Marimekko pants

I'll just start off by saying that I recognize these pants are a little insane. In my head these were going to be just a little funky and mostly fabulous, but as I got further and further into them I realized they were not quite what I intended. These are made from a fabric remnant I got at the Marimekko store while I was recently in Vancouver, and while I was sitting in the hotel room with the fabric draped over my lap, I thought -- pants! Printed pants are all over the place right now, and what could be better than Marimekko printed pants? The scale of the print is probably too big for pants, though, and the fact that I had a veeeerrry small piece of fabric and had essentially no choice about pattern placement also didn't help. Midway through sewing them, the SO started singing "Funky Pants" (to the tune of Funky Town) whenever I went to go work on them. The final shot to my confidence in the Marimekko pants project came when my sewing/running buddy affectionately told me that if I wore these to teach I would probably be known as Professor CrazyPants. There are probably worse things to be known for in academia, but suffice it to say I've decided these will probably remain weekend pants.

On the plus side, this is now the third pair of bottoms that I've sewn recently using my digital pants sloper, and the fit is really pretty good now. The first attempt I made at sewing something using that sloper was in a linen fabric that just stretched endlessly when I tried to sew it, and in my frustration with that project I never managed to get around to picking the sloper pattern back up again. Maybe one more pair of pants is in order, this time in a more sedate fabric!

Sorbetto top and a cheater FBA fitting method

Like many others on the internet, I was thrilled when Sarai and her team at Colette patterns released the free Sorbetto pattern a little while ago. The weather was finally warm in Montreal, the pattern looked quick and easy to sew, and it's easy on yardage so I could use up some of the one yard pieces I have in my stash. The finished product is very easy to wear (see how relaxed I look on my balcony up there?), but it did take some doing to get there.

The problems were entirely of my own making. Instead of doing a full bust adjustment, I cut a straight size 12 with the overly optimistic idea that it was just going to fit. Foolish, right? Every once in a while I do this, probably for a variety of reasons -- laziness, thinking that patterns drafted for a C cup might be just close enough, failure to think about what the pattern will look like on me and not the model, etc. In this case I think I saw the pattern being modeled by Sarai, and I thought to myself, "Her boobs look awesome in that top! Mine will look awesome too!" Of course, I'm forgetting here that I'm not Sarai (Shocking, right? She's an awesome pattern designer, I'm an awesome academic... it's easy to see how you could get us confused).

So, for those who are both full of bust and full of optimism and have cut yourself a size or two too large, here's a method for dealing with full bust fitting problems that I used to save this top. Keep in mind this is NOT a true FBA or a substitute for actual pattern alterations, this is more of a cheater method that can work on an already cut garment (I use this a lot on RTW clothes as well).

First, let's diagnose the problem:


On the left you see what the shirt looked like me on first fitting. This is a nice pattern to troubleshoot fitting problems because what you see after sewing up the side seams is pretty much what you're going to get -- the binding follows the raw edges of the top, so this is essentially what the shape will look like finished. As you can see, the straight size 12 on me is less than ideal everywhere other than the bust. The straps are towards the outer edges of my shoulders rather than being centered, I have a wrinkle at the neckline on my large boob side, I have a lot of gaping around the armhole (enough that it shows my bra from certain positions), and the fit overall is a little loose.

If you've ever wondered whether or not you need a FBA, the armhole is a great clue -- go try on one of your sleeveless ready-to-wear tops and see if you have a big wrinkle or gap there. It looks like the fabric wants to form a dart at the armhole, an indication that you need more shaping. This problem now drives me crazy on RTW tops, but before I started sewing I honestly barely noticed it. Having my bra peeking out at the armholes was just a fact of life, so I made sure to always have nice bras on. No more!

The main problem here is that the armholes and neckline are too large and don't have enough shaping, so we're going to solve that problem with some creative gathering. I started with the neckline because it's easier to fix -- you have a longer distance here and less gathering needed to make it fit. Plus, if you've followed the pattern instructions you already have your staystitching there that you can use for shaping. Just take one of the ends of the threads, and use it to gather the neckline very slightly until it lays nicely against your body. Smooth out the gathers as you go so that they are as evenly distributed as possible. You can see here that the shirt looks better already after I gathered the neckline -- it sits better on my shoulders, and I no longer have that neckline wrinkle (the gathering will create wrinkles as well, but these should be small enough that you can press them out in the end). I also took the shirt in by the side seams, leaving the hem at a size 12, tapering in to an 8 at the waist and back out to a 10 at the armholes.

