Cashmerette Harrison

 A short while ago, out of the blue, I found a job posting that sounded really interesting.  Whilst I didn't have all the qualifications they were looking for I decided to apply for the job anyway.  Amazingly enough I actually got an interview!

As soon as I stopped squealing, my mind turned to  - what am I going to wear?   I had my new pair of black Cashmerette Calder pants for the bottom half, but I needed a suitable top to go with it.  The obvious answer was the Cashmerette Harrison shirt - the best fitting button up shirt pattern for a large busted woman.  Plus I've already done most of the fitting for it so it should be a nice easy make.

Next I needed fabric.  I trolled through my stash and came upon a polyester satin fabric I bought in January as a contender for my Pattern Review Sewing Bee round 4 interview outfit.  I never used it as I found something even better in my stash but I figured it would work nicely for this project.  It is beautifully bright a white background with green leaves and colourful leaves printed all over it.

My pattern needed just a few tweaks before I could get started.  First up one of the pattern pieces for the sleeve placket was missing - However, since I didn't like the two piece sleeve placket, I just redrafted it into a single piece sleeve placket.  As for fitting I tried on my previous Harrison to see what modifications were needed.  First up was the shoulder - I  noticed that the shoulder seam was where it should be at the neck edge, but way too far back at the sleeve edge.  I compared my pattern piece to my sloper and sure enough a 1" forward shoulder adjustment was required.  The shoulder seams sits much more nicely now! 

 The only other modification I made to my pattern was to take about 3/8" width out of the center front piece at the arm hole.  I found that the arm scythe was just a tad wide at this point on my previous version.  Looking much nicer now.

With my pattern modified I got to cutting and sewing.  I cut out each piece with an additional 1/8" added to most seam allowances so that I could sew French seams.  Probably not the best idea on those princess seams, they're not the flattest seams I've ever sewn but at least it looks pretty on the inside and with the pattern on this fabric you really can't see the puckering in the seams.

The sew was all going swimmingly till I put my sleeve in. Now on my original Harrison the sleeve sat beautifully - it sits perfectly straight down my arm with no wrinkling what so ever.  But when I basted in my sleeve to check fit, I now have wrinkles galore (and yes I moved the shoulder notch based on the new shoulder position so it wasn't that.  I can only assume its due to the lightweight nature of my fabric this time around. 

I spent quite a bit of time playing around with the sleeve trying to get it to sit nicely.  At one stage I thought I had figured it out.  I cut a muslin sleeve out of another woven I had lying around and it sat perfectly, but once again it was a heavy weight woven and when I modified my sleeve to this new pattern and basted it in I still had wrinkles in my sleeve.  At this point I said close enough.  I'd buy any shirt that fitted as well as this one does without hesitation - so I went ahead and finished up my shirt.

When cutting out I made no attempt at pattern matching.  For most of the shirt you really can't tell, the pattern is so all over the place it's not a problem.  But I did get some twinning on the back as you can see here.

The last step on the shirt was the buttons.  I realised that I don't have any buttons in stash that would work - and I hate buttons and button holes anyway - so once again I went with plastic snaps.  My green snaps matched really well with the fabric print.  

Whilst I'll probably only wear this shirt once it's a great make - And I really do love the fit of this pattern - and with only a few modifications from the printed pattern.

So my final Cashmerette outfit.  Harrison shirt and Calder pants.

Cashmerette Calders

Last post I showed off my Cashmerette Calder Muslin.  I've been loving these pants for lounging around the house - but now I wanted a pair I could wear outside too.  

First I had to adjust my pattern. The muslin was a pretty good fit, but there is always room for improvement. My measurements at the time of making were:

Waist - 39"
High hip (around belly at front) - 44" 
Low hip (around bum) - 43". 

Based on the table below that puts me at a size 14 hip and between 18 and 20 waist.

For my muslin I ended up cutting 16 front and 12 back (for an average of 14 all around) and I felt like that was still a little baggy at the back, and the seams which are meant to be more towards the front were actually closer to my actual sides so I decided this time to reduce the front down to the 14 and leave the back at the 12.  

