Using up my red knits: Vogue 2506 et al.

I don't know about you, but I don't like changing the thread in my machines. Even more so if it's the serger or the coverstitch and has at least three cones to change. Honestly it isn't that big a deal, but still, I find myself avoiding it. So my past four projects have involved sewing up all of the reddish knits that I have. One was the streaked red knit that I used for the McCall's cardigan in the last post. There was enough of that left over to do something with, but not anything I'd really want in a moderately warm fabric like that (i.e. long sleeves were not going to be possible). So I used it to test an old Kwik Sew pattern, 304. More on that later, but to put it briefly, it's much boxier than it looks and I wouldn't sew it again without a pretty major redesign.

The second fabric is a viscose/wool/angora blend; I have what've turned out to be a few major wardrobe builders made from this same fabric in other colors. This one's a slightly duller, softer red, partly because of the slight heathering from the angora, but the serger threads were close enough (and maybe as close as I'd be likely to find in that weight, not living in New York). For this I used a newer basic top pattern, Kwik Sew 2619, that I'm much happier with. Again, more on that later; I may end up comparing it to 304.

Lastly, what I'll actually show here is Vogue 2506. It's a 2000 sweatshirt pattern that I got discontinued (thus the X) several years ago.

I made something like the version shown in off white, but split it down the front, left out the drawstring, and closed it with hooks and eyes only at the neck and the diagonal front seams. I've given it a bit of a "flyaway" pose on the form. It does need another pressing, and I'm debating whether I like it closed at the lower hook or not, but of course that can just be left undone.

With the extended shoulders and the very straight cut, I'm glad I used a drapier fabric than shown in the sketches. In fact, it's very oversized. This is probably just as well for an unlined cardigan that will have to be dragged on over other things.

So that's it for my red knits. It's nice not to have to rethread, but I'm also relieved to be able to move onto something else. Maybe some wovens will be next.

McCall's cardigan and one more tricot project

Here's the McCall's cardigan I've been meaning to photograph.
It's 6996 which, judging from Patternreview, wasn't as massively popular as another cardigan-with-peplum pattern they put out, but still got a good many reviews. I plan to add one, real soon now. These have both been over-flashed and the real color is closer to what you see in the mirror, but I guess the advantage is the heathered pattern shows up.

I'm pretty happy with the pattern. My only complaint is I might like the collar to be gathered and stayed on the sides as well as at CB, at least if it'd help keep the shoulder seams where they belong (though I'm not certain it would). They tend to slide outward; it isn't absolutely terrible, but when it happens, it can give more of an extended or drop-shoulder look than the pattern would've intended, judging from the sleeve cap height. I like the peplum more than I expected, but it won't go with everything, so it does need some careful planning to wear.

Oh, and the coverstitch worked very well on this fabric, though you can't really see it at all in the photos (which is kind of the point).

I've got maybe half a yard of the fabric left but I'm not sure what, if anything, I'll do with that.

As for the pink tricot, I had quite a bit left and decided I could use another half-slip with just a bit more length. Turns out one of my knee-length skirts sits lower on the waist than I remembered. So this one's 20". I used the last bit of lace I had left over, cut in half so I could get it all the way around the hem. That means it was serged on RS together, rather than applied to the outside, to hide the cut edge.

This time the elastic's serged on, flipped inside, and sewn on with a much narrower three-step zigzag. I like the look of this better than the wide three-step zigzag I used last time. A narrow coverstitch would've looked even more like RTW, but I lacked the motivation to rethread the machine. Anyway, I highly recommend Kwik-Sew 2467 or Beautiful Lingerie, both of which will tell you how to cut and make these. They don't need to take more than an hour or so, once you're used to them.

Tricot and oldish Kwik-Sews

I've finally had the chance to sew some of the Antron tricot I got from Bra-maker's Supply the other month. I got pink because it was the one color they've got that I don't already have in RTW slips (the others they have being white, ivory, and black — come to think of it, I don't think I have ivory, but I guess I figured it was so close to white, pink would be the more interesting choice). It isn't a color I typically wear, but eh.

