Silk Blouse

On By Sharon13 Comments

At our ASG meeting in April, Angie Zimmerman held a workshop for us to discuss the various techniques for working with silk and also gave us the opportunity to get patterns adjusted.

I decided to get Angie to give my Marfy 2254 blouse a fine tune so I could finally use the silk that I purchased in China for this blouse.


Angie made very minor changes to my original toile:

1. Took off the 1.5cm at the centre back neck edge that was added.
2. Reduced the armhole and sleeve additions by 0.5cm (half of what we added).
3. Increased the cuff and sleeve edge width so that the cuff doesn’t grab my arm.

Here is what we did to the front pattern and then did the corresponding adjustments to the back and sleeve.

Then it was time to cut out the silk. Oh did it have some movement in it, thankfully with Angie’s help I got it cut out. What was really surprising was the sleeve cuff which is cut on the bias. When I took this off to cut the 2nd lot, the way the fabric expanded was rather terrifying. Angie advised me that I need to cut out the cuff interfacing from the pattern and then get the fabric to fit it!!

I did quite a bit of hand basting with this blouse to make sure that it didn’t move when I sewed the seams. I used a silk Gutterman thread for the basting as this won’t leave press marks in your fabric.

Angie showed us a number of seam finishes and I chose to use a normal seam as the french seam was too thick.

You sew your seam normally and then press to one side and sew a small zigzag (L1, W2) right next to your original stitching and them trim back to the zigzag.

I don’t have a button stash, so I called into Spotlight on the way home yesterday and purchased these buttons.

and plan to drop my blouse and buttons at Mick’s on the way to work tomorrow for him to do the buttonholes for me.

Here is the blouse completed as far as I am going to work on it.

It will make its debut during Me-Made-June.

Skirts

On By Sharon10 Comments

Even though I said here that I have plenty of skirts, the following two skirts have been sitting around for a while so I thought I would finish them as they will be great additions to my winter wardrobe.

The first skirt is a self drafted skirt from when I attended the Australian Sewing Guilds Convention in Sydney in 2007. I did a class for skirt drafting with Ronda Braybrook. Our first objective was to have a straight skirt pattern ready to use, and I have since used this pattern to make the brown linen and the brown/cream/red linen skirts here.

Ronda then challenged us to draft a different pattern from our block, and I will admit right now that that is a huge stumbling block for me and this is what I came up with, a wide yoke with a half circle skirt attached.

The skirt is fully lined again with an A-line skirt pattern. Isabel and her predecessor have been wearing this skirt for the past 4 years while I got around to hemming it.

Here is a side view which show the fullness of the skirt.

Now the 2nd skirt hasn’t been hanging around as long and was supposed to be part of my wardrobe for the trip to the US. In fact it did travel with me the whole trip waiting for me to do some hand sewing on the side seams and add the buttons to the yoke which I purchased at M&L Fabrics on our 2nd last day, aren’t they cute.


Needless to say, it came home in the same state as it was packed.

This is another version of BWOF 04-2009-101 and really there are no changes from the original skirt. It will be a great base for my casual wardrobe and already goes with so many of my tops.

Aren’t pictures wonderful, I couldn’t see how the skirt was clinging to my tights in the mirror and seeing that the cord is a lot lighter in weight than the previous version, I’m thinking seriously of adding a lining to this skirt.

Now to focus on some tops.

Summer Skirt

On By Sharon17 Comments

This skirt was cut out before I headed to the US and seeing I was close to finishing Green Gable, I thought it best to finish the skirt as well so they could be worn together when we have our first warm day later this year.

I have made view A of this skirt (2nd from the top on the left) once before in a Japanese cotton and just love how girlie and cool it feels.

This time I used a cotton voile from Spotlight.

Photos taken by DM

The skirt has the pleats stitched down and it is fully lined with a white voile using an A-line skirt pattern as this gives me enough room to walk without adding a lot of volume around my legs.

The only change I made to the pattern was to take 1cm of each side seam from the waist to the hip line, a very small adjustment, however the skirt now sits where I want it to.

Now to keep my eye open for fabrics for tops to go with this skirt.

Green Gable

On By Sharon10 Comments

When I saw Amanda’s cute knitted summer top I just had to find out where I could get it.

I purchased the Green Gable pattern by Rachel Bishop from the wool shack who are suppliers of the Zephyr Style knitting patterns here in Australia and they recommended Jo Sharp Soho Summer DK cotton.


I started this in October 2010, so you can see that I’m not a fast knitter.

