Sew Distracted

Sewing Kitty

"Ohhh! This sewing just wears me out."

The yellow pants are (mostly) done.  I just have to hem them.  The hem is all pinned up and waiting.  We are going to see March of the Penguins  tonight though, so they might not be finished until tomorrow.

Oops!

I noticed that the photo in my last post had disappeared; I don't know where it went, the link was there, but sometime between when I first posted it (I checked it was there then) and now, I must have done something to change its character.  It must be that old Mardel magic.

Well I am finally working on the yellow pants again.  When I picked them up I had to take a few minutes just to puzzle through what had been done, where I was in the process, and what was next.  As you will recall, they had been thrown in the wash, unfinished and unpressed following zipper insertion when I discovered that there had been a close encounter of the poison ivy kind.

The pressing has been accomplished.  I need to to try them on, decide on whether there will be darts and a partial drawstring, or if the entire waistband will be gathered up. It is a simple project but I have been having trouble getting around to it.

Between work, yard, and my new workout schedule I don't seem to have time. The weight work and stretching is helping, I haven't gotten far in terms of what I can do and have discovered that I have lost a lot of strength on one side, but I am standing a little straigher and having less trouble getting out of the car, so I can definitely see improvement. 

On top of everything else, I seem to need more sleep again after a long period of doing fine with less. I miss the extra time.  On the other hand, when I try to force myself to my shorter sleep cycle, I fall asleep in the afternoon, even at my desk or my knitting or sewing, and then go through a prolonged groggy period that is worse than just sleeping longer to begin with.  Now this could just be a reaction to the new workout routine and other things and I will get back into my normal schedule soon enough.  Certainly when I was younger I needed more sleep so who knows.

I dreamt of fabric and patterns

Summer keeps getting in the way of sewing, now that I am feeling better that is.

I hoped to get into the sewing room last night, and I did, but not to sew.  Mondays are always such busy days anyway.    We finished dinner about 9 PM, just in time for me to go sit in the family room and knit a little bit on my socks while watching "The Closer".   I was hot and tired from my first full workout with my new trainer and weight/stretching routine.  It was a welcome relief to just sit in front of the television and not think for a little while.

Unfortunately, dishes, laundry and other mundane household tasks were still awaiting after my little reprieve and by the time I finished, a few minutes after 11, I was simply too exhausted to begin working on the waistband for my yellow linen pants. 

I was ambitious enough to think I could finish the filing and clear off the ironing board so I could work on something today, and I did manage to do that, just barely, as I ended up sitting down thinking about fall clothes and flipping through the card file which contains the samples of my fabric stash.

I saw a couple of suits at Bergdorf Goodman recently, a beautiful Oscar de la Renta tweed with organza ribbon trim, and a lovely Armani in a textured camel colored wool.  Neither suit was in a flattering color, but I have been thinking about them ever since.  One would think, with three shoe boxes filled with fabric swatches, I would have the perfect fabrics in my stash.  Not so!.  I might have a fabric for the Armani in a deep green, a beautiful solid color cashmere and alpaca herringbone weave. At first I was not sure that I wanted to use such a deep color, I had imagined something lighter and more feminine.  After sleeping on it however I think the green would be lovely.

I dreamt of fabric and suits and jacket shapees all night so I had to get up and play around with how to draft the asymmetrical opening  of the jacket and I spent time this morning playing with drafting  pattern pieces while I sill remembered, and writing up notes so that hopefully, if I ever get to this project, I will remember the details.  I don't know if what I have will work yet, and quite frankly, I am not going to get much further on working on this right now.  I seem to have frittered away the morning and it has suddenly dawned on me that I have many other things I am supposed to be doing today.  At least I should have enough information saved  so that when I do get to it, I will be able to jump right in.

The pattern pieces are stacked right on top of each other so it is hard to see the details, but I think you can get the general idea of what I have been working on.

I know, I know, you don't really believe that I will ever get to this project, and that is a valid concern.  I seem to think, and write, about sewing far more than I actually sew.  But there will come a time when I actually have time and all these bits and pieces will come together.

I have faith.

Offensive Courtesy

Are you courteous to others because you are generally kind and you want to treat other people well, or do you practice the "common courtesies" because you feel you should and you think that if you perform these little tasks it will prove to everyone else that you are a kind and giving person instead of the selfish mean little worm that you secretly know you are?

