Long, emotional review of Vogue 1261

I spent a lot of the weekend working on Vogue's Alice and Olivia knit top with unfinished edges V1261

This pattern raised profound philosophical issues for me about how the pattern companies handle some things.  I will go into those in detail later. I have a lot to say about this pattern and the thinking that went into it before it went into the pattern envelope.

I think I will start here with general thoughts on the style itself and then do the technical stuff tomorrow night. I have some work to get ready for tomorrow that I need to do before I go to bed.

First the pictures of it on the sewer:

General comments on this design:


Flared, slightly asymmetrical top with pointed hems at the side. Main feature was the unfinished hem at the bottom and what appeared in the pattern envelope picture to be a lot of unfinished construction edges. I really wanted to try this as I really believe that knits are best with minimal handling and wanted to know how that worked. It will take a little getting used to but I really do believe having a cut edge at the bottom allows this top with an uneven hem to flow and hang better than if I got at it with hemming techniques.


A couple of deceptive features you might not notice:


1. The sleeves are really narrow. My own arms were once described by a physiotherapist as "deconditioned" which I believe means the muscles of a mouse. If you have more than the muscles of a mouse and say can open your own jar lids you will find these sleeves pretty darn tight.


2. Likewise the chest is pretty tight, this really has a T shirt fit and in another version I would add a FBA (I have already altered the pattern for this the next time by slashing up through a hypothetical bust point from the bottom stopping in the middle of the shoulder and spreading.) 


3. Speaking of the shoulder seam it is only about 1 1/2" long. You might not be able to see it from these shots but the cowl is cut really wide, almost as wide as a ballet neckline and so the actual top of the body drapes a bit not just the cowl.


4. I added 2" because I am tall to this and it ends at about hip level. This is fine with me because my hips are not my issue, everything above them is, but if you have hips this top might not be your best look, although the cowl does balance pretty well. IMO the other views with the super wide about to slide off necklines would make pretty dumb tops unless you were into wearing a lot of things underneath like camisoles with straps showing or were going for the "Footloose" off the shoulder look. I am not, and only wear one top at a time, it's all I can get organized, apart from a nice cup of tea cardigan which I might add as necessary.


Now the technical side of this top is really something.


I will give you a hint, they suggest some seams be butted (pressed under 3/8" first), have paper taped behind the place where they are joined, sewn up with a twin-needle straddling the butt, from the wrong side so the underside of the twin needle is on the right side, and then have two rows of ribbon top stitched on either side of this so-called seam.


Can you imagine your average new sewer getting mixed up in this, an "easy" pattern.


Give me strength.


O.K. The details tomorrow.

Pictures of the North

In the event that you don't make it to the Bay of Deception yourself (in the literal and geographical sense at least) I thought I would share some pictures my husband brought back from his trip there. This is probably as close as I will get to that spot personally. There is only one building I am seeing here and my suspicion is that it is not a fabric store, so that lets me out.

  
In case too that there are not many caribou in your neck of the woods I thought I would share shots of those too:

And of the lovely northern flowers that you don't see in the big picture but remind me as always that the real story is in the details. Sort of the buttonholes of life (my god I am deep):

On the sewing front the first of my BMV pattern packages arrived today and in it was this pattern which I am incredibly excited about:

This pattern, which I figured would be a great addition to my comfortable sloppy wardrobe, is far much more. It has the totally most nutso instructions I have ever read. This is world class making-things-so-much-harder-than-they-have-to-be stuff.


Now tomorrow I should be making real progress on my son's shirts, but I am sorely tempted to get into this one and provide a running commentary of total construction madness.


We will see.

New Fall Buttericks

Thank you, thank you sewing gods for bringing me more patterns to think about. I love the tension of trying to make up my mind.


I am doing my best to i.d. patterns that I actually will make versus ones that catch my eye, leaving room for all those other patterns I know when I see them made up on other sewers/bloggers I will want to sew too.


O.K. Here are my picks with commentary:

Of course these dresses caught my eye with the dramatic colour blocking and everything, but really how many times would you wear that orange and black number and not get sick of it? On the other hand if I had a one off event where I wanted to make a statement these would do the trick. The seaming is cool though, maybe in a solid, or how about less high contrast? Grey and black for instance. I am not going to order these but will keep my eyes open for other sewist's versions.

