A wormy jacket

Another high fashion shot showing exactly how my hair looks when I come home from the pool as well as my much amended version of this pattern.

Before I go to NYC on Thursday I thought it would be a good gesture to actually sew up next to last piece I bought on my last trip.

I got a beautiful wool knit there last winter and meant to do a cardigan jacket thing for day-to-day wear. It occurred to me as I rolled up only black knit clothes (works for the big city - don't think I pack on monochromatic and definitely not black thing when I go to Florida) that this would be a good time to own a packable cardigan so I make one up.

I used a pattern that has been around a long time - Loes Hinse's Sweater Coat based on the fact that pattern has acquired cult-like status at my local sewing guild. One of the sewers, who teaches hugely popular classes in embellishing this pattern, has made over 30 versions all of them beautiful.

I can't say I have had a lot of luck with this pattern line in the past. I miss the shaping, I miss the facings, I miss the interfacing and all those things.

But I always loved the neckline of this coat and the collar and the rest of the sewing guild has made one and let's face it I am easily influenced.

If everyone jumped off a cliff would you do it too?

Well probably. If there was sewing involved.

Here is my sweater coat on the dress form - it looks like it pulls a bit at the back, that is partially angle but I solved that totally by doing this:

   

Yes that is a chain sewn into the hem - works well to counter-act the old sweater bunched up above the shelf of your bum look- I am quite sure that neither Coco Chanel or Loes Hinse had this in mind for sweaters.

Giant snaps for closures - I couldn't see messing with buttons and buttonholes in this stuff.

I really can't say that this is in anyway a review or accurate rendition of the pattern. This really drooped on me during fitting and I thought the shoulder/sleeves were dated, much like myself but that's beside the point. So this is what I did in addition to adding the chain in the hem:

• I added a centre back seam to shape in at my neck and at my waist.
• I took a slight curve in at the waist in the side seams
• I lifted the shoulder seam and cut it into the front chest about 3/4" to get a slimmer fit across my chest.
• I interfaced the sleeve and bottom hems as well as the pocket hems with a fusible knit
• I interfaced the collar

I transferred all of this to the pattern pieces, in case I ever use this pattern again, and if I do sew it again I will add some kind of a neckline facing or binding. I am not nuts about the way the collar is just serged on right to the band - in another fabric in particular you might see some of that serging at the neckline.

In short of sort of de-Loesed the whole jacket.

I do like it though. 

It weighs about 2 ounces and I think is going to jazz up my otherwise very black wardrobe, I am afraid I am going to look more like a yia-yia than a hipster otherwise, and it does allow me to get a bit of Florida randomness into the mix.

I showed it to Miss Scarlett, I was so pleased with it. 

She is usually a big fan of anything that comes out of the sewing room and I have taught her to say "Babs you're a genius" (actually I called her a genius because she, well she is, and she now says "We are two genius girls" when we are alone which I pretty much like).

However she took one look at this and said "Babs I don't like that sweater. It's got worms all over it."

She even turned down remnants, which she never does, because she "didn't want to touch it, it's got yucky worms on it."

I am writing this opinion off to her being three and not quite as sophisticated as I am, and certainly unaware of how much I paid for this stuff a yard.

Only two more sleeps and I am in the garment district and I am not taking my marking with me.

The TNTs march on, this time in lace

A while ago I shared with you my discovery of the London Jacket as a nice well-drafted Chanel type jacket without all the heartache.

You know the one I decided was going to be my go-to collarless jacket after having spent about 15 years and $1500 on other patterns.

Well all fired up with this thought, I went looking in my sewing room for something different to try next in this pattern.

I am not generally a saver of remnants. 

Let's face it my chances of ever crazy quilting a scrap quilt out of garment fabrics are slim to none. I am sure those ladies who used to do that weren't online, didn't have paying jobs, and probably were exploiting someone in the kitchen.

Besides if it doesn't have a centre front I am not really interested in sewing it.

That said there are a few left overs from past projects I just can't bear to throw away. 

Sort of like that last few inches in the champagne bottle that turns up when you are doing the dishes. I mean it's champagne, do you pour it down the sink before you toss the bottle into the recycling?

Exactly.

So I have been holding onto most of a yard of sand-washed silk (remember that stuff?) and some weird but really wonderful heavy wool crepe with a sort of beefy bounce to it, not enough to make anything, and a random yard of lace that I bought from Fabricmart because I thought I needed a lace skirt. It was described as having a "felt- like texture" which I understood to mean it was not thin and polyester looking like a bridesmaid's dress and in fact was nice and substantial and suitable for a classy skirt, where in fact it was just felt-like therefore capable of adding inches to my lower half.

Well back to the TNT.

I used the lace for the sleeves and front of the jacket.

I used the wool crepe stuff for the back and to underline the front.

I used the sand-washed silk for facings.

