Seersucker shirts

It's been a bit of a hiatus. I had germs and then end of semester and house visits. Anyway, I decided to tell my husband about the shirt I was going to make for him so there's no big secret (except for the fact that I bought a second length of seersucker so he will end up with two shirts). Shhh.

I made that second short sleeved shirt in yellow and it turned out as cute at the pink one. I have even worn the pink one twice and washed it!

And there they are.

My husband wants a long sleeved seersucker shirt because he read in a bicycling magazine that that's what one wears when the sun is hot and in danger of burning you. Okay. So I was lucky to finally find some thin cotton seersucker on sale and I bought two lengths of it. The first, shown here, is mainly white with an uneven stripe. I even got too much and was able to cut out a sleeveless little blouse for myself, using a NEW Vogue pattern I also got on sale.

I have made his shirt pattern (McCall's 9579) on several occasions so it's pretty routine. The Vogue pattern (2634) is not at all complicated so I don't think I should run into any snags along the way. It has front bands that are merely the long edge of the front turned under twice - the same construction as my husband's shirt. I also like the fact that both shirts have proper two piece collars. I find that I can't do up the one piece collar at the neck without it looking odd.

[And there's my new ironing board cover that I made while the dog was in kennels!]
His collar is cut following the lengthwise grain, like most collars. I decided this first time on the Vogue pattern that I would follow the instructions and make my collar with the stripes running across it instead of down its length and see what issues I have later. It might even be cute, who knows.

As usual, I interface both sides of the collar and press open the seam on the inside before turning the collar and doing any topstitching. I also interfaced both sides of HIS collar band but decided not to do that on mine, partly because the instructions don't call for it and partly because I was running out of interfacing.

His shirt has a yoke on the back and although it is not a great photo, I am showing the fact that I don't bother to trim the seam allowances on the yoke before assembling the back. I don't think the bulk needs to be trimmed and I also think it makes for a neater look to have all the 5/8 seam allowances lined up. When you trim, you can get a little uneven here and there.

To get the stripes on the pocket lined up exactly, I waited until I had cut out all the pieces and then, with what I had left, I lined up the leftover fabric, right side up, with where the pocket was going to go on the front of the left side of his shirt. Then I cut out the pocket using pinking shears and once it was sewed on, it looks pretty professional.

Pink Shirt Finished

Except for the buttons, I have finished the pink shirt. Even though it wrinkles pretty easily (it is 97% cotton with that tiny bit of spandex), I think I will get a ton of wear out of it. The pix that follow don’t show every stage of the making because I have made this shirt before (it was the first thing I made when I started this blog).

The first thing I show is the inside of the collar, after I have sewn the one side of it onto the shirt. I sewed the collar to the wrong side or inside of the shirt so that I could sew the folded over edge of the collar facing around the outside by machine. In this photo, you are looking at the trimmed seam allowance and the folded under edge of the collar facing.

Next, I show the collar facing has been pinned to the shirt, just covering the line of stitching. As I sew this fold down with the zipper foot, I will make sure that the line of stitching is concealed and that I get as close to the fold as possible.

In this next photo, you can see the inside of the shirt (on the right) and the outside (on the left). You can compare them to see the difference. The line of top stitching on the right side (outside, the left part) is just above the fold on the collar facing. On the wrong side (the inside, on the right), you see the bobbin thread has tracked just below the fold of where the collar was sewed to the shirt. You can also see this same difference in the stitching on the front band.

The shirt as it is hanging up needs a good pressing. I have marked with pins where the buttons are going to be sewed on later this evening, while I am watching tv.
My next project will be posted as one big blog entry. I am making something for my husband and while he doesn’t really read this blog, he does notice when I post new pix to Flickr and I want this thing to be a surprise for him. When I am done that, I will make the yellow shirt just like the pink one.

Bright Shirts - getting started

I started working on the bright blouses and then got sidetracked by some other things (not sewing). Then Peter came down with a cold last Thursday and now I have the stupid germ. Anyway, I shall persevere.

I got both the yellow and pink cut out in short sleeves in that pattern I seem to use for everything (Simplicity 9877). Then I discovered that I had pink thread but not enough yellow.

So I’m sewing the pink first. I do my usual assembly line kind of thing, cutting out everything, marking pieces and ironing interfacing on all the pieces, pink and yellow. Then I start pinning things like the darts. Unfortunately, the pink doesn’t show up very well in photos. In this next photo, I have sewed the front vertical dart from the bottom up and am nearing the point. Most of the dart is sewed at a 5/8 seam allowance because it is slashed in the cutting process. When you get near the point, you have to taper to less and less.

