The AA jumpsuit - a successful knockoff!

AA? Sure! except in this instance it refers not to the evil brew, but 'Murrican Apparel.
A jumpsuit isn't the sort of thing I'd ever think of for myself.  And yet....

The backstory here is that my daughter modeled for me a new garment she'd just bought.  And she looked deliciously adorable in it.  So, being that we're very close in size, I tried it on.  Better than that, I examined it inside and out, and... you guessed it:  decided I too could not only wear one but make it too.

Copying a garment typically involves tracing each part, sometimes with cling film (plastic food wrap, whatever you call it these days - the stuff used to be called saran wrap back in the days).  Instead of doing that (with one exception*), I simply sketched the garment and then described its dimensions. In  four pages of excruciating detail.

Then, based on these measurements, I drafted the pattern pieces.

*The exception is the pants leg:  I traced the outside pants leg from waist to hem and the inside leg from crotch to hem.  I still had to describe some of the dimensions, but this gave me a very good basis for the overall shape of the trouser part of the garment.

Pleats abound in this suit, front! back! top! bottom!  So in describing it, I was careful to note not just the placement of each pleat but also its length, depth and direction.

For example, three deep and long pleats on each shoulder - front and back.  Bodice pleats at the waistline.  Four front pleats on the trousers.

Three long and deep pleats at the back shoulders, and shirred back waist. 

Two deep side seam pockets; the top of each is caught in the front waist seam.  

The left side seam is one long zipper, all the way from the armscye to about mid-thigh.  The zipper runs behind the side seam pocket.  Figuring out how to put these things together was quite a trick of mental gymnastics ... the pattern I drafted obviously didn't come with any assembly instructions!

I made a few small but important changes to the garment that improved its fit and overall proportions:

I shortened the bodice by 1 cm and the trouser crotch length by 2 cm, but lengthened the trouser leg.

I narrowed the outside shoulder line by about 2 cm and shaped the armscye. The original had a very unattractive straight armscye that created excess of fabric puddling around the armpits, especially in the back.

I oriented the front pattern pieces so the CF diagonal crossover is on the straight grain (i.e., no bias stretching or rippling) , plus I took out a gape dart, shifted to the bottom of the pattern piece, from the CF diagonal.  This really improved the fit of the CF in comparison with the original, in which the bodice noticeably gaped open. The original was also a bit too long waisted for me and my daughter - we're borderline petites - so that also contributed to the original's gaposis.

There's no gaposis in my bodice at all. 

I'm just about ready to tackle my new coat now.  So stay tuned...

One seam unisex PJ - with pattern

My guys have few sartorial needs, and I'm very seldom called upon to sew for them.  Here's one pyjama outfit I've made for both of them several times - and once already blogged about, albeit in a very cursory fashion, here.  That was three and a half years ago - indeed time doth fly.   The boy was in dire need of a new one.

I return to this self drafted pattern because it's very simple and makes for very comfortable at home wear with breathability and plenty of coverage.  Depending on the fabric, a pattern like this could serve anyone.  My dimensions, below, are for a medium-large guy, but scale it down only a little and make in cotton eyelet or lace, and the outfit could so easily serve as beach or garden party wear on any one of us gals. 

This outfit uses 3.25 m of fabric, and took an afternoon to make. 

The blouse:

I designed the pattern to take advantage of narrow widths of fabrics such as silks and cotton batiks, or, in this case, African wax print cloth - in each case about 110 cm wide.  The blouse uses the entire width of the fabric, with the selvedges at the sleeve hems.  It's made from just two rectangles of cloth, joined by a single horizontal seam at upper chest level. The shoulder line is a fold of the back piece.  

Blouse pattern pieces. 

Construction is extremely simple:  first, cut out the neckline triangle and bind it; I use an 8 cm wide non-bias strip with no interfacing and 1 cm SA's, so the finished width of this kimono-ish binding is 3 cm.  I then sew together the front and back rectangles of cloth at the horizontal chest seam, matching selvedge edges. To permanently flatten down the SA, I top stitch it.  I then fold the piece together at the shoulder line, pin and draw in the side seam lines,  using a small (13 cm diameter) plate for the underarm curve, and sew them, before cutting the sides, stopping 19 cm from the bottom for the side vents.  To make finishing the vents easier, I serge each SA of the side seams separately. Since the sleeves end on the selvedge, they're hemmed with only a single fold; the bottom hem is doubly folded.   An easy variation on this basic is to  make the front hem 3 or 4 cm shorter than the back. 

The shorts: 

The now sadly worn out green shorts, originally one-seams, were made literally an eyeblink before my son got his pubescent growth spurt. Overnight, they became too tight in the seat. So I grabbed a remnant and added a 6 cm wide side panel to each leg.  Here's how it looked in wear:

I cut the old pair apart and used one side to pattern the new, once again no-side-seam, version: 

You can just barely see the chalked cutting line, with a 1 cm SA all around.  So the wearer can tell front from back, the shorts have a (sewn shut, non-functional) front fly, which is also (barely) visible chalked in at extreme right of the above pic.  You could thus make it a functional fly, but my fellas are adamant that they do NOT want it.  Really, the only important sewing line in this pattern is the inseam, as you want to make sure that the hem-to-crotch lengths (at right and left in the pic) are the same. 

