Sew Distracted

Chado Ralph Rucci

I've been lying low and not really sewing but I have been catching up on a few knitting UFOs. 

I was fortunate enough to be in NYC on Wednesday and have time to go by Bergdorf Goodman to take a peek at the Chado Ralph Rucci fall trunkshow.   (photo courtesy of www.style.com)  By the time I arrived I was tired, having been on my feet far too long, and was feeling a little shy.  The boutique was busy with Mr. Rucci talking to people who were actually buying the garments  so I pretty much stayed out of the way and just fondled and examined as much as I could.

The clothes themselves were really incredible although I am having trouble putting my impressions into words.  It is rare that I see a collection of clothes that strikes such awe.  The online photos really do not do the clothes justice. What really amazes me is that the basic silhouettes of the garments are quite classic and simple, he works with a fairly well defined set of shapes,  but the workmanship and the design detail were absolutely fabulous.  The fabrics were incredibly high quality, the techniques were unusual, and few garments had seams in the expected classic places yet they looked exactly as if they were the way they were meant to be.  The collection really combines great tailoring skill, with an understanding of the architecture of women's bodies and an artists eye.  There was no piece that was ho-hum and yet each piece was quite wearable. I am constantly amazed at how he uses seams, combining interesting design with fitting and structural support.  There were many garments of double-faced wool, cashmere or chinchilla (I am not sure what) butt-seamed together or constructed and bar tacked, joined with leather strips or joined with pieces of stretch illusion like fabric.  Often spectacularly detailed seaming added design interest and structure in lieu of layers of interfacing -- the structure was a part of the design, not hidden behind the lining -- and yet, none of these clothes would look out of place or "funny" in any part of the country.

They were, for the most part pretty formal clothes.  Suits, beautiful coats "I'm mad about coats" I overheard Ralph Rucci say to a customer, beautiful tailored, fitted dresses that were perfectly timeless and modern all at once.  The work reminds me of Geoffrey Beene, if anyone, in that it has that modern almost apart from fashion look that was so appealing in the best of Beene's collections.

I have been thinking about the collection a lot.  I did overwalk, and my battered leg was swollen and painful the next two days so I was pretty much holed up at home.  Mostly I think looking at these clothes reminds me to take pride in workmanship and to be more daring in solving fitting problems, trying to incorporate the solutions into the design of the garments.  I am reminded to be more open-minded, to take chances and to be less bound by "rules", ever realizing that it takes great understanding of the process and the techniques involved to break the rules.

There are definitely things I could learn from these clothes, although they are definitely "city" clothes, and as such, not as appropriate to my wardrobe as they once were;  simple but far to sophisticated for puttering about the garden and running to Home Depot, the farm stand, or the local nursery. 

Increasingly I am learning that I have a closet full of beautiful clothtes, many of which I have made, although by no means all, and which I wear less and less frequently.  I don't need to wear a suit everyday anymore.  Will I still make signature garments?  Yes, in time, as I enjoy the process too much to give it up.  But now is the time to make quick causal things and simple garments and oddly, that is what I am leaning toward doing although it is really a different kind of sewing for me.  I have not come to this easily.  There was a time when I hated to sew quick simple clothes.  It has taken me a couple of years really, but I am settling into my new lifestyle and I am finding I like more casual and even arty styles than I would have once imagined possible.

Well, sewing is always an education and often and adventure.  Have fun.

New fabric additions

Wednesday I met Mary in NYC.  The fabrics I purchased at Mood and B&J arrived yesterday.  Today my fabrics arrived from Sawyer Brook.

These are the B&J fabrics:  the blue and violet are cotton poplin that I will use for some casual summer suits.  The white with green dots is a really lovely Swiss cotton dotted Swiss voile, which I purchased primarily because of the green dots.  I love dotted swiss and I love green, how could I go wrong? On the far left the rose pink tweed will be a jacket and I have a lot of things that will go with it. 

