My youngest, DD3, loves tank tops of all kinds and varieties, which makes for fun use of shorter lengths of fabric. Enter the gathered top from OOP Vogue 2923, a DKNY design.
The first version is in a polyester pebble crepe, which I purchased from Fabricland. Every now and then there is a winner of a fabric to be purchased from my local store. I also made a second version of this top with this fabric. Arctic icy blue is DD3’s favourite colour.
And another version in red rayon jersey from EOS, which is worn very often, even now that the weather has changed.
And here’s the back. The pattern directions call for jersey, but there is so much ease that it works just as well with a woven fabric. Confession: I salvaged a wadder cardigan project to make the red top, and had to piece it together down the CF and the left back. Funnily enough, the piecing isn’t noticeable when DD3 is wearing it, unless one looks hard for it.
One caveat for this pattern: when made up in jersey, the straps, which are supposed to be cut on the bias (I cut them on the straight grain) stretch out like crazy. For the red version I ran a length of piping cord through in order to keep it at the correct length.
And that is the last of the summery tops for this year. On to garments suited to the cooler weather.
Tell me, do you have a favourite go-to tank or tee or top pattern for 1m lengths of fabric?
This is an old make. It dates from 2017, and I confess I have never worn it except to take photos… well, perhaps I wore it once? But I absolutely love the dress, so why haven’t I worn it? I don’t know. I tend to reach for the easy and familiar in my closet which usually doesn’t mean a dress like this. I need to just decide to wear it.
I purchased the fabric specifically for this dress from EOS, at least 10 years ago. It was one of my first purchases from Linda, and one of my first forays into sewing knit or jersey fabrics. This is a printed rayon, and it behaved beautifully while I was working with it: no curling, no stretching out of shape. And despite hanging in my closet for three years, it hasn’t stretched out, either.
The dress is a fabric hog: just over 3 metres of 150cm wide fabric. It’s the skirt, of course, and I don’t begrudge it a centimetre because it moves and hangs beautifully.
I love the back of this skirt!
I love the sleeve cuff detail. It isn’t perfect pattern matching, but, if you look at the first photo, you can’t really tell. I actually had to rip these cuffs off, not once, not twice, but three times (!) because I put them on wrong. So much for accurate markings; and by that time, I was so sick of trying to get the cuff on correctly that I couldn’t be bothered matching the patterns perfectly. But I love the split cuff.
split cuff, not perfectly turned or pressed
Some construction notes: I serged the seams for quick and stable construction, and simply turned up the hems and used my knit zig-zag stitch. I love using this stitch for knits, as it is strong and yet has enough give for the stretch in a knit.
It looks like a loose sloppy stitch, but the stretch zig-zag stitch works so well!
It’s been an entire four months since my last post. Who would have guessed the world would turn upside down since then? I haven’t been sewing very much. I haven’t had the strength or inclination. I haven’t even been thinking about sewing lately. And this is a problem, because I need to start sewing my stash. I asked DD1 and DD3 to pore over my box of silks, choose a few lengths for kimonos or robes (dressing gowns) and once they had, the fabric sat on my sewing table for weeks before I washed it (yes, they will wash the garments, so I pre-washed – and in two cases, dried – lengths of silk charmeuse for their robes).
I’ve set small goals for myself: trace or cut out a pattern one day. Make adjustments to it another day. Lay it out on the fabric and, if it’s a good day, cut it out. Sew a few seams another day. I have found that limiting my sewing time to around an hour is best, as I feel energized and happy with work well done. So that’s my modus operandi these days.
But in the meantime, I thought I’d share this quickly-made tee from Simplicity 4076. The fabric is a rayon jersey from EOS which was purchased a few years ago. There’s not much to say. The pattern is a quick make, and I made up my usual size without any alterations.
One little successful sew under my belt is the ticket to more stitching, I think.
Note: I began this post in July. I cannot believe that an entire year has gone by already.
It’s been a crazy last few months, and although I have completed a couple of commissions, whipped up some new pairs of slim Burda 01/2016 #135 pants, altered and mended clothing and made a winter coat, it’s only this weekend that I have finally managed to get some pictures of a recent make! Woo hoo! This coming Tuesday is DH’s birthday, and it’s also July, which means Summerlicious in TO.
