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.

Ensemble Sewing

A dig through deep stash turned up two, coordinating fabrics. One is a double knit, a ponte with rayon (I think). The other is a cotton design by Naomi Ito (brand: nani IRO). It's a fairly beefy cotton, almost the weight of canvas.

So I decided to do something I don't do enough - make two pieces to be worn together. An ensemble is so practical but I rarely plan that far ahead.

First I made a dress out of the ponte. I used my favorite knit dress pattern - the Swing Tee from the Sewing Workshop (TSW), modified to be a dress. The Tee is fairly wide at the bottom, so making it into a dress was a bit more complicated than simply lengthening it. TSW included the measurements for this modification in a recent issue of Sew Confident. I've constructed and worn dresses from this pattern quite a lot lately. Maybe too many. DH has started to comment...

This dress was modified to include bracelet length sleeves and side seam pockets. I chose to make the pockets a single layer to avoid bulk.

This was such a simple make and I do love the color. I know I'll enjoy wearing it.

For my second piece, I chose the Brando jacket, also from TSW. One problem with deep stash is that I begin to imagine that I have way more yardage than I actually do have. As I laid this out, it was obvious pretty quickly that there was no way to get an entire jacket out of my precious piece of nani IRO fabric. I was really bummed about this, but soldiered on, deciding to make a vest instead.

Even a vest was challenging with my limited yardage. By piecing the collar, and making the pockets out of a remnant of Bemberg Ambiance, it worked!

The pattern repeat on this fabric was way too large to even consider matching it at the seams. Some time ago, I decided that large prints are often better used without matching the print. Maybe I'm just lazy, but I have convinced myself that I really, really don't want that huge continuous pattern across my body.

The Brando has princess seams and provided nice places to break up the pattern without losing the overall effect. I think.

The Brando has an interesting collar stand that only extend around the back of the neckline. My fabric was stiff enough that I did not use any interfacing. With the interesting collar stand, I like the way the collar can be folded up a bit.

My greatest challenge in making the Brando was the zipper. A separating zipper is required. I ordered one online but when I started to use it, I realized it was about 1/2 inch too long.

The zipper is fully exposed on one side, so I needed the finish on each end to remain intact. Of course, a separating zipper has a hard plastic stop at the bottom for feeding the two sides of teeth together. And this one had brass balls at the top.

I was lucky to find a fine tutorial online (*) that gave me the tricks I needed to shorten the zipper. One trick was to crush the extra teeth using needle-nose pliers. Then they fall right off. Another trick was to do that BEFORE removing the brass balls.

After removing the teeth, there's room to maneuver the stop off without destroying it. It was fairly easy to pry it open, move it down, and mash it closed again. I was so excited when this was successful!

I was not quite sure how to secure the ends of the zipper to the fabric. I did not see anything in the instructions to help with this. It was one of those times that I really wished to have a sample to copy.

I was doubtful that I could machine sew the lower hard plastic tab to the fabric. But I was wrong. In the end, using my zipper foot, I sewed a tiny square around the perimeter of it to secure it.

I followed the included instructions to add the lining. Too bad I didn't have sleeves to practice bagging the lining! The instructions looked great.

To finish the armholes, I created some bias tape from silk dupioni. Once I finished it, I tried it on over a plain white Tee. I was not terribly impressed with it. The armholes are a bit larger than I expected, and of course, there's nothing to be done about that now. Note to self for next time.

Also there was a bit of gap-o-sis near where the front princess seam intersects the armhole. I did my best to remove the gaps by taking a wider seam allowance there. Unfortunately I was not paying close attention and took in the princess seam in the back of one side, rather than the front.

Yep, this was one of those projects.

I'll have to wear the vest a few times to see how to style it. I'm not sure I love it with the dress.

To me, it reads frumpy with the dress. Maybe with some tights...

 So much for Ensemble Sewing.

I'm not giving up on the vest and I definitely like the dress. I tried the vest with a Liberty shirt and Helix pants here.

There is still hope for the little vest. I think I'll like it with a shorter shirt. I mean, it's kind of cute, isn't it?