This shirt has front bands (which I prefer) instead of facings. In the next photo, I have attached a band to the front and you can see it (the right side of the band is sewed to the wrong side of the front) and the inside of the front dart. I fold over the seam allowances on the dart and sew them down in a flat fell. At the point of the dart, I sew in from the seam allowance and turn 180 degrees at the stitching line and sew back down again.

The front band gets folded over itself and the folded edge overlaps the stitching line.

Then you sew the band down to the front, using a zipper foot and getting as close to the folded edge as you can.

Buttons

I finally tried on the grey dress and was muchly relieved to discover that it fit around me, as I had made it in the size 12 and that only fits when I’m not carrying those extra pounds that I am always trying to lose. Unfortunately, it was too SHORT in the bodice! This never happens. I am very short waisted. I have a 30 inch inseam but I am only 5’2”. So I automatically take everything UP in the upper body and this new pattern that I had not made before was no exception. When I put the dress on, the waistline was a good inch above my natural waistline and as a consequence, the belt loops were too high. So I had to pick them off very carefully (the fabric is quite thin and shows every needle hole) and reposition them lower. A jolly pain as you can imagine. (In the following photo, the belt carrier is still in its original position, well above the waist seam according to the directions.)

I did however, manage to find some nice grey buttons in a flat finish and now I have made the buttonholes for them and will sew the buttons on while watching tv. I also got blue buttons for the blue shirt I’d made last before the grey dress and will sew them on this evening too.

In the meantime, I got two lengths of plain cotton broadcloth (no polyester in it but happily, a little bit of Lycra) in a bright yellow and bright pink, to make into little short sleeved shirts to wear with summer skirts (or anything else for that matter). I don’t know why, but I tend to gravitate toward muddy brown fabrics and I want to get some more bright colours into my wardrobe.

Dress finished except for buttons

I have been puttering away at this dress and now I am done, again except for the buttons. When I went to sew the facings down the front, I realized I hadn’t finished the waist seam so I did that. In this photo, you can also see the faint chalk marks on the inside (or wrong side of the fabric) where the carriers will go on the outside.

When I cut the 14 inch long flattened tube apart into four pieces to make the carriers, I also decided to zigzag all the raw ends so they wouldn’t unravel later. Usually, the pattern instructions don’t mention doing this kind of finishing work and this one is no exception. In this photo, I have sewed the bottom ends of the carriers to the dress in the spots marked and I have folded up the one on the right side, in preparation for sewing the top of it to the dress. I have not done any pressing.

Hanging on the door is the almost-finished dress. I hemmed the sleeves and I have turned up the one on your left and pinned the tab up where it will be buttoned, after I get buttons. I have not done a final press anywhere. I am thinking I will look at grey buttons but keep my options open for yellow and green buttons (or maybe even white) also. {Must remember to get blue buttons too, for last project!]

Dress halfway done

As usual, I ironed interfacing onto all the pieces that needed it, all in one go. The collar has interfacing on both sides to give it more body.

You can try turning pieces right side out and then pressing them but you won’t get as sharp an edge if you do. Instead, press as much of the seams open as you can before turning the piece.

The dress has small tabs on the sleeves that will turn up and button on the outside - more for decoration than anything. I am in the middle of turning one of the tabs right side out, using just my hands at the moment.

To get the corners nice and square, I use a plastic point turner gizmo. I have placed it inside the tube that is the tab and the end that is inside is pointed so I can poke out the corners from the inside. I have poked out one corner and will do the second after I take the picture.

After turning the tab (or any of the other pieces that needed turning) you have to press it and try to get the seams right on the edge. With interfacing only on one side of the pieces (except for the collar) the drapey fabric doesn’t want to distribute itself evenly. You just have to try your best.

As with all my projects from the stash boxes, I am using up thread colours instead of buying new thread. I have experimented with the white (that I used on Peter’s shirt), a pale blue (which I seem to have a lot of) and a grey which I bought for this other fabric that is languishing in a box somewhere. I decided to use the grey for all stitching that will show.

This dress pattern has interest on the bodice back, composed of a yoke and an inverted pleat.

The pattern instructions merely say to iron the seam allowance up, toward the yoke. Since I am a big fan of the flat fell, I am trimming the seam allowance that belongs to the yoke and will fold over the seam allowance belonging to the bodice back, press it and sew it down in a fell.

