A sewing uniform

I have been sewing and sewing lately on various projects and I realized I have definite sewing outfits. Two days this week it has been some old standby Jalie patterns.

The first is these purple linen pants (I call them my Berkeley pants because I wear them when I visit my kids who live there in California so I fit in with all the ageing hippies) 3243 in a size bigger than I usually wear for extra ease. These are perfect for sitting a long time and intermittent running to the iron board, to let in the dog, or to make teas. Not particularly elegant but so comfortable.

I wear them with my favourite top V neck 2682 in cotton spandex knit. I like the print and not everything goes with purple pants. You might want to remember that.

I also have these same 3243s in a smaller size and cropped in grey with the 3890 top. I found that this rayon interlock in the spotted top stretched and stretched so I ended up overlapping the neckline and adding a button. Next version I sized down.

Jalie's 3906 Tania knit jacket pattern

I have decided lately I am a third garment person. 

This is a pretty complex theory but basically here it is.

If you wear separates, say a top and bottom, you look about 100% more put together if you have a third garment, some kind of jacket or cardigan etc. on top. Of course this doesn't work in tropical conditions but third garments of various weights are pretty useful.

The problem of course is finding jacket type things that are comfortable. Knit jackets work, but really how many patterns for those, apart from mini tight jackets that really don't function usefully as third garments, are there out there?

For this reason I was particularly excited when I saw that a knit jacket was in the new Jalie line-up.

That jacket is the Tania and here is the line drawing with the pattern pieces:

A couple of things really struck me about this pattern. 

First it has one of those sneaky cleaver Jalie pocket details, not dissimilar to the Helene, mirrored with some pieced/angled seams in the back that would be great for colour blocking.

I also notice right away that the collar was meant to be worn up, pretty sharp actually, but new to me until the same day the pattern came out my niece walked into the house with a knit jacket with exactly this same collar detail - and I realized this was what all the cool kids were wearing.

I was also interested, based on my new thing about making Jalies in different but closely related sizes for different looks, to see that Jalie suggested sewing this jacket up to your usual bust/chest measurement for a casual jacket, but making it by matching your upper bust to the pattern size for something more fitted.

For the version here, because I was going for the most widely useful jacket, I made it in the version with more ease, in my usual bust measurement pattern size.

A note too on the fabric.

About a year ago I was at a wedding in Washington DC and we had one of those lulls while they took pictures. Faced with a couple of hours, and knowing I wasn't that far away from G Street Fabrics, I ran over in my heels (OK not exactly ran) and got some weird but interesting fabric. 

This one was a knit navy like a crepe with some cotton grey single knit bonded to it. A cool fabric but I had no idea what I was ever going to do with it. You can see the reverse side of the fabric and the interior construction details here:

For this project it was perfect. I knew I had a good reason for leaving that wedding, and I was even back for the food.

This pattern was a breeze to sew. I think it hits that sweet spot between being really comfortable but tailored-ish enough to wear somewhere you wanted to feel sort of efficient at. Like a work, or some place where the other folks are organized.

For the record I put this together with my all time favourite shell Jalie 2682 and a Lisette skirt 3883 . I make that skirt flatter my not flat stomach body by sewing it not in the negative ease intended, but in a size in which the hip measurement is 2" larger than my own, giving me the 2" ease I am more comfortable with.

I am pretty much sure this is going to become my go-to jacket pattern for quite some time now. 

I am going to try it next in the upper bust measurement size and see how that goes, maybe in a white for summer, and if it looks too much like a lab coat I will just give it to my daughter who always needs lab coats.

Insta project

When we are on the road my husband does 100% of anything related to food. Buying, cooking and cleaning up. 

The kitchen in an rv is tiny and he loves to organize it. This is a man of a million systems. Also when he was growing up his father, a man of multiple enterprises had a restaurant he sometimes worked in.

My husband also says cooking is to him what sewing is to me, something creative that relaxes him.

So our agreement when we are on wheels is that I stay out of the kitchen and do all the dog walking, the laundry, and my many projects. I also do the phoning people up and talking part. I am better at that than he is.

Every once in a while though I feel guilty. Women of my generation have somewhere a little voice that says if you aren't working all the time around the place then you are pulling some kind of scam.

OK I am pulling a scam here, but the scamee seems happy with it.

Occasionally I wonder out loud about things we could do so he would have less cooking to do. My daughter-in-law has just bought an Instant Pot and I thought maybe those are a good idea. Of course I am the princess eater here not on the production end of this operation, but it's a nice thought right? Like those 50s husbands who used to give the wife a new vacuum for Valentine's day.

Any one out there have one and think they are really really good?

I mean Valentine's Day is coming up right?

In the meantime while I wait to hear from my consultants (that would be you folks) and am engaging in some Insta projects.

When you are living in an rv Insta projects make a lot of sense, particularly the ones you cut out at home (and remembered to pack all the pieces of) if you have promised to stay out of the kitchen, since that more or less leaves just the bed and the driver's seat.

I started with my all time favourite Insta project- this neglected and quite amazing Jalie shirt, described, accurately as V neck and high back:

Now this is the cover shot of the version with a zipper.