The purple wool, 2nd from left, is my only non-summer fabric and was purchased because I wanted to make a skirt with feathers on the bottom after seeing a photo of one by Marni in the new May Vogue Magazine.   I went to  M&J Trims and purchased the feathers first as I figured that would be the hardest part for me as I get really picky about that kind of thing.  Then I looked a couple of places before finding the fabric I wanted.  My skirt will not look at all like the Marni skirt and is more fall oriented.  Still, I can't wait to make it:  Here is a picture of the fabric and the trims:

I am really eager to make this even though I might not wear it right away.  If I don't get it made this week, I will be going to San Francisco for one of Sandra Betzina's Power Sewing weeks and I will take it with me.  Who knows, I might even be able to wear it.

I started looking for the tweed at Mood, but didn't find anything I wanted for the skirt.  I bought silks this trip, mostly for linings.

The black with the paperweight design was just pretty.  The other three were purchased to go with specific fabrics and you will see them in the near future.  The peachy fabric on the far right can be seen in more detail below with the cotton from Sawyer Brook.

I am planning on taking this combination with me to work on in San Francisco.  I am stil planning on making the fairly straight DKNY jacket; It will be a very casual jacket, purposely minimally structured and I think it will be a lot of fun.

Summer Roses

Since I spent a good bit of time "resting" this past weekend, I had plenty of opportunity to get into trouble.    A packet of swatches arrived from Sawyer Brook while I was away and now I have succumbed to the lure of new fabric:

   This rose cotton/lycra sateen caught my eye right away.  I immediately thought of it for this suit:   Valentino Suit courtesy Bergdorfgoodman.com

I originally thought of making this in a stretch poplin or perhaps a cotton/linen with a little bit of texture or cross/dye interest.  But I really like the rose cotton.  However, the suit in rose strikes me as being a little TOO feminine and flirty for me.  I would like the very feminine shape in a color like gray more than pink.

I think the pintucked and tied jacket idea would work beautifully over a pair of pants however, something like this pattern from voguepatterns.com, Vogue 7685, photo courtesy of my scanner as I have had this pattern for about 8 or 9 months but haven't made it yet.  It is still available however.

The jacket could be made sort of like a cross between a blouse and a jacket, something without all the tailoring and interfacing.    Kathryn at Sewing World posted this pattern a couple of months ago and I ran right out and purchased it:

Of course here it looks too light and blouse-like.  I would probably put together some cross between this pattern and a jacket pattern.  I know I have several suitable options but have not yet looked through the pattern file for likely candidates.

I also ordered this kind of interesting striped cotton:

which I am thinking of using for a jacket to wear over the pants, possibly over the blouse as well, depending on how I make the rose blouse/jacket.  I am thinking of using this pattern, Vogue 2738:

A DKNY now OOP.  I think this combination will make a nice casual, fun summer jacket.  Of course, there is always the possibility that the fabric will arrive and I will wonder what I was thinking.

Well, the fabric is on its way and only time will tell.

Peruvian Textiles

Here are two photos of Peruvian Textiles from the Natural History Museum in Lima.  They were in glass cases in a dark room and this has limited the quality of my very amateur photography.

You can click to see the details (hopefully). 

The first one is embroidery and weaving and the second is woven.

Sewing Resolutions!

1.  Never sew when you are very tired.

2.  Never try to sew something in a big hurry at the last minute.

3.  Never sew when you are very distracted by familial craziness or other intrusions by "real life".

NEVER SEW WHEN ALL THREE ARE GOING ON AT ONCE.

The blue linen pants are fine.  There is no biasing.  I must have been standing very crooked that day. (I vaguely recall that my back was really sore for a couple of days, but now that I have relaxed on vacation that recollection seems so distant as to be lost in a fog somewhere).  I certainly refuse to sew for the crooked days, until they become the majority at least.

If I ever have time to sew again, I will pick up where I left off and finish the pants.  Thank goodness I did not trash them (but I might have trashed the lining, who can remember these things?)  Meanwhile, the problem with vacation is all the piles of things that lie waiting for your return.

