Sew day

Today was my once a month sewing day with my friend Trudy. 

These days are like gold to me. We sew and talk and eat and ignore all other obligations.

I will be posting some pictures and detail tomorrow but tonight I want to share with you my new favourite Style Arc pattern the Lucinda knit pant.

Suffice it to say that I whipped up one pair in the morning and we agreed they were so wearable and comfortable, Lazy-boy pants in fact, that after lunch we did a quick field trip down to Fabricville so I could get more fabric to cut out another three pairs.

I am very busy right now, largely with work, and trying a new pants pattern right out the envelope and having it fit perfectly (we decided that if there were any flaws it might be in the body inside the pants and not the pattern itself) just was so great.

Now if Stylearc would just put the Evie up on Etsy I would be set.

So tomorrow I will corral my photographer and get some pictures up, after that its back to the sewing room to make more before the week hits. Here is the drawing of the pattern but brace yourself for my version which are not quite as loose, despite the fact the body underneath is, but about as comfy as a toddler's jammies, and we all know toddlers get to wear all the cool clothes.

More later.

Another Lazy-boy shirt

You know this series is not about high fashion. In Style isn't presenting fleecey tops to wear when you do the laundry or sit at the serger on a cold morning as "on trend." This isn't the kind of outfit you wear and write "go me."

These are the kinds of tops you wear when you wake up and say "how many days to Florida" or "did you drink the rest of the coffee?"

And getting a top like this right requires some skill. 

Some additions to length and width for example. My worry with leggings are not that I am mutton dressed as lamb so much as looking like one of those college going away duffle bags where you have to have someone else help you hold it together so you can zip it up.

First the final product. Then the destructions so you can make one just like this for yourself.  Maybe this is a new uniform, something we can all wear when we clock off the shift of modern life. Me I'm styling mine with fake fur slippers.

Moving on and here we go:

Here is how we got here.

First off I used this Burda pattern for a T shirt and lengthened it to cover the parts that develop when you eat like an eighteen year old boy and you're not. 

Then I cut out the back and fronts as suggested on the fold, but only so far as around the neckline, across the shoulder and around the armhole.

I stopped cutting at the point the armhole joined the side seam, put in a pin where the lower armhole and side seam joined, removed all the pins everywhere else in the pattern, and pivoted the pattern out to make it as wide as I wanted (I think I added 1" to each side seam as measured at the bottom).

This is the brilliant Pivot and Slide method of pattern alteration that is my default particularly for adding simple length and width. I love this method for that because, unlike just measuring out extras and drawing your own lines, it maintains the original design lines of the garment. 

For instance one of my beefs with how they grade up patterns for plus sizes is that they increase everywhere - making the armhole bigger when there is width added to the sides for instance, which can give you baggy, bra showing armholes when all you really want is more to cover your middle.

The pivot and slide approach keeps the original armhole while giving you that extra across the body.

If you haven't tried this before, and if you are confused by my instructions (and who wouldn't be, I think I have confused even myself) you might want to look at this excellent little intro by the marvellous Nancy Zeiman:

Or you can see it all in more detail in Nancy's book:

Or for even more detail in this the original book on the method in which a very young and achingly beautiful Nancy is featured as a model:

The other detail on my own top is that I applied the cowl neck pattern from the Renfrew top to the Burda pattern, it fit perfectly without any adjustment. Of course I didn't check that out before I sat down at the serger, ever the optimist.

This cowl is amazing, very shaped so it hugs the neck and folds over nicely, no plain old rectangle. My only issue is that the construction directions are not as easy as they could be. Not as directed I sew two cylinders (seam the short end) and put them together, right sides together and just zipped around the top in a circle to join. And I do not top stitch the neckline seam down. This cowl stays put without that and when your cowl had gone in really nice why risk blowing everything on top-stitching?

At least that's how I look at it.

If you really loved me there would be welt pockets

I am sure I am not the only sewer who went through this before the holidays, probably months before.

You have family and some of them are far away. 

You want to give them something special, something of yourself, something they can't get at a store. You hope for those "my mom made it" connections. You want them to see in something from your hands your feelings for them.

I saw a Pinterest saying a while ago.

It said "I wouldn't miss you if you were here."

Boom, right to the heart that one.

Now those are words you can't say out loud. 

Not to a child who is living their own good life in the place where they should be. If you said it you wouldn't feel any better and they would feel much worse.

So you keep those thoughts to yourself or you tell them to another mother so you don't have to explain a thing. Someone reading this right now knows exactly what I mean.

And you decide to make them something instead.

But because you have so much to express, you want a project to match. To a sewer that means real good fabric and something that requires real work. 

