Plaids and Pleats Part 1

I bought an obscene amount of plaids recently.

It's this whole idea of school clothes that makes me think of uniforms. I wore a school uniform from the time I began school at 6 to the time I left, at 18. I loved uniforms. I picked my schools according to the uniforms of the students. Very shallow, yes, but I was a teenager and I didn't want to wear ugly clothes to school all year. Perfectly valid reasoning at the time.

I am still getting used to the idea that kids in the US wear all kinds of clothes to school. When I worked as a guidance counselor in a middle school for instance, the girls sometimes wore pyjamas and bunny bedroom slippers to school. Eh????? I don't get it.

So now that I'm sewing some school clothes for Emily, I'm leaning heavily towards the plaids and pleats.

These are the first four:


This is a semi-circular skirt with fold-over elastic. As far as the more robust fabrics of fall and winter go, semi-circular skirts are nice for little girls who might be otherwise overwhelmed by a full circular skirt (unless it is gauzy and used for dance!) They get a nice twirl and I get to save on fabric.



This is an inverted box pleat skirt with a teeny bit of elastic at the sides of the waist, just enough so it can be pulled up over the hips. Not an instant hit with Emily - she says it fits nicely but says it's "more of a church skirt", whatever that means. It didn't grab me as fabulous either, when I was done with it. Many reasons - stiffish fabric, shallow pleats, weird general styling. It would've had a better life as a tablecloth, honestly. Well, all part of experimenting to figure out what works visually and fit-wise, and this one didn't quite make it visually. Next!


This is an out-of-context cotton gathered skirt that should have been made and worn in the summer. But the fabric was checked, in spite of being cotton (!!!!!!!!!) and I am known to sometimes have no discernment whatsoever in fabric stores. So voila! A bit of summer dragging on into fall:


Finally, this was an experiment from start to finish:



Started out with the classic plaid pleated skirt, and decided to add a sleeveless top to turn it into a jumper. Then didn't have any coordinating solid fabric except this blue interlock. So decided to turn it into a long-sleeved knit dress. Then had no light blue ribbing for the neckline. So used white:


Then decided it was so jarring that I thought I had better add white somewhere else so it didn't look like the accident that it was. So then added a second sleeve layer. Funny how it all compounded.


In spite of how this design sort of ran away by itself, it was quite fast to put together.


This was one of those happy accidents because Emily really likes it. And so does Jenna - she has asked for a dress just like this but in "dark purple, light red and dark yellow." Anyway, it's a keeper. I'll probably make her a few more like these, since they pull on easily over the head and are comfortable and warm because of the knit. And Jenna too, except with a slightly less er.... psychedelic color combo than what she requested (what is "light red"? Is that a euphemism for "pink"?).

More plaids to come. And hopefully corduroys.

Updates

Thank you all for saying such nice things about my yellow tunic and my new banner! It was nice enough to have it finished and then you liked it too - bonus!

Just two things to say before I conk out for the night (yes, I still sleep every now and then, but not much):

1 I am working on the Toadstool House pattern. Yes, I am. I didn't forget! In fact, tonight I wrote out the entire set of Fairy instructions. After finishing that yellow tunic, everything else seems to go quickly.

2 I may not read Burda or Ottobre or other such pattern magazines but I do read catalogues. They are where I get my inspiration when I am too lazy to think up my own designs. I just received the latest Hanna Andersson one in the post. I want to sew A LOT of stuff in it, even if it means fabric versions of knitted things. Like this and this. And this and this are very easy knit dresses to pull off (and on). And check out the princess seams on this one!

OK, I'm quitting now. Have a good night, all!

Death By Lazy Daisy

You know how some sewing people whip up 45-minute skirts, or one-hour sundresses?

I am not those people.

My stuff runs into the months, sometimes (oh the shame) decades. I have a gorgeous - if I may say so myself, because it is not pink - column gown in light blue-almost-turquoise lace that I made 20 years ago that still needs a hem job and has all its basting stitches still in. Can't wear it now, obviously. Can't even get the zipper up a couple inches. I'll probably gift it to one of the girls and hope they'll make it a prom dress. In about 10 years I'll tell them, "Hey, who's too lazy to sew her own prom dress? Hem this one and you get to wear it to your prom!" And then hope one of them -the one who doesn't mind wearing Mother's Old Frock - takes the bait.

But here I present my 2928 - Hour Tunic!

Or the 175, 680 - minute Kurta!
Caaaaaaatchy.

But perhaps better known by its alias, Butter and Slate:

Yes, this is the one I massacred with my wing needle. The first garment to come from my sloper, and the last off the needle. Useless.

