Sew Distracted

Caftan #2

Well, the second caftan is finished.  As I suspected it is not as blatantly elegant as the first, but that large graphic print did wonders.  I still like this one though.

This fabric is also from Emma One Sock and is a cotton/lycra knit.  It is much heavier than the first knit, still quite drapey but with a substantial feel to it.  It therefore hugs the body much more closely on wearing. 

I cut the sleeves narrower on this caftan, tapering out about 2 inches at the wrist leaving the shoulders and the basic shape of the garment the same.  These fit much more closely around the wrist and I like this much better.

I also did a double row of twin needle stitching around the hem as I felt this garment needed a much weightier hem than the first one.  I really like the way it turned out and the skirt has a nice drape and swing when I walk.

LEAD NOT MISS CAT INTO TEMPTATION

My favorite sewing scissors and shears live here:

I try to put them away at the end of each day.  Still, I am only human and I suppose an occasional lapse does occur: One of those lapses happened last night when I left my favorite scissors here:

Enter Tabasco, fleeing her bed while her parents prepare to take over that real estate that, during the day she claims for herself: rumpling the sheets, squirming around trying to get comfortable, wishing each other a good night, and all those things that humans do and which cats find to be an affront to their territorial rights.  The ironing board is her bedtime resting place, out of the way yet close enough so that she can hear when the ruckus has settled down and she can sneak back into bed, feigning indifference.

But on this night temptation lies in wait on the sewing board.  Shiny metal objects are lying there. Who knows what will happen?  What cat can resist the temptation to push those shiny metal things over the edge of the ironing board and watch what happens when they hit the floor?

Clang! Bang! Clatter!  Mom is out of bed!  She makes loud unintelligible (if you are a cat) noises which don’t sound at all encouraging.  Miss cat runs away.  Mom picks up the scissors, puts them away, and goes, grumbling, back to bed.

...

It is not until the next morning that she notices that they no longer close all the way to the tip and are useless for cutting fabric. It looks like a trip to the hospital will be in order.

The second caftan is done.  Today has been a busy day filled with music, laughter, and dinner with friends.  There will be time for pictures tomorrow.

Entropy

Friday's entire sewing output:

Kind of pathetic don’t you think?   I am not suffering so much from lack of opportunity as lack of motivation.  Sewing will come.

Meanwhile, I am about 15 feet along the stone wall for the raised flower bed under the kitchen window.  It is about 2 feet high and the old wall is completely collapsed with stones scattered over several feet of ex-planting bed.    I might have found an entrance to the Rat Snake’s hole, I found a path through some rocks, as I was excavating them, and then on moving one, I saw that it lead to a deep hole under the bed, along the foundation of the house.  Unfortunately when I removed the rock, the soil came rushing down and that entrance was obliterated.  Not so bad for me.  I was not about to explore further.

Otherwise lots of cooking and reading.  I have been wrapped up in escapist fantasy reading “The Other Bolyn Girl” not so much great literature as just a good read that gets one away from all the day to day bother and buzz.

Process or Product?

I wonder how I got from product-oriented sewist to process-oriented sewist?  I certainly spent most of my sewing life interested in the clothes, not the sewing itself.  I started off wanting to take the shortest path to the desired goal – something to wear.  I have certainly spent more of my sewing time rushing against deadlines, than embracing the act of sewing itself without regard to the time spent.

And yet, here I am, more interested in the seam, boring little stretch of thread that it is, allowing myself to move slowly through the garment enjoying the process itself.  I certainly enjoy the final product more when I have savored the courses leading to its completion. 

That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard, checking my impatience at the sewing room door.  Sometimes I just don’t have it in me.  Sometimes I have to tell myself to stop if I am rushing too much.  It is not a contest.  Actually no one cares whether I buy a blouse or make one, except me that it is.  If I can’t sit back and enjoy making something, why no just go read a book instead?

Second Caftan Cut

I cut out the second caftan last night.  This cotton print is heavier than the first and much busier.  I am having grave doubts and am wondering what I was thinking.  I knew I loved the print (why oh why??) and could not imagine wearing it as an actual garment.  If I could not picture this fabric as a top or sweater set in my mind's eye, why did I think I would like it as an even bigger garment like a caftan.  I know that I like caftans out of large, gaudy even, prints that I might not otherwise wear, but this, this may have been a serious miscalculation.

