What is the part you like?

I admit it.

For the last few months I have been having problems with my sewing mojo.

There were moments, in fact, when it seemed almost like work, particularly when I was struggling to get a few things made before I went away.

I haven't felt like this in a very long time, and it worried me.

Then last weekend I had a conversation with my middle son, who is a lot like me, and the lightbulb went off.

The gist of our discussion was that we are both only really happy when we are learning something.

This, I realized, is exactly what I was feeling about my sewing and why, lately, I have been feeling there was less in the tank than there used to be.

I had got myself stuck in someone else's lane.

Let me explain.

Different lanes for different sewers.

I figure there are some sewers who are highly energized by fit.

Robin  seems to me to be a sewer like this. Her muslins and alterations produce beautiful results reflecting her wonderful mathematical/musical mind. 

I figure there are some sewers who are energized by fabric. 

Carolyn is a sewer like this in many ways. Her famous TNTs are a canvas for her wonderful fabric collection and her creative fabrications. Her inspiration seems to come from fabric and she does things with her fabric I wouldn't even see or think of.

I figure there are some sewers who are energized by technique.

Bunny seems to me to be in this category. Bunny to me is a classic sewer and exhibits a level of care and skill in her work the rest of us can only aspire to.

I figure there are some sewers who are energized by wardrobe planning.

Ruthie is a sewer like this and I would love any one of her many capsules wardrobes. Ruthie understands mix and match, do you know how hard that is?

I figure there are some sewers who are energized by fashion.

Erica Bunker is the queen here, her eye for fashion and her translation of the trends into clothes you can make yourself has given her a unique reputation in our world. Skip Style.com just read Erica.

And finally there are sewers like me.

I have a bit of all of the above, in varying degrees, but primarily what I like best are new patterns. What gets me up in the morning and rushing off to the sewing room is the element of surprise.

I love a new pattern.

I love learning how to do something I haven't done before.

I love pulling something new and probably half done over my head and not knowing until I open my eyes in the mirror if it is a disaster or a nice surprise.

I love good instructions and figuring out strange new pattern shapes.

I like every new project to be a new pattern.

Pretty nutty I know. Risky for someone who doesn't like to fool around with fit (which is why a well drafted pattern means so much to me) but perfect for someone who likes to be learning something, and is a total optimist. 

Now what about you?

What kind of a sewer are you?

Have I missed an approach?

Bootstrap Fashion's Boyfriend jeans mark one

There are a number of posts this project is kicking off in my head but it makes sense to start with the first edition of my jeans projects and work out from there.

I have been feeling the need to have jeans/pants that fit my real life as opposed to making me feel like a unit in a sausage factory. My real life, in addition to lovely unstructured time in the RV in Florida, involves teaching, by distance, dog walking, family entertaining and a whole lot of time with my grandchildren 6, 4 and 1.

Once I got this idea in my head I started looking for a pattern.

Enter Bootstrap Fashion's Boyfriend jeans.

Now despite the fact I am more mother of the boyfriend than anyone borrowing her boyfriend's jeans I liked the look of the leg in these and the laid back feel of this fit.

What is really cool about this pattern is that with only two basic measurements to input, jeans waist and hip, as well as height, the pattern is sent right to you to tape together (I love on demand sewing) and sew.

There is so much I want to say about this pattern I hardly know where to begin.

The fit is really amazing and the drafting first class and precise.

This is more than I can say for the measurer of her measurements, I got optimistic about my hip and under valued it by an inch due to some delusional idea that sitting in a car and crocheting caused me to lose weight (not true BTW and don't we wish it was). As soon as I finish this post I am going to order another pattern with 2" added to the hip (I figure I want a little extra ease for squatting in the sandpile) rather than trying to add it myself to the pattern I have.

What can I say?

Once a sewing princess always a sewing princess, and beside I have always been more interested in sewing than alternating patterns or making muslin multiples. 

I made this version below exactly as it came to me, I have found the hard way that to give a new pattern a chance that makes sense rather than starting to mess with changes in unknown territory.

It should also be noted that there aren't precise instructions for where to measure the jeans waist, I figured that boyfriends were unlikely to wear them hitched up so went with a below navel measurement. Since the top of the waistband completed sits exactly at the bottom of my navel this was perfect.

There are a few "boyfriend" details worth noting. The back pockets are man sized not woman sized and are set low on the back (but not as low as teenage in the mall droopy pant low). If you don't like how this looks then you can read a really interesting discussion on rear pocket placement here at Closet Case Files. (Ginger has some excellent jeans sewing instructions on this site too).

I am also not 100% happy with the fly. For a start I do not have a zipper foot with me, or a buttonholer, so part of the zipper, where I needed to get near the teeth, I did by hand backstitches.