On this basis I decided before Christmas I wanted to make everyone shirts. My job intervened however and I only got one made, which made me feel terrible in case it looked like shirt boy was more loved than napkin girl or heaven forbid more than the girl who got tops ordered online.

The thing is when the wrapping paper settled Christmas morning, it turned out everyone was pretty happy, maybe the online top recipient the most.

But we did discuss sewing over the course of the day. Two of my children, my son's girlfriend who is a hobby herbalist, and my son in NYC had requests: 

• I would love an apron to wear when I work with plants. Would it be too hard to have pockets on it?
• Mom I really need a bag for dirty clothes when I travel. I don't know if you can do this - but a sort of square bag with a drawstring you can pull on top. He even sent me dimensions.

A bag and an apron.

This made me feel so bad - that's it? - till I figured it out.

If you don't sew, what matters most to you is something you can't buy exactly the way you want it yourself, not the complexity of the project.

Like that time I made my mother those elastic waist A-line skirts out of quilting cotton and all the ladies at church wanted to know where she got them.

So maybe I learned something.  For years I have given made-by-me gifts with the comment "Hope it fits, it nearly killed me to make it." Not completely cool or in the spirit really.



When sewing to give you have to look at what the recipient can't do themselves, rather than through sewer's eyes.

What do you think?

I'm back and flypaper thoughts

It's been a little nuts lately.  I have projects to show and instructions and useful things. However the last week has me more in a flypaper frame of mind. So here goes:

• There is something in the water around here.
• Town's been over-run with sexist facebook pages, sex-texting scandals at some of the universities
• I have been doing media commentary all month and it's wearing me out
• Why they call me I don't know
• All I say is where are their mothers and their poor mothers
• Not talking on the guy I actually worked with
• Would someone take the phones away from these knuckleheads
• Their poor mothers
• Made a great Lazy-boy top by melding a Burda tunic and the spectacular Renfrew Cowl
• Pretty pleased with myself
• Was going to do a cross-over V instruction 
• Then decided both the V neckline and scoop neckline on the Renfrew need a different approach so they turn out better
• Will get to that asap
• Confiscate those phones
• Did I tell you I am making four flower girl dresses for the big wedding?
• So happy not to be fitting bodices
• Excited about this project, very cute kids
• My dear nice normal husband has been sick
• Bad flare up of psoriatic arthritis
• Decided that tough guy needs to try some complimentary medicine
• He drew the line at Tai Chi without even looking
• He said bread making was good therapy
• I already have downloaded a few patterns one size up
• So far I am doing great with the Yoga for Arthritis dvd
• Not sure if me telling him what I am doing while I am doing it is all that healing
• I mean for him
• He liked the osteopath though
• He thinks golf might help
• My husband not the osteopath
• Sewaholic just released a competitor to the Archer shirt
• The Granville
• Apparently named after my late father-in-law
• The one who invented a 900 pound cast iron clam digging shovel he made himself
• Wonder if the patent is still pending
• This new shirt has darts and shape
• For pears
• Might be good for my daughter
• I am more a parsnip shape myself
• The original Granville also invented a jam-making pot lid
• Did a promotional video where I was a jam-making Vanna White
• There were little paper footsteps taped to the kitchen floor so I knew where to stand
• And a script
• Patent also pending
• This is a man who once tried to fix a software problem on his computer with a screwdriver
• Miss that guy
• Covered the garage door with a house-paint giant rose
• My mother-in-law's name is Rose
• He was 80 when he did that
• I married his son
• Good men are still around
• They carry flip phones

Happy New Year

Tonight we are having Chinese food with the little girls and babysitting them so their parents can go out for New Year's with Mr. Billy as an attachment.

When I last saw those girls this afternoon they were playing summer with their bathing suits and sunglasses on in the kitchen, all laid out on towels hoping for a tan.

This has been a good year in my family.

Mr. Billy the world's most smiley baby was born in the summer. My middle son got engaged to the kind of girl I hoped he would marry in the fall. They have asked me to make the four flower girl dresses so more on that project later, much more.

As in every year and in every family there were some sad things, for me one of those was losing the one and only Mr. Rascal last spring. But then we adopted Miss Daisy who spent last Christmas locked in a cage in the dark waiting for the police to shut down that particular operation. One of the many things I learned from her is that even when you are just so sad someone, somewhere needs you anyway.

That and that when things seem hopeless and doomed, you never know, you just might get rescued, even when that doesn't make any sense at all. It is hard to put into words but there is something in that dog that just believes in something better, she has faith in things unseen as they say. 

You just can feel it.

And the thing is it turned out she was right, and every one else was wrong.