I like to think that I am a basically decent person.  I try to be kind to others and try to show appreciation when others are kind to me.  Despite this, nothing brings out my inner mulishness more than when some kind citizen thinks he or she is doing me a favor, such as opening a door, and then says "you're welcome" before I can even get a "thank you" out of my mouth.  Often the two phrases pass in the air, barely avoiding a head-on collision, and I wish I could desperately snatch those words out of the air and withdraw my thanks, even though I know that it is selfish and pig-headed of me.  I am most annoyed when the kind citizen you're-welcomes me  when I am still several feet away from the door he is so kindly waiting for me to pass through.  I swear I want to turn around and walk the other way.  Who says I should walk through a door just to make someone feel better about his or her Good Samaritan status?

I usually do thank people who are kind to me.  When passing through the door, I try to look the other person in the eye when uttering my thank-you, but I may sometimes be a little distracted and thank them as I actually pass, rather than beforehand.  What I dislike about being "your-welcomed" before the thanks have been tendered is the assumption that I owe this person something.  A courtesy is a gift one extends out of the goodness of ones heart, not in anticipation of a reward.  Once upon a time I was taught that it was courteous to be nice to people and to treat them the way you would like to be treated yourself.  A courtesy is to be extended whether it is appreciated or not.  It seems to me that by saying "you're welcome" before the recipient has even had a chance to enjoy your courtesy, you are not offering a kindness, but instead, a cut.  In effect one is saying "Here, look at what a good person I am you ungrateful wretch".  The poor victim of the courtesy is automatically placed on the defensive, dammed without chance of redemption.   

Yes, I know that it can get tiresome being nice; too many people ignore you or run right over you and take advantage.  Still, it is not nice to publicly humiliate them either, or correct them in public.  If you can't be gracious about being gracious, it would be better just to mind your own business and not try at all.  No one would think badly of you, most people probably wouldn't even notice.

FINE QUILTING PINS

While I was at the post office this afternoon,  I picked up a package from Londa's .  I really hadn't expected it to come so quickly.  After reading the article on pins in the last Threads magazine, I ordered the Clover fine quilting pins.  I had never ordered from Londa before, but she e-mailed me right away to tell me that there had been a rush on the pins (understandably so) and she was waiting for another shipment to come in.  I was in no particular hurry and informed her of this.  I was surprised when they came so soon, and was definitely in the mood for a present.

Don't they look pretty in their bowl?

Perhaps I should have ordered more.

Swamp Thing

My Poison Ivy saga continues,-- or at least the poising ivy continues to crawl its way around my person, so any sewing is still on hold, at least while my wrists and arms remain in a crusty oozy stage.    It has been over a week now and the original site of infection is healing, so I do see a ray of hope on the horizon.  To think that I used to be the designated PI person in the household because I never got a rash -- goodbye to all that.

On Friday I did get the crotch seam sewn on the linen pants and then I dripped PI ooze onto the lovely yellow linen.  They went in the wash and I was so disgusted I haven't touched a sewing project since.   Closet cleaning and reading old sewing old Threads Magazines will have to continue to do a short while longer.

It is lovely to have an excuse to lounge about and read, but the forced inactivity is getting to me, as well as the general annoyance and disgust factors that are at play in my personal image awareness.  Still, things are improving, PI is not fatal after all, and fiberly activities will resume.

Linen Pants

I finally started working on my linen pants.  They should be a simple project but I seem temperamentally incapable of just whipping something up.  Of course I would start a new project just hours before going away for a couple of days... well, this way I have something to look forward to when I return.

I decided that I will let the lining hang free on these pants, not my usual method, but I think more appropriate for this lightweight linen.  That means that I have to finish the seams more nicely.  If I were completely bagging the lining I could just serge the edges, but somehow can't bring myself to do that if they will be seen, even if only by me.  Besides, this is a fairly ravelly linen and I don't trust the serging to hold.  So I made French seams instead.  They are only one seam pants so that was not so bad, but I French seamed the lining too.  On the linen I also zigzagged in the seam allowance as the  sheer parts of the linen were starting to pull out of the seam stitching already, and I thought this would be extra protection.

It may be merely excessive and I may regret it.  I hoped that the weight of the seam will help the hang of the pants, but it may not work.

