jules' stitchin'

nobby nobheads

2011-12-23T18:01:00.000+09:00

For some reason hats keep getting lost, so a couple of months ago I whipped up a couple more. Basically the construction was the same as last time, but the materials were a little different. The bands are made with powerstretch. Since powerstretch is...stretchy...I made use of this facet, and made the bands a bit shorter, and so the hats grip the heads gently. The aim of James' hat was warmth so the top is made of sturdy non-stretch windbloc hard face, with shearling inner. I already have a nice warm hat given to me by my sister in law so I made a lighter weight hat for cycling and running, and the top is just a single layer of powerstretch. It has taken a while to take the photos as it has only recently become cold enough for James to start wearing his hat. I have been wearing mine regularly for a couple of months, but don't know how long I will be able to not loose such a black hat.

pinky

2011-09-30T20:25:00.002+09:00

Not quite my usual sort of thing this...

On a rainy day in autumn it gets a little cool at work in the afternoons. I thought an unconstraining flowing kind of garment might be nice to throw on at these times. I chose Jalie 2919, but then had much trouble getting my sticky little hands on the pattern. The shipping is too expensive at patternreview and (IIRC) it was out of stock at Jalie, so I purchased it at sewing patterns.com, a store I have used successfully in the past. The postage was certainly cheap, but several weeks later it still hadn't arrived! I complained and they said they'd send it again. Eventually, about 3 weeks later I got an email saying it had just been shipped and it duly arrived in Japan within the normal 2 weeks that airmail from the US takes. I'm guessing it was actually also out of stock at sewing patterns.com...

The fabric is a 2 way stretch lightweight hot pink silk knit that I impulse bought online from the USA. Such impulse purchases are not as uncommon as you might hope. When I am making a sensible fabric purchase online for a planned project, the postage is so expensive for a single purchase that I typically add in a few extra things to make it feel like less of a rip off. Thus my pile of fabric continues to grow, sometimes with rather curious pieces. I could see from the pattern that it wasn't going to fit my shape with the bulging hips and one-piece back, but I thought it possible that the drape of the fabric or tightness of the design might counteract these potential issues, and thus did not adjust the pattern. When it was made up I did decide it would benefit from refining closer to my shape. Since the design had a pleated front but no design features on the back or side, rather than just take in the seams, I sewed the new seam lines just down to the waist so that they appear to be pleats giving a vaguely similar design to the front. I did this for the back, and both sides. I don't have a photo which clearly shows these features - the wind blew too hard when James took the photo of the back of the garment.

As you can see the arms are quite long. I thought that was no bad thing for the intended use, but I still shortened the arms by 2cm with respect to the pattern. How much one may need to do this will depend on the stretch and drape of the fabric.

I am not sure that my legs are long or straight enough to pull this design off, but I do like the colour, and since I will mostly wear it sitting at my desk and generally skulking around work in the afternoons perhaps the leg issue won't matter too much. How will it look with my pinky Marfy trews?

Now, what to wear for the very cold winter days at work? During that season some people basically wear rugs while at their desks.

Simple Sack

2011-08-29T21:06:00.000+09:00

The Yokohama walking shop, Kamoshika, gives out a couple of bags to those who join their loyalty scheme. Then, rather than hand over a card at the cash desk you wave a bag and they take n% off the purchases as they put them in the bag. One of the bags is perhaps the most simple rucksack there is. Basically it's a drawstring nylon bag, but the strings are webbing and attached to rings in the bottom corners, so it can carried on the back.

When we went to volunteer in Ishinomaki, we couldn't carry that much stuff so James took this extremely lightweight rucksack and it worked out well, so I decided to make one for me. I also added an insert to both bags to allow a Platypus water carrier to be carried a little separately from the other things in the bag. The pattern for the main body is pretty simple - just a rectangle with some folds in. The metal rings came from the make your own handbag section of Swany, in Kamakura. The seams in the original and the copy are bound with tough binding so that the binding takes some strain off the fabric. I made the bag out of left over trench coat fabric, and the Platypus holders are made of Pertex.

More cool bizz

2011-08-11T20:38:00.000+09:00

The faux suede shorts wore through and James requested more. I found I still had enough tencel left to make another pair, just like the last ones. In fact I had just enough fabric for 2 pairs, although there was one flaw in the fabric which appears on the arse of one pair. I also managed to cut a waistband out wrong (not straight enough on grain) and then didn't have enough to cut another one long enough, so one of the waistbands has side seams. Due to the small overlap at the front, I fastened them with a snap rather than a button and the waistband was interfaced with Pro-Weft Fusible.

After they were finished James told me that he always wants rear pockets in trousers, even shorts. This pattern doesn't have a rear pocket and I'd assumed since he'd been wearing both previous pairs happily for years that an exact remake of the pattern would be desired. Oh well.

Here's a recycled photo from 2006, but it's not that inappropriate as the shirt is still being worn too. The shoes are relegated to gardening only, but the model has only become more handsome.

hippo-crit

2011-07-25T20:56:00.000+09:00

About a year ago, instead of using the used tea leaves to grow mould in the sink trap, I made James dry and save and store them all in tins. It was really the mother-in-law's idea as she had remarked that old tea leaves make good stuffing for pin cushions and the like.

The question was, which stuffed toy should we make. We pondered various options, but suddenly realised that we needed a hippo in order that the one of us being the most hypocritical at the time, could be given the hippo.

For the first time I made a purchase on a website called Etsy. I bought a pattern called Heather Hippo, by FunkyFriendsFactory. The pattern arrives as a PDF file a few days after the order is placed, and then it can be printed out. Wanting a slightly smaller hippo, I printed out the pattern at 75%. The pattern is very well made and the pieces fit together very well indeed. The instructions were also comprehensive.

I found enough red fur for about 600¥ in the bits bin at Yuzawaya in Kamata, used fake suede for the contrast and sewed Hippo up my hand. The tea gives her almost a bean-bag feel, and she smells very nice, but I should have made a lining out of a closely woven fabric, as little bits of tea are going to escape through the somewhat loose weave of the slightly stretchy red fur fabric.

therma-stuff

2011-07-22T21:25:00.000+09:00

Last week we went volunteering in Ishinomaki, one of the the tsunami hit cities of north Japan. See here for the story and here for some videos and photos. Shelter was the campsite at the local university so I took the opportunity of upgrading my leaky thermarest to the fabulously expensive super-light NeoAir Thermarest. This piece of equipment is so expensive that the stuff sack is sold separately (here it is on Amazon). Bugger that, thought I, and swiftly stitched up my own version with some Pertex that I had from when I made cycling tops and bottoms for James. The NeoAir, although a bit noisy, certainly was comfortable, and we had such a good time volunteering that we intend to go again, only this time we hope to take our bike, so James will not be able to bring his air bed. Thus, a longer NeoAir has been duly purchase, and a slightly larger stuff sack knocked up.

The stuff sack consists of a rectangle, sewn with a single seam to make a pipe, stitched onto a circle on one end and with a hem on the other through which a string is threaded. One sentence! 15USD on Amazon!

Marfy trews #4

2011-07-20T14:07:00.000+09:00

I made another pair of Marfy 0680, this time in a fairly heavyweight (at least so it seems from here in the middle of the Japanese summer), striped stretch fabric from Gorgeous Things. I made jeans style pockets on this pair, and added patch pockets to the back. With the stretch, they seemed looser, and I took them in a fair amount (making about 2cm extra seam allowance) on the outside seams. They have come out feeling a little long from waist to crotch. In theory I could I suppose take off the waistband and move it down a centimeter or so, but probably I won't get a round tuit.

So, I haven't actually worn these yet, except a little round the house just after they were finished and very quickly just now to take the photo, because, just as I finished them, summer suddenly arrived. Stretch trousers are really comfortable on aeroplanes so I hope these they may be an alternative to these flower trews which are now rather faded.

J's Trenchcoat

2011-06-03T20:25:00.000+09:00

At last, many years after I made a trenchcoat for myself, someone (Vogue patterns) brought out a pattern for a men's trench coat! This is V8720. I'd considered making a coat for James - we even went snoop shopping in San Francisco last year to consider styles - but I had been very put off by the available patterns. On the verge of adjusting my trenchcoat pattern for James, luckily this pattern came out just in time to save me all the work.

The search for fabric was taxing. The idea was to make a coat with a softer drape, unlike the typical tight fitting straight-jacket style worn by the prim young salarymen in Tokyo (James is not prim!). I ordered swatches from Rockywoods and Gorgeous things, and eventually we chose some shiny and slightly crinkly dark brown slippery stuff. It isn't waterproof, but is hopefully showerproof, and it cost quite a lot. I tested pretreating the fabric in various ways. Washing it seemed to shrink it a little, but more importantly it lost significant water repellency. So instead I ironed the whole yardage with a cool iron to preshrink it a bit so that it could be washed in the future if required, and also so that it would not shrink as I ironed it during construction. Getting the interfacing to stick down with the cool iron was a challenge, but I think it is all stitched down by all the edge and topstitching so it should be OK. It is rather softly interfaced (with pro-weft), and tacking down a fusible interfacing with the iron seemed preferable to sewing in interfacing, which would have made additional holes in the fabric!

I had plans to line the coat, but the pattern is deliberately designed to be unlined, with carefully finished seams and large front facings. Since this version is meant for use in rainy season in Japan, when it is warm and wet, we decided to go with the unlined version. My feeling is that this will not aid the performance in wet weather as when it gets wet it will probably stick to the clothes underneath. The fabric is, however, very slippery so perhaps it will be OK. Time will tell. I finished the coat several weeks ago, and it has been quite wet in Japan ever since - but we have been away in a very dry part of the USA instead - so it had yet to be thoroughly tested.

I happily used up some accidentally purchased (otherwise known as "what was I thinking?") cotton to make a test garment for fitting, adding several inches to the length of body and arms. I cut size 40 for the test, but ended up increasing the width across the back and shoulders, somewhat and fitted the size 42 collar pieces to the adjusted body. The resulting coat is perhaps a bit loose across the chest. The main mistake in construction (apart from sewing one pocket on upside-down and the other inside out, which I managed to recover from by sewing a new pocket bag onto the wrong way up one) was not altering the position of the lowest button after lengthening the garment. I think this button is too low, and will sometimes have to be released so that it does not restrict motion. The buttons are deliberately size 30mm rather than 25mm - I thought the over-sized buttons added a little something to the intended looser styling. Other changes from the pattern were to add a pertex lining (purple!) to the back flap piece, and also to stitch down the centre of the flap. The belt loops were fitted according to taste of the wearer, somewhat below his true waist. Otherwise I basically followed the instructions. I intend to include a belt buckle, but have yet to travel in to Yokohama to get one.

Thermo-nuclear gloves

2011-03-27T17:21:00.001+09:00

Found some Polartec Windbloc at Rockywoods and made lobster cycling gloves for him and her. The fabric description says - "Brown Nylon Canvas face and Cream Shearling back. This fabric would make a nice jacket, vest, hat, mittens and other outerwear". The fabric is pretty stiff and thick, so these were put together slightly differently to the previous pair. I trimmed the fleece from the edges before stitching, overlapped most of the seams, handstitching where required, and made the gusset between the pincers from the more pliant windstopper fabric used for the last pair. The photos show one hand from each pair. James' pair came out too tight, because I stupidly used the same pattern as before even though this time the fleece was on the inside, rather than outside. Some surgery has fixed this; cutting them open and adding a windstopper gusset down the thumb. As well as giving the required room, this gusset does make the fit look better. I suspect that fitting a similar gusset down the index finger would further improve the fit. Some of my gloves do include such a thing, although it is clear from looking at all our pairs of gloves that there are many acceptable ways of constructing a pair of gloves.

Of course now it is warming up here a bit, so these wont get properly tested until next year, however, mine did keep my hands warm and dry in a relatively cold and rainy day recently. James' have only just been finished so are not tested yet.

World's best Mini MacbookAir case

2011-02-20T20:32:00.000+09:00

World's best because it seems to be the world's only. Can't find any cases designed to fit the thinking woman's iPad, and so now have to face the fact that the only things in the MacStore that we haven't bought yet are the things that haven't been invented. Not that the thinking woman's iPad necessarily requires a case, but it would be a shame to pull it out of my rucksack and find it had a big scratch across the top.

This case is made from leftover denim lined with leftover wool, fastened with two little magnetic fasteners. Total cost: 200¥ (1.66 UKP) plus a few hours hard labour. It being denim, I had to include a patch pocket, so I made it to fit an ipod, as I often carry both items around together at work.

carpet trousers

2011-02-15T20:22:00.000+09:00

As the winter wore on, James begged for another pair of what have become known as carpet trousers - winter-weight baggies. These ones are not cotton, but wool, quite thick with a very coarse weave. Like the thick cotton baggies, I finished the edges of the fabric first, to stop it all unravelling. The fabric caused the thread to wear thin and snap periodically. I am not sure why this was - but guess that parts of the thick weave are very dense.

woolly hoody

2011-02-14T22:35:00.000+09:00

A remake of my version of the hoody from Burda 8291 last made in 2006.

The first version, linked to above, has been so well worn and complimented that I'd thought it was time I made another. Then, in December, visiting Britex fabrics, located conveniently near the Moscone Center in San Francisco (where I was attending a conference) I found an expensive sheer loopy woolly knit, and bought 2 yards of purple and two of blue with the bold idea of making a reversible hoody.

Since this is for cold weather I added 10cm to the length. I machine washed one of the pieces and then decided it had been a bad idea and washed the other piece in the bath. Handwashing only for this jumper then. I did manage to steam the first piece back into shape before cutting out.

This is a delicate fabric as it catches and pulls on any rough surface. When this happens it is possible to repair it, but my conclusion is that this is best worn indoors, for example, at work. Another reason it is good for indoors is of course that despite being warm and fluffy and cosy when there is no breeze, the wind goes straight through it. Luckily it is frequently cold inside Japanese buildings, including work, so I expect to wear it quite enough to wear it out.

Surprisingly the machine handled the fabric, a wool and acrylic mix, quite well. I interfaced the shoulders, neck, cuffs and hem. I wondered how to join the two colours together but in the end I just made a blue hoody and a purple hoody and then top stitched and edge-sticthed the two together at the hood edge, cuffs and hem.

The inevitable mistake. My house is rather dark inside and it is sometimes difficult to recognise the difference between fabric face and back. I really thought this fabric was the same on both sides (I'd checked this in Britex too, and the shop assistant had thought likewise), but the moment I joined the two hoodies together I realised that the body of the blue one is inside out! Oh well!

Gloves Galore

2011-01-30T15:22:00.001+09:00

In autumn I lost one of my favourite cold weather cycling gloves. I think I left it on a bus. The pair not only fitted like gloves, but were the best I had for both bicycling, every day, and mountain climbing. What a sad loss...

So I bought some kevlar and some Gore-windstopper from Rockywoods, and started to learn how gloves are constructed. I looked at all our pairs of gloves. They are all rather differently constructed. It seems there is no right way to make a pair of gloves. I drew around my hand and also James', and made some mockups and then some wearable mockups out of some leftover lightweight windpro. Now my friends are fascinated that my gloves match my jacket! These gloves are OK for autumn or spring but not warm enough for winter cycling. They also are not good for cycling as they have no padding on the palms.

Somewhere along the way, my lovely idea of a pair of all-round winter gloves for me got transformed into a pair of lobster-claw cycling gloves for James. I'm not sure how... partly because I am soft, but also because I can put a pair of lightweight fleece gloves inside the windpro ones and have a result warm enough for cold days and mountains, and I do also have a pair of winter cycling gloves that are not quite as warm as the one I lost, but could do with being worn out of my closet.

The big leap of understanding in the hiatus between the construction of the windpro gloves and the lobster claws was the realisation that we don't walk around with our fingers straight, but with them curled towards the palm. Thus, flat gloves work their way off the hand in use. The lobster claw pattern has shorter fingers on the palm side, and the gusset between the middle two fingers is also interestingly shaped.

I am told that the results are nice and warm but it turns out that this particular Gore windstopper is not the best for gloves because it has a fleecy outer and a smooth lining. For gloves you want a hard outer and fleecy inner! You'd think I could just turn it round, but the lining has a kind of loopy stitch that would catch on any rough edge. So I've sent off for some more bits from Rockwoods - then perhaps I will be able to start work on my all-round winter gloves...?

Some stitchers measure their progress on their fabric stash in terms of yardage in and yardage out. Be warned that spending a month making gloves is disastrous when seen in these terms!! I have worked through barely a metre, and bought several metres for future projects in the meantime...!

[Note for jules - have adjusted the finger lengths on the gloves pattern, but need to re-design the gussets]

Update:
Found some scraps of blue Polartec Powerdry of just the right size, and lined the gloves. James seems happy, but now, of course the weather has warmed up...

Boxers #2

2011-01-04T20:54:00.003+09:00

Last year, before we went to the UK, I made 2 pairs of boxer shorts for James.

One pair were a remake of these also made from some leftover silk. I did take a picture but can't seem to find it now. Being "airy" they go very well with the man blouse for summer lounge-wear.

The second pair were more complex, being a copy of James' favourite but fallen apart boxer shorts. Since they had already fallen apart I just fully cut them up to copy the pattern. The pattern was more contoured than the very simple design of the Jalie 2326 used for the other pair. I made them up in leftover black Polartec Powerdry. The idea was to make some boxers that may be good for mountaineering. To me they look quite bulky, but James says they are very comfortable. No photo of these as yet. These seem to be a superior pattern to the Jalie for actual use as underwear, and are good for using up leftover fabric, but probably wont be used again for a while, as James seems to very well supplied with underwear...

Marfy trews

2010-11-06T18:05:00.014+09:00

I bought a couple of trouser patterns from the Marfy 2008 catalogue. I was looking for a pattern to make summer weight casual trousers. The pantaloons (from the 2010 catalogue) were a wild experiment along the same theme, but 0680 looked much more likely to be useful. While trouser patterns are perhaps the most difficult to fit, but Marfy skirt patterns do tend to fit me quite well, so I was hopeful. Neve

rtheless, first I made a mockup version, cutting up a pair of cotton baggies and turning them into shorts. Since they were just for practice I didn't bother putting pockets in these, apart from using the one already present on the back of the baggies. I'm sure the experts of trews fitting would spot issues, but just like the Marfy skirts, these fit me really well. So I went ahead and cut into the hydra

ngea print cotton from a local shoppe. I made these straight leg - I'm really not tall enough to carry off seriously flared trousers. This time I included the patch pockets on the front. In fitting I very slightly widened the hips in the pocket area - by less than 0.5cm. These were stitched in August, and were taken to the UK and worn there for a few weeks, until the weather became too cold.

On return to Japan in October, I made the third pair, in an abstract pattern polyester, from the posher of the two fabric shops in Kamakura. This time I made internal pockets and discovered that I had to widen the outside seam by a further cm or so. I think this is not just from having got very fat while in the UK, but also required in order to enable usage of the internal pockets. It is now too cold here to wear these so I hope I still like them come next spring!

At last I've found an interfacing for waistbands that actually seems to work. I find proper waistband interfacing too stiff to be comfortable, and most other interfacing too insubstantial, such that the waistband does not really do its job and tends to wrinkle. .. So a bit of advertising for the new favourite, bought online from the US - Pro-Weft Fusible.

Pantaloons

2010-07-17T09:35:00.008+09:00

This is Marfy 2217 (size 42). Ridiculous trousers like these seem to be fashionable. The odd thing about fashion is that things that look ridiculous when they come out seem normal after a while. So I wondered if my judgment was too harsh and since the model in the drawing doesn't look ridiculous, I thought perhaps these might be a more wearable version of the trend.

They were very fun to make. Look at this marvelous pattern piece! The grain lies along the lines of the floor boards. With just the usual minimalist Italian-English phrases jotted here and there on the pattern, it was very interesting working out how they went together. In the end the sewing itself was not hard in that once the geometry was worked out there were no real technical challenges. There are only 3 pattern pieces, legs, waist band and cuffs at the bottom of the legs.

