Vests and the next project

I don't think I posted a photo of the blue wool vest I made. I hadn't decided on the buttons, the last time I posted. I went with the same clear plastic button as I used on the jacket of the same fabric. I also made real welt pockets. I love wee, vest pockets! Here is the newest vest (waistcoat to my English readers), made from the beautiful but thick, orange Italian wool I got from Darrell's and from which I also made a jacket (but maybe didn't blog about - I can't find an appropriate entry anyway). In spite of loving vest pockets, I didn't make them on this one because the wool is too substantial and would only cause me more grief than they are worth. I used the fabulous printed lining from the pink raw silk jacket. I put in a piece of elastic at the back waist so the garment would have a bit of shape. Next, I have been wanting to make a fitted jacket with a peplum for some time, and I got this Vogue pattern because of the jacket. I believe I am too short/small to wear the full skirt, as much as I might like it. But the jacket appeals to me. I got a remnant of some plaid wool at Darrell's this summer but I may have been dreaming in technicolor to think that all the pieces of this jacket would fit onto the fabric, especially as the plaid is about 4 inches on a side! The extra fabric required for the peplum might sink using the plaid for this jacket pattern. I have to go back upstairs now to play around with it all.

Wanting to start something new

Still working on that shirt. I get so impatient when I want a project to be finished already. I prefer the phase where I wonder what fabric to use with which pattern, to the nitty gritty of finishing.

In the meantime, tragedy befell my favourite track pants!

I don't know how long I have had these Pearl Izumi pants but it has to be close to 15 years. I love them. They make my butt look small. They fit comfortably over my yoga pants and I wear them to the gym three days a week. Last week, I was zipping down the ankle zipper when it suddenly parted company with itself! The zippy mechanism jumped off the teeth. I can rip everything apart and install a new zipper. But I was wondering if any of you clever sewers out there had a magic fix? You have to get the zipper teeth back into the zipper pull and I'm not sure if I can do that.

I finished the cute little blouse with clear buttons. They have a little band of "cut glass" around the edge which sparkles nicely. I haven't worn it yet but plan to, the first warm day. Today was warm and it got up to 10C (50F) but that isn't really warm enough for a short sleeved blouse. And I have a cold so I didn't even get to go out and enjoy the weather much. But soon!

I decided to flat fell the armhole edge, to contain the ravelly polyester fabric edges. I've been doing French seams for all the rest.

It turned out well.

I put the cuffs on by sewing the right side of the cuff to the wrong side of the sleeve first.

Then after I sewed up the ends, I turned the cuff to the right side and used the zipper foot to sew the folded edge to just over the sewing line.

Here's the finished cuff. I still think I'm going to sew a line of top stitching around the other three sides.

After I turned the facings to the inside down the front, I saw that there was going to be bagging. This might fix itself after I put on the buttons and buttonholes, but in the meantime, I hand sewed a line of basting down the fronts to hold the facings down flat.

So I have just got buttons and buttonholes to go, and maybe some top stitching.

New blouse and no thread issues

I sanded down the throat plate, held my breath and started sewing. It worked! I made a complete blouse without the thread breaking once. I feel a little embarrassed, having ranted so long about it being the needle hitting the bobbin case. I even heard back from Singer, who wrote that they thought it might be a timing issue. But that was after I finished the blouse, so I'm off to the races, I suppose.

I've had this pattern for a little while but never made it. It's cute. I rummaged through my stash and hauled out this white stuff that I had bought at Darrell's years ago. It is a weave but it feels a little like a knit (it is textured), and it has a fine silver thread that you can glimpse occasionally. It also ravels quite a bit and is one of those fabrics for which you keep your lint brush always at the ready on the ironing board.

I think it might have been a remnant because it was only through clever cutting that I managed to get short sleeves out of the piece I had.

I decided on French seams for the shoulders and side seams, to keep the ravelly ends in. Around the armholes, I trimmed one side (the shirt side) and folded the sleeve-side-seam allowance over to contain the ravelly bits and then sewed that down with a zigzag stitch. Yes, it would be easier if I had a serger! But I don't.

The front bands are sewn across the bottom, right sides together, to make a nice square finish. But instead of hand sewing the band to the wrong or inside, I sewed it first by machine, wrong side to right side, then I sewed the square bottom, right sides together, THEN I folded it over to the RIGHT side of the blouse (the outside) and sewed it by machine with a topstitch.

It's a bit faster that way -- no hand sewing -- and it gives it a professional or maybe commercial look. Anyway, I like it and since I learned to do this with all the jean jacket bands I have sewed, I now do it with all the other bands I sew.

