Attack of the Twee

Ye-haw 

Well, I finally did it. I succumbed to my inner twee urges. To be fair, I live in The South, so this really isn't all that out of place. Still, I'm not in love with this on me. I LOVE this dress, I'm just... it needs something else. Maybe red boots.

If I stand here too long I'll be covered in kudzu.

Ya know, I should probably back up a bit here. If you've followed for any amount of time you will know our very good friends (of the Wedding Cruise fame) live in THE COUNTRY. We went up to visit this weekend and the kids helped break in their new pool, and of course this is the best place to take photos of this dress. It had been hanging in my sewing room for weeks just needed a hem, and so I did a rolled hem about an hour before we left. I didn't iron it so this denim looking knit tends to roll up a bit.

I borrowed the boots from Dreama's father. He was working on the hay barn when I asked, "Hey (uh, no pun intended), so I am taking some photos for my sewing blog and I was wondering if you have any cowboy boots I could borrow?"

Completely nonplussed by this he said "SURE!". In fact he may have been a bit tickled I even asked. They are too big for my feet so merely a prop for this shoot. I now want to own some cowboy boots though.

Fun Fact: Kudzu flowers smell like grape koolaid.

Back view. If you haven't already noticed this is the Camino Cap with the Lady Skater skirt. Are y'all sick of Kitschy Coo yet? I hope not because at this rate my closet won't have anything else. I've been stuck on knits for a while because my weight is still in flux but I THINK I'm back on the downward swing. I've been working out on a regular schedule keeping what I learned in physical therapy in mind.

wiggle dance

The skirt has swish. I think a nice red petticoat might help me like this more. The blue denim is a cotton interlock knit that I picked up for some ridiculously cheap price at Fabric Mart (all gone). The gingham knit you can get here. I did have to stretch the LS skirt out to get it to attach to the bodice. I managed to keep the resulting gathers to the sides to keep it balanced out, though once I put it on you can barely notice.

This is my derp face

Obviously a country outfit in the country requires a pickup truck and tools, right? Now excuse me while go stick this dress in the magic closet.

Kitschy Coo Hacks: The Cowl Neck Maxi in Blue

Hello Sailor.

 y'all. Y'ALL. This is like, my favorite knit garment I've ever made, FOR SERIOUS. Its a combination of Kitschy Coo patterns that have been modified from the original. The bodice is from the Lady Skater but I used a Threads tutorial to create a cowl neck.

The skirt is the maxi version of the Camino Cap, but this time I had enough to go all the way to the floor.  The fabric is a navy blue bamboo rayon from Fabric.com, its one of their reorderable medium weights that aren't quite so clingy as other rayons. Still, if I'm going to wear it out and about it needs proper foundation garments for a smooth silhouette.  And I have, in fact, already worn this to work.  It was a bit bizarre because if ever staring was audible, it was that day. No one actually complimented the dress, but one lady on the elevator had her mouth open. When she realized I was looking at her she said 'Your hair is... amazing".

I was like "Um, thanks! Oh hey look this is my floor".  Cause I suck at taking compliments, its taken years to learn to just say thank you.

This fabric drapes beautifully,  I might add. LOVE IT. Let's see what else? Ah yes, I used clear elastic at the shoulders and the waist for stability. I did cut the bodice two inches shorter to have it hit at the right place with the weight of the full skirt. I just did a rolled hem on the serger because this is a knit and well, I was feeling lazy. Wanted to WEAR IT NOW!

This is the "Would you please do something about your dog barking all fucking day" face. Seriously people, if you are going to have a pet, don't neglect them!!

I want like, a closet full of these! I'm wearing it around the house right now and I can be active and do things in it without worrying. If I'm cooking there are aprons for a reason!  I also know that y'all are going to ask me about a tutorial, I've already mentioned to Amanda (Of Kitschy Coo) that I'm game. The kids are away with their Grandma this week going road tripping, so its been quiet and I've been concentrating on the six things already cut out. Yes, SIX. Crazy, I know. I have another hand full of things I've not yet blogged and need to share!  I've started working out again now that my pain management doctor has agreed that it will take more pain meds in the short term but be beneficial in the long term. I'm pretty determined to make that uphill journey for a second time (the first was before Mom went into hospice).

So tell me, have you ever hacked a pattern until is was barely recognizable from the original? Did you like it afterward?