I also got the zipper in and the lining attached at the zipper, but I have not sewn the crotch seam yet.  Somehow I am having trouble keeping my legs straight and am getting them all in a tangle.  This could be because it is nigh unto midnight.  With a clear head, sewing the crotch curve is a piece of cake, but I am not confident of my late night mental competence.

To be continued upon my return.

Unsettled

I have been a little unsettled the last week and not able to focus my attentions on sewing.  This seems to happen a great deal.  I have thought about sewing.  I have a project cut out and ready to go; it will not take long, but I diddle about with other things. After guests leave I always need a couple of days just to wander about and kind of re-connect with my space.  It is not like anything really changes, but all the extra fuss and stuff, and disturbance, gets me off balance.  I suppose I am too solitary and too much of a homebody.  I certainly can sympathize with Miss Cat when she comes home from boarding – she has to wander about and look at everything, try all the napping places, kind of get resettled.

A VHS tape arrived today showing the fall Carlisle Collection and I started to look at it.  There was nothing spectacularly interesting there:  some interesting trapunto stitching on one jacket, one nice suit made of a lightweight boucle with coordinating charmeuse piping and a pretty skirt made of boucle with godets of the same charmeuse.  It looked like a pleated skirt or a “car wash” skirt with the charmeuse behind it.  There was certainly nothing I was tempted to buy and very little I was tempted to make.  The whole thing was so boring that I had to stop the tape half way through as I was falling asleep. I think I am better off just looking at the designer fashion show photos on the web.  I still have the Armani CD I got two years ago and I would love to get a Ralph Rucci CD as well, but have to recognize that I simply don’t spend enough real cash with these designers to ever get on their CD lists.   I am sure that Carlisle is trying to lure me back to the fold

When I look at clothes now I am most prone to saying “I could make that”, except for a few really special designer garments where sometimes I am taken by the workmanship or unusual design.  I will admit I sometimes just fall in love with the fabric.  Then there are the garments I look at and say I would have to make that, those that would be difficult to fit on me from ready to wear.  I could make them look good but there would be a good bit of pattern preparation beforehand.  They fill my head with ideas and inspirations, often with plays of cut, color combinations, and design I would have never come up with on my own.

Of course if I don’t shop and I don’t sew I will have to live in brown paper bags – that will not happen.  I am just more in knitting and landscaping mode than sewing mode right now.

Truthfully part of my general sewing malaise stems from the entire fit issue (again).    I have had trouble standing up straight lately–I list forward or to either side.  I don’t feel any pain, I just look funny.  If I try to stand up straight, that’s what hurts.  I feel as if my hips and my back have somehow become disassociated from each other – I know that is not what has happened, something has settled, that is just how I feel when I try to make them work together.  The good news as there is nothing new or major wrong, I am able to do most things, sometimes more slowly than I used to, and  I have far less back pain than I have had in years.  The bad news is it is hard to get clothes to fit.   The dress I made for Neil’s wedding looked terrible when I tried it on last weekend, but it looked great when I made it, or at least it did the one part of one day when I was pretty upright.  The problem is in the middle, the waist area, where the bodice and the skirt have to meet – it pulled on one side and had a big buckle.  That was due to the way I was standing. 

In desperation I tried on the dress I made for Adam’s wedding last summer and the good news was that it was now to big through the hips, and easy fix, but it had the same pull and buckling through the waist.  Separates work better because top and bottom can each just go their own way.  I wore a pantsuit to the wedding,  a nice one, but some part of me feels that weddings are for pretty dresses. 

I think the fit issue has been a large part of why I haven’t bothered sewing anything particularly complicated,.  The separates I have made lately have fit well and have become favorite outfits.  Even they fit better on some days than others.  Matilda is a much better model as she consistently stands straighter than I.  I suppose I am just not ready to reconcile myself to the bent over life – I am convinced that new exercise and stretching routines can help, and am giving it a go.  The new routines, and training help, take a lot of time and cut heavily into my available sewing time but the long-term payout should be worth the effort.  Improvement so far has been slow but I am hoping it will increase with time.  If in the end, I need to alter my fitting skills again and adapt to a more angular existence this is a manageable fate.  I’m just not willing to give in without a bit of a fight.

