E-Vest Re-Make

This is a make from last year that I never used as the subject of a blog post. It was perhaps because I wasn't sure I liked it that much. In fact, when I came across it recently I could not remember which pattern I used. At first I thought I had used the Valencia jacket and omitted the sleeves. But, indeed, it was from the Sewing Workshop eVest pattern. And here is why I thought it was the Valencia.

Online description: The easy-to-make eVest is an adaptation of our popular Valencia Jacket pattern. The loose-fitting vest has soft fold-back lapels and angled front drape. The wrong side of the fabric shows. Options for hemming or binding edges are included in the pattern download.

I think that the adaptation is just that the sleeves were omitted. Maybe. The Sewing Workshop folks are champs at reworking a pattern, I think.

I remember it as an easy make, probably from a short cut of fabric I had acquired - too little to make much of anything but a vest. But I like the fabric and NOW I think I really like the vest.

Version 1:

The selvedge was nice looking so I thought I would just fold it back and stitch in place with a running stitch. I used a silk tafeta remnant to finish the armholes and the lower hem.

The result was OK:

Version 2:

Next, I cut off the selvedge down the front and used more of the silk tafeta to finish the front lapels. I also added a patch pocket to the right side front.

Last week I fished it out of the closet and wore it. I love vests when it's cold here. We don't turn the indoor temps particularly high so I like the extra layer. This light weight wool drapes nicely. Also it is not itchy and so I can wear it with almost anything.

I felt like it needed another re-make, so here is the maybe-final...

Version 3:

I removed the silk tafeta binding from the lapels and the front hemline. It is not soft and does not roll nicely even on the bias. I also *improved* some sloppy finishing on the armholes. And I replaced the binding with this rough weave silk piece from stash. 

I have no idea where and when I acquired this piece of silk. It is only 14" wide so probably a kimono remnant I picked up at Sewing Expo years ago. I really like the way the stripes in the bias binding work with the colors of the wool in the vest. Now it is in my rotation of favorite vests.

It goes with a lot of things in my closet. Here I am wearing it with my very old gray silk charmeuse Plaza pants (another Sewing Workshop pattern from years past). 

I think those Plaza pants may have come back into style. Or (more likely), I am just in the mood for loose silk pants.

I did not resist the urge to add a patch to the back neckline.

I am pretty crazy about this eVest pattern now. Maybe I want to make a long version next. It's still chilly here, especially in the mornings.

1001001

As I begin a new year around our planet, I am pausing to think about the joy I receive from my hobby of sewing and other making. 

It is no longer all about the fabric. I do love fabric and fabric shopping, and I salivate knowing I am about to enter a fabric store, but it does not drive me to making one garment after another, as I've done in the past. Instead I am looking at existing garments and imagining improvements.

Though I am still enamored of patterns and will always use them - why invent something that others invent for a living - I do not feel the need to constantly try another new-to-me pattern. I have a fairly large collection of unused patterns when that urge strikes.

North rim of the Grand Canyon in Arizona

I want to push myself in new directions. In the last few weeks, I have been pulling out Diane Ericson patterns and I love her inspiring videos. Her patterns are unique, I think, in that the instructions are chocked full of ideas and variations on the pattern enclosed. The instructions are different from, say, Cutting Line Deisgn patterns, in that they invite creativity rather than precise results. 

Modified TSW Urban pants + self-drafted pullo-over

Here is my latest make. I am not too sure about wearing these pieces as an outfit. I may find them to be more useful as separates with other pieces. The fabric is light weight cotton pique from Five Eighths Seams in Charleston SC.

The pants are constructed with a slight modification to the Urban Pants pattern from the Sewing Workshop. Instead of tabs and buttons, I threaded a bias tube through a channel in the bottom hem. Then I gathered it slightly to give a little shape. 

The top is constructed from the pants remnants. I created to rectangles, roughly 25" x 25" each. I opened the center fron seam on the front piece enough to create a V neck. The triangles are folded to the inside and top stitched in place. I added a small pleat to each arm cap to bring in the silhouette a bit, but I may remove that and do something different. It is too cutsie right now.

It is not terribly creative but the process is engaging. I'll keep pushing Diane's approach to constructing garments.

