On knowing yourself, sewing contests, Loes Hinse, and fabric boards

I know this is a fairly random post title but it all relates.

First there are a lot of sewing competitions going on, SWAP, sew alongs of various types and my personal favourite (actually the only one I can finish) Wardrobe in a week. WiaW suits my sewing personality, I have decided, the other ones don't.

There I said it. 

I'm not SWAP material.

You see I have to be pretty organized in the rest of my life. I feel responsible for a lot of people. 120+ students, many of them first years and just about as sensible as you would expect. My multi-generational extended family, blended family, and now baby-in-the-family. The dogs.  My friends. I put a fair amount of effort in trying not to let anyone down. All this is good but in the one day a week if I am lucky that I get at my sewing I really don't want any more rules or any sense of obligation. If I am distracted by a bright shiny object (new pattern, fabric, often a project that inspires me on someone else's blog or at on the boards at Stitchers' guild) I really want to follow it and not feel I should do something else first.

I like to sew when I feel inspired. I like to look forward to my sewing day all week, to hardly wait, to run down and sew when I should be doing something more useful like washing the kitchen floor. Sewing is my creative place, where I actually sort of design my life entirely my own way, and not something I want to convert to another item on the to-do list.

When I get that organized I will let you know.

Wardrobe in a week on the other hand makes no logical sense and is all about sewing what you want in a craze before you lose interest in it. WaiW involves making up your mind really fast, announcing to other people that they are going to have to feed you, ignore the mess, answer the phone, and expect nothing from you. Oh I suddenly see why I enjoy this ...might not be entirely about the sewing. It is sort of dramatic and exciting which is part of what sewing is to my life - a passion way past logic.

I think there is another one coming on for November and I'm in. I am so in.

On an unrelated note. Part of understanding your sewing style is to realize that some fabrics and some patterns suit your style. And some don't. It doesn't matter that other people can make these things work and you admire what they produce - it all has to mesh with your own sewing identity.

I remember Carolyn once wrote that she wasn't a tailor. That's sort of what I am getting at.

Now I believe in Loes Hinse patterns. Some sewers I really admire make beautiful garments, that frankly I wish I had made, or at least own. I believe in the whole casual elegance, easy to sew an easy to wear thing, but I have trouble making it work for me.

Right now I am in the throws of a Biarritz jacket.  I should love it; I certainly love versions other sewers like Terri have made.

I think I have trouble trusting Loes Hinse patterns. These are supposed to be no interfacing patterns, very minimal in construction. When I look at her pictures I often think the hems looks droopy and even homemade a little so I add interfacing to all the hem edges. And I can believe that an uninterfaced collar won't disappointment me so I interface that too. And the facings. And the curve of the V worried me on the bias so I ironed on stay tape, and onto the shoulders too. And of course when it was time to wrap the facing around the collar and serge it down, it was all too bulky at the tiny, crucial corner. I was not happy either with the serged back neck edge which was through so many layers and really bulky, so I covered that with a strip of silk bias.

Etc.

I will finish it tomorrow and post some pictures. I think I am beginning to understand the problem here as I blog and watch DH cook. Now he is a much, much better cook than I am. I am not a bad family cook, but I would no more spend 2 hours on a sauce for pork chops than fly to the moon, even though that sauce will be amazing and I will love it, and have the waistline to show how much I love good cooking. As a cook he has technique and I don't. Loes Hinse is like that I think. It isn't about simple ingredients as much as special ways of handling those ingredients, literally at the machine.

The jacket I am working on is the right fabric by her standards, a beefy rayon and maybe I should have just trusted it and not used all the interfacing. I am just not sure if I can do it until I can believe it.

We will see what I think tomorrow. We will see if I decide I like it enough to do it her way in another garment.

Now you shouldn't read on unless you are a hardcore sewer. Sewers like me have their minds go in strange directions that might shock the ordinary person.

This is what I mean.

Last week DHs company asked him if he would go down to the southern US to work for a few months over the winter. Now he wants to go. He loves that part of the continent, likes the people and of course loves, loves the food. It is an adventure, and of course there is that thing about missing out on the Canadian winter.

Now I will miss him when he is gone, and he leaves in about a month. Possibly on and off for most of the winter. I will miss someone who acts interested in everything I say (OK Rascal does that too), I will miss the cooking of course and have been online trying to find recipes that I will make for myself - it has been a lifetime since I cooked for myself, back probably to my mother's kitchen, I am of that generation. I will miss having someone make me laugh. I will miss someone who takes good care of me, I mean how many men are there is the world who get up early every Saturday morning to make coffee and bring it to you in bed so you can sit up at 7:30 and start watching Sewing with Nancy?

