Closet control by "seasons"

There's no shortage of writing about wardrobe planning, cleaning out one's closet, blah blah blah. It's a first-world problem and not exactly earth-shattering – unless we consider the literal sense and go into all the environmental problems of fashion – but this is how I currently manage my closet space.

I have four groups of clothing items ("seasons") that I switch in and out of use at certain times of year – I find the solstices and equinoxes easy to remember. Two of these groups are in use, and in the more accessible part of my closet space, at any given time. At the moment, that's spring and summer; it'll be summer and fall next. This was part of winter and spring, shuffled together a bit:

Each of these groups is allowed to contain up to a certain number of pieces. I'm a little more lax with this when the group is actually in use, but by the time it goes out of rotation it has to be no more than 24. That total fits okay in my closets. I also have a couple of small, completely unrelated sections for activewear, outerwear, and special occasions; they don't have to follow these rules and are kept out of the way of the everyday items.

I'm trying to keep the colour schemes of all four groups roughly compatible, more or less fitting into what certain colour analysts might call Soft Summer or Dark Winter, but this is very much a work in progress: I have older items that don't match and still aren't quite worn out or dispensable enough to get rid of just yet. The bright pink spring dress above was an example, although it's on its way out because I've had it with the poor quality of the fabric.

Each group has a slightly more specific colour scheme within the range. Spring has my clearer pastels and silver grey, summer is a little hazier and more faded while still having highish contrast, fall is warmest, and winter is smoky and darkest. Each group is meant to try to cooperate with the neighbouring seasons, since items from both of the groups in rotation at any given time should ideally be able to work together. On the other hand, for example, the spring plums don't have to get along with the fall browns, since they're never in rotation together.

At present I'd say I'm happiest with what I have for winter, least happy with summer (a lot of the colours I've got there aren't right at all), and spring has a fairly dire shortage of pants, which means I have to rely on the winter or summer ones. I have two or three projects in the works to remedy that.

This scheme works okay in a fairly monotonous climate. More extreme temperatures might require a silly number of layering pieces to make it work. But it gives me a fresh look at what I already have, every time I switch a new group in.

DIY hook-and-loop cable wraps

I used to use twist ties to bundle my cords, until I got a cat who has an unhealthy obsession with them. Zip ties are another option, but you'd better be pretty sure of where you want them. Strips of hook-and-loop tape are a nice alternative, and require no tools to remove if it turns out you didn't put them in the right place the first time.

You can get big packs or rolls of the ready-made ones (Velcro or Panduit brands, for example) for a price that usually isn't very beatable compared to retail hook-and-loop tape. But the color selection readily available around here, or online and selling to Canada, seems to be mostly limited to black. That's fine for some of my cords, but there are others where I'd rather have something close to ivory or beige, to match the cord and draw less attention to it.

Well, Dressew had a sale bin of packs of 1yd loop and 1/2yd hook tape for 25 cents. They had white and pastels only, because these were evidently marketed for babies, and there aren't many goth babies, I guess. For my purposes, I found I could get 8 reasonably-sized wraps from a pack. This actually is a good deal compared to the ready-mades. They do happen to be wider than necessary, but at that price it doesn't bother me.

You just cut a piece of hook, a piece of loop, overlap them a bit (let's say 3/8-1/2") with wrong sides together, sew (I settled on a three-step zigzag), and you're done. It's best to place the loop side against the feed dogs, because otherwise the thread may catch on the hook side as the needle comes up, and that makes a mess.

The "sticking" area of these may be less than it is with some of the ready-made ones, but I find it's more than enough. They also aren't quite as flat as the ready-mades, obviously, since there are the two pieces being overlapped, but I suppose they could be butted together against some kind of softer backing material if that's a concern. Personally, I didn't care enough to bother.

These will make my light-colored cords much less of an eyesore. I'll probably still buy ready-made wraps for the rest.

Tea towels, for actual tea

I've again become sidetracked with knitting; this time it's to replace my sorry old kitchen towels. In ready-mades I was looking for something really specific, so unsurprisingly, it doesn't seem to exist: medium to dark colours; busy patterns without too much white in them; and thick fabric—the last seems pretty hard to find these days, at any price. One of my main uses for these is mopping up tea or colorful ingredients, but a lot of what I could find was thin, solid-coloured pastels that would get very noticeably stained on first use. I guess you could bleach them, but then you never quite know what color might result.

Well, two balls of Bernat Handicrafter will make a decent-sized towel for less than $3, when it's on sale. I got many different colors in an attempt to tie together all the miscellaneous colors in my kitchen; if I don't make myself thoroughly sick of this I could end up with 12 towels, which should pretty well replace what I've got. Here's one in Indigo and Lime Stripes.

It's a Purl Soho pattern that I downscaled, in both senses; you're meant to use Euroflax linen, which is lovely, but will make a thinner towel at a significantly higher price. It seems to me that linen yarn is less absorbent, somehow, too—is it the smoother surface, or just the fact that it's never spun as thick? Most importantly, they'd take a lot longer to knit as intended. Maybe someday.