Well, since I started, I am going to go ahead and finish.  Who knows, it might be nice. 

Once again I ran out of fabric and did not have quite enough for the sleeve.  Since I purchased the two caftan fabrics together and they both have Lycra, this was anticipated, although I was naively hoping that the first knit was an exception.

Two points here:  First the sleeve will have to be cut on the cross-grain even though the garment was cut on the lengthwise grain.  I wonder how that will affect the drape of the sleeve and the join of the sleeve to the garment.  Secondly, as you can note in the photo, there is a little piece missing about mid sleeve, roughly in the elbow region.  I decided to piece the fabric so I would have enough to cut the sleeve:

There will be a little pieced in area under the arm.  I am hoping it will not be particularly noticeable. I may be acting on totally blind faith.  It would have been better had there been a way to piece the fabric at one end or the other, but I see no possibilities there.  I briefly wondered if I should have but the entire garment on the cross-grain; it may have been tricky as the garment is 58" long: with shoulders and hem it probably would not have fit.  Too late now anyway.  I suppose if I had not started this process at 9:30 in the evening I might have thought of these things before I cut.

No regrets, but...

If you are one who pays attention to detail, you might have noticed that the caftan was unhemmed when I took the photo the other night.   This was intentional.  At that point I was feeling a bit lazy and thought I would just not do the hem.  The knit was stable, it was not necessary.

As usual I changed my mind.  But until after wearing it that evening.  The next day Matilda got to wear the caftan so I could sit, obeisant, at her feet and turn up the hem, which is now complete.

Since finishing the caftan I have kept myself entertained by putting away my summer fabrics and bringing out the fall/winter and “transitional” fabrics.  Transitional is an open term and here refers to whatever I might feel like sewing that is not obviously fall/winter.  As I told you some time back, I had previously sorted the pile in my sewing room into the “sew” and “store” piles, but I had not progressed beyond that point.  Since then I took some fall fabrics out of the closet and can now transfer the summer fabric to their spot. 

Usually, when I buy new fabric, it is immediately indexed and stored.  This summer all rules were suspended (I am still paying the price) and the new fabrics were just stacked up in my sewing room, a most unsatisfactory method of fabric storage.  One evening I sat down with all the summer fabrics, the two boxes they are to be stored in, a pile of index cards, and my handy glue stick and set to work.

 

This resulted in 21 index cards of fabric that I p

urchased this spring and summer and did not get around to sewing, and one, the yellow linen, of which there is enough leftover to make a little camisole, but that fabric was a stash fabric and not a new purchase.  How embarrassing.  I will not even tell you how much yardage is involved, but I am sure you can make an intelligent guess.  More fabric than I could normally sew up in one summer.  Now these will be the first things pulled out when spring sewing approaches.  As I begin to look at the spring photos from New York Fashion Week, I think that they will all be quite appealing next summer as well.

At least I am trying to make a concerted effort to not buy much fabric this fall, unless I have a specific garment in mind and I am actually ready to sew it at the time I buy the fabric.  Even then, I have to sew more stash fabric.  So far I have been successful.  The fabric situation is not yet out of control and it shall not become so.   I think there is a hording gene and it runs in my family.  I hope not to succumb.

First Caftan Done

The first caftan is done.  It was a pretty easy project, it just took me a long time because I only worked on it a little bit each day, and I dawdled.  I would say that I spent about 4 hours on this, and would have finished it in 3 except for a bunch of stupid mistakes and frustrations in the home stretch this evening.  Even then, if I  had used faster techniques and just sewn more efficiently, it would have taken less time.

As I said before though, it is not a contest.

I think it turned out really well.  It is very loose on top, which I realized from the pattern dimensions,  and with some fabrics I might want to take some of the bulk out of that area and cut a smaller size, probably an 8.  With this drapey knit it is fine.  Also the sleeves were long enough, even with a couple of inches chopped off -- I have short arms what can I say .  The shoulders are so wide that the sleeve seam is about 4 1/2 inches below my shoulder on the arm, again, nice on this thin drapey knit but not necessarily  in everey fabric. 