The instructions also call for a double row of topstitching but I am only doing one row because the fabric doesn’t call for two rows, in my opinion. This is a soft rayon and I think one row will look better.

The instructions also call for sewing the bodice all together before attaching the sleeves. However, it is easier to attach a sleeve before the underarm seam is done up, so that is what I have decided to do. When I laid the pieces on the board to take the picture, I forgot that I always put the sleeve on top when I pin because it has the excess fabric.

Here, I have started to pin the sleeve to the bodice and you can see the excess fabric between the pins. You can also see the tab sewed to the sleeve.

After that, I sewed up all the boring bits - the four skirt seams, the underarm seams and attached the bodice to the skirt. Of course, I also finished all the seams with a flat fell.

A Dress

I have been inspired by A Dress A Day for some time and have now started to make a dress for summer. I found some rayon I had left over after I made Peter a shirt out of it and I thought it would be suitable for a dress. I have a new pattern I have not made before and I want to make this dress in this pink fabric I have. However, I thought instead of making it with a muslin first, I would use this rayon and then, if it doesn’t fit, I won’t be upset about giving it away. Sounds extravagant but really, when the rayon was left over and cheaper than muslin, why not make the prototype in fabric so that if it DOES work, you can wear it?

It is a soft grey rayon that drapes nicely, with small abstract but evenly spaced spots on it. At a distance, you might think it was polka dots (also liked by ADAD). Peter has got quite a bit of wear out of the shirt but I don’t think I will encourage us to wear the two pieces on the same day. I used white thread throughout when making his shirt and have regretted that because it is surprisingly contrasty. I am using some grey thread for the dress which I hope will blend in.

Here’s the pattern - Simplicity 4995 - and I am making the wide skirt in the shorter length with short sleeves. I haven’t decided if I am going to make the belt with the same fabric as even with interfacing, I am not sure it will work with this fabric. I will try it on (if it fits, that is) with one of my regular leather belts and see what it looks like and then make the fabric belt if it is required.

Because I have never used the pattern before, I had to cut all the pieces apart and then iron them. Don’t forget to iron the paper pattern pieces flat with a barely warm iron, otherwise you won’t get an accurate cut.

I had enough fabric to cut out pockets too but when I was unpinning them, I realized that I should have cut the edges of the pocket with pinking shears. Instead, I trimmed them after the fact. The two edges of the pocket are going to be folded over just once and then sewn onto the dress so pinking keeps the future ravelling down. However, once I had sewn the top edge of the pocket to finish it, I realized that this fabric is too drapey to lend itself to this sort of pocket and I am not going to use them after all.

Shirt and Shell Finished

Based on the order in which my photos are arranged, I must have sewed the sleeves next. After attaching them to the body of the shirt, I trimmed the one seam allowance (belonging to the shirt, not the sleeve) to less than half its width. Then I ironed the seam allowances toward the body of the shirt from the outside, using the clapper to make them flat. Turning the shirt to the inside, I folded over the larger (untrimmed) seam allowance over the trimmed sam allowance, thus making the flat fell. I pinned it down and will take the pins out as I sew.

Here I am sewing down the flat fell around the shoulder.

Next, I put the collar and front facings on. When pinning the collar to the shirt neck edge, you often need to make tiny cuts in the neck edge to make sure it stretches out to fit the collar without anything buckling or folding over into wrinkles. I put a ruler in the photo to show how small the cuts are.

The pattern instructions say to baste the collar on first, before attaching the facings but I do it all in one go. You can see I have made those tiny cuts to the facing neck edge as well, to stretch it out too.

With the facings sewed on up to where they stop at the shoulder seams, the next step is to sew the collar to the shirt in between the facings. You can see that I have ironed interfacing on to both sides of the collar, to give it more body. In the photo, I have pinned the collar to the shirt neck edge and I have pinned the “facing” part of the collar (the part that gets folded down over the seam line) up and out of the way.

Here is a close up of where everything meets at the shoulder seam. My thumb is holding the front facing up so you can see under it and the collar “facing” has been folded under and pinned over the seam line. You have to clip the seam allowances after they have been trimmed, right at the point where they have to be tucked under the collar facing. To the left of that point, the seam allowances point in the opposite direction and lie hidden under the front facing.

In the next photo, I have finished all the topstitching around the neck and down the front. Rather than hand stitch the facings down, I use the machine and very carefully, using a zipper foot, stitch along the seam lines on the outside. You might want to click on this photo to view the large size at Flickr.

Then I stitch the shirt together under the arms and do a modified flat fell on those seams. The next photo shows one half of the seam allowance has been folded and pressed under, in preparation for sewing.

