Photos of two Vogue knit tops

As promised earlier, here are shots of the two knit tops I completed.

The first one is a black knit, Vogue 8669; I lightened the photo for the purpose of showing how the neckline drapes as a result of the pleating at the shoulder.  The top is a little boxy and very full in the back.  The next top I will take out some of that back fullness by taking a small tuck all the way down the back.  After making a FBA of 1 1/2inches and eliminating the resulting dart, I ended up trimming down the sides after basting this top for fitting purposes.  I adjusted the pattern by taking a 1/4 inch horizontal tuck across the upper chest to raise the underarm area some for the next top.

I like the top even though this one needs the tweaks I just mentioned.  I don't like the knit fabric.  It sewed up well, but wrinkles a lot.  I am planning on making another solid color top from this pattern. Here is another view of Vogue 8669.








The next photos are of Vogue 1275.  I like and dislike this pattern.  I love the front ruching but I am not sure it is the best look for busty person.  I hope you can see this and I would like your feedback about the look.  I like the square neckline and I like that it does not gape.  I don't particularly like how the finish was for the neck binding and the center front section.  It works, but it is not real pretty on the inside.

Here is a semi side view of the top

The sleeves have elastic sewn in three places creating ruching in this area also.

And here is a close up of the neckline.  This became the most difficult area to sew and the instructions and illustrations did not seem to sync up. 

I stitched the center edge down though instructions did not call for this.  I was concerned the edge may roll out.  It is rather snug to chest so perhaps it would not and stitching was not necessary, I will never know as I chose to stitch it.    I love this knit fabric; it sewed well and handled easily.  This too is from Gorgeous Fabrics.

So back to sewing room to think and ponder on my next top or two.

Vogue 1275 and what's next

Sewing Vogue 1275 was pretty easy-peasy until the neckline band.  The written instructions and the photo just don't seem to make sense.  After numerous attempts at understanding how to do it, I finally came up with what will be my best solution.  I think there were some finishing steps left out or at least for me there was; so when you are in these situations you just punt! Or make it work! 

I hemmed the other Vogue top yesterday with coverstitch machine and hemmed the sleeves for this pattern.  I have the hem for this pattern pinned and ready to stitch.

That now leaves two other patterns I wanted to cut out and sew.  I am rethinking about the solid brown knit pattern I had planned to use.  I have a McCall's tunic style pattern already fitted and I may go with that pattern, but using a different front piece (the pink one) that I have not tried yet.

Anyway, I will post photos soon of the two completed tops later today.

Now going to have some breakfast and then on to the sewing room.

One done and another in the works

Vogue 8669 is complete except for the hems for the sleeves and top.  I need to re-thread the coverstitch machine but have the only black serger thread I have on hand threaded on the serger.  So I proceeded with the next top . 

I made fitting adjustments yesterday AM and cut out the fabric.  I am now over half way completed with this Sandra Betzina top. I needed to take a break and decided to post an update before jumping into the shower and getting dress to run some errands.  One such errand is to buy more black serger thread.  I thought I had replenished it but obviously not.

Once this top is sewn together then both will get hemmed using the coverstitch machine.  And then I have two other knit tops in the line up.  I also want to make some blouses using woven material.  And I still need to give some serious thought to SWAP 2012.

Later.

Day after Christmas

Not much to report in the way of sewing.  Most of the day was spent running around with DH.  We even had late lunch of pizza and salad at Ragazzis.  Time for a change from turkey, dressing, and other Christmas dinner leftovers.  We even ventured to the mall; surprisingly it was not as bad as we thought it might be. 

Returning home, I spent time in the sewing room making the last tweaks to the Vogue pattern and then I was able to cut out the top.  I decided that I wanted to start preparing the fit of another Vogue knit pattern top, a Sandra Betzina pattern.  I am using another Gorgeous Fabrics knit in a green/black animal print.  I had originally planned to make a dress from this fabric but it is telling me a top would be better.  Once this pattern is adjusted and fabric cut out I will then sew these two tops.

I have to start thinking about my 2012 SWAP project.  I have decided to participate in this sewing challenge.  I normally talk myself out of it; I think this will help me focus a little on developing a spring wardrobe and to use up some of the patterns/fabric I have on hand.

More later;  sipping on coffee and taking a moment to read blogs to see what everyone is up to. 

Sewing inbetween

All the Christmas shopping is done except for one item for DH and we will take care of that later today.  Call us crazy for going out into what I am sure is going to be a frantic holiday shopping scramble.  Fortunately it does not require going near a mall! 