For the armholes, you'll need to add a line of stitching to use for gathering. I bump the tension on my machine down and put the stitch length up to 4.0 or so to give nice, loopy stitches that are easy to gather with. To keep the gathering in place, I tie off one end of the row of gathering stitches so that it's anchored and doesn't move while you're pulling the other end.

You can see above here that I have a row of stitches just inside the seam line, and where it ends at the side seam I've tied it off. The top is open and ready to gather. Slip the shirt on, get in front of the mirror, and start pulling on one of those top threads until the armhole begins to flatten against your body.

On the left you can see me awkwardly trying to show you how to fit the shirt by pulling on the loose threads. It may be quite puckered, and you may have to find a happy medium between a fitted armhole and a wrinkled blouse. Remember, this is the cheater method so it's not going to get you to fit nirvana if you have lot of bust to deal with.

On the right you can see the difference between the two armholes. See how the one I've adjusted is sitting closer to the body, while the unadjusted one still pops away? When you get something that you're happy with, tie together the threads at the top. This keeps the armhole from loosening back up as you take the shirt off and handle it. You can also adjust the gathers a little bit more to smooth them out and make them more even once you have the shirt off of your body.

After you've finished sewing on the binding, you're going to need to give it a good press to make the binding lay down nicely and to try to smooth out any wrinkles caused by the gathering. If you have a forgiving fabric they might mush out entirely, and if you have a busy print they'll be less noticeable. You can see below I have a few puckers that I'll try to press out here.


Here's the finished product -- you can see now that my bra is totally covered at the sides, even with my arm raised in this rather unnatural position. The top still feels big through the shoulders, but that's just the way it's going to be since I cut the size 12. Hopefully this method will help some of you fix your gappy tank tops, but I hope even more that my impatience will be a cautionary tale. Fit first, or you'll be annoyed later!

Towards a personal blouse pattern

For a while now I've had the sewing goal of trying to work up a set of basic patterns that I can use for altering commercial patterns and drafting my own designs. I worked on this basic pencil skirt pattern a few months ago, and next up was figuring out a basic princess seam top.

I'm sure I'm not the first one to post this lament on the internetz, but as a short and reasonably busty woman button down shirts rarely-to-never fit me properly. Usually they're some combination of too tight/gappy at the bust, too big in the shoulders and too long in the arms. I've used various tricks to overcome these problems over the years, like rolling up the sleeves, wearing shirts partially unbuttoned over camis, or stitching down part of the front so that it can't gape. But, I think I have enough fitting knowledge now that I can actually make something that fits properly, and this is my first attempt at that.

This shirt is actually a remake of a shirt I made some time ago, one of my first blouse attempts:

I loved the idea, but the blouse suffered from a few issues that made it uncomfortable to wear, namely: too big in the shoulders and gaping neckline, not big enough in the waist so it was tight when I sat down, and I used crappy quality quilting cotton (terrible beginner's mistake, I know) which made it stiff. Despite all of the time spent carefully piping this bad boy, I gave it away when the SO and I moved in the summer.

This attempt is made from a bit of a frankenpattern, which combines the bodice of the JJ pattern, the sleeves of the Ute pattern, and a self-drafted collar. The first item of clothing that I ever made from a pattern was a JJ blouse, and looking back at it the fit was remarkably good for a first attempt (I still have that blouse, but I'm not sure I'm brave enough to post it on the internetz. It's also in quilting cotton!). I started with a 40 bodice and did a FBA, adding to both the side and front panel to try to get that seam right over the bust. Since the piping attracts a lot of attention to the seam line, I wanted to make sure I got the placement right. In retrospect, I wish I'd done armhole princess seams, because I think that the shape would have been even more flattering with the white piping.

