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I have decided I will go to the event with HRH and need something to wear. 

Of course.

My stash has increasingly become a sort of primeval bog that spits up artifacts from the past (you know those movies, those black and white shots of quicksand with chair legs and things bubbling to the top, or maybe only I saw that movie when I was eight). Well this week while searching for something else it spit up about 5 yards of merlot coloured silk shantung, and I looked at it and thought "party dress" so I RSVP'd.

Now I have been thinking about patterns. I note that my fashionista diva Erica B has said good things about Kay Unger and since Erica always looks like she would be up for cocktails with the Queen, and dressed perfectly for it, at anytime anywhere,  I took that as good advice. So I did some searching and found this great dress and review by Victoria in Savannah so I decided to turn my dark red silk into a Vogue 1182. I had already decided against an LBD because guaranteed that's what everyone else will have on and if I do some colour there is a chance that this dress could be wedding or party useful for some other occasion in my action packed social calendar. You know those events once or twice a year I go to that don't involve Rascal.

Of course this is going to call for a muslin and I will start that this weekend, putting aside all my numerous other more mundane projects. With the pleats and everything this looks a like complicated one for alterations.

Now I have a question for you.

Do you too have the most trouble when coming up with the best pattern and idea for special events? I can sew all sorts of everyday clothes and do just fine, but throw a New Year's Eve or a big party, or even a wedding at me and I just freeze. Maybe it's the pressure of feeling you have to do your best work and make all the right choices, maybe I am not enough of a fancy dresser (I lie I love to get all dressed up, just can't decide what to wear).

I rarely make a good outfit that I am totally happy with but I have hopes for this one. I feel I am sort of due.

The Queen and sunscreen

A few days ago I had a bump burned off my nose and was sent home with instructions to stay out of the sun, wear hats and cover up. This was hugely dramatic news for me because of what it meant to my summer wardrobe. I went out of course and bought 5 hats but realized that hats, particularly the big ones, don't go with much. So I am thinking more summer dresses and of course gauzy type things. Yesterday I watched CNN and the oil spill and of course the reliable stash spit up about 10 yards of white crinkle cotton (amazing what I have literally stashed away around this house - this stuff was tucked away in a dresser behind the furnace) so I cut out a long sleeved sort of caftan type dress and then a top and pair of drawstring pants (don't laugh but this is my wearable muslin of my Jalie pajama pattern for me - I made DD a pair for Christmas and on her they were a great hit). It will be interesting how I get some style going on this.

Yesterday we went to our local swimming club (three outdoor salt water pools, that's where all the kids have learned to swim) with Miss Scarlett and all I had to wear was the hat, a long sleeved floral patterned blouse from whenever, and some loose linen pants. My DD said I looked like a some crazed gardener - not my look - so I have to get sewing.

Actually to join them yesterday I was a no show at the Lieutenant-Governor's by invitation only garden party which I suspect a former boss got me invited to (he's the premier - for those US readers this is the same as the governor- he always remembers me and I think sometimes wishes I was still there working myself to death for him) but I have my priorities and that Miss Scarlett is pretty interesting. The L-G is a bit of a character though and it might have been fun. One of the things she did when she became the Queen's rep in Nova Scotia was to get her own coat of arms made and at the top of it she put her house cat, who is her best friend. And I wouldn't joke about a thing like this, I mean if it was me I might work Mr. Rascal into the heraldry, as significant as anyone else.

However in the mail this morning I have another invite to a reception with the Queen when she is here the end of the month which I might go to. I hear she is large busted and always, always wears princess seams and essentially the same TNT. I would like to know if that is true. The invite says "semi-formal with decorations" and it's for 8:00.

I suspect what they have in mind as decorations aren't wearable art, which actually was the first thing that popped into my mind.

So if I decide to go what should I wear? What would you wear?

I am thinking probably not the Jalie jammies.

Sewing and feeling good

I have been making a real point in the last month about enforcing more dedicated sewing time, even if it is sewing on a button, every day.