I chose the

lightest weight cotton I could find, since I thought that stiffness and bulk were definitely to be avoided. Here are the amazing results. Marfy should be sued under the trade descriptions act! :-) Whereas the pantaloons make their fictional model looks tall and elegant, I am made dumpy. One might wonder if a heavier drapey fabric, perhaps a knit, or even having a smaller arse would work better. I think not. A few days before I completed the pantaloons, I had the pleasure of walking behind a pin-stick thin woman in the very fashionable Motomachi area of Yokohama. Her pantaloons were heavy and drapey and swung around back and forth as she walked in the most unflattering way. And yes, her bum looked enormous. If the tiny pert Japanese bum is made to look fat by this trend, there is no hope for the rest of the world.

Nevertheless I have been wearing these almost every day - as indoor only lounge wear! Although I'd prefer they had a higher crotch so that movement was not restricted, the super lightweight cotton is excellent cover for these super hot and sticky days of Japanese summer, and the baggy design allows for good airflow.

New Pet!

2010-06-13T17:14:00.003+09:00

At first we thought it could be fun to get an iPad. Then James discovered that the data plan for the iPad was very cheap compared to an iPhone. From there it was just a short step to wonder if a standalone dataplan could be the best of all. No need to buy an iPad, I can end my iPhone contract but still have mobile internet access through the iPhone wifi (I don't use the phone anyway), James can access the web from his iPod, and we can both connect to the internet from our laptops while away at meetings (public wifi is not that common here).

Enter, "Widget", our new EMobile wireless 3G device. We decided not to pay the pittance each month that partially insures the device, so given it's smooth shape and the requirement to handle it on the move, a case was required. Thanks to the fur class I took a little while ago, he's furry, with a tail - and a personality! He is all hand-stitched, and I also had a really fun afternoon creating him.

Waffle Baffle

2010-05-29T09:09:00.006+09:00

I think the hardest part of stitchin' is buying fabric. Not that the spending is itself hard, of course, but getting the right texture, weight, drape, stretch, recovery and colour all together is quite a challenge. Also things that seem OK in the shop do not always turn out as expected. I must try to spend more time in fabric shops!! :-)

This garment is the latest in a saga that I have not blogged before. James has a casual top made from fabric sometimes used in jumpers used for hiking. I'm not actually sure it it is a knit or woven. I'd thought it was a kind of fleece, but now I am not so sure. It is beige, lightweight for a jumper (spring-weight), with only slight stretch, and with a textured pile on the right side. The texture has, for some reason, made us give it the name "waffle baffle"! The colour and style suit James very well and it has had a great deal of wear.

The waffle baffle has been old for some time. It has holes in. So I have been trying to make a replacement. At first I bought 100 weight polartec and went for a different design - a hoodie, but by the time it was sewn up, it turned out to be too hot for spring. By the time I got round to having another go, I was less scared of copying pattern features from RTW garments, so I bought a knit in the right colour that I thought might work in Swany (in Kamakura). It also tuned out too heavy, and being wool, it subsequently felted and shrunk massively in the laundry, even though I had pre-washed it. After that I researched how to treat wool properly, so it was certainly not a wasted experience. The next time I took James with me to Swany to choose a better fabric. We chose a textured knit that seemed the right weight and colour.

The colour and texture look fine but as soon as I got it home and inspected the fabric I knew I was in trouble. It is not really a very heavy-weight knit, but it has a lot of stretch and very poor recovery which makes it hang quite heavily and also, of course, makes it just awful to sew with. Experiments on scraps showed that, without extra support, every seam would have stretched completely out of shape. Inspired by the classes by Sarah Veblen on Pattern Review, that anything is possible as long as you have control of the fabric, I decided to sewing this up anyway, mostly as a learning exercise. I used interfacing in the cuffs, hems and collars, and sewed all the seams with tear-able interfacing between the fabric and the feed-dogs of the sewing machine. This was all quite time-consuming - in fleece this would have sewn up form start to finish in a couple of afternoons, but it has taken me a couple of weeks. But, wonderfully it actually seems to have worked and the seams are not very stretched at all. The disappointing thing, however, is that it seems highly likely that the garment will quickly get out of shape with wear. It is also considerably heavier (in weight although not necessarily in warmth) than the original waffle baffle. The search for a more suitable fabric therefore continues.

To make this I adapted the collar and used KS 2439 View B, which I have used previously to make a zip-front jumper for James (here), to match the waffle baffle. Or so I thought. Actually I made a big mistake, making the slit of front opening at the centre front, rather than the middle of the placket. Luckily the top is so baggy and the fabric so shapeless that it doesn't show too much. Also, as in the original, I made a (interfaced) slit in the side hem, and the back hem is an inch lower than the front with just a 1.5cm turnup at the hem. This worked fine with the original pattern, as it was the right length at the back. I just had to turn it up an extra inch at the front and the cut off the excess. The cuffs are narrower than on the original pattern, and I also had to reduce the arm length and width at the cuff somewhat at the fitting stage.

LIghtweight PJS

2010-05-29T08:56:00.004+09:00

Since I started stitchin' I have made two pairs of thick PJs for James. See here and here. He used to have some lightweight pajamas to wear in the brief moments between winter and summer, but these were finally disposed of about a year ago. As they are not worn for much of the year, making a new pair has taken be a while to get round to. I bought the cotton fabric in Yuzawaya (in Kamata) at the end of last year. Hence, the slightly Christmassy snow flakes on the fabric.

I used the same pattern as for the thick PJs and did not change the pattern or construction at all. So these were an easy way to re-start stitching after taking almost a month off my favourite hobby while James' family were visiting us.

As it happens early summer has been a bit cool here, so these PJs have, this year, been worn more than expected.

All fur coat and no knickers

2010-03-22T13:22:00.006+09:00

I am taking an online class over at patternreview. This one is about sewing with faux fur. I'm not at all sure about making a fur coat, but you never know... and many nice coats seem to have fur trim, so I thought it would be useful to learn how to handle it fearlessly. Anyway, here is the result of my class project. Most of the other class members are sewing jackets, so I looked through my Marfy catalogues for a suitable pattern, and then drafted in in doll-size, which is very easy as dolls are much more simply shaped than people.

One apparently important aspect of sewing real and fake fur is staying the seams with something called "cold tape". This is special cos it is sticky fabric tape. Since you don't iron fur you can't use any sort of iron-on tape. Amusingly this tape seems to only be available from one shop in whole world, which just happens to be in New York, and you even have to telephone in order to get some surly guy to agree to post you some. So this seems to have slowed most of the class right down. Don't see why they didn't include this in a class kit (some of the other classes do include kits). Anyway, since James' parents visit very soon, I didn't want to wait, and anyway, Yamka (the doll) doesn't demand perfection, so I used fabric medical tape to stay the seams. Problem is that it gums up the needle. Apart from that I basically followed the class instructions... careful cutting out, zigzag seams, bias strips on the cuffs, trimming the fur on some of the seams, clever slit pockets, pick-stitching...etc.... I can't republish all the details here - you'll have to take the class to find out more.

From the dolls clothes point of view, the interesting part is scaling. In the fabric shop (Odakaya in Shinjuku - which has a large fur selection) I didn't know what to buy so plumped for mid-length, mid-thickness, mid-price . But really, for Yamka, I should have chosen a shorter length fur. To cut the bulk down a bit I did not use a facing on the coat, but just lined to the edge. The undercollar is also made from the lining fabric.

bum mats

2010-03-09T20:53:00.004+09:00

When we came to Japan, we brought with us some Ikea flat pack furniture. It wasn't that we realised that you cannot easily find adult-sized furniture in Japan, but rather that, as we were shipping a crate with our bicycles in, we thought we may as well throw in some versatile solutions for modern living. This included 2 little stools, which we have used as dining chairs ever since. Some years later Ikea came to Japan, and in need of a new sofa, we finally visited recently. We bought a third stool.

And then I had an idea of using up fabric scraps.

I started with what is perhaps an Amish knot rug, using a large eyed leather needle I happened to have. It was made from a piece of fabric I bought with good intentions but then washed with something unfortunate, which turned the white bits of the pattern an unpleasant pale blue. Gosh was it slow and boring work. Took a week or so. Used 1 inch strips folded neatly using a bias-tape maker.

Then, after a visit to Okadaya in Shinjuku, I became the happy owner of a double-ended crochet hook, as well as a more suitable needle. It didn't take long to remember how to crochet - I used to enjoy it and did quite a lot of it when I was 10 years old...so much quicker than knitting. As it turns out, also much much faster than Amish knotting. This one, a spiral, took about a day. Used 1.25cm wide un-ironed strips from an old sheet.

Then I looked on the internets about how to crochet in rounds kind of properly, and made a third bum mat. This time used double 1.25cm thick strips (single 1 inch strips wouldn't work on the hook properly). This one was a little quicker even than the second one, I think.

James helped tremendously by ripping and de-threading the fabric strips. Every few strips I steam ironed and flattened the mat quite hard.

But - I still have loads of fabric scraps left - and to be quite honest, this was very very boring compared to the exciting variety and challenge of clothing construction. Nevertheless the result seems quite nice, and it is good to have a bit of padding on our versatile solutions tor modern living.

Fuzzy James

2010-03-09T20:28:00.003+09:00

James' second pair of shop bought fuzzy legs, finally became so worn out that they offered insufficient warmth. So it was time to make him another pair. This time I managed to get a photo of him wearing the finished article.

I had sufficient fabric and elastic stashed, and the pattern and construction technique was identical to last time. The only real difference was that since the first pairs were sewn I have a much improved sewing machine, which made simple work of sewing the super soft and stretchy powerstretch fabric (using the straight stretch stitch). Including cutting out, I made these one Sunday to be worn to cycle to work next day, and almost every day since. It seems we are having a cold late winter here - as I type this it is snowing outside, so it seems like tomorrow will be another day for the fuxxie legs.

The final result was just a touch on the tight side, but they do give in wear. In fact James reports that even now, about a month after they were constructed, they have already relaxed a bit to fit well.

striped jeans

2010-01-31T19:48:00.003+09:00

The shape for these stretch jeans is a mixture of Vogue (7481) and Marfy (1058) patterns. I compared both patterns for many hours and also compared garments made from both patterns. In shape the final pattern is more like the Marfy than the Vogue, but slimmer in the hips. The rear pockets are an enlarged version (to fit iphone better) of those from Vogue 8202 and belt carriers are also from that pattern.

The construction closely follows James' jeans, so that required different adjustments to the pattern, particularly to the fly and pocket areas. To give myself a chance of not messing it up, and also getting close to having a reliable pattern, after cutting out the pattern (with no pockets), in what I was fairly sure erred on the loose side, I tacked it together and then readjusted things (side seams, rear crotch). Then took the tacking apart, adjusted the pattern, and recut the legs out of the same pieces of fabric. For trousers I have got into the habit of cutting the waistband after the legs are fully constructed, to make sure I get the right length and shape. In this case I tried a traditional straight waistband, but got a bit gap at the back, so I cut the final band to the wight length, based on the curved waistband of the Marfy pattern.

What with all that and the lapped side seams, and fly construction, making these jeans was a pretty long job, taking up much of the New Year's holidays plus a couple of weekends in January, but all the guesswork and trial and error seems to have worked out and presently I feel that these jeans are a better fit than either the Marfy or any of the Vogue versions. I find this to be quite encouraging! :-) The photos are taken after about 5 days of wear without laundering. One annoying mistake I made was forgetting how far to overlap the fly front at the top, and not doing it far enough, meaning that it is possible to just see the edge of the zipper puller when the jeans are worn without a belt.

The striped stretch denim is mid to heavy weight and was bought from Swany in Kamakura some time ago. Swany always seem to have some denim, but the selection varies, so when I seem something I like I tend to buy enough for some jeans. My sewing machine sewed through it magnificently as always, only destroying one needle, and skipping just a handful of stitches over the 6+ layer section of the side-seams.

T-shirts extravaganza

2009-12-23T14:50:00.005+09:00

It may not look like much of an extravaganza, but there are more. I made six in total. Hence the long time time my last blog post.

I decided I needed some simple tops to wear as a base layer during the winter months, which are rather cold here in Eastern Japan due to the buildings being poorly heated.

I used my T-shirt pattern, lengthened it a bit and adjusted the armhole slightly as I went along to try and get better fit. I also drafted the long sleeve by lengthening the 3/4 sleeve pattern I already had. I think I have a reasonable pattern now, assuming I can keep track of all the pieces next time I bring it out.

No photos of me wearing these - it is too cold both inside or outside to wear them with nothing over them, but the longsleeves in particular have been getting continuous wear.

So - the extravaganza:
1. 1 black longsleeve with turtle neck. Nice drape, slightly shiny knit.
2. 1 black shortsleeve (same fabric as 1) with jewel neckline (not shown).
3. 1 green longsleeve with roll-neck, in a less shiny and more cuddly fabric.
4. 1 blue longsleeve (same sort of fabric as 3, and similar tone but blue) with roll-neck (not shown - but being worn to write this post!).
5. 1 red t-shirt. I bought a men's L size T-shirt in Yellowstone, boldly cut it up and re-made it in my size. Really this adventure deserves a blog post in itself, but will have to wait until it is warm enough to photograph. Used original neckline. Made in your standard US thick t-shirt cotton knit.
6. 1 green t-shirt with jewel neckline. Heavier weight than 1; quite a stable fabric.

One thing I learned is that how long to make the neck piece depends on the amount of give in the knit, so I found that rather than apply a rule precisely (like 3/4 neckline length for a turtle neck), it was best to cut it a couple of cm extra and then adjust later.

Striped shirt

2009-10-14T20:02:00.006+09:00

One day, sitting in church gazing at someone in front of me, I realised he was wearing a nice casual style shirt and then realised that such a shirt could go well with the black jeans I recently made for James and that the fabric (from Emma One sock) I had already bought some years ago to make the long-sleeve version of James' evolving shirt pattern could be just the right thing.

It turned out that the required adjustments had, for once, been made to the pattern before it was put away last time, although since last time was a short sleeved shirt I still had to adjust the arms compared to the original version. I ended up leaving the arm width the same but adding some inches to the arm length, and I took the placket pattern and instructions from David Coffin's shirt making book. I also used the book for instructions on how to construct the shirt. I think that the only major problem remaining with the pattern is that the collar is a bit long in circumference, meaning that were the top button to be fastened there is not really enough room, causing the collar to not look right. Luckily, this shirt is unlikely to be worn with that button fastened, but this would need changing for a more formal shirt. The other issue is that the collar pattern requires a 1.5cm seam allowance on the edge that attaches to the collar stand. I only have 0.5cm, which really made things a bit tricky.

Oh yes - I almost forgot my terrible blunder. I cut out the pattern. Then a day or so later I was again gazing - this time at striped shirt a friend of mine was wearing. ...and noticing with dawning horror that the fabric should match at the centre front not the front edge of body pieces. Of course. Obvious. But I had done it wrong. I also did not have sufficient fabric to cut new front pieces (or even one new body piece). That is until James told me that having a seam across the front is really not a big deal if it is tucked into the trousers. He even suggested that he'd had a shirt like this previously! So I cut new fronts each made from 2 pieces and I lined up the striped pattern on the seam as closely as I could. ...and yes, indeed it worked - so well that I almost forgot to write about it...

More Black Jeans

2009-08-23T17:18:00.007+09:00

This month's large project was stitching a pair of jeans for James. The first time I made James some jeans

I made the pattern from an old pair of Wrangler jeans. That time, I used moderately lightweight "soft" denim. At the time James said he'd like a pair in thicker "proper" denim. So here they are.

They are creased because I washed them after finishing them, and James has yet to wear them for a day as it is far too hot as yet. They should be good for winter! It is so hot that it was difficult getting James to try these on for even 2 minutes in fading evening light, so if the James looks cross and the photos blurred, that's why. However, his mood did seem to improve a bit as I photographed him so it is possible that the jeans are not uncomfortable. The idea is that these will replace his relatively ill-fitting black Levi 501s, which have a seam-up-the-bum while still being to wide problem (ie too short back crotch seam and too wide hips). Finding really black thick denim was hard work. Eventually I found some in one of the larger fabric shops in the Nippori fabric district in Tokyo (for those who know the area it was the 2F of a shop more or less opposite the famous shop, "Tomato". I think it is called something like "Kawamura". I bought the denim more than a year ago, and I can't see the shop on the latest Nippori map. There was a sample on the wall and I walked round the floor looking for the denim, and then in frustration asked an assistant who escorted me what was almost a separate room, stuffed full of what looked like fantastic denim. Certainly this stuff was great to sew with, thick yet supple, and it even smells properly like real new jeans.) .

I used the same method as last time to make the jeans. A few cm were added to the pattern before putting it away last time, so this time there was enough fabric to make a double hem. In fact I ended up cutting a bit of extra fabric off, and the finished items look quite long too. I decided it was better to leave them long and then adjust them later if required. Perhaps they will decrease in length a bit in wearing and washing.

Constructing these was a lot of fun. I have realised that jeans are all about obvious seams and maximising bulk; on several occasions I was sewing through 8 layers of denim. This is a refreshing change from most sewing which tends to involve things like grading seams to make them as invisible as possible.

Scrappy Snappy update

2009-07-19T09:26:00.002+09:00

Felt tip pen is one of the deadly enemies of vinyl dolls. I can't help that think that Scrappy Snappy would just love to indulge in a little graffiti. So I carefully introduced Mary and Scrappy on neutral territory well away from all stationery. So far so good...

If there were any regular readers of this blog they might recognise the style of Mary's jacket. Yes, I used up some leftover fabric from the Jalie jacket, and made a sasha-sized version. I am not sure such a complex pattern adds much to doll-sized clothing. As sasha aficionados tend to suggest, perhaps "simple lines" suit them best.

Scrappy Snappy

2009-07-19T07:32:00.002+09:00

A few months ago a teddy bear maker and doll enthusiast by the name of Ted Menton made a kit for a sasha-sized teddy bear (ie a bear scaled for sashas), and offered to post the construction instructions on line. At the time he started the project, there was plenty of faux fur available in the shops so I elected to use locally available supplies rather than buy the kit from the US. So many people did order the kit, however, that the project got delayed as Ted completed the orders, and by the time the lessons were posted online (Ted kindly emailed me the pattern for free) at "Ted's Teddy Talk", I could find no fur in the Kamakura shops, it being a winter fabric... I guess people in Kamakura mostly wear faux fur rather than make furry animals out of it.

I opened up my numerous bags of fabric scraps and used some faux suede. Very little fabric is needed to make this bear, who Ted named Snappy (because his joints are made with press studs, "snaps" to Americans). The faux suede does have some give so I fused some non-stretch interfacing to the back to make sure that Snappy would maintain a good shape. I stuffed him using the insides of our couch which our little furry friends have made plentifully available. He did look rather naked when finished so I decided to sew him a hairstyle out of some blonde silk yarn I had lying around. This addition does seem to have given him quite a lot of ... character. James says he looks like Johnny Rotten... Consequently I have not yet dared introduce Scrappy Snappy to the comparatively genteel Sashas for fear he will corrupt them.

P.S. That's my marvelous new 15" MacBookPro in the photo!

red and green - Marfy waistcoat and skirt

2009-07-12T17:34:00.005+09:00

I made the waistcoat first. It is Marfy 1468 from catalogue FallWinter2007/08. The outer layer is a faux suede, made of some synthetic fibre. It is easy to work with as it does not fray. The lining is made with silk dupioni in a rather unpleasant pale green with pink cross threads. I underlined (or interfaced) the front pieces of the lining with silk organza. Otherwise I just made the front and the lining and stitched them together as one might a sleeveless dress. I under-stitched the armholes and fronts to keep the lining under control. A few months ago, through PatternReview, I took an online class by Sarah Veblen about buttons and buttonholes. It sounds like a trivial thing to take lessons in, but it was great to learn some correct techniques which come rather close to guaranteeing the desired results. So after having mostly added the lining I decided that not only would this look better with bound button-holes, but that the non-fray feature of the fabric meant this was a really good opportunity to try them out. Since I had already sewn the lining at this point I hand-stitched the buttonholes, which actually was a relaxing way to learn how to make them. I made one practice and then the real things. For fitting I cut 2cm seam allowances, basted together the lining, tried it on, added a bit to the bust and took a bit off the hip, and marked corrected stitching lines on both the lining and outer layer. For the side seams I sewed the outer layer and lining in a single action. I basted this first, tried the waistcoat on and slightly took in the waist before finally stiitching these seams.