Stay tuned, later this week I have photos for Oonapalooza!

A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That

I don't know why setting up my dslr and taking photos of my makes has felt like a tedious chore of late. Cause once its done I have lots of taking and editing the photos. So I'm going to give you a sort of high level overview of things that have been going on.

IOW: I'm just going to post photos from instagram cause I'm lazy.

So, y'all saw the photos of Felicity in my raglan skater hack dress. I finally got around to tracing out and doing one in my size, with no modifications other than grading from a 6 in the bodice to an 8 in the waist. This is the trial run, fabric courtesy of Oona.

 I completely failed to match up the stripes, but I'm OK with that. I decided I didn't like the cap sleeves AND they are a bit tight despite being knit. So I modded the pattern to have elbow length short sleeves that fit my Brunhilda biceps and a "cheater fba" that Miss Katie blogged about. Which was awesome because then I dragged the family and all my sewing stuff out to the wilderness and taught D and her sister S to make LadySkaters. D also needs FBA, but she doesn't have Brunhilde arms, so large arm adjustment not necessary. And I finished my static dress for Dragon*Con (post to come).

This is not the actual costume, just an awesome dress.

So that was all awesome and good and then my car blew a gasket on the I-285 north side. In the middle of construction traffic. At 9pm at night. And AAA said they couldn't get to us before midnight.  Which put us down BOTH cars and we both had to be at work at 6am Sunday morning.. I worked two 12 hour shifts from home on less than five hours of sleep (in a 48 hour period) and called in sick Tuesday because my body threw a hissy fit, and my husband had to use my car to get to work. The car fix was cheap but that cost me a LOT of "spoons" in energy.  I did go into work on Wednesday and xanax is the only reason my coworkers lived through the day.

I slept in on Thursday, and then I made my last video post. Which, btw y'all. THANK YOU. I mean really. Your words of support and the fact that I may have helped others cope means that world to me. I cannot even explain. You're all awesome and beautiful people. 

And because they were already cut out, I made matching skater dresses for Felicity and me that Thursday. Next photo shoot, D*CON costume, one after that, mother/daughter dress photos. I think I'm also going to do a post on "What to Wear to an MRI" (not a joke).

Oh hey, remember the Tofino's and the swatch in one of my videos? Yup, totally made that. Here's crappy selfie with gratuitous belly button and stretch marks (or as husband calls them "lightning scars", cause I'm awesome and gave birth to a mostly hairless bi-ped. Two of them, but not at the same time.). By the by, double gauze is YOUR FRIEND if you live in hot humid climates. I officially want three dresses from the stuff for outdoor activities. Like Ren Fair or craft shows. For serious.

And HERE is my ripping off Heather B and making a LadySkater t-shirt*. Now I want one in every color.

I know, I'm teasing you with my shoe collection you can't quite see behind me.

To be honest though, that is a really bad representation of the red. Here, have a better one from my new webcam. Its the "Cayenne Red" from the bamboo knits Fabric Mart got in sometime ago. I bought it full price because I was certain it would sell out quick. It did, like  it was gone a month before it went on sale. I snagged two other colors on sale though. This stuff is amazingly comfortable.

This is the un-cropped version. Check out my #sewdontclean sun room.

Oh, that brings us up to what I'm currently working on, which is fitting the Hawthorn (4 hours so far) and working on the Hummingbird skirt. I've traced out both views.

Humming Bird!

I did decide to do a wearable muslin out of the same turquoise denim that I made my latest pair of Clovers from... and I just realized I haven't blogged about that either. Sheeit, I'm just all kinds of slack. You still love me, right??

FBA Phase 1

Oh, what's missing here is the forward shoulder adjustment. And the Brunhilde Arms adjustment I did to the sleeves. I ended up adding 2 inches in diameter for the sleeves to fit around my biceps.  The one nice thing here is I don't think I need a rounded upper back adjustment. I don't have the web-cam fitting photos with me.

Here's the markings that I change on the muslin.

And here's where I transferred to my already poor Frankensteined pattern piece. I traced out a new one, I may move the bust dart over later, I dunno. But that's it for the Hawthorn. I did cut out a blouse version from Fabric.com's solid rayon challis collection called "darkest navy". I hope I did the sizing up on the peplum correctly.