So far I've made Kwik-Sew 2394 and 2467. Unfortunately, both of these are now out of print (and I figure it's a matter of time before that 2467 link dies). For what it's worth, occasionally I see Sewingpatterns.com selling these older patterns as downloads long after the printed versions are out of production. I've shortened both of them by 4", because the problem I currently have is that most of my RTW slips are too long for my knee-length skirts. Hey, I'm short.

The full slip has lace edging and ribbon shoulder straps from Dressew. I considered making the straps adjustable, but I think they may be a bit too thin (thickness, not width, if you know what I mean) to stay in place in the sliders I have.

 
The half-slip hem is done with my machine's "M" stitch, which sort of looks like its mock blindstitch; the technique is described in several Kwik-Sew patterns as well as their Beautiful Lingerie book.

I must admit my tricot-sewing skillset is far behind some of my other sewing abilities (such as they may be). Until fairly recently, I've avoided sewing many lightweight knits, for a few reasons:

• I feel like there are already too many lightweight knits in RTW. I can see why the industry would want to do this; they presumably save on costs and encourage the customer to buy more layers to wear.
• I don't especially like layering (takes more planning than I enjoy doing) and I try to avoid wearing very thin knits on their own.
• My sewing machine doesn't always sew thin knits well. There's no presser foot pressure adjustment, and I haven't got a straight-stitch throat plate (I don't know if one was ever manufactured for this model), so I tend to run into problems with the fabric being stretched as it's sewn, or being sucked down into the machine... and that's assuming I can find a needle that will consistently pierce the fabric rather than sort of bouncing off, or more precisely, getting through at the wrong time to form a stitch. Now that I've got a serger that does a better job, this is less of an issue, but in the past it's meant that I've avoided those fabrics and therefore I've had less experience with them.

That means I didn't enjoy sewing this fabric all that much, and I'm thinking I'll probably prefer to stick to Bemberg for my slips in the future, not least for the greater variety of colors. Also, I suspect only the black color comes very close to being opaque. Still, the Antron does work quite well as an anti-static layer, and there's a lot to be said for Bra-maker's standard colors: their tricot should match their other pink, white, ivory, or black fabrics and notions well.

The weekend's Sewaholic/Fabrics Etc. meetup, and a new project.

This past Saturday I went to the meetup at Fabrics Etc., where Tasia from Sewaholic Patterns was speaking. Well, that makes it sound all formal; I guess I should call it more of a friendly chat/Q&A. I'd heard of her patterns but hadn't really been familiar with them. Although they are available both printed and in PDF, while I was in Germany I put off buying any: I didn't want them to go through customs, as printed patterns would, and I didn't want to print the PDFs if I'd be able to buy the printed patterns once I got back to Canada (which was "any month now" much of the time I was there). I'm not a big printing-PDFs person, though it does have other advantages and I'll occasionally go for it especially if the pattern is small (lingerie, for example).

Anyway. I like her thought process: my understanding is she's more interested in the construction, and making fairly classic designs that work well in real life, rather than creating very avant-garde or over-the-top styles. The patterns are proportioned for the (so-called) pear shape, probably more of a pronounced one than I personally have, so I might have to size down the hip area for once, rather than sizing it up. I'm most interested in the Granville shirt with its back princess seams (I need either those or a waist seam to fit into the small of my back nicely) and the retractable hood on the Minoru jacket.

As for what I'm starting at the moment, it's a slip from Kwik-Sew 2394. I got some Antron tricot from Bra-makers' Supply, plus some ribbon and lace from Dressew, and I'm making View B, but cutting 4" off the short length, my current problem being that most of my RTW slips are too long. I may do a tricot-vs.-Bemberg faceoff one of these days, but here are my thoughts on the tricot as of right now.

