Sewing Bee - Round 3 - Lillian Top/Dress

And yes I made it into Round 3.  After waiting an extra day to find out if I made it through, and then another day after that to find out what the next round was going to be - I finally had an answer - and it really didn't surprise me.

Round 3 has quite often in the Bee been a specific pattern and since Pattern Review have released two patterns recently I must admist I wondered whether one of them would be the pattern for round 3...I was right, but I picked the wrong pattern.  I was hoping it'd be the Claire Dress, but instead it was the Lillian Top/Dress.

That's unfortunate.  I don't really like this pattern.  It has a front inset that I can't help but call a bib as that's all I see when I look at the top.  But that's OK - I'm up for the challenge.

That being said I had no immediate ideas on what I could do with this pattern.  So in order to do something and let my brain work on the problem I decided to start with the fitting of the pattern.

The first thing was to figure out what size to use.  I did all my measurements and according to the size chart I fall pretty much evenly into a size XL.  That sounds fair from a width paint of view but I knew that I'd have to do some modifying for length.

I printed out the pattern at size XL and taped all the pages together.  Then I set about figuring out what changes I would need to make.  First was the waist.  I know from doing my moulage that I prefer my clothes to fit at a waist point 4" above my belly button so measuring down from the under arm to that point I found that I needed to raise the waistline on the pattern by 1.5".  This was simple on the back piece, but on the front this cut into the inset piece so I had to figure out just how much to remove from the front inset piece as well..

Now that I have my waist line defined it was time to work on the shoulders.  I measured my back length and then working up from the new waistline I found that the back shoulder was at about size small.  That sounds reasonable considering I'm only 5'1" tall with a short torso.

Again the front was a little more tricky.  Based on my front length the front shoulder fell at about the Large size line.  If I were to make this again I would probably just cut a medium for both front and back neck and shoulder region grading out to the XL at the sides.

With these initial pattern changes made I cut out a muslin in upholstery material and found that the fit was pretty good really.

I actually liked the way it looked in the heavy weight fabric and decided that I would like to do something more structured for my final piece rather than using the knit fabric that the pattern calls for.  My first thought was to make it into a maxi dress, so I whipped up a quick add on for my muslin to see what it would look like.

I really liked this so I went to my fabric stash to see what I could find.......Unfortunately there wasn't much.  There were a number of knit fabrics that I could used but they wouldn't have the right drape, the only heavy weight fabric I could find had a big print which was not the look I was going for.

What I really wanted was a heavy weight velvet - preferably in a rich red or green, but that was well outside of my budget.  I just couldn't justify spending over $100 on fabric for a dress that I would probably never wear.  I just don't have the need for a long velvet dress in my life - I wish I did!

Still the idea is there for next time.

So onto plan B - make it in Denim with a bright panel in the front?  Nahhh don't like the denim idea
Plan C - a paisley polyester material with a lace inset??....nahhh the poly was too lightweight
Plan D - plaid double gauze with the inset on the bias ???? nahhh again too lightweight
Plan E -  grey upholstery fabric with paisley designs?? too upholstery looking
Plan F - red jersey knit with multi gold inset?  Love the fabric idea but again it's the wrong weight.

Ok so it looks like the maxi dress idea is out of the question unless I go shopping.  what else could I do with these fabrics.. what if I made it into a jumpsuit - add the Closet Case Patterns Sallie Jumpsuit legs to the Lillian top?  I like this idea.

Plan G - Red knit jumpsuit with inset and waistband from a gold foil printed fabric.

I decided to go ahead and cut this out to see what it'd be like.......

yeah that didn't work.

It's not terrible, I don't hate it, but it's not what I'm looking for.  Ok so what if I made the jumpsuit  out of a heavier woven fabric.  I had found when going through my stash a cool fabric in light grey green with llama and cacti all over it - Its a seriously cut fabric and I thought that if paired with a bright teal linen might make a sort of cute short jumpsuit. (Plan H)

I don't hate it, but it still isn't what I was hoping for.  I think I have to shelve the jumpsuit idea.  I just don't have the figure to pull it off.

OK back to the drawing board.  When I was thinking of the red jumpsuit I came up with the idea of using the gold foil embossed material and cutting out scales and overlapping them like scales to make a real feature out of the inset.  Lets go back to this idea.  What if I made a jumper out of the blue sweater fleece and used the gold foil embossed fabric to make scales to line the inset.

Nope not loving that either....But the idea of making a feature out of fabric manipulation is not a bad idea?  What can I do with that.

So I sat down to do some research into fabric manipulation techniques.  Unfortunately most of them are for light weight materials rather than a heavy fleece.  But I did find a couple that look interesting.

One was reverse applique - Made popular by the Alabama Chanin garments.  I've played around with this once before and liked the way it worked and I thought that this would be a great way to add some interest to a plain fabric.  Plus it would allow me to play with the inset so it's not quite so ...Bib like..  plus I could use the blue and black colour contrast to good effect.

OK what else?  I also read about couching...Now I have a coat that is made out of a fabric that is covered in couching and I've always been interested in trying it out (even before I knew what it was called).  I figured I could play around with some of that.

