The edges of sewing

By which The Sewing Lawyer means an activity that has something to do with sewing but doesn't involve the actual activity of putting cut pieces of fabric together with thread.  It includes choosing fabric (in a store or from the stash) and patterns, thinking about sewing, reading about sewing, and tracing patterns. More constructively, it may involve shoveling out the sewing room.   This is a (rarely-seen) variation of sewing around the edges because it tends to result in recently-acquired fabric being handled, thought about, and put away, and leads to unfinished projects being unearthed, thought about, and sometimes even advanced (without actual sewing).

Because I feel I have truly started to "sew" until the machine has been turned on and a bobbin wound, I also include cutting out projects in this category, if I'm pretty sure I'm not going to turn the machine on and wind a bobbin imminently after cutting out the last piece.

Right now, I am marking time while waiting for my teflon foot to arrive so I can get back to the leather jacket.  It's going to be a bit of a pain to translate the very precise settings I had been using (on Kathryn Brenne's Bernina) to the very imprecise settings available on the Featherweight, but I am determined.

So in recent days, quite a lot of stuff around the edges of sewing happened here.  This included:

• taking the lining out of the mink coat pictured in a recent post, reading Kathryn Brenne's article in Vogue Pattern Magazine several times, studying the construction of the coat, identifying Vogue 1083 as the perfect pattern for its transformation, thinking about the kind of fabric that would best complement it, rejecting every piece of fabric in my stash as unsuitable; shopping several websites without success, and trying to figure out if I'll have enough time to seriously look for fabric on my work-related trip to downtown Toronto later this week;
• making the lining pieces for my leather jacket (after all the adjustments it was easier to make the lining patterns from my altered pieces than to alter the included lining pieces);
• (finally) finishing the lining pattern for my Auckie Sanft jacket which was enthusiastically disassembled for this very purpose more than a year ago; 
• cutting Jalie 2795 out of cushy blue-grey Power Stretch; 
• washing and drying recently-acquired fabric; and
• putting fabric away (!) which is always a challenge chez The Sewing Lawyer due to an overabundance of fabric and an underabundance of storage locations.  

Today I feel like more, maybe to include tracing Jalie 3024, which I think I'll shorten for now to another top suitable for exercise wear.

Light relief ... again

 Jeans are hard.  Not only was the fitting a challenge, as you know, but the actual sewing is physically demanding.  Denim is thick and tough to sew; there's lots of practical details like belt loops and topstitching, to be sewn through multiple layers, and there are metal zippers and metal rivets, and buttons that need to be hammered in place.  Assembling the main pieces of the jeans is relatively quick; finishing them off takes three times as long.

When the Sewing Lawyer has had it with a tough project it may be time for some knit tops.  Jalie always  seems ready to come to the rescue.

By lucky coincidence there were two dark brown-based knit fabrics in stash begging to be made up, and so another iteration of Jalie 2805 and Jalie 2921 (the scarf-collar top) came quickly into being.

Here's the latest version of 2908. The most interesting thing about this shirt is the print - the fabric is a fine rib-knit cotton/lycra printed with a VERY large and colourful swirly paisley motif (this was a Fabricland offering from earlier this summer).  The motif is larger than the front or back pattern pieces as you can see here (the fabric is lying on my cutting table; those are 1" squares).  I had two complete motifs plus parts - which became the sleeves.

I cut out the back with the print in this orientation (orange swirls at the shoulder) as you can see in the next picture, but the front in the opposite direction after a moment of angst about whether the print had a noticeable direction.

What do you think?  Not obvious?  Phew!













The scarf-collar top is, as any of you who have tried it will know, quite magical.  The instructions for the ingenious construction of the collar/tie are well illustrated in the pattern, but I was also lucky enough to see Jeanne Binet demonstrate how to make this top at PR Weekend Montreal.  I'm sure it works best with a thin knit; luckily that's what was on hand in the stash (a crepey polyester knit acquired at Couture Elle in Montreal, a few years back).  This is another big-scale print, but although one needed to be alert to avoid the dreaded big "bull's eye" on the upper front, cutting it out involved less angst.

I'm wearing the top with a vintage plastic buckle in this picture.  It also looks good threaded through the little hole in the CF (another genius trick in this pattern) or simply tied in a bow.

Another T-Shirt Interlude

Sometimes you just have to do what pops into your head, as long as it's legal and reasonably safe that is (the lawyer in me can't resist qualifying that statement...).  So I made this T-shirt.  The stretch lace was given to me by a friend and fellow-sewer here in the Nation's Capital, and the underlining was in the stash, the result of an earlier gift from another end of the country.  The fold-over elastic (FOE) also came from stash.  Oh, and I borrowed the pattern (from DIGS).  So that makes this little T pretty much cost-free, and it didn't take much time either.   

Like every other Jalie pattern I have tried, this is a winner.  Simple and it fits.  What's not to like?

And it's a fabric miser.  I might have had 70cm of this fabric.  There is a bit left over. 

Because the lace is sheer, I underlined the body pieces with a flesh-tone cotton lycra jersey.  The sleeves are just the lace.  The illusion is not bad.  I hate worrying about whether my undies are showing, and the wind won't whistle through it either.  So practical!


I finished the neck and sleeve edges with narrow FOE.  This is so easy it is just ridiculous.  I used a small zig-zag (1.5 x 2 mm).  Applying a very small amount of tension to the FOE works best. 

I traced size S, blending to T at the hip.  I cut the neck down very slightly, and cut the sleeves shorter than the short sleeve line marked on the pattern (but longer than the cap sleeve line).  I also cut the T shorter (used the size M hem line) because Jalie's Ts are always too long for me.  I allowed myself 1.5cm at the side seams for fitting because Jalie's 7mm (1/4") gives no room for error at all.  Because the fabric with underlining is a bit less stretchy than many knits, I needed the extra at the bust and hip.

Here is a close up of the lace fabric, with the hem turned up so you can also see the underlining. 

I AM going to cut out my jacket now...

I hope I have enough fabric for a coordinating skirt...

Interrupting the stream of sewing...

Here's an instant-gratification project.  It's nice to be able to take something from flat folds to finished garment in a few hours.  This is my second version of Jalie 2794, an all-round favorite on Pattern Review with (as of today) 58 reviews.  It was chosen as a "Best Pattern of 2008" and is in the "Hall of Fame 2009" (a prior year's "best of" with lots of continuing positive reviews). 

There's not much more to say.

Except, of course, that I made it to coordinate with my orange plaid jacket & black skirt.

Back to my muslins...