Figuring out Chinese characters

Yesterday, I took a photo of the gold character on the fabric and ran over to my friend May's house and asked her to tell me what it was, or at least, which way was up.

The gold one seemed to me to be the most legible of the three large characters, so I thought I'd make sure it at least, was right side up. I had already pinned the dress pattern pieces on the fabric and had made the assumption that the three strokes with the vertical line were at the bottom of the character. May looked at it and said she wasn't sure what it was exactly, but she was pretty sure that the three lines would be at the top of the character, not the bottom.

Later, May came over with a book of Chinese characters and I spent some time poring over them. It is possible that the gold character is "biao" or "manifest" (show), although I don't know why that would be on fabric. I think that fabric is more likely to have zodiac characters, or words like "love" or "soup". [This is a reference to one of my favourite shows "Big Bang Theory" and the episode in which Sheldon asks Penny why she has a tattoo of "soup" on her hip. She says it is "courage", not "soup". It is discussed more here and someone has even posted a GIF of the two characters here.]

I couldn't manage to get the pattern pieces for the jacket with the pleat in the back to fit on the fabric, after I had pinned the dress on, even when I eliminated the pleat. So I went with a tried and true pattern, Simplicity 4698, which has lots of smaller pattern pieces that I can juggle around.

I managed to squeeze them all on there. At least, I got the main pieces on.

I knew I wasn't going to be able to get them all on, so I bought some black linen for all the facings. I am making the jacket with no collar but it has large front facings. Also, the dress has facings all around the top edges. I toyed with the idea of red linen facings but thought the black would make a nice contrast and then I wouldn't have to match the red. I also bought plain red lining as I have decided it will be best to line the entire dress. It kind of negates the point of linen being worn when it's hot but this is pretty substantial linen and I think the dress will hang much better lined.

Finally, instead of a back vent, I am going to make a side slit at the bottom of the dress. I made a back vent the first time I made this dress (last January, also in linen) and I wasn't happy with how it rode up when I bent over. I know I can just avoid bending over, but with the Chinese fabric and everything, I thought a side vent or slit would work.

Blue Spring Coat

You guys rise to the occasion! The consensus is overwhelmingly in favour of a coat.

I am going to use Butterick B5145 and one of the longer views like C or D (pink or blue), with the regular collar. I will cut out the tabs for the back and sleeves, even if I'm not sure if I will use them yet.

I am not sure how long a skirt I can get out of the fabric I have but I'll try for about knee-length. I am also not sure if I will put more than the three buttons down the front part of the bodice. In a wind, the skirt will fly open if it is not buttoned down. When it's 20 below, that is a big deal. But since this is only a Spring coat, we're not talking 20 velow.

I was hoping to make the cutting easier by folding the fabric in half but when I did that, the selvages didn't match up, even though I carefully folded the fabric along a particular white line. This means I will have to cut each piece out of a single layer of fabric. sigh.

Red wool coat

How did it get to be the last day of September?

One thing I don't often mention is the prep work for starting a project. I have never used this pattern before so I like to read the instructions first. Then I have to cut apart all the pattern pieces and see which ones I need to use. I double-check them with the list shown above.

The only garment in this pattern is the coat (some have all sorts of things like pants and skirts and things) but there are some variations. I'll be using all the big pattern pieces but maybe not all of the small ones. Once I have the pieces separated, I iron them flat.

I am going to make the long sleeves with 6 buttons on the front (view C) but I want to make the slash/welt pockets (views A and B), not the patch pockets. I also like the detail of the band around the sleeve but it is only on the short sleeve and the 3/4 sleeve.

When you look at the instructions for the sleeve band, you see it is only decorative and not functional. Interestingly, it is made from three pieces of fabric so that the seaming becomes part of the decorative design. I have been debating with myself if I want to use the print lining I got for the backing of the sleeve bands and I haven't finished that debate yet. I lean toward NOT doing it, just because I am not familiar with this pattern and there may be a good reason not to use lining fabric to back the band.

I have got enough fabric that I could make them both ways and see which looked better. You can see that the band gets sewn to the sleeve and the button is just for show. But I like the way it looks on the photo and in the drawings so I think I will make bands and then decide as I go along, whether I will attach them to the sleeve. They get sewn into a seam but I could still pick them out later if I don't like them.

Here I have laid out all the pieces and pinned them, except for the bands. I am going to use Mum's old electric scissors to cut this coat out. I keep forgetting I have electric scissors and while I may not use them for delicate stuff, they should be perfect for this sort of wool.

Silk tops and wool skirt

Ten days since my last post. Hmm. I've been busy! But I haven't even finished those tops. So back to where I left off...

That silk I bought on sale was so narrow (how narrow was it?) that I had to cheat to get the tops cut out. I had only bought a metre of each colour, thinking that was enough. As you can see in this layout photo, there was no way I could get both the front and the back cut out on a fold. I thought I could fold each selvage into the middle and do it that way but it was just too narrow.

Even though I put the back seam right on the selvages, the sides overlapped by a few millimetres and I had to make them with a 3/8 seam allowance. Talk about cutting it close.

Here is the blue top, inside out, with the back up. You can see I didn't need to finish the centre back seam because the selvages are already finished. I zigzagged the other seams and trimmed them, although they are not trimmed yet in this photo.