This pattern had a few firsts for me:

1. Knitting in the round
2. Knitting from the top down

Thankfully YouTube helped me out with the backward loop cast on, otherwise I would have never got there.

This is the second item of chartreuse (although Jo Sharp calls it Cactus) that I have bought into the house.

I love the lace at the neckline and have just about finished a lovely summer skirt to go with it – just in time for winter.

Me-Made-June 2011

On By Sharon2 Comments

At last, Zoe has organised a made-by-me month when I will be home instead of travelling for part of it.

My pledge is:

I, Sharon of http://petiteandsewing.blogspot.com, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-June ’11. I endeavour to wear at least one self made garment each day for the duration of June 2011.

To help me achieve this I really need to make some blouses/tops. Skirts and trousers I have enough but tops/blouses are scarce so at least I know where my focus will be for a while.

Is anyone else going to join me?

Holiday Sewing

On By Sharon11 Comments

For my trip to the USA, I needed to organise a few extra layers as the temperatures where going to be around 6 degree Celsius, little did we know that we were going to be snowed on 🙂

First up was to change the neckline on 2 purchased thermal tops that I have for skiing (I still have a couple crew necks left).


With the assistance of my sewing buddies, I put on the thermal and then this top that I was going to take away and they then drew around the neckline with a chalk pen. I also checked that this neckline would work with my cross over top as well.


When I took the thermal off, I rounded off the chalk neckline and cut out the excess fabric, and then used fold over elastic to finish of the necklines. I also took the sleeves up as the original length was far too long for my tops.


The thermals worked a treat as they were worn just about every day we were away.

The next item was another Simplicity 2603 cardi and top with long sleeves.

This time I made the set up in a chocolate brown Merino Wool from The Fabric Store and cut the cardi front drape halfway between the short and long versions.

This length enabled me to take one of the fronts and tuck in into the back waistband of either my jeans or skirt

and then flick the other front side up over my shoulder.

giving me an extra layer across my upper body when the temperatures were very low.

Here is the top by itself and Roscoe being directed to stay out of the picture 🙂


The cardi went with all my tops and was worn every day. The merino wool washed and dried very well

Now to continue with my winter sewing.

Vogue 8572 – Versatile pattern

On By Sharon13 Comments

I did manage to get some sewing done earlier this year (not just the UFO skirt and pants fitting session) however the time to tell you about it just wasn’t available.

I made another version of Vogue 8572 (OOP). I first made it here with long sleeves and then here with 3/4 sleeves and this time with short sleeves.

This time the fabric is the chartreuse crinkled fabric that is at the bottom of the bundle that I purchased from Kerryn’s Fabric World in July of last year.

For some reason I thought chartreuse and burnt orange (above the patterned knit) zips would be everywhere, so I didn’t think about getting them when I was at Kerryn’s.

After checking out the many fabric shops in Sydney and having no luck, I remembered the comment the lovely ladies at The Cloth Shop said when we visited them in March 2009, “we can get you any coloured invisible zip you want”.

So I cut a swatch of the both fabrics and posted them to The Cloth Shop. This is what I received back from Kim.

Chartreuse

Burnt Orange

The fabric was interesting to work with as you do your best not to take out any of the crinkles when laying out the pattern, pressing and sewing. The advantage of the made garment is that you scrunch it up and put in in a panty hose leg to wash, dry and then I just press the small facing I have at the neckline and I’m all set to wear it another day.

Front

Back

This top has been fun to wear during summer and I can now wear it with a number of jackets and cardigans to take me through autumn and winter.

(PS: The large piece of fabric on the top of the bundles was the linen for my Shirtmaker.)

Sew Expo, Puyallup – WOW

On By Sharon6 Comments

All I can say is if you are a sewer, quilter, textile artist then you must visit the Expo at least once, it is amazing, the teachers, vendors and general energy of the whole site is mind boggling. This is the view when standing at one end of a row looking towards the back of the Showplex venue:

Photo courtesy of Alison

There were approximately 178 vendors attending and a lot of the teachers had their own stalls and were on hand to talk to or assist you.

See the brick wall way at the back, that is where some of the seminar rooms were and where Vogue Fabrics had their fabric stall set up, with different fabrics being added daily:

Photo courtesy of Alison

When I organised my classes I was concerned how I would survive 4 days arriving at 8am and leaving late, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to fill the day between attending classes, visiting the various vendors’ stalls and finally being able to meet my Internet sewing friends.

I had some wonderful classes during the 4 days and there was something from each of them that I have noted in this cute note book that we received at our first class on day 1.