You see I am thinking about this transitional stage of my life and looking back I realize that the times in my life when I have felt most together and content have been the times I have done a lot of regular sewing.

It's not just about the clothes, there is something else going on. I speculate that if you have the creative need and it doesn't have an outlet it sort of backs up in you and gets a little toxic. I wonder if doing something for yourself when life seems so much about doing things other people want you to do is somehow centering. I consider the possibility that with our busy lives when it is hard to feel much of a mastery at anything, if turning to an activity where you really can see your skill produce something beautiful is just necessary.

Or maybe it's all about something that I don't really understand.

What I do understand is that it does me good and some times call for the deliberate seeking out of the things that do you good.

I know a yoga teacher who does her positions and stands on her head like a religion every day and it's called doing her practice.

Well sewing is my practice. And that's just about all I can say about it.

Jalie 2921 revisited

One of my most annoying and tiring traits is my difficulty in letting things go if I think there is anything else I can do. In fact there have been moments when I have distinguished myself by an inability to recognize when a particular investment is no longer giving returns and that it would be best to give up.

What that looks like when I sew (apart from getting up in the middle of the night to take out a sleeve that is bugging me and put it in again) is that when I make something I like and I wish I had done one little thing differently is that I have to make another one right away and but this time make it right.

That's why I had another go at Jalie 2921 and this time stretched the collar between the shoulder seam so it would cup my neck but keeping the sides of the V neckline 1 to 1. This actually meant shortening the collar pinned between the two shoulder seams by a full 3" but I am so happy with the result.

Much more scarf like and a nicer fill-in of the neckline IMO.

I can tell already that this is going to be a favourite shirt.

Jalie 2921

I decided that I needed to start cutting into my stash in advance of some serious fabric shopping I intend on doing when my daughter, Miss Scarlett and I hit Winnipeg to see my mother, sister, nieces and nephews next week.

I have had my eye on this top for a while as it seemed to me to have the potential to look like a professional style work top for school and still have the comfort of a T shirt. I am always on the look out for patterns like that. I move around in the class room a lot, sit on desks and have to get dressed fast for early classes.

I have had this quite nice, heavy rayon knit lurking around from Fabric Mart for a while and since it has a slightly retro print to my eye it seemed like a good fit for a pattern that I also felt had a slight 50's feel to it.

I enjoyed sewing this. It is always nice to work with a pattern that has some clever instructions in it and Jalies usually do. The burrito style way the collar is attached is really cool and gives a nice professional result.

One word though about the back neck and about fit.

Jalie drafts for the small boned Quebecoise body and the arms are slim and so is the upper chest and shoulders. There is considerable negative ease in this top, which might be fine around the bust but not so fine around the waist and hips. I suggest you disregard the measurement/size advice and flat pattern measure and figure what size to cut out yourself based on the knit ease you are comfortable with.

If you don't have out of shape thin arms like me (and note these sleeves are skin tight on this body) you might even want to morp the neckline and collar onto a TNT with good sleeves to save yourself some aggravation.

This particular knit was not super stretchy, a bit flaccid in the recovery so the one thing I wish I had done was to stretch the back neck of the collar about 2 to 3 so it would hug the neck better. I am going to do that in the next version and see how that goes.

Also yes the scarf is long and I suggest you measure it off with a tape measure and hang the tape measure around your neck to see what you think before you commit.

Myself I am tall so I like the length and I think it makes me look cool. Yes I know.

Don't get me started - a review of Butterick 5495

Oh let's talk.

This week I finished one of Butterick's "fast and easy" patterns, 5495 to be exact, pattern picture here.