And here it is:

Usual disclaimer.

Photographically this blog isn't exactly Vogue. Or even National Geographic. Maybe in particular not National Geographic.

In fact it would be fair to say that if my very nice husband and I ever have issues it is during one of our photoshoots.

He claims for example that my head is always blurred because I don't stop moving, by which he means talking.

I think it is the lens.

Anyway in the interest of world peace we shot this in the kitchen which he has been laboriously tiling with stainless steel tiles. Which look great but of course call for new stainless steel appliances. Which is something I am not going to be mentioning so close to a photoshoot.

I'm stalling.

The classic range hood shot with an attempt to hide now inappropriate white stove, a tactic that went unnoticed.

Felt-like lace close-up

The sleeve view, felt-like is perfect

I love, love this jacket. The lace is pedestrian enough that I don't have to hold this for New Year's Eve or similar events and it fits.

Also it cost me zero owing to the International Bilateral Agreement on pre-existing fabric which states that if you already have the fabric and pattern then it can be considered free owing to the statute of limitations on Visa records.

I am going to be re-using this pattern a lot.

Flypaper thoughts

• Where did my week go?
• Oh now I remember, I spent it with Wolf Blitzer.
• More or less worn out with the US election.
• And I was only an observer. 
• Big reality check for a lot of folks.
• Generally a good thing.
• Also dealing with November student melt-down.
• Pajamas in class and late night emails.
• "Do I put quotation marks around quotations?"
• "Do you want research for this research paper?"
• "I am failing your course but I love it. Do you think I should study?"
• Sometimes there is too much instant in instant messaging.
• Trying to find a dress pattern for my mother.
• 85 and she wants something new to wear when she tutors at the elementary school.
• Don't quite make patterns for that kind of old lady.
• She will kill me for the old part.
• Have two jackets to show you.
• Maybe tomorrow.
• On a roll.
• Off to NYC next week.
• Have solved problem of how to carry home fabric.
• Am only going to buy silk or very expensive - that should restrict volume.
• Making a list of how much I need for my new TNTs
• Tend to get carried away.
• Last time bought 5 yards for one Chanel jacket.
• 60"
• Linton tweed
• And I am a real Chanel drop-out.
• Make me an offer.
• How did Christmas end up being next month?
• Am I going to be ready?
• For what year?
• Forward.

Life in the sort of medium lane

I swim at our local pool when I have a chance. It is beautiful and not all that crowded and swimming, not requiring much coordination, is something I can do.

A lot of people around here, on the ocean, aren't very enthusiastic swimmers. The ocean is not the best place to actually swim. The ocean interferes. 

However I grew up in Manitoba, the province of 10,000 lakes, many of them about 2 1/2 feet deep and muddy which is perfect for learning to swim. Most of the time a person can just put her foot down and touch bottom and probably a few leeches, but apart from that lake swimming is a reassuring way to learn how to do it.

At the local pool there aren't any leeches. 

In the morning it is often ladies vigorously doing water aerobics and retired men standing in the middle of the lanes talking but not swimming. There were two characters at the end of my lane today discussing cauliflower recipes, I can't make this stuff up, and how they felt better since their heart attacks now they are "in the water" most days. In the water just about described it - if these guys could have smoked cigars in the pool they would have. 

Eventually they climbed up the ladder and were off to the sauna, to discuss broccoli I suppose, but no longer au gratin, and I kept swimming.

OK this is the thing.

I used to count my laps.

Then I would go home and google a converter to see how many miles I had swum. However it mostly turns out that after a hard, non recipe talking, aquatic workout I more or less put in about the same distance I would if I went over and visited Mrs. Smith across the way - and I can see her reading her paper in the living room window from my own living room window. 

No one is going to be recruiting me for the master's team any time soon.

So I have stopped counting laps.

It seems to me this is pretty smart and a parable for birthdays. 

Since I just had one, a birthday, I am aware that as you go on you start to count the birthdays like laps and that can kind of take the fun out of the swim. Better just to feel how it feels.

Starting next birthday I think I am just going to celebrate being born and leave it at that. After all I really think getting in the water is what matters.

Maybe my two cooks know that.

Auditioning patterns

I have a thought for you - a thought based on a few things I have done right and a whole lot I haven't.

Let me explain.

I have made another version of the London jacket and I just love it. So much so I wonder where this pattern has been all my life, mixed with regret for all the time and trouble I took to find something like this.

I would show you a picture now but resident photographer is putting some corner bead around the kitchen window and it is against policy to interrupt a husband when they are doing something you have been wanting them to do for nearly a year.

And might have mentioned once or twice.

And he could be down in my sewing room creating utility items couldn't he?

Well I have a weakness for patterns. 