Birthday + Summerlicious = reason for a new dress. The fabric is a rayon-lycra knit from my local Fabricland, purchased last summer (or the summer before…..???) because it was a) on sale; and b) looked so cheery. Actually, it probably reminded me of some project I’d seen in Burda Magazine that I really liked, so I purchased it. Unfortunately for me, I never make a note of pattern + fabric combinations that randomly pop into mind, especially at that critical moment when they are actually in mind, so I cannot remember what made me think this would be a great maxi dress. In the interest of time (no time to trace a pattern!), I opened my binder of Vogue dress pattern envelopes, pulled out Vogue 8896, measured the flat pattern, laid out the fabric, and cut.. I made some changes to the shoulders – adding width in the back to match the front shoulders so I could sew channels and run ties to create the gathers instead of just gathering the front into the width of the back shoulders. I used my favourite neckline edging (a long strip of fabric, cut across the grain, 5cm wide and a few cms shorter than the actual to-be-finished armscye or neck opening) and finished the armscyes using the same technique before stitching the shoulder seams so it would be a neat finish for the ties.
The skirt was quite heavy, and in the interest of keeping it in place at my waistline without having to constantly adjust it, I stitched the seam 2cm wide instead of 1.5cm and ran 1.5cm wide elastic through then entire length, from left front to right front ties.
And then wore it out to dinner!
I do have more projects to show you. I have been under a self-imposed deadline to get some things done, photographed and blogged before December 24, when my sewing area will be co-opted into Christmas Dinner With The Family space.
Updated December 30th: And here we are…. at the end of the year… The good news: I took photos of my one finished coat project for 2018. Fingers crossed for posting!
Vogue 1491, DD3’s middle school frankpattern formal, Burda 04/2010 #112
I’ve been enjoying all the year-end reviews that have popped up in my reader over the last 6 weeks or so. It’s crazy how 6 weeks seems like it’s a lifetime ago, and obsolete. One reason I really hate social media these days.
I haven’t blogged very much this past year for a variety of reasons, and it seemed to be a reflection on what I’ve actually done creatively in my sewing life. But after reading Naomi’s wrap-up post I thought I would set up a similar Excel workbook to track my makes. And my fabric inventory.
Lo, and behold! I actually sewed 62 garments during 2017! I was so surprised! Only about half got photographed or blogged, some were thrifted, and only a handful haven’t been worn yet, as I decided in December to sew up a collection of short-sleeved summer tops.
I must say, compiling this list was encouraging. I sewed a lot last year! It makes me feel I can move on to 2018 with a right good will to getting some of the larger projects going that I have been purposely avoiding out of fear for the last couple of years (fear of fitting, fear of less-than-perfect execution, fear of garment-lifestyle clashes).
And speaking of 2018, there has been a lot of kerfluffle in the sewing universe about the 2018 Burda Challenge. I’m sure Burda appreciates all the variations on this challenge every single year, although each iteration to date hasn’t gotten a lot of social media attention. When I participated back in 2013, only a few bloggers were interested, but this year, I guess the right person with enough clout in the sewing blogosphere decided to get on board, so everyone’s talking about it. I think credit should be given where credit is due, however, and so here’s to ReadyThreadSew and Pattern Review with the idea of a year-long challenge from waaaaay back when. I always find it amusing when the masses jump on a bandwagon that’s been around for a while simply because they hear a louder or more popular voice talking about it. No rant intended! It’s just my observations from the sidelines. 😉 Ideas need persistent, loud, popular voices in order to take root and get people on board. But that smacks of politik, and I am not going down that rabbit hole.
Anyways, I’m looking forward to actually getting photographs of all my 2018 makes – both successes and failures – and sharing them with you this year. I’ve tried IG for the last year, and it is sooooo not my thing. I’m a sideline girl, and although I occasionally like to scroll through my feed and see what you all are up to, posting prolifically is not my style. Of course, this article went a long way to explaining why, never mind that I like my neurons and my privacy.
That said, this year I have resolved:
to actually blog and share my makes this year, and not get dopamined-up and depressed on my IG feed. There is a small part of me that screams, “But you’ll be missing out on so much!”, and I’ve decided to ignore it and stay true to my watching-from-the sidelines self. Sharing all my makes is also not really in my comfort zone (I often feel I have nothing interesting to say, or any pretty pictures to share), but I have also resolved this year to…
take baby steps. Baby steps in healthy activity, in French, in social settings; permission to be creative, including TAST (an embroidery and stitching challenge); and..
sewing up some of my prolific stash, including ticking off the
2018 Burda Challenge box and a
Year of the Jacket personal challenge with each make. I have so many beautiful coatings in my stash, and I really want to attempt a French jacket, so I have set this as a many-birds-with-one-stone step.
