Sew Distracted

Five Dress Patterns

I went to a four day sewing retreat at Papermaple Studio in New Orleans and had a fabulous time.  The studio was beautiful, spacious, well-equipped, and Leisa was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful.  I met some interesting ladies, all of whom were working on really lovely, and sometimes very special projects.  

I however worked on muslins, dress muslins to be specific.  I came home with four muslins, all in the final stages of fit, and I believe manageable for me to finish up on my own.  All of the patterns are for dresses I would make and wear over the summer, wearable shapes that I would probably make repeatedly.    I feel like I am in a good place to jump back into making my own clothes, and I also feel I learned a lot.  Leisa helped me to look at the fitting process in new ways, and I am very excited to move forward.

 

Alas I am traveling most of this month so you will not be seeing immediate progress.

 

I also did some sewing before I went to New Orleans, partially fitting and making up the Closet Core Cielo dress pattern.  

Admittedly I felt a little confused by the entire fitting process.  It had simply been too many years and even though I am more adept at fitting knitting patterns, somehow I just could not wrap my head around the process, so perhaps I was not quite as methodical as I could have been.  I did a quick muslin of the basic pattern, decided I needed to pinch out a pleat on the right side of the dress, from the neckline angled down.  You can see that in the pattern piece above, the green lines, which are all on one side of the center fold only.  

Once I drew that in, and pivoted the pleat out into the dart, it changed the angle of the shoulder and armscye, although it did not change the armscye or sleeve shaping at all.   You can see the repositioning in the blue line above.  I should have made another muslin.  But I did not.  I just went ahead and cut my first dress, rationalizing that I could spend an endless amount of time on muslins and I desperately needed summer clothes.   The final dress was not perfect, but it is wearable, and will get me through the summer.  I suspect I am more aware of the flaws than are most people, except perhaps for my closest and sharpest sewing friends.

Here is a (poor) picture of me in the first dress, a purple 65% linen, 35% cotton blend.  As you can see, I made my dress longer than the pattern illustration.  In fact I had to add about 5 inches in length to the pattern, all below the waist.  I love the shape of this dress, it is exactly the kind of loose, easy, dress that makes hot humid summer dressing tolerable.  

I did note a few problems, but that didn't stop me from making two more dresses.  The second dress is an Australian cotton print, and the third version, my favorite so far, is in a more loosely woven muted green linen check.   I did not go back and perfect the pattern before making these dresses.  As I stated, need trumped perfectionism.  Although I admit that the first time I put them on I was self conscious about my own failings, I promptly forgot that and was simply happy and comfortable. Generally, I hate making things under pressure, which is exactly what I did here.  I needed clothes and I whipped them out.  Now that I have my most basic wardrobe needs covered, I can spend time with my sewing, hopefully learning and improving as I go.  

 

Each project is a learning process, and I don't intend to get so wrapped up in perfectionism that I never wear anything.  I learned a lot about fitting the Cielo dress through making the three copies, more than I did from the muslin.  Then I learned more about fit by working on the four muslins in New Orleans.  Every project is a learning process.  I am sure there will be successes and failures.  If I have an excess of successes, I may grow tired of my three dresses, or I may not.  In the meantime, a part of me feels like a kid again. 

Retrospectoscope

I am sewing.  My projects have been a mixture of successes and near-misses, truthfully some of those misses are fairly widely off the mark, but not unwearable. There have been times when I have grumbled at myself over making "rube" mistakes, at errors that could have been caught earlier because I certainly know better.  Yet none of my efforts have been wadded up and tossed in the trash.  Reconnecting with old skills appears to be a meandering path. 

 

It also takes rookie mistakes sometimes to remind oneself of why things are done the way the are done.  There is something about saying "I didn't think it mattered in this case" and admitting that you were wrong, that it did indeed matter. There is something also to be said about moving forward anyway, about living with your mistakes, and accepting that it is all a process.  Perfection doesn't come down like a lightening strike from the hands of God, however much we might wish that it did.   I told myself initially that I would start simple, that I would wear what I made, mistakes and all, if possible, and that I should remember my younger, beginner, self.  Even though I have skills, some of them are quite rusty, and others seem to have retreated into deep hiding.  I am a begin-againer. 