According to everything I should be grading out to a 18 or 20 around the waist, but with an elasticated waist I didn't feel like I really needed to - the waist just needed to be wide enough to go over my hips.  Despite the numbers saying it shouldn't work (the finished garment measurement for a size 14 at the waist is 41.5" stretched) I cut my waistband to a size 14 at the front and a size 12 at the back and it slides on fine.  My theory is that that 43 - 44" at my hips is squishy - not solid!  The best thing about this is that I don't have all that extra gathering at the back waist which is a look that I don't love. 

So my final pattern modifications were:

Back - Using the Apple back piece, I cut everything (including waistband) to a size 12 and removed 1.5" length between waist and crotch.  For my muslin I ended up taking a 6" hem so this time around I removed 3" from the bottom of the legs (since the legs are pretty much straight I didn't bother removing the length at the shorten lengthen line, just took it off the bottom).  I then also modified the back crotch curve making it more of an L shape based on my latest shorts pattern.  

Front - I trimmed the pattern back to a size 14 all around (including waistband), and took 1.5" out of the rise and 3" off the leg length. 

Now to figure out what fabric to use!

Last time I was at the fabric store I purchased a piece of fabric with the plan to use it for my next pair of pants.  It was on the wool remnants table for $2.99/yard.  It's a black twill fabric - bottom weight, not sure of the fabric content but a burn test showed signs of both poly and natural fibers so I'm guessing a poly wool blend of some sort.  after pre washing my fabric piece turned out to be about 1.75 yards of 60" wide fabric which would be fine for a pair of fitted pants, but now that I wanted to make Calders - Hmmm the pattern says 2 3/8 yards for a size 12- 22 pair of Calders in view A.  Could I do it?

Why yes I could - just.  I had to line things up very precisely and cut pieces upside down but since it's a plain black fabric I figured that wouldn't be a problem.  The only thing I had to do was add a seam down the back of the back waistband as I couldn't fit it on a fold.  I was quite impressed be my tetris skills.

After sewing this once before this was a really easy sew.  I did each seam on the sewing machine and finished on the overlocker/serger.  I did top stitch down the front and back crotch seams.  I find that is where my pants split most if they are likely to split at all so a bit of reinforcement is always good.

When I had attached one edge of my waistband to the pants, I pinned in a piece of elastic and tried them on.  As expected they are a bit scratchy.  I had bought a piece of poly cotton knit to use to line the fabric, but since that was only 45" wide there was no way there would be enough for a lining for my Calders so I went through the stash to see what else I could find.  I came up with two scraps - A pink and a brown and decided to use both up (not enough of either to use one or the other.)  I cut the front out of the brown and the back out of the pink.  I had to do one little patch job on the back of one leg to get it to fit.

Once I cut out my lining - as it was a knit fabric I then went around and cut about 1/4" off each seam just to give it a smidge of negative ease compared to the woven main fabric.  I also cut the length off 3".  I serged the pants lining together with a 1/2" seam allowance and then basted it, wrong sides together to the waistband. 

Then it was just a matter of finishing off my waistband - I didn't use the elastic lengths specified in the pattern just pinned the elastic in one side, tried them on pulled the elastic as tight as I wanted and pinned the other side.  I used three rows of stitching to hold the gathers to the elastic just because I think it looks nicer.  And then finally I turned the hem up 3/8" and then about 3/4" to give a nice long leg line.

I really love these Calders - I think they look fantastic, then feel super comfortable with the elastic waist and the knit lining - perfect for either lounging around the house - or heading out to dinner.  win win all round!

Sorry about the lack of good photos - my camera is playing up at the moment so this is the best I could get!

Flannel Lounge Suit

 This wasn't quite what I was expecting to make when I started my latest project - but you know what - I'll take it!  In fact I really like it!

This all started when I decided I wanted to try out one of Cashmerette's pants patterns.  I know they do an apple and pear pelvis fit and wanted to see for myself just what the differences were.  That gave me two choices - I could buy the Calders or the Ames Jeans.  I decided that in this day and age the elastic waisted relaxed fitted Calder's were probably going to get more wear than the more structured jeans so bit the bullet and bought the PDF version of the Calders.

