Red Noto Tee and White Jeans

  

When spring rolls around, I feel like I need white pants. And the previous versions of white pants just won't do. It's a fiction that I allow myself, imagining I'll look better this year!

Fiction aside, I have been wanting some white jeans. A jeans fit is of course quite different from other pants styles. These are extra comfortable due to the elastic across the back. Otherwise they are classic jeans with a couple of odd darts near the front inseam. You can barely see them in the line drawing.

It is tricky to get the proper fit through the stride and I'm still working on it with this pattern. 

Somehow a couple of yards of white stretch denim came to be in stash. I know that I do not like stretch wovens, so I'm not sure why I made that mistake. Again.

But I was optimistic making these Getaway Jeans from the Sewing Workshop. For one thing, I have a pair of black Getaways in 100% cotton denim and I think they fit great.

So I cut out and constructed a pair with this part-lycra stuff. All was well until I reached the buttonhole. The jeans call for lots of lovely topstitching and I really like that. Inserting the fly zipper was smooth sailing. In my previous pair, I somehow got the right and left waistbands reversed, so I was extra careful this time.

Boy, do I wish I had cut the waistband so that the length-wise grain would run around my waist. The pattern calls for it to be cut on the cross-grain. No problem with nice stable 100% denim. But with this stretch, the buttonhole was difficult. After a number of samples, I determined that a buttonhole made with my automatic feature on my Bernina was never going to work. So I made one using the manual settings. 

I tried them on. They feel great. And they look good from the front, I think. Here I'm wearing them with last year's bias cut Emerald top published by Made By Rae in red linen. I do love that shade of red.

And here I'm wearing them with my recent Berwick Street tunic (the Sewing Workshop) hack. I rather like the navy contrast with the white.

Now the back needs some tweaking. I'm not going to show a picture, but I sure do hope I remember to extend the horizontal crotch a bit next time. Also I will avoid stretch wovens like this one. I feel like I'm pulling the pants up constantly. It might be my imagination, but the black version in 100% cotton denim feels much more secure.

Here with the Bristol top in Alabama Chanin organic cotton knit

I also finished my first and last Noto tee from the Sewing Workshop. It is a simple t-shirt with an inverted V shape to it. I hesitated to make one before losing some weight. Now my measurements fit into a size M so I gave it a try.

Super easy-to-make Tee Shirt, the Noto

I used a luscious red rayon jersey with nice drape. It was relatively easy to sew, not much rolling. And I so love this shade of red. 

I did struggle some on the neckline. Initially I tried navy and white striped rayon jersey, thinking the stripe would be pretty. I cut it on the lengthwise grain so that the stripe would have the desired effect. This failed. By the time I made it large enough in circumference, it simply flopped around looking sloppy.

So I used the standard signature t-shirt neckline suggested by the Sewing Workshop. It does not look great flat, but the puckers disappear when I wear it. And doesn't it look fun with this Fillmore Duster in the same shade of red?

My first try-on made it clear that this length, combined with this shape is not that great for me. I cut off about 2" and like it much better. Here is the BEFORE:

And here is the AFTER:

This is not the best shape for me. The color makes it feel successful but I'm not loving the shape. My hips are just slightly larger than my bust measurement and I think this silhouette highlights it some. Maybe I'll wear it and learn to love it. 

It is RED, after all.

Getaway Jeans and Persistence

My latest project was snake-bit but I persisted. And, boy, am I glad I did. 

The fabric came from my local fabric store, Gail K. The guy cutting it said it was Japanese denim. It's black on one side and a bluish black on the other. I loved it the moment I saw it. It's 100% cotton and so I washed and dried it thoroughly before cutting into it. I don't think there was much shrinkage. 

It's very sturdy denim, much like new jeans used to be before lycra invaded RTW jeans. I selected this fabric specifically for the Getaway Jeans from the Sewing Workshop. It's not often that I buy for a specific project, but this was just right for jeans. 

As Mr. NowSewing and I prepared for a 10 day trip to visit grandchildren, I carefully cut these out. Well, actually I made a toile first and got the sizing right. I imagined myself bringing a number of pre-cut projects to sew while visiting. I cut out the jeans and a Swing Tee dress, a basic no-brainer summer dress.

As I began to actually pack for the trip, I realized the unlikelihood of being able to sew something this complicated, or really anything at all involving a machine, while visiting. So I left my two carefully cut projects behind, and took my Alabama Chanin projects instead. These are all hand-sewing and worked out just right. It's nice to visit and sew by hand.

Once back home in the studio, I began the wonderful black jeans. I did not keep count, but I feel like these jeans contain the largest number of mistakes-per-project ratio to date, sort of a personal *best.*

It began when I realized it was a bad idea to have separated the pattern tissue from the pattern pieces. It was easy to conclude this after I screwed up the pockets. This occurred after I successfully sewed the odd but interesting darts on the front crotch.

In my defense, things have been going on in my personal life that are distracting. But I persisted. Mr. NowSewing said, Stop, but I did not.

The pockets came together easily once the pieces were more accurately labeled and I read the sentences in the instructions completely. Those pockets made me so happy, the way sewing at its best is prone to do.

Next I worked on the fly zipper. I booby-trapped this part a bit by using an old metal zipper with one missing zipper stop at the top. I worked around a safety pin to avoid zipping it off. 

I've had good success with Sandra Betzina's method for fly zippers in her book Power Sewing. But I like to try new things, so I began by following the instructions in the envelope. The instructions may be OK and I may try them again some day, but I stopped when I came to the part where the center front is NOT basted together during construction. Whoa. Way too much slack in that action for me. So back to trusty Sandra Betzina. It worked great.

The next steps are to attach the left and right waist bands. Due to the fly zipper, they are different lengths. I struggled a bit, and fused interfacing to the right side of one. Thank goodness for remnants. And then I noticed that they were larger than the pattern tissue. I whacked off the extra and moved on. 

They were now too small to fit on the top of my jeans. Back to the remnants to cut new waistbands, self-drafted to match the tops of my jeans.

That worked out fine, though my waistband is not traditional for jeans. It is a feature, right? It was indeed a lot easier to sew the buttonhole when it was not sitting so close to the top of the zipper.

The rest of the construction was without hiccup, so Yay!

The back waistband has elastic and I totally like that. Thought I would not, but I do. So comfortable and I do not tuck shirts in, so just right. The length was perfect too. 

Here worn with a green linen MixIt Top.

I put them on right away for a Father's Day dinner with DD and family. I do believe I'll get a lot of use out of these jeans. They do not photograph all that well, but you'll just have to trust me. 

I used a medium green heavy weight cotton for the top-stitching. It is one of those details that makes me happy even thought no one else will ever notice. Now I need a pair of white jeans. Definitely.

Once these were complete, I had a good night's sleep and went back over my pattern tissues to determine what went wrong. As it happened, I cut out tissue for both the Small and the Medium. After the toile, I cut the Medium in the denim. But when I reattached the pieces to the tissue I failed to notice that some were for size Small and some for size Medium. Operator error, per usual.

The swing tee dress was indeed a no-brainer, so I'm grateful for that.