In my next pair I will use these traditional instructions for a fly zipper that offsets the teeth from centre front.

And now the pictures:

The bum shot. This gives you an idea of the relaxed fit and the pocket size and placement

I got enormous pleasure from the top-stitching reminded me of how seeing that needle goes through fabric makes me happy

More bum shots in the interest of science. What can I say? The fabric was a little too light for all the details but all I could access locally for denim was Hobbylobby. Expecting a shipment in tomorrow ...

This shot shows where the waist sits and also why I have dropped sugar from my diet. I have blamed the belly on a C section but since that baby is now almost 30 that excuse is probably getting old

Just a shot revealing that this denim is maybe a little light, but comfortable

OK we took a lot of pictures. Nova Scotia does not look like this now you know

Side shot, because well it is a side shot

I am pretty pleased with myself and getting geared up for more jeans.

* Full transparency: I have just signed up for an affiliate relationship with Bootstrap, a start-up which is also crowdfunding. Being an affiliate means purchases of this pattern through the link on this site will make a small contribution to my own pattern buying habit. I feel a bit strange about doing this but I really am impressed by this pattern and would not do this if that was not the case.

Flypaper thoughts rv edition

• Only the waistband to go on the Vado boyfriend jeans
• Apart from the fact I lied to the program about my hip measurement
• They are awesome
• More later
• Sent the husband on the scooter across town to Walmart to buy interfacing
• Best I could do
• They tried to sell him Stitch Witchery
• He knew to call
• When I was 16 I worked for the Hudson Bay's Northern Stores in the warehouse in the summer
• We sent the Inuit paper thin pyjamas on the boats before the ice closed up the routes
• In return they sent us soapstone carvings
• My boss was an old guy who had been in U boats in the war
• When things got tense he would crouch down and run
• Too much time in the subs someone told me
• I have thought of him sewing in the RV
• My ironing board is set up on a shelf under some overhead cupboards
• You would think if someone stood up under a cupboard 47 times she would learn
• Apparently not
• There are a few old men in Nova Scotia who were in the U boats in the war
• They looked through the periscopes and thought "looks pretty nice"
• Came back later
• A half done roll of paper towels makes a good sleeve roll
• I read a resume this week
• Wouldn't it be cool if people wrote true things?
• How about "Worrying: 1962-present"
• Did you have a good Valentine's day?
• I did
• Sat across the table in a restaurant from the man who once met a 45 year old woman with three teenagers, a cranky dog and a semi-renovated house and proposed because "I figured if I didn't someone else would snap you up."
• All these years I have let him think that is true
• However Valentine's day meant I missed Downton Abbey
• Never even crossed my mind
• Besides they broadcast last week before this week every Sunday
• I could so live with a lady's maid
• Every time Lady Mary steps out of her clothes and leaves them on the floor
• I think I could do that
• Live like a teenager
• And how about having someone do your hair every morning and all you have to do is move aside the breakfast tray and stagger to the dressing table?
• I could do that too
• And anytime you were bored you just have to ask Anna What's up?
• Modern life you lie there and discuss whether or not the dog really does need to go out for a pee this early
• Just not the same
• Tomorrow waistband and button loops
• Brace yourselves

No resources like the real resources

I have had a nice day on the picnic table and have the pockets on in my beta test jeans, etc. and tomorrow am doing the fly. Remember I am doing this blind, without instructions, which is fine with a few mysteries.

For example the pattern says to cut three fly pieces and as well one largish zipper guard. I have been trying to figure out the three fly pieces and searching in my memory (it has been a long time since I sewed a traditional, versus a mock fly).

To refresh that memory I have been doing some surfing and pretty much have turned up about 47 versions of the mock fly.

Then bingo.

When you want old school, you go old school and refer to those who knew the Right Way to do things.

In this case I have found in the Digital Commons (where many university libraries use to upload archival materials or university research projects) of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln  Extension, these marvellous instructions for three kinds of fly zipper instructions. Save these instructions, they are like gold.

I think we are losing a precious resource here. 

In previous generations home economists took their work pretty seriously. Historically there was an argument to be made that as women became more educated, and vast numbers of them became empowered working out of the home during WW II, that it became necessary to find a socially acceptable (read this home based) way for women to use their brains and become professional and that fostered the development of Home Ec degrees.

I have written about this before.

In some cases this got a bit silly at times, here is something I read from the same archival collection, about scientific kitchen organization:

Now although this sort of stuff above was a waste of good woman time, I really regret all the good sewing knowledge that is now archived and lost.

I think of what was known, that is now not -  leaving bloggers, new and old sewers to flounder, and too often to hack together methods without the benefit of good solid knowledge.