The skirt is Marfy 023. It is mentioned but not highlighted in catalogue FallWinter2007/08 which generally means this pattern first appeared in an earlier catalogue, but I do not know when this would have been since I have no earlier catalogues, and I also could not find the pattern on the VoguePatterns site. Anyway, this is a really easy pattern to make so if you are scared by the no instructions of Marfy patterns this would be a good one to start with. I think it should have 4 pattern pieces: 2 waistband pieces, a front and a back. When I came to use my pattern it was missing one waistband piece, but I cannot blame Marfy since we have a small furry pet who just loves to steal bits of paper of this size. So I'm not sure what Marfy had in mind for the waistband but the remaining (back) piece was a simple rectangle so I just drafted a straight 1 piece waist band. I'm not sure I really like waistbands that go firmly round the waist so if I make this again I might just make a narrow binding at the top, and let it sit slightly lower. The skirt has a rear slit and a back zipper. Size 42 fits me almost perfectly (I just took 1cm off the length and slightly straightened the wait to hip profile). I made it out of the same fabric I used to make the green frock. This made things easy since it is a relatively robust fabric but does not need lining, so it is a fairly robust skirt that can still be worn in the hot Japanese summer.

Another frock meets another royal

2009-06-26T19:59:00.005+09:00

This one, a simple handshake with Princess Takamado, at Cambridge University's 800th birthday party in Tokyo, was rather less close to an international incident than the last time. This time the green silk frock did the honours.

The week before James rashly decided he wanted a bowtie to match my frock. There was barely enough fabric to complete both sides of the bowtie with the leftover green fabric, but James assured me that the way a bowtie is tied, means that each side can be different.

So I went ahead and made one side out of the green silk burnout underlined with red georgette, as used in the frock, and the otherside of shiny black silk charmeuse, which was leftover scraps from the lining of the pin-stripe skirt. I traced the pattern from James' favourite silk bowtie, and tried to match the feel, which required rather robust interfacing which I fused to the fashion fabric.

So it all worked out, and then James tried to tie it and discovered that both sides do show!!! Some quick googling found the way to tie a two sided bowtie - you put a single twist at the back of the neck. See photo and it should all become clear. James made the most of it, reversing the bowtie halfway through the meal, to show black bows and a green centre.

Wind and thunder

2009-05-24T15:55:00.006+09:00

The third part of the James' trews trilogy. These ones are made in Fujin and Raijin fabric, purchased at a large fabric store in Kyoto called Nomura Tailor. Fujin and Raijin are Shinto gods of wind and thunder, and, strangely, opposite Nomura Tailor which is located in one of the main shopping streets in Kyoto, there is a building which has huge images of these two gods on it. The pair also adorn a huge wall at our workplace, where we study climate change.

It rained continuously while I was making these trousers, which, unfortunately for the rest of Japan, was during the Golden Week national holiday. The fabric is reasonably thick so quite good for rainy season which is a slightly cooler period during the Japanese summer, typically lasting most fo June. These trews sport another zipped back pocket, using up an old zipper taken of some disposed of garment. This time (and last time) the pocket is slightly larger than for the dragon trews, for those oversized hands

In addition, Simon and his new friend Garfunkel are now equipped for summer, with cotton kimono in dramatic fabrics! Lining up all the seams so that the patterns match is quite wasteful of fabric, so I managed to cut up all the larger pieces leftover from making the trews. This is a good thing since I now feel I've done my bit and can in good conscience throw out the small scraps.

Triangle trews

2009-05-10T17:25:00.007+09:00

From time to time I impulsively buy 3.5m of cotton print to make into trews for James, so having made one pair I thought I'd carry on. and work through the stash Fabric for these was bought a couple of years ago at Yuzawaya in Kamata. It is rather lightweight cotton, so possibly not very heardwearing but they should be good for summer. Oh and I also corrected the pattern a bit to make the seams line up better, before cutting these out.

dragons!

2009-04-14T20:02:00.003+09:00

Some mid-weight dragon-baggies for James. These are a repeat of the old pattern used right at the start of this blog, although now I have done more stitching I realise that really the pattern could do with a bit of improvement to make the seam-lines match better! The fabric is a mid-weight slightly textured cotton in a Japanesie dragon print bought from "Tomato" in Nippori, Tokyo . Good for Kamakura as it is a town full of dragons, and not just ones like me, but real ones too! I added a rear zip-pocket to these, which is preferred over a non-zipped one, but apparently I made it a bit too small. My excuse is that James has unimaginably wide steak-like hands, and I was using up an old zipper from an ex-garment...

Jalie Jacket in grown-up size

2009-03-14T14:26:00.003+09:00

Last year I made the Jalie 2795 hooded jacket for my niece. I always intended to make one for me too. Jalie patterns seem to often include all sizes both child and adult in the same envelope. The differences between the sizes also seem small. This does make it a little difficult tracing the pattern sometimes, particularly in the region of the little triangles that mark the line-up points on the pattern pieces. I actually made mistakes in two of my pattern pieces, although I managed to use the pieces since I hadn't cut off the stitching line, and was using a completely un-ravelly fabric.

This jacket is made in a "lightweight" windpro bought from Mill Direct Textiles. It is a bit hit and miss buying from them - the website descriptions within each fabric type are opaque and the colours decidely approximate. However the quality is generally good, and the fabric type very clearly described making it a good shop for fabric meant for technical wear. Windpro is fleece that is wind resistant. It is not windproof, but cuts out a lot more wind than standard fleece. This makes it much more suitable for an outlayer such as this hoody. This particular version has a hard outer and fleecy inner, a fact that was not apparent to me from the description on the website, however, this makes it even more suitable for an outer layer. The fabric did indeed feel quite lightweight before the jacket was made, and I was concerned it would be too thin, but it is fine now it is sewn up. I envisage this is a spring/autumn weight jacket. In fact I have already started wearing it as an outer layer and so far it has been very successful, if the fact that James keeps asking "aren't you cold?" when we're standing on breezy railway platforms is anything to go by.

Construction was identical to the fleece made for my niece. On the whole I think I did a better job - easier second time around, but I did make one mistake, which was sewing the collar piece on upside down, sewing the shorter rather than longer edge onto the neckline. It was too late to rip by the time I realised, so I trimmed the sides of the piece so that it fitted onto the hood properly. However, by sewing the shorter piece to the neckline I had of course stretched it, which is, I think why there are draglines in the collar.

I am not so sure that the design at the front with the chest-level seam is particularly flattering, but the pockets, created by the seam, are certainly useful.

In Jalie sizes, my chest measurement places me two to three sizes above my waist and hip measurements. But in this case I didn't think I wanted the jacket to be waist or hip-hugging so I cut the correct size for my chest. I basted all the body seams together and tried it on and then decided to sew about 1mm outside the stitching line for the chest area and about 1mm inside for waist-hip. With all the seams on this garment that's at least 6mm reduction in total. I suppose I could have taken more off the waist-hip area, but the finished garment feels OK. Judging from the pattern pictrures, the pattern is designed to have rather long sleeves with cuffs down to the thumb joint. I reduced the length by sewing a bigger seam allowance at the cuff, so that they came down to this point on me. This long sleeve length makes the jacket excellent for cycling.

pajama party

2009-02-07T16:23:00.005+09:00

Last but certainly not least (cos they are for me) is the pajamas. These are made from a cool Jalie pattern 2686 in cotton flannel. These have more details than basic pajamas like those James gets :-) . For example, the jacket has piping detail which was fun to make (from cotton broadcloth strips cut on the bias with cord inside) and install. The waist band of the trousers has an elasticated back and a cord tie at the front. These took a long time to cut out because I squeezed in an extra pair of trousers, since they seem to wear out so much more quickly than the jackets, and I ended up cutting out mostly on a single layer of fabric. I lined up some bits properly with the fabric stripes, but failed to realise quite how the cuffs worked so they are not lined up at all.

After 2 pairs of trousers and a jacket there was about 30cm left plus other scraps. Just enough to make full pajamas plus dressing gown for Simon . These patterns were traced off some original sasha doll PJs, that came on wee James, a 1969 Sasha I found for sale on the web. Oh no - a vintage dolly addiction! I am a pensioner before my time! Anyway, I added a fun detail to these, using some of the selvage to make a fringe applied in a similar way to the piping in the Jalie pattern, using it to finish the fronts of the dressing down and also on the pockets and the cuffs of the pajama jacket.

James in winter

2009-02-01T21:39:00.005+09:00

James has always had a pair of winter walking breeches. Very nice they are too, in tweed. Of course they are supposed to be plus 2s (meaning 2" spare in length), but on James they were minus 2s. Apart from that, though they were great, so there was no need to make some new ones until they started to get rather thin.

I made these new plus 2s without destroying the originals, by pinning tracing paper onto the originals and drawing on the stitching lines. I then made a mock up in some super cheap corduroy, and then adjusted the pattern, and made sure that the pattern pieces lined up with each other. At least that was the idea. I forgot to transfer one of the adjustments (taking some extra out of the back crotch curve) to the pattern before cutting it out again. It is quite irritating, since it causes the trousers to "pooch out" at the back in most positions. It is not so bad in these picture,s where James has things in his pockets and is striding up the hill. What I should have done is double check by tacking together the final version after it was cut out - then I could easily have adjusted it. But in the overall complexity of all the different parts of the construction I forgot to do this. Major surgery would be required to adjust it now, so I wont bother, especially since James says the comfort is good.

These are made from Polartec PowerShield (from Malden Mills Direct). This is a stretch fabric, 1 layer with a hopefully very hardwearing outer and fleece inner, whereas the originals and my mock up fabric are both non stretch woven. The back pocket is very clever. It creates a double thickness seat which is good for durability and warmth sitting on rocks and sliding down moutains and the like. The belt loops are about 10cm long, and they fold into the waistband, which meant dealing with enormous thicknesses of fabric at the waistband. There are all sorts of clever willy guards inside the fly, while the bottom of the legs are finished with a little gusset and velcro tabs.

As you can see from the photos, there was not much snow around when we went for a little walk the other week, so these have not been tested in real winter conditions yet. But it was the first time on any winter walk that the bottom of the legs of James' breeches have not come undone nor his socks fallen down!

Penny Frocks

2009-02-01T20:54:00.006+09:00

My nice niece (called Penny) has her birthday on Christmas Day. A year ago I bought her toys, but the shops were all so segregated into boys things (fun, interactive) and girls things (domestic-ish, pink, useless) that I warned my brother well in advance that next time I would make things, and got measurements of niecey in about October. So, having planned well in advance I managed to fit in making two things even though the wimmin's conference organising was getting a bit of an obsession by then.

First of all the Penny frock. It was a choice between a Simplicity pattern and a New Look Project Runway pattern. I actually bought both patterns and then dithered about which to choose. The Project Runway patterns don't look that appealing to me. Maybe it is because the pictures are always so small on the pattern cover, and they look weirdly "trendy", and unpractical. I decided on the Simplicity and even traced the pattern. Then I compared it to the New Look P.R. pattern and realised that it had a huge amount of ease (about 6") so was going to look rather style-less on a four year old, and that the Project Runway pattern was a lot cuter! So I switched. It turned out to be a lot of fun. These P.R. patterns have lots of optional extras, that are quite easy to add. I made the frock as a sleeveless version from a rather thin cotton, and lined it with a red silk (both from my stash), and then made a silk sash for the waist. I don't know how hard it will wear, but kids clothes only need to last a year, right? I haven't seen a picture of her wearing it yet, but I understand she has done so, so perhaps it fits.

To encourage the inner tomboy in Penny-niece, I also made her a hoodie. The was made from left over sweatshirt fabric. So that's 3 hoodies this piece of fabric has made - one for James, one for Simon and one for Penny! This is the Jalie hooded jacket pattern. I also intend to make this one for myself and I have already bought some windpro fleece from Malden Mills. The pattern was great. It was easy to make (no easing - just stitching pieces together and top stitching), but with lots of pieces and top stitching it looks quite cool (I think). I haven't had any feedback on whether the jacket fits or not (or whether niecey is allowed to be a hoodie-girl!).

A week after posting it all off, I was thinking about how impoverished a present of stuff stitched from spare fabric was, when I spotted a local shop that sells moderately nice kiddiwink clothes. I couldn't believe how expensive they were, for things not as nice (IMO) and certainly in less nice fabric. Kiddies clothes are also fun to make. Not quite as fast as dolly clothes but things like cutting out are much easier, and the clothes come together quite quickly.

Dolly clothes

2009-02-01T20:28:00.006+09:00

This is the easiest one to start with. I made a wee set of clothes for Simon: some black jeans, a striped t-shirt and a sweatshirt hoodie, all from spare fabric left over after making similar pieces for James. Here are the two of them working at their computers.

And here are some close-ups. They were based on commercial patterns (Simplicity), which I think are designed for 18" dolls. Simon is only 16" tall and quite a lot smaller all round, so the patterns had to be reduced in size quite a bit. The jeans were quite different from the pattern in the packet since I added real pockets including a coin pocket, silver top stitching and a velcro fly. They fasten with a press-stud. The fun part is how quick and easy it is to knock dolls clothes up - and it reduces the piles of <1mx<1m pieces of fabric.

I also have some tartan fabric, so cut off a bit to make a great kilt for Simon. I actually ironed and hand stitched in the pleats, which isn't the way a real great kilt is constructed - you are supposed to fold it into rough pleats each time you put it on. This isn't really finished. Needs a shirt to go underneath it. I also have since bought some shoes and boots for the dollies. Unfortunately I don't have a picture of James in his great kilt for comparison.

Back from the "real" world

2009-02-01T20:23:00.004+09:00

It isn't that I have given up stitchin', although I have done a bit less over the last few months, but I got very busy helping to organise the Japan Wimmin's Conference. Anyway, the Conference was last weekend so now, perhaps I have time for some quick reports on some of the things I have stitched recently.

Since August, I made a jacket and a frock for my niece, some winter walking trousers for James, some PJs for me and used up some bits of spare fabric on dolly clothes...

Mary and Simon in Kimono

2008-08-23T16:56:00.005+09:00

While I was visiting my Pa in the UK in June I discovered, in a box, my two Sasha dolls. I got Mary on my second birthday and Simon a few years later, but I never played with them aggressively - they were more kind of decorative - so they are in quite good nick. I couldn't find their box of clothes, but then I remembered the pieces of spare fabric too big to throw out and too small to make a garment with back in Japan.... So we bundled Mary and Simon into our carry-on bags and now here they are in Japan.

They were finding their one set of clothes too hot so the first thing they asked for was some silk kimono. I have actually only made one so far but I have enough fabric for another. Anyone recognise the fabric? If this blog had any readers I would make it a puzzle, but since it doesn't I will just remind myself of the answers. :-) The chiffon burnout is from James' man blouse. Top quality Japanese silk! Lucky Mary and Simon! It is lined with silk charmeuse which was used to line the pinstripe skirt. It is fully-lined so this makes it reversible (for the goth-kimono look). The Obi (the sash) is made from stretch silk charmeuse used to line number two of the recent frocks. I found a pattern on the internet showing the pieces and shapes of a kimono and then fitted the proportions to Mary and Simon's frame. Both men and women wear kimono in Japan. Women in formal kimono are a common sight in Kamakura so Mary is wearing the kimono in that style. However the colouring of this kimono is more like a men's kimono. Men are more commonly seen wearing the summer kimono (called yukata) so this is the style in which Simon is wearing it. Both sexes do up the kimono wrapping left side over right side. Here is a close up of Simon - he looks almost half Japanese!

Frocks

2008-08-19T19:36:00.010+09:00

This is Marfy 1661 from this year's catalogue. When I were a lass I used to wonder why those close fitting dresses, which I now learn are called "sheath"s never fitted proper, and concluded I must be a uniquely weird shape. Probably it is true, but now it I realise that because they are close fitting the ready to wear versions of these sorts of frocks probably fit very few people.

So first I made a test using some wool blend fabric from the Emma One Sock online store. The pattern size is 42 which seems to fit quite well for the other patterns I have tried, sometimes requiring taking in a bit at the hips or letting out a bit at the bust. So I cut the 42 with 1 inch seam allowances. It was quite easy to put together the fronts and backs but took a while with all the pocket details and top-stitching. The pattern has some lining/facing pieces for the top of the bodice. Since my fabric was pretty solid I just made these from cupro lining fabric.

According to this book I have on making Linings, when you line a sleeveless frock, before stitching the side-seams you are supposed to stitch right sides together fashion fabric and lining pieces and then pull the frock through both the straps. I was sure this was impossible, since my fabric was quite thick as well as sturdy, so instead I did the front and back linings separately and then stitched the shoulders together after having turned the attached linings right sides out.

Then it was time to put in the zipper up the back and stitch all the long seams. I basted them first and then discovered I had to take in the waist and hips a bit. Then I stitched it all together. The final result was a bit of a mess at the back. The hem hung at an angle and there was extra fabric at the back waist. I've had to make what they for some reason call a "sway-back" adjustment before when making close fitting t-shirts. This is where you take a horizontal dart out of the back. So I played around with the fitting and decided to adjust the pattern, taking both horizontal and vertical darts out of the back and, because of the low-hanging back hem, I didn't add the removed fabric back in again on the hemline. I didn't want to go chopping up the test version though, so to make it acceptable I just stuck a couple of vertical darts in the back and sewed the hem crooked. It looks a bit odd at the back but seems pretty much OK all things considered. I also adjusted the pattern to take a cm out of the back neckline since it gaped a little.

Next it was time to stitch a real one. For this I had some linen-cotton-lycra blend stretch fabric also from Emma One Sock. Since the fabric is a bit transparent and also a bit rough to the touch I fully lined this with some white stretch silk charmeuse from Sarah Veblen's online store. This time I did manage to pull the frock through the shoulder straps although only half the dress at a time since I did this step before sewing the centre front and centre back seams. These fabrics were both very nice since neither frayed much at all. This was a surprise since plain silk charmeuse seems to fray a great deal. With the stretch of the fabric I didn't need to insert a back zipper which was also a bonus. Weirdly I found that I had to take a a couple of cm out of the front of the neckline. I did this by altering the centre seam between the neckline and bust. The bad thing about this version is that I think the neckline was better before I went and top-stitched it. Apart from that it fits quite well. At least James says it is better than the practice. I have been wearing these two frocks at work quite a bit through the hot hot hot sweaty summer.

From scraps to boxers

2008-06-14T14:50:00.007+09:00

For some unfathomable reason, James didn't want photos of his lovely self in his underwear thrown all over the interwebs. So here we have a rather dull couple of photos of James' new boxer shorts pinned to the front of a chair.

The shorts are made using the leftover pieces of silk from my suit jacket lining. The fabric pieces left little room for manoeuvre and, unless one were to start making stripes, there was no choice as to which colour was the front and which the back. The first photo shows the front. The pattern is Jalie 2326, which contains a large range of sizes from boy to bloke. James' measurements are closest to size V and I added a 1cm to the seam allowances because the silk frays a lot. I decided to practice a rolled hem so including the extra 1cm, these are bit longer than they might have come out. That, however, is a good thing because James is so tall. There are only very small scraps of silk left now, and I used up the thread I bought to go with it, which makes me glow with the illusion of economy. Being so shiny, these shorts really do look like the shorts boxers wear, but I am told they are very comfortable and I hope they will be good for wearing round the house, as "loungewear", now it has got hot again. Probably these are on the baggy side, and in a less drapey fabric perhaps I should make them a bit narrower.

The shorts were fundamentally simple to make with only two pattern pieces, plus an elastic waistband, but I find sewing anything in silk charmeuse quite tricky. The instructions on the pattern are terse, and really give no explanation or feeling of where they are heading unlike, say, the instructions on a typical Kwik Sew pattern, which teach you how to sew. This gives me some nervousness since it would be very easy to miss a step and makes me wonder if it might have been easier to not bother with the instructions at all! Actually I only started work after checking some pairs of James' boxer shorts to see how they were really put together. One thing I noticed too late but must write down for reference is that, in RTW boxer shorts, the elastic waistband is not stretched much over the front fly area, where there are several layers (4-5) of fabric together. The consequence of over stretching it as I did is a curve which does not lie completely flat when the shorts are worn.