Nice dress and I am so happy to see knit dresses dominant this season. However if there is one thing this summer's draped and cowl necks taught me, it is that having the action around my face and neck works pretty well. I notice that the eye is drawn right to the stomach on this one. So good, but not for me.


Oh, that reminds me of something I am upset about. While my spouse is away I have been really healthy. Exercising every day, no Friday night wines, lots of vegetables, little meat - a diet right out of a woman's magazine. Well guess what?


I am now about 6.5 pounds heavier than when I started this routine. In fact I have exercised and healthy eaten myself to my all time heaviest non-pregnant weight (and that was one long time ago too).


What the hell?


I have taken action though and am dealing with this development. I have taken the scales right down to the furnace room where they can stay.


Now back to patterns.

I can't make my mind about this dress, I think I like it, all the seaming is pretty cool. Is this the one with the side zipper though? In a knit dress? What's up with that? I really need to see this on a real person. The hem width on the back of the pattern envelope is modest (high 40s) I think so it probably isn't as flared as it looks here.

Great coat, neckline would date but the coat would wear out too. Looks warm and feminine, going to get this one and make it longer for sure.

The drapey blue neckline on that one top appeals to me but I might recut it to dispense with the tails, for cooler weather wear they might drag down under a jacket and how dumb would that look?


Now those are my thoughts, what are yours?

Details

Back to work today but wanted to share my shirt collars because they are the best I have ever made due to Debbie Cook's method here.


This system seems to work for me because the last stitching (and in collars the last stitching is usually the tricky part) is when you slip the collar into the top of the neck band, and that is a pretty straight and easy seam to sew.

I have also taken advice from somewhere I forget and used a smaller stitch length for the top stitching. That, and my straight stitch plate and foot, has given me some nice neat stitches at all the scary parts like the collar point and the curve in the neck band:

My husband is coming back Friday morning and I am looking forward to that. The only thing I will miss is seeing "Bay of Deception" on the call display when he calls. Looks very dramatic.


Speaking of drama I have been watching CNN and the debt ceiling debates and votes in the evening. What's left of my work in politics is an appreciation/interest in the process. Of course both Congress and Senate had to go through each getting a Republican and Democrat bill voted down, they needed that to take to the base and for the record before they moved forward. As this is a sewing blog and not a political one, and I'm not going to be writing one, I can only say that my observation is that these are trying times for intelligent people and some of those are at the top.


When I have had enough of politics I have been watching movies and knitting my blanket for the next baby. I bought this yarn because it felt so soft and because the store sample was so baby friendly but frankly it's a pretty boring pattern. I want to move on to something more interesting. 


The slight tedium of this project is compounded by the fact that my TV seems stuck on voice over for the seeing impaired on the movie channel. No matter what I do I can't fix it. So I have a running commentary on everything I watch " John moves to the window and looks longingly down on the street." The credits at the end are the worst.


However I am making sure I am only knitting in good vibes, I am looking forward to another baby in the system:

Shirts and Scarlett

Miss Scarlett and I were on our own this weekend with her parents away at a wedding and my better half still in the land of the midnight sun (but back the end of the week).


This morning I am considering my sewing life and drinking a quiet coffee after an action packed few days.

Here she is in a toy stroller with Pinky Bear. It turns out it was Pinky's weekend to get toilet trained so he spent a far amount of time being fished out of the toilet, washed and then blow dried. He is making some progress but apparently not enough. Day two we had to put him back in diapers. (By the way those are pen marks on her arm - we move fast when Babs is on the phone.)


Miss Scarlett really is our girl and a bit of a conversationalist. When I went to get her up after a nap on Saturday she took one look at me and said "Nice dress Babs, did you make it yourself?" This kid and I will have a lot to talk about.


I spent my evenings doing semi-horizontal knitting and nap times making shirts.


I have two going for the on his way to NYC son. I made him one a year ago and his comment was that the collar was weird and so I have delayed trying another one while I thought about that.


