Black matelasse skirt suit: it's the bomb!

Back to regular programming!  Whew - those itty bitty little booties really took me out of my comfort zone.

My black wool matelasse (wool-nylon blend from Mood), outfit is done, done, and done.  You already saw the blouse I made to go with it. The fabric is super interesting - not nearly as wooly as a wool bouclé, but not smooth like a rayon-poly or cotton matelasse or jacquard. It's a solid black, but the shiny parts reflect light, making them appear greyer in photos, which creates tons of texture. It looks flocked, but isn't:  that texture is created by thick wooly threads woven right in.

I chose Vogue 7975, as  I'd just "revised" my red bouclé  Chanel jacket, so the pattern was at hand.  I'd used it twice before, for the red Chanel, and also my brown-shot-with-blue-and-gold cashmere one.  This time, I was determined to see if I could finally and once for all  make it my own, turn it into a TNT straight out of the envelope.  

Hah!  Does the phrase "hoist by her own petard" (see bottom of post for the ultimate example) say anything to you?  Influenced by a friend (yes I'm looking at YOU, you know who you are!!!), I decided to make a petite alteration above the bust. It's a salutary tale of two different bodies: for her, a perfect move. For me, not so great. What it did was make the armscye tight, and I had to enlarge it back to its original size.  I'm slowly coming to the realization that the correct petite alteration for me - I do need it, since I'm a shortie - is just below the armscye, across the back to the side seam and tapering to nothing at the bust point.  N-e-e-e-e-xt time.....

Successful alterations, anyone?  I wanted a working and visible sleeve vent, so split the upper sleeve in half.  I also wondered about Claire Shaeffer's new Chanel jacket variation, V8804, in which she places the front upper sleeve on a slight bias.  So I did that too: 

I don't think that made any functional difference to the sleeve, but then again, it did no harm either. In a typical even patterned or tweedy fabric it would offer a nice bias textural variation, but in this fabric it was invisible. 

To modernize the jacket a tad and distance myself from the suspicion that I used home dec fabric (quel horreur!), I used leather-look snaps on the sleeve vents plus one at CF waistline:  

Look Ma, no buttonholes!  But quite a bit of laborious hand sewing instead.... 

The skirt is the double-vented, princess seamed V7937 (yes, again).

A good black skirt is a perfect basic, wearable with anything and everything.

One more thing?  Did you notice the collar on my jacket?  But.... V7975 doesn't have one.  Right.  The collar's a bit of an afterthought.  Originally, the jacket was meant to be collarless, with Chanel-like trim.  Midway through construction I decided the fabric pattern wouldn't lend itself to trim, being already very busy. So, I grabbed the collar from my fave Chanel-like pattern, New Look 6516.  And added self fabric front facings instead of lining to the edge.  Done!

All told, 2.5 yards of fabric, 3 yards of silk charmeuse (jacket lining and matching blouse), 0.75 m of black rayon lining for the skirt, all from the stash. For a change and a softer silhouette, I omitted shoulder pads this time.

And here, as promised, is the ultimate of being hoist by your own petard, the final few seconds of Dr. Strangelove (Or How I Learned to Love The Bomb), with the voice of the incomparable Dame Vera Lynn:

This clip gives you the whole "Kong Rides the Bomb" final segment of the movie, with a very young James "The Amazing Voice" Earl Jones at the controls, instantly recognizable once he speaks. 

Revisions 1: red bouclé jacket

The last few times I tried to wear my red bouclé Chanel jacket, I had to abandon the inclination.  I shrunk a little in the last few years, and was simply swimming in it.

So recently I took the time to "revise" it.  I took off the trim, removed the front zip, opened the lining, and then took it in - a lot.  The key alteration was taking in the upper shoulder princess lines above the bust point.  The pattern is drafted for a bust whose fullness seems to begin right at the shoulder - I kid you not. My body has a definite hollow between the clavicle and the bust, so without alterations there was quite a lot of pooching of fabric in that area.  I was happy to wrestle that issue into submission and transfer the change - once and for all - onto the pattern pieces.  I also removed a lot from the waist at each of the seams - front, side, and back, taking in the sides all the way to the hip.

Then I put it all back together.

For comparison, here's a collage of the first look, with the original hooks, before I replaced them with a zip:

Driven by my desire for change, I removed all the armscye trim and moved the secondary little pockets to their conventional Chanel locations.  Without the trim, the shoulder line suddenly seems much wider, doesn't it?

The nice thing about this revision?  not only do I have a jacket that fits me better, but the zipper tape is correctly concealed beneath the lining.  Shames me to admit it, but I was too lazy to open the lining when I replaced the hooks with zipper in the first place.  Much happier now.

Brown blue cashmere suit: stashbusting really works!

As hard as it may be to believe it, this three piece outfit, completed at last, marks the end of a four year saga.  It began in New York in Jan of 2010, when I got tempted by a dark brown, shot with blue and golden brown threads, cashmere wool woven.