A suit

2008-05-22T21:04:00.007+09:00

Remember the pin-stripe skirt and the story of how I got given 2m extra pin-stripe for free? Obviously I had to attempt a suit. Now, for only about 100USD, and a month's hard labour, I have one. I actually finished it a couple of weeks ago, but have been tidying up since then - wool sure make a lot of dust - and I only wore it properly for the first time this week.

The jacket - Marfy 1450 - is, of course, constructed out of a long series of errors. I like to think the errors get smaller the more jackets I make, but still with so many steps in making a jacket there really are a lot of places to go wrong. Moderately priced ready to wear suits are made with much greater accuracy, but I think home stitchin' still wins because of better fit, and nicer fabric (for the price).

I used Kenneth King's Tailored Jacket CD to make the jacket. I think I made better job of the inferfacing this time, but I still struggle to get the lapel right. This jacket has vertical darts in front and back and they all have little dimples in which is also not ideal. Marfy patterns do like quite pouffy sleeves and it is a bit of a struggle getting all the ease in. My resulting sleeve cap is nothing like as smooth as a real suit.

The Marfy size 42 is pretty close to my size. The last jacket ended up a bit tight across the back, and I shortened it a bit too, and also narrowed the shoulder slightly. I compared that pattern to this one and decided that adjustments would mostly likely be within seam allowances so I cut out the lining. I broadened the back by sewing 0.5cm into the seam allowance at the back-underarm seam, tapering down to nothing by the waist. I also added 0.5cm to the circumference of the arm, again tapering to nothing in about 20cm. After making these adjustments in the lining I make the adjusted pattern pieces for the interfacing and top fabric. I also added some extra to the pattern for shoulder pads. I only used thin pads (0.5cm) but it wasn't clear to me whether space for pads is included in the pattern. Even with the extra I added, the bust point is a tad high. The arms are exactly the right length unaltered and I also did not change the length of the body.

The lining is silk charmeuse in an excellent blue colour, bought from Sarah Velben's online store. Generally I prefer to shop for fabric locally, but I haven't seen much range of silk lining fabric so quite a while ago I bought Sarah's colour card. It is really worthwhile since it means there is no guesswork over colour or fabric (I also have a set of samples of the different silks she sells). The only downside is having to wait for it to arrive, but since this time I actually had a plan I could buy it well in advance.

The pattern has no pockets, but KK's CD includes an inside pocket in the lining which I included. It is rather handy although , of course, I managed to put it in the wrong side, which makes it a bit harder to get at than it should be.

Longsleeved J

2008-03-29T14:51:00.008+09:00

The brown raglan top is Kwik Sew 2561, a pattern which I have made in various forms 5 times. This version is the slightly slender version, with crew neck and arms extended by 1" compared to last time. The fabric is a fairly substantial cotton knit from Swany. This one seems to have really worked if I am to judge by the fact that there have not yet been any complaints!

The other two tops are cycle/mountain wear and are made of Polartec PowerDry using Kwik Sew 2439. I have made this before, only last time I made View B. This is the "close fitting" View A. After laying out the pattern pieces I realised I could fit them all onto the fabric twice so I thought I would make two tops. So I cut out two fronts, two back and two arms, plus collars and cuffs, neatly using up all the fabric. Only later did I realise that two James' have four arms. Fortunately I had some more PowerDry, although it is slightly heavier weight, so was able to cut the extra arms. I blame the arm pattern for being confusing because, unusually it is symmetrical and cut on the fold.

I cut a medium added an inch to the chest measurement and cut the length to large size. The arms I cut to the full length including the hem and then added a 4cm cuff. Also, as usual I added an inch to the back length. It all worked out fine, except that, at least in this lightweight fabric (the pattern suggests heavyweight fleece) the pattern is not remotely close fitting, especially in the arms. I'm not quite decided what to do if I make more sports longsleeves. I could possibly adapt the raglan top (which I already have a zippered version of), or I could start from James' T-shirt draft...

review

Pin-stripes

2008-03-11T21:30:00.005+09:00

Marfy 1469. From the Marfy Fall 2007 catalogue: "This flared skirt is divided into panels cut on the grain and on the bias. Suggested fabric pinstripe"

The hard part of making this skirt is cutting out the pattern so as to get the stripes on the bias strips going the right way. I spent a long time working it out and then, finally giving in and asking for James' help, I managed to do it...wrong! But I only made one mistake and I was able to switch the incorrect pieces and draw new stitching lines so there was no problem in the end.

My choice of this pattern was all about the fabric. There is a store in Kamata (Yuzawaya) that sells fabric for men's suits on the top floor. Actually what they do is make suits for men. You pick your fabric from a very large selection and they make the suit. However, (if you persist and find the right assistant) they will also sell you fabric by the metre. I have long wondered what I could do with this fabulous resource (apart from make James a suit which he doesn't really need) so when I saw this pattern in the Marfy catalogue I jumped at it. I thought it was the perfect piss-take on pin-stripe. So in this case I even followed the Marfy fabric recommendation! You might think this is not so extraordinary but Marfy do suggest some outrageous fabrics. Things like "vicuna"!!!

I decided on black with blue stripes and one of the samples I really liked was at half-price, so I requested 1.5m. It was a Super100s Japanese wool. Then it turned out this fabric was end-of-line and the assistant decided to give me the whole 3.3m. I'd only asked for 1.5m so I got that length at half-price and then the extra 1.8m free! Unbelievably that means I got 250 US dollars worth of fabric for about 55 US dollars and of course it means I also have enough to make a suit.

After cutting out I finished all the edges of the pieces with an overlock stitch to avoid fraying. I am a little under size 42 in the hips according to the measurement chart and in fitting I took 1cm off the-right side seam. In the left side I installed an invisible zipper. I cut the full length, but aware that it would be shortened quite a bit I increased the flare a little. In the end I tried several lengths and decided that mid-knee length looked best, which, including a 2.5 inch hem, meant cutting a couple of inches off the bottom. I hand-sewed the hem, and also added a black silk charmeuse lining. I had some problems sewing this fabric. The bobbin seemed to be sticking. It didn't actually effect the stitches that I could see, but the thread did not seem to come off the bobbin smoothly. I never quite tracked down the problem although it did seem to improve a lot when I used a size 7 needle...I hope my machine isn't peaky.

The fit is really good, and it looks very nice to me in the mirror, although photographing this skirt is rather a challenge. I think it's very cool - no one else on the train to Tokyo has half their pin-stripes at 45 degrees!

review

Black jeans

2008-02-02T18:47:00.001+09:00

James wanted some new black jeans. Choice is limited since James takes between 32/36 and 34/36, the second number being the length and the first the waist measurement. Such jeans are rare in most parts of the world and probably non-existent in Japan. He has some 34/36 501s but they have always had an up-the-bum-crack issue. We looked in Levi's while in San Francisco last year and the latest 34/36s are much worse fitting. Basically, the 34 label now applies to a fatter arse (odd since I thought it was supposed to be inches), and of course no 32/36s in the shop at all.

The jeans James has that mostly fit are 32/36 Wranglers. Problem is these are actually a bit tight across his lower back and he doesn't like to wear them for long periods, especially after he slipped a disk a few years ago. Those jeans are also blue.

So the aim - transform the Wranglers into black and a slightly looser fit.

The big cheat was that James had 2 identical pairs of the Wranglers so I took one to pieces and drafted the pattern pieces as close as I could to the originals. I also stuck as close as I could to the construction used in the originals, without which I think that the result would not look very RTW. To start with I added 5 cm at the waistband tapering to nothing at the hems. Then during the fitting stage I took off 2cm above the hips - so I reckon this means they are basically size 33/36, in old money. The only thing is that I didn't allow quite enough hem allowance so they are about 1cm shorter than they might be.

These jeans were a rather amazing construction journey. The pockets were pretty standard. The only extra piece is a piece of pocketing attaching the pocket to the flies.

From the fly onwards construction is completely different to usual pattern construction, because of the lapped seams. First the right hand side of the zipper is sewn. Then the left, and then the front crotch seam is lapped. The willy guard (zipper guard?) is interesting since it is basically a rectangle with a fold in at the bottom which adds some bulk. I guess it is deliberate! For a more "manly" effect. For the crotch the back and front are sewn before the inseam.

If you look at the lapped seams on your jeans you will see they look the same from the right or wrong side, whereas a home-sewers lapped seam does not (at least in instructions I have seen). I guess they have special machines in the sweat-shops. To make it look like RTW, first lay half the seam allowances over each other, and pin or baste in place. Then turn the seam to take up the rest of the seam allowance, pin and baste. Then sew the stitching lines on the machine. I was greatly helped in this tricky endeavour by magical thread that is sold in Japan that melts when ironed. It really only sticks to a basting level, not a permanent hold. I used this for my first line of basting and so when I turned the seam and ironed, the full lapped seam was lightly stuck in place. This was particularly useful for moulding the curved back crotch seam.

The waistband was fun. It is just a piece of fabric, folded in half, seam allowances ironed in place and then top-stitched all the way round. That was actually a whole lot easier to construct than the usual pattern method, although I realise that I have one line of stitching where in home-sewing there would be three. I did add some stay-tape at the waistband to prevent stretching.

Medium weight denim, black on the front and olive on the back. This pair is mid-weight denim and he would like a thicker pair some time. That of course would be harder work with the sewing - my machine handled the mid-weight denim very well. Summer should however save me from making another pair very soon.

I even ripped off the Wrangler back pocket pattern... Here is the boy relaxing in his new jeans.

I entered these in the PR 2008 rip-off competition. Winning entries in that competition are usually inspired twists on commercially available patterns that make them look cunningly designer cat-walk. Obviously this entry falls short on many levels, but its the taking part that counts init...

Overpowered by flowers

2008-01-19T13:34:00.001+09:00

I bought this lovely fabric in Keitoya in Kamakura. It is a 4-way stretch cotton woven, with a lot of stretch along the grain and less stretch across the grain, relatively supple considering its weight, quite warm and very comfortable. However, when I got it out of the fabric pile, James kept pulling faces and covering his eyes, and I had to teach him what stitchin' people in the interwebworld say when they dig unspeakable fabric from their stash, and that is "what was I thinking?". This enables one to pass off fabric one thinks is lovely off as a blunder when one discovers that the rest of the world disagrees. I'd thought a pair of trousers in this fabric were just the ticket for work or play. After all, it seems nothing clothing-wise is a step too far in Japan.

This is Marfy Pattern #1058. It was in the Fall 2007/2008 issue but as evidenced by the Marfy patterns on the Vogue patterns website, it is not new. The pattern appears in the catalogue twice. The first entry they are pictures with a loose shirt/tunic and called "tapered hip-hugging pants", the second time pictured with a quite minimalist jacket they are referred to as, "straight pants with pointed hip-hugging waistline". On the Vogue Patterns site they are in the Marfy Autumn/Winter 2006 collection and pictured in a third ensemble with this text, "These straight, hip-hugging trousers have a wide inserted waistband".

I cut the trousers on the line of less stretch in the fabric which was the cross grain. This means the pattern is sideways, but I decided it was better that way round since it elongated the design. I made the trousers assuming from the Marfy size chart and previous experiences with their patterns that I may have to take them in a bit at the hips. The fabric is very stretchy and I took 2cm at the back seam allowance (just in the top ~10cm) and 1cm each side seam allowance (all the way down). It was then I realised I hadn't sewn the back darts! No trousers I have sewn before have had these so I missed them. The fabric is so stretchy that I was able to take the 1cm darts, which improved the shape, without much trouble, although the waistband is a tad short with all those cm removed. I am not sure I have learned so much about the pattern since my fabric is so forgiving, but these were a much easier fit than the Vogue trousers I have made, where I had to change the shape of the side and crotch seams and waist band.

I only noticed while perusing the vogue patterns site and the Marfy catalogue to write this post that the waistband is secured with two buttons and that there are belt-loops on the catalogue photos. The two buttons would have been a good idea since the waistband is quite wide. As for belt-loops I can add them later if I can find enough fabric - I don't have much left. Since it was rather expensive I did not buy much excess.

A size 11 universal needle worked best - a thicker one made holes. I used Resilon thread a straight stitch and I finished all the edges with an overlock stitch.

Here are some pictures of the, erm, ensemble of black cotton jumper and flowery trews. The camera has difficulties exposing on both items simultaneously, as I expect do most peoples' eyes. I still like these trousers and even James admits they are "fun".

review

Cotton jumper

2008-01-19T12:55:00.000+09:00

When I was 17 or 18 my Mum bought me a black knit cotton jumper. It is a slightly odd fabric, like it is made of string. It shrinks when washed and then stretches in wear, a bit like denim does, only more so. Anyway, this jumper no longer has much shape, but I kept it because a smartish-casual (ie not sporty) black jumper is a versatile thing. However, when I found a knit in Yuzawaya (Kamata) that had a similar feel I though I should make a replacement. The fabric is a sheer, or perhaps it might be called a holey knit. It is so cold at home and work in winter that we rarely actually remove our jumpers to show what is underneath, so I thought it was a positive feature to be able to see through the fabric. Having worn the jumper for a week I don't think this fabric is as hard wearing as the original so I have doubts it will be around in 20 years.

I took the pattern I used for this jumper, which in turn was stylistically derived from Burda 8291, and added ease (2 inches total = 1/2" at each side seam) at the bust and waist to make a less fitted top. The hips always seems to stick out on the other versions so I did not add any ease there. I then redrafted the sleeve in order to make it a bit looser. A strange thing happened when I did this because I made a mistake and equated the lengths of armscye and sleeve cap not on the stitching line but at the edge of the pattern pieces. This results in the sleeve cap being too short. However, in the original pattern I had released a dart at the armscye, and it was just about the same size as the error induced by my drafting mistake. So I took the opportunity to ease the dart fabric as was taught in Sharon Gifford's T-shirt class on PR . Due to the willingness of the fabric to shrink and stretch under the iron, this worked far better than I expected. Until then I'd not got this to work that well. Now I think the key is in how the fabric reacts to the steam iron.

I used a size 14 needle, put Resilon thread in the bobbin, and used a straight stitch for some of the seams (double back-stitch for the hems). Resilon is a Japanese thread in size 50, that has some stretch and is also rather strong, which makes it possible to use a straight stitch in garments with small to moderate stretch. I sometimes use it in top and bobbin, but it has a tendency to spring off the reel and then twist up, especially at the start of the reel.

jumper re-form

2008-01-03T14:25:00.000+09:00

This was originally a practice run for a pertex cycling top, which later became world famous. However it has turned out to be a very popular fleece top for wearing in the mountains. James uses it as apres-walking wear in the drafty huts during summer and walks in it in the winter. I highly recommend windpro fleece; it really does make a far superior jumper for cold conditions. Yesterday James complained that he didn't like the cuffs. He said they were cold. As the pertex practice these were created using a simple hem with elastic cord in them. I have now replaced this by more normal cuffs made from powerstretch.

A re-form is what you do in Japan when you want to change your fixed interior decor. So you replace your white walls, white ceiling and wooden floor by, say, white walls, a white ceiling and maybe a wooden floor. Or you might replace your kitchen cupboards with kitchen cupboards. Of course if you want to spend a fortune it can be more extensive than this involving knocking holes in the walls and such like. Since we rent our house we can't do any of this. So we just have to put up with white walls a white ceiling and a wooden floor. I don't mean to sound too sarcastic. I actually really like the simplicity of Japanese decor.

Jumpers again

2008-01-01T17:11:00.000+09:00

One lunchtime during the AGU in San Francisco we popped into Sak's 5th Avenue Men's Store, which isn't on 5th Avenue at all, but just of Union Square. How silly to forget to rename their store when they went to SF. The shop is tiny compared to the other bit of the shop (the wimmins section?) which runs for almost the whole length of one side of the square. Anyway, inside S5AMS were lots of lightweight fluffy jumpers costing hundreds and hundreds of dollars. One might have been tempted only a badly fitting jumper is still a badly fitting jumper no matter the fluff-factor or the price tag. So, by way of getting some fun in famous Britex fabrics which is nearby, I suggested to James that we go and buy some fabric and make a fluffy jumper ourselves. Britex is an odd shop. You can't really browse. You tell the staff and they find you what you want from their stock. Fine for us since we'd just been feeling up the fluffy stuff in S5AMS. They sold me 2.25 yards of a 60 inch wide black wool knit for $50 a yard. It really was only just enough with no room for cutting error. It's smarter and less fluffywuffy than the stuff in S5AMS. I think it's high quality, and I expect it to wear well but time will tell.

So then it was back to KS2561, for the third time in the year. We decided to make it a bit slimmer than the previous version made with quite thick (and very fluffy) fabric, so trimmed the pattern down by 0.25" on the side seams, tapering the arms to their original side at the cuffs. Got confused again by the sleeve length. My tracing stated the adjusted pattern had been lengthened by 1.5" compared to the original but when I compared the two, it was much less than that. so I retraced it to 1.5" extra length. Of course when it came to it I had to take that extra length (5/8") off again! I've also now adjusted the cuffs to be narrower than the original pattern piece because I prefer them shorter.

So now having a properly adjusted pattern, James wanted another longsleeve T-shirt. The fabric to be used was this buttermilk. It is quite lightweight and I did wonder if it would be too light for men's t-shirt. I'd not sewn with buttermilk before. It really isn't all that stretchy. Pretty much no stretch along the grain and not that much width-ways. These features conspired to make James complain that the sleeves are now too short!! tsk! The problem is mostly that the tighter neckband (less width-ways stretch) pulls the neck higher, but the lack of length-ways stretch also contributes. So now I have a note on the pattern piece to lengthen it an inch for the crew neck version! A v-neck in this less stretchy fabric would I think really require a longer neckband. Another thing about buttermilk is that it ladders - so I got to use one of the very fancy over-lock stitches on my machine which was quite fun. A good feature of the low-stretch fabric was that I didn't get any stretching of necklines and hems. A less good feature is the fabric seems attracted to other fabric. It doesn't cling to skin but it does to under-Tshirts or over-jumpers, as can be seen in the photos of both the shirt and the jumper in this post.

Hoodie Hug

2007-12-22T17:17:00.001+09:00

This week James got even older. To celebrate he got some teen wear - another hoodie. This one is made from 100 weight fleece (which is their lightest but actually it is still quite thick) from Malden Mills. It has a lower nap on one side (MM call it velour), and I chose that for the outside. The main thing, which isn't really apparent from the pictures, is that the garment is better stitched together than the first one. I could pretend this is due to an improvement in skill but in reality my stitches took a big step change for the better upon purchase of the "new" sewing machine almost a year ago. I had to re-trace the pattern since the previous tracing was used up making the pertex top pattern. The sleeves are shortened about an inch compared to the last one, but I forgot to lengthen the back so ended up cheating the hem a bit to make up.

V-neck for Pa

2007-12-01T13:01:00.000+09:00

I made another V-neck jumper like this. The fabric is almost identical, a wool/angora mix, but much cheaper; it was bought from the closing down sale of the second Keitoya store in Kamakura in May of this year. This one is for my Pa who I measured while we were on holiday together last month.

I made medium size, but cut it a bit shorter - along the S-line at the front. I added an inch at the chest and took 2 inches off the hips. I shortened the arms by half and inch, with the intention of making them 2 inches shorter than James'. After tacking on the cuffs and trying the jumper on James, I was dismayed to realise the arms were not really short on him so I took off more while making it by sewing the cuff on with a 1.5cm SA.

The jumper is Pa's Christmas present. Shockingly it seems to fit. The pictures are rather dark. I suppose that's just because there aren't so many photons in the UK.

Marfy Jacket

2007-11-20T20:18:00.000+09:00

Although hardly a quick job, this jacket did not take quite as long to make as it seems from the length of time since I last posted. We had a holiday in Colorado and Utah, and I finished the jacket shortly after my return. Then it took a while to do the photo-shoot.

The jacket is made from some sort of synthetic suede, bought for not very much from Swany in Kamakura. The edges do not fray. It was possible to un-pick and re-stitch a row of stitching, but perhaps only once before the fabric starts to ruin.