  • When making a shirt/blouse, clip the top and bottom of the collar, collar stand, yoke and centre back of shirt and centre front fold lines (Marto Alto). I know I only clip some of those areas on one edge and Marto showed how the extra clipping sped up her sewing of the shirt/blouse.
  • Your neck binding for a knit top is the same length as your neck edge but seamed at 1.5cm except for a mesh binding which is 2 1/2″ (6.3cm) smaller (Sandra Betzina).
  • When you press your bias strip in half, remember to remeasure it as it tends to stretch (Sandra Betzina).
  • Facings – pin front facing to neck edge and clip shoulder seam, pin back facing to neck edge and clip shoulder seam, then sew facing shoulder seams matching the snips and your facing will fit perfectly to the neck edge (Patti Palmer) – this has always given me grief.
  • Button loops, sew these in place on paper to ensure your placement is correct and then put the paper in between the fabric and facing and stitch, the paper pulls out (Connie Crawford).
  • Fancy Seams – Ron Collins showed us a pair of linen pants that were lined with silk organza to help the “wrinkle factor”. I will be using this technique as I love linen, and I am sure others have documented it, I will once I get around to making the pants.
  • Have you ever had difficulty in tyring to figure out what colour you can put with the chartreuse garment that you have in your wardrobe? Visit the hardware and pick up 1 or 2 of the Inspired by Colour charts, they have a lot of very good ideas of colour groups (Sandy Miller).

I’m certain that the handouts that we were given at each seminar will provide a lot more for me to “try out”.

Now I have to figure out how to get back their in a few years time 🙂

What an adventure!

On By Sharon7 Comments

I am home from the USA and it was a fantastic trip, I hope not to bore you with the details.

Our flight to LA on the Qantas A380 was uneventful thankfully and landed us in a very cool Los Angeles for the day. We then flew to Portland on Saturday and hired a car and this is where the fun started.

Sunday saw Janis, who had contacted me via Stitcher’s Guild offering us a natives tour of Portland, meet us at our hotel for a fabulous tour of her home town.

First stop was Fabric Depot, then to Mill End Store the goodies we found soon had us using our second bag.

Monday we headed to Joann’s under our own steam and then on Tuesday we headed to Rose City Textiles on our way to Puyallup for the Sewing and Stitchery Expo.

For the next four days we attend the Expo attending the classes we had booked into and meeting up with Patti B, BeeBee, karent, Karen Roth, CarloynB and Janis (again) who are all from Stitchers Guild and managed to bump into a number of the Australian Sewing Guild Group who were there as well.

From there Alison and I flew to Utah where it put on a great snow show for us. This is what the car looked like after 1 hour and thankfully we had a helper to sweep the snow off the car before we headed 1 hour back down the freeway to our hotel.

After Utah we headed back to Oakland and drove back to Los Angeles for our flight home.

Now for the goodies:

Fabric

Top Row: green/black knit, brown geometric knit, brown/red/coffee knit, purple mauve geometric knit and brown/coffee swirly linen. The two small pieces of black and green are wick-away fabric for a cycling shirt for DH.

2nd Row: 3 ply gortex, orange self patterned linen, aubergine Camel Hair for a coat and next to it is quilted fabric that I would like to use for the zip out lining that was in Threads No 152, and the next piece is a patterned fine cord for a jacket.

3rd Row: cream wick-away Lycra, aubergine knit with wool, orange wick-away and camel boiled wool.

4th Row: brown self patterned knit, camel waffle weave knit from M&L Fabrics; Missoni type knit, Rust knit, brown floral, cream stripe, cream/pale blue knit and open weave knit all from Marcy Tilton.

5th Row: multi coloured stripe and pale green waffle weave from M&L Fabrics, coffee/grey/cream knit from Joann’s; aubergine/grey/blue silk and brown/pale pink silk from Vogue Fabrics.

Notions

Wonderful rhinestone zippers, buckles, brown and coffee sharpies, sewing machine and coverstitch needles, snap source goodies, Palmer Pletsch Interfacing packs, scissors and more.

Other goodies

2 Ottobre magazines, Sandra Betzina Power Sewing Books 1 and 2, Merino wool and pattern, beads and of course 2 rolls of Press “N” Seal, 2 Cross Stitch Fob kits.

We were entitled to 2 suitcases on our trip and luckily we didn’t have any excess baggage costs and didn’t have to post anything home.

I will be back soon to let you know about the Sewing and Stitchery Expo and the classes I attended.