Well, the linen swatches I ordered from Denver Fabrics finally arrived, through no real fault of theirs -- I always have trouble with those website order forms.  My mail comes to a PO Box, but deliveries come to the house.  The post office tells me that I should be able to put my street address on the first line of the address and the PO Box on the second and that way both UPS and the Postal Service know where the mail goes.  That may be the case (Dave, the local UPS driver tells me this is so), however whoever designs web order forms does not know this because every time I try it I get a message back that UPS cannot deliver to PO Boxes.  It would seem simple enough, most forms only require an address in the first line of the address field, so they should just ignore whatever is printed on the second line.  Somehow, life is never that simple.

To make a long story short, my delivery address is my home address and my billing address is at the PO.  However the swatches were mailed, not sent UPS -- hence a mix-up occurred.  They finally came Saturday, by mail.

The burgundy linen swatch will be a border for the multi-colored blue and burgundy cotton tablecloth.  I will probably also make napkins and napkins out of a green linen which coordinates well, but did not make as nice a statement with the fabric as this burgundy does.

The slate gray linen will be used with the gray abstract geometric cotton.  I have actually had a hard time finding the perfect gray for this fabric and happy to have finally succeeded.  I already have black linen napkins, but gray ones might be a nice change.

The fabric might be here by the end of the week, but I will be in NYC over the weekend so the tablecloths will have to wait a little longer.

Armani Fall Couture

I hve been thinking about sewing the yellow linen pants.  I know it seems surprising that such as simple thing as drawstring pants could require so much thought, but in my case it does.  I have also been busy and just too tired to sew, especially when I am not yet sure what I am doing.  I know I should just bodly go forward and tackle the project.  Perhaps tommorrow,as I will be out most of the day today, first taking Adam to the airport and then going to the wedding of a friend's son.

However, I have started looking at the fall couture show photos on stye.com.  I have really only gotten through Armani so far, but there is lots more looking and dreaming ahead.  I know, this blog seems more about dreaming about sewing than actual sewing...

Following are a couple of things I liked, all from Armani Prive, all courtesy of style.com .

I really really like the shape of this little jacket.  It is, to my mind the nicest of the day clothes shown in the phtoos from style.  Some of the other day jackets are nice but a are a little too overtly feminine and flirty for me.  The dart/tuck shaping around the neck and shoulders is very sleek and flattering here and the jacket looks modern, sleek and feminine.

I am pretty confident that I have a pattern I could adapt for a variation on this look and it is really making me look forward to fall sewing.

(Ha!! I wont start fall sewing until the leaves start falling off the trees, I know myself too well.  But I will probably think about it.)

 

I do like the front shaping on this jacket, but it is far too revealing as shown here.  It would be beautiful as an evening look over a simple silk or lace shell and a long skirt or drapey pants.

The second evening look is very clean and simple and I especially like the contrast of the fabric, matt with rich.

Aqua Top

Well, I finally finished something, the top made from the Nancy Erickson aqua pebble knit. 

Here is the pattern I used:

The Pattern, vogue 2483,  is OOP.  I originally purchased it for the top with its diagonal dart.  I did not think I liked the shrug but I see how this could be a really cute transitional outfit, post workout perhaps, although I don't think this is what was originally intended.

You can click on both photos to enlarge which might especially be helpful with the line drawings.

The top is self lined and top-stitched all around.  The original design might have been meant for double faced fabric, although Vogue Patterns never tells you this, and I think it would be very nice in a double faced fabric fabric, maybe even a knit, although perhaps a firm knit like this one, not a really stretchy knit.

The pattern calls for the front pieces to be interfaced with a fusible interfacing, and for a more drapey fabric such a a lightweight flannel or wool crepe this would be necessary.  The cotton pebble knit is pretty firm and I did not think it needed the interfacing.  The top turned out very nicely without it.

First I sewed and top-stitched the front darts and sewed the fronts together at the center.  Then I sewed the back darts and inserted the zipper.  The pattern calls for a centered zipper but I used an invisible zipper.  I did try a new technique though, at least for me.

I inserted the invisible zipper in the outside fabric in the standard manner, before sewing the center back seam, lining up the zipper along the fabric edge and sewing in place.  I had previously trimmed by center back seam to 1/2".  I lined the zipper up at the top so that the top of the zipper teeth were just a scant 1/8 inch below the neckline seam-line as I wanted a clean finish at the neck with no hook and eye.    After the zipper was in place I sewed the lower part of the center back seam. 