After lengthy consideration of the pattern sizes I bought size 42. In theory this size should be a little tight at the bust and a little loose at the hips. I made a muslin from a very cheap cotton woven. I ended up lengthening the jacket by 3cm, decreasing the shoulders by 1cm each side, and taking in the waist at the back side seam, by about 1cm each side. This last adjustment also meant adjusting the un-belt feature on the back. The final result on the real-fabric is fine but is a little snug at the bust and a little looser at the hips! I realise what I did wrong wit the muslin - I only attached one arm so did not properly check the fit at the bust/across the the back.

No instructions with Marfy patterns, so the muslin was very useful for practising how to make the jacket. For the basic construction I used Kenneth King's foolproof CD for a Tailored Jacket and this time (unlike last time) I interfaced the jacket body with some sort of hair cloth (I never really know what I am buying in Japan!) from Yuzawaya in Kamata. One super thing about this CD in combination with a Marfy jacket, which comes with no lining pieces is that Kenneth's techniques fit together best if you draft your own lining from his finely detailed instructions.

This jacket has quite a few features which deviate from a classic jacket. There is an extra front piece, of rather an interesting shape. Then there is a pocket and a kind of flap thingie. I think the people at Marfy are just having fun making a puzzle! I also puzzled a bit over the cuff and I am not sure I did that quite right since my method was rather fiddly, and I think resulted in a slightly weak point. The front of the jacket is done up with a centred zipper. Because I was using fake suede, which does not press very well, I faced and understitched the hem and cuffs. I also interfaced these facings with tricot fusible. I used various bits of interfacing elsewhere, fusing a woven onto the front at the "flap-bit", reinforcing the back with tricot fusible where the snaps attach (I used snaps throughout - I thought snaps and zippers might go together) and I also interfaced the pockets with a bit of quilting cotton (I don't quilt - I make trews for my James!). I also lapped most of the seams, for reasons of suede.

The lining was bought from Yuzawaya in Kamata and is a thicker than usual purple cupro. Kenneth's CD has a really nice lining method with piping and a magnificent inside pocket. The piping on the lining is made from silk duppioni.

I used 60 weight thread and a size 12 microtex needle for non top-stitched seams. For the top-stitching (of which I did lots) I changed the top thread to a 30 weight thread and used a size 16 topstitch needle. I had trouble with the top-stitching at the hem - it might need redone but I left it to see if it holds. However, after that debacle I hand-stitched all the way round the fronts and collars. That did take quite a few evenings - I can only do so much before getting sloppy and this really had to be as neat as I could do (which isn't really very neat).

I like the final result although people do keep asking me if I made it so it must look home-made or weird in some way. tee hee! The Japanese are very kind. Not like those Americans. When we were in Boulder on holiday some incredibly tatty fellow came up and told James he was wearing the ugliest pair of pants he'd ever seen. These lovely autumnal beauties were the culprit.

A Scot-Jap stylee shirt

2007-09-16T17:42:00.000+09:00

I had another go at the Kwik Sew shirt this time using quite a bit of the information in D.P.Coffin's Shirtmaking book.

It is Scot-Jap because the collar and general style is taken from James' fave (but defunct) shirt bought in Ayr, Scotland, but the fabric, being lightweight silk from Keitoya in Kamakura is not something I think you could ever wear down a wind-swept Ayr high street. Well, maybe if global warming _really_ kicks in...

You can read all the details of the alterations I made on my review. The bit I remain unsure about is how wide the sleeves should be. I did not alter this aspect significantly in my alterations and I wonder if they are a bit loose. As DPC explains in his book, if you increase the sleeve cap height you make the sleeve point more down towards the ground and decrease the width of the sleeve. I couldn't experiment with this here because needle holes show in this silk and with that and the 1/4" seam allowances I think putting in a new sleeve would have caused rather a mess. Next time maybe...

James always has problems finding long sleeve shirts that fit because they were always too short and fat. But for short sleeve shirts, he just buys UK medium sized because they fit he body. Initially I was very confused when I saw how looong the sleeves were on this shirt. Then I looked up some shirt shops on the interweb and found lots of pics of men in short sleeve shirts with hems falling at about the elbow. What a revelation!

Sewing machine notes:
Used a size 10 microtex needle, because it was the one that didn't go "thunk thunk thunk" as it stitched this fine fabric, and #90 thread. Finished raw edges with a 3 step zig-zag using edge finishing foot.

Marfy rugby shirt - 1493

2007-09-02T16:34:00.001+09:00

I guess the Italian women's rugby team don't really dress like this on the field, but this is like a mix of a blouse and a rugby shirt with the addition of trendy empire waist and feature pleating. Actually I am not sure that every place Marfy write "pleat" on the pattern they mean it - I think sometimes they might mean "gather". Like on the back of this top, I think you are supposed to gather the top into the bottom. I sewed pleats and James thinks they are "a bit funny".

It is all a bit funny really, but since Marfy patterns are well-known to be "fashion-forward", this means that everyone else in the world will be wearing this style soon even though they don't realise it yet. Until then I will just have to put up with the funny looks. Actually I think "fashion-forward" might really mean "daft and will never catch on but if I call it 'forward' you fools will buy it anyway".

Actually I love this top. I made it from some super 4-way stretch tencel knit found in Yuzawaya, Kamata for 3300¥/m. Splutter. The fabric is light yet cosy. Nice for this time of year when it is still hot but a little cooler than scorching and yet shops and can be a shade cool with the aircon still going.

This is the second pattern in my size included in the Marfy Autumn-Winter 2007/2008 catalogue. I cut a size 42 with confidence even though the bust measurement of the pattern is a little small for me, because I knew the stretchy fabric would give me extra to play with. I ended up sewing 3/8" inside the Marfy sewing lines for the sides and arm seams.

I've only done 2 Marfy patterns but found them such fun that I have now placed an order for several more. Stupidly I like the no-instructions style. It is stupid because a sensible person could have as much fun throwing away the instructions on other patterns, but it doesn't seem to work like that. If they are there I have to follow them, because I am a good girl! I like that the patterns come with lots of little pieces (easier to cut out accurately) that you have to work out how to put it all together. In one way it is like an exam - you have to remember what techniques to use, or at least where to look them up. On the other hand it is kind of liberating because you get to decide where you think it is OK to take shortcuts without having to feel like you cheated. Well the really cool thing about the patterns is the way the seams of all the little pieces slide together like magic into such interesting shapes.

review

Marfy Catalogue

2007-08-19T21:55:00.000+09:00

Recently I ordered the Marfy Catalogue for autumn/winter 2007-2008. Unlike most magazines which make you wait 15 weeks for their editions by which time they would be completely out of season (although perhaps it makes sense for Australians) they actually shipped it by airmail and it arrived in a week or so.

Included in the catalogue are 6 actual patterns as well as lots of piccies of other patterns. Although they are multi-size the included patterns cover different ranges and actually only 3 of them include my size, a skirt, a top and an odd cape thing. When you order the individual patterns they come in only one size I think the idea is probably supposed to be that you test out your size on the included patterns and then order with confidence.

I started with the skirt pattern since I had some cheap heavy denim hanging around waiting to be used up. The mistake I made was that I cut a 44 instead of a 42, although I didn't realise this until the end. Having worked this out I now feel quite confident that 42 is the best size for my lower half at least. The pattern has 8 quite small pattern pieces which makes for easy work cutting out, since I don't really have room on my little kitchen floor for laying out huge amounts of fabric all at once.

Since the denim was quite thick and the start of the catalogue swore that frayed edges are way-cool :-o , I adopted flat construction techniques and so with the aid of some fancy stitches on my machine to stop fraying beyond the decorative I slapped the skirt together in a day. Even though I had to take it in rather a lot (due to cutting the wrong size) I really like the shaping of the skirt. James thinks the details (like the pocket and my top-stitching) are weird but I quite like them, even though people do keep telling me they are "cute".

The really cool thing about Marfy patterns is that they have no instructions beyond a few labels written on the pattern. I thought this might be a hindrance to construction but turns out that it enabled me to make a skirt in only a day! No pattern instructions would ever have allowed me to make this skirt the way I did. Maybe it will fall apart in a year but by then frayed edges will probably be well-uncool so it will probably be for the best... The word "couture" is all over the Marfy website, which is quite funny - I don't think this skirt could have been made any less couture...

review

An American Shirt

2007-08-19T21:08:00.000+09:00

Kwik Sew 2777. Some barrel scraping conveners at the AGU have asked James to submit an abstract to their session, so for the first time we might be attending the "Fall" AGU meeting in San Francisco. How exciting! Taking place in mid-December this meeting really does coincide with the time the leaves are falling in Kamakura, while British people are more likely to consider mid-December to be mid-winter. I wonder what it is like San Francisco in December - don't they have summer all year?

Anyway, of course James will seek to blend in with the locals so what better than an American shirt? Question is what makes it look so American? The consensus of the comments on my review on PR seem to think it is the extra (muffin and steak?) space in the body and arms and the sloppy off the shoulder fit (for putting your muscles in from working out at the gym?). But I think there is summat funny about the collar. I think British collars are more square...? Of course it is not fully American because it does not contain a pocket to fill with leaky biros and notepads which, at least when I used to visit labs in the US with my Pa when I were a little girl, is a vital accessory for all American scientists.

In reality, this is a practice at men's shirt making using some incredibly cheap (100¥/m) and less than lovely fabric. It doesn't drape well which I think may make it look even baggier than it is. The real reason for making it is to see if I can make James some shirts which fit. All his long-sleeve shirts are too short in arms and body and too wide.

I've got the length sussed at least. I made size M adding several inches to body and arms to make the equivalent of XL lengths. I had some fun practicing some shirtmaking techniques. It is hard to keep edgestitching neat on such inordinately huge lengths (much easier on tiny blouses for jules). I had one or two other problems, getting the machine stuck on the collar points and finding that the top cuttonhole was in the wrong place. The are discussed further in my review on PR.

I have David Page Coffin's famous shirtmaking book. When I read his book I can't get the image of the pedantic and murderous George from Desperate Housewives out of my mind.... Anyway this time I followed only a few of his simplest suggestions - how to turn collars and how to roll-hem the hem. Next time I will probably try and incorporporate more of his clever techniques but this time I thought I'd try the pattern instructions - which seemed good enough for a practice.

I have now adjusted the pattern a bit, taking 1.5cm width out of left and right body and yolk pieces. Then I took 0.5cm off front and back at the edge and so 0.5cm off the edge of each sleeve top tapering to nothing the cuff. I also very slightly reshaped the back armscye moving it in 0.5cm at the base of the yolk. I wonder if that will mess everything up and mean poor James can't wave his arms, but that part really did seem like it had loads of extra fabric.

summer top thing

2007-08-19T19:47:00.000+09:00

This top is based on Burda 8361. When I compared the pattern pieces to my own t-shirt pattern they were so radically different that I thought this was a chance to have some fun attempting to transfer the pattern details onto my own pattern.

I started by finding the height on the back to chop the t-shirt pattern in half horizonatally. Then I cut the front in half but with a curve like on the Burda pattern. The v of the neckline seemed low (why should become apparent later in this story) so I added a short CF seam to raise it a bit. After that it was just a case of swivelling the bust dart to the horizontal seam and drafting the pseudo-arms, which are just extensions of the shoulder.

The mistake I made was failing to realise that the shoulder to tit distance of the Burda pattern was too long for lil me. As a consequence the bustline was too low. Of course I only realised this after cutting out the fabric and basting the top together to try it on. To compensate I raised the shoulders an inch but of course this means the top is now a bit tight round the ribs and also it meant that I had to do the view with the unstitched arm-shoulder seam, since the arms would now be rather tight stitched up.

The top came out fine really and I have been wearing this quite a bit in the hot summer. Made of "onionskin" knit it is slightly sheer and feels best with a lightweight vest worn underneath. The vest is silk and I think the onionskin is polyester so that might be why it feels so much better with the underlayer.

This pattern used so little fabric (<1m) that I have enough left over to make a repeat. It is for fun since I rather enjoy the pattern-geometry stuff. I've already drafted a hopefully improved pattern so now just need time to stitch it and see if I've made things better or worse.

review

blousey

2007-07-25T20:34:00.000+09:00

Burda 7942, from the burdamode website:

"Sewing level: easy. Burda sizes 36, 38, 40, 42, 44 The latest version of a classic - a blouse with a lapel/revers collar, section seams and fashionable gathering: view A with long cuffed sleeves, view B with short, gathered sleeves. Recommended fabric: Light-weight poplin, linen blends, cotton fabrics"

I bought the pattern because of the front styling. I do still quite like that. What I didn't like was the sizing. I think it is a bit big. I cut 38/12, a size smaller than my bust measurement suggested, but since I was using a stretch fabric, and the actual bust "finished garment" measurement written on the pattern said 39" for size 38, and my bust is 36"... it seemed like it should be OK. I suspect it is the usual problem of allowing the same actual ease in the smaller sizes as the bigger ones. However, I can't check this since somehow I have mislaid the part of the pattern where the finished garment sizes were printed. I also didn't find the pattern piece for the ties, but it must have been a small piece - I guess I threw it out by mistake!

I used a lightweight cotton shirting bought over the interweb from Emma One Sock. It's quite strange. Kind of cobwebby. Ms. One Sock herself told me it was "fashion forward" when I whinged about it to her. So that explains everything... It has a lot of stretch perpendicular to the stripe but none at all along the stripes. This made easing the back and front together quite tricky because I cut the front piece so that the stripes run across the shoulders. You can see the way the stripes run in this closeup. This is not the same grain direction as on the pattern but it seemed the only way to combine the stripes and the gathering at the front without getting very weirdie weirdie.

I couldn't really see how to make size adjustments in the gathered part, so after sewing the front and side-front together (ie sewing in the gathers - I tried out something called Seam Saver to bind the edge of the seam. It seems very nice and lightweight.), I pinned the body of the shirt together and then adjsuted it to fit. As well as taking in the waist and hips which I had thought I might need to do given my shape (1 size smaller below rib cage than above), I also adjusted the shape of the CB seam, taking in more at the waist. I also did think I had to bring the princess seams in a bit so I changed the button position and CF position to cope with this. I suppose this is probably the wrong thing to do, but with the curved shape of the front piece it seems to have worked out OK. I'm not sure it I like the non-collar stand style of this shirt. I realise now that all of the shirts in my wardrobe (except one) are not of this style.

There seemed a lot of sleeve to stuff into the armhole. I tried it and basted but then was quite relieved to find that the sleeves were really to wide for me, so I took out about a cm. This not only made it fit better but decreased the amount of extra fabric and made it possible to bring sleeve cap and armhole together.

I wouldn't really call this pattern "easy", because some fairly accurate stitching is required - for example in sewing the gathers neatly and attaching the casings for the ties. The result of the cotton cobweb fabric is surprisingly pleasant - being thin yet stretchy it is very comfortable for hot weather.

review

T time for James

2007-07-15T12:49:00.000+09:00

James and I ride a tandem. We ride it off road and on road to and from work. Sometimes we take the bike travelling. At the weekend we do a big food shop with Mountain Expedition panniers filled up with beer, beans and baps. The disadvantage of having a great weather shield on the front of your tandem is the front view, which tends to be a bit dull.

Not anymore! Now at weekends I have romantic european cafe-life views to enjoy. I just finished the third T-shirt I have made for James. What I have realised through the two other attempts is that tighter fitting shirts don't look that great on tall men, so I added about 4cm ease to the pattern. Here are some more pics: side, back.

The fabric was the interesting part of this exercise:

It was so expensive that I have forgotton how much it cost - a bad memory is the only way to make cutting into such things a possibility - but I know it was so much that I only bought a metre. I bought it from a lovely shop called "Elegance" in Nippori. It seems to sell only incredibly expensive beautiful fabrics! So I laid out the front and back of the shirt on the fabric and then realised there was no way to get even a single whole sleeve out of the remainder. I think the fabric was 150cm wide but James being so tall, there was just no way of getting it to work given the fact that the print on the fabric has a right way up. So that's when I started stitching little rectangles of fabric together. Each sleeve is of about 5 pieces and the neckline band is made from 3 pieces. The delightful part is that it really doesn't look any the worse for the patchwork effect, and I still managed to get a cute little velo at about the same place on each sleeve. So now I feel like I didn't waste quite so much money on the fabric - I had only a handful of tiny scraps left over after cutting out!

The fabric is a cotton knit, light-mid-weight and soft. It feels really lovely. It was a total pain because the edges curl. At the last minute, I doubled the seam allowances when cutting out (they were 0.25"), by drawing a new cutting line straight onto the fabric in chalk. I think it would have been hard work without this extra SA. The other problem was that the fabric did not always start the seam being fed through the sewing machine properly and had a habit of staying put and the machine then stitched a big knot instead of a nice neat row of stitches. The Janome Acufeed food helped but did not always irradicate this problem. On the other-hand the fabric has great stretch recovery which saved the fabric in these situations and also none of my seams of hems appeared at all stretched after steaming, which is unusual.

Other than the fabric adventures I didn't have problems constructing the shirt since I have done it twice before. Really I just wanted to share the nice pattern with you, to encourage you all to save up your money and then come shopping in Tokyo (although I think the fabric is a European import).

review

shorts in summer

2007-07-10T21:47:00.000+09:00

I think it is in the name of fashion but in Tokyo the girls like to wear shorts in mid-winter and long johns or (and?) thick denim jeans under their dresses in summer. I don't have a photo of the latter but here is one of the former. I am more traditional and prefer to wear as little as possible in hot weather and as much as possible in the cold.

Summer is coming so I made a shorts version of Vogue 7481 previously used to make some lightweight blue jeans and some mid-weight black jeans.

First of all I altered the pattern a bit with the aim of improving fit compared to the previous version. This mean adding about a cm to the front crotch. I also slightly altered the shape of the front crotch and reshaped the inside leg and outside leg seams a bit so that the backs and fronts fitted together more perfectly. The waist band was redrafted to make into a smooth curve.

I chose a somewhat looser fit for the relaxed-style shorts, so I added to the side seams a bit - about a cm to each side seam at the hems tapering to nothing at the waistband. View C of this pattern does not have pockets or a yoke so I used the pattern pieces from View B as a guide to draft these onto my View C pattern which I have been adjusting for fit each time I make the trousers. Actually there are no rear pockets in any of the views so I took those from from View B for Vogue 8202. I used my RTW jeans as a guide for sewing the front pockets, sewing a full lining to the back of the pocket. What I did wrong was stitch the inner pocket on sideways. Rather than rip it out I opted to rotate the pocket piece by 90 degrees. This resulted in a pocket that was a cm or so shorter than it should have been. The rear pockets are also quite small so it doesn' t balance so badly!

The fabric is a fairly lightweight stretch denim but it is seemed very dense. I used size #30 thread rather than "jeans stitch" thread for the top stitching (size #60 in the bobbin), and used a lot of different needles, ranging from size 12 microtex, several sizes of denim needles to size 16 denim twin needles, depending which thread I was using and how many layers I was stitching through. Since I wanted a comfortable fit I interfaced the waistband with fusible tricot to keep the stretch. Partly because of this I also added belt loops - just in case the shorts decide to fall down.

They may look sloppy but I really like these shorts....

review

Waterproof overtrousers for J

2007-06-23T22:20:00.001+09:00

In the beginning there were Pertex overtrousers but, as it turned out, Pertex doesn't really have what it takes to keep out Japanese rain, so, in January I bought some Paclite Goretex from a shop called Rocky Woods. I also got Textile Outfitters to convert my prize into 7m of iron-on seam sealer, only I made the mistake of thinking James' inside leg measurement was his outside leg measurement so there wasn't enough sealer to tape the hems or waistband.

There is something that I have realised that I really like about sewing functional clothing. With normal clothes there is always the worry of "do I look awful in this?", but with functional clothes the question is "does it work?" and if it does work then its a success and that's it!