We talked about it last visit and it turns out he was sort of waiting for more shirts and that I had "nailed the fit" and really all the collar needed was a tiny bit shaved off and a place for collar stays.


Being female I don't have a lot of collar stay experience but can see now that they are a good idea. Hold the points up but don't require crazy heavy interfacing.


Gigi has a great tutorial on a really easy collar stay method that doesn't use buttonholes and I did that and am super pleased with the results:

This is what the underside of the collar looks like with the collar stay patch on it - I am making a striped and a plain blue shirt but thought the striped showed best how the grain goes.


Of course I didn't get the stripes matched - the collar has shape and the stay is folded on grain - not that I tried very hard, since this is on the underside.


I also revived a memory of how to do the shirt pocket hem:


1. Fold the top hem allowance to the inside.
2. Fold it down again.
3. Stitch through all layers along the fold 1/4."
4. From the right side press the fold down.

Now I know this shirt fits I am very much enjoying the zen of this sewing project. The details are so precise and clean and classic. The cotton presses so nicely. 


Men's sewing is so different. All the fit fussing just isn't there. This makes me think for the upteempth time that male dress, collar stand shirts, blazer type jackets and pants with flys, are really not natural garments on the female body and a lot of work to get to fit. Tell me what is less stress to sew? A dress or a fitted jacket?


While I was sewing these shirts I was reminded of how much I enjoy sewing machines. That straight stitch plate makes all the difference to being able to top stitch around collars without losing a stitch or packing them up at the corners.


Quite a few years ago I did some part-time work for some sewing machine companies as an educator. It was a bit of an indulgence and something I gave up when work got really busy. It was so much fun though. One of the best things I did was was when one of the companies send me their complete line and I wrote sort of demo guides for them comparing and emphasizing features.


Can you imagine how great it was to have all those machines to test and play with? I am a bit wistful about that. I would love to have machines to review - there are so many new features out there and cruising the net over the weekend I wondered to myself how would anyone ever figure out what suited them? It's all pretty overwhelming.


I wonder if I contacted a few of the companies what would happen?

Where did the week go?

Good question.


I have had a work intensive week which is a good thing because I am feeling well caught up with my classes. I have to tell you I just love my students. Why do so many adults let this kind of funny openness be taken out of them? 


The kids got off track at the end of one class and started talking about getting ready for the work world (they are last years). The girls in particular, in fact the girls only, didn't want to talk about salary or work itself but about the terrible pressure to wear the right thing. As we talked I realized that for women of this age it is all about fitting in. The big question is "what are you going to wear?" translated to I want to fit in, not be over-dressed not be under-dressed. I wondered at how much time, money, and most importantly emotional and intellectual energy is being diverted into this.


And I wondered if this kind of process is what takes those nice edges off them as they "grow up?" What pieces of themselves do we make them leave behind in all this fitting in?


I was surprised this week to get an message from a former student, a sort of silly, wild child but a good kid, signed with his name and "who loves you like a son." And the big, athletic, beautiful and quite wonderful student who, on the subject appearance, told her classmates that she knew she would never be one of the pretty girls in the work place and had the students on either side put their arms around her. There is a solidarity to these kids that I feel quite privileged to see. Gee I don't want them to lose that.


It also made me think of course that I too spend a lot of emotional energy on the "what will I wear" question myself, but that to me I no longer feel, at all, like any desire to fit in. 


So the big question, and at the root of why we make our own clothes, is how do I want my clothes to make me feel? I am not sure if I can define that yet, except to say it is more about how I want to feel about myself. Not as how others see me but how I feel inside those clothes.


Like myself, comfortable, cheerful, relaxed, stylish.


I also realized that for a sewer, most sewers, they are wearing the process as much as the product. What we each get out of that process is very different for each of us. I can see that in my blogs I read.


Some of you are fitting sewers and are so good and energized by the almost mathematical challenge of perfecting fit.


Some of you are collection/competition sewers and have wardrobes that give you clothes for your life.


Some of you are designers and transform TNT and other patterns into something special.


Some, like me, need variety and are excited not as much by a patterns that works, as by a pattern that may or may not.