I also used the same technique on the bands that hem the slightly puffy sleeves.

Here is the puffy part of the short sleeve being sewn to the band and you can see how much the fabric ravels. The green thread is there to gather up the puffy part.

I have yet to go get buttons. This is a single button I have in my button box. It has no mates -- too bad because it is just like what I think would go best with this blouse. The silver thread makes the blouse sparkle a tiny bit but silver buttons would be way over the top. This one is a clear plastic button with a flower motif embossed on it and so it "sparkles" just a little bit. Plus, it is a bit bigger around than most of the shirt buttons I normally use and I think that would suit this fabric, since it is textured and not sleek.

Here is the blouse, awaiting my trip to the button store. Cute!

Boiled wool jacket, almost done

Almost done! I got some buttons on Thursday:

I looked at all kinds of red buttons, plain, patterned, matte, glossy. I looked at black buttons too and even metal ones but I liked these red buttons the best. They are not very contrasty and yet they stand out a little bit. I think I am going to have to do the buttonholes the old way, because the fabric is so thick my automatic buttonholer won't work on it.

I've sewed the inside and outside together and pressed all around the edges. I have sewed up the jacket hem but not the lining - that is the lining hanging down below the hem there which of course, it won't do after I've sewed it up.

I haven't hemmed the sleeves yet either. I think I'll wait to the end for that, as I want to make sure they are fairly long, to cover the cuffs of whatever I will wear underneath the jacket. It is heavy too! For such a short garment, it weighs a lot. That is partly the kind of fabric and partly the volume of the jacket with the pleats at the back. Next, more hemming, topstitching all around and buttonholes.

Votes are in!

I got 16 votes, including one on Flickr. I thank you all for spending the time to look at these things! My husband says that the pictures don't really show how the buttons look but they are the best I can do. If I count his vote, I have 17 in total.

I got 5 for the small gold spiral. I got 3 for the brown plastic one. And I got 8 for the large gold one. I was leaning toward the large gold one all along, and in fact, when I was thinking buttons, before I even pulled them out of my stash, I thought of it as an option. I was concerned that it would be too sparkly and when I looked at the three finalists over and over, I started leaning toward the smaller gold spiral. It blends right into the jacket fabric, which is both good and bad, depending on the look you want to achieve. I also had a vote for doing the snap and no buttonhole thing but it is a little fiddly to be doing and undoing snaps and I am not a fan of fiddly. Form should follow function!

I am therefore going to make a large buttonhole, the size of the big gold one and sew on the big gold button. Then, if I have doubts or get weird looks, I can hand stitch the end of the buttonhole closed and take off the large button and go for a smaller one. How's that?

In the meantime, I have started back to work and am scrambling to finish the little silk tops for under jackets. I wore the embroidered linen to my first classes yesterday and felt very cute. :) But no one commented on it. :( I wore the cream silk top too. It was a hot day and although the college is sort of air conditioned, because I was not told my first class was in a different room, I had to sprint around the campus and was sweating freely by the time I found my proper classroom. I was glad I had on light and natural fabrics! Tomorrow is also supposed to be hot so I am thinking I will wear one of the new silk tops under a light cotton jacket with the shorter, "extra" navy linen skirt (that I got out of the left-over linen). We'll see.

Buttons

Votes are split between the shiny brown plastic button and the larger shiny gold button. I myself am still leaning toward the smaller, duller gold button. I need more votes! Four does not a survey make.

Here they are again, pinned on to the neck of the jackette.
First the shiny brown.

Next, the large gold.

Then the smaller gold.
I suppose I could make the largest size of buttonhole and then switch out the buttons from time to time. More votes!

Speaking of buttons, I finally got some for the embroidered linen. It was a tough contest at the store, with Darrell and Carmen going their ways and me going mine. Carmen didn't care for my final choice (too sparkly) but Darrell picked it out as a possibility so I guess he's okay with it.

I settled on making the stripes in the "shell" go horizontal and the metallic stripe goes up toward my right shoulder, instead of the way it is in the previous close-up. The buttons are a little oddly paced in this pic because I had just pinned them on. Now I have sewed them on but I was too lazy to put the finished jacket back on Rose.

While I am prewashing some oatmeal coloured wool for a skirt, I am going to quickly sew up another top in some silk charmeuse. I love silk next to my skin and have decided to have a few tops to be worn under a jacket. Since it is so small, and since I have modified the pattern, it only takes one meter to make, as long as the fabric is at least 112 cm wide. It's a squeaker!