A decade ago I spent one week with Diane at Design-Outside-the-Lines in Sisters, Oregon. It was the last one where she partnered with Marcy Tilton. I met some wonderful women and I was overwhelmed with inspiration. Though I was sort-of a deer-in-the-headlights during the workshop, I soaked up a playful attitude shared by all present.

Taos location for upcoming Design Outside the Lines

Now I am excited that I will spend another week with Diane in Taos, New Mexico next month. I am tickled. A space opened up and now I am working on the logistics.

Biking in Zion National Park

Meanwhile I have returned from a wonderful time with family in Las Vegas, NV, and Zion National Park in Utah. What a blast! My legs are still sore. My elbow scrapes are healing, as are the bruises. 

I bought two souvenir T shirts that I am treating as fabric. The price of the shirt does not change as sizes change so I bought the largest shirts I could. I cut open the side seams and began to experiment with some Diane-style ideas. I started with this very inexpensive, very large shirt from the Cirque de Soleil show I saw in Las Vegas.

After some play, I shopped by closet for clothes I made but never wear. This yellow shirt seemed to be ready for a remake. That yellow is cheerful but not good with my skin tone. So I never wear this shirt.

I used the Grainline Studio Lark shirt as my base. I was able to cut two long sleeves from the yellow striped shirt. I slit the front and back of the pink Love shirt with an S curve. Once I had assembled them, placing part of the back on the front and vice versa, I knew I had made a mistake. 

I sort-of wish I had kept the two images as they were in the original shirt and just cut them to fit the Lark pattern. My work-around was to cut some black-and-white striped knit into strips and zigzag onto the seam line. After washing and drying, it curled up and I'm OK with the result.

I hope that this new shirt gets more rotation than that yellow one. In any case, it was great fun to use for my experiment.

Canyoneering in Zion's slot canyons

*My title 1001001 is a palidrome when written in binary. Yep, I'm still a geek.

Bricolage

In January, I attended a virtual class with the wonderful Mary Ray via my local fiber art organization, Southeast Fiber Arts Alliance. And it was just full of the kind of inspiration that makes you want to drop everything and get into the sewing studio. It was just what I needed!

We have a follow-up virtual meeting this coming Saturday. During this meeting, participants' bricolage projects will be shown. I cannot wait to see what everyone made.

So what is bricolage anyway? As I understand it, the basic idea is to use what you have. That is not all that difficult given the embarassment of riches I have in my fabric storage.

1st Attempt:

Ever since I made a vest from my husband's old jeans, I have been collecting old jeans. I volunteer at a food pantry that also includes a clothing closet. I sometimes rescue items that are deemed unredeemable and end up in the trash. The clothing volunteers are on to me and pass along used jeans when not useful.

I now have a fairly substantial pile of old jeans, some already diassembled. I tried to disassemble more but, two bandaids later, I simply cut them apart. Next I made *fabric* by stitching pieces together.

My idea was to recover 8 cushions on my sunroom love seats. Ha!

2nd Attempt:

When I finished covering one cushion, I stopped. It did not look that great, honestly. And it took forever to piece together enough to cover a cushion. This surpirsed me. Not one to let go too easily, I converted it into this pillow:

3rd Attempt:

About a decade ago, we visited Spain on a tour. In Barcelona I became enamored of Gaudi, of course. How could I not? And I wanted fabric to remind me of Gaudi. 

Tours like ours did not include fabric shopping.  Instead I bought a tshirt with a Gaudi-esque print on the front. It was a too-small size but I liked the front print, so I bought it, figuring I could work it into something.

After capturing the maximum amount of fabric from the tshirt, I pulled out some thrifted tshirts acquired over the years, one of which I had used for another project, leaving me with less that one tshirt.

I selected the Odette pattern from the Sewing Workshop's Odette and Ivy. It's an interesting take on a tshirt with lots of assymetrical piecing. 

My approach was to start with the focus fabric from my Gaudi tshirt. I wanted to use it as efficiently as possible while keeping the focus on it. It became the front piece.

I worked from there using first one and then another shirt to cut out the various pieces of the Odette. In the end I did not have a lot of choices. The sleeves and the lower band take a good bit of fabric. Then I spotted the bicycle and decided to incorporate that.