The first thing I did was to import the two different patterns - the apple and the pear - into Inkscape so I could see where the differences were.  Basically, it turns out that it is just the back pattern piece that differs.  The pear pattern piece has the addition of the dart at the back, it has a longer back rise and and longer crotch extension.

So lets talk fruits.  When I hear apple and pear shape I think Apple - round body with thin legs and arms sticking out andPear - smaller upper body and larger hips/backside.  Then I take a look at myself in the mirror and go - yep I'm an apple I have a protruding belly, a protruding backside and protruding boobs - Basically a round ball in the middle with arms and legs sticking out.  So when I saw the pattern differences I was a bit confused - All the changes for the pear pattern are those that I regularly have to do to get my pants to fit.  I decided to go for it and cut out the pear pattern (I figured it was easier to get rid of extra fabric later than to try and add it back in).

Now to figure out which size.

The waist measurement is always the hardest for me to figure out.  It says to measure where you are narrowest.  For me that is directly underneath the bust - and for once the picture shows that point being used.  OK well then we will go with that. At the point shown on the figure above I'm 36".  That's size 16.  Now for hips.  I'm 43" standing and 46.5" sitting.  Size 12 pear? size 16 apple?  

I decided to just start with a straight size 16 and go from there.

I printed out my pattern with size 12, 14 and 16 printed ( I love the inclusion of layers on a PDF pattern) so that I could do modifications as required.  I used my daughters lightbox to tape all the pieces together without trimming - makes it so much faster.  The one thing that I was a bit disappointed about with this pattern was the large margins around each page. Each page has a 1" margin around it which results in 2" overlaps, which is an awful lot of wasted paper. 

I printed out both the apple and pear back pieces just so I could see in real life the differences (plus I was stupid and didn't read my instructions before printing and printed my main pattern without the grid shown so I wanted to make sure that that 2" overlap was really there).  Then I went and compared them to my last shorts pattern.  The front piece was actually a very close match.  The only real difference was an extra 3.5" rise in the Calders.  The back pattern piece was huge compared to my pattern  a good 6" wider around the back leg and 4.5" wider across the bum.  But my pattern was definitely closer in shape to the Pear than the Apple.

Now I had to find some fabric to use.  Normally when I make a pair of pants I can get them cut out of 2 yards of fabric - so when I buy bottom weight fabric I usually only buy 2 yard cuts.  So the only thing I had in stash that was big enough was denim and I did not want to use that for these pants.....but then I saw this blue and black checked flannel - I'd bought 4 yards of this so I would definitely have enough.  OK so they probably wouldn't be outside pants, but I could do with some more pajama pants - and that would work nicely for a wearable muslin.

I cut the pattern out at a straight size 16 pear and basted it all together.  Wow there was a lot of fabric there.  I loved the way they looked from the front, but the back view was not good.  Plus as expected the rise was just really too high - They were sitting right up under my boobs.  I know that the pattern is designed to be high waisted but it was too high for me.   I pinned out 1.5" and that was better, but I think that for next time I'll take out a full 2"  (which happens to correspond to the 2" I took out of the length of the Cashmerette Harrison shirt I made).  

I then tried taking a good inch out of the width of the back panels - basically cutting the pattern back to a size 12 at the back side and that was better.  I then removed the dart from the back - this was less about fitting than about the look - the dart was just really badly aligned with the checks and it make the back look messy so I removed the darts and took some extra off the side seams to account for it. 

The final modification I made was to take a horizontal dart across the back to pull the checks up to a horizontal line across my backside......so basically what I did was take it back to a size 14  (average of 16 front and 12 back) with an apple back.  OK well now I know for next time!  Though I think they are still a bit too big so next time I think I'll go for a 14 front and grade from 14 at the waist to 12 down the hips and legs with the apple backside.

I trimmed off all my extra fabric, took my basted together pants apart and  then put them together properly following both the instruction booklet and the sew along from the website.  I found later that I had made one mistake when sewing the front crotch seam so the center check didn't quite align with the waistband, but I'd flat felled those front seams for extra strength and wasn't about to try and fix it now.  Otherwise I'd done a pretty good job of matching the checks I was quite happy with the result.

