, JoAnn's had them on sale for $3.99, so I picked up another copy.  It's a really lovely jacket, which does not come in "potato" sized.  It's also classic enough, that it wouldn't look too weird if you had more than one in your wardrobe, provided that they were made up in different fabrics.  So, I spent a huge portion of time this on adjusting the pattern to fit (hopefully).  I still haven't bothered to re-size the (2 piece) sleeves. I made up a muslin in cotton muslin, but it's hard to translate that to wool.  Fortunately, the wool fairy blessed me with a lot of really nice quality, inexpensive stuff, so I didn't cringe all that much when I cut out the shell pieces.

Here is the front of the jacket -- you can see that it's got some interesting pleating at the pocket.  I used white silk thread (because it is very visible and slides well) to trace the shoulder dart and pleats.  Here is a better image of that and a good picture of the weave of the fabric.  It almost has a herringbone effect, but is fairly subtle and incorporates a lot of colors that I like:

Because I am crazy, I decided to do view "A" -- the couture technique version.  This involves facing the front pieces and collar with medium weight hair canvas and then hand padstitching the roll on the collar.  The fabric itself is a medium weight wool -- not quite a coating, but heavier than the very expensive wool flannel I got for a potential round 2 of this coat.

Hair canvas is called this, because it actually has some goat hair in the weft threads.  It's one of the classic tailoring interfacings.  If I ever win the lottery, I'm totally going to buy myself a bolt of this stuff.  That and a 100 yards of spiral steel boning.  Both seem like they'd be obnoxiously stiff and irritating to wear and both really "make" the garments they're incorporated into.

The hair canvas helps to stabilize the fabric and gives it just a slightly heavier drape than just the wool alone.  Ever since the debacle of the seersucker jacket + craft interfacing, I've gotten more neurotic about not letting the interfacing overwhelm the fabric.  I steam pressed the hair canvas to very slightly pre-shrink it.  I then compared it to the jacket shell:

Once I was okay with the way they lined up, I used my sewing machine to run a 5/8" line around the edge of the hair canvas.  I learned from my mistake with my brother's jacket, and won't trim back to the seam allowances until the pad stitching is done.  However, I wanted to know where the seam allowances were (approximately). 

I've never done a dart through this type of interfacing before -- essentially what you do is sew the dart in the shell fabric and trim the dart out of the interfacing, so it comes through.

I then spent (way too long) hand catch stitching the edges of the interfacing dart legs to the fashion fabric dart and the edge of the interfacing to the fashion fabric where the pleat was.  I stitched the interfacing to the fashion fabric on lines (like the shoulder) that I didn't want to shift around and basted the roll line of the collar (again in white silk thread).

Fortunately, I had a couple episodes of Top Gear (BBC) to keep me company.  I love Amazon streaming video!

Next up, pad stitching redux!  The nice thing about this type of project (tedious though the pad stitching can be), is that it is much more portable than other types of construction.  I just need good light and a small bag to carry all my supplies.  So, it will probably come on vacation with me.  I think I may be checking a bag though, since it doesn't look like the TSA allows scissors to come in carry on luggage!

Happy sewing, all!