Kineton Top

 Well this post is well over due - I'm finding it hard to take photos of my makes now that the remote doesn't work on my good camera...plus in this case, there is that pesky problem of I couldn't post photos till after the pattern was launched.

This is the top version of the Cashmerette Kineton dress. To make this I lengthened the top pieces of the pattern  by 2" , left off the skirt and just finished the bottom of the skirt by turning the lower edge up twice at 1/2" each and threaded 1/2" elastic through the resulting channel.

The fabric for this top is my favourite part.  Its a beautiful peacock chiffon fabric.  I didn't know what I was going to make out of it when I bought it, I just knew I needed it.  Then when this pattern rolled around I knew it'd match the pattern beautifully, but also that I'd never wear it as a dress, so I decided to make it shirt length instead.

Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out as planned.  I have no issue with the cropped length as shown, but when I wear it, the bottom band creeps upwards to settle at my smallest part, right under my boobs, and that is not a good look.  So I really only wear it if I'm willing to continue tugging it down the entire time - which is never.  I'm actually contemplating add the skirt to it as at this point I think the dress would get more wear than the top does.  Such as shame as I love the neckline and sleeves of this pattern and I love the fabric....

Three summer shirts

It's been quite some time since my last blog post.  There's a good reason for that, just prior to that post I actually got a full time job!  That has been quite a change for the entire household with me going from home full time to working full time.  We are all still adjusting.  But I do love my new job. I'm working as a pattern development manager for Cashmerette Patterns. It's a great combination of writing/creating patterns and project management work, really my perfect job. 

Still working full time is taking a bit of getting used to.  Not so much the working, as the knowing when to stop.  I tend to get on a roll and suddenly I've been working from 6:30am to 5pm without a break...not a good idea.  And it doesn't leave much time to sew outside of work, which in turn means that I haven’t been able to add much to my wardrobe this year. Thankfully my wardrobe is fairly well stocked but I have been noticing a few holes.  Mainly in the work wardrobe department.  Now don’t get me wrong, It's not like I'm expected to wear business clothes, and most of my work is done remotely, however I do have to occasionally go into the studio and that means thinking about what I'm wearing.  In the middle of summer I’m either wearing casual dresses, or shorts and a t-shirt.  I don't love to wear dresses into the studio as a lot of what I'm doing has me climbing ladders, and sitting on the floor etc which is not always easy in a skirt. As for the shorts and T-shirts, well I made three new pairs of shorts last year so I’m good there, but finding things to wear them with is something else.  Most of the summer shirts in my wardrobe are tank top types, which is great for a warm day, but not so great for an air conditioned studio.  So I’ve made a couple of new short sleeve shirts. 

The first one is a basic T-shirt.  On one of my trips to the fabric store I found some seriously nice jersey fabric.  It’s got a sort of micro fibre/velvety texture to one side which makes it feel lovely.  The colour isn’t too exciting - it’s a burgundy sort of colour - and quite dark but I figured it was perfect for using to perfect my basic T-shirt pattern.  Since I made my new moulage/sloper in Dec I haven’t had a chance to make a basic knit shirt pattern out of it and decided it was about time. 

I’m quite happy with the way it turned out - the sleeves have just a small puff, and I created a faced square neckline for this shirt which is quite nice….

But the finished T-shirt was just a bit...boring.  The colour is a bit dull by itself, and it’s just a basic T-shirt - so I decided I’d try and jazz it up a bit and pulled out my embroidery thread and needles.  I decided to keep the animal theme going that I started with my T-Shirt quilt, and hit upon the idea of embroidering our pet hedgehog onto the front of the shirt.   I used the original photo of him as a baby hoglet, traced it onto the shirt and just free embroidered it.  I’m quite happy with the way it turned out - it just makes the shirt a little more exciting.

After wearing the shirt once I decided that it was just a little too short, so I unpicked the hem and added a 2.5" wide band on the bottom - it's now a bit too long, but it's certainly wearable.

Now that I had a T-Shirt pattern that I was happy with I decided to make a second one

Once again - I didn't want it to be a plain T-Shirt. So this time I decided to play with the sleeves. I tested out a number of different sleeve options. The one I went for in the end is one that is gathered down the centerline. I really love the way this looks - and once I had made the pattern it's not that hard to make those sleeves.

