Two weightless raglan tops

Many years ago I proposed I think twice to David Page Coffin when he was working as an incomparable editor at Threads, that I write an article on sewing for comfort.

I thought and still think this is an interesting and important topic.  After all the clothes we really wear are those that are comfortable - so why don't we consider this more as a deciding factor when we sew? However no one but me thought this was a good idea for an article, but I have held on to the idea since. I still think this is something we should think about.

I am often struck by my mother's beautiful 1950s suits and dresses with how every heavy they are. That 12 panel wool skirt completely underlined with horse hair ... well you might as well be wearing the horse blanket IMO.

So whenever I can I try to find fabrics that are as weightless as possible, but still durable to put on this body.

Ans due to my far flung children, I also travel a lot. I need light clothes.

This weight restriction and paying for your checked baggage thing has got totally out of hand. All it has left us with are these two things:

1. We now all have to travel in the baggage department, with folks trying to shove steamer trunk sized "carry-ons" in the glove compartment over our heads.

2. Nothing has suddenly become really heavy and really heavy costs about an extra $40 in excess baggage fees. And no one listens to you at all when you tell them they don't understand because you have nothing in that bag, not counting the shoes that match, a big housecoat in case there is a fire in the hotel and you have to spend the night in the lobby with strangers, a few patterns to look over, and some knitting to keep you entertained during long conversations with people you have come a long way to see. How heavy can just that be?

Which brings to my sister's quilt.

The fabric I used to make these two weightless tops was bought in Portland Oregon last spring while at Quilt Mart to promote my book on garment sewing at my publisher's request. When I was there I saw a lot of quilts that I knew my quilting sister would appreciate, and spent a lot of time walking around and talking to people who told me they didn't sew clothes, because that was too hard.

But they could quilt, which I cannot. It is pretty much all the focus I am capable of to sew two sleeves not one. I am sure glad two arms is all I got. Yet quilters can sew 580 pieces of fabric back together again and not get overwhelmed and do a good job of it.

The tiny stitches those folks can make are amazing. A wall hanging one of my sisters made for me recently is proof of hat.

Here is the story. 

I have a scarf from Japan a couple of the kids brought back for me last winter after a trip.The pattern is stylized apricots.  Since the Japanese word for apricot is the same as my youngest granddaughter's name, Anika, I decided I wanted to do more with this scarf than just wear it.

So my sister Dawn in Ottawa made a whole quilt wall hanging for me with it. I completely love it and her for doing this.

Here are her crazy small stitches:

And here is me standing beside the quilt in weightless and packable raglan sleeve (most comfortable sleeve in my opinion) top #1.

The pattern is this one from Jalie, the Marie-Claude, sort of a sport top, and you can see how loose the sleeves are, cut for movement at the armhole even though the sleeves themselves are fairly narrow, like a base layer. This is some sort of weird puckered cotton/rayon/lycra and weighs about the same as a teabag. It also will not show any suitcase wrinkles at all which will be handy.

Weightless top #2 is made from another novelty fabric, this one a sort of pre-wrinkled number that looks like the all those discarded pieces of tissue paper that are all over the living room floor Christmas morning. It has silver threads running through the grey.

Because this was so wrinkled and odd and floaty I tried out a new pattern for me, another comfort raglan, this one Love Notions's Rockford Raglan. I really loved this pattern. It has a nice fit through the shoulders and sleeves but does ease up a lot over the belly - perfect for fabric with real drape. I wish I had used this pattern over the summer when I was in the market for tops that didn't cling.

All the Love Notions tops also come with an optional full bust front pattern piece, which saves you from having to alter the pattern with your own FBA. I made a medium here but used the full bust front piece.

You good sewers with your eagle eyes will notice right away that the neckband pulls in a lot. I personally did a lot of stressing about this, took it off, re-sewed it, pressed, top stitched the seam allowance down (something I rarely do) until I had a good look at the fabric and realized that with all those built-in wrinkles (more apparent in the fabric on the front of this top) I was crazy not to respect that quality and accept the fact this fabric was not meant to lie smooth. I just had to let this fabric be who it was.

Plus I can wear a necklace, or a cardigan over this or, and this is my go-to, really bright pink lipstick to distract the eye.

At any rate even if you might think that this top looks like something I have pulled out of the bottom of the bin I am going to wear it a lot - just so breezy and comfortable.

Love it.

Favourite pattern time: Lovenotions pullovers

One of my pleasures this Christmas was to discover and sew Lovenotions new pullover patterns, the Navigator for kids, the Constellation for women and the North Star for men. I have no affiliate relationship with this company but do note that there is currently a 20% off discount if you buy all three at the same time - something I wish I had done.

Before I go into the story of my own versions I should show you the pattern pictures from Lovenotions:

I have made a ton of fleece/hoodie/casual knit jackets in my time. I compared my experience with sewing those with this new pattern, so far I have made the women's and men's version and will be making some for the kids soon too, and have been really impressed.

I started off with the Constellation for women because I was on the hunt for nursing top options for my daughter-in-law. When I saw that this jacket was "nursing friendly" because of the unusually long zipper opening for a pullover, it just jumped off the screen to me. I have already been sent pictures of Maddie nursing Anika in it and yup, it works pretty well.

I have also realized that the longer zipper places this jacket sort of between a pullover and a full zip jacket.Of course is easier to make than a full jacket because there is no zipper-ending-in-the-band situation to deal with (although of course you could use this pattern for a jacket too by just bringing the zipper right down the front if you wanted). This longer zipper makes these tops is so much easier than a pullover that you have to haul over your head to wear.