Cat tunnel

The idea here was to copy this ready-made cat tunnel, but in a sturdier fabric and colors that match the room better.

The original tunnel is a tube about 33" in circumference and 27 1/2" in length. I cut a rectangle of my base fabric for this size plus seam allowances, then pinned it around the existing tunnel and chalk-marked the placement of the wire casing that spirals around.

It got a little more complicated when I decided to add leaf appliques. At first I was thinking of doing catnip leaves, until I looked up what those are shaped like... nope, way too many little serrations. I decided on matatabi/silver vine instead—a simple heart-ish shape is a decent approximation, and my iridescent fabric at least hints at the silvery leaves. (Well, I gather that it really should be cross-dyed green and white, not green and purple, but when I get to tell fabric manufacturers what colors they should make, that'll be the day.)

I drew a template and cut out 20 of those, made up a placement, and satin-stitched on all the ones that could be attached with the base fabric still flat. For that I used some variegated green-and-white thread that was just sitting around being useless in my stash. Then I sewed up the tube (using a French seam, like the original) and finally added the last few leaves that needed to go over that seam. 

For the spiral wire casing I used a bias strip of the contrast fabric, and for the end casings I used strips of the base fabric on the straight grain. There are also three tubing ties made of the contrast fabric around one edge, so the tunnel can be collapsed and tied flat, and another piece of tubing on the opposite end that holds a jingly bell toy (on the original tunnel it's a piece of red braid). Those are each caught into the end wire casings.

Lastly, the tunnel needs a wire inserted into the spiral and end casings. I had a hard time getting a good springy wire; the best I was able to find was 14 gauge galvanized wire that doesn't have enough bounce to keep the tunnel straight. I'm guessing what I need might be spring steel, but given the size of the rolls I'm finding, plus the fact that I don't know for sure it is what I want, it might end up being cheaper just to buy more of these cat tunnel(s) to take their wires. (I'd thought I might have to cannibalize the original tunnel for its wire connectors anyway, but I'm hesitating to do that now that I've mended it—it doesn't have those falling-off casings and sticking-out wires anymore.)

Anyway, the new tunnel has been getting some cat approval even in its current sad-sack state, so I might leave both tunnels alone for the time being.

First FO of 2017

This had been a UFO for a couple reasons, but the main one was it got sidelined for a sewalong I was doing with a local sewing meetup, working on a different project—that Burda 7237 coat. That was last fall, and this is not a winter top.

I used a linen remnant with a lot of sheen. (Yeah, it's very wrinkled, and I could've done more about that, but... it's going right back in the closet for another few months. It didn't get much beyond the necessary construction pressing.)

The pattern was Simplicity 3860, dated 1952, in vintage juniors' and misses' sizes 11-16 and 18. The one I have is about 3 sizes too small. After some dithering, I found it easier to try to duplicate all the details onto my fitting shell than to try to grade it. So what I'll say next has to be taken with a grain of salt, because I don't know the exact grade rules they followed and how well my version would correspond.

The impression I get is that this pattern (as drafted) will fit best on a figure that's relatively shallow front to back, i.e. with a wide, flat ribcage and chest: The armhole doesn't have much depth front to back, so on a person who has more, it will probably crease against the front of the arm/shoulder area, unless it's cut very low to mitigate this. Personally, I drastically reshaped the armhole when resizing the pattern and even so, had to hollow out the front more after cutting. The blouse also has the typical postwar very fitted waist that's more concave in front than I've ever been, so I had to reshape those darts. I narrowed the upper back, at the same time coping with an ostensibly permanent wear/crease line in my fabric that I couldn't cut around, by adding a long CB dart. I would probably cut and sew that as a seam next time, if there is a next time.

Lastly, design changes: I was a bit bored with the thing, so I decided to make reversed armhole facings to go with the neckband. I used an invisible zipper since that's what I could immediately find to match. (Now that I look at the button in artificial light, I'm really rethinking whether it's an okay match. Hmm. That might get changed.)

The pattern as a whole is clearly "of its time," and there are some aspects of the fit and design that probably really would work best for a 1950s teenager. But I think the blouse at least can be made much more versatile.

Burda 7237: the end is nigh

There are several more things that need to be done before I put the lining in. That's assembled too, less an underarm seam that I left open for bagging but might decide to close.

The fabric wrinkles easily, but it's also being softened up nicely by all the (over)work. I'm told that the shiny coating is more decorative than waterproof; no big deal (she says as it pours here for the next week at least).

One small thing to note (the instructions don't make a point of it, although they're in the correct order for it to happen): you have to complete the pockets before topstitching 4.5cm from CF. That way, the pocket seam allowance will get caught into the topstitching, rather than bumping against it. It's a nice touch that'll hold the pocket bags in place.

The instructions tell you to sew the lining in by hand, but I plan to do it mostly or entirely by machine, although I haven't decided whether that applies to the CB vent as well. It may also get an inside pocket.

Neue Mode these days: print-on-demand (looks like)

Unrelated to anything I'm currently working on, I tried ordering a few printed Neue Modes¹ while Sewingpatterns.com² had a rare sale on them last month.

