The four horsemen of the stashpocalypse

Sarai wrote a very thoughtful a post on the Colette Patterns blog the other day about balancing a compulsive sewing habit with an equally strong desire not to hoard and over-consume. This post really struck a chord with me because I've been on a fabric buying lockdown all year in an effort to reduce my stash. When I moved up to Montreal in January it became embarrassingly apparent just how much fabric I've been hoarding -- I packed up a massive tupperware bin of fabric to take with me, and I still have more at our apartment in Ithaca. And I'm clearly not the only one with this problem, as evidenced by the response to Sarai's post.

Reading everyone's comments about hoarding control mechanisms made me think about why exactly it is that I do this. Some of the reasons are not so bad, perhaps: I buy fabric because I love nice fabric, and it's fun to stop in the garment district when I'm passing through NYC or traveling somewhere else and buy a few fabric souvenirs. But I also have a well-documented tendency to take on too many projects that I never get around to doing (and to be fair, I've had very little time to sew for the last six months so my backlog is worse than usual).

Inspired by all the talk of de-stashing, I pre-treated a bunch of fabrics tonight that I would like to sew with soon. As I was folding them, it occurred to me that each of these fabrics represents a different problem that keeps me from actually using the fabric I have stored up.

1) A purple rayon print from Japan. I bought this fabric as a souvenir and because I loved the print, but inspiration has yet to strike on this one. Every time I look at it, I just can't picture what kind of top it wants to be. I'm actually not so worried about this anti-stashing issue, because I think the moment will come for this fabric eventually.

2) A cotton double gauze, also from Japan. This fabric falls into the category of fabrics that I would be heartbroken if I screwed up. This piece was expensive enough and I love the print, and so even though I'm dying to make something out of this and wear it around I keep avoiding it in case the thing that I make doesn't turn out well. I would hate to make a dress out of this that ended up in the back of my closet.

3) Shirting from Paron Annex. This is one of several fabrics in my stash that I avoid because I feel like my technical skills are not quite up to the task of making what I envision. In this case it's not that the cotton shirting itself is hard to work with, but I fear that the button down shirt that I plan on making might be above my skill level. I could make a tester shirt out of a cheaper fabric to practice shirtmaking techniques, but I hate sewing stuff out of crappy fabric that I'm not really excited about (catch 22, anyone?)

4) Lightweight cotton from Quilter's Corner in Ithaca. Here I have exactly the opposite problem from fabric number one: I have way too many ideas of what to do with this fabric. I've mentally drafted four or five different summer shirts with this fabric in mind, but all that inspiration makes me indecisive. If I lock in one plan, I kill off all the other possibilities!

So there's my four horsemen of the stashpocalypse. Of all these, I've decided that the least tenable reason not to sew is number three -- there's no reason to not make something (or to buy cheap fabric and make something I don't love) just because I'm afraid my skills aren't up to it, especially when the fabric wasn't insanely expensive, I have lots of it, and more cotton shirting can easily be found elsewhere. Classic button down shirt, here I come!

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!

Bowtie blouse

My sewing mojo has still been a bit low lately despite the fact that I do have time in the evenings (and even a nice little room to sew in!), so I decided to try to kick start myself by sewing a simple, gratifying project. I often have a habit of making overly complicated things that take forever, and this bowtie blouse seemed simple enough.

Actually, this project turned out to be a bit of a headache due to some bad decisions on my part and some issues with the pattern. The fabric I was using was a remnant from Sew Green, an awesome store that sells vintage/recycled fabric at very little cost (I'm pretty sure this piece was part of seven bucks for all you can fit into a grocery bag haul from one of their sidewalk sales). The piece seemed pretty big so I just started hacking into it, but my lack of prior planning came back to bite me in the end. I was forced to make the blouse a little bit shorter just so I could squeeze it out, and now I have a bunch of oddly shaped scraps instead of useable leftovers. Not very green of me!

The other issues I had were with the pattern. The pattern is from an old-ish (2003 or so?) issue of Burda magazine. This being Burda I knew that the little keyhole neckline was likely going to be quite low, so I raised it by more than an inch when I was tracing out the pattern. Even with that modification, it's still low. I had intended this to be a work-appropriate shirt when paired with some navy slacks (like so), but it's really a bit too low cut for me to get away with that. The fit of the shirt was also quite blousy, so I had to add some front and back darts to keep it from just hanging straight down from my boobs. I think those modifications worked pretty well; it's still blousy enough to be comfortable but definitely has some shape.

