SWAP 2013 Wardrobe Sewing

Completed SWAP (sewing with a plan) collections are up via Stitchers Guild.  Due to the many appearances here of my older daughter in the last few months, you may have gathered that  she is the recipient of my attempt at this year's challenge.
This year the concept of a completely co-ordinating 11 piece wardrobe was split. Instead,  two capsules of 4-5 pieces were required for each entry, which have only one linking piece needed. These are the two capsules I have entered (no multi-outfit photos are allowed in the official entries, so this is a good excuse for me to show them to you as a two part collection).





I had planned to write a nice long post linking photos to each individual item I had made, but unfortunately, I am currently suffering from a very dodgy internet connection. 
Instead, here are some outfit shots that are not in the official entry.











I think this is my most successful wardrobe sewing attempt yet, and despite making it often at long distance, all the items are being worn constantly (or else my daughter is a kind fibber). The success is partly due to having each top only need to coordinate with two bottom pieces and one cardigan, but also because after only 5 years of SWAP sewing I am finally getting more practiced at  planning co-ordinating separates to make an appealing silhouette - instead of actually making two completely unsuited garments and having to start over ;(. After colour and fabric choice, I think the overall shape of the outfits is the next category to discipline in order to have mulitiple outfits from a small number of pieces, and I will be working more on this for my own sewing when I want to maximize garment use.
As soon as my internet recovers, I will be spending a lovely long time looking at all the other collections - so many brilliant outfit ideas are always very good for pattern acquisition encouragement.

Burda Style 01-2013- 119 knit tunic - ruched sleeves and silk neckline

All these office clothes are not very exciting. Practical, neat, possibly stylish, but the fun factor is rather low.
Here is a suitable antidote to the serious sewing.



There are a lot of things I like about this pattern.
First, it is an easy- sew knit.
Second, it has fun to sew and wear details.
Third, it is quite an unusual garment, but not too strange to wear.
However, it was not entirely delightful in construction.

technical drawing source .burdafashion.com

I had no trouble with the sleeves. These are cleverly cut so there is no excess bulk.  Treena of The Slapdash Sewist wrote a clear and detailed post all about the sleeve construction so I didn't take any photos, but this was a good trick.
The neck however, required some lateral thinking.
Burda has you use a nice strip of bias, sewn into a ring, folded lengthways, then offset to form a rippling neck band. This twisted neckline finish has been intermittently popular on knits for quite a long time now -Sigrid wrote a great tutorial on it that I have used before.
However, Burda's neckline finish is slippery silk (mine was charmeuse), and is, in my opinion, not nearly wide enough for a nice finish. It looked skimpy and cheap. In addition, the neckline is gathered after the offseat pleating, so I should have known it would lie in a floppy and turning out fashion once worn.
It did.
I added lingerie elastic to the neck. It pulled the neckline in nicely once understitched, but unfortunately, the extra wide neckline of the t shirt meant that it still flopped outwards at the back unless the posture was of military uprightness.

I  then added an extra wide silk organza bias strip, treated according to the Burda Instructions. This looked terrific, but the raw (bias) edge of the organza was itchy. Sigh.

Next step was a long strip of the black cotton lycra of the t shirt sewn right side to wrong side of the organza, and turned in to make a facing. This was tacked to the raglan seam lines, and at last provided a successful neckline, with a clean inside finish.

In the end, I am very pleased with this top, it seems casually luxurious. I am thinking just vaguely, that it would make a terrific knit dress with a more fancy fabric.....

Stashbusting statistics, 1.4m of cotton-lycra knit, 2012, and about 50cm of silk charmeuse and silk organza scraps from deep in the little useless bits pile that is still taking up far too much room in my  fabric cupboard.

Burda Style 10-2010-119 blouse again, the clinical wardrobe

I finished making an 11 piece, 2 capsule wardrobe for the SWAP (sewing with a plan) challenge at Stitchers Guild a few weeks ago. Fortunately for my distance sewing, there was an extended deadline for the phototaking. My daughter is home this weekend and has spent most of her time in front of the camera. I hope this is offset by the pleasantness of sleeping in her own bed and eating home cooked food ;)



 Here is the last SWAP piece, a blouse for my daughter to wear to work or clinical sessions at University. I have used Burda Style 10-2010-119 for a second time in the SWAP - this is the fourth version between 2 daughters. It is an excellent  blouse, being very quick to sew, but crisp and professional in appearance.



As I did last time, I have finished the front opening with a placket, instead of a flippy facing, and extended the neck line bias binding to make a button loop. The bias scarf collar is hand hemmed (train trip entertainment,1 hour and 45 minutes of hand hemming) and hand sewn to the back neckline, which are the only lengthy procedures in the blouse construction. Burda has a raw edged scarf collar in their boucle top version, but I prefer this clean finish.



