Back home!

For all of you who celebrated Thanksgiving, I hope you enjoyed that time.  DH and I traveled to our hometown of Danville, VA to visit DH's sister and her immediate family members.  We also got to visit with some longtime friends as well.  It was a very great visit and it is always nice that as longtime friends, you can pick up the conversation from where you last left off, even if it was a few months or a couple of years ago.

No sewing during this holiday.  I am now ready to get back to sewing some clothes for fall/winter.  I just need to decide which ones.

I did take advantage of Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals.  I purchased this new book on Amazon from Named patterns. ( I am an Amazon Affiliate and there is a link in the left column to order yours.  If you do, I may receive a commission. Being transparent here.)

The book includes several patterns uniquely packaged at the back of the book.

I have not had time to really look through the book.  It was delivered yesterday and hope to look at it more this evening.

Off to pull patterns and fabrics.  More later!

Vogue 1522

I just finished V1522 a designer pattern by Isaac Mizrahi.  I bought this pattern in 2016.  This was to be my second entry in the Pattern Stash contest on PR.  I knew that I had to chance of winning by making the most garments from patterns in my stash purchased prior to 4/2018.  So I did not knock myself out to complete this top by the deadline.

This was an easy pattern to make.  I did not follow the instructions all the way but did review them as I went along.

Some differences were how I did the binding for the neckline as well as completing doing the sleeves differently.  Instead of using the fabric for binding the neckline, though I did cut out the fabric to do so; I used bias tape instead.

My reason for doing so is that the bias fabric neckband was much longer than the circumference of the neckline.  I seem to have that issue with a lot of patterns for woven necklines.  I could have fixed this but decided to use bias binding that would be easy peasy to sew and finish the neckline.

The sleeve flounce is a single layer with a tiny hem and I decided to cut four flounce pieces and have the flounce encased so wrong side would not show.  I also used a sleeve lining method I learned many years ago from Nancy Zieman.  You can see the underside of the flounce below:

I plan to do another post detailing this technique.

After returning from grocery shopping, I was able to set up tripod and camera to take some shots of the top.

I like the fit of the top and had to make some fitting adjustments.  I narrowed the shoulder by 3/8 inch and used a size small for that area.  I added 1 1/2 inches to the bust and kept the dart that was created.  It is difficult to see with this busy print. I made 5/8 swayback adjustment and shortened the sleeves by one inch.

I have sewn other designer patterns that were very difficult and this was not at all.  A beginner I think could easily tackle sewing this top.

I will make another version another time.  Now I want to focus on sewing a couple of cardis and cold weather tops!

More later.

Pattern Reviews 12 Days of Thanksgiving

For a few years now, Pattern Review conducts a 12 Days of Thanksgiving.  This is a time when you can thank various reviewers for what they have provided to you and other sewists by posting on the PR Blog.  I was so thrilled when it was announced that I was the Day 1 Winner!

And even more exciting was that I won fabric from Emma One Sock!!!!!
I just received the fabric yesterday and was so excited to see what Linda Podietz selected for the winner. Of course, if you have purchased fabric from EOS you know that it is top quality and always packaged and shipped promptly.

I was thrilled with the selection, 2 yards of rayon knit!!!

I just had to share this with my sewing friends!

Comments

Once again I find that I will have to initiate comment moderating.  With my last posting, someone left five comments in a language I do not understand nor can read.  It appeared to me to be the same comment over and over. I know that I do not know this person.

I truly appreciate your comments and do try to respond to them most of the time pretty quickly.  This requires me to take more steps; nonetheless, I am willing to do so to keep my blog somewhat protected.

I have to hem my top that I am working on and will share some photos soon. Thanks for stopping by and I will update the results of this new top shortly.

Progress

I am currently sewing V1522, Isacc Mizrahi designer pattern.  I am making the top.

It has been a fairly easy top to sew, though I am deviating from some of the steps at the neckline and the sleeves.  I will share more about this later.

The fabric I am using is rayon challis from Fabric Mart purchased in 2015.