Woolly jacket

Nearly done!

I decided to topstitch around the back of the neck only. The fronts are all interfaced so I don't have to worry about the seams coming unravelled. But at the back of the neck, the thin lining fabric is sewn to the loosely woven woolly fabric and I feared an early dismantling of the neck due to fabric failure. I sewed a second line of stitching beside the first but then, after I had turned the jacket right side out, I put a line of topstitching on to reinforce everything.

It fits and doesn't bind anywhere. Maybe they fixed the pattern after earlier complaints? Maybe that little side piece went missing? It is very small - a "jackette". The sleeves are 3/4 and the hem hits only a few inches below my waist. But I did only have 1.1 metres of fabric! But I like it. It's light and shouldn't make me too hot while I wave my arms about in the front of the classroom.

Now I just have to choose the button. There's only one button at the neck. Carmen suggested yesterday in the comments that she liked the largest gold button, in the lower right in this pic. I like that big button too but I am also leaning toward the shiny plastic brown button in the lower left. The big gold one is really big and almost sparkly. Maybe I should go for the smaller, duller gold one in the upper right?

White denim jacket and skirt

So I got some plain wood buttons. There wasn't a huge choice so I settled on some shank buttons because they weren't very dark, or very big or very textured. Sort of like the Baby Bear's middle of the road choices.

I wanted to get them now because it is far easier to put a buttonhole on the pocket flap before you sew it to the jacket.

Here, I've made the holes and set the buttons on the flaps, with the shank in the buttonhole.

The other decision I made was about the skirt pocket facing or lining. I didn't want to use the denim because then the pockets would be too thick and look weird. I had some almost white lining but then I remembered the thinner cotton I used to make the last two white shirts I made so I used that instead. You can't really tell from the photo but the denim is in the middle, the lining on the left and the shirt fabric on the right.

The skirt zipper is a mock fly - a real one is more complicated.

The zipper itself is too long, even at the regular skirt size, 18 cm length, because the waistband is supposed to sit just below the waist. So I sew a zigzag stitch in one spot as a new stop, above the original metal stop at the bottom, and cut off the excess zipper tape.

Here's the fly with just the one side sewed down.

Here's the fly with both sides sewed down. Not too exciting but simple is good too.

Navy linen outfit

I have been picking away at the navy outfit. Once I am almost done an outfit, I tend to lose momentum because I start thinking about the next project. It is ever thus and therefore why I have my "rule" whereby I cannot start one project without completely finishing the one before.

I have got the skirt almost done. I put hangers on the facing because the other linen skirt kept falling off the hanger when I used wooden clothespins because it was extra long and extra heavy. i.e. I put hangers on it too. I have to hand sew around the zipper and hand sew the hem. All I have left is to machine sew the lining hem. Not too exciting - it's just a plain navy skirt.

Here is the back of the jacket before I pressed the hem.

And here is the benefit of pressing and clapping the hem. I have also added the two decorative buttons as detail to the back. All that is left is the front buttonholes and buttons.

I has a ham!

Well that was the most thorough breast exam I've ever had. And the mammogram was the least objectionable. Those women know what they are doing. The only bad thing was that I got lost on the way and arrived 10 minutes late and in a positive lather. I kept apologizing for dripping sweat all over their machines. I loathe and detest whoever designed how the Queensway crosses Carling and splits Carling and all the other idiots who don't put visible numbers on their stupid buildings. I was also mad at myself for imagining the building when I heard the person tell me it was in a "small mall". I was envisioning a 4 or 6 plex but it turns out it is in a much larger place than that, which has an anchor grocery store for heaven's sake. Anyway, I rode sedately back to the Fabricland on the way home and got the seam binding I needed. I also escaped buying more fabric.

I got some nice, plain dark buttons for the navy linen blend jacket. Mostly matte with a little shine around the edges.

And I got a ham! I has a ham! Okay, it's a walrus with a bucket, but it cracks me up too. I have grown tired of pressing shoulders and other curvy bits inadequately on the sleeve board. Hmm, bad photo, but then, you know what a ham is. And if not, I'll be sure to show pix of me using it.

And I have acquired some more jacket patterns (Vogue V8146). I seem to be obsessed with detail on the back. It's similar to the linen jacket I just made but has no yoke and it's not pleated.

I have continued to muse about the red Chinese linen that a student who became a friend got me from China.

And now I think I have the right pattern (New Look 6619). I just have to decide whether to make the large collar or the smaller, stand-up one. I am leaning toward the large one because the fabric is already Chinese enough, without going for the look of the mandarin collar.