Mini-Wardrobe Composite

A composite of the photos for the Mini Wardrobe.

Seven ways of wearing the items. (edit to show the jackety blouse worn on it's own with skirt)

Mini-Wardrobe complete

Here are the blouses I made the other day worn with the skirt. The majority of them will also go with the white dress.

The toile of the double collar blouse

It doesn't count for the contest.

Double collar blouse

left out and tucked in

The sheer blouse with dark blue underblouse

underblouse on it's own showing the silk noil skirt

close up

double collar blouse worn open with the underblouse.

 jackety blouse over underblouse.

 worn buttoned as a loose top

  

To be honest, I will probably wear this with jeans rather than a skirt. Or over the white dress for less casual situations than the blue jacket that my husband bought with the white dress.

I am soo ready to NOT sew clothes at the moment! However, now that I have a nice summer wardrobe, it is time for winter clothes. One at a time though, not 8 things in 1 month!

Mini-Wardrobe - Dress

Done!

Not sure about it totally. But then I am not used to the loose fit in the body.

I have, however, learned how to work the timer on my camera! The only place I felt confident about non-distracting background was the stairs in the front hall! Placed the camera on the shelf in the corner, pressed all the buttons, dashed to the step, posed and smiled. Then repeat 5 times till you get a photo where you look good and the garment looks good all at one time!


The badge. I nearly forgot to sign up!

another idea

The last piece of fabric for the mini-wardrobe seemed to want to be a loose jacket/top sort of concoction. I got some ideas on how I might do it.

Just as I was about to cut, I thought, wait a minute. This is special fabric. let's see how this actually will work.

So, I rummaged and found this brick red plaid which suddenly said it would look wonderful with similar ideas.

Basically, I have used the pattern for the top with the pleated neckline, swung it away from the CF and CB and added 10 cm to the length. I plan for a grandad sort of collar and placket down the front.

I have already cut this out as you can see, it was actually quite freeing to ignore the plaid part and not have to worry about whether it was all straight. This sort of pattern has different grain position to start with, so nothing has to match.

I managed to sew the basic bodice part together at shoulder and side seams. Looks about like I planned. So now I am in the process of laying it out on the fabric for the mini-wardrobe. I think it will go together pretty quickly.

I need to plan a time for getting photos of me wearing the variations of garments. And doing the reviews before the deadline on Sunday.

Plan B button stand and facing fix

So, while sleeping on the problem, I thought I might just have enough of the edge from where I had cut the sleeve and one of the princess panels.
and in the morning I found I had!

So, I first pressed back the white + the bit not printed right on both edge pieces...the remnant and the left front of the dress.

Then I sewed along that fold - well measured and sewed along it because I couldn't see the fold line well enough when sewing.

Then pressed it over. I had a moment of 'now what?' 'where do I trim this other piece?'

But I remembered telling you that I had measured exactly how much buttonstand and grown on facing. So, I trimmed the smaller seam allowance by half, put the interfacing on the larger facing piece, then overlocked the bits together.

Then I measured the 4cm grown on facing bit and pressed that back.

Here is the side which will be seen.

Well, not all will be seen because it is the bit where buttons are sewn, I am not too sure about it, but it will have to do. I am tempted to do some sort of fancy stitching on it to make it look intentional. But I need to find buttons for it first and see what they would look like.

Wouldn't you know I have tons of buttons, but not enough of any sort of blue to do a shirt dress. I will try to get into the market on Friday morning and then hope it doesn't take me ages to do the buttonholes.

One plus about this extra layer, since the fabric is fairly lightweight - linen/rayon blend, it will help to give more support to where the buttons are sewn.

Plan B button stand and facing

Even Tried and True manages to throw you a challenge sometimes.

This is the edge of the fabric. Laid out and cut precisely so that I have 2cm for buttonstand and 4 cm to turn back as grown on facing.
And with the amount of fabric I had, yes, the white part would have to be part of the facing, which would be alright. Because even taking into account the bit of leaf that didn't get printed blue, the depth from the edge is 3cm.

except, if you notice the bit on the right? That is the other side. Discovered after it was cut out and when I went to snip the balance marks.
Hmmm. The white is not going to all be turned back is it? The white on this side is 4.5 cm.

So, Plan A.5. Is it going to be alright because it is the part of the buttonstand that goes underneath?
But what about at the neckline and the hem area?