I was originally planning to modify the Ute collar, but after fiddling with it I decided to just draft my own. I really wanted to make sure that this shirt would end up being work appropriate (i.e., not too low cut), and I just wasn't trusting that Burda neckline! Once again, this vintage sewing guide proved very helpful. The little trick about adding 1/8 inch to the neck seam to get a nice roll on the collar worked perfectly for me. Other finicky details: I made all of the piping by hand with 1/16 inch poly cord (it was pretty time consuming!) because I wanted a nice thin piping to go with the small dots, and to get practice in making piping for my next project. It's this kind of stuff that makes sewing go so slowly for me!

Here's some views from the side and back:












Looks pretty good from the side, I would say, but the fit does look a bit blousy in the back. In general the top feels pretty loose around the middle when I'm standing, but I was reluctant to take it in because it isn't all that loose when I'm sitting. My waist changes shape enough when I'm in a seated position that I think I have to deal with the extra room when standing in order to be comfortable sitting. I'll wear it to work for a day before giving the pattern a final verdict, just to see if it becomes uncomfortable at some point in the day. If you're stopping by and have any other fit suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

My own skirt sloper

I posted a picture of this skirt previously, but I thought it deserved its own post because I'm really pleased with the way it turned out! This skirt is drafted from my own skirt sloper. The idea of making personalized slopers and working from them for modifying or drafting new patterns makes so much sense, but I've never managed to get around to making them. I thought that I might be more motivated to make a sloper if I could use it to use something right away, like this simple pencil skirt. It's basically a sloper with a back vent and waistband!

For the base of this pattern, I started with a pencil skirt pattern from an old Burda magazine and started fitting from there. This vintage guide was really helpful for fitting the pattern, although a warning that it has a lot of frustrating body shaming language sprinkled throughout. If you have sanity watcher's points to spare, though, it's really helpful. My fit problems were similar to the problems shown in Fig 3/4 -- my butt tends to lift up the back of skirts so that the back is shorter than the front. Usually I just deal with this by shortening the hem at the front, but this time I tried shortening at the waistband. You can see on the houndstooth pattern here that the waistband now dips down slightly at the center front:

The advantage of doing it this way is that it makes the front of the skirt smoother because it hangs flat from the waist, rather than being pulled by the back by my butt. I also eliminated the front darts because they just dig into my stomach at the front (one of my major annoyances about RTW skirts), and then deepened the darts at the back for a better curve over the butt:

You can see that I still have a bit of a weird divet thing than happens at my hip. I'm not sure how to fix that. I always end up with a little pooch of fabric there right underneath my hip bone where my hip actually curves in before it goes out again at the thigh. I pinched a bit of fabric out at the seam there but it still looks weird in certain stances. But I think the problems here are fairly minor -- all in all this skirt is really comfy to wear and I think it looks good, too!

I'll leave you with a few pictures of the inside finishings of the skirt. I get so anal about seam finishes and all then no one ever sees it but me (well, my SO does, but he doesn't always know what he's supposed to be appreciating!).

The houndstooth was a little ravely, so I finished it off with hong kong seams on the inside. It's time consuming, but since there are only a few seam to finish here it wasn't such a big deal. I also hand stitched the hem so it would be super duper invisible. Figuring out what to do with the lining at the back vent had me stumped at first, but fortunately The Cupcake Goddess has a great tutorial on how to address just this problem. With the lining and the seam finishes, I hope this skirt will hold up for many years of wear!

Self-drafted chiffon dress

It's starting to take shape! After draping, drafting, muslining and cutting, my chiffon dress is finally starting to look like a dress that I can try on, and I'm starting to feel a bit less paranoid that I may have just killed my gorgeous chiffon. See, it's actually looking pretty good!

The lighting in this picture is terrible and doesn't do the fabric justice, but you can see that the fitting is coming along nicely. I messed around with the gathers on the top tonight trying to get them just so -- I had a weird poufing thing going on over one boob. While one side turned out exactly the size I drafted it, the other inexplicably grew during sewing. Go figure. A little extra cutting and tucking and now it's looking better.