But finally finished! Took me about 4 months. So long that it now hangs looser than it did when I first cut it out in May. I think my body is still changing from having had babies. I thought I was done shrinking, but my shoulders and rib cage had other plans.

I hand-running-stitched over the massacred bits - they really are awful - and now they are happily hidden.

But the rest - I like.

And just in time for fall, when I'm sort of ready to be in longer sleeves.

Thought I'd better share photos because I am so relieved that it is finally in a wearable state. And also thought you'd like to see how the embroidery eventually turned out, after all your comments and suggestions.

I like this for many reasons - that it is yellow and grey and white; that it is linen; that it is not printed; that it is subtle; that it looks so dressy with grey pin-stripe pants

and so run-after-small-children casual with jeans.




Mostly, I like it because it is finished. Hooooooooray.

P.S. 404 lazy daisy stitches. I know what you're all going to say, so I'll say it first - you're not sure which is insaner- that there are so many of them, or that I counted. Welcome to my world.

Raising Funds

Well, we're done with our garage sale! I can finally exhale. As a reward, I sewed one skirt for Emily tonight.

Wanted to share one photo of our garage sale:


In spite of that look on Emily's face (it was freezing outside today), there is actually a pretty decent story behind the photo.

Emily and her friend Rena decided they wanted to raise money for two worthy causes. Rena, after hearing the story of a boy who had leukemia, was moved to paint pictures to sell at their garage sale to raise funds for the foundation. Emily wanted to raise funds for Operation Christmas Child, which our family supports every year, and that the girls more fondly interpret as "the kids who have no toys". They painted tiles using the instructions from Anna at ThreeSneakyBugs. I first met Anna when I used her tutorial to make playsilks for the girls' dress-up box two Christmases ago. What a lovely person she is! And so nice to correspond with! And now, she's helped us again with this project- thank you, Anna! The girls are so proud to help someone else with the work of their hands.

A funny story: my brother-in-law put out a suit at our garage sale. He'd inherited it from someone (not sure who) but had never worn it. It was a lovely black pinstripe suit, well-tailored but quite unsaleable. We called it The Weird Suit. The pants were for an approximately size 32 waist and the coat had the shoulders of an approximate size 44. Obviously not off-the-rack. One of the downsides of custom-drafting one's clothes is being unable to later pass it on to another human being!

And now that the garage sale is over, I can finally get back to sewing those school clothes for Emily. Yes, I have been sneaking off between garage sale tasks to steal a few stitches and run off a few seams, but nothing organized or focused. Photos soon!

How To Get More Time

We are up to our nostrils in busyness. I am scheming to get more time to either do stuff or to not do stuff. I think this will work:

1 Stop sleeping.

2 Stop eating. Eating wastes time, especially eating food that has no curry in it.

3 Surgically alter right index finger into a needle, so that I can sew on the go, wherever I am, even while walking. Surgically alter left hand into a gluegun.

4 Buy this clock.

5 Stop blogging.

6 Stop emailing.

7 Live on an aeroplane that keeps flying Westwards (or is it Eastwards?) so that I am always several hours ahead.

8 Boycott daylight savings.

9 Stop cleaning the house, and any chore that has similarly low returns and high repetition factor.

10 Stop cooking. Bulk-buy everyone those little packet meals that astronauts eat on spaceships. Surely Costco has those? Costco has everything.

11 Speaking of Costco, stop doing the grocery rounds. Plant a garden and have everyone harvest whatever they like to go with their Astronaut Snack Packs. Revolutionize the family diet to include novel but healthy options like Green Pea Juice and Tomato Torte with Whipped Jalepeno Frosting.

12 Stop making lists.

Explanation: we are having a garage sale this weekend. It has taken over our universe. We have so much baby stuff in storage that it is ridiculous. And - to add insult to injury - I unearthed old books. I used to read! Wow.

P.S. I made three plaid things for Emily since that denim skirt. I did it by ordering in pizza (no time to procure Astronaut Snack Packs). See, my list works.

Drafting Part XII- Resources

Jen and I hope you've been enjoying the posts on drafting thus far! There is so much information to pack into each topic and so many topics within the whole realm of drafting that it was hard to decide what to share and what to leave out for the sake of succinctness. While writing this series, we both found ourselves thinking about why we draft the way we do. Someone - I think it was my old school teacher - said that you never understand something so well as when you have to teach it to someone else. Can't speak for Jen on this, who's always been a fabulous drafter even as a teenager, but I've learnt a lot about my own drafting just by dissecting it to share with you.