The pic above gives the best sense of the fabric: very soft, very dark brown and yet not only brown; the bright blue and golden highlights are very clear in close-up. In the pic, the jacket is paired with the brown silk jaquard top I just made. Unquestionably this cashmere is the most expensive piece of fabric I ever sprang for. Lightweight, soft as down, springy, yum!  I think it came from Beckenstein's - I recall my sister in law took me for a long day's trawl through the fashion district and this was one of our last stops, a fabric store dominated by menswear cloths of the highest quality.  Sound familiar?  I believe it should.

I got the fabric with only a jacket in mind, but the cut was so wonderfully generous (2.2 meters) that after the collarless V7975 jacket was cut, the remainder yielded a sleeveless two piece dress made up of a princess-seamed top (Go 4001) and simple pegged skirt (Burda 9-2008-120). I finished the top fairly promptly, then continued apace with the jacket.  All of a sudden, with everything cut and mostly sewed together, the project got stalled by this, that and t'other.  Mostly two snags:  I resisted the idea of cutting buttonholes into this scrumptious fabric but wasn't sure how to proceed; and I was't entirely at all thrilled with the shape of the skirt.

Still, we all  know the UFO refrain:  unfinished is unstarted, and merely cut out is money thrown out.  I finally tackled the bull cashmere billy goat by the horns and, tadaaa! at last can call the top, jacket and skirt, and therefore the entire three piece outfit, completed at last.  At very long last, indeed!

So, without further ado: all on the dress form, because, well, Baby, It's Cold Outside.

Jacket:  Vogue 7975, size 10 straight up, lined with chocolate brown silk jacquard (the Marfy 1913 chocolate brown top I made last week was eked out of the last little remnant of the very same silk).  It's a closer, better fit than the red boucle jacket, which was a size 12.

Instead of buttonholes, I sewed on three snaps and covered the right side ones with deep blue "tweedy" buttons.

I stabilized the fabric - all 2.2 meters of it - with lightweight fusible knit.  I can hardly believe I had the patience to do that, but yes, to my amazement.... The jacket is further padded with a chest and upper back shield, sleeve heads, and shoulder pads.  I was going to forego the pads, but realized late in the finishing that lack of them would give the jacket unsightly drag lines between armscye and waist, so in they went.

The top is based on the bodice to hip line Go 4001 sleeveless dress. I love its strong side princess line, it's perfect for anyone with nice sized assets on top. I made the dress back in 2009; for those of you not party to Sewing Review, the pictorial set starts here.

 This top is also lined with the same brown silk jacquard. Easy peasy. Nothing more to add.

The Awful Skirt:  Burda 9-2008-120 simple pegged aka "tulip shape" skirt. IMO this skirt has a very strange shape, with a really strong pooch line at the hip, I suspect mainly due to the tulip shape, though some of that may be the fault of my drawing the pattern to match the dimensions of my generous derriere/small waist figure.  I tried to slim it down but it seemed to me I was only making matters worse, worser, and worsest, so finally gave up on alterations, returned to the pattern's original truly weird line, and decided to finish it with much more ease in the hips than I would ordinarily. Lined with a heavy 80% bemberg/20% polyester blend lining in very dark navy, it works, but is far from ideal. Embarrassed, much?  Oh yeah, very. C'mon, how hard can it be to get a simple no waistband skirt to look decent, for pity's sake?  It hangs off my hips just fine, but then goes all "I wanna be a jodhpur" a few inches further down.

What's really funny is that a gal showed up in just such trousers to this week's group photocall of 2014 Oscar nominees:

Dressed to impress: Gravity's Sandra Bullock and American Hustle's Amy Adams posed with director/writer Alfonso Cuarón, singer Karen O and actor Leonardo DiCaprio among others in the line-up (Daily Mail credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2556576/OSCARS-2014-NOMINEES-Full-line-pose-group-shot-pre-awards-luncheon.html#ixzz2t45RHkzs )

Though it's now finished, I still aim to sneak up on it with a bit of needle and thread to oh so gently, millimeter by millimeter, tamp down some of this skirt's dressage ambitions. Sheesh. The bottom line (pun intended!) is that my hip line would do better with a different pattern.  I'll most emphatically never, not ever but ever, use this pattern again.  Basta!

But wait, perhaps NOT Basta!  With a little research under my belt today, I discovered that there really is a trick to making a good looking pencil skirt.  Take a look at the detailed skirt sloper workup, nicely demo'd for the rest of us by the Overflowing Stash. This is almost tempting me to rip the skirt apart again, and re-sew it a third time.  Maybe. It'd be a pity to let an otherwise nice outfit, and such a luxurious one at that,  languish unloved in the closet.  Especially as I'd been a busy little bee making, and continuing to make, go-with tops:

Both the cashmere top and the brown silk jacquard top coordinate beautifully with these two scarves:

The green python blouse also works with the brown; its deep blues and oranges play well with the blue and golden threads of the jacket: 

And I have three more potential playmates in the pipeline:  two nice polys and a silk crinkle chiffon.  Just draped onto the form, and feeling hopeful about them:

Poly satin

Lightweight poly crepe

Crinkle silk chiffon

As a concluding remark, I'm happy to say that the stashbusting challenge prompted me to finally buckle down and finish this set, already.  I'm thrilled to bits - the jacket is scrumptious, and a good excuse for some fun and easy blouse-making time.  But, how do I count this set for stashbusting?  The sleeveless top was completed some time ago, but without its partners, it would never have been worn. In fact, though already finished, it was still languishing in the sewing pile along with the rest of its set, an abandoned orphan if ever I saw one. So, 2.2 meters of fabric, 1.8 meters of silk?  Done!