The Boy sure didn't want to be photographed!  I do like this image though, as it shows the blouse side seam curve, and the length of the shorts.  And the great wax print!  I was just tickled when my local Fabricland acquired these wax prints.  I have a love affair of long standing with African cloth, so much so that there's something downright Proustian - as in, A la recherche du temps perdu - in this little project.

Back in my academic days I was the Mr. Spock (scientist in residence) at archaeological digs in northern Ghana.  

That's me at lower left, wearing a Madras check shirt that I did NOT make!

One season, the women of the project, and ours was a gal-dominated project, commissioned the local seamstresses to make us outfits out of local wax print cloth.   As we sojourned in a tiny little village in the Ghanaian boonies where electricity was not widely available, all the sewing was - and, I suspect, still is - done on foot-pedal Singer machines that would count as antiques here.   

Here I am with our dig's employees and a slew of local kids, in my two-piece wax print dress.  We called our compound - built from scratch by the project on an empty piece of land just outside the village - Canada House. It included a one room hut for each of the project's members; mine is at extreme left here, with the red window frame.  Inside, there was just enough room for a mattress on the floor with mosquito netting tucked around its edges, a tiny stool, and a bit of dung-smoothed floor for a suitcase.  We'd spend the long dark tropical evenings playing scrabble by kerosene lamp under a gloriously brilliant Milky Way, fortifying ourselves with G&T's, the best anti-malarial favoured by all visitors to Africa.  It worked:  I didn't get that dreadful parasite even once.  

This gorgeous young man, a Fulani from Nigeria, worked with us at the dig.  

Each year, I brought home some amazing genuine kente cloth. I used the one above - a classic design - as the background for a conference presentations of my results from the dig.  Kente cloth weaving is a fascinating subject best left for another time.

So long, everyone!

From scarf to garment: the one-yard top, and pattern comparison

On one of my visits to Montreal, I was tempted by a couple of silk crepe scarves crumpled up in a "going for a song" sale basket of an Indian clothing store.  Not because I wanted scarves that particular day, but because the silk was a wonderful springy crepe with lovely print designs, and I thought they could easily be converted to simple sleeveless tops.

This time, I used the downloadable Marfy 1913 sleeveless blouse pattern. Rather than using the standing collar pattern, I simply bound the neckline and armscyes with bias strips.  Since I don't care for the fashion faux pas of peeking undergarments, I didn't pleat as much of the neckline as suggested on the pattern piece.  Per pattern design, I did insert the elastic in the hem; in the pic above, the hem is pulled down to make the shirring visible.

The print is is so beautiful:  are these lilies?  irises?  not according to the leaf, which I don't recognize at all. Any guesses? And, though at first glance it all appears to be monochromatic in tones of cornflower blue, close examination shows that there are green and brown tonalities as well, clearly visible in the leaves.

The scarf had a rolled edge that I unpicked before testing the layout. Laid out flat, it's a perfect 36 inch square:  since India is a metric country, as is Canada, it was clearly made for the American market! As it turned out, the two main pattern pieces fit perfectly in the square:

I cut size 42, with wide side seam allowances.

The orange pin heads mark the shoulder corner of the back piece moved from upper left to lower right.

The front, at lower left in the upper photo and lower centre in the lower one, was cut on a fold, while the back (at upper left in the upper photo and lower right in the lower one) was cut with a center seam.  The remaining fabric at upper right provided more than enough 1.5" (4cm) bias strips for the arm and neck edges.

Since the neckline is high in this pattern and a back opening is necessary, having a centre back seam was functionally useful. I made a thread chain loop and found a blue button that's a surprisingly good match to this fabric.  A self-covered button would also be great. 

 Here's the finished top again, this time with the elastic hem loosened upwards, giving a short blouson effect.

Silk crepe is my favourite of all fabrics for sleeveless tops. It wears like iron, feels like butterfly's wing on the skin, is warm to the touch without burning, breathes beautifully, and has a springiness that's superbly comfortable.  Some years ago I drafted a simple sleeveless top pattern, and have used that ever since as the basis for variations not just in silk but also linen and poly.

Silk crepe tops:  self-drafted pattern with pleated neckline, early 2013 at left, early 2011 at right.  

So how does the Marfy pattern compare with mine? My pattern has a scooped out neckline both front and back, making any additional opening redundant. The Marfy neckline is high, so even without the standing collar it needs a neck opening.  Note that though it's originally placed at CB in the pattern, this opening can easily be made into a design element  in the front, either angled towards the sleeve or at centre front, perhaps with skinny bias tubes to tie into a pretty bow instead of a button or hook.

Though not readily visible in the finished garments, there are other minor differences between my pattern and the Marfy. My pattern has shaped side seams for a closer fit in the waist, a higher armscye, and its outer shoulder is less cut in towards the neck, for more secure coverage of these pesky undergarment straps.

Self drafted pattern, box pleat variations:  at left, patterned red silk crepe scarf with short hem and two hem pleats; silk-cotton blend at right.

So, will I make the Marfy 1913 top again?  Of course, and at least once with the standing collar!  it's great to have another top variation.