I buy too many of them, usually late at night when that mouse is so damn easy to click. The thing of course is that with random fabric purchases you can always use it for something else (and usually each piece of fabric I have has been mentally sewn into about 45 different ideas before I actually get to it - and invariably what I end up making is not what I had thought I would use it for when I bought it).

But with a pattern you are sort of stuck.

Stuck with that dumb idea you had one night after seeing a sharper-thinner-younger person dressed up in it on some blog. Stuck with it because it was this season's shiny object and it turned your head so you forgot you lived in a ranch house in the suburbs and drove a van and read library books in the bath while you drank Ovaltine, but for a brief moment thought you lived in Manhattan or London or Paris and wanted to wear really high heels and ate in boutique restaurants and had Martinis with friends who not only owned but actually wore long over the elbow leather gloves and coats without closures or collars to keep their necks warm.

Patterns that you bought when it was too late at night and you sort of thought maybe you should be dressing like that and if you did you would become that person with that life, forgetting that you really like library books in the bath and that the love of your life doesn't wear cashmere coats, and in fact wears Tennessee Vols T shirts and plaid pajama pants after 10 at night, although he will get up and let the dog out if you pretend you are asleep.

If you forget all of that you can collect quite a lot of patterns that you never sew and they just stalk you and make you feel guilty.

It is as if they are auditing you and you have failed the test.

However.

If you look at your pattern collection from a TNT point of view and you are the decider and decide say that you need a jacket or a blouse that you can make up a hundred ways because you trust it and it trusts you, well then you can look at all the patterns that swirl by and just decide which one are worth auditioning for you.

Recognizing that once you have the role figured out you might have to deal with a few walk ins from the street to find the stars but that at last you are in charge. And it's your show.

Update from the you can't turn you back for a minute department

I was out of the house for an hour this morning and while I was gone my husband, who is also working from home today, decided to make some of his excellent heating pad Greek yoghurt.

The only issue he has had is a good straining system, but guess what?

Problem solved.

He went down to my sewing machine and made up his own yoghurt straining bags - they work perfectly.

They should - they are constructed out of good silk organza.

I think he should have matched the thread colour.

Storms and new Vogues

I was up a bit last night. 

Got a 2:30 a.m. call from my son in East Village to say he was on his room mate's cell and they were fine, despite being pretty close to the power station that blew up. 

He was eating grapes which I take as an indication that he did not follow my storm preparedness advice. He will be fine. My children are all survivors.

They survived me.

Now I want to talk about the new Vogues. I know everyone has reviewed them but me, so I better get on it.

This collection really struck me. I believe it was Sullivan who said form follows function and Chanel who said that if it isn't comfortable it's not style. 

I am wondering if they know all that at Vogue.

To my mind a new style should make you feel sharp in a new way without being something that you make because it is "on trend" and without being something you would look at next year (on in the family pictures) without you saying to yourself "what was I thinking?"

There is only one I ordered actually and it's not because it is particularly new but looks comfortable and reminded me of the potential impact of border prints:

This simple style is all about the fabric and that is where I am going these days, but I have to tell you I am totally mystified by the fabric requirements in my size - about 6 1/2 yards 45"-60".

That is a lot of fabric, even allowing for the border layout, particularly when it looks to me as if the yoke and sleeves are laid out on one repeat. 

I am going to have to get this pattern for myself and do my own trial layout, my sense is this is nuts.

Now onto other patterns, the ones I am not getting, with my editorial comments:

Who would possibly look good in this? A few gathers over the belly to disguise that concave stomach? A baggy top to disguise the shape you might have? All of the style of a canning apron with none of the charm.

In general I like this, but it probably the fabric that is attracting me. The wings are something I will have to get used to, but I suspect the way I crash around they would just get caught on doorknobs and rip perfectly good fabric. If they were on the front they would be good though if you had to go to an event and had a broken arm or carpel tunnel and needed to support your arm, not a lot of patterns provide for that, so you might want to hold that thought and wear it backwards if you were ever in that situation.

Gulag fashion and even the model's face knows that. Note they put a turtle neck underneath to make up for the fact this jacket combines a stiff body and a drafty neck.

Wow. A turtle costume. Might look cool for two weeks but think how it would be trying to strap this little number into the seat belts. And you would spend most of your time trying to move the shell out of the way so you could drive.

Just in case no one noticed you have boobs. Imagine doing a FBA on this one. Makes me want to draw eyes in those specs. Waste of good silk.

For those of you who have always wanted to unzip a seam and leave them flapping like a couple of ziplock bags. Although the pouches are sandwich size so might be handy if you made them into actual pockets. Not sure how this look enhances feminine beauty.

And there is trying too hard, way too hard. I can achieve the prominent rear end look without any assistance but this takes function follow form to the outer limits. Must be 6 1/2 yards in that plumage. 

There you have it, a sleep deprived pattern review, not that it shows.

Take care all of you impacted by Sandy and hope your sewing machines all have power soon.