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. 

Lace overlay skirt suit - finished!

Happy New Year, everyone!

I finished this two piece outfit some time ago, but got flummoxed by the weather:  I was waiting for a warm (hahahah!) day.  We did have some warm ones just after Christmas, and all the snow melted, so then the great outdoors looked terribly drab.... so I waited some more for a WARM day with SNOW (for a prettier backdrop).  Right, I need my head examined:  this is, after all, the coldest time of the year.  As a matter of fact, it went down to -29C (-20F) a few days ago.  For a warm day, I might as well wait till May. Today it went up to a balmy -17C, so I said, let's do it,  heck, threw on a turtleneck....
... and isn't it glorious and bright, with the bluest blue sky you ever did see?

So, the jacket is Style Arc Ziggi pattern, starting with size 8, modified as per my previous post, lined with bronze silk jacquard.  To reiterate and sum up, my modifications angled the main front and back body princess seaming, raised and slightly widened the peplum, and enlarged the collar and lapels.

The skirt is a princess seamed Vogue 7937, view A without the belt loops, lined with black bemberg, with an invisible side zipper. I started with size 12, then took it in a bit in the waist and added a bit of width over the hips.  I think I finally got smart about this - I didn't touch the side seams, but instead added all the extra width, about 1/4" per seam, just to the front and side princess seams:  i.e., over the butt and the thighs. Well, the skirt fits (and I think looks) better than any I've ever made before.  And it's a little shorter than I normally make them.  I like it, but - is it mutton posing as lamb???

Jacket back view:

Here is where I think I could've done better - the upper back is a little longer than it could be. I shortened the front and back side panels, pinching out to nothing at the front and back princess seam. Looking at the photo above I now think the CB panels could also have been shortened the same way.  In the front, the effect is a small FBA, which is perfect for me; but my back is "overerect" in tailoring parlance, i.e., shorter than the norm as it is.  Lesson for next time:  for optimal result do a petite alteration of sides and all of the back, but omit the front.

Jacket lining:  I have always loved how gold and its many shades plays with black and white:  it's a classic combo.  That's why I chose both the bronze lining and the bronze-gold trim to riff on the bronze zippers of the jacket.

Sleeve gussets:  I winged it, as the pattern had no such thing.  Basically I cut two large isoceles triangles taller than they were wide, hemmed their base, and attached these by machine to the zipper tapes of the unlined sleeve.  When making the sleeve lining I made sure the bottom 20 cm of this seamline was left open.  After bagging the lining and turning the sleeve hem, I hand sewed these lining edges to the gussets. Clear as mud?  

A side view of the skirt's back vents: I worried about how to correctly attach the lining to those pesky vents, but then, when I got down to it, there was no problem. Somehow, it all just fell into place.  Yes, Virginia, there IS such a thing as overthinking what you're doing.

In closing, a "Shakespearean" look:  very Sir Walter Raleigh, don't you think? 

Happy 2015 Sewing, everyone!!!

Grey boucle/tweed wardrobe

Today was a beautiful day:  dry and, relatively speaking, warm.  No rain, no snow, temp well above freezing.  Tomorrow, I hear, it'll be quite the contrary.  So I prevailed upon the Hubs to take a few pics of my new grey wardrobe. To wit:

1. Chanel-style jacket, wool bouclé, cotton broadcloth underlining, silk twill lining and trim
2. A-line pleated skirt, wool bouclé, silk organza underlining, bemberg rayon lining
3. Blouse, out of the same silk twill as the jacket's lining and trim
4. Grey bouclé and black ponte top to work with the skirt for a two-piece dress
5. Standard lightweight wool black trousers, made long ago and a beloved wardrobe basic

Jacket:  New Look 6516

My new hair goes very well with this new outfit, doncha think? (...beats being bald....)

With bouclé top and skirt for a very unified look

Methinks the proportions are a bit top heavy. Next time, I'll shorten the jacket by at least 2 inches/5cm!

Skirt: New Look 6511 view D

Unobstructed view

Edge stitching of  the outside  edges of the pleats
 keeps them sharp, while edge stitching of the pleats' inside
prevents them from falling open. 

Front pleats are faced with lining fabric to reduce bulk, otherwise those pleats just wouldn't behave.
 Elsewhere, the fashion fabric is folded up and edgestitched.