Still, there is so much more about drafting that we will never be able to blog about here so I've compiled some resources that might take you further and deeper. The internet is a great (and free) source of information, but for those of you who prefer the written page, I have also included a list of books. Ready for some help? Here goes:

Savile Row

- If Only -

When our kids are old enough to sew for themselves (that would be at the grand old age of 10, y'hear, kids- are you reading this?) Jen and I shall hop on a plane to London and BEG the folks at Savile Row to take us on as free apprentices. We will make their coffee. We will unpick their seams (not that there will be many). We will lint-roll their WIPs. We will do all the ironing and pressing. Just please take us on. Please, please. Even if I don't know if I personally will ever be interested enough to tailor a men's suit. I just want to walk on hallowed ground and grovel.

Sigh. It's nice to dream.
But here is my point, and the reason I put this right at the top of the list: there are such things as drafting courses and classes and dressmaking schools for general everyday folks that don't require sycophantic wheedling. I don't know how or where to find them in my area but I'd love to take one if I did. Nothing - not even the best print resource - comes close to learning from a real person you can hear, watch, ask, imitate. If you have the money for either -but not both - a dressmaking class or a good drafting book, pick the class (duh).

Websites

I'm only scratching the surface with these - there are so many other pattern-drafting sites available on the internet. These are just the ones I am personally familiar with.


1 Vintage Sewing.Info
Tagged as "your primary source or recreating vintage fashions", this is also a goldmine of basic, classic tailoring information. More text than step-by-step photos, it reads like a well-organized textbook that cuts to the backbone(s) of patternmaking. None of the glitzy shortcuts that often sadly undermine the modern sewing movement - just good old-fashioned foundational drafting, with fascinating history thrown in. A fabulous resource that I highly recommend. This is my go-to site.


2 Weekend Designer

I can't remember when it was that I first stumbled upon this site, but I immediately bookmarked it. All those pattern drafts! Sometimes all a person needs is a sketch of a draft for the light to go off in one's head - like, "oh......! Is that what an XYZ collar looks like in draft?". But to see it in proportion as a real pattern is like being given free nutella a gold ingot a whole week of free babysitting something extremely nice.


3 Vani's Blog
Her tagline says it all: "This Blog Deals With Sewing".

I've always had a soft spot for the more traditionally ethnic outfits of my culture, which tend to be fitted, elegant and non-elasticized, and Vani drafts these and more.

4 Threads Magazine

I must be one of the few people in sewing blogland who doesn't read this on a regular basis (no time), but I wish I could. All sorts of garment sewing stuff here, and sometimes drafting and pattern alteration. Check out the section on Fitting for pattern-drafting tips and tricks.

5 University Extension Services

I chanced upon the New Mexico State University (NMSU)'s extension service months ago while googling some sewing thing (forgot what it was) and realized the wealth of information in some of these educational publications. Clothing being textiles-related, was within the main Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Studies department, so obviously, you'd want to focus on the section within your interest boundaries and not stray off to, say, crops or water treatment technology.

Here are some examples from NMSU's publications: sleeves, taking measurements, sewing machine maintenance, and a very nice pictorial overview on common fit problems and how to correct them.

My sister-in-law Joy made a neat list of the different sections within another university's extension service (Texas A&M) that deal with specific fit issues.

Books
Jen and I both like our old Homec textbooks! And another couple of books which are similarly out of print: Drafting, Cutting and Sewing in Dressmaking and Designing and Drafting Office and Casual Wear by Pauline SE Gan who ran a dressmaking school in Singapore and published these books in the late 80's and early 90's. Sadly, these books can now only be found in reference libraries in some obscure part of Asia. I'd love to be proven wrong about this, though, so if anyone finds them on ebay or somewhere, tell!

Here are some non-extinct books I've either read, heard about or browsed copies of while with the kids in bookstores. In order of decreasing price (i.e. most expensive first):


1 Patternmaking for Fashion Design (5th Edition)
by Helen Joseph-Armstrong

Of all the drafting books I've heard about/personally flipped through/somewhat read, this is the one I'd buy. If I hadn't already spent all my sewing allowance on fabric, I mean. It has great reviews from a lot of sources. But since I don't actually own this book (yet), let alone use it, I can't say more.

2 Metric Pattern Cutting for Women's Wear

and

3 Metric Pattern Cutting for Children's Wear and Babywear

both by Winifred Aldrich (who also has a men's wear version, and another on using the individual qualities of fabrics for flat patterns). Not as comprehensive as Armstrong's, but slightly more affordable, with also generally good reviews from various sources. Again, I don't own either of Aldrich's books, so I won't say more.