I have made a square shoulder adjustment, but in this version of the blouse, the sleeve head looks a smidgeon high. I am blaming this on the crispness of the shirting cotton, as in the softer cotton version, cut out with exactly the same adjusted pattern, the sleeve head looks spot on.



I am looking forward to seeing all the SWAP wardrobes. 

Stashbusting  1.5m of shirting cotton, 2011 Michaels Fabrics

Scarves

I have a very bad habit of buying a small piece of beautiful silk chiffon and pretending I will make myself a scarf from it. Once upon a time I only did this (buy the fabric, not actually make the scarf) if I lucked out in the remnant bin, but in the last little while I have actually done this deliberately from a whole roll of fabric at full price. I must be getting worse ;) I think I can date this worsening from Sherry's detailed and de-mystifying post about hand rolled hems. I was sure I could do this on my silk and make myself a lovely accessory.

Several of these lovely fabrics have been hanging in a nagging manner decoratively on the wall of my sewing room for a couple of years now, with absolutely no urges to hand roll the hems occurring to me for all that time. So, having an excuse not to hand sew them ,due to the bad behaviour of my right thumb in getting in the way whilst I was falling off my bike, I naturally was struck with the brilliance of Scruffy Badger's post about her gorgeous overlocked rolled hemmed scarf and awesome corner technique and had to try this myself.

However, I was a complete dunce at rolling the scarf hems on my overlocker. The edges wobbled in an abandoned manner and the corners were terribly dodgy. The Badger is extremely clever, that's all I can say. Back to the drawing board.

Fortunately, I am very good at reading blogs and looking things up on the computer instead of actually getting any sewing done. I vaguely remembered that Janine had something very interesting to say about silk chiffon a little while ago and followed the gelatine soaking recipe she found for my chiffon scarf attempt mark 2.



1.3tsp powdered gelatine stirred into approximately 250ml of cold water, leave for 30 minutes
2. Heat this mixture until just simmering at the edges
3. Add 3 litres of cool water
4. Soak fabric in the mixture for 1 hour (I did two pieces, one after the other. The red lost quite a bit of colour in the mixture, so one fabric at a time was a good call)
5. Line dry
6. Iron

 This treatment was very effective in reducing slipperiness of the chiffon, and revealed that the two subject pieces of chiffon were both provided to me cut in interesting wedge shapes. Even my left handed rotary cutting improved this situation - the fabric was much easier to handle with a little extra stiffness, and I could use weights to keep it under control whilst cutting out straight lines with a ruler.

Once I had straight edges, I made another hemming attempt. This time I tried using the rolled hem foot on my conventional machine. The gelatine soaked chiffon was not quite as helpful as shirting cotton or cotton batiste, but had definitely improved in attitude from the earlier attempt on the overlocker without gelatine assistance. The silk now had more body and more tendency to stay where I put it. I used a size 60 sharps needle.



 I started the stitching about 3 cm in from each edge, and by sewing slowly and managed a fairly respectable hem on each of edge.

The patterned scarf is a 60cm width, chopped in half lengthways and joined by a french seam at one set of short ends, other short ends left as selvage, making a very long skinny scarf approximately 30cm x 220cm. The red scarf is an allegedly 80cm piece, trimmed to on grain, so now about 70cm wide, with the frizzy selvages trimmed off and hemmed so it is a rectangle of about 70x110cm.I finished the ends of the seams, and the corners of the red scarf, by hand, which was an interesting and clumsy experience, but I don't suppose too many people will be inspecting my scarf corners. After hand washing the scarves, they returned to their original floaty texture, just as Janine described. What a useful technique, thank you!

I am quite happy with my new scarves, and feel instantly better dressed when I add them to a plain t shirt and denim skirt or jeans.





I made the t shirts just recently too - a short and long sleeved version of Burda Style 01-2013-127 and 128 both in the same sand coloured cotton-lycra knit. These were rather dull to sew, so don't deserve a whole post, but they go with nearly everything. Just as well, there are another half a dozen pieces of silk chiffon floating around somewhere!

Stashbusting statistics 2m of cotton lycra 2012 and 1.4m of silk chiffon, 2010 and 2011

Save! Excellent knit interfacing tip to the rescue

Sewing doldrums occur when you make something, and no matter how well it has turned out, the reception is less than ideal.



You know I just showed you this t shirt, but I have more to say about it.

I had a terrible suspicion that this excellent and creatively satisfying garment was destined for a life on the floor of the wardrobe under a wet towel, being stigmatized as ITCHY, a word that ranks very highly in the clothing rejection stakes.