* I wish I had made a note on the tutorial. If I find it again, I'll come back and give credit here.

Never Say Never

I never wear shorts. Well, almost never. I own one pair of RTW shorts that I wear for walks, hikes, bike rides, rowing machine. Having this one pair of shorts allowed me to avoid making shorts because I do not feel all that comfortable in them.

Truly Terrible RTW shorts

After chaperoning 11 teens in Belize for a week, I have decided to come clean and admit that I wear shorts. There are simply times when shorts make sense. And these old RTWs are quite terrible.
So I made a pair of shorts.

I chose Fit For Art Eureka! pants as the starting point. These are narrow cut pants and so cannot be simply cut off. I think I tried that once and, of course, the results were not good.

Luckily I remembered that Carrie of Fit For Art had done a post on pants-to-shorts once upon a time. I was a little confused about part of it and posted a reply to her blog post. She not only replied on her blog but sent me an email message to make sure I was clear. Thanks so much, Carrie!

The fabric I chose is a linen-rayon blend purchased from the Sewing Workshop. I made a pair of culottes out this fabric and I love the feel and drape of it.

For mine, I first measured the outer seam of the awful RTW shorts, as these were the only reference point I had. I knew I wanted my new shorts to be longer so I added 7 inches to the RTW shorts outer seam.

Then I measured the outer seam of the front piece and the back piece, and folded the leg up so that my new shorts would be long enough, adding some for SA and hem. You can see in the picture the chalk lines I drew for the shorts. Evidently I'm not committed enough to making shorts that I think I need to create new tissue for them!

Based on Carrie's post and additional notes, I knew I needed to reshape the outer seam. Starting at the widest hip point, I dropped a vertical line to my proposed hem line. This added 1.25" to the width at the bottom. I added 1.25" to width at the inseam too, curving it back into the original curve near the crotch. I made the same changes to both the front and back pieces.

So that these would be a bit tailored, I added a fly to the center front of my shorts. Sandra Betzina's book is my go-to on this technique.

Then I decided to get fancy. I thought that perhaps a contour waistband would be quite comfortable, and, really, shouldn't the zipper extend into it? I could not quite conjure it in my imagination but felt confident it would all work out.

First zipper insertion, extending zipper into the contour waistband.

Creating the contour waistband was pretty easy. I created one that finishes at less than 2" in depth.

Extending the zipper into the waistband worked great on the narrow side of the fly front.

I watched several YouTube videos looking for a guide to installing the fly front zipper and extending the zip into the waistband. Nothing. There were several on adding a fly front, and there were several on extending the zipper into a waistband, but none on the combination of the two.

With unreasonable optimism I pushed ahead anyway. First I constructed the front darts. Then I added the front waistbands to each front. Then I installed the fly front zipper. All was swell.

But when I added the waistband facings, I realized that the facing would cover the top of the zipper due to the overlap created on a fly extension. To be honest, I did not realize it right away. I fiddled quite a lot. And let it rest overnight.

Nothing worked so I ripped out the portion of the zipper extending into the waistband. But that made the zipper too short. After an hour or so of picking black thread from black fabric, I was ready to install another zipper.

Second zipper insertion.

Sandra Betzina offers helpful advice on using a too-long zipper in this fly application. The stop goes at the bottom and the excess is cut off after it has been caught in the waistband. This creates a fairly flat transition.

Words were said, but in the end, I'm glad I ripped the first zipper out. I would've been unhappy with a too short zipper.

before the buttonhole fiasco

After that, things proceeded smoothly until I got ready to install a buttonhole in the contour waistband. My Bermina makes gorgeous automatic buttonholes. That's why I bought it. But it is finicky if there is any bump. That tiny zipper extension was just enough to cause it to get stuck.

So more words, more picking black thread out of black fabric.

Next I used the manual buttonhole - which is also darned good - and it worked just great!

I'm quite pleased with these shorts and will wear them proudly when the occasion calls for it.

easy machine hem

I should be careful when I say never. I used to say I'd never go on a zip line. And then I did.

But never again.

I'm serious this time.