This is the same pattern as last time. The only difference is that this time, armed with seam sealer to seal the extra seams, I made a gusset at the leg zip area. I hope they still fit over hiking boots. The previous version just had a zipper guard sewn to the zipper tape. The other difference is sewing Goretex rather than Pertex. It was actually much easier, although time consuming. You just sew the seam, trim the seam allowances and then iron on the seam sealer. It is the ironing that takes all the time. You can pin in seam allowances (especially those you will cut off), but mostly I used basting glue (washed off afterwards with a sponge and water). I also used steam-a-seam to help secure the hems. I read somewhere that as well as mircotex needles a long stitch length is the way to go for waterproof fabrics. The idea is to make as few holes in the fabric and to make them small. With my new machine I can change stitch length so I used lengths of between 3.5mm and 4mm.

The first torrential rain of rainy season was last night. James says the new trews are "great". I think they are relatively sexy too - for waterproof trousers.

review

Frock meets royal

2007-06-18T15:56:00.000+09:00

I have to give a special mention to the colourful frock which was lucky enough to meet Prince Andrew a few weeks ago. Although all the men wore gay ties, colourful frock was, by sheer acreage, the brightest thing in the room.

Story of the full diplomatic incident on James' blog.

Tshirt festival

2007-06-09T17:27:00.002+09:00

Recently I have at last got round to working on my T-shirt pattern. My strategy was to construct each shirt, alter it to fit a bit better and then adjust the pattern for next time. I'm not sure how well it has worked out since with 3 shirts done the fit is still not quite right. Probably it would have been better to make a single, trashable, test version but the problem is that I wanted something wearable to result from each one, and none of the fabrics were ones where unpicking a stretch stitch would not have left marks. One additional tricky part is that each fabric is a bit different, so perhaps that also changes the fit. Nevertheless I think things have improved a bit along the way and I have had my first successful twin-stitching experiences. While taking the Tshirt class last year I tried twin needling on my old sewing machine and managed to sew through my finger, nail and all, twice. The subsequent pulling out of broken bits of needle with pliers was sufficiently distressing that I didn't dare try again until well practised with my new machine.

T-shirt 1 - Black 4-way stretch cotton and lycra.
The fabric was a remnant from a frock I made. It is 4-way stretch but quite firm, so probably better for the frock than a T-shirt which tends to be somewhat looser fitting. I started with the princess seam pattern (drafted for the vest top) and made cap sleeves and a self-bound neckline. When it was finished I had to take up the shoulders, because it was too baggy. I altered the pattern accordingly. I twin needled the hems and the neckline. No pic yet since this top is at work.

T-shirt 2 - dark green lightweight knit cotton
This fabric was also a remnant, from James' green T-shirt. It is really quite lightweight and shiny on the right side. I now think this fabric is probably a bit too lightweight for a manly man's T-shirt. The sleeves were going to be long but I ran out of fabric so instead I am starting a new fashion by having my sleeve stop at the elbow...hmmm. I moved from using the princess seam design to using single pieced fronts and back with eased darts. This inevitably ends up with creases atthe back around the waistline because there is no back seam to adjust.

This time I discovered that I needed to change the slope of the shoulders - I suspect my previous adjustment had messed them up. I also had to take a seam at the back of the neckline - perhaps I stretched the neckline, but I was also getting extra fabric at the front around the arms so adjusted the garment (after basting together) and the pattern to take out a bit of width at the upper chest. I should also have smoothed off the armhole shape on the pattern - I could see it was not the right shape anymore - nevertheless I headed on to T-shirt 3.

T-shirt 3 - patterned lightweight cotton knit
The previous 2 versions seemed to have slightly stretched necklines. This time I did not twin needle the neckline and I also cut the binding shorter - so it was 2-3 inches shorter than the neckline. This did seem to work much better. With the shorter binding I may again try the twin needle another time. In this version I also had to take in the sides around the bust level, more at the front than the back. I now see lines on the picture which may indicate I have brough the armhole in(up?) too far. I'll have to think about that but it feels more like extra fabric remains on the lower part of the upper chest (that I should have got rid of by shaping the armhole nicely!). If I pull my shoulders back the lines disappear.

That is as far as I have got - I don't have much knit fabric left to carry on this rather more tricky than expected project! My first test a year ago made from and old tshirt and including a bust dart seemed better than these, although I never finished the neckline. So I remain a bit uncertain about the whole easing of darts idea - perhaps I should try an uneased version to see if it is actually helpful - I wonder if these eased darts may be adding to the extra fabric at the armhole problem.

sewing machine
foot pressure - 0!
top tension 5.5
bobbin - loose for twin needle (half-turn left), normal position for stretch stitch.

fabric shoppin'

2007-05-13T18:13:00.000+09:00

For the last rather a long time I have been not buying any fabric and not many patterns in order to complete the things I had in mind. There are now not so many things outstanding, and no very expensive fabric sitting unused; only moderately expensive fabric. The thing I have to try to do is complete some Goretex trews for James before rainy season, and I also want to sew some more T-shirts, which I have fabric for - but apart from that....

...well this weekend I went looking for for fun fabric. I started off in bed, online at the fabric stores on Saturday morning, but of course that stuff hasn't arrived yet. The photo above is the results of a 1.5 hour shopping expedition in our home town of Kamakura. There are two fabric store companies in Kamakura but that comprises 5 shops. Wimmin's work seems very much alive and well in the 12th Century capitol of Japan!

Swany - 3 shops. This being an old-fashioned world it is closed on Sundays and all national holidays. Of course most Kamakura wimmin can shop during the weekdays so no problem there. :-) Actually the shop is packed with wimmin on Saturday and merely busy the rest of the week. It has floors spread throughout its 3 shops dedicated to, in no particular order:

a. notions, buttons, ribbon, beads and bag-making essentials. Bag making does seem very popular.
b. quilting cotton and quilting notions
c. cotton and linen
d. home dec fabrics and notions
e. clothing fabrics with a particular emphasis on knits, and including some lining and interfacing fabrics.

You can buy examples of pretty much anything you can imagine although there is not a large range of some things. The emphasis is on cheaper things, and you don't find many very striking things or designer fabrics here.

Sometimes (and at present) it has a relatively large amount of denim in stock. I got the lovely and unusual ripped denim for the jeans I made here, as well as the infamous stretched denim for the second pair. On Saturday I bought a dark blue very lightweight stretch denim (I thought I might make some shorts) and a guaranteed uncolour-fast denim both for under 500¥/m. The non-colourfast one just seemed interesting - it was wrapped on the bolt inside out so that the indigo didn't get on everything! I suppose it will make the whole house blue.

Then I was determined to choose something from their large wall of knit prints. The problem I have is that almost all seem to have a pale yellow-green cast and I look really quite ill in pale yellow, pale green and pale orange. I guess these colours suit the average Japanese complexion well. Anyway I found one rather striking thing - a buttermilk stripey number for a little over 500¥/m. It isn't a print, though, but a "real" stripe of dyed threads. It is bright, has a sheen to it and if it is too yellow for me, it looks like it will be super on James.

Next, on to Keitoya - 2 shops. Basically they have one shop concentrating on cheaper fabrics and the second one focusses on the hyper-expensive designer shit, and stuff. The first shop is currently flogging all its huge stock for almost nothing. Whether, when it is all over, they will re-stock or close down from too much competition from Swany I don't know. The overall effect walking in to the stores is that colours in both the stores tend to be brighter than those in Swany. However, looking back through my blog I see that although I visit the cheap Keitoya often, I buy far more often in Swany. Perhaps the best thing I bought in Keitoya was the fabric for the trench coat. I also quite regularly buy practice fabric, or fabric to use as interfacing in their 100-200¥/m section.

Still a closeout sale is not to be missed. I want to attempt to make a proper shirt for James so here is some practice fabric - 100¥/m really quite nice shirting cotton (as far as I can tell at this stage) brown and light brown with thin gold stripes.

Next a real find. Well I've seen it here before but not for 500¥/m! Usually it is more like the 3000¥/m I paid for similar in Yuzawaya. It is the wool with 40% angora knit. This one is very thick so definitely will make a winter jumper for James.

From the sublime to the ridiculous. This is 1.5m of velvet knit. I think it is the stuff that is variously called panne velvet and crushed velvet. Anyway this is remarkable variagated gold, and almost as interesting on the back as the front. 500¥/m. Maybe it's just for looking at?! It is rather more "interesting" in real life than in this photo. One could make some weekend trews out of it if one dared to cut it up.

Finally - hyper-Keitoya - which was the place that had preciptated the shoppin' trip. I've only lived here 6 years and so it was only last week when I realise that the stuff in hyper-Keitoya was not _quite_ as expensive as I had thought. Much of the fabric is sold in cut lengths and the price tags are for the whole length rather than per m! Having said that they do have astonishing fabric at extraordinary prices ( 480,000¥/m?!). Hyper-Keitoya is probably the only place in town where you might find cashmere coating or suiting fabric. Last weekend I picked up two pieces of matt finish very lightweight, but not sheer, silk, for, erm, some money. Suitable for shirts or blouses, here they are:

While there last week I spotted these rather extraordinary prints: so extraordinary that I left it a whole week before buying (a dangerous ploy in the Kamakura fabric buying business where the good stuff usually sells out very fast). The first is a 4-way stretch woven, which will make a lovely revolting pair of trousers. In the shop they assured me that despite being made in Japan, this print is of the Italian style. Being of the Italian style seems to be quite important in hyper-Keitoya. They confidently informed me I'd only need 1.2m for a pair of trouser but I can't imagine that working out so I went for 1.5m. Hope it is enough. The price was: more money.

Finally, near to the stretch woven was this knit. I'm not really into flowers, but this one seemed very nice. I suppose the reason is that it is not a regular pattern. It also cost some money. I was doing so well, having spent less than 10,000¥ until I got to hyper-Keitoya...

velvet rules OK

2007-05-13T06:48:00.000+09:00

Vogue 7856, View A. See previous review of View B. I shortened the pattern by about an inch and cut a 12.

About a year ago I impulse bought the last 1.5m of a violet/green/blue with splashes of gold asbtract pattern silk/rayon velvet burnout in Yuzawaya, Kamata. I don't much like regular flowerly patterns and almost everything seems to come in flowers so I found this design irresistible. It was incredibly expensive (worked hard and have suceeded in forgetting exactly how much), and ever since I have been dithering over what to make with it since it was far too nice to leave in a cupboard. For a long time I was going to make some sort of top with it. Maybe something like this, only I don't like that top so much. It turns out that 1.5m doesn't seem to be enough to make most tops.

One of the two branches in Keitoya in Kamakura is closing down. At least it is selling off all its stock at a low price: perhaps it will re-stock when it is done. It is quite funny - the sale has been going on for months, and yet each time I go I notice different things. It think that more fabric is being revealed below the stock that has been sold. They really did have a huge amount of stock crammed in! Anyway, one day I found 2m of violet silk/rayon velvet for 2000¥, and bought it cos it felt so nice.

When I got home I found that the burnout and the violet velvet were a tolerable match. Suddenly with 3.5m of fabric the pattern possibilities were greatly expanded! I was on the verge of making a blouse when suddenly I spotted the skirt pattern envelope. I used gimp to draw some pictures and work out a pattern for the panels. I thought alternative stripes would just be too stripy. When I first showed the design (already cutout and tacked together) to James he said it looked like I hadn't had enough fabric to make a whole skirt. I told him it was "design". Cruel boy.

I had already washed the burnout with no obvious effect on it. I knew that if I washed the violet velvet it would come out a bit crinkled, but I thought that this would make it combine better with the shiny/matt streakiness of the burnout design. So I chucked it in the washing machine. The result was impressively crinkly, and I think it improves the match between the two fabrics.

For stitchin' with velvet I used info. from two websites, here and here. The cutting out was very tricky. I did my best but did not get too worked up about it because I reckoned on the 12 being large since the previous version of View B had really come out a bit big. As it turned out, after tacking it together I could take out 6cm at the waist, which I tried to do quite evenly over all the back/side pieces of the skirt. It was not so easy to take it out of the front due to having to line up two overlapping sections here. I finished the seams flat with a 3.0 width triple zig-zag and then trimmed them close to the stitching.

Then I realised that since it was turning out OK, I really should do the velvet justice and line the skirt. Cupro fabirc was duly purchased. Next time I should consider lining well in advance - I had not realised how much it really does improve a skirt - and order some silk from Sarah Veblen's huge range. At the front of the skirt, because of the wrap design of the skirt, the burnout has violet velvet behind it, so I bought violet lining to get a reasonable match behind the other burnout panels.

Velvet is pretty difficult to sew accurately, but the acufeed foot (dual feed) foot on my sewing machine helped a great deal and the only problem I really had were at the zipper. While sewing I did manage to get it uneven but didn't want to rip it out, due to the risk of ruining the fabric. I thought it was salvaged but now I see that somehow I managed to stretch the fabric at this point. Here is a picture of the mess. Yes it looks as bad in real life too. Velvet burnout may be difficult to handle but this stuff also hides mistakes wonderfully!!

Also in this pic. you can see the waistband. In the pattern you are told to ease the skirt into a facing. I don't like this finish on View B and I didn't think it would be a great deal of use in this view either. The velvet is pretty heavy and needs something quite strong to keep it up. I bought some wide black velvet ribbon, folded it over and handstitched it onto the top of the skirt.

For the hem I marked it, thread basted the fold line, finished with the three step zig-zag about 1cm from the edge, and then hand stitched the hem. Took a long time but I knew there was no was I would get an acceptable result with a sewing machine.

For the lining I lined up the back (8,9,10) and front (the underwrap pieces 6,7) pattern pieces on grain, joining them at the hip and marking darts at the waist. Then I cutout a front and a back on the fold, and stitched it all together, taking in the side seams to account for the 6cm of decrease in circumference. I sewed the hem of the skirt before hemming the lining then marked the skirt level on the lining, then stitched a 1 inch double hem on teh machine, which is not beautifully done but is hopefully fairly well hidden from view.

A comment on the design. The skirt is shorter at the front than the back, but it is almost too subtle and could almost be a defect. The beauty of this skirt (as even James acknowledged) is in motion, so here is a viddy!

Sewing machine settings:
#90 violet thread, #9 needle lining, #14 needle velvet.
TT - 4.5, FP - 2.0, BT loose.
seams - straight stitch acufeed foot
edge finished - 3.0 width 3 step zig-zag, non-acufeed foot

review

green frock update

2007-04-08T10:16:00.000+09:00

Due to too much travelling and recovering from travelling I have done hardly any stitching recently - only preparing the pattern pieces for a go at View A of Vogue 7856 in velvet! It has 11 pieces and I have 2 rather short lengths of 2 different velvets to fit it onto. I anticipate a lengthy process.

However, here are some slightly more proper green frock pictures with the arm with a stitch in rather than with shoulders poking through. It is now just about warm enough to strut about outside dressed like this, for a few moments. And I bought some shoes. Hate buying shoes, but didn't have anything suitable.

Stitchin' makes you rich and famous

2007-03-22T19:57:00.000+09:00

I bought the Pertex for James' cycling shirt and trousers from Textile Outfitters. At some point during email correspondence about seam sealers they requested a photo form me, and here it is on p11 of their 2007 catalogue! As if the fame itself were not enough they also gave me a coupon valid for several months valued at the princely sum of $25 (Canadian).

2007-03-18T15:16:00.000+09:00

New Look 6370 is a fairly short frock intended for lightweight and possibly sheer fabrics. View D. I bought this pattern more than a year ago, and then bought some fabric for it. Then realised my tricky-fabric skills were non-existent so I took Sarah Veblen's sheer fabrics class in order to be able to make the dress. The pattern is labelled easy. But it is not easy or fast making a bias frock in a slippy dippy lightweight fabric! Key thing I learned from the sheer fabrics class was pick an easy pattern and to take time to make the fabric behave properly.

Mock Up

The practice was made in cupro (a rayon like lining fabric) and is basically slammed together - took me a long day from starting cutting out - none of the seams are finished or the arms hemmed, although I did get round to making the adjustments on the pattern pieces. My new sewing machine helped a lot too because with the clever acufeed system I didn't need to baste before stitching.

For the practice I cut 14 top and 12 from waist down in line with the measurements on the pattern back. I have adjusted this considerably. I took up the shoulders 2cm. I decided to also lower the underarm and bust dart by 1cm. I took in in 3.5cm on both sides at the bottom (ie 14cm total!!!), about 3cm at the waist tapering to nothing around the underarm. I've also reshaped the back to allow for sway back. I stuck a tuck in the practice frock to estimate this which can see it in the back view photo. Because of all the adjustments the tie is in the wrong place on the practice (2cm too high). the envelope.

Real Thing

Top layer is a green silk/rayon devore bought almost exactly a year ago from Borovicks Fabrics, Soho, London. The underlining is deep red silk geogette from Sarah Veblen's on-line shop. Both these fabrics feel warm to the touch whereas the lining fabric I used for the practice frock feels really cold.

I don't think I made too many mistakes the second time around. The only problem really occured during construction of the neckline. The final result of the neckline lies much nicer than that on the muslin (partly because it was stitched much more carefully). However, I was rather shocked after stitching it because the back of the neckline was all baggy. Seemed I had managed to stretch the back neckline while sewing. I unpicked it and took in the top of the CB seam by about an inch. After much basting and trying on and helpful comments from James it seemed to work out OK.

The part I was not sure about was whether to completely sew up the arm/shoulder part. On the pattern the two sleeve halves just flap loose and when I tried on the dress these flaps tended to turn over revealing the underlining a bit too much. So I sewed the ends together. After soliciting the opinion of the PatternReview participants I decided to take an extra stitch in the middle of the sleeve to keep the general effect but lessen the amount the shoulders poke through. The photos are taken before this change was made.

After making the practice I altered the pattern but was a bit confused because I had so drastically reduced the ease. I emailed Sarah Veblen and my interpretation of her advice is that for a bias frock for someone quite small like me should cut with about 2-3" ease, baste together and then adjust. I measured the post-muslin-adjusted pattern and I was down to zero ease at the bust and even negative ease at the hips. Spot the drag lines on the photos of the practice frock! So I added 2cm to my pattern side seams and then cut out and basted the CB and side seams. I ended up not taking the hips in at all from this but taking the 2cm back out of the bust. Sarah's other advice was to "go with the flow", which I interpret as not trying to force things together that don't want to go, but letting the fabric fall/hang where it wants to. I found this very useful advice for all the seam sticthing. For example, the underlining fabric hung longer at the bottom of the dress than the top layer fabric.

For the flounce I made one flounce of top layer devore and another narrower (by about 0.5-1 inch) flounce from the georgette and then sewed them together at the top only. I did this so that the flounce would be visible and yet still be "flouncey". The flounces were hemmed with baby hems. Since the frock is cut on the bias I didn't finish the seams, just sewed them down to the underlining. Because of the multiple layers and the way they liked to misbehave, this time I did baste most things before stitching.

It is interesting how differently the frock hangs in this fabric combination than in the lighter weight less bias-stretchy muslin. As well as the quite large differences in the width fit, I had to take it up a bit at the back hem, and it still hangs a bit lower than the muslin.

This is a good pattern for sheer fabrics on the bias because it is basic with few seams and the flounce adds a bit of interest withought being too hard. It took me a lot of days to make this but I only had the odd hour here and there to work on it. Worked quite well since it gave the frock time to hang out and me time to consider the next move between sessions.

One might have to be a bit careful how one sits down in this frock.

review

ミシン settings:
90 weight thread; bobbin tension 0.5 turn left (~minimum).
Devore alone - FP=2, 1.7mm str. stitch, 3 step zig-zag W=2.5mm L=0.8
Charmeuse alone - FP=3, 1.8mm str. stitch, 3 step zig-zag W=2.5mm L=1.0
Devore, Charmeuse together - FP=1, 1.8mm str. stitch

jules' jeans #2

2007-02-12T15:13:00.000+09:00

First thing with new mishin!

New machine is supposed to sew through anything. So what better to test it on than denim? This is a repeat stitchin' of Vogue 7481. This time I used much thicker denim and attempted some of the topstitching details. What I really wanted to work on was the fit. As well as seeming too large at the front crotch, the previous pair we slightly loose when finished and are even looser now. So I made the pattern alterations that I had noted last time: I took an inch off front waist, tapering to nothing at the hips, and then took 5/8" off most of the outside of the legs. Then I took a cm off the front inside leg all the way down. I then redrafted the waistband to taper more towards the waist. I'm not sure I got the grainline correct on both waistband pieces - the left side looks kind of wrong on the finished garment.