I was hoping to be able to get away with wearing a nude colored bra under the top, but unfortunately the chiffon is a bit too sheer for that. I tried on a tank top under the dress, but that's really not a good solution. The tank top pushes the center of the dress away from my chest, which really distorts the lines of the dress. So, I'm going to have to come up with some other way to line the dress. Probably I'll try drafting some triangle-shaped cups out of the black batiste lining fabric and see if that looks good.

Really though, these are minor problems to be worked out when compared with the major triumph that is a deep V dress that doesn't gape in the front or only cover half of my boobs. Seriously! I have never had a top that fits me this well, and I'm psyched. More to come soon!

Fabric Mart feeds my chiffon obsession

I was browsing around the sewing blogosphere a few weeks ago and happened on a post (not even sure where now) about someone's recent fabric haul from Fabric Mart. I think I've been to a Fabric Mart in real life and was not terribly impressed with it, but I clicked along anyway and was really, really pleasantly surprised. They had a bunch of designer fabrics (including the Vera Wang chiffon that I made my Chantilly dress from), and a beautiful selection of couture silks. This one caught my eye immediately:

I can't even tell you how psyched I was to find this! I love prints in bright, rich colors but I'm getting a bit tired of flowers, and I was really excited to find a print that was a bit more abstract. It's even more beautiful in person, and now I'm currently obsessing over ways to sew it up.

I think I'm going to try making the BurdaStyle Jenny dress, or rather something inspired by it:

The flowy top would be perfect for this silk chiffon. The only problem with this pattern is the deep V neck. Deep Vs do look good on me, but they're such a hard fit when you have ample cleavage. I asked about this when the pattern was posted and got some helpful tips from people on the forum, but in the end I figured that it would probably be as much work (if not more) to alter the existing pattern piece than it would be to just make it myself. I'm already planning on changing the skirt to a bias cut A line anyway, so really it makes sense to just try drafting it myself from scratch.

I've already started on drafting the top (no pictures yet, though). Basically I took a piece of very lightweight cotton and draped it on myself, pinning it at the shoulder seam and just under the bust. Then I gathered enough fabric to cover my breast, and then marked where the side seam and shoulder seam fell by just drawing on the fabric. I used that to draft two pattern pieces for the back and the front, and then made a muslin to test it out. The armholes ended up much too small (totally fixable, though), but the fit in the bust is great! I hope hope hope I actually have enough chiffon to make this dress now (I had a blouse in mind when buying it so I only got 1.5 yards, although it is wide). But, if not, I'll have a deep V pattern that (for the first time ever) actually covers my breasts. Are you excited? I sure am!

Custom fitted pants, the finished product

Okay, my custom fitted pants are finally complete! Are you ready for the virtual fashion show?

These pictures were taken just moments after I finished sewing the buttons on, so you'll have to excuse the unpressed hems and other weird wrinkles.

Okay, impressions. Despite my frustrations with how these were turning out halfway through, I think they look great in the end. They hang very smoothly from my body and have a very easy fitting shape, and I lowered the waistline to just where I like it so it's very comfy. I did find that on my first wearing out that the silk lining was not exactly the best choice, though. I don't know if I needed to make an ease pleat or reinforce it a bit more or what, but I did actually rip some of the stitches in the lining a bit when I sat down quickly and they must have pulled in some weird way.

I learned some interesting things about fitting my body from this experiment. For example, one of the things that I noticed when I was making the pattern pieces is that the back waistband was very curved, while the front pieces were almost flat. This makes a lot of sense if you look at me from the side, since I'm kind of straight up and down around the middle in the front and sloping in the back. This will be good knowledge to have for future pattern alterations, and I can think of a few patterns that I made that had pieces that were too straight (and therefore gappy at the back) or pieces that were too curved (and therefore dug into my waist at the front). Drafting my own pattern from a block was also incredibly fun, and really encourages me to make a bodice block. Oh, the cool blouses that I could make then! I did make a few errors when drafting my pieces, but obviously nothing bad enough to keep these from turning into pants at the end of the day.

