T-shirt with cowl collar and new bra

Can you stand another bra? I made yet another one. Not that I need any, in my drawer are more bra's and panties than I ever had when I didn't make them myself. But it is an addiction!

This is the Sewy bra I made before, only now the wrinkles are gone and the fit in the back is better. My adapted review is here. The cool new widget from Pattern Review on the right doesn't show it, because the original date is from several months ago, and in the list the new ones are on top.

Still to sew: two panties to go with this bra.



And I made a T-shirt with cowl. In my post from Thursday I showed the pattern change.
This is the original Butterick I made last winter, from a very drapey buttermilk from EmmaOneSock. It is very difficult to make a good picture, but the "lines" tend to go round my breast, instead of straight down.

I had a "lightbulb" moment when I read Claire Shaeffers solution of a collar stay in the book High fashion sewing secrets.

This is what it is about: an extra front in a non-elastic material, that prevents the cowl from draping in a way it shouldn't.
















And this is the result on me. Quite a nice result I think, no pulling over my breast. As mentioned in my earlier post, I took a Jalie pattern for the overall fit and combined this with Butterick 4606.
Next time I will not make the necline in the back higher, but keep it like a

BWOF 01-2006-111 shirt finished

As some of you have seen already, I finished my shirt and published a review on PR. I really was happy about my third attempt at the collar, it was sewn by machine on one side (the inside collarband to the inside of the shirt) and handstitched on the outside of the collarband. Then there were only the cuffs to make and buttonholes and that went smoothly.










On looking at the picture I think that the front might need a bit extra width in the fba, but in wearing this shirt it doesn't bother me. A few more pictures you can find here.










Now I will sew a few easy shirts. The first one was already made yesterday evening. A simple Jalie shirt with collar. Sewn in an hour, not special at all, no pictures to share yet.

Tonight I wanted to cut a black top with draped collar. But after fussing with the pattern of Butterick 4606 and combining it with the Jalie t-shirt, found that the fabric didn't have as much drape as I thought. The reason for using the Jalie pattern as basis was that I wanted to make a collar stay, as described in Claire Shaeffers book. I made the Butterick top last winter, but it was not completely right. I wore it a few times, but it could have better fit and drape. I found it too difficult to make a stay based on the Butterick pattern (did not know how to fold the pattern back in the right shape to use), so chose a pattern which I know fits me well as starting point and convert that.
The Jalie pattern without alterations can now be used for drafting the stay.

(the black line is traced with a mouse in a picture editing program, not very stable line)

Couture exhibition

Wow, I'm going to London in December. With a good friend I made plans to visit the Henry Moore exihibition at Kew gardens (hope the wheather is reasonable) and the plans are final now. It's only two days, but it's so special.
The other reason to visit London now is the couture exhibition in the Victoria and Albert museum.
So looking forward to this.

The sewing of my shirt gave me a headache and a very low sewing spirit. On Pattern review there was only 1 review of this BWOF shirt by Sew-4-fun. She mentioned the great amount of sleeve-ease. But I was stubborn and didn't change it. Lesson learned: listen to reviewers with more experience than myself.

I did manage to get the sleeve in without puckers, but in the end there was too much fabric in the front, giving a strange "puff". Yesterday evening I took out both sleeves. They were already topstitched, but it only took me a little over an hour to take them out, take a bit off the top and sew again. Much better.

Then I took off the (second) collar and made a third one. This one still has to be finished, but looks more promising then the other two. And I thought a shirt like this would be ready in one weekend!

Collar with stand

Thanks to the ladies who commented with suggestions on my last post. A cardigan it will be. And Vicky, I very much like your suggetion of a contrasting band, so I'll look for a matching fabric.

In the afternoon and evening I did have quite some time to sew and worked on my blouse. When working on the collar with stand I was thinking of a thread at Pattern Review: sewing goals for 2008. I don't have specific sewing goals at all, but tonight I thought "mastering the perfect collar with stand" could be one for me.
I've sewn quite a lot of these collars, but everytime it is taking me sooooo much time to complete it to my satisfaction. This one no exception. The first one was ripped off, the second must do.

I've tried Gigi's method the first time (link on the right side), but somehow managed to go wrong. Then I tried "perfect collar with stand in 10 minutes" in one of the sewing books I have (upstairs now, too lazy to find the title).
Well, 10 minutes seemed a very, very optimistic way of looking at it, and it was. The end result is not perfect anyway (my fault, not the instruction in the book). And I ended by doing it the "old" way, slipstitch one side of the collar band, which gave the best result in the end.

On the left a picture of how I always do the fusible interfacing: the interfacing is the pattern without seam allowances, and give a very accurate line to use for stitching.







I show you two pictures of my collar, on both sides. The left one is a little unsharp, but this is the one on which I handstitched the undercollar. The right one is "by the book".

Next projects

Strange, but I feel a bit relieved by the decision not to swap. Still, I want to go on making clothes that can be worn in more combinations.

Yesterday evening I took out the fabrics in my stash, without the real spring and summer fabrics, as I want to make clothes to wear in the coming months.