So that's all the randomness for now. For the finally I give you a sneak peak of the costume I will photograph sometime in the undisclosed near future. And yes, I really was that pale.

Oddly enough, I was the only one with decent cellphone reception that day.

Love ya, Mean it. xoxo

* I had some sort of interesting footnote to put here but I forgot what it was. So um... KITTY!

Summer Swim-A-Long

Hey, what's up? Did you miss me? I missed me, so I'd be surprised if you didn't. I've been around a bit on social media so you might not have missed me if you are there too. But seriously, I apologize for such a long absence between blog posts. You see, I've been fighting my brain chemistry a good bit lately* and blogging was not high on my to-do list whilst trying to sort it out. But here I am and I want to tell you about something fun going on.

The Summer Swim-A-Long! Like many things, this started out as a twitter conversation and kind of grew into a full fledged theme. Its kinda like a sew-a-long but with more options than just swim wear. Like, I'm going to be doing a guest post over on Katie of Kadiddlehopper in mid-June for a beach cover-up how-to. Just a few days after my birthday. The lovely Leila of Three Dresses Project is co-host of this affair.

The beach cover-up I'll be making is a free download at fabric.com, you can find it here. Click on the banner that says "free pattern" and below are links to suggestions of what to use for making this cover-up. Which will henceforth be called "The Beach Kaftan". I recommend semi-sheer or sheer materials that can withstand beach, sun, and the washing machine. Cotton voile, gauze, and even chiffon if you are feeling froggy, but I recommend easy to work with fabrics.

Those goggles are pretty darn goofy looking. Also, she's inherited my shoulders.

I've already dabbled a bit in making a swimsuit for my daughter, the above is my first attempt. I really want to make a slightly better one with latex elastic around the neck so that it doesn't pull down so far on her. I ordered some more and it came in the mail yesterday.  In any case, we've been quite excited for summer since all the rain this winter has the lake fuller than it has been in the last decade, AND my mother-in-law's pool is now operation again. I fully expect my children to develop gills and webbed feet by the end of summer. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.

Speaking of lakes, I want to make surfer suits for the kids to use while skiing. So what fun activities do you northern hemisphere folk have planned?

*By "fighting my brain chemistry" I mean I had yet another complete meltdown at which point I threatened to euthanize all the cats. I may even have threatened my husband with a knife, but he says that I didn't so my memory could be faulty. Or I just thought about it (but really, who doesn't entertain that notion once in a while?). In any case, these episodes were getting to the point where even I was like "WTF is wrong with me" and finally agreed to see my doctor. We've adjusted my medication and we'll see how that goes. So far, so good.

Sewing For Boys

You know, its kinda hard to sew for boys. I mean, the pattern options are very limited and while you could probably find some cool vintage patterns there's no guaranteeing that your boy will wear them. While Simon loves his WoW shirt, he doesn't wear it often because its a button down, and that's too fancy for school.

So, I asked him what kind of shirt would he actually WEAR to school. He says "NARWHALS!" (do a google search, they are a real thing). So I pulled up Spoonflower and did a search for narwhals. There are way more options now than their used to be. But at the time we settled on this one:

You can buy it here.

So for the shirt I used a vintage 70's raglan t pattern. Sorry, no link at the moment. When the fabric came it it was much more purple than expected. Which was fine, cause it matched his stuffed Narwhal I got him for Christmas.

This was the "try on" phase, complete with Dr. Dandy (cause he has a monocle and mustache). I was apparently not fast enough because he promptly ran upstairs "for bed' and then wore it to school, and then Grandma's cause she picked him up before I could pry it off of him. Once I finally got it back it had to be washed. Cause woof... boys are stinky. I added contrast bands to the arms and then self fabric to the bottom. Both needed more length anyway.

As an aside, Spoonflower's organic cotton knit is amazing and worth the price. The only thing I can complain about is the fading of dark colors.

Later I made a pair of sweatpants. I'm glad construction of these are fairly straight foward because I'd had a pretty epic meltdown after finding a dead chipmunk in the kids' rooms. That's one in each.  OHGODEEEWWWW.  There was a lot of screaming and yelling about the state of their rooms, making the kids cry, my husband fairly silent and "helping" them clean* and my roommate left the house. My roommate never leaves the house.

All that to say, I constructed those bad boys while heavily medicated. If this were a game I would have gained a skill level.