For the final hem I turned the bottom of the legs up a full check width, and then turned it up again,  and then a third time to get the right length - so next time I can probably cut a good 3-4" off the bottom.

So now I had a really cool pair of pants but nothing to wear with them.  You really need either something tucked in or something cropped to show off the top of the pants which is the best part - otherwise they just look baggy and a bit daggy.  

I still had some of my fabric left over so I decided to go ahead and make a top to go with it.  I used the pattern that I created this summer for the gathered neckline top, but wanted to remove the gathering as I wasn't sure how that would go in the flannel fabric.  I simply angled the front neckline out to meet the collar of the shirt.  I think I left about 1/4" too much length in that front slit which makes the front neck buckle just slightly but I'm not going to worry about it now!

I extended the sleeves to full length making then straight for a more flared look to go with the flare of the pants, cut if off straight across at waist height and removed the flare from the under bust area down so that it sits snuggly around the waist.

I love the way both of these pieces turned out and have been wearing them since I got them finished. Its a great outfit for just relaxing around the house - gee do I do much of that at the moment??? 

Precious Cardigan

No - this cardigan has nothing to do with a gold ring.  Precious comes from the fabric being used.  There is always a lot of talk in sewing circles around precious fabric - what is it - when do you use it.  For me - this fabric meets the requirements for precious in more than one way.

First - it was bought whilst on holidays (vacation).  I purchased it last July when I was back in Australia so plenty of good memories to go with it.  

Second - the purchase comes with extra special memories - in this case it was the last time that I went shopping with my Mum.  I needed to go to the RTA and that meant a trip to the big mall - Miranda Fair.  I asked Mum to come with me thinking we could have some time after our errands to browse. Amazingly, I was in and out of the RTA within 10 minutes -  Its a miracle.  So of course we headed next door to Lincraft.  Now I haven't had much success with finding good fabric in Lincraft for many many many years but as if I'm going to pass up the opportunity of browsing fabric of any kind.  So Mum and I went in and wandered around.  And amazingly I found a fantastic fabric.  Its a stretchy velour fabric that feels super soft and squishy - I find a lot of time the velours feel great from the outside, but the inside tends to be scratchy or cold  - not this one though - it was super soft inside and out.  And it came in this beautiful flower/leaf print fabric.   It's not really my usual colour palate - more red and yellow and navy  - none of which feature heavily in my wardrobe, but I knew I wanted it anyway.  Mind you it was not cheap - nothing ever is in Lincraft - so I only got 2 meters rather than the 3 I would normally buy if I didn't know what I wanted to make out of it.

Third - it was expensive.  Precious fabric doesn't have to be expensive, but I do find that most of my expensive fabrics are precious - does that make sense!  It means I don't just want to cut into it for any old project.

Fourth - it sat in my stash for over a year until I finally figured out what it was going to become.

When I first bought the fabric I was thinking winter dress - maybe a kielo?  maybe magnolia?  but really how often do I wear winter dresses? - I hate wearing leggings which really limits the amount of dresses I can wear when it's cold.  I thought about just making a simple shirt, but then I usually just cover most of my shirts with jumpers/sweaters so you never see them.  And so the fabric just sat there - waiting.  Until finally I had an epiphany. Obviously it needs to be a cardigan - a long cardigan.  That would then mean its a focal point when worn and it will get worn lots, plus it'll brighten up those cold winter days - win all around.

So I finally had a plan for my precious fabric - but what pattern to use?  I have a couple of cardigan patterns but none of them were quite what I was looking for so it was back to the drafting board for me.  I started with McCalls 7478 - a 50s style swing coat pattern and through many modifications to the muslin turned out looking nothing like that pattern.  I've done a full write up of the pattern and modifications on my post about the muslin.