1. It only comes in a few colors, none of which are really to my taste. I'm guessing since the trend has been away from synthetics for the past several years, and it seems to be getting harder and harder to find even RTW slips, there's not enough money to be made by dyeing this in anything other than basic colors. They've got white, ivory, pink, and black. It's all nylon so it should dye well, but I'm very skittish about that, since I rent and my entire apartment is light colors.
2. If you're looking for opacity, you're not going to get much from the light colors (not that you necessarily would from Bemberg either).
3. It has some stretch. There are several older Kwik-Sew patterns designed for tricot that must make some use of that: they tend to also allow you to use wovens, but only if you cut them on the bias.
4. It should be anti-static. I'll need to give it a real-life test to know how it compares in that regard to Bemberg, but at least so far it's behaving well and doesn't seem to be sticking to itself at all.

New socks, catch[up|all] and some general plans

It seems that every time I move continents, I have to try out all the new colds the next winter. That and work have stopped me from doing my usual projects. Besides that, recently, I've been focusing somewhat more on knitting than on sewing. Here's what I have to show for it:

These are based on Cat Bordhi's Upstream master pattern, with the stitch pattern from Anna Zilboorg's Gemma (which in turn came from someplace else, IIRC, but I'd have to look up where exactly). They aren't blocked; generally I let wearing and washing do that for me, for socks anyway. I'm noticing Cat Bordhi's default arches come out very high, which is even more noticeable if the socks are oversized and have short cuffs, as in this case (they're oversized because they're meant as layering rain boot socks, and they're short because I couldn't make them any taller with the 100g yarn I had). She does tell you how to customize that, and I may look into it next time I'm making biggish socks like this. On closer-fitting socks I'd say the high arches are an advantage, though they can look odd when they're not being worn.

The long-suffering rayon crepe georgette dress is finally done, but it's already been worn once and washed, and needs ironing before it'll be ready to photograph.

I've cut and started McCall's 6996, which is shaping up nicely. It might make a good test for my coverstitch machine.

Finally, I've been thinking over what kinds of projects I want to do in the near future and over the course of the year. Current ideas:

• I'm not sure I will do many (any?) Patternreview contests. At any given time, chances are good they won't match what I really want or need to sew just then, and it's too easy for me to get off track and disappointed with something I wasn't all that excited about doing in the first place. I'm certainly appreciative of and impressed by the people who plan and manage the contests, but they may just not be for me.
• I'm not planning on posting about my stash every month (whew). I still do keep track, but it's not too interesting to write about, and must be very dull to read about.
• The temperature range here is far more limited than it was in southwest Germany, not to mention any of the East Coast/Midwest cities I've lived in. I'm finding I have too many too-warm clothes and not enough middling ones. Some long-sleeved tops/shirts may be up next.
• I have a large collection of lingerie fabrics I stocked up on in Germany and Holland, plus a few newly acquired here. Anything made from that might or might not make it here; we'll see.
• Last year, I've decided, I was trying to control too much of my sewing. While I think some wardrobe planning is worthwhile, this should be a hobby, and I shouldn't get too caught up in sewing the ideal thing at the ideal time.
• I do want to continue with my pattern-drafting nerdfest to some extent, but I'm a little desperate for finished clothes right now, so it may be a while before I get back to it.

That's all for now. I'm off to the Fabrics Etc. meetup early (for me) tomorrow; Tasia from Sewaholic will be there!

Immature content warning

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/of-balls-and-talking-about-balls-387999299895

December's new fabrics

As I'd mentioned before, I raided the Vancouver location of Gala Fabrics during the last month or so it was open. As far as I know, it did indeed close in the middle of December; I have not been back by it again, but the website says it is now closed. Anyway...
There's what I got. Almost all of it's from Gala Fabrics, the exception being the streaked red knit, which came from Fabrics Etc. In order, they are:

• A wool jacquard skirt length.
• Bemberg lining for the above.
• A short length of heavy silk twill. I'm not sure what I'll do with this, but I really liked the color and the weight.
• Rayon/silk blend jersey; I have some of the Drape Drape books and this might do nicely for something from one of them.
• The aforementioned streaked red knit, which should become a cardigan.
• Linen blend crinkle gauze, for a summer dress.
• A heavy embroidered organza.
• Crushed stretch velvet with a paisley pattern. It's a dark gray that doesn't scan well at all.
• Heavy Bemberg lining. I will probably use this and some of the others from last month for slips.
• Wool/mohair coating.
• English wool doubleknit.