I mean this is a good man, and my life was half over when I found him, and I know how lucky I am.

But you know what my first, my very first thought was when he told me he would be leaving me for months to go work in the States was?

I can now order more fabric online and have it sent to his hotel and save a fortune in shipping-to-Canada charges which means I can buy more cool fabric. And he could bring it back to me when he comes home on the airplane for visits because he misses me.

How cold is that?

I also realized that I could eat a lot of tuna casserole (low fat kind, I found the recipe on the internet) and spend a lot of time catching up on the decades of sewing I have had on hold while I took care of everyone else.

So I went down to my local fabric store and mooched some fabric boards to roll my fabric on because I am going to set up my sewing room like a store, like creativity central, to get me through my lonely nights when I am baching it, when I am not working, when I am not grandmothering, when I am not dog walking or being a good adult.

I will make something of this.

Starting with the coat

I have been offline for so long with work and life events, and also, to be honest, replacing some of my online time with sewing time. I have a lot to say though, all my blog posts were being composed in my head while I ran around.

To begin with my red gab CJDesigns Easy Coat came back from the cleaners with the mystery stains gone. This was a big event as I had already decided to take it apart and make another half a front and had got myself in a mental space to do this, and then, what do you know, the stains were gone! It was like being given a whole weekend of sewing for free, like finding a $100 gift certificate for Fabric mart under the bed, like finding out that your machine has a hidden feature for making perfect automatic buttonholes you didn't know about.

"You are miracle workers" I screamed at the cleaners.

"No actually we are drycleaners" they said while they waited for me to leave. The trick they said was that I hadn't tried to get the stain out myself. They said once a customer has started to mess with something there are other chemicals involved and it becomes hopeless. Whatever it is they said just bring it in, wine, ink or lipstick.

I will remember that.

As you can see this is just a plain old coat, but I really like it. It is simple but not too loose, and there is none of that crude easy pattern feel to it. The only design change I made this time, after the silver raincoat version, was to cut the collar back by about 3/4". You can see that it is still a pretty large and pointy collar and the only thing I might do next time is morph another collar onto it- one with a stand to lift it a bit. I have the coat in the line drawing from my 5/2009 Ottobre magazine in mind.

I also didn't add shoulder pads because there is a nice fit in the upper chest for me in a large, and I felt I didn't need them.

A TNT coat pattern for me for sure.

Major update

My big news and reason for not posting in a while is here. Here is my beautiful granddaughter just born and looking very Canadian in a hospital hat. She came a bit early but she and her mom are doing very very well. 

This is wonderful.

Up to her arrival I was very busy with lots of work and lots of sewing. I made a wool gab red coat in the CJ Easy Coat pattern with some very nice silk charmeuse lining but am unable to show you a picture of it here. After one wearing I reached into the closet for it today and right in the middle were two big anonymous stains. Like there were gremlins in the closet. I have no idea what happened and all they could say to me when I took it off to the dry cleaner today is we will see.

I have already decided that since I love this coat and have some fabric left over that if the stains don't come out I am recutting a new left front and taking it all apart and sewing it back together. I mean it. I absolutely am not going to put this much into a coat and wear it once. This is a crazy idea but that is my plan B. Only a sewer would even think like this but I am mad.

Off to bed now. Tomorrow my son-in-law goes back to work and I am driving the baby and mother to the doctor for first check up. I think I will also be hanging around trying to give my DD some time to sleep. Our baby is doing a terrific job of nursing like a crazy person and my daughter asked me today if she would always be this tired and if she would ever have time again for a peaceful shower.

I told her give it about 20 years.

More later.

Easy coats

Living in Nova Scotia outerwear is important to me, and as I also walk to work, pretty essential. I have been plotting new coats for a while now as I have a definite gap in the mid-weather (as opposed to really cold winter) can wear over a suit or skirt stuff. You know those times where you have to go somewhere and the same coat you wore to walk the dog in the morning won't cut it. Sort of a car door to the front door coat. I have collected some nice fabric and quite a lot of different patterns, but nothing that made me want to get up early and start sewing. I was also concerned in making something too trendy, aka dated, in nice fabric that I would not be wearing every day and would therefore likely have around for a few years.

Also, see previous post, I have some interesting fall projects lined up, plus a whole heap of bra-making supplies under collection and really didn't want to invest my precious Labour Day weekend in something that would not turn around pretty fast.