I'd already washed the fabric 3 times to pre-shrink it (it is what they advise for denim). Then I cut across the grain at either end and attempted to lay it out. The fabric was about 4 inches off grain! I do wonder if I made it do this by stitching the ends together before washing it (to stop it fraying). Perhaps one ought to try and straighten it while wet? Or after it is dry? Anyway I did neither of these. Instead, with James' help I laid the selvages on top of each other. The ends were about 4 inches off, but the fabric was lying very happily with a nice flat fold -- if you fold fabrc off-grain usually the fold will not lie flat. The fabric was also already showing another irritating characteristic of picking up bits. I thought I may as well carry on since the main aim was improving fit.

So I cut out and then I basted it all together in no time, using my new machine, on which it is possible to sew long stitches that can be easily pulled apart. The result certainly seemed tight!, but I've heard often of people sewing jeans which then stretch in wear that I thought I should not adjust it but carry the experiment through. I think what I failed to take into account was the extra bulk taken up by this thicker fabric which makes them tighter compared to the previous pair. I took another cm off each side of the legs below the thigh because they really did seem too baggy especially when compared to the tightness of the top. This change needs transferring to the pattern.

To test the new machine I bought some #20 thickness "jeans stitch" thread. I had wanted very dark red but it didn't seem to be available so I got an orangey instead. I wanted to be able to see it clearly to see how good the topstitching really is. I think this thread is thicker than one usually sees in RTW jeans so probably one could just as well use #30 thread which is available in a huge range of colours. Anyway, yes, the machine stiches merrily through 8+ layers of denim. I even made flat felled side seams and the new machine and new iron just made it easy. The only thing I didn't feel confident enough to do was the double row of topstitching round the fly. Perhaps next time... For the hems I copied my RTW jeans and did a double folded hem (2.5cmx2).

I haven't done any of the details like the belt loops, or the yoke and pockets of the other views. I suppose having belt loops might be useful if/when the jeans get looser.

At present they are certainly tight round the bum, but not tighter than pairs of jeans I have bought before. I am waiting for several round of wearing and washing before casting a verdict...

review

atarashii mishin

2007-02-12T14:21:00.000+09:00

On the evening before Memorial for Broken Needles Day a new sewing machine arrived.
The day before, the iron stopped working so later in the week I bought a new one of them too! As you can see the new equipment is all huge and built around an icy blue theme.

The sewing machine is a SuperQuiltDX made by Janome, a Japanese company, who are also the world's largest manufacturer of sewing machines, partly because it also manufacturers a lot of the machines sold by other companies. Or does it own the other companies? I am not quite sure... I bought the machine for a lot of money (205,000¥) from Janome's local dealer in Fujisawa. I could not find this machine in any more usual shops (like the big electrical stores which, surprisingly, mostly seem to sell rather old models), on the web or even at the specialist stitchin' shops. I was so impressed with myself for finding the dealer only a 20 minute bike ride away that I wasn't going to waste time shopping around for a cheap deal!

Anyway, the SQDX is the Japanese version of the 6600, which can be found in places like Europe, Australia and North America. The only differences (as far as I can tell) apart from the casing colour and language details are that my version doesn't stitch alphabets and also has slightly fewer decorative stitches. One of the cool things about the machine is the oodles of space to the right hand side of the needle. As you can see, this allows one to more easily enjoy a nice cup of tea while stitching. The Janome 6500/6600 have their own yahoo group!

The iron is a T-Fal (or Tefal depending which country you are in), and its most amazing feature is that it flattens things. My old iron did not do this. Reminds me a bit of our old vacuum cleaner which did not pick up dust. At least my previous sewing machine - cheapest Brother that did not sport Mickey Mouses on the casing - did actually do stitchin'!

green T-shirt for James

2007-02-07T11:51:00.000+09:00

In September 2006 I took a Tshirt class (on the web) and stitched a couple of samples. I have several bits of fabric to carry on with this but have been rather slow getting a round tuit. The only one made so far is a light weight dark green version for James. I had to add a little width at the chest compared to last time when I used a 2-way super-stretchy fabric. In this case the error was found after I had stitched the side seams so I took them apart and added gussets at the underarm. I've altered the pattern, adding a somewhat generous amount of extra width all the way down the side seams. I have some nice fabric for another T so don't want to mess it up by cutting it too small. I can always baste it together and then sew the sides with a bigger seam allowance. I followed the class instructions for self ribbing which it seems to me produces a rather too tight neckline. I am waiting until the Tshirt has been throught the wash before passing a confident verdict on this. Possibly it will settle down just enough. There is enough fabric left to make a T-short for jules...

again - no piccie yet!

heavy cotton baggies for James

2007-02-07T11:32:00.000+09:00

I have made in total 3 pairs of cotton baggies, and even have possible fabric for another pair. Because James is so tall he looks good (I think) in these things. However, he does not look so good in the baggy-knees sweatshirt-fabric trews he insists on wearing at home all winter. I was wondering what to do about this. Then I found a kind of ethnicy weave of rather thick cotton in the local store in Kamakura. I accidentally didn't buy enough so James had to go back with a swatch and buy some more. Only by then (a week later) they had cut the remanants up into 1m lengths! I had realised that if I see nice fabric I should buy it there and then but I hadn't realised quite how quickly it gets sold. Kamakura is obviously a stitching hotbed. James bought two 1m lengths and then I spent quite a while sewing them accurately together (being the sort of person who struggles to stitch in a straight line, this was a bit of a challenge). I was concerned that with this thick fabric even tall-James would start to look dumpy in these but turns out that the strong vertical pattern cancels out the effect.

The problem of what to do with the two ~50cm lengths left over from the purchasing error has just been solved! While writing this I kicked over my coffee cup and the smaller scraps came into service to mop up the spill. Very effective. Ethicy tea-towels then..

Pixie and shroomie

2007-02-07T11:25:00.000+09:00

James has a silly hat which he used for cycling in the winter. But it is not warm enough (see previous post on fragile men). So I took some of the remains of the Polartec 200 WindPro fleece used to make the muslin for James' cycling fleece (which BTW has become very popular as a really warm fleece for taking mountain climbing in the winter), and roughly based on the not-warm-enough hat I made a pixie hat for jules and a mushroom hat for James. I wonder if the styles will catch on.

Somehow I doubt it by nevertheless the hats have been very serviceable this winter.

more jim jams

2007-02-07T11:15:00.000+09:00

James said he wanted more winter jim jams. I was a little surprised since he already has 2 other pairs as well as the ones I stitched last year, and only needs 2 pairs for winter. But apparently one pair are too old and smelly and the other pair too small! So I bought some brushed cotton from Yuzawaya in Kamata. I decreased the width of the legs by an inch (ie 2 inches decrease in circumference) and otherwise stitched them the same as last time. Something I didn't mention on the blog last time is that the legs are too long. At least I had to stitch a large hem and I noticed that the first pair also have a large hem. It would be good to adjust the pattern to take a couple of inches off before cutting these out for a third time.

The clever part of making these jimjams is that two pairs resulted. I did have plans to make some nice PJs for me having ripped one of my two winter pairs last year - but I found that the rejected "too small" pair are in excellent condition and can be made to fit a jules! After all it is better to have PJs too big than too small. It is interesting how much warmer men's PJs are than women's. Now I understand that it is men who are the fragile sex!

jules' jumper in blue

2007-02-07T11:00:00.000+09:00

I made Burda 8291 again only this time I made View A. Kind of. It is just the hoodie without the hood and in a less sporty fabric. I used a self-binding for the neckline. I thought perhaps that with the wide neckline it would be good for wearing over shirts. The fabric is a soft medium weight knit made of wool, tencel and lycra (IIRC). It is a bit clingy so not so good for wearing over shirts made from crisp fabric! Also it feels like the sweater is slightly bigger this time even though it is made from the same pattern pieces. Interesting how the choice of fabric can affect this - this fabric is thinner with less stretch recovery. My instructions said to cut 1.5 inches width for the binding but with 5/8" seam allowances this was really too little (2" would have been OK) and I ended up handstitching the backside of the binding. The only interfacing I used was lightweight interfacing on the neckline. This seems to help stop things stretching out of shape.

The only alteration to the pattern pieces was to smooth off the area near the hem a little so that it wouldn't flare out. That worked out as hoped I think. I used stretch thread and a small zigzag stitch for most of the stitching.

V-neck jumper for J

2007-01-07T17:20:00.000+09:00

This is a fluffy raglan V-neck jumper made from a lovely soft wool/angora/lycra mix knit bought from Yuzawaya in Kamata. Angora wool comes from angora rabbit fur but mohair is what you get from angora goats. I suppose this is probably the rabbit version, but I am not totally certain since Japanese use of foreign words is not always related to the common usage in the foreign tongue.

This is a repeat sewing of KS2561. This time I made View A which is a short sleeved V-neck T-shirt, but using the long arm pattern from the previous sewing. So all I actually changed in the pattern used last time was the neckline. I tried very carefully to do it correctly but somehow it ended up with the V right overlapping left, which is not the manly way, apparently. Other than that the V came out OK.

I interfaced the neckline with lightweight interfacing for knits and also basted lots which probably helped things not get stretched out of shape. The fabric was quite stretchy but without good recovery. I used steam with very light (or no) pressure from the iron to shrink it back into place. I've seen it often written on PR how easy it is to reshape wool using steam but had never experienced it before. It certainly is a nice quality of the fabric. I used the almost invisible hand hemstitch that I learned from Kenneth King's tailored jacket CD to stitch down the seam allowances inside the V-neck since I thought that if I tried to machine topstitch it, it would be bound to stretch, and I didn't think leaving the SAs hanging as recommended in the KS instructions was likely to be very satisfactory in this somewhat chunky fabric.

The kerfuffle came with trying to get the arms the right length. On the previous shirt I shortened the cuffs during the stitching process. I should have adjusted the arm length on the pattern at the time. Anyway this time I ended up cutting an inch off the bottom and stitching 5/8" seam allowance on the cuffs (the rest of the pattern is 1/4" SA). I have now adjusted the pattern and taken 1.5" off the length, so next time the cuffs can be inserted with 1/4" SA and it should fit perfectly!

It is interesting how easily the long sleeve T-shirt pattern has become a jumper, but then I suppose it was quite a baggy T. I did not intend the jumper to be quite as warm as it is. The fabric didn't seem that thick to me in the shop. Perhaps it became more dense through pre-washing, or perhaps I am just not very skilled at judging these things.

review

Ultra-cool bizz part #3

2007-01-01T21:02:00.000+09:00

PHEW! If anyone actually ever read this blog they'd be thinking I'd given up stitchin' but here, at last, is what I have been toiling over! I wouldn't like to try to add up how long it took!

This is the jacket of the Vogue loose fitting men's four piece suit (ie jacket, waistcoat, trousers and shorts!). We sometimes attend parties that specify "lounge suit" as the dress code. Almost all the men turn up in black suits which is very dull of them. James' other suit is also black and more suitable for a Scottish winter than a Japanese summer. So now he has something jolly to wear instead.

I think the Vogue instructions were OK, although there may have been a couple of mistakes. For example, I didn't see where the lining arms are attached to the body. On the whole I did not follow the Vogue instructions, but those of Kenneth King's (hereafter KK) Tailored Jacket CD book instead. I followed the Vogue instructions for the pockets and for checking that the hems allowances were going to work.

Originally my intention was to use the Vogue instructions but I became an instant convert to tailoring when I discovered just how much the fusible interfacing altered the fabric. I also didn't want to mess up the breathable hot weather qualities of the tencel fabric by glueing some interfacing to it. It really seemed to defeat the object and was clearly going to add weight. The Vogue instructions have you fuse all the body pieces right at the start - and this was the point at which I booted up KK's CD full of instructions. The instructions in this CD are excellent on the whole. They are incredibly detailed step by step instructions. I had a couple of occassions when I couldn't see KK's geometry for a while but I think I got it in the end. The only fault with the book is that it seems to think that a jacket can be knocked together in a "long day". Bah humbug! It takes days and days and daysssss...

My version is, however, not a properly tailored jacket. Mine is meant for the heat of summer and jackets here that made to cope with Japanese summer (I've been to the shops to check) are really hardly interfaced at all. Indeed sometimes they are almost transparent. Husband also desired a very soft informal and crinkly looking jacket (he says he wants to look like a rhinocerous) rather than smooth tailored lines. So I didn't make shoulder shields or use canvas in the interfacing. Instead I used cotton batiste for all interfacing. I made the shoulder pads using a mixture of the Vogue pattern and some instructions I found online.

My version looks softer than that on the pattern picture due to the different construction methods employed (sewn in interfacing vs fusing). The pattern went together fine so I don't have any complaints. Of course not all the dots lined up exactly with the KK instructions so there was a bit of guesswork and it didn't turn out perfectly. For example, the (KK) piping in the lining should have gone lower down.

Following KK's instructions I really like the way that the jacket was shaped. It is amazing - the finished article has this incredible lapel that lies in a beautiful curve even though the fabric is really soft and no firm interfacing was used. All done by steaming things in curves and basting with silk thread. I don't have any hams or a sophisticated iron or half the tools required by the CD. I managed with a normal iron, a towel and a sleeve ironing board. The tencel is pretty hardy stuff and survived the trauma of my inexpertise! The let downs of my construction are the buttonholes which are not the sort with the nice curve at the end. My machine only has one sort of buttonhole - the straight 4 step sort - I have experimented on scrap cloth with making them by hand but they look awful so I just did the machine ones, which aren't that great either!

Apart from that I made plenty of mistakes like not realising that the piping should all be done in one long piece, not realising that I should have drafted the under collar and front into a single piece before cutting out, and accidentally snipping bits of fabric when I was supposed to be cutting threads, and stitching wonky seams and not getting things to line up properly. I have a similar feeling to when I made the Vogue trench coat which also had a lot of steps - with one mistake in each step one ends up feeling like the whole thing is just a load of errors. However the trench coat has held up really well with only a couple of small repairs so I am hopeful that the jacket wont just unravel the first time it is worn.

Fabric Used: Green Tencel for the "fashion fabric", red and purple bemberg lining (which KK hates!) and cotton batiste for the interfacing.

I made a muslin out of muslin in size 40 and then added an 1.5cm to the arm length and half an inch width at the underarm, tapering the arm to the normal cuff size and keeping the excess all down the side seam of the jacket.

Even now, only an hour or two after finishing it I think I would sew it, or at least another tailored jacket again. It was really quite a lot of fun. I do feel quite a sense of acheivement at having done a jacket almost properly! My technique of not bothering too much with the multiple mistakes and instead thinking "I'll do it properly next time" does make me want to do it again better.

Shoulder pads:
Here are some instructions for making shoulder pads. I also had the Vogue shoulder pads pattern, but since it was for ladies shoulder pads I thought it wise to take measurements from the jacket muslin. I used non-fusible cotton batting for the padding. 4 layers - one for each of the pieces shown in the photo. Then I used a kind of thinner cotton stuff - maybe flannel? using two of the largest pieces. Altogether this made the desired 10mm thickness. I pad stitched all this together in a curved shape according to the Vogue instructions. Then I decided to stick fusible tricot over the outside to make a smoother finish. I am not sure if that last part really helped in the end, although it kept the pads clean while they were floating around the house before the jacket was sewn. I discovered that the important thing about shoulder pads is to have a nice smooth curve at the thick end so that they look smooth in the sleeve cap. Steaming after installation helps to greatly improve this.
review

FuXXy Legs

2006-11-12T19:24:00.000+09:00

Yesterday I finished the James version of the fuzzy legs. The legs seams are looooong. This time I had an idea what I was doing so it was a bit easier. Once again I took apart one side of the oldest pair of these. Making the pattern did seem a bit easier. I think this was because the pieces were a bit bigger and so kept their shape better. I used the same construction techniques as for the previous pair. I did not stretch the elastic so much when measuring it to avoid artificiaaly shortening the leggings (he tried them on after sewing the seams).

Used hot pink thread (by request) so as to make it easy to distinguish between my pair and James' in the closet.

No pics yet - the weather has been very kind and remained quite warm until the fuzzy legs are finished! Although fit is good, both pairs seem tighter than expected. We think this might be because the new fabric has good stretch recovery and is thicker. The old pairs were transparent in parts.

fuzzy legs

2006-10-21T16:17:00.000+09:00

More than 10 years ago James and I bought a pair of Karrimor Slick Rock Bib Tights each. These are cycling bib tights made of Powerstretch, with no extra annoying frills like a cycling chamois or reinforced knees. Powerstretch is very warm and very good at wicking away moisture so excellent for really warm cycling leggings. The bib tights go high up the back too which adds considerable extra warmth.

A few years later we bought new pairs. But they were never quite as good . Mostly it seemed the fit was bad - they had gone very long and narrow. So mine were too tight round the ankles (became OK in time) but way too long. I tied knots in the shoulders. Also the fabric did not seem quite as strong, but maybe that was just an illusion.

We have continued to wear both pairs for cycling through the winter months. That means we don't wear them as many months of the year in Japan as we used to in the UK, but we also take them up into the mountains when we go walking in wintertime. Their fantastic warmth is really wonderful in the draughty mountain huts. I always cool down a lot after exercise and can get cold even on quite pleasant days.

Anyway, I'm not even sure that Karrimor make cycling apparel any more. The only reference to these tights I found was on ebay .

Our fuzzy legs (as we call them) are really very worn out now so we decided last winter that it was time for some new ones. Somehow that means I only have about a month to get both pairs done!

As you can see, I have finished mine. I did them first because they are smaller and therefore easier!

I sacrificed the older pair to make a new pair. I took apart the old pair, but only completely dissassembled one half. Here are the pieces from which I contructed the patterns. As you might be able to see the pieces are very stretched - mostly at bum and knees. I did mark on some approximate grainlines with a water soluble coloured pencil. Then I sketched round the pieces and spent some time trying to make sure the seamlines were going to match. Actually they are not all identical lengths but it seems to me from looking at my pieces that there is also no way the originals can have been the same. Basically there is 2cm length extra on the lengths of the side pieces compared to the inner piece (which is the large piece). The two side pieces do match each other well at their join. The easing of the extra length was not even noticible in this 4 way stretch fabric.

Here's the final pattern. It took a whole day to make! I was amazed how many curves there are. I had thought beforehand that the panels would be straight. I think the final results may be an amalgamation of the Karrimor pattern and the pattern that my body forced the fabric into after 10 years of wear. End result seems to be...a perfect fit!?!

Then on to the contruction. The fabric is the original and best, Powerstretch from Malden Mills.

Most stitches caused the seams to stretch. The small zigzag may have been tolerable since it provided the maximum give in the seam and it was possible to pretty much steam the seams back to their proper shape after stitching, but I decided to use a straight stretch stitch in order to minimise bulk in the seams. I used the stretch thread (Resilon) that is available here (and perhaps no where else?) and a 14 stretch needle (the thread is quite thick at size 50). Previous experience with this straight stretch stitch has taught me that it is almost impossible to unpick but I found that using a contrast thread (I used blue) the impossible became possible.

For the edges, I was surprised to find that the originals had strips of rubber in the hems. I substituted this with something that seems to be called shirring tape. It is basically less bulky elastic with lots of holes in (I used 1cm width). After refering to the PR resources on stitching in elastic, I overlocked the elastic to the raw edge wrong side, turned it and stitched it down with the stretch straight stitch.

I measured the elastic lengths required from the pattern, and then cut the lengths while holding the elastic slightly firmly, to make sure the elastic was going to provide a snug fit.

Here is the only picture I could find of the originals in action.

mountain hoodie

2006-10-10T22:20:00.001+09:00

Burda 8291 is is labelled easy and consists of a knit jumper with a variety of different neck finishes. I made the hooded version. Apart from the hood and neckline, I used modified pattern pieces from the PR "Build a Better Tee Shirt" class that I took earlier this year, rather than the Burda pattern pieces. My version is not quite as long in the body and somewhat closer fitting than the original.