I made mine without the zipper and also without the bike helmet and the bike shorts. Seemed like a good idea.

What is amazing about this top (you can add sleeves if you want they are included) is that it essentially can function as a great tank or under cardigan type top and can be made in about 30 minutes.

The upper part of the top, the V neck, is made by laying two front pieces on top of each other (they are sort of rectangles no neckline shape at all) sewing a short 5" line of straight stitches up the middle at centre front, and the folding the pieces, wrong sides together, to each side.

That's it. 

A beautiful V neckline with zero sewing around it, no points of the V, no binding, just a nice folded edge that lies beautifully.

At this point I should stop and say I am fully aware that the above description makes no sense at all and only marginally describes the picture I have in my head, so your main take away here is - no sewing - super easy.

As far as V necks go this one's a scam.

After you have done what I have described, properly because the directions make sense in the pattern, all there is left to do is the back, lower front, side seams and turn and stitched hems around the armholes and along the bottom.

Here is my version - a black knit with a sort of a built-in texture wave I like, modelled in a non kitchen part of the rv, meaning next to the bed and in front of the bathroom door. I am posting two more or less identical pictures because I couldn't decide which one was worse:

Full RV view in my glasses for this interested.

After my busy day yesterday the serger seemed to be too heavy to lift off the floor and put on the table so I sewed this whole unit up with a straight stitch on the Rocketeer using that stretch Eloflex thread.

I know some folks have had issues with that thread but I learned a few tricks that kept it working just fine in my old 60 year old travelling machine:

1. Wind the bobbin slowly. If you whirl that bobbin around too fast the thread will stretch on the bobbin and retract in the stitches, puckering them.

2. Sew slowly and steadily. When I sped up the thread obviously got stretched thin and tight in the tension disks and then broke. When I kept up a conservative and constant pace this did not happen.

3. I bypassed the little thread guide just above the needle and this eliminated any possible fraying. Eloflex looks to me to be a 2 ply twist and is quite stiff. The stiffness means that it dropped down to the needle without having to be further held close, so dispensing with that last thread guide was fine. It also meant that this thread guide which is quite tight didn't get a chance to saw away at the thread.

I also have an idea, untested as this machine has few fancy stitches, that the simpler the stitch the better this thread will perform. A complicated stretch or multi action stitch would probably stretch and strain it a lot and that might contribute to the issues some sewists have reported. 

I wonder. 

Now off to dinner. I have some Indie pattern reviews coming your way and then I think I am going to do a series on hand sewing, like I did on hemming knits.

Does that sound like a good idea?

Grey basics for the suitcase

You know I like bright colours and quirky projects, I have been particularly quirky lately. However getting ready for a little road trip this last week down to a wedding in DC I remembered that packable basics have their place.

I also gave the colour grey some thought - it's a basic but not too dark - so check trans-seasonal. It goes with other basics, namely navy and black, and it's also a low key backdrop for bright pastels, which I love.

I also figure that with all the visiting and road trips I do, knits are my only option.

Since I did all this serious thinking only a few days before I was due to fill up the suitcase, I decided that TNT patterns were my only option.

Since I have made the little girls both velour Helene cardigans in the last few weeks, they loved them and I thought they looked cozy too, I decided to just go ahead and make myself a big girl version.

I used a grey version of the cotton mix knit velour I got at Fabricville for the little girls. It has a sort of silvery cast to it which I think is useful in case I go out to a restaurant or something in my travels and want to look smoother than a person who spends most of her time walking dogs and sewing.

My assistant has to be in every picture

To wear under this I made a pair of pull-on pants from the Jalie woven pull-on pants pattern, just cut a size smaller since I was working with a stretch crepe knit.  I really like the leg of these pants, straight leg and sort of wide but not overwhelmingly so, unlike so many similar patterns.

This left me with a top pattern to come up with and here I went for a new to me pattern but an easy one.

This is the pattern I used, a sort of athletic looking top I have passed over for a few years now:

It turns out that you don't have to have a zipper in this top and you don't need to carry a bike helmet. This is good because I am going by car this trip.

It also turns out this is a super pattern, the front is made from two folds seamed up only half way making a facing/lining along the neck edge. The whole thing cut to finish only took me under an hour which is about all the time I had to pull the last part of this little outfit together. I made it from the same crepe knit as the pants to make a sort of ensemble which is handy when you travel.

Here are my shots, the whole project, done with one eye on the clock. I am pretty happy with how this outfit turned out because I know it is going to be so useful.

A fun sew and not the last time I use these patterns.

I have to say that I am beginning to really appreciate the multi-sizedness of Jalie's patterns. My pants here are the same pattern I used to make little Billy's size 3 PJs, and the cardigan has now been made for four members of the family sized 6- 40.

BTW Daisy is not on this trip. Too quick and we will be at a wedding etc. most of the time. We really miss her but she is at home with my niece who is the midst of major studying this week.

They are spending most of their time right now reading in Daisy's favourite chair - and we got this update today:

I think she will survive the week without us.