So I want to dedicate this one to her and leave you with some pictures taken today on a long walk on the golf course near me. It is hard to get her to stay still but maybe here you can get a sense of her first family Christmas:

One of her specialities is divot retrieval

Divot capture

On the way home in what is known as Mom's dog car

And finally after a wild Christmas with family, dogs and small children tearing up the place, here she is beside the wreckage of the much jumped on couch:

I had a cover on that couch for dog protection so much for that idea

A new year tomorrow.

New and improved placket pattern

My dear husband got up this morning and looked at my last night posted pattern and said - are you nuts?

So he redid it more professionally for me this morning, being someone who works with engineering drawings.

Thanks kiddo.

Sewing a shirt placket

For a start let's talk about the continuos placket or lap method of finishing a sleeve vent. Before we go any further let's talk about what this little unit's job is:

To finish the raw edges of the little opening above the cuff that is necessary so your hand can get into the bottom of a sleeve where it is closed when the cuff is buttoned up.

That's it. 

Raw edge finishing of a little slash that is about 3 inches long. 

This is not worth having a nervous breakdown about. 

And that might be where making a traditional, inevitably bulky, continuos placket can take you. Too many layers in such a small space with the monumental challenge of trying to sew through 12 layers of fabric (including seam allowances) diagonally across the top of the vent, over a wide throat plate hole, as is necessary in a zig zag machine, is a challenge that in my books hardly ever turns out well.

By contrast a tailored shirt style placket is dead easy and produces immaculate results with very little mental engagement, around here always a plus.

The way I do shirt placket requires photo copies or hand drawn copies of my simple pattern piece. When I put these little numbers in I do not:

• mark
• measure anything
• use more than a few pins
• stitch down anything until I have pressed and arranged it by eye so I know it will look right, if it doesn't I re-press till it does.

I do the entire placket by eye and feel and it works great. 

This is how I do it:

Step one:

• Cut out the placket piece.
• Make a little clip at the bottom of the sleeve where the cutting line of the vent should be.

Step two:

• Press under the two long edges of each vent by what looks to you like about 1/4". Just make sure that the pressing is about the same depth on each side.
• Press under the little pointy peak at the top of the placket, clipping in about 1/4" where marked in the attached diagram so you can actually fold the second side of the peak in. Turn it around to the right side and if none of this looks even and neat try it all again at the ironing board.

Step three:

• Pin the placket to the wrong side of the bottom of the sleeve so you are looking at two wrong side fabrics, this means the right side of the placket is facing the wrong side of the sleeve fabric.
• Pin a paper copy of the pattern on top of the placket lining up the marked cutting line in the centre of the stitching box with the little clip at the bottom of the sleeve.

Step four:

• Shorten your stitch length so you have smallish stitches and stitch around the stitching box.
• When this is done tear away the paper and cut up the centre of the box and right to the corners.

Step five:

• Turn the whole unit to the right side and press so the top of the box looks faced and square. If it is a little lumpy go back in a cut closer into the corners but don't stress about it - remember the placket part you see from the outside functions as a giant patch that covers all sins.

Step six:

• You now have a pointy big side to the placket and a thinner side, wrap the thin side around the stitching on one side of the box, just as far as you need to so as to cover that stitching and top stitch it down. Again don't fuss too much about the top it will also be covered up by the placket patch.

Step seven and the last one:

• Laying the whole thing in front of you fuss around with it with your hands until the placket part with the point covers what it has to and covers the part you just stitched up.
• When you have it the way you think a placket should look put in a few pins and stitch the folded under edge down, around the pointy part and back across horizontally. Go look at a shirt you have for a better idea of what you are trying to make this look like.
• You are done and it looks great.

Here below is my hand drawn pattern for a female sized sleeve placket. I have written in the directions for what to do with each marking so I won't get confused, which I often do when there are too many lines to figure out.

Note I don't actually make any of these markings, I just use the shape of the pattern to cut out the vents and the words and lines to remind me of how this goes together and what I am supposed to do.

Instead of marking I use photocopies of this drawing, or I trace off the outline shape and only the stitching box (cleverly marked with little stitches in this very home made drawing) and pin it to the placket and stitch through the paper in lieu of any more complicated markings.

The paper can then get torn off (easy if you use small stitches for stitching around the box), slashed, turned and the placket completed from the right side.

Pattern and instruction drawings for a sleeve placket below. Note this placket is fairly wide, it's one of several I have made up, but I thought it made the techniques easier to see. You might want to reduce this in width to suit your own taste, or use these methods with your own pattern piece:

Placket pattern and instruction sheet:

Placket pattern and instructions: