Vogue 9006

This pattern has been in my stash for a very long time. I always loved the style of view A but somehow never got around to making it. 

Until very recently one of my students wanted to make a top like this and I took it out again. She has elongated the pattern and makes it into a dress. 

The pattern was out on my table now and I decided to finally make it too, as I had this very nice viscose for which I sought a pattern.

As the centre part is not cut on the bias, as usual with this kind of neckline, this pattern really needs a fabric that drapes well. There are two more views in the envelope and they are cut on the bias. I kept the grain as indicated, as the print might look a bit weird on the bias.

 

Quick sew

 Do you sew something easy after a more complex or time consuming project? I certainly do. 

So Saturday I sewed a pretty simple top. With a pattern I have used before, though that must be around 15 years ago. 

It’s Vogue 1519, a Kay Unger pattern for a top and skirt. You can’t see the details of the top in the envelop photo, you need the line drawing for it. The skirt is ‘just’ a wide skirt, nothing special about it, apart from the fabric used for the photo. The top is very nice:

Sorry about the bit of my chaos in the background, this is my top:

The instructions are very extensive and let you insert a zipper in the back and line it. Probably a wonderful way of doing it and very couture, but a little too complicated for what I wanted. It is a stretch top that with a good quality fabric doesn’t need lining imho.A zipper? Stretch fabric with such a neckline? The instructions also say to use stretch fabric so I don’t get that. Well, one of the reasons we sew is that we can do it our own way, which is what I did.  For the neckline I used elastic that was sewn with a little tension to the edge, then folded over and topstitched. 

Other then that it was easy enough to sew and I am loving the result. 

@Barbara on the question about Venezia lining vs. Bemberg: I thought it was similar but after checking it isn’t. Bemberg lining is not quite common here and despite being from a man made fibre, Venezia is lovely to have as lining. 

@ anonymous with the question on Burda sleeves for shirts: usually I have no problem with wrinkling because of too much ease with Burda patterns. It can be a bit difficult when the fabic is stiff. Setting in sleeves still is a time consuming thing, even after my many years of sewing. 

Rosie shirt

Tonight I played pattern tetris to get a jacket and trousers out of my fabric. The fabric is narrower than usual but I think it works. Pinned all the pieces to the fabric and as it’s getting late here I decided to wait with cutting. Better check tomorrow whether I have every piece and cut with a clear head.

In the meantime let me show you a blouse I finished only very recently. It’s the Rosie shirt from Bella loves patterns. The first time I use a pattern from her and it doesn’t disappoint. Well drafted and good, thorough instructions with a lot of photos. I wouldn’t be me if I would have followed them all as written ;).

The instructions make the collar as if it were a coat. Way too complicated imho, so I made sure the upper collar has a bit more fabric to adjust for turn of cloth and sewed the collar in between the front and the facing. At the back I used a bias binding for the edge, a cute detail that’s just for my own pleasure. 

The linen is a bit too stiff probably, I hope it gets a bit more drape over time.

 

Braiding/weaving

 Thank you for the comments, how sweet to know I’ve been missed😘. It means a lot!

Let me show you a project I made this year ( doing a bit of catching up).

It was inspired by a photo I saw online and I just had to make it. What helped too was that I bought a set of tube turners shortly before and could practise using them. 

First I made a lot of fabric tubes, then I braided them onto the layer underneath and used the whole set in an Ottobre pattern with a raglan sleeve.

It’s been too hot here recently to wear this top, but it already was a favorite in spring. 

A top by my daughter

 It's been so nice to hear some of you just like to read my posts. I do realise I've been here before in the past years, which is probably something that happens occassionally when you have been doing something (in my case blogging) for so long. Sorry to have bothered you with my uncertainty and indecisiveness. 

There are a few things I will change in the near future but I'll come to that when I do it. Let's start with showing you a project that has been made recently. Partly by me, partly by my daughter.

My daughter is one of my "students". Of course she's not a paying student and it's not a weekly thing but she really likes to learn to sew. My son's girlfriend too, lucky me! I like to pass the sewing bug along and we've been sewing together a bit lately. 

She selected this top from an older Patrones magazine.

  

It was labeled "Couture facil", which means it should be an easy sew. Really? With this button placket in the back? This kind of button placket even makes me a little nervous. It's about very precise sewing and cutting and if you do it wrong, you really can see it or worse, even be so bad you want to throw the pattern piece in the bin. There was no fabric left, it had to be right first time round.

Perhaps needless to say that I did sew the placket. My daughter watched the process clearly and said she could not (yet) have done it. But the rest, from tracing to cutting the fabric pieces and finishing the neckline was done by my daughter (with a bit of guidance). She's ever so pleased with the result and has worn it with pleasure. Receiving compliments for it too!

The placket before finishing the neckline and completely sewing with buttons

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The sleeve with pleats

My daughter wearing the top

  

The fabric is from Atelier Brunette and bought in a shop in The Hague. What's nice about this brand is that they have notions matching their fabric. In this case the buttons!

An old pattern - Jalie 2449

These two tops I made recently. The pattern is Jalie 2449, a faux wrap top. I bought and made this pattern for the first time in 2007. It's no longer available.

I bought the wonderful blue/white border print at Croft Mill fabric in the UK and thinking about how to use it I remembered a famous wrap top from BurdaStyle January 2008. There was not enough fabric for that one and rummaging through my patterns I found this one again. I liked it so much that I made another one.









On the second version The neckline is heightened about 1 cm above the bust, giving just a bit more coverage. It's a minimal change. Other than that I used the pattern as it was traced/changed in my pattern stash. It had notes on it and at the time I made it a bit longer and widened the sleeves.

Sewing a top like this is an afternoon project ;).

Summer!

July already. It’s hot and dry in our country for weeks on end. Very uncommon. It gives the nice summer feeling though and a lot to do in the garden and my allotment too. It takes some time to water it all, not all plants thrive as they would normally, others do much better. I’m already picking the loveliest tomatoes from our plot (there’s a greenhouse where I grow them) and looking forward to tasting a few special varieties that need a bit more time. But hey, that’s not what you’re reading my blog for. I’ve been sewing a little too.

An update on the Burda dress from the June issue I started before my holiday: I didn’t like the baby blue on me and it’s been laying around for weeks. As I write this it’s in the washing machine after having dyed the partial constructed dress. If I like the result I will finish it, otherwise it will be the bin.

The blouse I show today is a pattern I’ve used very often before. It’s an adapted Ottobre pattern that I like for summer. This fabric is very fluid, which makes the neckline a bit too deep for everyday wearing. Must remember to adapt the pattern.

I call this my “crazy fabric” as it’s totally not my normal style. Something I do sometimes for summer tops, not on purpose, but I made this top in a “not me” print several years ago too.

The fabric has a visual illusion: it looks like tucks but it’s all printed. Several people have thought it was a special sewing treatment by me: none at all!

A top with lots of drape

Having done a proper review of this top, I almost forgot to post about it on the blog. Thanks Nancy for reminding me through your comment.

The top has a lot of drape and because of that I don’t know yet whether this will be a favorite or not. I’m used to more fitting clothes. Still I was attracted to this pattern and “had” to make it. It’s from the January 2017 issue of Burda.

Again I compared to my sloper but have to remember it’s different for knit fabrics. I could have used a size smaller. Being so wide it’s not a real problem.

I found this fiddly to make with the double shoulder parts and the binding at the neckline. At the point where the shoulder pieces and neckline meet, there are a lot of fabric layers creating a bump.

With the experience I have now I would have done it differently and have made the back with a cut on facing. Also I would serge the shoulder pieces on the inside, thus eliminating another layer. Burda’s instructions tell you to fold the seams on the inside and then stitch.

A plus to this pattern was the added camisole. Burda realized this time that the neckline was too deep for being comfortable in day to day life and solved this by adding a pattern for a camisole. I made my own bias tape for the top from the same fabric and used a lingerie elastic at the bottom. Not an exact match in colour, but well, no one will see this.