One thing that turned out really well with this project was the seam finishings. I used a whole bunch of different techniques in here -- french seams on the side seams, flat felled seams on the armholes (it was a little tricky to do, but looks sweet!), and I took some extra time to fiddle around with a few different stitches for finishing off the facing. In the end, I went with a zigzag stitch around the edge of the facing, which I then trimmed, turned under, and straight stitched over top to hold it in place. The result, I think, is pretty neat looking. Normally facings are so floppy and ugly that I avoid them, but in this case I'm proud enough of the finished result to post a picture of my facing. Voila!

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!

Lazy (but tasty) saturday morning

While I was finishing up my dissertation, I thought that as soon as I was free from the pain of daily writing and revisions I would be back at my sewing machine as soon as I defended, cranking out all the projects that I had been dreaming about but had no time to actually do. And now that I actually am finished, I find that all I want to do is make a nice G&T and watch some bad TV in the evenings. Normally I have to actively restrain myself from rushing through sewing projects, and now about one step an evening seems like quite enough work. On thursday I traced out the pieces for the new blouse that I'm making, last night I sewed the sleeves (yep, that's it!) and today I may or may not actually get around to fitting the bodice. At this pace it's going to take me approximately forever to get through my mental project backlog, but I don't want sewing to start to feel like a job rather than a hobby.

So what did I do this morning instead of fitting that bodice? Well, I made a super duper fantastic latte. A while back, a friend of mine was kind enough to give the SO and me a home espresso machine (this one here). It looks simple enough, but it's actually a pretty complicated little beastie and it took us a while to figure out how to produce good espresso with it. I took it with me when I moved to Montreal, and since arriving here my coffee has been terrible. Watery, sad coffee, making for a sad morning Biketopus. It's like the machine was protesting its relocation to Canada. I finally figured out that it was probably due to the grind of the coffee (the grinder stayed in Ithaca with my SO, so I've been using pre-ground). And after buying some new coffee at a finer grind, behold:

I seem to have my coffee making mojo back! In addition to actually being able to pull a decent shot, I'm also getting better at frothing the milk. This is obviously not perfectly "micro-foam"y, but it's close enough that I could make a pretty swirl/dot picture. It's not quite the amazing leaf and heart patterns that you get at gimme!, but I'm pretty pleased with it nonetheless.

I had just enough morning motivation to make some banana bread, too (using the Veganomicon recipe). Nom, nom. Now off to watch bad TV and be lazy!

Long time no sew

Well, no sooner did I write that last post promising my imminent return to regular blogging than my life was shaken up rather dramatically! After a rather disheartening few months on the job market last year, I had finally made peace with the idea of spending another year in Ithaca (and in grad school) when I got a job offer in September. The job was fantastic but required me to be able to start in January, so I kicked it into high gear and started putting the pieces of my dissertation together to get ready to graduate.

Between writing, revising, preparing to move and other things, I had basically no time for any of my usual hobbies. I did manage to make a few things in the precious few days off that I had, like this houndstooth skirt:

After sending the full draft of my dissertation to my committee, I headed straight to the sewing machine and whipped this skirt up while I was waiting for their feedback. I wore it to one of my defenses (yep, that's right, our department has multiple exams!).

I intended to make a new skirt to wear to the final defense as well, but unfortunately I was too exhausted by that point to make it all come together. Even though I didn't have a snazzy new outfit, I got the most important job done: I passed! You can now call me Dr. Biketopus :)

The other big news is that my SO and I got married in a lovely, low key ceremony in Ithaca. Since I was rather stressed out with other things I had initially planned to just wear something I already owned, but about a week before the date I decided I really did want to sew something. A lot of late nights were spent making this dress come together, but in the end it turned out quite well!


I've already started my new postdoc position in the fabulous city of Montreal while my SO remains behind in Ithaca to finish up some of his work at Cornell. Since I'm now free from dissertation writing and alone with my sewing machine, I hope I'll have some new things to post in the near future!

Gone biking (amongst other things)

I know, I know, I've been gone foreeeeever. When our neighbors moved out a few months ago and took the internet with them, the SO and I foolishly decided that we would just go internet-free for a while. Well, that was about as much fun as any other form of dieting, and I'm pleased to report that I'm back to an all-you-can-eat internet plan. In the intervening months, we moved to a new apartment, sold off a whole bunch of random accumulated stuff, I taught some high schoolers about history of medicine, and I went to Tokyo. How's that for an entirely too hasty summary? I'll be back to regular blogging soon, but in the meantime you can enjoy this nice pic of my SO's fully loaded and my lightly loaded bikes on vacation!