This AM I have been cooking for dinner tonight and for family gathering tomorrow for Christmas.  So in between peeling, chopping, cutting, and cooking, I am now working on fitting a Vogue knit top for one of many that I plan to sew over the next few days of my holiday and vaca days. 

I am working on Vogue 8669 which has been in the stash for awhile.  I have so many to choose from and settled on this one because of the neckline and because I think it will work well with a skirt I completed recently and have not worn yet because I need some new black tops.

The knit fabric I am using is one of several that I purchased from Gorgeous Fabrics over a year or so ago.  I plan to make the pink version of the top as I like 3/4 quarter or ballet length sleeves for fall/winter and transitioning into spring.  I really like them year round as my aging arms just look better in this style.

I hope everyone is enjoying their pre-Christmas time with family and friends.    Off to sew and cook.

Without Further Ado……

Here is the Sandra Betzina Vogue pattern, faux leather and Sherpa jacket.

After coming home from work yesterday evening and changing into comfy clothes I decided it was time to reveal the completed jacket. 

The final steps were tweaking the princess seams. I then trimmed each of the exposed Sherpa seams to between 3/8 to 1/4 inches and then stitched down the center of each seam to help keep them open.  This was suggested in the pattern instructions.  I probably could have used a different method to construct these seams; yet this method assured a better fit.

I did not insert pockets, there is just too much going on with this fabric and I would not really use the pockets.

I turned up 1 1/4 inch hem at the bottom and after stitching that I trimmed the hem by about 3/4 inch all around to eliminate some of the bulk.  This faux leather is thick.

Here is a view of the back: 

Here is how the jacket looks when partially unzipped:

You can also see the zipper in the sleeve in the shot above also.  Having made a KS jean jacket with zipper in the sleeve, I prefer their method than this one as you have a placket behind the zipper; this one is stitched into the sleeve seam.

I will write a more formal review for PR soon.  I do recommend this pattern and will definitely consider making another non-faux anything for the next one.

Soon to see

I finally completed the jacket!!!!!!  I took some photos of it hanging with my iPad and just did not have time yesterday to post.  I will also take some photos of me wearing it. 

My DH saw it hanging yesterday afternoon and immediately commented on how well it turned out.  He had seen some work in progress and I could tell he had some concerns about the outcome. 

I am now ready to move on to some very instant gratifications projects.  More later.

New Fabrics

I posted previously that I purchased some new fabrics. 

This fabric is from EOS (EmmaOneSock) and is beautiful knit fabric with warm shades of brown, gray and some green. Sometimes photos just do not do justice to the fabric.  Another fabric purchase from EOS is this black, gray and white knit.  This was labeled as Chico's.  This also is from EOS in a green and brown mosaic/paisley design.  I also purchased black fabric but black is black so no photo.

The next two fabrics are from Marcy Tilton, my first purchase from her site.  One is gray ombre wool jersey, very thin.  The other is a ponte knit in green; it is a thinner fabric than I had anticipated but still nice enough.

I have plenty of visions dancing through my head of all the sewing I am going to do over the Christmas holidays/vaca. 

More later.

I'm dreaming of

sewing something else besides the Vogue faux leather jacket.  I am down to the last few areas to stitch. Then hem and trim those seams.  I only got about two hours of sewing time yesterday and I had a real challenge with sewing the collar and the facings to the jacket.  My sewing machine is getting tired of sewing this fabric!

Attaching the collar was actually a breeze; the collar pattern is drafted very well and all markings etc lined up as it was suppose to.  The challenge came with when sewing the facings to the neckline.  I am now sewing three, thick layers of fabric;  I am talking THICK fabric.  One issue was my needle by this time is dull and the thread kept breaking.  Changing the needle of course helped a lot, but we are still sewing thick fabric and the walking foot was not "walking" over the fabric well.   At this point I adjusted the presser foot presser which helped some.  Then I get to sewing over the shoulder seams which in those areas made the sewing even more a challenge.  All of this took about an hour.  By then I was tired and was rather late.  I decided to stop there until tomorrow.  I could feel myself getting flustered and likely to make more mistakes.

All I have left to do now is sew the facings down the front.  Make a lower back adjustment, hem the jacket with the machine and hem the sleeves, trim those seams.

All in all this has been a challenge to me and actually one that I have learned from.

I am so ready after this to tackle some knit tops, a few blouses and some more skirts.  I also want to make a cape.  I have some great fabric purchased over the past four years or so that would make up into a nice winter cape.  So I am dreaming of some new challenges and new clothes for the future.

I have vacation time coming up during the Christmas holidays and my sewing plans are ambitious ones.  I will get several complete I am sure.