And, thanks to the wise words of Twitter Sewcialists, I saved the next thing for later.

Constellation curtains!  This fabric is the perfect curtain fabric. Seriously. The designer really thought this through. Again, spoonflower, and you can get this here in two colorways. These were also super easy. I uses every single bit of this fabric, NO WASTE!  And because it was such an easy project I decided to use some glow-in-the-dark fabric paint I had lying around to paint the constellations themselves.

This is the nook, where we just turned the old fish tank table into a hamster table. Next up is covering it with some vinyl for easy cleaning.

All these things seem to have made Simon a very happy kid. I could tell that he was feeling left out with the amount of things I make for Felicity (because.. hello, girls clothes! Seriously, this is why defining what we can wear by gender needs to go away).

So, that's that. I think I'm done here, but gotta go tally up the Sewcialist votes. Tell me, what do you sew for boys?

Oh, and before I forget, here's the Narwhal Song.


*Clean is a somewhat relative term here. We actually did a lot of cleaning this weekend but you can't tell because the living room is currently the laundry staging area and the carpet looks like it hasn't been vacuumed in weeks. Except it was vacuumed four days ago.

Vogue 8747 - A Classic Princess Seam Blouse

This is my Hautey Bitch look. 

I really must sing the praises of this blouse. Vogue 8747 is from the "Basic Pattern Custom Fit" line, and I think I'm in love with these. Its built on their standard block, with most of the bust adjustment done for you. The two major changes on my part were large upper arms for the sleeves and rounded upper back adjustment. This is my second make. I also did a plain black one, but did not photograph it.

These trousers were given to me by a friend that had lost a great deal of weight after surgery. I love them to bits but they are getting kinda threadbare. I will probably use them to help draft a new pair.

I also really like how this goes with my floral bolero.

Hmmm. Hair stuck under the jacket. My mojo seems to have taken a hiatus. I did make a raglan t-shirt for Simon out of narwhal fabric, which he quite loves. I still have to finish it. I want to make a skirt or two for work then get cracking on my raincoats.

Ok, well. That's all folks! Until next time.

Challis Chalet: The Simplicity 1880 Shirtwaist

You know, I'm sure there's an awful lot about this dress I could say, but I really don't feel like doing a process post tonight.  This is Simplicity 1880, one of the project runway ones. I can see why they are so popular now, as they are extremely well drafted. Suffice it to say that this is my wearable muslin. For the first time ever I went ahead and didn't make a muslin first. I pretty much have these kind of bodices figured out and I was pretty darn confident that I didn't need to test it. I think my next two makes are going to have cap sleeves though.

Oh, before we go on, don't forget to vote for the Sewcialist emblem!

This was an accidental photo of me walking back to pose. I liked it so here it is.

I'm not sure what I'm doing here but, hey, its a good shot of my backside. Mostly.

Check out that fantastic collar.  This was, I think, the moment where doing a notched collar finally sank in and made sense in my brain. Now if only I could wrap my head around pants geometry, the world would be a better place.

Pretty flared skirt. I wish I could show you how the fabric sort of sparkles and a close up makes it look like peacock feathers and ferns. My belt is vintage, probably 80's, from Nashville when I went to see the Golden Age of Couture exhibit and met Gertie in person.

I might look like my paternal grandmother in this photo.

That's all folks. I have two more of theses dresses planned, they are all meant to be work appropriate. I'll do a post on what modifications I made and a bit about getting the invisible side zip to be, well, invisible.

As for photos, I think for now on i'm going to take them in the morning when I'm backlit, or maybe another how for the sun to be down further. We'll see.

Cheers!

Patterns That Play Well with Challis

Source

Settle in darlings, lets have some brunch (because I know we all slept in) and discuss what kind of patterns work with challis. The more flowing the better, though not all challis is created equally, as we read in the last post. Some of it is heavier and can take a bit more structure than others. Here are few of my pairings:

I have  several fabrics I want to make Simplicity 1880 in, AND Sunni did a great sew-a-long last year which you can read about here.

This is a one way fabric and I just LOVE the border flowers, which will be the bottom of the skirt. You probably recognize this as Colette's Chantilly. I've made this before, so I won't have quite as much work to do to get it to fit. Other pattern ideas:

Tasia's Cambie Pattern

Vogue 8827, for a great work dress, particularly version B.