My guess is these come from the same digital sources as their downloads do. I don't know how the originals would have been digitized (if they didn't start out that way), but just to see, I tried ordering patterns of various ages—the site has a few that look to be from the late 70s or so, many from the 80s, and possibly the complete catalogue from the 90s–2000s. It seems the image quality for the newer ones is slightly higher, but not by a lot. They've all got at least a bit of fuzziness, just like downloads from Printsew—not that impressive, though not unusable. I haven't yet attempted to check whether they're printed at the correct scale. I should hope so.

The paper is fairly heavy, kind of like old Kwik-Sews' but maybe not as smooth and flexible. Instructions aren't included; you have to download the PDF of them yourself from the site. Since it's possible to do that without ordering, I think it's well worth checking if the instructions for a particular pattern are to your liking before you decide whether to buy. Some of their oldest patterns have only German instructions.

The patterns are placed in large white envelopes with the original envelope image printed on, usually scaled up slightly, with the sharpness suffering as a result. Since the pattern paper is not very compactly folded, nor folded to match the size of the envelope, the result is rather bulky, similar to what I've seen from some small indie outfits.

All in all, I think the quality is fair. I'd prefer it over having to print out a download, myself, but it certainly doesn't match the polished presentation of the old Neue Modes.³

Are they worth full price? Well, how much do you really need a specific pattern? The reason I've gone to the trouble to get Neue Modes in the past is the quality of the drafting, variety of styles, and good construction methods, particularly for things like coats—those have the most complete set of pieces for interfacing and lining I've seen in home sewing patterns. The pants fit is similar to Burda's, and the sleeve cap shapes are (if anything) better, with a pronounced swoopy curve in front. The instructions are also similar to Burda's, which may be a dealbreaker for some.

I've now collected more Neue Modes than I care to admit, and these may be the last I buy. If you want to try this brand but aren't set on any particular pattern, you can still get some deadstock originals from some other sources. I've had good experiences with The Sewing Place. There are also some here and there on various resale sites, with (unsurprisingly) more being available in Germany, where they originated.

¹ Backstory: Neue Mode stopped designing and printing new patterns about 2007-8. I don't know what exactly happened then, but sometime thereafter, it looks as though Sewingpatterns.com got the rights to reprint their patterns and to sell them as downloads.
² People have had, shall we say, mixed experiences with Sewingpatterns.com. I've never had problems getting print orders fulfilled, eventually, but they aren't very communicative to say the least, and I wouldn't want to order from them if I had a deadline. The site is also not too professional-looking and hasn't had its design updated in the past several years, if ever—although I sometimes find site design updates gratuitous, this one's gone long enough that I have to wonder what else about the site hasn't been updated. They take PayPal; I would strongly suggest using it, if you do order from them.
³ In the past year or so, "new" Neue Modes have come out. I don't know who drafts them, and since the original Neue Mode drafting was what I appreciated, I haven't tried any of these others. You can tell them apart by their different instructions, which lack diagrams and seem rather Lekala-like.

"First" project of 2017

Or rather, this is the first project I've done any (more) work on—it remains to be seen what'll be finished first. I bought the pattern probably 3 years ago and just started it last October; being a coat, it feels like it's taking forever. The pattern is OOP Burda 7237 (here it is on the German site, where it can still be downloaded; I don't know how to find it on the English/US site, if it's even there).

It's in their petite sizing; size numbers are halved from their regular misses' European ones. I'm about the right height for their petite standard, although my height proportions aren't distributed identically.

Notable and not-so-notable fit changes:

• The bust darts seem way too low, something I would not have expected of a Burda petite pattern, given the way Burda says to convert their regular patterns to petite. It looks low on the model too—not easy to see, but there if you look at the "Original-Große" photos on the German site. I wonder if they were trying to keep the bust shaping below the View A flap. In any case, it was going to be glaringly obvious on my crisp fabric, so I raised the dart point—by more than two inches! Even on a non-petite pattern, I wouldn't expect to move it up more than maybe 3/4" (at least, if I hadn't done an FBA that lowered it). That being said, I found the armhole depth about right for me as it was, in line with what I'd expect.
  
• I did a large bicep alteration of 1 1/2", and lengthened the sleeves by 1/2" below the elbow. Not too surprising.
  
• I took a generous quarter inch of width out of both the front armscye and front of the sleeve cap. I could have considered taking the same out of the back armscye, but was advised it's just as well to leave it in for reach room when the fabric is non-stretch.
  
• I'll add thin shoulder pads, since the shoulder tips seem a little bit extended.
  
• To stop the lower front edges splaying out, I was advised (by a fellow member of my sewing meetup group, as with the shoulder width) to take in, or maybe I should say lower, the shoulder-neck point on the fronts only. This effectively "rotates" the entire front to make CF hang straight.
  
• I might let out the hips at the back side seams; haven't decided yet.
  
• I may shorten the belt. As designed, it's meant to be tied in a bow of some sort, and seems to have quite a bit of extra length.
  

Dart oddity on this one aside, I appreciate that Burda still makes a few petite patterns. They seem designed to be flattering on shorter people: good proportions, and a nice but not overwhelming number of details.