In dreaming of some other sewing projects, I have burned up the Internet of late with some fabric purchases.  More show and tell later.  I am off to sew now.

More progress

I wanted the jacket to challenge me, particularly because I am sewing on faux leather.  Believe me this has been a bear of a challenge.  The fabric is thick to begin with and when sewing through two thicknesses it is rather difficult and sewing very slowly is the best way to handle this.

I have switched back and forth between walking foot, zipper foot and Teflon foot. The walking foot has been a huge success in sewing layers together.

I just completed inserting the sleeves which was the most difficult sewing thus far.  Photos to follow.

Start of the Holiday parties

After a very stressful week at work, the ending of the week has begun for me the start of various holiday parties.  My Rotary club kicked off the week with an event Thursday night, which because of work I was not able to attend.  Our agency had its annual meeting which became close to a four hour event.

Today I will be going to our annual ASG Holiday luncheon at a local country club.  I had truly hoped that I could complete my faux shearling jacket in time for the event; I realized Tuesday evening that I would not meet the deadline unless I spent time into the wee hours working on it.  Unfortunately I am way past the age when I could go to bed at 2 AM and get up at 5AM to get ready to work a full 9+ hour workday.  Accepting this reality, I will present my jacket at next month's show and tell.

The real fun for me with this event is the opportunity to enjoy time with people who love to sew, eat great food and have a genuinely good time.

I will say that my jacket is coming along nicely.  I have inserted the zippers into each sleeve.  I had to cut out another set of sleeves; fortunately I had enough fabric to do that!  In reading the reviews on PR it was noted that the sleeves ran small.  Based on the measurements on the pattern piece, I thought the size I cut would work nicely.  NOT!  If you wear say a heavier sweater under the jacket the sleeves will be very tight fitting and I believe uncomfortable.  I think some of the tightness also relates to the thickness of the fabric I am using, as faux shearling is thick.  Having to re-cut another set of sleeves created a slow down in the sewing momentum also.

I eliminated the back belt as it looked wide on me, rather bulky and unflattering.  I will adjust the back to fit closer through the various back seams.

Enough for now, have to go now to get ready for today's luncheon.  Later!

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who offered information on zipper sources.  I found some zippers on eBay from Zipperstop that hopefully will work out.  I also found zippers on SewTrue this afternoon and decided to order two from them also.  They should arrive this week and with my upcoming holiday/vacation next week I should be a go to make this jacket.

I have finished some hand sewing things I needed to do with the recent Butterick skirt.  I will plan to take some photos of me wearing the latest skirt.

After I complete the jacket I want to work on some tops and another skirt or two.  More updates later.

I've got a feeling, that today is going to be......

A good day for sewing. 

Last two weeks have been so hectic at work that I had a major melt down on Friday-at least major for me.  A good Appletini and nice dinner with DH (who also had a crazy week) helped reduce the stress I was feeling.  After a good night's rest on Friday and last night, I am back to feeling happy again.

I also have been very sewing motivated today.  Last night I cut out the fabric for my next skirt again using the Butterick pattern shown in the right side of this blog.  This AM, following my coffee break and blog/email reading, I began the sewing of the skirt.  Here are a few shots of my skirt in progress taken with my iPad camera app:

The pleather is a brown/black croc skin that I think I purchased when I lived in Florida over 12 years ago.  It was going to be a purse, but that never came to be.  The bottom front of the skirt is a brown polyester gabardine acquired from Sewing Studio several years ago, which I was going to attempt to make a pair of pants.  That did not happen either.  So today both have become part of a new skirt.

The pleather has not been difficult to sew and mostly I have sewn from the wrong side which is more of knit type backing. When I topstitched the pieces I switched to a Teflon coated foot and that worked very well.  I decided I wanted to line the skirt so I will work on that this afternoon.

My next challenge is going to be a jacket using faux Sherpa/shearling acquired recently from EmmaOneSock.  Our ASG Christmas party always has a fashion show and this year the show will be about jackets.  More on this later.

What next?

I completed the Butterick skirt this AM.  Decided that I needed to do some culling out of sewing debris and went through a huge bag of patterns in my sewing room that I will either sell or give to Goodwill.

I want to make this Butterick jacket, the view at the bottom right.  I have enough of the tobacco/camel wool fabric as well as the black.  I am thinking of making the sleeves in black and the rest in the other color.  I want to wear the jacket with the new skirt; but I am thinking that just may be too much color blocking together.  I think that doing that I could still use the jacket with other black pants or skirts. 

I would really appreciate your feedback about this. Is it to much color blocking? Please take a moment to comment.  Thanks.