 

I am sewing for myself now, but what I actually want to look at today is some sewing I did earlier in the spring.  Sewing that was not for myself, was not particularly difficult sewing, but which nonetheless rekindled that love of making things, and reminded me of some of the why's and wherefore's of my path.

This past Sunday was Pentecost.  My church was filled with joy and balloons and people wearing red. I had never been to a church filled with balloons on Pentecost before I moved and found this church, but it is a thing of joy.   But this post is not about Pentecost, or about church except insofar as it references sewing for church.

 

The color of Pentecost is red and the church is draped in red.  There are two ecclesiastical reds in the Episcopal church however, Pentecost red which is bright and vibrant and a deeper red, a Holy Week red.   There are in fact many shades in between given the variations in the way fabrics take dyes, but that is not the point of this post either.   My church only has one set of red hangings for the altar, and this is not unusual.  Our hangings are actually Holy Week red, but I doubt very few people care about this minor point.  I like ritual, and I like knowing that there are colors associated with seasons and saints and all kinds of what-have-you; but that is my inner medievalist, medievalist and lover of ritual. I doubt most people even notice the difference. I am not thinking we need to buy (or make!) more.  Rather, in thinking about shades of red I am also reminded of the direct connection between reds, between the somber red of Holy Week, and the vibrant red of Pentecost, between blood and fire, between despair and joy.  We cannot have the balloons and the flames and the joy without also having some acquaintance with the dark side.   Our joy can only burst forth after we have been dipped in despair.

 

But the red hangings also reminded me of a spring sewing project, specifically a Holy Week project, a project about which I did not blog, partially because it was "too simple" but also because I was once again under the weather  and struggling with heart rhythm issues and I didn't have the energy or wherewithal to write.

 

But now, even as we embrace the future, the retrospectoscope has been opened.

 

Back in April I wrote about making a cover, or dress, for a small cross.  I also made covers for all the processional crosses in the church, and another dress for the standing cross, this time in red for Holy Week.  Our church had not, at least in my memory, used red for Holy Week beyond Palm Sunday, and we did not have the appropriate covers for the processional crosses.  And so I made some. 

 

It was a fun project.  First I had to find a red fabric that was as close to the red fabric already in use as possible.   Then I had to measure the crosses and draft patterns for the covers.  They were pretty simple geometric shapes, but I did have to think about such things as proportion, or where to place the channels for the drawstring ties in order to create an attractive balance.  Because I had to measure the crosses and create the patterns and figure out how the drawstrings would work.  None of this is as complicated as an actual dress, but it was still a good way to restart the process of thinking about making things, about sewing, and about sewing math.

 

It was also a good refresher course in technique.  I figured out pretty quickly that sewing the rather tight curves at the top of the cross cover was a tad tricky, and that I much preferred using hand-stitching to gather fabric where necessary, and basting curves in place by hand rather than by machine.  Handwork may be slightly slower, but it offers much more control.  Or perhaps this is just a temperamental thing. It seems I am far less interested in speed than I am in the process and the idea of doing something well.   Making the cross covers reminded me of this and allowed me to practice skills which continue to come to be useful.

 

 

I made three cross covers for processional crosses.  I neglected to take pictures of them in use, but I admit to feeling absurdly happy when I saw them in church during the church service.

 

I also made a second dress for the small chapel cross, this one in red.  The second dress had deeper pleats than the first dress, the result of actually thinking about the pattern and the shape and the way volume and shape influence each other.  But this dress was also made out of a fabric with more drape, a fabric that handled volume in a different way, and that contributed to the dress as well.    Even the same dress, on the same figure, in different fabrics can be entirely different.