As I was sewing this shirt and top, I found that my thread broke more often than usual (for me) and I saw I was pulling up lint and things occasionally. When I was finished with the hems, I opened the machine up to clean it out. In the next photo, I have removed the actually bobbin case and you are looking into the bobbin compartment, full of lint.

After brushing out that part, I flipped the machine on its side and removed the bottom cover. I’m holding the cover in my left hand.

Here’s a close up of the lint.

I’ve brushed it all away and I am now ready for my next project.
Here is the (almost) finished shirt hanging over the top. I didn’t have any blue buttons so they will have to wait until I have bike to FabricLand, which should be soon as Spring is here. Peter has to pump up my bike tyres first.

Shirt and Shell

Rooting around through my fabric pieces, I came across a length of blue polyester I had bought because, a) it was on sale and b) I didn’t have any blue shirts. I was also going through a phase where I thought I needed more plain shirts instead of all the patterned prints I had. I find that plain old polyester isn’t the nicest thing to sew with but since I have this piece and since I made that white skirt with the blue and purple flowers, I thought I would cut this blue fabric up into some sort of top.

I had a pattern I’d never used before, which I bought because it had a tank top (or “shell” as my Mum calls them) which uses bias bands as facings. It is McCall’s 3610.

When I took the pattern pieces out, I measured the side seams and compared those measurements with shirts and tops I already had. I decided to take the pattern up in the body by two inches. I am quite short-waisted so I often have to do this with patterns. I fold the paper pattern along the line indicated for taking up and then fold it again along the dotted line for the maximum adjustment. You can see the fold better in the photo following this one.

When I had all the pattern pieces out of the envelope, ironed and adjusted, I started laying them out on the fabric (I had about 2.5 meters of fairly narrow fabric). Because the top front and back pieces were both cut on a fold, I couldn’t get the top AND the shirt out of the fabric the way I tried to initially. I unpinned the pieces and had another look at it. I measured how much fabric I needed to get the top out of one end of the length of fabric and cut that piece off from the rest. Then I folded each selvage into the middle so I had two folds and pinned the front and back pieces of the top to the fabric. That is a line of selvage in the middle of the two pieces in the next photo.

In this way, I managed to get the shirt cut out too, once I folded the remainder of the fabric back into its selvages-together/fold-on-one-side configuration. I ironed the interfacing to the collar (both sides) and front facings for the shirt. Then I pinned together as many pieces in one go as I could and started sewing.

In the next photo, I am pinning the sleeve to the shirt. I have it here to illustrate how I put a pin in the ironing board cover and gently pull the armscye out so I can eliminate wrinkles. It also shows how this fabric has already started to fray, a constant complaint of most polyesters.

This blog entry is mostly about the bias strips used instead of two inch wide facings, on the top. I have no idea why the colour in the next photo is so off but anyway, I have started to pin the bias strip (it is folded in half lengthwise) around the neck edge of the top. You can see that the strip is longer than the neck edge and so the bias strip will have to be eased into the neck with lots of pins.

Which reminds me that I changed the sewing machine needle for this project to the finest, thinnest needle I had. It has the numbers 55/7 on it - usually I sew with a 80/12 needle. Polyester also snags very easily so I made sure the needle was brand new and didn’t have any flaw on the point AND I am removing every pin as I sew, to make sure the needle never comes in contact with metal.

Here, I am sewing around the armhole and you can see that the bias strip has more fabric in it than the armhole edge, in that it is buckling up.

Now you can see that as I sew, I am gently pulling the armhole so that the bias strip fits. I have my right hand on the camera for the photo, but usually it is gently pulling the material behind the needle. It doesn’t matter which hand goes in front or behind - just don’t get your fingers caught under the needle! I have heard of people who have done that but in 30 years of sewing, I have never sewed my finger to the garment. I have certainly stabbed myself with pins and even cut myself with the scissors but I haven’t been run through by the machine needle.

At one point, I left the room and when I got back, the dog had decided under the ironing board was a good place for a nap. Not wanting to disturb him, I worked around the body.

After sewing the bias strip facings on, they have to be trimmed.

Then you have to press them, starting with pressing the facing away from the top.

Then you press the facing in a fold, over the raw (and now fraying) edge of the armhole or neck edge.

Finally, you sew the facing down, from the wrong side of the garment to make sure you catch the edge of the facing, using a zipper foot to get close to the edge. You can also see that I have done a modified flat fell on the shoulder seam for the top.