If I had an endowment and decided to do a nutty retirement project I might just start visiting these archives in the old RV and pulling these materials together for sewers today.

Some excellent minds put their effort, their careers and some times their lives into creating this knowledge.

We shouldn't let it slip away.

And now we are finishing seams

Not sure how this jeans project is going to go, since I was asked if I wanted a translation of the instructions and being a smarty pants said no of course not. 

And now being too proud to admit I am not as smart as I think I am, am turning my old jeans inside out to figure this out.

One thing I do know is that I need to finish the edges before I go further.

Last year I bought a completely unused old Hobbylock Pfaff serger that was put on the market in the early days when zero went into the user friendly part. This, I am sure, is why this particularly tight, nice, 100% metal, built like tank unit, was left in the box by the previous owner.

It is no piece of cake to thread. Not even a piece of anything.

An illustration is me with a flashlight in my mouth and the tweezers my husband hides for emergency uni-brow repairs in my hand threading it.

I can't believe, BTW, that I left the country without interfacing with me. 

I mean who does that?

I decided to use a light weight denim since the boyfriend jeans have rolled bottoms, and I am making them for my spring and summer with the Jokers, my collective name for the three grandchildren at home. But now I think the waistband might be sort of flimsy.

Such a worry. But I am sure I can find something stiff around the RV to use ... 

Just because it isn't interfacing doesn't mean it can become interfacing.

Onward.

Stay with me.

Yes the jeans are being cut out as you read this

Evidence of eccentricity, lots of that going around here:

In a Renfrew top pivoted out to an A line and lengthened into a tunic. Barb pants in stretch yellow denim and the hat I promised the kids I would never wear in public. Note the tuna cans to keep the fabric from blowing away in the wind.

Cut her out flat and make 'er round

About a million years ago I lived in Melbourne and worked at RMIT. 

One term I taught a sort of after class in sewing to some interior design students who wanted to learn to sew. The class also attracted two brothers, welders, who I suspect were most attracted to the interior design students. 

The brothers each made a very competent pair of velvet pants as their first project.

These guys didn't say much. But after watching me lay out a pattern one turned to the other brother and said, 

"No worries. You cut her out flat and make 'er round."

Just like sheet metal work apparently.

This comment has stuck with me all these years as I believe it nails the secret to good pattern making, and to the signature characteristics of a good pattern.

You see fabric is flat but people are round. 

To make the flat fit the round and all the round aboutness requires seams and details that are not themselves straight or flat. It also requires larger areas to be broken up into sections, or by things like seams and darts so the flat fabric can shape around the terrain. This is why a two piece sleeve hangs better than a one piece one, and why you don't get so many wrinkles and pulls in the upper chest in tops with darts.

So after decades of sewing so many patterns (I am a pattern motivated sewer) I have to tell you that just looking for these two things helps me identify a pattern that is more likely to fit (or be fitted with a few adjustments) than another:

1. There is curve to the seam lines where appropriate
2. There has not been any skimping on pattern pieces

New sewers in particular are too afraid of multiple pattern pieces. Remember those 3 or 5 easy pieces patterns the big four used to sell? 

If it looks like a pillow case in the layout it is going to look like a pillow case on the body you've got. 

No amount of tweaking is going to change this.

Which brings me to Indie patterns.

I have a few on taxi-ing around the RV runway at the moment and I am not sure where to begin, based on the little I know and have observed above. Sewaholic and Stylearc I don't put in this category anymore - their patterns are too good and the drafting too fine.

But I was intending on making up the very famous Scout Tee from Grainline. I have the pattern and there have been a million versions made, about a million more hacks and countless blog posts written about how it has been tweaked to fit, often over multiple iterations.

I could use a decent pull over top in a woven for warmer weather.

But compare the Scout - front, back, sleeve and with Stylearc's Vicki top:

See what I mean? 

The Vicki has a front seam that would allow for gaposis adjustments, a small front dart so you would still get a fit in the shoulders and room in the bust and in the back sort of raglan seams that could very easily be used to function as back neck darts if you needed them. This would fit your modern computer working (forward shoulders etc.) , bust having, woman.

In other words you could work from the stitching lines already in the Vicki to get a great fit without much effort or knowledge. But in the Scout you would have to add these things which would require some pattern drafting skill, and in a pattern meant for beginners, not the point.

And fit matters.

Nearly every new sewer I have know who has thrown in the towel, or more often the sweated on garment thrown into the garbage, has done so because it just didn't fit or feel right.

All of this is an on ramp to the Bootstrap Boyfriend jeans pattern I am now in the process of assembling.

Here is a shot of the layout which should give you an idea of what already I think this pattern has potential:

We will see how this sews up.