I’ll give you a hint:  Marcy Tilton.  Ths is the pocket from the Vogue 8561 skirt that has given so many people fits (and not in a good way) over at PatternReview.

The nice stripe matching is purely coincidental and is due to my placing the grain lines directly on a stripe.  Lucky me!

I’m making it up in some cheapo polyester suiting that I got at Gail K’s last year when our ASG neighborhood group went.  I did not shorten the thing at all, so it’ll probably be way too long.  The finished length is 35 1/2 inches and I’m somewhere in the neighborhood of 42 inches from waist to floor.   In the summer I enjoy wearing long skirts with sandals, so I’ll see what I think as I get closer to done.

So far it’s a lot of fun to make and I don’t want to stop once I get started working on it.  I’m hoping to have some fun with it after I finish typing this!

In case I don’t see you, have a happy 4th of July!

ETA:  OK.  That’s a southern expression.  It means “I wish you a happy holiday!”  LOL!

Tags: Vogue, Vogue 8561

At last! I was beginning to think I’d never finish.  Every time I’d plan to work on it, something else in my world would require my full attention–and that invisible zipper was the pits. They may look nice finished, but, please.  Give me a nice lapped zipper any day of the week.

The source of my zipper woes was the back skirt piece, #14 in the scan.

The left hand side of #14 is the center back seam.  See how it curves a little bit?  It doesn’t look like much in the drawing, but it gave me two problems.  First, I don’t curve right there.  I used to curve right there until my knees forced me to quit riding the bicycle.  Now I have no need for a curved center back seam.

Of course I did not notice the curve until I sewed the zipper.

That curve gives you a slightly bias, easily stretched edge.  And it’s especially easy to stretch in lightweight cotton denim.  The first time I sewed the lower portion of the zipper and tried on the dress, I had a little pooch where the zipper pointed outward.  It looked like I was growing a puppy dog’s tail back there.

Out it came.

I kept at it until I eased the curve onto the zipper with a nice, smooth result.  Then I tried the dress on again.  This time there was no tail, but the back of my dress hung in vertical folds where that curve is.  I tried pinning out the excess in the two adjacent vertical seams, but it didn’t look as good as I wanted it to look.  The excess needed to come out of the center back seam where I had already sewn that miserable zipper.

Out it came again.

Finally after several days of this (10 minutes at a time), I got the zipper in to my satisfaction and was able to finish the rest of the dress. A day or two later, I had enough couch time for hemming and sewing on buttons.

I like it very much, and I expect to forget all the zipper pain the first time I wear it.

Tags: New Look

After I posted the pattern for the turquoise dress I’m working on last week, everything conspired to keep me away from my machines.  I couldn’t get 5 minutes to stack together.  I was finally able to do a little work late yesterday.

At the zipper, I hesitated.  The dress pattern wanted an invisible zipper, and I seldom use those.  I needed a little memory-refresher to get me going again.  The Bernina doesn’t have an invisible zipper foot, but I knew from experience that it could be done without one.  I just couldn’t recall the process.  Sigrid’s sewing tutorials to the rescue!

Chiefly, I used Els’ tutorial to sew it, and Summerset’s method of keying the zipper to get my dress’ horizontal seams aligned to my satisfaction.  I pressed those coils flat and pinned the thing in place.  I found that my Bernina zipper foot did not allow me to both hold the zipper in place and stitch close to the coils.  As soon as I removed a pin, the foot would nudge the zipper off the seam allowance and onto the body of the dress. I could have hand-basted the zipper in place first, but I’m not really a basting kind of a girl.  I can and will baste, but only as a last resort.

I decided to try another foot instead.

Any foot I used must be able to ride along the zipper coil plus have a wide opening to allow the needle to shift close to the coil.  I immediately thought of the manual buttonhole foot that I had bought last year.  It seemed perfect, and as it turned out, was!

Not only did the foot keep the zipper tape in place along the center back without pushing it outward, the groove in the bottom of the foot kept the coil steady as I stitched.  If you click on the image at the right (which I borrowed from the Bernina site, btw), you’ll be able to see a video which shows the underside of the foot.  It has audio, so turn the volume down if you don’t want people around you to be entertained (and I use the term loosely) by the overview of the foot’s features.

Next time you sew an invisible zipper, you might consider using such a foot–especially if you have trouble getting your stitching close enough to the zipper coil, as I do.

The dress’ sewing order does not lend itself to fitting as you go.  I suspected that it would be a little large at the back hip.  After I got the zipper installed, I saw loose folds in back.  (My mother has a good ole Southern expression for this condition, which I’ll leave to your imagination.)  Naturally the position of the folds indicated that the center back seam would be the best place to take it in.

<<sigh>>

I suppose I’ll be ripping the lower half of my zipper–below the pesky horizontal seams to make it a little smaller there.   I don’t mind a little ripping and restitching to make the dress look just right, so I’ll get to it as soon as I can.

The dress is looking good.  Mr H gave me the thumbs up to say that he liked it.

Tags: New Look

There was some lightweight turquoise denim in the stash closet that wanted to be a dress.  I was wanting a plain sheath pattern for it.  In fact, I had selected a shift pattern to buy, but I wasn’t completely sold on making it from the denim.  I had pulled the McCall’s shift pattern from the drawer when this dress–New Look 6799, view C, caught my eye.

Usually I do some research before I buy a pattern.  I’ll decide what kind of garment I want to make and select a pattern.   I compare my “subject” to similar patterns in other brands, and look through my extensive stash to see if I have anything similar before I invest the money, time, effort, and storage space in a new pattern. That’s what I had done for the original McCall’s pattern that I went to the store to buy.

There are a few patterns like this one, however, that just bowl me over from the start.  It seemed perfect for the denim, which requires just the right pattern to make a flattering garment–especially when the garment is a shapely dress.  I bought it then and there, untested and unresearched.

When I arrived home, I consulted PatternReview for reviews.  There were some good ones.  Most of the reviewers said the pattern was easy–great!  I did a tissue fit on Sunday, cut on Monday, and sewed on Tuesday and Wednesday.  (One of these days I’ll show you a photo of my sewing set-up at present.  I  appreciate the sewing room that I have in “real” life even more now.)

I’m about half done, and it’s working out nicely.  By the weekend I should be able to show you a photo or two.

Tags: New Look

Ok. The maternity styling that has been in vogue for a while has never appealed to me. Let’s get that out of the way up front. 50 is breathing down my neck hard, and the last thing I need is to look preggers.  You can keep your tunic tops.

Harrumph.

Well looky what has transpired.  Me in a tunic.

My new grey pants wanted a new-style top. This is Burda Magazine #115 from the May, 2009 issue.  I liked the yoke, natch.  I’m not so crazy about the cap sleeves, but they are ok for this once.  If I ever made this top again, I would change those to some other sleeve.

The fabric is a polyester satin from JoAnn Fabrics, this season.  It looks really good with the new pants, and not bad with some old light blue capris that I had on earlier.

I made some changes, but nothing that really affects the look of the top.  The pattern offered traditional facings, and an invisible zippered closure in back.  I changed the front facing to a full yoke facing.  A zipper in back seemed like overkill, so I changed that to a slit.  Turns out the neckline is large enough to pull the top over your head with ease, so you don’t need any sort of opening back there.  I sewed the slit closed at the top.

I got a number of compliments on this when I wore it on Saturday, so maybe a tunic isn’t such a bad thing.

Tags: Burda WOF