Biased

No linen pants, alas!  They fit beautifully through the waist, upper hip and crotch; in short they fit very well from the crotch line up.  I thought the biasing problem on my side seams would be fixed automatically by fixing the top of the pant.  A naive thought at best.  If anything the biasing is worse.  I think I see why however and it can be partly predicted by the curve of the waistline (see patterns).  On previous pants the pant itself did not sit properly on my waist or hip so the fabric of the pant would kind of slip around so that the leg seam did not appear as biased as it may have been, but the hips or waist would pull or pucker on one side or the other.   Now with the hip straight and the side and center seams vertical and well fitting, the pants hang more crooked.  The grain is straight at each leg but the leg does not come off the hip at the right angle for it to hang straight.    I might be trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

I can see I am going to have to work on this further, and my preliminary analysis may or may not be accurate.  The advantage to the one seam pants is there is no side seam to analyze so if the pants hang crooked who would know.  When I made striped one-seams, I ended up taking very strange looking curved, hooked, and almost horizontal darts in places to get the stripes to hang straight.  I never worried about this figuring that getting it to look good was the important part, not how I got there.

Well the whole process will have to wait two weeks for my return from the Amazon Cruise.   All I can think is that when this whole process is over I will have a much better understanding of patterns and drafting and my own body.  I may never be able to sew for regular people again.

Here is a picture of the projects that await my return:

Ziplexia

Ziplexia:  one of the many forms of dyslexia in which the afflicted person is incapable of figuring out which way to install an invisible zipper so that the outside of the zipper is lined up on the outside of the pants.

As you may be able to surmise, no pants have been sewn.  Both pairs are still stacked neatly on the end of the ironing board smiling expectantly every time I walk into the sewing room.  We still hope that construction is in their immediate future although given the time constraints they may remain in limbo, neither pant nor mere fabric for some time.

Yesterday I attempted to start the linen pants and lined up the invisible zipper, put in the zipper foot and started to sew.  Four stitches later my lovely Bernina stopped and flashed me a very ominous message "main motor failed, check hook system".  It didn't sound good but I did find the appropriate action in the manual and I cleaned and lubricated the hook.  Still the sewing machine did not work.  Same message.  I see that the nice Bernina will be going to the hospital on Monday.

I set up the Elna and promptly sewed in the invisible zipper, upside down.  This is not unusual.  I have put in how many invisible zippers over the years, hundreds? Thousands?  I have probably put 90 % of them in backwards before gettting them right. 

I can only assume that my general zipper failure is related to my mild variant of dyslexia where I have trouble telling right from left.  In order to say "turn right" I have to first look at my hands and figure out which is my right hand so that I know I am saying to turn the correct direction.  Unfortunately zippers are not this simple.  I can't look at my hands.  I do look at the fabric; I look at the zipper; I put them together and imagine zipping up the zipper; then I sew it in backwards.  Yesterday, between the sewing machine and the zipper I decided that the goddess of sewing was not smiling on me and moved on to other things.

Today, I have sewn the zipper in backwards, twice.  How can I do that you ask?  Once, yes, take it out, turn it over and it should work.  Not so.  Who can tell how my twisted mind works.  Well I am ready to keep trying.  Three's a charm they say.

Square silk top

I went into Chico's to look for a funky belt to go with my new knits and while I was there I fell in love with this silk top.  Actually I am not sure if it is meant to be a top or a wrap, but since it has to be pulled over the head, I tend to think of it as a top:

It is really just a simple square of silk chiffon and would be very easy to make.  I bought this one because I LOVE the fabric and it coordinates perfectly with everything I am taking on a trip to Brazil next week.  This would be great over a swimsuit with some cute casual pants by the pool and it also just solved an entire formal dinner dilemna.   Well, to dinner I would obviously have to wear a tee or tank under it.

I think I might even have a piece of chiffon or two, originally meant for other things, that will get transformed into something similar.

The top is a rectange of fabric folded in half with the fold at the shoulders.  An opening is cut for the neck; I would think I could just copy one from another pattern. The fabric is turned over in a narrow seam and topstitched.  The bottom of the rectangle has a narrow topstitched hem.  The sleeve openings are a little more than 1/3 of the length of finished top, although that could be easily varied for individual preferences.  After the sleeve openings were finished with a narrow hem, the side openings were french seamed closed.

Very simple really.

The bottom fringes are sewn on individually.  Each one consists of 6 strands of shiny rayon thread in a heavier weight, about 13 inches long.  They were obviously threaded through the hem of the fabric, so the needle must have a big enough eye to hold the thread but a sharp enough point to pierce the silk, pulled half-way through, and then knotted in place leaving about a 6 inch tassel.  On my top the tassels are spaced 5/8 inch apart.