My main problems with this project were really related to the linen. I'm a bit bummed out at how baggy these pants are after wearing them around for a day, even after my reducing and interfacing and twill taping. These are not supposed to be close fitting pants, they're designed to be comfy in a fabric with no ease, and so maybe linen was just a bad choice for a first go. They'll be very nice for a loose fitting spring pant, but they're just not quite what I had in mind. I think I'll have to make these up again in a non-stretch fabric that will be more stable, and that will give a better indication of whether or not these are truly the perfect pants. Oddly I've had two pairs of pants self destruct this week, so maybe that's the pants gods' way of telling me I should try again. Maybe a brown twill?

Custom fitted pants, take one

After slowly but surely turning my custom fitted pants sloper into an actual pants pattern, I sat down tonight to start cutting and sewing. My SO is still away in Germany, so I had the evening and the house to myself to sew. Whee! I tried to really take my time on these pants and go slowly and carefully, making everything as neat and professional as possible. Behold the loveliness of this single welt pocket.


And my fly front zipper, inserted with the Sandra Betzina method (this is an awesome video and makes putting in the zipper much easier than I would have ever imagined). I don't mean to toot my own horn here, but it's looking pretty good, eh? I'm quite proud of how these are turning out so far.

After I put in the zipper, I went to pop these on for a quick try on in the mirror, and was horrified to find that they're HUGE. Like, falling off, inches too big huge. I was seriously not expecting that, since I know that these pants fit me after having tried on several muslins for the research project already. Arg.

I've come to the conclusion that it's probably the linen. I've heard that linen "grows," I just didn't think that it could grow this much. I compared the pants to one piece of the original pattern, and they're probably more than an inch bigger just in one piece!

I'm trying not to be too bummed about this, because I think it is fixable if I can manage to keep myself from getting too discouraged to do the work it will take to rehab them. For starters, I reduced the size of the waistband and used some of my newly acquired twill tape to make sure it doesn't stretch out.

I was planning on putting some twill tape in here anyway, but I decided to put in two rows for good measure. Next I think I'll have to go back and try to take in the pants by a few inches at the sides. That makes me so sad, because I did a really meticulous job on finishing the seams and now I'll just have to slice it off. Such is life, I guess. Hopefully it will all be worth it in the end!

Rooibos fitting

I've been rewarding myself with some sewing time this week after a tremendous push to get some stuff done last week, and as a result I've been able to finish my Rooibos muslin! I decided to make a "wearable muslin," because the idea of using all that fabric only to later wad it up and chuck it annoys me. What do people do with their muslins when they're done? Make rag rugs? I don't know. I'm not exactly the most eco friendly dresser what with my penchant for buying new fabric and all, but I still can't get behind the idea of making something that I know I'm going to throw away.

I opted to make a muslin using a combo of things that I had in my stash (the bird fabric from Ikea) and $3/yard black broadcloth from Fabric.com. At least this way I'll probably get some wear out of it instead of just chucking it at the end of the day.

So, fitting. I'm really glad I did a muslin of this first, because I definitely had some fit issues here. First, the body ended up being too big for me. I cut a 12 and ended up taking it in by 1 inch on each side, so I figure that means that I probably should have cut a 10 and will do so for the final version. Even with 2 inches out, it's still plenty roomy enough to not be clingy. So yeah, I think we're good there.

The top on the other hand, now that's a whole different story. Looks cute enough when I'm just standing there, right? But it's really too big. This is definitely obvious from the back, where you can see I've got some gaping and some off the shoulder issues going on.

From the sides, it's even more obvious that something just isn't quite right. One side looks not too bad, but the other side (my right, the left photo on here since I'm taking this in a mirror) has some major gap problems. You can see my bra when I'm just standing here hanging out, let alone when I'm actually moving around. You can also see in the right photo that the neckline jumps away from my body a bit in the front, although not as badly as in the back. Big siiigh there. These fit problems are exacerbated a bit by the fact that I probably used a little bit too much interfacing here and so the fabric isn't conforming to my body so well, but the issues remain.

