Now this is a simple knit talk and I am needing some of those for my everyday life, and since I have found a good brand of easy to wear pull on tightish, slimmish pants (with the stretch woven yoke sort of like my easy short pattern, several posts back) I now really need tops loose and long enough to cover what could be called many other things but really can most accurately be described as a bit of a middle aged female gut. The kind of thing that seeps into your body so that one night you are lying in the bath with a book propped up on your stomach and you look down and say "oh my god." This happens about the same time you realize that other parts of your body are getting thinner, like your thighs and your hair (OK maybe not thinner so much as sort of detaching).

I am going somewhere with this and that is that all of this leads in a pretty straight line, if you are a sewer, to the need to sew more clothes.

Now this Butterick 5495 looks on the pattern envelop as if it has some style and some grace around the middle. Not really. The cut is essentially some very nice under bust gathering achieved by a loop that pulls the fabric in (kind of like a loose top you might have once made where you grabbed all the fabric at the front and said "now that looks better"). Quite flattering with a nice V neckline.

However appearances, in pattern envelopes at least, can be deceiving. In fact this shirt has no more than standard T shirt ease waist down and the effect as you can see in my own blurry picture spotted version (will upgrade the photo later, someone was trying out a new iPhone) is a lot like a twist top but probably easier to figure out.

OK so my advice on this is that if you want more than very moderate room in the waist and hips of this top you best add a couple of inches at the waist and hip. I have already cut out another version in better fabric (this is very comfortable) for another top and even gone so far as to cut an even fuller version in a longer length, sleeveless, for a summer nightgown in some pointelle knit (that's what Fabricmart called it - a single knit with stripes of little holes).

So there are some good things about this pattern.

However.

What's with the pattern companies completely disregarding the realities of modern sewing and knit fabrics with the instructions? No wonder good sewers pay zero attention to the instructions (or buy indy patterns that may have some very basic and maybe even dated styles, but at least have instructions written for real sewing and real sewers - I am sure that most people buy the independent patterns simply because the instructions actually make sense.)

OK, so what do I mean by instructions that refuse to acknowledge knit fabrics or techniques, written I assume by professionals (or more probably cut and pasted from some library of generic sewing instructions) and therefore absolutely doom the new or new-to-knits sewer to failure?

Let me tell you, specifically:

1. The pattern pieces are marked with a straight of grain line. No such thing in knits, that's a woven term. What matters in knits is the direction of greatest stretch and keeping that running around the body. Where is the greatest stretch line in 5495?

2. The sewer is told to sew all seams twice with a straight stitch. If you sew knits chances are very high that you have a serger, and even if you sew on a 50 year old machine you will have some kind of a zig zag. A narrow zig zag is an excellent alternative to a serged seam, but really who do they think is making this top, a person with a treadle machine? What's with the straight stitches only?

3. An enormous proportion of the construction steps are about things that make sense in wovens when stabilizing grain is the thing (see note 1 on the absence of grain in knits) but are just messy and unnecessary in knits and likely to over work the fabric. My own analogy for knit fabrics is pastry, this is something that works best if you treat it with a light hand, over work it and you pull it into a shape from which there is no return - ever see a pie crust that benefitted from an extra 20 minutes of good hard kneading? Exactly.

I have included a few shots here, staystitching a curved seam, stitching one of those little boxes around where you are going to have to clip -a practiced sewer would just ignore this advice but a new sewer would follow this nonsense and end up with a wavy, worried seam.

Also note the hem instructions. Where is the reference to how to actually handle a knit hem so it doesn't stretch out of shape and you don't end up with the dreaded wonky wavy hem? Baste this twice and then press it and then straight stitch it, well that would take as much time as it should to put this little top together and definitely produce your worried hem. 

4. Finally, and this is specific to this top and not to knit instructions in general, the V neckline instructions, illustrated here are really, really odd. Basically you are told to do reinforce stitching, clip to the point of a V, fold under the edges of the V like sort of facings, after which you finished the raw edges and then just to press the facings down. So what about the point of the V? Is that just supposed to be pressed under and just stay? Are they kidding? 