However, the sewing world is so helpful, that two very clever readers, Shannon of MushyWear and StephA of escapades in sewing,suggested that knit interfacing might help.



It was ridiculously simple (knit tricot interfacing from FashionSewingSupply) and, unlike much other sewing type activity, could be carried out by a seamstress with a broken thumb.

The new ranking is "it feels Okay now"

This, dear readers, is a wild success. I should tell you all my problems......

Burda 02-2009-108 t shirts, Burda sew-a-long

I like sew-a-longs, it is highly enjoyable to see what other people are making with a common goal.

At the moment, the famous Me-Made-May has started, and although I signed up, I have decided I can't take photographs every day just at the moment, and as I already wear 99% hand made clothing, the photographs and making the outfit is the real challenge for me, so I am a real piker.
Instead I am hoping to join the Wellington Burda sew-a-long. I particularly appreciate the inclusiveness of this plan - any Burda pattern, just in May. I can do this! In fact there are a lot of sticky notes calling out to me from my big pile of magazines.
Despite this, I have a strange urge to hunt down a tie front blouse pattern from 09-2007 - a magazine I do not own. This is Treena's fault - see her nice blouse? I take no responsibility for my own pattern acquisitiveness ;)

Here is a pair of t shirts I made last weekend (April, so not eligible).



This is  one of the things I love about Burda magazines. I had this beautiful print on a super stretchy, thin and slippery viscose knit (Cleggs, February 2013), that was a real indulgence for me, and after some deliberation, I decided that I needed a t shirt pattern without a neck binding, as I predicted major problems in applying it neatly. I didn't have enough fabric for a cowl neck or a tie neck (it was $$$$ fabric), so I went looking through my Burda stash for a bateau neck t shirt. I was sure I'd find one (or 3)
Burda 02-2009-108 sounded perfect, and on Pattern Review, nearly everyone was happy (I also love pattern review for problem pattern identification)
I made the practice version from a nice sturdy cotton lycra knit.
The neckline sat reasonably well, but I felt the viscose needed some recovery help, so I added lingerie elastic to the folded over neck.



This is not as heavy as clear elastic that I often use in necklines, and I am glad I used a more delicate elastic, as even with this, the neckline tends to ripple a little. Fortunately, this is not an issue once the t shirt is worn.
I used a 60 stretch needle, and a walking foot for the construction - with a narrow 3 step zig-zag stitch, and the coverstitch for the neck and hem.





I was able to squeeze long sleeves out of my 80cm of fabric by cutting them on the cross grain (4 way knit), a tiny bit of underarm piecing, and a cuff from the straight grain scraps.

This is a very bold print for me, but I love it.



Now I will look through my Burdas for something else to make for the sew-a-long.

Stashbusting statistics - practice t shirt eligible, about 1m of cotton lycra 2012, viscose knit not eligible

Burda Style 03-2013-151 t shirt variations. How to annoy your son.

Just after I wrote a whingy post about how few patterns exist for boys outside the very small stages (come to think of it, there is a dearth of patterns for tween girls too..), Burda included 3 patterns for boys sizes 134-158 in their March 2013 issue. Naturally, having got out the overlocker and coverstitch for my own t shirt, it was my clear duty to use these machines for something else, so as not to waste all that threading time. See, I do plan my sewing.....



Burda's t shirt is a nice raglan shape with a curved hem , and contrast sleeves.



 To maximize fabric use and cutting out efficiency, it was second nature to make 2 t shirts with the opposing colours. However, this is where efficiency left me.

I am taking the Alabama Chanin class on Craftsy. This has no dull old t shirts in it, but there is reverse applique leaving curly raw edges. Can I claim this as inspiration for the stripe effect here?



Unfortunately, although I think this t shirt looks great, and the teenage fashion panel agrees, the verdict from the recipient is that the reverse side of the coverstitch is ITCHY.



It is clearly boy torture to force someone to wear this t shirt. However, I am ruthless and told the boy he should wear a singlet.

The next t shirt was pure whimsy, and involved very little effort, as I embraced the deliberately messy style I see in most RTW for boys (no doubt because it is very easy to sew!). I am very pleased with how it turned out.





I don't think the cyclist is working quite hard enough going up that hill, but otherwise this turned out quite well.
It has a slightly lower boy torture rating from the recipient, in fact, he said it is quite nice.

The next t shirt is seamstress torment. My son asked for another t shirt, not so fancy thanks Mum. I suggested contrast binding? contrast stitching? A tiny bit of decorative coverstitch?
No, plain.



Now he is happy.

Stashbusting statistics, about 2.5 m of cotton lycra jersey 2012