I was actually attracted by the quite tight looking fit on the pattern photo, although it seems that, on closer inspection, and reading of the other reviews, that the fit is not so close. The thing I most liked about the pattern was that, without too much difficulty, it was possible to meld the hood with the Tshirt pattern I made in the PR class.

The fabric is 100-weight single velour fleece (ie a smooth hard wearing finish on right side and fleece on the wrong side), from Malden Mills prints section. I have had very good wear from RTW jumpers made of this stuff in 200 weight.

I didn't use the pattern instructions except to check how the hood was constructed, which was straightforward. I used the T-shirt class instructions to aid the construction. I used lightweight knit-suitable interfacing on the neckline and I think that was very useful. Interfacing in the sleeve and body hems seems less pleasant to me, although I did do it this time after much testing on scraps of fabric. I also interfaced the hem at the front of the hood which seems OK. I used a narrow zigzag to topstitch down the hood seam allowance and to stitch down the hems since I haven't mastered twin needle stitching (or stitching 2 parallel rows). Haven't looked to see what the Burda pattern suggests for this.

I made quite a few changes to the T-shirt pattern, adding about an inch of ease to the side and arm seams, taking out the CB seam, lengthening the body, slightly modifying the armscye, and taking out the darts. I cut large seam allowances and basted it all together, and then adjusted the fit. The important bit I learned in the class is to bother to transfer the changes on the pattern pieces so that as part of the work, a re-usable pattern is constructed. In addition more small changes can be added in the future so that the pattern can evolve bit by bit.

For the neckline, I made a rough estimate based on the Burda front and back pieces. Then I measured the neckline ofthe resulting pattern pieces and chose a hood size such that the neckline size was correct. I added a cord round the hood front - I am not sure if this is in the Burda pattern or not. For the holes where the cord came out I sewed a bit of interfacing in a rectangle over where the hole was to go right sides together. Then I cut the hole and turned the interfacing to the other side and ironed it down. Wonder if it will fall apart during laundering.

I intend to sew this again, but will wear this one for a bit first to see how much ease to go for. In fact I already have some fabric which is more fashion fabric than sports fabric so will be interesting to see if it works out. I think that using the tshirt pattern as the base enabled the final result to be much closer to what I had envisaged than had I started with the Burda pattern pieces. As well as being a fun hooded top, it is also an excellet perfomer - took it up the mountains this weekend. It is very good at wicking away moisture, and I appreciated the extra warmth of the hood.

review

girl-blouse

2006-09-17T21:42:00.000+09:00

This is my version of the Man Blouse. It is View A of the same pattern, Vogue 7457.

I made this top using the skills learned in the Understanding Sheer Fabrics class that I took on PR this summer. It took quite a while to make, despite the "very easy" tag on the pattern. Since the fabric was chiffon I basted everything and was very very patient!

I cut a size 12 because I hought the 14 was going to be too baggy, and followed the pattern except I made a baby hem on the bottom rather than a narrow hem.

The other change I made after constructing the shirt was to take out the cord and casing at the waist. The casing really didn't look very good through the chiffon, splitting things up with a horizontal line. When the cord was tied it also made the shirt go a bit too weird and girly.

Making this was partly a silk chiffon practice and partly a test of the pattern for some velvet burnout fabric that I bought in Tokyo. If one made the top a bit longer then it might be possible to tie it round the waist with something.

Tshirts

2006-09-17T20:08:00.000+09:00

This summer I took 2 PR classes. These were Understanding Sheer Fabrics and Build a Better Tshirt by Sarah Veblen and Shannon Gifford respectively. The thing that started this class taking was that I had accidentally bought a rayon and silk devore when in London earlier this year, and then realised that I had no idea how to sew it. Now I do, although I haven't actually done it yet.

However, the Understanding of sheer fabrics doesn't just apply to silky, dressy things, but also to anything with holes in! I took the tshirt class somewhat as a consequence of taking the sheer fabrics class. After you are going to wear transparent things then you need to have something underneath! The first thing I made as a result of the sheer class was James' Man Blouse. James looked lovely in that through the summer (the fabric is beautiful) in the intense heat but doesn't wear it outside the house! However, we've seen plenty of Japanese men wearing man-blouses since. The Japanese don't half dress funny!

I chose the Jalie 2005 Tshirt pattern because it had good reviews. In Shannon's class you start with a tshirt pattern and then alter it out of all recognition. You start by making the fit much, much worse but 2 weeks later you have made it quite a bit better than the original pattern, and have a valuable set of basic patterns for future use. Maybe more importantly, by the end, you have learnt a huge amount about how clothes are shaped to fit our bodies and are a step closer to being able to copy design features from clothes on to a basic pattern that is likely to fit. Basic changes for me are shoulders more square and narrowed hips and waist. I also have a bust dart (incorporated into the princess seams in this case) and a non-straight centre-back seam.

People on the Tshirt class suggested that Jalie patterns have more square shoulders and are more inverted V shaped than other patterns. It may be true but I think it must be a pretty small difference. I noticed no particular improvement in this area than Kwik Sew or Vogue patterns, had to square the Jalie shoulders considerably and there were 4 sizes difference
between my bust/chest and waist/hips!

So, I made a princess seam tank which was one of the possible permutations of basic features detailed in Shannon's class.

Shannon seemed to lean more towards modern solutions using hi-tech substances and fancy machines where as my impression from Sarah was one of being "at one" with the fabric and using the correct techniques to slowly convince it to do one's bidding! I pretty much prefer working slower and taking the latter approach. I didn't use interfacing in this top.

For the sheer I used black "fishnet" knit and I underlined this with soft dense red very stretchy 2-way stretch cotton knit for the front and back. Just the red knit for the sides, and for the neck and arm bindings. All purchased in Nippori (a region with 65 fabric stores all within about 10 minutes walk!) in Tokyo. Sarah's (Zen!) sewing techniques were very helpful for getting this stuff to behave. I ended up doing double rows of basting stitches for everything I stitched on the machine. I used a long stitch and tied off all the ends by hand (backstitching was pretty much impossible, with my machine at least).

In the Tshirt class I also made a pattern for James from the Jalie pattern. I actually made it before I made the tank for me, so it was actually the first result from the class. Using Shannon's instructions it was straightforward to adjust it to fit James' measurements. I used a blue version of the very stretchy knit. Shannon suggests using interfacing. I used some in this shirt and I think I probably shouldn't have, except for at the neckline. At least the interfacing in the hems is too tough and not stretchy enough for the fabric. It is just about OK, but I will be more careful next time I make a T for James. I think that probably interfacing can be mostly avoided but I also do now have some lighter weight interfacing for knits.

review

Nano!

2006-09-17T19:51:00.000+09:00

In the previous post you may have noticed James wearing a cute little 2G iPod Nano. This is not his Nano, he is only the model.

So, rather than buy a (currently nonexistent anyway) case for my lovely new Nano, instead, this afternoon I made a case. I used a little bit of some quite thick navy suede that I happened to have.

I just traced the ipod on to tracing paper, added seam allowances at the side and a tab that tucks into the back. It fts quite snuggly so is quite secure I think. I made the first verson out of some left over ultrasuede but it was too supple. The cord is stitched on using a narrow zig-zag. I used a size 16 leather needle and some size 30 pink thread on the top but thinner thread on the back. I topstitched round the bigger holes to add a bit of extra support. The sewing machine went "thunk thunk thunk" as it stitched this stuff but nothing broke and the stitches were generally good.

review

Ultra-cool bizz part #2

2006-09-17T19:39:00.000+09:00

At last I finished the second pair! It is hardly shorts weather now... After seeing James in the first pair of shorts regularly I decided they were really nice and it was worth making another pair right away (to consolidate the things I learned the first time).

The fabric is probably Ultrasuede. It is certainly very much like a swatch I got from Denver Fabrics, so if it isn't US, it is something very like. As I understand it, Ultrasuede is the USA tradename of fake suede made by Toray (a Japanese company), so I'd be unlikely to see the name here. Anyway, they had rolls and rolls of this stuff on the top floor (5th) of Okadaya in Shinjuku, Tokyo, but only 1.5m left of the particularly thin yellowy beigey one that I bought. Most of the rolls said it was OK to wash but this one said dry clean only, so of course I pre-washed it in the machine - no ill effect. Ironing was OK so I could fuse interfacing (also fused a few other bits with seam fusing stuff - darts and the huge seam allowances at the back crotch).

Construction:

phew! Glue stick is your friend!!!! I glued everything! Hope it washes out like it says on the packet! I used a water soluble pencil to mark things - hope that washes out too :o. I used this page a lot to work out how to do things.

I did lapped side seams, and topstitched the seam allowances above and below the side pockets to the front to match. Maybe you can see some of these details on the side view. The lapped seams are wonderfully supple.

The waistband I did quite differently form the instructions on the pattern. I sewed the crotch first (the pattern sews on the waistband first), then I cut off the seam allowances from the waistband, laid some twill tape on the inside, and basted on the outside and inside of the waistband with glue. Then I double top stitched through all layers. See waistband. With the twill tape stabilising things the waistband seems more snug than the tencel so I haven't actually added the belt carriers.

I used a snap instead of a button and a plastic zipper rather than metal and I think it help the front sag problem (see last paragraph of original review).

I did not topstitch the inside leg - didn't want to make the seams stiff - they are so nice and soft either lapped or with just a single stitching line. I am not sure if they will hang well with only this one line of stitching - will see once they are washed and worn for a while.

The length is unaltered from the pattern but I cut off the hem allowances and left the edges raw.

review

PJs for the little angel

2006-08-14T16:52:00.000+09:00

KS3126: "Toddlers' pajamas and tank top. The pajama shirt has long sleeves, a front button closure, a collar and a patch pocket. The pants have side seams and an elastic waist. The tank top has a neckline and armholes finished with narrow hems."

I made the PJ shirt and trousers but not the tank top.

Pattern Sizing: T1-T4. erm. See below.

The pattern instructions were excellent. The top wasn't that quick to make despite being so small, because it is a real pajama shirt. The trousers go together super-fast!

This was a long distance endeavour so, unsure of sizing, I used cotton print remnants.

My brother made a few measurements of the little angel and she came out as the length of a T2 but the width of a T1. However, there is still masses of widthways ease in this pattern. I cut a T1 width with a T2 plus and inch total, since my brother said he'd like them long so that they'd last a while.

The end result - you'll have to trust me since I haven't posted a pic of niecey, looks to me like it is too big all over, but if she keeps her proportions the PJs should fit in autumn or maybe even next spring. (Niecey is in Oz so it is now heading towards spring).

I removed the side seams on the trousers, because real pajamas don't have side seams!

I did french seams everywhere except the armsyce. I suppose I wanted to make a neat looking job since this is an export out of the immediate family!

A good pattern for woven pajamas. Apart from worrying about the sizing it was straightforward and fun making such a little garment. I would like to be able to make a summer weight pair. My brother says these are too thick for summer. Haven't found any suitable fabric yet.

review

Ultra-cool biz

2006-08-14T16:20:00.000+09:00

Vogue 1753: loose fitting men's four piece suit (ie jacket, waistcoat, trousers and shorts!). I made the shorts. (38-42) I cut size 40. The pattern instructions were OK, but I still prefer the Kwik Sew zipzops fly instructions which seem much easier yet I am sure they produce a better result.

I used a dark grey-green Tencel from ye olde locale shoppe. This is a very unstiff fabric and has a little bit of give in it even on the straight grain. I found basting the seams prior to sewing helped ensure even feed through the feed dogs. It has a kind of slightly brushed/sueded looking surface. Very nice feel. Machine stitches really sink into it, making them quite hard to remove. The fabric will crease up if you take off the garment, throw it all crumpled up onto the sofa and sit on it all afternoon in a hot and humid environment, as had happened prior to James putting them on again to be photographed(!) - but the creases soon fall out again.

I made no sizing changes to the pattern. Cut a size 40 and basted it together. It looked like it was going to fit so I just went for it. I did turn up the hem about 0.5cm less than advised on the pattern (pattern has huge 1.75 inch hems).

I did not slip stitch the waist band, but instead practiced my ditch stitching. Used the zipper foot for this task, and it worked! I thought another secure line of machine stitching was a good idea in this area, since James isn't kind to his trousers when he rips them off and chucks them across the room. I added a zipper guard - an important feature I think, particularly if you use a metal zipper!

I got James to try on the shorts after turning and basting the hem. Interesting that, once on, in order to get level hems the fronts had to be cut slightly higher and also one leg slightly shorter than the other at the front! The side view photo explains the former adjustment - waistband sits lower at front than back. The latter adjustment still a bit of a mystery - but the moral of the story is - don't finish the hems on shorts until you have tried them on your victim!

Since this is a pattern for a suit I should point out the fastening method (which is the same for the shorts and the long trousers), which, I have concluded, is not really of suit quality. Suit trousers usually have an extended waistband that extends beyond the centre front, with two fastenings. Now I know why. This pattern only has a single fastening (button) just above the fly and no extended waistband. The result is that the wasitband pivots round the button, leading to the fly sagging at the top and also the stress lines in the waistband. Perhaps I could have used some stiffer interfacing for the waistband but that might have detracted from the soft style of the shorts(?). The thing I think would have helped is to use a snap rather than a button since they have a much larger footprint, so the pivoting would not have been as bad. If I make the long trousers I will try and nab a more suit-worthy fastening method from another pattern.

I hope to sew the jacket, maybe the long trouser too. I have enough tencel to do one or the other. The fabric weight is more spring/autumn weight than summer weight, so there is time for husband to wear these for a while and give some feedback. I may also sew the shorts again - I have some very thin ultrasuede (I think) to try.

In Japan they recently invented "Cool Biz" where, for summer, rather than jackets and ties, salarymen can wear short sleeve shirts, no jacket and no tie with their suit trousers. It is all part of the effort to reduce power wastage on air conditioning. Japanese men have, however, yet to show thier knees - husband is leading the way with --- Ultra cool-biz!

review

Js Pertex overtrews

2006-08-14T16:18:00.000+09:00

Overtrousers for cycling/ hiking.
These are a modified from an (already modified to fit husband) pattern (by Haan Crafts) for "baggies", which are loose fitting trousers, usually made from bright cotton prints, with elastic waist. Any "baggies" pattern could be used. I'm sure Kwik Sew has an equivalent.

The fabric is Ripstop Pertex from Textile Outfitters. It is a good weight for cycling, but not really waterproof enough for the very heavy rain we get here. For hiking, this Pertex maybe slightly lightweight (get ripped on rocks?), but has a good level of waterproofness for walking conditions. If these get ripped up walking then making them in Goretex should work well. So far they have been worn on several very rainy cycling days and one hiking trip.

I actually made these a while ago, but photographing James in overtrousers is not easy - no one wants to hang around when they are dripping wet - and James wont put them on when it isn't raining (because it is too hot).

James already had a pair of pertex overtrousers but they are very worn out and also had a design flaw. More of that later.

Here are the main technical details working from waist to ankle:

1. Raise the back and lower the front by between half and one inch, to enable good bum coverage while cycling and walking, but avoiding excess fabric at the front while cycling.

2. Checking the baggies pattern to make sure (by comparison with the old pair of overtrousers) that the fit was sufficiently loose to work as overtrousers over hiking trousers. It was OK.

3.Knees. For cycling overtrousers the knees need to be articulated, but avoiding extra seams is desirable to stop water getting in. I made the very simple adjustment of adding an inch at the knee on the front pattern pieces and then made a tuck on each seam.

4. Calf zipper. To enable getting the overtrousers on and off without taking off shoes, a zipper was inserted into the side seams below the knee. The leg width was calculated to fit over James biggest walking boots with the zipper undone.

5. Bottom hem. I cut the trousers long so that they can be brought over the tops of the shoes. Overtrousers that are too short and have elastic round the hem ship water very effectively into shoes! This is the technical fault in the RTW overtrousers husband owns.

For the bottom hem I made a little casing and inserted a loop of thin elastic which can be looped under the sole of cycling shoes. For hiking boots, this elastic remains unused, but then the hem does fit quite snuggly over the tops of the boots, so water cannot ship into the shoes. The legs below the knees are actually a little wide for cycling (zippers not required in the cycling situation), but we discovered this week that the extra width is necessary for the hiking boot situation!

I finished the edges with a multi-step zig-zag stitch since this is the only stitch on my machine, apart from the straight stitch, that does not pucker pertex. I used a liquid seam sealer from textile outfitters to seal the seams. Not sure how well that worked really - probably some sort of tape would provide a more waterproofness.

review

James' summer shirt

2006-07-19T13:12:00.000+09:00

Vogue 7457. Loose-fitting, pullover top has three lengths. A: front/back extend into above-elbow sleeves with slit (wrong side may show) and purchased drawstring. B: cap sleeves. B,C: stitched hem.

The instructions seemed straight forward but I did not follow them exactly. The top is really a test ground for things I learned (am still learning) from participating in Sarah Veblen's recent Understanding Sheer Fabrics Course on PR.

The pattern was very easy with not many seams. For a sheer, unlined top, I think lots of seams have the potential to spoil the flow of the garment.

The fabric is silk chiffon, purchased in Tokyo. Black with white man flowers - and expensive!

I bought this to make View A for me in a size 12-14, but then realised that View C would work for the, erm what shall we call it - home summer shirt - for James. So I bumped up the size to 18, added 4 inches to the length plus an extra one to the back. I also added nearly 2 inches to the arms. View C of this top is straight up and down so no womanly curves to remove from the pattern. [Next time could taper from the under arms by about an inch to the bottom of the shirt - this version is maybe a bit too baggy below the waist.]

I tried various sorts of seams. For bias binding I used some lovely deep red slightly sparkly looking Bemberg lining, which looks lovely either over or under the chiffon.

The neckline I did according to the instructions, but everything else was done differently, using some of the hundreds of sheer fabric techniques explained by Sarah in the class.

I didn't like the silk pattern of the fabric folded over on itself so I bound the shoulder seams with some bias strips. What I learnt there was that you have to be careful that the fabric is kept at the right tension while feeding it into the sewing machine. Because I didn't take care to stretch the chiffon a bit, these seams did become a bit tight. But I made up for this by stretching the sleeve edges like crazy (I was just playing about) and got rather an interesting effect. I'm calling it a feature.

Anyway, I decided that the fabric show-through was much less obvious for underarm and side seams, so for them I did a simple 4 step zigzag to stop the edges fraying.

Then we get to the bottom of the garment! The slits look quite nice with a binding. It was my husband who pointed out that I had to use a single piece of farbic to bind the slit to prevent it ripping at the top.

For the bottom hem I was faced with the same potential problem of fabric showing through. What I did was cut a bit of the bias lining fabric, stitch it on like a facing (right sides together) and then it becomes the filling in the fabric sandwich of the hem. I then slip stitched the hem, but I am thinking I might machine stitch across to increase the stability because I am wondering if this hem does rather highlight an error I made in the pattern adjustments. I should have cut the inch longer at the back but tapered the edges to the same length as the front. Instead I cut it an inch longer all the way across. When I first stitched the hem there was a large hill shape in the back hem, which looked three times as bad because the back piece and front piece were a different length at the side. The funny shape required is because of husband's large shoulder blades which pull up on either side of teh centre back. I realised this was my design error and I did improve it a bit when stitching the binding on the slits - I stretched the binding when stitching the back part and stretched the chiffon when stitching the front. As the picture above shows, the edges do now meet. Went for lunch at the local excellent Indian restaurant and the waitress had exactly the same problem at the back of her silky top, so now I don't feel so bad about it!

[Update: I folded the bottom hem in half again and then machine stitched. The extra thickness/stability does seem to have improved how it hangs, although of course the curve on the back hem remains.]

The main conclusion is, if you are a sheer fabric novice like me, choose a really really simple pattern like this one, or you might never finish the thing. This took me about 2.5 days solid fun!

Oh yes one other point. You may be wondering what possessed me to make a silk chiffon man-blouse for my husband. The reason is that he is a Scot living in a country with 35C 100% humidity summers. He refuses to wear anything on his top half while indoors at home. But this top is light enough that he will wear it (so far!) and I much much much prefer these elegant man-flowers to the sweaty alternative! Futhermore, inhabitants of England, currently being scorched by 37C temperatures, may like to take note that it really is OK to take off your woolley jumpers when it gets hot.

review