But the one I was really interested in was smocking.  Now to my smocking is something that you do using elastic thread  to gather in the top of  dress or something, but the smocking I found online was much more defined.  A real diamond pattern created using hand stitching.  Now this sounds like something I'd really like to try.

Ok  so I now have an idea.  make a sweater using lillian as the base pattern.  Add a kangaroo pocket with welts on either side (all good sweaters need pockets and Kangaroo pockets are the best).  Add reverse applique on the inset plus also a small bit on one lower front  panel wrapping around to the lower back and a final small applique on one shoulder.  I decided I wanted my applique design to be quite geometric.  I've been obsessed with Greek geometric designs since I visited Greece back in 1989  and am always looking for an excuse to use them.  I would then use couching to add a more abstract border along the bottom hem of the sweater and use smocking to gather a full sleeve into a tight cuff.

Now to execute the idea.  It was truely amazing just how long it took me to make a relatively simple sweater.

I started with the inset, cut out of black with a layer of the blue fabric underneath.  I traced out my pattern onto parchment paper, pinned it on and then sewed around the design on the sewing machine.

 The paper ripped off nicely along it's perforated edges and I was then able to cut out the top layer to expose the blue underneath.  I did the same for the two pieces of applique on my back piece.

When I was ready to do the front piece I decided to do the welt pocket first just in case I stuffed them up.  I could redo the front without having to do my applique all over again.

The welt pockets were actually quite tricky as I had no pattern to follow.  To place the welts a drew a line directly between the corner of the inset and the corner of the applique.  The pocket was centered between the two points  along this line.  I then mirrored that for the pocket on the other side.

The actual sewing of the welts went surprisingly easily and I'm really proud of how they turned out....

But then I had to actually add the pocket in behind.  I used a piece of left over Rayon in navy blue and white. It took a couple of goes to get the right angle on the sides to match the welts, then I just free handed a curve between the two welts.  I bound the top and bottom edges of the pocket bag in self fabric to cover any fraying edges and add extra strength.

Once the pocket was in I was able to add the applique to the front too.

Now to start putting the top together.  The inset went in quite easily - I'd had a lot of practice thanks to the number of muslin's I'd already made.

I needed to decide at this point what sort of seam finish I wanted.  I normally prefer to do French seams but sweater fleece is too thick for this.  Bound seams was a possibility but would create cold spots inside my warm snuggly sweater.  I decided in the end that the most sensible seam finish would be a faux flat fell seam.  Sew the seam together, then trim one side down and fold the other over it.  Stitch again 1/4" away from seam and then trim off the rest of the seam allowance.  This would then blend in with the finish on the reverse applique whilst eliminating as much bulk as possible at the seams.

When it came to the neck band I cut it out to a size medium - half way between the small back and the large front.  I also doubled the width of the  neckband and instead of making it a round neckband then sewing a V into the front I sewed the neckband together in a V shape first before flipping the neckband inside right.  I again finished off the neck band with a raw edge trimmed close like the rest of the seams to eliminate as much bulk as possible.

I tried on the top at this point and found that I had quite a bit of gaping around the armhole - It' hadn't been an issue on the upholstery fabric but this fleece has a bit of extra stretch and it's much more noticeable now.  To eliminate this I added a dart originating in the corner of the  front arm hole.  It's something that I find necessary in quite a few garments due to my large bust.

Now to do the sleeves!  First I took the cap sleeve pattern and extended it down to the length and width of my rainbow zipper dress sleeve.  I then cut and spread the pattern to create the extra fabric that was to be gathered in by the smocking.

Following a tutorial I found online I drew out my gathering lines.

 and created my gathers on the outer edge of the sleeve.

I then spent approximately 5 hours trying to get the smocking right. It's not perfect but it's as good as I can get at this point in time....and next time I think about smocking something by hand can someone crack me over the head with a bat....I reckon it'd be a lot less painful than this was!

I got one sleeve smocked  and tried on my sleeve and hated the way the end of the sleeve flared back out once the smocking stopped so I had to come up with some way of taming this.  In the end I decided to stitch all the pleats down neatly and then use a strip of the blue to bind the edge to the diameter I wanted.  I'm quite happy with this.  I thought the second sleeve would be easier...but it wasn't.  I still had to rip that one out and redo it a couple of times too.  Over all I spent almost an entire day just trying to get this smocking right.  Its a good thing I like the final outcome.

Once the smocking was done I sewed up the sleeve and inserted it into the sweater.  I had to do some tweaking to get the fit right.  It was good at the back but the front had to be taken in by at least 1/2" on each side - somehow the whole front of this top seems to be wider than I would generally want.

The final step was to add the Couching.  Couching is a techniques in which yarn or other materials are laid across the surface of the ground fabric and fastened in place with small stitches of the same or a different yarn.  In this case I used the edges of the black fabric that want to roll up on themselves as the couching fabric and machine stitched them to the hem of the shirt.  After struggling with turning the fabric each time I wanted to go in a different direction I decided it was time to learn how to use my free motion quilting foot with my machine.  This turned out to be so much fun and allows you to sew in what ever direction you want.  I definitely want to play around with this some more.

But finally my sweater was done.  It'd not the most fantastic thing I've ever made.  It really doesn't have that wow factor that I was hoping for for the sewing bee.  But at this point in time it is what it is.