Next, I attached the back lining to the zipper seam.  This was new for me.  I had never done it before.  I usually sew the garment and then hand sew the lining to the zipper tape after the garment is constructed, using the opening of the lining around the zipper to turn the garment inside out so I can attach the pieces, but I am never completely happy with the way the finished garment looks.  Oh it looks nice, but I always have a sneaking suspicion that it could look nicer.

Not long ago I discovered a new blog (for me) by Kathleen Fasanella called Fashion Incubator.  One of Kathleen's posts was about a centered zipper construction where the facing was sewn to the zipper as part of the construction process.  This made me start thinking that I could do something similar with my invisible zipper as well.  I don't recall that I have ever read about doing this before, or perhaps my brain was just not ready to absorb the information.  After I sewed the zipper in the outer fabric I took my back lining pieces and sewed them over the zipper tape at the back zipper seam.  I lined up the neck and center back edges exactly and then I sewed just OUTSIDE the original zipper seam-line.  I did this because the invisible zipper seam is very close to the teeth on the outside of the zipper.  But the inside of an invisible zipper is wider  than what you see on the outside and I was afraid that the lining fabric would interfere with the operation of the zipper.  I did not take pictures but perhaps I should have, although you can follow Kathleen's technique and imagine what I did pretty well.  After attaching the lining to the zipper I sewed the lining center back seam leaving a few inches open below the bottom of the zipper to be used later on in turning the garment.

Here is the finished garment showing the zipper, first the outside and then the inside of the zipper seam, very neatly finished:

The top of the zipper opening is not quite as perfectly smooth and clean as I would like.  I finally accepted that it did not have to be perfect when I noticed that even Armani had a little bump at the top of his invisible zippers, but his are less noticeable than this one.  Still it is not so bad that I am going to fret  about it too much.  The next one will be better.  (forgive me all you perfectionists out there)  I had a little trouble trimming out the extra bulk from this technique, but not much, and I think this will become my preferred method for the invisible zippers in lined garments.  The opening at the bottom of the zipper was adequate for turning the garment and is far easier to hide with hand stitching.

After finishing the zipper I sewed the outer layer together at the side seams and the lining together at the side seams, leaving the shoulder seams open on both pieces**.  Then attached the lining to the outer fabric at the neck and armhole openings.  At that point it is easy to attach the lining to the outer fabric at the shoulder using the same technique I used for the lilac blocks  shell.  (oh how weird is that, linking to my own blog??).  Because of the zipper I had to turn each shoulder separately, rather than doing it at one time, but that really is no additional hardship. 

Next I sewed the lining to the outer layer at the bottom hems, turning the garment through the opening I left in the center back lining to do this.  Once the seams were turned and pressed, the neckline, armhole and lower edges continuing into side seams were top-stitched.  It is really hard to see the top-stitching as I did not use a different thread (intentionally) but it does make the garment look more finished.  I hope you can see something in this photo:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really like the way this top turned out.  It is going to become a favorite, sleek and modern and comfortable too.  I suppose there will be more of them in my future.

** oh yeah, don't believe that really went as simply as it sounds.  I really don't need "real life" to distract me from what I am doing, I am more than capable of distracting myself.  I actually did baste the shoulders together to check the fit of the garment on me, then I forgot about it (duh!!).  I sewed the shoulders together late  at night and got up early yesterday morning to finish.  What with being freshly awakened, getting breakfast ready and getting my DH out the door, I forgot that I sewed the shoulders together even though they were looking right at me.  I sewed the neckline and armholes together and then couldn't figure out how to turn the garment.  I got one weird-looking tangled mess which I kept turning and pulling and generally cursing and panicking.  Imagine a human being at a sewing table acting something like a cat that has gotten something sticky on her tail which is attached to a long piece of string.  She keeps turning around and getting herself more and more tangled and panicked....  well, you have the picture.

I finally realized that I had to unsew the armhole seams and unbaste the shoulders.  That done, everything proceeded correctly.  I am sometimes amazed at my own capacity for making stupid mistakes.  Well, Sandra Betzina always says that sewing just offers more opportunities to do something wrong.  I guess you know you are becoming a good seamstress when you can get yourself out of the messes you get yourself into. At least I hope that is what it means, otherwise there is no hope for me.