I can see that this would make it a good top for kids or even older people because it would be so easy to put on and off.

I was also impressed by the design details that all give a professional look but in fact represent easy techniques that make the garment very beginner friendly.

For example:

• The bottom pockets are really one big kangaroo patch pocket basted to the lower body piece. The edges of the pocket are just strips of knit or ribbing. Really about the easiest outerwear pocket I have ever seen.
• The under collar is finished with a turned and stitched binding before it is attached to the outer collar - once the under collar is stitched to the outer collar around the edges the finished neck edge is just hand or machine stitched down over the neck seam. I am going to think now of other places where I can use this technique. There is actually a live link to a Youtube video on how to do this in the instructions, which would be useful for a new sewer or just a visual learner.
• The zipper suggested is longer than necessary, you just trim the bottom off after it is all stitched in, so it is easier to hold on to and so there is a place to park the zipper tab while the zipper is being applied - there was a far bit of thinking ahead in this pattern. There is also a Youtube video link too for the zipper.

As far as style features all versions have collars or hoods and the woman's also has a sort of shirt tale view without a banded bottom. That's the one I made for Maddie and will make for myself.

I ended up making three men's versions and one women's for Christmas. Here is my youngest son Ben in his:

 Really a winner of a pattern. Today I actually cut out three more by popular demand, those will be ready to share soon.

A lesson we need to keep learning- all knits are not alike

This post started out to be a review of three new to me tee shirt type patterns. But when I started thinking it seemed to me that just as important as talking about the patterns, was talking about the knits each is suitable for.

I really think most of us fall into the trap sometimes of thinking that all "knits" are alike, and if we see a pattern calls for knits, we immediately think anything that stretches will work just fine.

This is of course nuts, and I can say this without insulting anyone because I am referring to myself when I make this mistake.

I mean really. Would we ever assume that just because a pattern says woven that we can use either linen, denim, chiffon, melton or broadcloth and the garments would all turn out just fine?

Nope.

So to be fair to any knit pattern it is important to recognize that certain patterns are suited to certain knit fabrics. The trial garments below are talking points on this issue.

First off the Mama Paige by Made4Mermaids.Unfortunately the website doesn't seem to release images to be copied easily so you are going to have to go the link for more pattern details, but here is a start:

• This is a free pattern. A number of the indie companies, particularly the start-up type ones who sell only .pdf patterns offer some really great free patterns. Worth a look around, what you might want to sew just might be available for nothing or next too.
• This is a dolman top with skinny sleeves (really skinny you need a really stretchy fabric to make these work, or size up the sleeves) and a T-shirt, tunic and dress length, plus some neckline options.

Here is my version. 

Note the first one, my "muslin" was made in a scuba that I didn't really like. The arms were pretty tight, good thing I have little upper body muscle development, and the structure of the fabric made me look like a fridge with two stringy arms sticking out of it.

When my husband said he wouldn't wear it - first time he has ever commented on anything I make with anything more than an eyes unfocused "looks great"- I decided that this one was one for the recycling bin. So too late to show it to you here now.

So, educated on the pattern, my next version was this ITY knit in a long tunic length. The fabric has tons of stretch and enough body not to cling. I wasn't expecting to like this top, not my usual choice of print, but I actually do. It will work with leggings or a straight skirt:

Next I tried Pattern4Pirates Favourite Tee.

I have to admit I have soft spot for P4P patterns. They have an astounding collection of free patterns that are really useful, from baby clothes to sun hats to leggings to the pyjama pants you think you might make for Christmas.

This particular pattern is not one of their free ones, but how could I resist any body's favourite? It also had a really unusual scoop neckline with a full shoulder. Wide scoops that expose my bra straps are something that drive my crazy and as a scrawny shoulder person I run into this a lot.

Here are the descriptive photos of this pattern:

I made a sort of muslin for this one too and after that made a few person additions to my own version of the size large:

• I added an inch at the waist because I am long waisted.
• I cut nearly the dress length to give me a tunic length for my tall self
• I raised the scoop at the centre up 1.5" but that might be too much, might go for 3/4" next time

I have learned from experience that a tunic length knit top works best for me in something with some body, i.e. it won't cling to my belly and articulate it. So for that reason I used a cotton/lycra interlock. Here we go:

You can see that this has a real flare to it. I made the large, worked for my upper body and bust but the hip measurement for the large is about 2.5" larger than my own actual hips. So what you are seeing is more of a pattern size than a style design issue. On someone who had the pattern size hips 43" this would look quite different. I will probably take this in a bit below the waist (which is definitely shaped) next time.

Finally I made the Classic Tee by Love Notions. This pattern is currently on for $5.00 which is very reasonable given the quality of the Love Notions draft. 

The name of this pattern more or less says it all but it needs to be noted that this pattern, like most from Love Notions I have tried, has a a good shoulder fit but a fair amount of ease in the waist and hips. 

Here are some of the pattern shots:

This is an extremely wearable pattern. I did not do any pattern changes for my muslin except add my standard 2" for extra length.

Now the fabric I used wasn't ideal, a thinnish rayon knit, you can see the belly grab and I can see the hem will need a press after each washing, but it is so comfortable. I probably won't even add length next time:

Definitely a standby pattern for sure and once I get some sewing for family done I hope to get another version of this made up in firmer cotton lycra to see how that works. This pattern one might be best done in lighter fabric, we will see.

So there you have it. Three very different T-shirt patterns all suitable for different fabrics and for different uses.

Now what do you think?

I really enjoyed the process of pattern comparison and think I may be doing more of exactly that in the future.