Do I have enough to cut a sewn on buttonstand and facing instead? No.

So, Plan B. Should I make a partial sewn buttonstand and facing from the neck to where I might leave it unbuttoned, and then at the area near the hem that will open a bit when I sit down?

Answers on a postcard please.

Only I need to sew this tomorrow. I expect it will be Plan B. But I need to sleep on it to work out how.


On any other more sensible occasion, I would pin the fabric so the print edges are lined up with one another...before cutting out. It makes the usable amount of fabric smaller, but you don't end up with problems like this!

Mini-Wardrobe - Crinkle Sheer

The past few days I have been working on making a blouse from a John Kaldor Crinkle sheer fabric. It will be part of the mini-wardrobe.

If I had not been making it for the contest, I probably would have taken forever. It was one of those fabrics that makes you think it was going to be very hard. I normally dither and dither and end up having them as UFO's! See those scary crinkles in the photo?

Anyway, I managed to cut the blouse out without a problem. Then I got a case of nerves and went to look online if there was any special way to sew it. I mucked about with tissue on the seams and trying to keep the neckline, etc from stretching. What a load of bother!

I chose a 60/8 sharps needle to sew with, and after a bit realised I didn't really need all the tissue. But still I had to make myself do each new step. I am worn out!

A few things I did do...tape the shoulder seam with silk organza selvedge. I also used silk organza along with a lightweight interfacing for the button stand and cuffs. And silk organza alone to be interfacing for the collar.

When I had finally got the sleeves in, I realised the puff was not very puffy because of the weight of the cuffs. So, I created shoulder stays.

I used the top of the normal sleeve pattern (between the balance marks and above) to cut 2 silk organza pieces. They both were cut on the bias fold. Then I cut 2 pieces from the blouse fabric - on the fold as well.

I didn't fuss about complete accuracy in cutting here.

I covered the silk organza pieces with the blouse pieces.

Then I stitched them into the sleeve seam between the balance marks/notches.

This is one sleeve with the stay.

mirror photos

And the other without.

Even with me holding my shoulder's funny to try to photograph in the mirror, you can see the pleats that form because the weight of the rest of the sleeve pulls it down.

And here is the final blouse. Phew.

Hopefully cutting a TNT dress and sewing tomorrow. (TNT means Tried and True apparently! They use it all the time on Pattern Review.)

By the way, for most of these, I am finishing seams with the overlocker. For this blouse I didn't put the collar on as I normally would, enclosing the seam, because of the sheer and the fact that the crinkle stretches. So, the silk organza holds the shape and the sheer fabric sort of floats above and below it a bit. If I find it is too floaty after the first wash, I will try to catch it down here and there with invisible thread by hand.

Freeform pleats

I wanted freeform pleats inserted as godets into the skirt I was making for the mini-wardrobe. Here are the steps. It could easily be used as a way of introducing texture to a section of a a piece of textile art you are developing.

I could have created pleats which would move with the skirt - like this example, but I wanted to try the idea of the pleats being texture.

First I formed the pleats on the fabric and pressed them into place. While they look pretty regular, they aren't precisely measured or stitched or fused into place. (The stitching here is from a step further down. I didn't get a photo of this step)

Next I attached a shaped piece to the hem and turned the seam to the inside.

The godet shaped piece was cut from cotton lawn and works as interlining or a stabiliser to keep the shape. If you were doing this for an area of a garment or art quilt in which you did not want to include the hem, you could just skip the hem part.

The turned back cotton lawn piece was positioned and then tacked into place with a long stitch on the machine. (This is where I held it up in the first photo to see if the pleats behaved like I wanted them to.)

Then trimmed.

Here are 2 pieces, one for each side of the skirt.

Each piece was treated as a normal godet and inserted into the side seams of the skirt.

Any good sewing book will give instructions for doing this. But the best one I have found is from a Threads magazine article on sewing godets. Not that I can remember which issue!

Because the pleats are not permanently attached to the stablilising shape, they are flexible texture. I am counting on the creasing from the construction stage softening with washing. They shouldn't become too loose because the ends of the pleats are caught into the sides of the godet. If you were doing a shape in an art piece and the ends of the pleats were not caught into the edges, you might want to catch the top layer down from the back here and there in the hidden parts of the folds.