So on one of my many online whims I ordered Christine Jonson's Easy Coat, because, well it was even called easy, and seemed a pretty classic style. To tell you the truth I wasn't expecting all that much. This pattern has been around a while and I thought it might be dated and boxy, but felt it was worth a try. For my "wearable muslin" I decide to make an unlined version first in some metallic type nylon taffeta I got on a buy-one-meter-get-two-free sale.

I made it up yesterday, while dog sitting the three extended family dogs who entertained themselves by wrestling across the floor for 14 hours straight, and I love this pattern.

Here's why:

1. It's really well drafted and all the pieces fit together very smoothly. A one day project no problem.

2. It is simple, but not crude and boxy. Nice slim fit through the shoulders and chest with enough flare to cover wider parts without alterations. The finished pattern measurements are printed in the guidesheet so I knew exactly what I was getting. Good shape.

3. The sleeves are as close as a set-in as a sleeve that is still sewn in flat with that one long up under the arm seam as you can get, not too wide, and for my average size arms fit perfectly.

The coat I have would be good for traveling or for throwing on over a skirt outfit doing the dash-to -the-door-run in the rain.

So today I am making a wool gab version with a silk lining and have high hopes and glad I ordered a few more CJ patterns.

Been busy sewing

When I opened my blog this morning I couldn't believe how long it has been since I posted. I also realized that the last time I wrote anything also marked the day that my summer company started arriving, closely followed by the week of prep and week of sewing of the Wardrobe in a week competition at Stitchers Guild.

I am posting the suit, blouse and skirt (you had to make four items in a week that you had cut out and marked the week before) I completed for that one. I have also been busy with baby sewing for my daughter, bedskirt for the crib, valance, receiving blankets, wet bags for transporting the diapers, and knitting more diaper covers/soakers. It has been an intense sewing time for me and I can feel I am entering into one of those phases.

I also reconnected with an old friend I haven't seen in a long time and we had a good sewing Saturday together. She was in a bad accident and still in recovery and it was poignant to see her slowly start to sew again and how nice it was for her to see something come together.

Oh yes and I have been super busy at work getting a new program launched and a new course online. Neither are really my thing, what I love to to do is teach and it was useful to struggle with administration (all those meetings how do people stand it?) this summer to remind myself that the classroom is where I belong.

First off let me tell you what Wardrobe in a Week sewing has taught me.

I am a real sewing contest failure. I tried SWAP a couple of times and ended up with things that fit the rules but I didn't want to wear. WiaW has limited garments, four, and a tight time frame so the emphasis is on sewing not planning (see comments about aptitude for the classroom versus the meeting room) and I do better at that. WiaW, invented by the way by the brilliant Ruthie, the sewing contest champ, also has built in to it a whole week in advance where you are not allowed to sew, only get organized. I thought in the past getting a pattern and fabric was as organized as I needed to be before I started sewing but I was wrong. Held back from actually stitching I had nothing better to do than fit, cut, fuse and go and get in the buttons, thread and zippers, wind bobbins and put it into bags (BTW those plastic bags with zippers new blankets come in are great for WiaW prep). This is not my usual procedure and I can tell you if you get everything ready in advance your sewing just flies by. This reminds me of my change in my baking when I decided to pre-measure all my ingredients just like a cooking show (and put all the other stuff away) before I made anything, as opposed to the old way where I would walk back and forth to the pantry as I went ... one teaspoon of baking powder, where did I put that etc.

Makes the whole process enjoyable. So I have decided to prep and bag all my fall projects, the other thing I have been doing, and plan on treating all my sewing if I can like a WiaW.

Around the house

My house is full of company right now. My son home from DC and my sister, brother-in-law and 18 and 20 year old nieces from Ottawa. Other family is coming over every night for dinner too so the place is jumping.

Not a lot of time to sew although I have done some more online pattern shopping (my Vogues finally came - good because at the end of next week I have to start my prep week for the SG Wardrobe in a Week competition) and some thinking.

I also got myself a set of good wooden hangers, the ones with the pant/skirt clips on them and in the process of company prep moved clothes around closets and while I did that decided to arrange my fall teaching outfits on these hangers. As all my courses are 24 classes per term, I always figure on 12 professional, more or less, outfits so I wear each outfit no more than twice for the same class a term.(Rotating the days of the week is another exercise).  I quickly found out that I have this covered with things I like to wear (and noticed that all the clothes I like are the ones I have made and that my discards are purchases) and the thought hit me that even if I didn't sew a thing all fall for work I would be OK. 

This is interesting because if you asked me I would say I needed to make a ton of clothes for fall, although I have a few suits planned for the odd conference talk etc. 