In my stash the colors navy, brown and black/grey are leading. No surprise to me. For a very long time I had navy as a basic color for most of my clothes, later black was added. More recently I started to use a lot of brown. My stash is not very large, if I compare it with the hundreds of meters I have seen others mention. It will not be more than 40-50 meters, which I still find a lot, half of it was bought in the past half year. Certainly has to do with restarting sewing for myself last year, what will my stash be in a year??

From my closet I took a few clothes I made in the past year, to match with fabrics.
Two Jalie tops (2682 and 2449), a white blouse from a Knip issue (don't remember which, it's a very basic blouse).
The blue, pinstriped trousers I made last week, the Knip skirt (October 2007) and grey pants made last year. These are the same as the pin-stripe pants.

To this I'm going to add a blouse (the fabric on the left) and a Jalie top in off-white (in the middle). Together with a rtw navy jacket this will give me a lot of combinations.










This is the blouse I planned. A very basic one again, but that's great for making combinations. I'll make it with visible buttons though.






Another picture from my closet/stash:

The pin-stripe navy pants again, BWOF 10-2007-115 brown pants are finished.

To add:

• Denim skirt (as Summerset suggested when I made my Knip skirt, I will make the same skirt with contrasting topstitching)
• the off-white is the same as above
• T-shirt from the print on the left (pattern to decide)
• On the right a woolen stretch. Still not sure whether to use the Jalie wrap top for this one, or make a cardigan of it. Any opinions on this?

That's 6 items to make in the coming weeks. And in the meantime still working on my Vogue jacket.

Update

The last few days I got some things done, but there was not much time to blog. Time now for a little update.

DD finished McCalls 5512 (with a little help) and she's very happy with the result. The fabric had been cut a few weeks ago, but a lot of schoolwork prevented her from finishing it, and she wanted to do it herself.

Surprise to me was that she found it very difficult to work with default seam allowances of 1,5 cm. From the few things she did till now, she apparently already got used to working with actual seam lines as used with Knip and Burda. The review on PR is here.

I finished my red Patrones pants with the alterations as described in earlier posts. Because I had cut wide seam allowances, I could make the muslin to a wearable pair of pants. Strange that the wrinkles are back a bit again, but still this is a big improvement. It will take a few more pants to get it perfect, but for now you have seen enough pictures of my back!

The altered review is here.

SWAP

I've definitely decided not to enter the Timmel swap. As mentioned earlier I like the idea of a swap very much for the end result of having 11 garments that go together well and for the joined effort and inspiration of others doing the same. But the rules for this year just don't fit me.

I will make my own swap (inspired by Carolyn in this post and from the results of previous contests with Timmel and PR), but without the wardrobe rule and just starting and finishing as I want. My swap will have a lot of Jalie and Burda patterns in it. I hope to make a plan in the coming week.

Adding to stash

Today I had to be in Amsterdam for business reasons, and I took the opportunity to shop a little at Kantje Boord, my favourite shop for all lingerie notions. You could easily spend hours there, they have so much in store.

This is what I bought: a lace that was available in a left and right side to make symmetry possible. And with it embroidered lace to match. As it is very sheer, I will use ecru lycra underneath. In the picture this is already under the lace. Not to be made very soon however.

Parting shot

A few of the beautiful iron-on flowers I received from Laura, together with some beautiful lace. The lace I will show in a finished project. The flowers will be a great embellishment. Thanks very much Laura.

Pants Vogue 2896

I managed to find some time to sew. So I sewed last of the three I cut two weeks ago.
It's the pants of Vogue 2896, a Anne Klein pattern. Last summer I bought this pattern, my first Vogue in years.
The pants are very simple, no pockets or other details. I won't do a full PR-review, as I don't exactly remember what I changed last year, when I first made these. I do remember starting with size 16 and making it smaller afterwards.





Knowing what pattern change I need since my experiments of last week, I should have changed this pattern a bit too, but it was already cut. But luckily it is a wider pants, it is not too bad in the back. I even lean a bit to the left, hence the extra wrinkle there.

From the line drawing, it looks these pants have a straight waistband. This is not so, the waistband is actually very much shaped. So much that I couldn't get into the pants when I used this waistband (also already found out last year). I straightened the waistband, but did not make it completely straight.

The fabric is a very beautiful quality wool, with great drape. I lined it with a good quality (Venezia) fabric too, and these pants feel great.

Two pictures of the inside: I always sew the upper part of the center back seam last, I find that this gives a better fit. I learned this from RTW pants that I could easily take in because of this seam, but saw now that it is also recommended in the Burda sewing book to do it like this.
It made it a bit more trouble with the lining, which I hand-sewed in center back. Next time I will try the lining method as described in Sandra Betzina's book Power Sewing.

I did not sew a hongkong finish to the whole of the waistband (if you want to do that, a good tutorial was written by Tany in this post). But I did make such a finish at the sides of the waistband in the back. And yes, the stripes do not match in the back of the waistband. Grrr.