I am linking to Off the Wall Friday at Nina-Marie's. Go check out what creative things some of the other participants have been doing. If you have come from there, Welcome! and do post a comment!

Mini-Wardrobe so far

Most of these were nearly done. Yesterday and Today I spent the day sorting out the finishing bits. I still have a few more pieces to do. the second blouse was a prototype for the first one and the third blouse will go under one from the sheer fabric.

Most of these will be part of the Mini-Wardrobe Challenge from Pattern Review.

And now to bed.

Edit: skirt

underblouse

Double collar blouses

Collar detail

'Try it out' Tuesday

Some might recall my quest earlier in the year for a blouse I like. Sort of disheartening because it still wasn't getting anywhere. The reason I had started a different blouse was because the pattern I had didn't fit in various ways.

Anyway, in the meanwhile, I have lost weight. A few weeks ago, I put on a red blouse I made some years ago and was pleased to discover it fitted better than it did then.
and then I had a moment where things clicked. So, if this blouse fit, why not get the pattern out for that and dispense with getting necks and dodgy sleeve fittings right on the other one?

So, today, I used some lightweight stripe that I seem to have miles of (previously used for DH for pjs). First I sorted the shoulder seam on the pattern - probably the next thing I would have sorted with this particular blouse pattern quest, only I was put off by the blouse being too snug and having no more time because I started teaching.
I cut a 'Try it out' blouse from the stripe just to make sure there wasn't something I had done to the red blouse but forgot. Fits! then put in the adjusted sleeve - the sleeve head was too full for the armscye. and found it works, too!

Here are both blouses...the stripe is only a shell at present.
So now I can go ahead and use that pattern as the starting point for all these other blouse styles I want to try!

and the stripe will continue to be a 'Try it out' blouse. I have an idea for a collar, for one of the mini-wardrobe blouses so I am going to see what happens on this blouse first. I also have an idea for some surface design, so I can 'Try it out' on this blouse to see if it will work.

If it ends up wearable it will be a plus, if it doesn't, it will still be a plus because I have been able to 'Try it out' without worrying about messing up 'good' fabric.

In case you hadn't thought about it, getting a pattern right IS part of design development. There is no point in making something to showcase your work, whether is technique skills or style possibilities or embellishment, if the pattern is going to let you down. In the first place, it will make the rest of your work look rubbish when it is not. and in the second place, you won't wear it or show it (garment or otherwise) because you know it doesn't do you justice.
So, if you do your own patterns or use commercial ones, take the time to get them to look right or check they go together right before you put all that other work into it.

If you are wondering...yes I do save the patterns from previous years. I write the year on them. My weight is often up or down, so it means I can go back to such and such year because I weighed 'whatever' at that time and see if the pattern will work again.


This one said 2007!

mini wardrobe - 1

I showed these fabrics I got at the Festival of Quilts. I am taking part in the Mini Wardrobe contest at Pattern Review.

Rules:Mini-Wardrobe Contest - Expand Your Wardrobe

This is a contest to create a 5-piece wardrobe in 4 weeks. Four of these pieces must be sewn during the contest period.

**The 5th piece, known as the KEY item, can be something you already own, something you purchase, something you have made in the past or something you make during the contest. The KEY item must work with all the other pieces. It needs to co-ordinate with the other four ITEMS, but need not be included in every OUTFIT.**

These 5 items must combine to make a minimum of 6 different outfits.

The fabrics will all work together with my new white dress as the key piece.

However, when I was looking over my plan, I realised I needed another solid in there. Those fabrics are pretty stand alone, so they need to go with something besides the white dress.

In digging around my stash, I realised this silk noil which I dyed would be just the right colour. So, yesterday I cut a skirt.

Today I interlined it with cotton lawn to give it more body. The colour in this photo is more like the blue of the fabric.

Originally when I dyed the fabric I was a bit disappointed because it looked too much like terry toweling! So, I have been about a year considering how to use it in the way I wanted. I am not into floppy clothes, so I realised underlining it would be the best way to go for more fitted clothing.

I am pretty happy with this now. I just need to hem it. I do have an extra style idea I am considering, but I will show that if and when it happens. If I run out of time, I will at least have a simple straight skirt to go with the blouses and jackets I make from some of the other fabrics. If I get the 4 other garments made up, the silk noil skirt can be the key item.
I do have more of the blue silk noil...maybe a jacket, but maybe not til after the contest.