I tried this and of course the finished edge of the facing just stood there showing at the point of the V because there was nothing to hold it down. Also the V was so deep that it in fact ended below my bra band. Not a look that is that sharp on a 56 year old woman even if she made her bra herself and did an excellent job.

My solution was to sew a little dart to close the neckline up and finish the bottom of the V (fold the top right sides together and start stitching about 3" above the point of the V which then becomes the dart point - doesn't that make any sense? It will when you have it in your hand).

Final thoughts on Butterick 5495 - nice and interesting top but use your own head to put it together.

And better photos next time. And maybe the next pattern won't make me crazy and I won't look that way in the picture, vertical hair and all.

On women, money and jelly roll

Last night I made a couple of jelly rolls as part of our family dinner dessert. My grandmother used to make these and I think part of my appreciation for them comes from memory. In fact I only remember her cooking two meals, one standard in winter, one in summer. Hot meatloaf in winter, cold meatloaf sliced with home-made pickles in summer. She also made a wonderful mayonnaise for her salads which were always garden lettuce and radishes.

She was a Depression housewife and looking at her recipes now I see that they were all very economical, there's nothing much in the jelly roll (no fat but the eggs) and it is all about technique, not just the ingredients, and what you make with it.

Much like life. Just like sewing.

The other thing I know about my grandmother was that she ran her household on the money my grandfather gave her every week, which was limited, despite his business. I know that bothered her a lot, being subject, dependently to what she was given. In fact even when he died the management of his money was turned over to a nephew who worked in banking and he put her on an allowance, and there were always stern words about not "touching the capital."

Some man told her what she should live on her whole life, and I remember too that she wanted to work early in her marriage, she was a book-keeper, but wasn't allowed to, as it would "look bad."

The thing about her was that when she died, at 94, we discovered she had her own secret bank account where she had pieced together a surprising little sum, composed I suppose of the corners she cut over the years. I remember seeing a quarter of a pancake carefully wrapped up in her fridge.

So it doesn't take a lot to make a jelly roll, but you have to know how.

Here's how you do it.

Set your oven to 375.

Lay a tea towel on your counter and put a few tablespoons of icing sugar on it and using your hands rub the sugar into the towel to coat it well. Roll up the tea towel.

Get out a baking sheet and grease it. Then cut a piece of parchment paper or tin foil (I use parchment, my grandmother used tin foil she had saved) and lay that on the baking sheet and grease it well too.

Measure 5 tablespoons of water and 1 teaspoon of vanilla in a cup.

Measure out 1 cup of flour into a bowl and add 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

Get some jam or jelly ready with a knife or large spatula on your counter.

Put three eggs in a bowl and beat them hard until they are yellow and frothy. Then add 2 cups of sugar and beat that in nicely.

Add the water and vanilla from the cup and beat, add the dry ingredients and beat until a smooth batter.

Pour the batter onto the paper or foil lined pan and tip it around to move the batter over the whole surface. Don't stress about this, it doesn't have to be an even rectangle.

Now this is the secret, hit the pan hard down on the counter. This will make the bubbles in the batter rise to the top and not stay in as fault lines in your cake so it will crack up when you try to roll it.

Put it in the oven and set your timer for 10 minutes. Watch it carefully, it may need a couple more minutes than 10, you need it cooked but not too brown on the edges, remember the batter is thin. You don't want to overbake and end up with a dry jelly roll.

When it is done you have to start moving fast.

Take the pan out of the oven and immediately unroll the tea towel on it icing sugar side down. Then flip the pan over onto the counter and lift the pan off.

As quickly as you can peel the paper or foil off the cake, the longer you wait the harder this will be to do, but again don't get stressed about it, it's normal to have a few edges stay stuck to the paper.

Just as quickly spread the cake with jam (I use seedless raspberry) and using your tea towel to help you, roll it up. Again this is easiest right away the longer you wait the more likely it will be that the roll will crack.

Leave your little rolled up bundle on the counter to cool and when it has cut it up into slices. This will be best if eaten before the end of the day, which it will be.