Where my real wardrobe gaps are though is in my home casual clothes, and I am at home a fair bit as I do most of my course prep and marking from home, and also DH and I are basically homebodies anyway in our social life (see above).

It made me realize that my home clothes, are sort of left overs and not very thoughtful, certainly I don't consider them a wardrobe. T shirts and jeans and often the same comfortable old pairs of knit pants, presentable for sure but definitely not where I put my sewing energy.

This got me to thinking about leisure suits and what most of us wear when we have a home day or what we change into when we come home from work. Hour for hour I should be putting as much of my sewing energy here as into my work clothes. I pulled out my most precious possession which is an old 1950's pattern catalog and looked at what those women in those more formal time wore.

I am posting some pictures here of the Tee Vee coats (what you wore when you finally got that girdle off) and thought of the patterns that exist from the Indie designers in particular for comfortable clothes, good for schlepping/knitting/sewing/talking on the phone to relatives days, but still stylish. I am thinking maybe of Favourite Things and Indigo Junction 

Some thing else to consider when the house is quiet again and I can start my bra and mini wardrobe sewing. Home wear might in fact be what I need most for fall.

Bra making here we come

I should start at the beginning, OK the pre-beginning.

In the last couple of months or so I have noticed that some of my favourite sewers have embarked on bra-making adventures. Sigrid started it, Liana continued it and Robin got involved too. Since each of these sewers always makes things I would like to wear myself I spent more than a few late nights looking at their blogs, following their links and generally considering the concept of bra-making.

There are a couple of reasons why I have not got into this bra-making thing myself. First it looked all a little fiddly to me - if I was good at that sort of sewing I think I would be a quilter and I am not. Also there seem to be a lot of hard to source parts to the whole thing, and I thought all those across the bust seams would show through knits, and as a general policy I don't like to sew what I can buy cheaper (OK that's not at all true, let's be honest it is the fiddly thing that got me). However the bras online that I see other sewers making look very pretty so let's say that the idea was planted in my mind, and there isn't a new area of sewing adventure that generally doesn't eventually get to me.

OK. On Friday I got my hair cut. My hairdresser has a strategic chair on the second floor of a building on the corner of our best shopping street. As he cut away and in between our catching up (he has done my hair for 20 years and once brought me a lasagna when the kids were little and I had pneumonia) I looked at all the women pass on the street below and thought to myself if there was one thing they could do to improve their appearance what would that be, and I decided it was a better bra. In the summer in all those T shirts there are a lot of poorly supported bosoms out there.

This got me thinking, and really my own bras aren't that comfortable. I don't really like the ones I wear to work (yes I have comfortable old knit bras for the weekend) and I often suffer from a urge to haul them down. 

Which brings me to shoes. A while ago now I decided to buy fewer shoes but to spend whatever it took to have shoes that are really comfortable but also have some style. I walk a lot, and walk to work, and the concept of work shoes that I can't walk any distance in is something I feel I have outgrown and have a right to outgrow at this age.

So now I spend more than I ever thought I would on shoes but am saving money because I buy fewer pairs - and I am happy to wear what I wear to work on the weekends.

You see where I am going with this.

In fact where I actually went after my haircut was down the street to a fancy lingerie shop with a  " Bra fitting specialists" sign in the window. I walked and and just said "fit me." And they did.

Well what I ended up with (pictured above) was a bra two band sizes smaller and two cup sizes larger than anything I have ever worn in my life. It fit and it felt great. The price, well we won't be talking about that, let's just say I won't be buying a lot of fabric over the next couple of months, and that when they brought me the matching panties at $90 I don't know who had a greater fit me or all my Scottish immigrant ancestors or the Prairie farmer grandparents. My people don't spend that on underwear. But I did buy that bra - for research purposes and to own something that fit - I am considering this tuition money and it more or less is.

You will notice something about this bra though, a couple of things. First is there is next to nothing to it 1/8 of fabric and a couple of yards of elastic. You will also see that it has seams and looks completely sewable.

This purchase has been followed by an incredible amount of pattern surfing/sourcing. I liked the European patterns a lot and tried to find one that looked like the research bra but also saw this. The Bravo bra is a new pattern designed by Anne from Needlenook's daughter  Monica and that lead to a really nice conversation with Anne herself (when I was supposed to be engaged in heavy duty company's coming house cleaning and bed assigning for 5 incoming guests). Anne incredibly has volunteered to send me a few fitting bras to try on to see what I think before I try a pattern. 

I think I am about to start something new, stay with me, as the ultimate Ordinary Sewer, who knows where this is going to go.