Actually the sleeves would have been long enough but I had trouble getting them hemmed without either stretching out , or not being stretch enough to push up, or just not looking right.  I redid them so many times, I wore a hole in the fabric and had to cut a bit more off.  Then I just put elastic in a casing so they would stay up at my elbows and pushed them up.  The fabric does not have enough body to be a push up sleeve unless I made it very tight, which is not the case with these sleeves. 

In fact, the sleeves are too wide and I have made a note to narrow them considerably at the wrist.  In a knit they would be nice, even a little long, if they were narrow because then you could get a rippling effect at the wrist.  In a woven, I might have to put in a button so I could have them more closefitting or I might make them shorter, bracelet length maybe and a little more fitted.  I would have narrowed the sleeves down on this caftan, but then I though I would like them longer and I just didn't feel like adding the extra fabric.  The caftan is really nice as it is and I love wearing it.

Honoring the stitch

The super-stretch stitch is such a wonderful little thing, truly a modern marvel, yet we take it for granted.   My old Elna does not have this kind of stitch and even with the various possibilities for knits, there is nothing remotely like it, something that lays flat yet stretches with the garment.  Oh, I remember all the years I have battled popped stitches.  Oh super-stretch stitch I embrace thee.

It seems to take forever to sew.  The machine hums along, the needle going up and down at almost blinding speed and yet, the fabric moves forward ever so slowly, creeping onward at an almost invisible pace.  You wonder if the fabric is moving at all.  But eventually you are done and the seams stretches with the fabric and then returns to its resting state, flat and perfect. It seems amazing that you have spent so long on such a simple seam, one you wouldn’t even normally think about.  You think " I could have sewn the entire garment on the sergeer by now"; but then you do think about it and look at the tiny stitches and marvel.

I don’t think we spend enough time marveling at the simple little things that make life so wonderful.

I have decided that I don’t like completely serged together knits.  I like to combine the stitches from my sewing machine with serging.  The seams appear to look nicer, at least to me, even if all I do is add a simple straight stitch just inside the serging line.  I don’t always use the super-stretch stitch, don’t need to really, but the knit for this caftan is very stretchy with four-way stretch.

What a waste

I will fritter away hours trying to avoid a mending job that will take 10 minutes.  What a waste.  I could have been sewing something fun.

Fabrics, Patterns, and lack of sewing

There has.precious little sewing the past two days; in fact the only action the sewing machine has seen has been mending and alterations, two of my least favorite tasks.  Generally speaking I would rather make something new than mend anything.  Unfortunately that is rarely practical.

Michael Bearman of Michael's Fabrics  called on Tuesday and said he had some wonderful Agnona double faced cashmere in coating weights and asked if I was interested in seeing swatches.  Of course I said yes.  I immediately thought of some of the lovely coats and jackets done by Ralph Rucci in double faced cashmere and wondered if would be able to do something inspired by those creations.  The swatches arrived today, I promised to send them back, so they will go back tomorrow.  Unfortunately the fabrics are heavier than I imagined.  I knew they were coatings but I was thinking of a more plush drapey coating and these are thicker and a little stiffer than I wanted.  They are wonderful quality though and come in some absolutely delicious colors.  I admit I am tempted.  But I have far too many coats as it is.

There is one swatch in a kind of chestnut and black which reminds me of a jacket I made a few years ago, the fall Susie Denison got married.  It was chestnut and charcoal gray, merino wool instead of cashmere, but about the same weight and hand of these cashmere swatches. I took it with me to Washington State for the wedding and I wore it a lot that winter, a simple straight jacket, reversible, with a turn-back collar that showed the contrast and cuffs that turned up.  For some odd reason I did not wear it much last winter though, I don't remember why.  I was looking at it the other day while I was sorting through the closet and made a note to myself to wear it more this year as it goes with so many things in my wardrobe and is so simple and elegant.

I also received the new Marfy catalog this week, on Tuesday, and I need to refine my choices and place an order for the patterns I like.  I will probably order several.  I love seeing new shapes and seaming and looking at how they are done.  I am not convinced that I will ever become someone who will draft most of my own patterns.  I love playing with other people's ideas too much.  Anyway the Marfy patterns are so well drafted that I love using them and have no qualms about ordering  these patterns.  I will not regret a one.  I want to place the order this week as I know that orders slack off after the catalogs are mailed and this was the second batch sent out.  I missed the first batch by ordering too late.  I had the mistaken idea in my head that I had a standing order and it would just come.  Well, I know better now.