Next I began to cut apart the other tshirts, using parts for first the large pieces in the pattern, until I had each piece cut out. I enjoyed the process so very much. And I like that the funky bicycle made it into the final piece.

OK - bring on the bricolage!

Eureka Top Hack

When the Eureka pattern first published, I purchased it, of course. But I wondered if I would ever really use it. The pattern envelope contains a simple boxy top with cuffs on the cap sleeves, plus a skirt with a V design in the front and back. Both call for knit fabrics.

Here is the shirt line drawing:

I made my first Eureka top out of a knit I purchased at the Sewing Workshop while attending Sew Kansas. I believe I made a size M based on my measurements. I never wore it much, mostly because the armholes were too large and revealed too much of my bra. 

Eureka top with Helix pants

Since then I believe I must have made it a dozen different times with woven fabrics. I've changed the neckline, lengthened it, pieced fabric, and, this time, I added sleeves.

Eureka top size M made as is from pattern with woven cotton

Today's make is part of my preparation for a presentation at my local ASG neighborhood group in late May. The presentation is on cutting, sewing, and wearing garments on the bias. This shirt is part of my *control group* because it is constructed completely on grain, as recommended by the pattern instructions.

This time I started with a size XS and lengthened it three inches. I had 3 thrifted men's shirts to use, all with woven in designs, stripes and plaid. This makes the grain aspect highly visible.

I've worked with men's shirts before and have learned some things that help me. I start with a seam ripper and open up and as many seams as possible. But I do not stress over this. For one thing, working on removing the stitches often leaves little holes and lots of weak spots in the remaining fabric. Men's shirts are sewn with tiny stitches and these old shirts have the stitches embedded in them. 

So after a little work with the seam ripper, I switched to scissors. I simply cut off the seams, preserving as much fabric as possible. 

The arm pit area of the shirt pattern is a place that can be challenging when salvaging men's shirts. The curve is way too low. Also I wanted the resulting design to be vertical lines, in keeping with the stripes and plaid. In addition, I did not want it to look like a patch-work quilt top. Not sure I was totally successful though.

To keep the vertical lines, I used one front with buttonholes and another with buttons. Men's shirts are cut and sewn in remarkably consistent ways! Because of the way I cut things out, I actually had to reposition the buttons, leading to some weak spots. These, I mended just a little.

Flat-felled seams were used for all the piecing, as well as most construction. The armholes are serged to form a faux flat-felled seam. 

When I completed the bodice, I realized that the fabric on one side was slightly frayed where I had removed its pocket.  So I attached a breast pocket from another shirt, placing it more to my liking. My hope is that the result is balanced as well as hiding and protecting the weak fabric.

I wanted to see how much I could use existing sleeves, so I cut the sleeves from the shirt, then cut off the cuffs, and cut off the vertical seam. This allowed me to open and press the sleeves flat, retaining the placket with its single button.

The Eureka comes with sleeve cuffs designed to be sewn to the armholes one-to-one. So I placed the cuff pattern over the salvaged sleeve, snugging it up as much as possible to the upper sleeve. The cuff pattern piece from the envelope is on straight-of-grain, so I cut my new sleeve straight across the top of the sleeve. That is, there is no curve at all in the sleeve head. Frankly I've never seen any reason for a curve in the sleeve head for a dropped shoulder, at least not for my shirts.

Then I connected the point of the sleeve cuff pattern to the bottom edge of the sleeve, removing only a small wedge from each side. The resulting sleeve was a simple shape and fit nicely into the armhole.

I cut 3" bias strips from one of the salvaged pieces of men's shirting and used these for the neckband and the sleeve cuffs. I discovered a slightly frayed area in the neckband after completing the shirt, and so had to add a little patch by hand.

The sleeves were gathered onto the folded bias strips. I learned from Marla Kazell that gathering can be easier to control if the stitch length is shorter. I believe my gathering stitch-length was about 3.5 cm. The fabric gathered easily and smoothly. 

With bulk of the bias binding for cuffs, I was sure I did not want to try a machined buttonhole. Instead I sewed a thread loop on the end. I had small buttons left over from the collar buttons. I can slip my hands through without using the buttons, but it is possible to open it up and roll up the sleeves.

Hemming involved stay-stitching 0.5" from the edge, then folding twice and edge-stitching. I added just a little sashiko to the back neckline.