For this version I went back to a V neckline, but still used a stitched down facing to finish it.

The fabric is one that has been in my stash for quite a while. The main fabric varies between red and blue, and then there is an almost animal print in black and green over the top. Its a cotton jersey fabric. I placed the fabric pieces so that the blue was closer to my face and the red down at my hips.

The third shirt I made is a woven T.  I used my moulage to remake my gathered shirt pattern, but without the neckline gathers.  Unfortunately I’m not sure if it was my drafting, or the french seams I used taking up more room, but I don’t feel like this shirt fits as well as the original.

Looks like it could definitely use some extra length in the front.

I really took my time making this shirt and made the shirt reversible, trying to making the best of both sides of the beautiful double gauze cotton fabric that I used. 

I tried to make the facing plaid match on the inside.

and dealt with the seams and darts as best I could.

In the end it was probably all a waste of time as I don't think I've ever worn it inside out.  I still like the large plaid side better.

In the end this shirt is nice, but not as nice as the one I was copying - which is still my favourite summer shirt.

I've had these shirts made for quite some time now, but trying to find time to take photos (especially since my remote to my camera stopped working) is hard. But I got the camera up and running today and tried to photograph everything I've made in the last couple of months - so look out for some more posts really soon!

Stained Glass Shirt

Pattern Reviews contests are always a great source of inspiration for me.  They push me to make things that I otherwise might not make.  They force me to step outside my comfort zone and try new things rather than just making the same things over and over.  So when I saw the Zoom outfit contest I knew that I wanted to enter.

So what is a Zoom outfit? - obviously it's anything that you would wear on a zoom call but that's really wide open to interpretation.  There was plenty of discussion online about what photographs best, choose plain bright colours, V necklines  etc - I read through it all and then thought - you know what - I don't really care.  I'm going to go for what I want to see in a zoom call, and what I want is something with a lot of visual interest in the shoulder region - something that is eye catching and colourful.

My original thought was to use all my blue/teal french terry scraps patchworked together. I tried a number of different combinations - even just sewing all my little scraps together.....and ended up hating the resulting fabrics.  OK scratch Idea #1.

Onto Idea #2  - I made this stained glass window quilt for one of my friends' weddings and really love the contrast between the black and the bright batik fabrics - maybe I could make a shirt using this technique.

I sketched out something like I was imagining and then got to work.  I used my woven moulage, lowered the underarms by 22 mm and extended the lower point out by 5 mm then added an additional 1/2" down the outside seam (sorry about the mixing of units - that's how I work these days).

I rotated the majority of the armhole dart to the side seam at bust level, then started drawing in my black lines. I cut my pattern along each of the lines to give myself basic pattern pieces without any seam allowances.

Fabric:  I wanted to use one of my batik fabrics.    The base fabric is tie dyed in blue greens and purples and then over the top are stamped grids of gold metallic patterns - It's a beautiful fabric.  

For the black I found an offcut of a really light weight wool - since it was so lightweight I interfaced the entire fabric with black iron on interfacing before cutting anything out.

I cut out all my pieces for my front, sewed them together and pinned it on my dress form.....and hated it!  well not quite I loved the top part around the shoulders and neckline, but hated the lower parts, so I ripped the bottom half off, pinned some more batik fabric on the dress form and then started using the black stripes to find a new arrangement of stripes and colour that I did like.  I played around with many options - 1 is shown below, before deciding on my final layout.

Once I came up with an arrangement I liked (not the above one - though I wish now that I did go with that option), I started again with my pattern.  This time, instead of cutting up my pattern I drew my lines on, then traced each separate piece off, allowing me to add seam allowances to each pattern piece as well.

Once I was happy with my front piece I  did it all over again for the back, and then once again for the sleeves.  It was a very slow process, taking me a couple of days to come up with just what I wanted.