Brown-blue cashmere: the unstingiest cut of all

One of the fabrics I sprang for while in NY last month was a length of lightweight suiting in cashmere. Very soft, quite an open weave, and it comes from a menswear store in the famous Fashion District - wish I could remember the name of the store, it was up to the ceiling with all the fancy suiting wools and shirting cottons you could imagine. I had my heart set on finding a pinstripe wool in red and grey, but when I touched this stuff, my wallet was history, along with my preconceived idea.



The image is pretty close to real life - a fine tweed, very dark overall, with highlight threads in golden brown and blue. Thinking "jacket", I asked for 2 yds. When I got home, I discovered I got 2.2 meters. Hmmm. After pre-washing it's still 2.2 meters. It started to look like a jacket and skirt could be doable.

Here's my layout:



What you see is a long pencil skirt - the spaces below the hems allow for extra length - with a back vent - that's the space beside lower CB; and Vogue 7975 jacket, with its two-piece full length sleeve, back facing, and pocket. Even I, the stingy cutter, was amazed at how neatly all these pieces jigsawed themselves together.

I could only get away with this because: 1. I already made these two up, so know they'll fit; 2. the jacket's only a size 10, even a 12 wouldn't have fit this way - hah, sometimes being average is not such a bad thing; 3. this fabric is wider than normal by nearly 10 cm, 158 cm instead of the usual 150; 4. it has no nap; 5. it didn't shrink. Oh my lucky stars!

The 66 cm near the bottom staring blankly at me is obviously enough for the front facing and a cropped sleeveless top. Sort of like this two piece dress: V2218



Specifically, the centre reddish pair, with long skirt and sleeveless top.

I seriously considered repeating my Go dress in this fabric, but a skirt makes the whole thing so much more versatile - and a passel of tops is easily washable, while a cashmere frock is not.


A slightly lighter image, showing the highlights. This outfit, although I confess I got brown trim at M&J, will probably remain completely unadorned. Beautiful good quality cashmere = timeless. How much more timeless can one get than, well, timeless? or more infinite than infinity? Infinitely timeless? Asymptotically timeless? I have some bronze-coloured leather and I'm toying with the idea of trimming the sleeve hems and pockets - maybe. But plain and timeless really appeals to me here.

Red "Chanel" suit: skating season!

The little hobble skirt will be perfect for a death spiral.



But not for triple axels or pirouettes.



More later!

Red "Chanel" Suit: Baby It's Cold Out There!

My laptop's still in the hospital, but the patient's expected to live. Or so I'm told.

In the meantime, I've managed to put my "what to do next" pondering time to good use. When I say I'm a stingy cutter, I mean it! I bought 2.25 yds of this here red boucle, and I managed to turn the scrap left over from the jacket into a matching skirt. Tadah! Here's my fuzzy little butt-warming outfit, and not a second too soon, considering the howling you-don't-want-to-know-the-windchill gale out there tonight. A lovely Arctic blast.

We're entering prime Rideau Canal (=longest skating rink in the world, it's in the Guinness Book of World Records) skating season. We need it to be cold. We LOVE the cold!

We know how to dress for the cold. So, the front:



Both top and bottom are underlined with organza, painstakingly stitched to the ff, and all four pockets have double silk lining, so you can slip your fingers into them without catching on the fuzzy boucle. The jacket's weighed down with a hem chain. And that's not all: altogether too much hand sewing, I tell ya. But it had to be done.

I'll post a "live" photo on the GCGH blog, and probably - I hope - review it on PR. Or maybe not. I'd rather be sewing than computing whilst on my own time, seeing as I spend pretty much all my time in front of an ugly square screen at work, and not watching sitcoms either. Bear with me.

I had JUST enough trim to do all that you see - with a 1 cm scrap left, I kid you not. As I didn't want the skirt to turn into just a great big boring red bottom, I did this:



A nice exposed heavy gold zipper all the way down. Maybe it'll tweak someone's imagination. I hope.

Is this all? No indeed. One of the sites I love to stalk is Style.com. Today I found Thimister - I know, I've never heard of him before either. But take a look. Did you? So, never mind the shoot'em up bloodstained clothing theme, what I did like about the collection is the fab-fabulous colour combination of drab olive with red and white. Eminently doable! Here's the jacket with the very first thing I ever reviewed on PR - a New Look skirt, and being a total newb back then, I never bothered to post the skirt I made (in olive microfibre):



I like the skirt enough to wear it regularly, and now I can feel fashion forward in it. A hooray moment?