It’s almost a skirt

I had an opportunity to try on the skirt this evening after work.  I added the lining and prior to doing that, I had taken deeper side seams on both the skirt and lining. I may let out the seams a little as I am seeing some puckers.  Those could be where I need to press the seams again or perhaps not.

I thought I would take a few photos of how the skirt will look when finished.  I need to sew the front and back facings together and then attach to the skirt.  Then hem the lining and the fabric.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made the decision to use a black exposed zipper.

I plan to make another skirt from this pattern but use one of the other views.  I think after that I will make some jackets.  Time for a new direction and a new sewing challenge.

Holiday weekend sewing

I finished Simplicity 2413!  Two new skirts thus far for fall/winter.

I have had this pattern forever and recently learned that it is OOP.  I saw a review on PR of this skirt and it looked lovely on the reviewer.  I decided it was time to pull this out of the stash and make it up.

The fabric I used was included in a fabric bundle from Fabric Mart.  This has been around in my stash for at least two years if not longer.  It was great to sew.  Not sure of the actual fabric content and it is a stretch woven.

This skirt was fairly easy to sew.  It does have some tedious sewing requirements such as numerous pleats that require accurate marking; a fold over facing again requiring accurate marking.  A side invisible zipper that needs to be stitch accurately because there is a side pocket as part of the seam for one side of the zipper.

It is not lined which is good again due to all the pleating and such.  The fabric I chose seems to work well for one that is not lined.

I marked the pleats with marking pencil but recognized that with the fold over facing, the markings were not going to be so visible unless I marked on the right side of the fabric.  I decided to baste stitch the pleating marks which worked out great.  In the end I had to take deeper pleats as the waist was a little to big.

I like the skirt, but it feels a little full.  The model’s version of the skirt on the pattern envelope does not look as full.  I was concerned about the horizontal stripes on the bottom skirt band.  When you are short that is not necessarily the best look as it can of widens and cuts you off.  But 2/3’s of the skirt is vertical stripes, so I decided it would be okay.

Here are photos of the completed skirt. The first one is the skirt on the hanger; there is sash hanging down the front.

Back view below:

I am holding the pleats in this view.

I like the pockets.

Fabrics from Waechter’s

I wanted to share with you my recent fabric purchases from my trip to Asheville and Waechter’s Fine Fabrics.

I had so many choices to make; their selection was great but I was on a budget so I had to leave some of my fabric wants behind.

I loved the fit of the Vogue 8750 skirt pattern that I decided to purchase a dark navy blue cotton bottom-weight fabric to make another skirt. 

I love the feel and weight of this fabric.

Displayed near by was some 100% rayon fabric.  One particularly caught my eye was a navy blue background with shoes printed all over.  I want to make a blouse/top to wear with the navy blue skirt to be.

This photo does not do this fabric justice.  The blue background is much darker than it appears here.

The fabric below is another rayon of crème, gray and blue.  Again to made into a top/blouse.

The final piece was a gray textured knit.  I am thinking cowl neck knit top for this one. 

Front view 2 V8750over exposed

Front view 2 V8750over exposed, a photo by Danvillegirl on Flickr.

Overexposed photo of skirt. I wanted you to see the paisley/floral overprint of the skirt onto the demin fabric. Fortunately I have more left and need to decide what it shoud become. This is from EOS. As posted previously I used what was possibly the wrong side but the right side for me.

Front view V8750

Front view V8750, a photo by Danvillegirl on Flickr.

I was having some issues with the camera. I had untucked my top and realized I needed to take a few more photos. So I turned the top under and took this with top untucked.

Sorbetto Top 2 and 3

I completed top 2 yesterday, late night.  This morning I cut out top 3 using fabric and lining from my stash.

Top 2 was a multi color striped fabric acquired from Jo Ann fabrics about a month or so ago.  It is a polyester crinkled fabric with very sheer stripes between colors with metallic thread running through it.  The lining I used was lining acquired from Fabric Mart and was included in a bundle package over a year or so ago.  I call it an oyster color as it matched the “oyster” color serger thread from Maxi Lock.

Here is the completed top 2

After attaching the lining and sewing side seams, I decided to edgestitch the neckline to keep the pleated area from rolling out.

I used the rolled hem setting on my serger to hem the top.

Top 3 is still a work in progress.  The fabric used was a yellow cotton eyelet from Fabric.com.  Acquired over two years or more ago.  I decided I wanted to use a contrasting color for the lining and chose a warm green lining fabric also from my stash.

The eyelet fabric has scalloped edges, so I wanted to use that edge at the hem line.

Top 3 has lining attached at the neckline and I had to stop there because DH says its dinner time!