A final note on the fabric needed: the measurement given in the magazine is 2.2 meters, using a fabric that is 1.35 meter wide. This is not a normal width in most knit fabrics. My fabric was 1.6 meter wide and I could cut both the top and the camisole from only 1.7 meter of fabric.

A summer top

I saw this fabric for the first time at a fabric market in April and resisted buying it. When I saw it again at a fabric market two weeks ago I bit the bullet and bought it. Abstract print, summer colors, it was just the right fabric for a summer top. It’s a good quality cotton, though sheer, so a cami underneath is a must.

Told the story before, an essential box with sewing materials is in storage by accident. In this box are my sloper drafts too. Which meant that for this top I drafted the basic sloper again and relied on it to fit properly. Two things are not quite as they should be: the armhole is a bit too low for a sleeveless top and the width at hip height should have been a bit more. Nevertheless this top will get a lot of wear when summer decides to stop by in our neck of the woods. Not now in any case.



All seams were stitched as French seams, which is a beautiful finish for a sheer fabric like this.
My bust dart is very wide and that was sewn using the French seam technique too. It makes for a small dart as you can see in the picture above.
I won’t wear this top with the collar closed, but it gives you an impression of the fit. Quite pleased with that.I drafted it using Suzy Furrer’s technique as she explaines in her Craftsy class Collars and Closures, only less wide than she uses in her demonstration.

Two posts in a day…

This one with a preview of a Knip Mode pattern from their latest issue, June 2016. Intriguing neckline, sure to catch my eye and immediate desire to make it.

 

Hello

In the past months I’ve done quite a bit of knitting, but hardly any sewing. As you may remember we sold our house and moved. A month ago we moved to a house we rent for a while, as we have not yet succeeded in buying the house we want.

It was a bit of an unsettling time, sorting out our belongings, what to take  to the temporary home, what to put into storage. At the end of the day one box with sewing stuff ended up in storage by accident. Fabrics I planned to sew this spring were in that box as well as most of my thread. Lucky enough not my collection of interfacing, that would have been worse.

Of course this was an excuse to buy new fabric ;). I bought a remnant piece of a border print online and when it arrived it was not quite what I expected. I forgot to take a picture but there was too much going on and too big a difference between light and dark. Which made me creative (good!) and I used the dark part for a skirt and the lighter part for a top. I won’t wear those together though they come from the same piece of fabric. Pictures of the skirt in another post.
For the top I used the Esme pattern from StyleArc.




I had a top in mind I had copied from a BurdaStyle magazine many years ago, guessing it was from an issue published in the (early) nineties. But in the great purge I let go of that pattern thinking “I haven’t made it all those years, so it can go”. Of course it now was on the back of my mind and when I was searching for a pattern to use for the remnants of the fabric that top seemed the pattern I needed. Then this StyleArc top appeared in the Pattern Review gallery and the neckline was quite similar to the BurdaStyle pattern I was thinking of. Bought the pdf in the Etsy shop, traced the pattern (as described in a previous post here) and made it in an evening. Almost instant gratification.





As I did not have enough length of the fabric I had to make a horizontal seam. The bottom part is on the crosswise grain, against all sewing “rules” to cut in the same grain direction. There was just not enough fabric and this was the only solution, including the horizontal stripe that is not at the most favorable position.



The neckline is wider than the illustration suggests.I interfaced the collar with Pro Sheer elegance light interfacing. Both the collar and the interfacing were cut on the bias. The instructions don’t tell you to interface the collar but I thought it wise, as the fabric, a light ponte knit, would not have a lot of stability. I’m glad I did but still the collar won’t stand up as in the illustration. I quite liked the idea of being able to wear it in two ways, but am satisfied with the folded collar, which looks nice on me. I will try to get pictures of me wearing the top.







Finally I topstitched all seams, as indicated in the pattern as one of the ways to finish it.
I like the result of this top, I would not have bought this fabric if I had seen it in a shop, but I’m actually quite pleased with how it looks.