Finishing details:  I think this is the first time in forever that I sewn something with no real finishing techniques used inside - I just wasn't sure I liked it enough to spend any more time finishing it off all the little seams.  But the edges did need to be finished.  The sleeves were easy - I just added black ribbed cuffs.  The bottom edge is just turned up 1/2" once and stitched - I tested out a black ribbed band but didn't like it.  The neckline I had a bit of a problem with.  My original plan was to have the black strips as my neck edge, but when I tried on the shirt it ended up being quite low cut and showed off quite a bit of cleavage.  If there is one thing you don't want in a Zoom outfit it's lots of cleavage, so I ended up adding another couple of triangular batik pieces to fill the area in a bit, I then cut seconds of these pieces, interfaced them, and cut seconds of the back black bands, sewed them to the neckline and turned it inside, then top stitched in the ditch to hold the facings down.  Looks neat from the outside.

For the strip on the arm I tried to align it with the strip on the bodice.  I also aligned all my black stripes at the side seams, but then I had to take in the side seams and everything lost alignment - Oh well - I'd prefer fitted to aligned.

So final results - I like it, I'm just not sure I love it.  Ahh well it's always good to try something new.  It's probably a bit too lightweight for winter, but will be good when I want a light weight long sleeve top in Summer.  Only time will tell if it ever actually gets worn.  

On the plus side it does make a statement in a zoom setting.

Blue Floral Shirt with neckline pleats

More playing around with my pattern.  This shirt actually came about thanks to the Great British Sewing Bee (again).  They did an episode where one challenge was to drape a garment on a dress form and I thought, now that I have my dress form looking like me, maybe I should try doing that too. 

However I didn't want to cut into my good fabric so I took the entire length of fabric and just started draping.  My first attempt was actually quite interesting.

I really liked the way those darts/pleats worked as so I decided to go ahead and try and draft a pattern with this arrangement of darts.

I started with my woven sloper, traced it out again and then started doing the modifications needed to make it a knit sloper.

On the back this was easy, I just moved the back darts out to the side seams, removed 1/4" from the side seam to allow for stretch and took 1/4" off the outside edge of the shoulder seam. The final change was to raise the underarm by 1/2" and redraw the back armhole between the two new points.

For the front pattern piece it was a bit harder.  Again I brought in the shoulder point by 1/4"and raised the underarm by 1/2".  I took 1/4" off the side seams.  I then had to try and remove some of the under bust dart.  

Originally the under bust dart tapered from 0 at the bust point to 6cm at the underbust, then back to 5 cm at the waist and 2.5cm at hip (Shown by a dashed line in the picture below).  I started by just moving 2.5 cm out to the side seam from the underbust right down through the waist and high hip but that creates a really steep angle between the bust and underbust.  So instead I moved the 2.5cm out to the side seam at the hip line and waist lines, but at the underbust line,  I only took 1.5 cm off the front side seam, and then took 1cm off the back side seam as well - It just gave a more balanced pattern.  This still leaves a 3cm dart at the underbust and a 2cm dart at the waist, but if I take out any more it ends up really warped.

I then lowered the center front point 3" and created a V neck, then rotated the armhole dart around to the center front point.  This created the lower of the two pleats (or technically they are released darts) at the neckline.  To create the second pleat/dart I just drew a line from a point about 1.25" above the center front point on the neckline, out to the armhole and spread my pattern piece around that point.  I opened the second dart the same amount as the first.

For the sleeve pattern piece I again raised the underarm point on both the front and back by 1/2" and slimmed down the sides of the sleeve by 1/4".

And now my pattern was just about complete.  I cut the pattern out of my fabric  - a sweater knit that is grey on the back and printed in blue with red flowers on the front, and basted it all together and tried it on - I was quite pleased with it.  I had to unpick my pleats/darts a bit to get the right look I was going for but otherwise the fit was really good so I took it apart and serged it all together properly.

The final piece of the puzzle was how to finish the neckline.  I didn't want anything to detract from the dart/pleats so I decided on a facing.  I cut front and back facing pieces, serged them together at the shoulder line and stitched them onto the neckline with a straight stitch so that it wouldn't stretch out.  I under-stitched the facing , turned under and stitched the free edge of the facing and then hand stitched the facing down with a catch stitch.

The sleeve and bottom hems were double turned and then stitched with a twin needle for a really nice finish.

I really like this pattern  - something slightly different to my normal tops - fairly fitted but not too tight. There is only one small issues at the back sleeve - I feel like the seam line should be moved in just a touch so I've drawn this onto the pattern to try for next time, and there will be a next time with this pattern - though maybe next time I'll make three smaller darts at the front instead of the two larger ones.  So many options!