With matching silk blouse.  But just look at that chain: the links are so poorly closed that they slip right out of the thread!

Bouclé-ponte top: Go 4001

I went for grey-black-grey-black-grey-black. 

Love this pattern's strong princess lines. And look at the matching sleeve trim!

 Boucle side back with black ponte on either side.

Honey, does this make me look wide in the beam? 

Blouse: Burda 10-2011-128

Half-length sleeves with self-covered buttons. 

Love the belt carriers on the skirt's yoke.   Need new, skinny belt.

From a distance the blouse looks a nice pearly grey.  But actually, it's a very fine print in cool pink and black.  I like how the print size reflects the pink loops of the bouclé.

You have to be pretty close to the garments to spot the pattern: 

If you look closely, you'll note that the rows of pink are not evenly spaced,
but at 1/2" and 1" intervals. I had to remember that when cutting out the pockets,
to match them to the underlying fronts. 

The look with trousers: The slacks are from a very old Burda paper pattern.  I've tweaked them to death so they fit me no matter what, and now I don't dare try any other pattern. 

I will, of course, add to this little wardrobe, at the very least a couple more matching tops.  

Da-da-da-dat's all folks!  

The Ch*anel tweed skirt

With the grey boucle jacket all but finished - except for the hooks and eyes along its front opening - I turned my attention to making a matching skirt that, once completed, will give me a work-worthy little suit.

If you've ever given a little thought to Chanel's overall look and feel you might notice that Karl likes the A-line silhouette.  Just look at these:

 I found all these examples by googling "Chanel skirt".  There are lots of others, many with stratospherically high, lap-dancing-only hems, so I picked out just those that I thought could easily be translateable to real life scenarios.

 ....and in pretty sedate colours, too.

 A little air conditioning between the thighs is very nicely offset here by a giant let's keep my ears warm-and-toasty collar.  The overall silhouette is great, and I like how the thick turned-up cuffs offer a stark contrast to the model's delicate wrists.  She looks like a fragile little shore bird safely coccooned in a cozy warm blanket.

 This one is very fierce. And comfortable at the same time.

Although I'm not crazy about the colour and the armscyes look huge on the model, the skirt shape makes my point very nicely.

















I've made my point? Indeed. So you won't be surprised to learn that I decided on an A-line skirt for this outfit. For the pattern, I turned to New Look 6511.  Unfortunately this pattern is no longer in print, but I did see it's on offer on etsy today.

Several years ago I had made the midi version view A of this pattern in an olive coloured ultra-suede. This time, I thought the short pleated skirt - view D - was giving off just the Ch*anel vibe I was looking for. I was particularly encouraged by the fact that it's shown in a boucle or tweed in the picture. Yesssss!

I cut a straight size 12, but upon fitting just the yokes found I had to take at least 5/8" off each side of both front and back. Later, after the skirt panels were attached to the yoke, I took out a big wedge out of the centre of the back yoke.  Interestingly, this is exactly the same alteration I did to the back yoke of my view A version.

I interfaced the yokes with a fusible, and that made them nice and smooth while maximizing their stability.  The skirt panels, however, are quilted to a silk organza underlining. It took a lot of basting at fairly narrow (3-4 cm) intervals, but  I'm getting reconciled to these time consuming tricks, and with good reason:  I had used silk organza underlining in a skirt once before, and very much like how it looks and wears.  A lesson well learned.

Before it got too dark to sew, I completed the outer shell:

 Inside front:  the difference between the interfaced yoke and organza-underlined lower panels is clear.  The front has two wide box pleats.

 Inside back:  there's a big difference between my butt and my waist, so the back yoke needed to be severely narrowed at the top.  The lower back is made of three flaring panels.

Front:  these box pleats make it really really cute.  The edges are basted at the  moment; they'll  be edge-stitched once the skirt is hemmed. The  zipper is set into the left side.  Of course you can't see it:  it's invisible!

Tomorrow morning I'll burrow into my stash for a thin, lightweight grey wool for the hem facing.  A facing seems like the best solution for those box pleats, as the tweed is quite thick and I'm sure would prove very troublesome when folded upon itself so many times.   

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!