And here’s a teaser, although I probably won’t blog any of these, as they were last year’s makes.
Collection of lace and silk tops from BurdaStyle & Vogue; brown skirt Burda 02/2006 #114; blue linen trousers Burda 12/2011 #133; and a stack of tops from Simplicity 4076 and BurdaStyle
Here’s the result of my first attempt at one of the popular Drape Drape Japanese patterns as modeled by DD1: No.4 Asymmetrical Top. I mentioned it in my last post, only because I was so annoyed that I’m not Japanese-sized. More like 6XL Japanese sized. However, I put my big girl pants on and got to solving how I could make this one-piece pattern work for me. I needed to find 10 inches – read it – that’s a big one zero – in extra width.
Isn’t the draping on this just gorgeous? DD1 is a very dancer-fit hourglass, and the pattern looks so amazing on her. This is the size L/XL on her, btw, because she’s a L in the Drape Drape world. Anyways, I got a brainstorm and sliced the pattern clean down the middle and spread it three inches. I have no pics of it, but it added width to the right sleeve and really nice drapey side as seen above. Then I added three inches of width on either edge of the pattern piece (left underarm seam) and graded it back to 1/2″ of extra width at the sleeve edge. And I cut the neckline three inches higher than drafted. Here’s the result:
I made the mom-sized version from some stashed linen jersey that came to me via EmmaOneSock about a year ago. I really wanted to try the loose tee shape, and this jersey is soooo delicious to wear. It’s a bit finicky to work with – something like fussy silk – but the extra care is so worth the end result.
Looks good! I have to tell you, when I first tried on the orange sherbet version, it was t.i.g.h.t. No drape whatsoever – more along the lines of Spanx. Now, it’s me-sized, and the drape is just as sweet as the daughter-sized version.
I’ve had this lovely black and cream striped rayon jersey in my stash for about a year, and I wanted to make something unique or unusual with it. After seeing Allison’s striped top I went on a hunt for a design idea for this fabric. I had a little more than one yard of 60″ fabric and I hoped to get a dress out of it, not just a top.
If I had any degree of creativity or technical skill, I would have tried draping this fabric in an homage to Vivienne Westwood, but I don’t, so I hunted through patterns and landed on Vogue 1282. I know. Not very adventurous, but I had just finished making it up in a roll-end from EOS in a dark dijon rayon knit, and wondered if it would work in a stripe. I thought perhaps the excess fabric below the waist in the top would be perfect in a lengthened dress version, creating visual interest with the stripes, and hiding fluff. Then I stumbled upon Ellen’s version from a couple of years ago that had a subtle stripe and it decided me. I picked laid out the fabric and the pattern….
….. and shortened the bodice above the armscye (because it sits very low) by about 2 inches (5 cm), instead of just adjusting it at the shoulder seams during construction, as I did for the top, and plunged in with my cutting shears.
Instead of facing the armholes, I cut strips of fabric on the cross grain, one stripe-width finished width and left them as an extended edging. It completely changes the fit of the pattern since they act as little 3/4″ sleeves. It means the neckline sits at the outer edge of my shoulders instead of close to the neck, and results in the front drapes being a bit wider/shallower instead of narrow/deep. But it also means I don’t need bra strap keepers and the shoulders are stable. And it creates an asymmetrical look across the top, as the binding extends the vertical stripes on the right, making it look wider than the left. Just one of those quirky things that are currently endearing this dress to me at the moment. As for the CF plunge, I’ve discovered a new little trick: use a bobby pin to pick up one or two seam threads and clip it to the centre bridge of my bra. Nothing moves. Brilliant!
I honestly wasn’t sure about this, but after seeing the pics (mirrors lie, y’know) I like it, but some details bother me. For instance, the lack of stripe matching on the CF of the drape.
And again down the CB seam.
Try as I might I just could not match up those stripes without creating weird alternating patches of easing and stretching which refused to lay properly and looked terrible down the back of the dress.
Similarly, if I match the stripes on the front drape, it will mean one side is longer than the other and sits at a different angle. But my inner seamstress/perfectionist is squirming looking at these photos! So, because I’d like your opinion, I’ve created a poll to either leave it, or fix it. It’s anonymous, so please be brutally honest.
So I’ve been sewing up a few new tops. The first one is Burda 7/2012 #136, without the ties. No comment on the ties.