Simplicity's Cynthia Rowley 1872

SO those are my picks! What have you decided on? Let me know in the comments!

Challis - A History of Our Chalet's Namesake

Source: oscarmora.com viaLady on Pinterest

Hello Chalet guests, have a seat and lets talk a little bit about the history of our namesake, challis.

According to the dictionary is a lightweight plain-weave fabric of wool, cotton, etc., usually with a printed design. Which is all well and good, but doesn't really give us more information than that. So I figured I'd start with what a "lightweight plain weave" means.  Enter a text book from 1925*.

Click to embiggen.

"A plain weave" is where one weft yard passes evenly over one warp yard. This takes the least amount of material to make and is very inexpensive. The book goes on to say that challis is made from cotton and wool (rayon has not yet caught on).

Wool challis is light and soft and recommended for dresses and negligees. It will cost you (adjusted for inflation) anywhere from $13-25 dollars per yard (no wider than 39").

Cotton challis, however, is considered for inexpensive dresses and "comfortables" (lounge wear, I'm assuming).  This will run you anywhere from $2.50 to $24 a yard (also, no wider than 39").  

Now lets fast forward about 15 years, just before WWII was really under way. Chemists had been working on improving rayon, or "viscose" as it were to make it easier and more cost effective to manufacture. Somewhere around the 20's it started being called "artificial silk" and, as I looked, was not yet more than a foot note in text books but popular among households, until the 30's and the Great Depression.  But here's info according to DuPont's timeline.

About the time of the 1940's, DuPont started pushing rayon through what I can only assume are the original "infomercials".  I found an example from 1940 itself.

But rayon, and coincidentally, rayon challis, didn't catch on until the USA was fully embroiled in  WWII and rationing started.

After this country entered World War II practically no staple clothing fabrics of prewar quality were manufactured for the civilian. Some of the materials that homemakers used during peacetime in enormous quantities to clothe their families virtually disappeared from the civilian

consumer's market. No 80-square percale, no fine-count two-ply broadcloth or voile, and little gingham, chambray, muslin, nainsook, lawn, or poplin was available. These shortages were due in part to Government regulations which directed enormous quantities of textile goods to the armed forces. In order to stretch as far as possible the small amounts of fiber available, there was also a lowering of quality of textile materials made for home folks.

By the spring of 1944 the supply and variety of serviceable cotton fabrics were limited. The prewar backlog of materials of good quality was used up and the flow of these fabrics from the factories to the stores had almost ceased. In the small cities and towns, particularly those near military bases or camps, the shortage of staple materials was acute. Many of the few fabrics available, particularly the cottons, were so unattractive in design and color that they obviously would not have sold readily, if at all, in normal times. Rayons were generally more plentiful and more comparable to prewar fabrics than were the cottons, but some types of rayons were scarce. Wool and wool mixed fabrics were more plentiful than the cottons. Mixtures of wool and rayon were common, but few wool and cotton mixtures were on the market.

From early in 1944 until several months after the end of hostilities, homemakers in various parts of the United States found many of the available staple clothing fabrics so coarse and sleazy that they scarcely justified the money spent for 'hem or the time and energy used to make th jloth into garments. Many of the fabrics shrank and were faded by light and washing.

The relatively large volume of "too poor" fabrics might have been replaced by a smaller volume of materials of better quality if minimum quality standards had been set up for textile goods. Such standards under Government control would have prevented textile raw materials from being manufactured into inferior fabrics in this period of scarcity.

Before World War II considerable progress had been made in determining the physical characteristics of cotton woven goods such as broadcloth, chambray, gingham, and percale (5, 6,16,17).2

Federal specifications developed for the use of Government agencies in purchasing these goods have been in existence for several years (11, 12,13, 14). In these specifications for broadcloth and chambray differences in quality have been

designated. On the other hand, the quality of other classes of cotton and of various types of wool and rayon fabrics is not so generally known. The quality of various kinds of mixed fabrics composed of cotton, rayon, wool, and other fibers needs to be studied since they are becoming more and more common. Some of these fabrics are included in this study. Found here in Google Books, Quality of Fabrics Study in 1946

So, in essence, rayon and particularly challis, became popular because what else was there to use? Here are some vintage samples.

Source: etsy.com viaLady on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com viaLady on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com viaLady on Pinterest

Well, that concludes today's lesson. I hope you enjoyed it and learned something new!