I found it very difficult to mark the dart on the wrong side of the fabric.  Perhaps because this is a busy print, the wax tracing paper, no matter the color, would hardly show up.  I finally got the darts marked with clipping and marking an endpoint for the dart with marking pen.  The other challenge was to make sure the darts were in the right place on both sides.  I forget that rayon challis can be a slippery fabric to work with.  I prevailed.

The dart is a result of needing an FBA of 1.5 inches.  I am very close to finishing this top; hopefully today.  I have a lot of things on my To Do list for today.

The weather has turned dreary, cooler and wet.  This is getting me in the mood to make a cardigan.  I have several I want to try. More updates will follow.

Is it just me?

This is a quick post.  Lately, when I visit the McCall's/Butterick/Vogue website it takes forever for pages to load.  This just started in the past month or so.  I thought it was my computer.  I did a speed test and that proved that it was not my computer.

I cleaned out my "cookies" and optimize my computer and still have issues.  I was just wondering if others are experiencing this.  I sent an email to McCall's yesterday and have not had a response.  I also saw on their site that some of the McCall's patterns were not listed at $3.99 per their sale notice.  I actually want to buy a couple of patterns.

I appreciate your feedback.  I have not tried it today yet and will later. Right now I am getting ready to make breakfast.  Look forward to your comments.

Wearing the Austin Tee

I truly love this pattern!  I am not sure why I waited so long to try it. Now that I have, there will be more.

I purchased this pattern in 2017.  I liked the look of the tee and the variations offered.   Because of the Pattern Stash contest on Pattern Review, I was motivated to try it.  So glad I did.

It is a well-drafted pattern.  The challenge for me was what size to use.  I am so used to indie patterns running large on me in the upper chest area, so I started with a medium.  After pin fitting this, I knew it was going to be too small.  The instructions say to decide your size based on upper bust measurement, which put me in a large. Again I thought that would be too large as I normally go with medium or 12/14 in Big 4.  Come to find out that it was the right size.

I made a 1 1/2 inch FBA and tried a different method that I normally do which did not work so well and made the shoulder width to wide.  So I retraced the front pattern piece and used my usual method.   Other adjustments were swayback and trimming the armscye area to a medium.  I also added length to the tie piece as sometimes they are too short.  I think I may have overdone this.

The tie is shown in the middle of the top and instructions say to put it where you want it, so I moved it more to the side than keeping in the front, maybe next time I will put it there.

My only tweak to the finished pattern is that I will shave off about 3/8 to 1/2 inch on the shoulder width next time.

Without further ado, pictures of me wearing this with shorts yesterday.  Our temperatures were in the upper 70's again, perfect for voting weather. I ended up not wearing the top as the long sleeves would have been to warm for me yesterday.

The fabric is so soft and buttery.  Washes great and no pilling. 

Next up is a Vogue 1522; I am making the top from this pattern.

Austin Tee

I completed the Blank Slate Pattern-Austin Tee.  I am very impressed with the drafting of this pattern as well as the instructions.  I did not use the Simply By Ti fabric that I had originally planned to use. I decided to use this fabric from Cali Fabrics.

I love the quality of this fabric and how it feels.  I previously used it for this project.

Since I had not tried this pattern or any other Blank Slate patterns ( I own several), I was unsure of the measurement information.  After taping the pieces together and tracing a too small pattern, I retraced the large size and achieved a great fit.  Pictures wearing will follow in another post. I decided that if this did not work out well, then I had already gotten my money's worth using this fabric from stash.

As I stated earlier, this is a well-drafted pattern with very good instructions.  I will make another one in the future. Here is a quick view of the top and the top tie.

I will post pictures of me wearing and provide more details later.

Back on Track for sewing some indie patterns.

Prior to the pant journey, I was going to sew some indie patterns, particularly for the Sew a Garment a Month group.  The theme was to sew 3. Three of anything, blouses/tops/pants/etc.  My plan was to sew three indie patterns. 

Today I taped all the pieces together for the Blank Slate Pattern Austin T.  I have had this pattern since 2017 and there was an update in March that I added. I am sewing the front without the center front seam and adding the tie in the front.  I see many tops with a tie on various websites such as Nordstrom and Macy's and this pattern was perfect for this.