With this rare bit of self-insight I threw out so many patterns yesterday. I am not going to be working on last season's to-do list next season. I am dying for my new fall patterns to arrive.


That is of course why my white shirts stalled after three. I was soooo bored. I can only do these when I have something new to work with, and those are going to have to get done one at a time when I have a new pattern that inspires me.


On the home front I am going to be doing a little son shirt sewing this weekend. My middle child headed off to London Wednesday and then to NYC in October. He is doing so great. I am just lucky and keep reminding myself to keep my eye on the person he is and not the person who used to live here.


And this weekend, a long weekend here too in Canada, my daughter and her husband are going away to a wedding, and it's going to be just Miss Scarlett and I for three days. She's pretty busy but awfully funny. We are both good schleppers so it should be a good weekend.


However if any of you want to drop by and give me a hand, well that would be fine too.

My weekend

First the sewing.


I have, the last woman standing, finally made my edition of Vogue  1250 What a nifty pattern. Here are my back of the bathroom door shots, as my photographer is still in the middle of nowhere. I miss him a lot. Great cooks who will listen to you talk for 20 hours of a day and still love you are not all that easy to come by. Took me a while to find him.

I took an extra shot of the neckline because it really is a thing of beauty. I need to get a someone, probably my daughter, take a picture of it on me. It really looks very nice, with the control panties and the Spanx going on both, and if I stand up straight. I actually think I may wear it to my DSD (dear step daughter's) wedding instead of the Loud Dress. It would probably be appreciated.


Until I get a picture taken I can tell you that it looks just the same on me as it does on the model on the envelope, if you can image the model at 57 and having had three babies, one of them 9 lbs. 10 oz. and a C section. Cool, easy to sew, fun to sew dress.


So far I haven't seen anything in the fall catalogues that has this potential for star status. What do you think? 


I am hoping, seeing the BVM Butterick sale on now, that they will deliver something soon, or the next version of Vogues. I love an interesting pattern.


My next projects will be shirts for my DC to be NYC son, which I have been putting off because I find men hard to sew for, they can be so particular, but he loved the last shirt I made him a year ago, just wanted the collar " a little different" - can you translate that into fractions of an inch? 


I am also going to be making my daughter some knit wide leg capris, sort of gauchos, with a pregnancy waistline. She is due with #2 on October 10 but was in the at Emerg today with some definite contractions and some dilation so is off work immediately. Those 12 nursing shifts are too much in these circumstances. I am going to have to help her more when I am not working with Miss Scarlett. I know that she is feeling big and unattractive and thought some new versions of the capris I made her for her last pregnancy would help.


The other reason I have not done a lot of sewing this weekend is that Nat, my son in transit, came home for the weekend between moves. His company is actually sending him to London England for two months before he starts in New York and he decided to have a break here.


I've got to tell you something and it doesn't make me look good.


I am a little stressed with this move to NYC. I really love this guy and miss him a lot. Every day.  He is great company and if he were ever to decide to move back into his own room and reinstate me as part of his day-to-day life that would be great, but that isn't going to happen of course.


My way of dealing with it is to keep in touch with where he is and what he is doing. I got used to DC. I got used to his neighbourhood at R and 1st. and liked it. I had my own system there and was happy visiting him. DC is on the top edge of entering the south, and I love the south. The south makes sense to me. That whole family oriented, not real hurried view of the world is pretty much the way I am. I have done some high powered work in my time, but me the person is not very high powered. At all.


Now he is going to NYC I feel as if I am moving too and I wonder how I will do. I am sort of holding on to the idea of the garment district and trying to figure out what the visits will be like. He is living of course with room mates and I will be in hotels. It looks like a night in a Manhattan hotel is my seasonal fabric budget. Should I stay outside and travel in? What is the transport like? 


Man is this guy ever going to get married and have a normal house with a place where his mother can stay and set up her machine and do the mending? Will he be with someone who will give me jobs to do and make me feel like part of the family? Middle aged mothers think these things, but never say them. In the meantime how sophisticated do I have to be?


He will be back in the States and at work there at the beginning of October. Then I better get down there and get myself a relationship with New York.


In the meantime off to make maternity pants.