Once I had my pattern sorted, it was time to cut out my real fabric. I was terrified that I wasn't going to have enough fabric.  I don't think that the fabric has a nap - but with a velour fabric I wasn't going to take any chances and cut any of the pieces upside down which means each of the 4 main pattern pieces had to fit side by side on my fabric (It wasn't long enough to get more than 1 piece out of the length).  Thankfully it was super wide fabric so I just lined the bottom flared edges of the pattern pieces up side by side  - I had to take just a smidge of the flare out of the back princess seams to get them all to fit but I don't think that was much of a problem.

To get enough fabric to cut the center front pieces a second time as a facing I did have to add a seam in about 3/4 of the way down the panel. 

I basted my fabric together and tried it on and loved it - but there was a little niggle at the back of my mind as to whether it would be warm enough as it was.  The problem was that the day after I cut it out and basted it together we got a second wave of summer - the temperature shot up again and cardigans were not necessary. I knew that if I made a decision then I'd probably say yes it's warm enough, but then when the weather turned cold again I'd never wear it.  So I decided to set it aside until the weather turned again and I could try it out in the cold and make a decision. 

I went on and sewed another couple of garments and the weather remained warm - it wasn't till over a month later that I felt like I could finally make the decision - and after trying it on again I decided yep - I really did want some extra warmth.

Now what fabric to use as lining. I started off with the sleeves as that is where I feel the cold the most.  I knew exactly what fabric I wanted to cut the sleeve lining out of.  The remnants of the really thick cuddle fleece that I used for this sweater - probably the warmest snuggliest sweater I own. 

I already had the center front section cut out of the main fabric as the facing so I just needed fabric for the side front, side back and center back pattern pieces.   I scoured my stash for any other fabrics with a similar stretch and drape and was really only able to find one fabric with enough yardage - a brushed sweater knit that was grey on the back side and light blue with flowers printed on the front.  But I really didn't want to waste that fabric on a lining!  Plus it really didn't match.

Then I had a thought -  I still had a small piece of my main fabric left over - was there enough to at least get the side fronts cut out too?  I found that If I were to cut the pieces on the cross grain  - yes I did.  Thankfully the fabric has 4 way stretch so that wouldn't cause any issues and I didn't have to worry about the nap since it would be on the inside.   That meant that  I only needed a small amount of fabric for the back pieces and I had a small piece of purple stretchy sweater fleece fabric in my remnants pile that would do the job.  Now we were getting somewhere! 

The last step before the final construction was pockets - I had just enough scraps of fabric left to cut out my pockets which I then lined with a stable navy knit from my scraps drawer.

Construction was straight forward - I put together the main body sewing each seam on the machine and then finishing it on the serger.  I then put the entire lining together in exactly the same way.  I knew I had to do something different to the muslin with regards to the interfacing so this time I cut the interfacing to only sit around the neckband and extend out to the front dart.  I did this on both the main pieces and the lining for extra support.  I then added a strip of interfacing down the center front of the lining pieces to provide the support required for the buttons.

I sewed the lining and the main cardigan together up the front edges and around the neckline and then bagged the lower hem edge and top stitched around the front edges.  To attach the sleeve lining to the main body I hand stitched the thick lining material directly to the cuff seam. 

I spent quite a bit of time with my button box trying to decide what to use in the way of colsures - I realised that I didn't want to overlap the front edges of this cardigan so that eliminated normal buttons and button holes.  I thought about adding ties at the bust line, but didn't like that.  In the end I decided on using some small black velvet buttons and lining up three buttons on each side of the coat and using thin black elastic to link the buttons together.

I love my new cardigan - it's super snuggly, to the point where  some days its too warm - though I'm sure that wont last long.

There is only one thing that I would change if I were to make this pattern again and that is to remove, or at least lower, the notch in the collar.  

When I applied the interfacing to the neck band pieces I didn't bother cutting out the notch and when I basted the lining in and tried on my half finished cardigan I really loved the way collar sat.  Once the notch was added back in (unfortunately I had already cut the main fabric with the notch so I had to add it) the neckline, whilst having more visual interest doesn't sit a nicely as it could. 

                             

But overall I really love the way this turned out and I know it's going to get plenty of wear.  I feel like I made the most out of some really stunning fabric.