4 How To Make Sewing Patterns
by Donald McCunn

A no-frills, affordable alternative to the earlier three books that has sloper drafting instructions. I actually own this book, and read it in one sitting on the interminable aeroplane flight to Singapore in March. The approach in this book relies quite a bit on draping with a muslin to achieve a final fit but it is a useful first book for very beginning drafters.

5 Make Your Own Dress Patterns
by Adele Margolis

This book will not teach you to draft slopers but it will show you how to make a lot of different patterns from them.

Q Why this is such a short list?
A Probably because I've not personally read any others or even heard about what other people have said about them.


Q Why haven't you included some of the very popular pattern books that are on everyone's blogs? C'mon, you must have seen them!
A Yes I have! And it was exactly because they were all over blogland that I was curious and flipped through them in the bookstore. Part of their charm is that they are visually gorgeous. However, I found them heavy on application (lots of quick patterns) but skimpy on foundation (principles, basic blocks, explanations and sloper-approaches to patternmaking in general). Nothing wrong with that at all - just not adequate as a drafting textbook or reference book for folks wanting to really learn to draft from scratch.

Pattern Grading and Standard Measurements
These are not really in the realm of custom drafting but are very useful if you are making commercial patterns yourself and aren't keen on measuring every random child in your neighborhood to get a good range of sizes (not to mention that hounding the neighborhood children is insane and will get you instantly and permanently labeled as the Community Weirdo among the other parents). If you are a purist custom drafter, you will probably never use these tables, but I included these links because I know some of you want to make or are already making patterns to sell and want to grade them in different sizes. You might want to remember that standard measurement tables may not fit real people, but they are a good starting point.

Here's an overview on standard clothing sizes, more for buying clothes than sewing them.

Burda has a similar chart - again, more for conversion than drafting.

Threads magazine explains what pattern grading is, and how it's done here.

And here are two links to actual measurement tables - this one and this one are based on the

National Bureau of Standards Body Measurements Tables, of which this is the document for children and infants. Here is another set that includes measurements for men and women.

And now it's your turn: what sites, books, videos, forums, groups, courses or classes have you tried and found useful in your own drafting and sewing-from-scratch? I don't have the time or inclination to trawl the internet for sites but I know there are dozens of great websites and blogs on which a person can find actual patternmaking and pattern adapting tutorials. Please feel free to recommend them or review them in the comments below. Or blog about them and link back to your own post in the comments so everyone can read them!

Tip of the Iceberg

Okay, everyone, don't laugh, but I made this ruffle denim skirt for Emily. This is so not my style of denim skirt. This is my idea of a denim skirt:

Yes, yes, I know - it's not something a 6-year old should wear. Or even her mother.

So back to Emily's denim skirt. I don't do ruffles. I've said that before. But my little Emily - she loves ruffles. And while we were out clothes-shopping for school earlier this month, she saw a denim skirt like this in the store and wanted it so badly. But it was just barely long enough to cover her behind, I kid you not. So I said no, but that I'd sew her one like it, except modest.

So here it is - fitted front

elasticized back
and some printed cotton to line the waistband and the inset pockets. If you look closely (no, I don't mind at all- that's why I'm showing you the photo) you can see my inferior tension-control in the stitching on the bottom of the waistband.

On hindsight, I think I'd have liked it more with shorter tiers - maybe three instead of two. And without the top-stitching. Yes, plain blue denim. Seriously. But Emily - who isn't me - loves it.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She grabbed it the minute I finished it (she never does that) and ran off to choose a shirt to go with it so she could wear it to school tomorrow.

So what's with the title? This is the first of the school clothes I'm supposed to be sewing. I bought vast amounts of corduroy, french terry (I think; I'm awful with fabric names), plaids and knits. I cut out 4 skirts before the weekend, all kilt-y-like, and have my sketches - knife pleats, box pleats, inverted box pleats, rubbish pleats, gored, whatever. There are also supposed to be pinafores in denim, corduroy and twill. And I weakened and bought fleece-on-sale for trial-run winter coats for the girls. All three girls. Lined with plaid flannel. With welt pockets. If they turn out nice, I'll splurge on wool melton. And I told Emily, "go sketch out what you want to wear for Halloween" and asked Jenna if she still wanted to go candy-collecting as Ariel-with-legs, dressed in pink.


Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!


(wiping eyes)

And where will I find the time to do all this supposed sewing?
I fool myself. Always I fool myself.