I’ve been wanting to use fabrics I’ve been collecting over the last few years, and this combination of 14 oz rayon-lycra jersey in oatmeal and the scraps from my chocolate Burda 1/2013 #119 seemed to fit the bill. The chocolate jersey is 11 oz, and it doesn’t have the heft of the oatmeal fabric, but it manages. The bands are cut on the cross grain, on a fold, so the folded edge is the neckline. I had to do some tweaking to get the angles of the shoulder, CF and CB seams just right in order to feel secure in this top. The neckline sits (quite) wide. I ended up putting bra keepers in the shoulder seams just for added peace of mind. If you look at the Russian Burda site, lots of versions of this sexy neckline just slip off shoulders coyly. I’m not so coy, so I made the shoulders secure.
The next top is my go-to for tees. I just love the fit, neckline and little gathered raglan sleeves of this design: Burda 02/2013 #126.
I have two versions that are new to me. First, the crocodile print.
And then the polka dot one, upcycled from my purged McCardell dress.
There was so much fabric in that skirt, that I also made a second version in a bigger size of Burda 09/2011 #106. I don’t know what it is about that dotty jersey, but I just love it. Must be the combo of chocolate and olive.
And last, but not least, this little number from Burda 06/2014 #103. I didn’t quite have enough linen fabric to cut the required length, since this came in a package of roll ends from EOS. So I added tiers to the bottom. It’s rather loose, contrary to what the photos look like, which is a good thing.
Here’s a detail shot of the shoulder.
The jersey is intersected by petersham ribbon, which has been edged with bias binding. It creates a structure from which the jersey literally hangs. Brilliant.
I used a Liberty Arts Fabric print, and I cannot for the life of me find the name of it. If you know, please share it in the comments!
I love the linen jersey. It’s so light and comfy and luxurious. It was a PITA to cut, though, because the grain was all skewed. In retrospect, I coulda/shoulda used petersham in a more contrasting colour to make the binding pop a bit more. But this is subtle, and I’m happy to wear it, as I am all these new tops! I did make up one more top in a coral jersey, but the pattern (and solid colour) was all wrong, so I thrifted it. Well, five keepers out of six ain’t bad! And I’m happy to be sewing my stash!
Do you like sewing new tee patterns, or go for TNTs?
Seriously. Any tiramisu, although I’m talking today about the Tiramisu.I used a dotty jersey from my stash, and I confess to not following directions exactly. I didn’t have quite enough fabric, so I left off the pockets and the skirt side seams, and the sleeve and bodice facings are from a coordinating fabric from my op art tee.
I cut the dress during an all-day cutting session last week, and put it together yesterday between mommy-I-need-you sessions, since the kids are home from school now. The bodice sewed up beautifully and was a perfect fit right out of the envelope. The only tiny adjustment I made was to the length of the neckline, which I shortened by one inch per side at the bodice CF bottom, tapering back to the original seam.
The instructions are wonderful in this pattern. Simple, straight forward and completely understandable. I love the method of construction, too. It makes the entire project a simple easy dress. Add in the lack of fussy fitting problems, and this is a real gem of a pattern. This is my first ever pattern from anything other than Burda or the BMV group, and I am very pleasantly pleased.
This the second of three tops that I’m working on right now. The third is in the toile stage because it must fit perfectly. When you see the fabric, you’ll understand why! Anyways, this lovely little tee with gathered raglan sleeves from Burda’s February issue – 02/2013 #126 – has been popping up all over the internet these days, and I know why! It’s the perfectly fun take on the basic tee.
I cut a size down from my usual size – typical for knits, but I could have gone another size down through the shoulders and bust. It’s a little loose, but it’s not going to fall off my shoulders or be guilty of any wardrobe malfunctions. And it’s very very long. I trimmed a good 5 inches from the bottom of this top and my bottom hem is 1.5 inches deep. And there’s still enough length to pool at my waist during wear!
The only change I made was to not follow Burda’s directions for binding the neckline. My experience with bound necklines in a knit is not fraught with pretty successes, so I thought I’d just do the standard neckline edging with a strip of self-fabric on the cross grain. And I cut my length about 2 inches shorter than Burda suggested. It’s good, but it could be a snugger fit around.
My conclusions on this one: a great little tee pattern. You can’t really see the gathers on the sleeves, but I like the shape of it and would highly recommend it anyone!
I’ve been wanting to use fabrics I’ve been collecting over the last few years, and this combination of 14 oz rayon-lycra jersey in oatmeal and the scraps from my 
I didn’t quite have enough linen fabric to cut the required length, since this came in a package of roll ends from EOS. So I added tiers to the bottom. It’s rather loose, contrary to what the photos look like, which is a good thing.
Mezzo Couture 