I would say that all signs point to this top needing a full bust alteration. I was hoping that I would be able to get away with not doing an FBA in this pattern, since Colette patterns are supposed to be drafted for a C cup and can fit a D cup. Now to be fair, I'm a D or a DD depending on how you measure, so maybe I was pushing it a bit, especially in such a fitted pattern. I think I'm going to try to start with the size 8 pattern piece and alter that one. Now, here's a really radical idea -- I think I'm going to try to do a two sided FBA, meaning that instead of adding 1.5 inches to each side, I'll add 1 inch to the left boob and 2 inches to the right, to compensate for the fact that I'm a cup size larger on one side. I'm not sure how well this will work. It could end up just drawing attention to my lopsidedness, but I *think* that it's actually going to work out well. We'll see. Obviously more muslins will be in order (although I'll just make up the bodice this time).

For the back, I think the sensible thing to do is just take a little tuck out to bring the shoulders closer together. Unfortunately sizing down in the bodice won't help this problem, since the size 8 shoulders are pretty much the same as the 12. Normally I would applaud this since it means that the pattern maker recognizes that just because you have a big bust you don't also have football player shoulders. In this case it's working against me, though. Fortunately I think it's an easy fix. I tried tucking some of the extra fabric out just quickly with some pins, and it looks much better. This pic has about an inch at the top tucked out.

Since this piece is cut on the fold, I'll just angle it a little bit to get rid of that extra fabric, and le voila! Hopefully it will all work well.

I also started cutting out my Beignet skirt this weekend, and I'm already done the lining and the facing. Woot!

I am the statistically average woman

As I found out today in my fitting for the custom fitted pants project, I am the statistically average woman. As it turns out, I am the height of the average North American woman (162 cm) and have almost exactly the average hip to waist ratio for "body group 2," which is the average body group for this study (a butt which is neither flat nor prominent). So, I am the average of the averages! Who would have thought? You'd think that if I was so ridiculously average I would be able to find reams of nice-fitting pants. In fairness, I have an easier time finding pants that fit than shirts that fit, because my bust size is definitely (ahem) above average.

I tried on my pants muslin today, and my friendly local pants-fitting grad student marked off the areas where it needed adjusting. She had me try them standing, sitting, and walking -- when I first tried them on I thought that they were much too big, but with a non-stretch fabric you definitely need some extra bagginess for sitting in comfort. I often forget this when I'm adjusting stuff myself, and then it looks awesome in the mirror but is uncomfortable to actually wear all day. Note to self -- try stuff on while sitting down in the future, unless I'm only planning on walking around and looking cute all day. I can't wait to get the final pattern so that I can make myself a pair of pants!

I'm going to get a custom pants pattern!

Just got an email back from the 3D body scan study saying that I've been selected to be a fit model for this pants project. Not much else to report until I go in for my fitting next week, but I wanted to share my excitement. Behold, the coolness of the virtual try-on machine:

I get to keep the pattern for the pants sloper, so now I just need to make a bodice sloper and I'm golden!

First day of school dress will have to wait

Did you ever get to buy a new outfit for the first day of school when you were a kid? I loved doing this (along with buying new school supplies in September). I thought I would make myself a back to school dress for this semester, but unfortunately the dress looks like it's not going to make it in time for the bell.

I started working on this pattern, using some plaid fabric that I got from fabric.com:


The plaid doesn't have one inch stripes, but I figured that this wasn't really essential, as long as I took out tucks big enough to reduce the waist area by 50%. After reading up about the pattern on patternreview.com, though, it seemed like a lot of people were having trouble with the waist ending up a bit smaller than planned. Taking out just a little extra to make sure that the white squares are tucked out adds up, and people were suggesting to size up by one or two sizes to make sure that it didn't end up being too snug. I thought I could solve this problem by simply taking out a bit less than half on each tuck, thereby ensuring I'd have a roomier waist. Well, it turns out that the problem is just as annoying in the reverse.

Do I look unhappy here? Yeah, that's because the waist of my dress is now 40 inches, instead of the 34 inches that the pattern promised. I could go back and make each tuck a little deeper, but that sounds so unappealing after carefully sewing each of these 60 tucks or so to make sure that the plaids lined up. I think instead I'm going to just try to reduce the dress at the side seams, which will also make the shoulders a little less droopy (I'm not sure how these ended up so big on me as well. WTF?).

The bigger problem is, of course, that I now have no dress to wear for the first day of school :) What to do, what to do?