Here I am, ironing the neck facing on the ham. It really is easier on something like a neckline or shoulder, to use the ham, instead of trying to iron it on a flat board. In this photo, I have already understitched the facing and all I need to do now, is iron it folded under.

Here's the ham from another angle. After this, I stitched the facing down to the shoulder seam by machine stitching in the ditch of the shoulder seam from the outside of the garment.

That was the end of the machine sewing. From here, to finish the tops, I have to hand stitch the hems. They are pinned up and ready to go. I generally save my hand sewing for sitting in front of the tv. These tops look awfully shiny and that pink one is very pink, but when I wear them, it will only be under jackets so all you will see is a little bit of the top at the neck.

Because I only have hand sewing left, I am not breaking My Rule by starting a new project upstairs in my sewing room! This is the beautiful wool I got at Darrell's sale. He only had the oatmeal colour left at the sale and I kicked myself when I discovered he had had two other colours - blue and green - as they would have made perfect, all-purpose serviceable skirts. Oh well.

I am making my tried and true, no-waistband, knee-length skirt with a small vent in the back. It will go with everything this Winter!

Little woolly jacket - we hope

First, cleaning up leftovers.

I had quite a bit of the navy linen blend left over so I decided to make a plain skirt. I had made a long, high-waisted skirt to match the short navy jacket. But like white shirts, I don't think you can ever have too many navy skirts. So I used the reliable, slightly below the waist, waistband-less skirt and hemmed it at the knee. This also allowed me to verify how much fabric I need to make one of these skirts, so I can get 0.8 metres of some plain wool to make a few more. I seem to have a lot of wacky jackets and print shirts so I need plain skirts to go with.

Next, a new jacket pattern.
In a previous post, I was warned in the comments against using this pattern. Marji said she and other people had ended up throwing out the jacket after they made it, due to problems under the arm.

I laid out the pattern pieces and overlaid them with tried-and-true pieces from other patterns. Nothing seemed too amiss. And since I had this piece of acrylic that I got as a remnant just sitting there in my stash, I decided to be reckless and make the new pattern.

I had exactly 1.1 metres of this acrylic stuff. I got the remnant thinking I would make a skirt but the more I looked at the loose weave, the less I liked the skirt idea. I decided to make the view with no collar at all and three-quarter sleeves and I just squeezed all the pattern pieces on to the fabric.

In the hopeful anticipation that the jacket will work, I cut each piece out in a single layer so that the houndstooth will match everywhere and be straight. I even cut the back out, which is normally on the fold, by cutting out one half and then folding the pattern piece over and cutting out the other half.

Rather than trying to match the notches, I cut out the front and back and side pieces with the bottoms lined up with a white stripe.

When I got one piece cut out, I laid it down on the fabric, right sides together and lined up all the stripes and pinned the pieces together and cut out the corresponding other piece, so they would be identical mirror image pieces. Now for the interfacing and lining and then we shall see if this thing goes together or not.

Linen outfit

It takes me a while to get comfortable enough with the fabric to start cutting it. The linen was draped over my cutting table for a few days before I started eyeballing it to see what would be best. The flowers are obviously directional so which way was "up" was no problem.

I started with the two front pieces of the jacket. As usual, I am cutting one piece at a time. I decided to focus on the place where the facing folded, as opposed to centre front.

My index finger is pointing down the line where the fold will be. I choose this line because there was almost no embroidery along it. I didn't want the fabric to fold over a flower and have a big bump there.

You may have to click on the above photo to make sense of it by going to Flickr and looking at the notes. I have cut out one jacket front and have laid it face down on the fabric which is right-side-up. I have also folded over the facing part on the jacket from so that I get the same non-embroidered part on the fabric along the foldline, for the other jacket front.

Here are the two jacket fronts, cut out, with the facings folded back under them. They look pretty much the same, thank goodness.

Green Wool Suit

I finally put away some patterns I had scattered all over my sewing room and found the jacket and skirt patterns I want to use for the green wool. I ironed the paper pieces and organized them and then I looked at the fabric, which I had laid out on my cutting table, folded in half lengthwise. I knew then I should cut out each piece in a single layer, not two pieces at a time as it would be if the fabric were folded in half. So I unfolded the fabric and staked it down with 48 oz. cans to prevent it from sliding off the table.

I was going to write about how much extra work it was, to cut out each piece twice, but as I cut, I realized that it was just a bit of extra time and not extra work, really. As I cut each piece, I realized how nice and precise it felt, to only cut one layer at a time. I knew that each piece lined up exactly with the stripes in the fabric, and that the under piece (because there wasn't one) wouldn't be slightly skewed. I also knew that each piece would be flaw-free.

There were several flaws in the fabric, which I noticed and marked with contrasting thread as I ironed the fabric originally. Now that I'm cutting out each piece, one at a time, I can position the pattern piece carefully to avoid the flaws. It's actually less stressful to do it this way, than to cut two pieces out at once, on folded fabric. And easier on the hand too, because you are only cutting one layer of fabric. Which is not to say that I won't ever cut two layers at a time, ever again. But I am not minding this step at all, this time.

I know I've posted this jacket before, but it was easier to take a new photo, rather than find the old one. This is the McCall's 3796 pattern made in a raw silk. I won't be doing piping with the green wool but everything else will be the same.

For fun, I draped the front jacket pieces on the dummy, over the silk jacket, just to see how they will hang. I am quite happy with the fabric so far.