The fabric I am using is a recent purchase from Simply By Ti. (I am not an affiliate). 

This is a weighty rayon knit. It is a black background with peach and coral flowers.  It has a good recovery and a nice stretch for this pattern.

I will update you on the progress of this new to me pattern.

The Journey has Ended!

I am done with my pant project.  I mostly enjoyed the journey and decided this can end now.  The pants are not perfect and from the photos that follow I, as well as you, may also see where some more tweaks can/should/would be made.

I compared the final results to my side zipped Talbot's pants with some surprising similarities and some differences.  The back waistband matched the back waist of the Talbot pants. The front waistband on the sewn pants was about 3/4 inch longer. The crotch length was fairly spot on for both the front and back.  The major difference was the fullness of the legs, especially at the thigh area. The hip on sewn pants was still curvy compared to Talbot's and I trimmed that section down several times.

Here are the final results.  I have not hemmed the pants but did pin them to the length I would wear them. 

This is the front with side zipper. Still some excess fabric near crotch on the left when viewing the picture which is my right side.

This is the side view

This is the back view

I like the back style of these pants.  There is a side back and back piece that is sewn and mine lined up well running from waist to hem.  I took up this section at least three times. There is still some bagginess under the bum.  I am okay with this.  I have some of this with RTW also.

This is how the pants look with top out which is how I mainly wear pants and tops.

I still need to hem them and may wear them around the house.

Here are some of my takeaways from sewing these pants.

• When you make one tweak, you may have to make two more tweaks somewhere else.
• It would be nice to take a pant fitting class with other sewists who can help you see what works and what is not working well.
• I took a lot of pictures to get a better idea of how the pants were fitting.
• Using the Palmer/Pletsch Pants for Real People book as well as the Craftsy class by Melissa Watson helped. 
• Watched other pant fitting videos and learned that how one sewist fixes an issue may not be how another would do it.
• I should have gone a size smaller from the beginning.  Using the information provided about being between sizes and if you are more mature and/or have a flat bottom you may want to go up a size.  My bottom is lower and flatter than it was when younger, yet I had to take in up to almost two inches in some areas because I sized up instead of my normal size for my hips which is between 14-16.
• I still am confused about crotch length and crotch depth and need to have more knowledge about which I should adjust. 
• Just because I have sewn for many, many years does not mean that because of that I should want to sew pants.  Now that I have made the best fitting pants ever for me, I really still do not want to sew pants.  
• I may still sew some shorts in the future when it is spring again.
• I rather sew dresses, tops, jackets, and skirts.  I have sewn these for many years and know what tweaks, changes I need to make.  Results are normally good.

Time to move on and make some knit tops as the weather has gotten cooler; many of my tops have been in the wardrobe for a few years now. Some are wearing out or I am just tired of wearing them.

Thanks to all that commented on my pant sewing journey, it truly helped me to keep going with this project.

Pants and Pattern Stash

I have tried on and taken off, made some adjustments, undone some adjustments, and tried some other adjustments with my pants fitting.  I have made my last adjustments and will attempt to actually sew with these final pant adjustments.  I have made so many adjustments and noted many and then lost track of some. 

This has been an amazing adventure. I think my final version will be the best I can do with this particular pattern.  Will I attempt to make another pair of pants? Perhaps but probably not this pattern.  Having said that, one real issue with this pant pattern is not choosing the right size and the need to better understand crotch depth and length.  I have more to learn.  I will take a break from pants and plan to sew some tops for the upcoming cooler weather.

DH and I have other plans for tomorrow and hopefully will be able to finish the pants, take pictures and write a final blog post about these pants by midweek.  I am soooooo ready to be done with this!!!!

P.S. I continue to reduce my pattern stash; I would have to be reincarnated to sew up all the patterns in the current stash.  I have given away a lot of patterns before and after moving.  I decided to sell some patterns on eBay and am selling cheap.  Below is a list of the few patterns I have posted on eBay.  Just click on the link if you are interested.

Simplicity 1017 Amazing Fit, Wide Leg Pants

Collette Parfait Dress

Butterick 5997 Loose-Fitting Tops

Butterick 6419 Semi-fitted Blouse