Studio Saturday - towards a bespoke shirt

For quite a few years now I've been promising to make a shirt to fit my tall thin son, who can never find sleeves long enough. And finally it's happened, meant to be a surprise for his birthday. No chance of fittings during the process...

First step was to search shelves and elsewhere for my copy of this comprehensive book, published in 1993; it had wandered away from the Sewing shelf.

Over a leisurely two days, I made a pattern from his wedding shirt, which seemed to fit him well. This involved checking and rechecking the white shirt and the cross-and-dot paper pattern pieces.

The fabric is a strange sort of stretchy denim, quite heavy, so I looked for some lighter fabric to line the collar, collar stand, yoke, and cuffs. A happy byproduct of the search was the chance to sort out several more fabric drawers, and even allocate some fabric to the charity shop (sorted into ziploc bags and labelled "craft fabric")

 Which to choose? I slept on the decision...

Would he actually like any of these?

Fabrics from South Africa, Australia, Japan

I chose the Aboriginal design and started sewing, adding seam allowances of different widths as set out in the book.

A plan!

 Fussy-cutting for the patterned fabric

Following the grain lines -

Space near the sewing machine was a bit constrained, as the little kitchen hasn't yet left my studio, the carpenter has had other things on his mind -

I like how the hidden bit of the yoke turned out

 The cuffs will be fun too -

Before and after, or rather, model and sample

Practising making the placket - great fun -

For the birthday, this is what got packaged up -

Unfortunately the cuffs were a bit small and a new pair is being attached.

Even more unfortunately the fit of the back has inexplicable wrinkles parallel to the sleeve seam. But the shirt sort of works as a jacket over a teeshirt.

Next version will be in shirting-weight fabric and will be fitted to the body at each stage!

Studio Saturday - Dolly

The summer sun is at the right angle to catch the leaves of the peace lily - yet another possibility for a woodblock print -

- but not yet, the grandbaby must have a doll.

I found a pattern, and dug out some recycled linen and a remnant from a favourite dress -

Failure to re-read the instructions led to some tricky moments attaching the head - "next time" I'll sew it on to the body as instructed, rather than stuffing it first!

 We got there in the end -

The tricky part is the hair; the scary part is  the embroidered face. This, I decided, is too much detail, and could so easily go wrong -

Better to leave the child to decide whether she's happy, sad, etc -

Dolly was well received -

Apart from Dolly, a new woodblock is under the knife.

A new project perhaps

While ill recently I found it very soothing to read this book, which has been on my shelves for some 15 years, waiting for good intentions to fly into a window of opportunity. It was first published in 1993 and oh my, hasn't sewing technology changed in the past quarter century! The internet, rotary cutters, and a myriad of small things. But the basic principles endure, and this book sets them out clearly and in detail.

It wasn't just escapist reading, or harking back to my teenage years when I devoured books/information on garment making. I made some complicated garments back then, in quantity and at speed, squeezing them out of remnants for myself, or "sewing for money" for my mother's friends and even for teachers at my school - in fact it all started with a hem needing to be taken up, for which I was paid $1.00. It was amazing to earn money by doing something I so enjoyed. (To think that decades later I would fall into a serious job that did the same - what a fortunate life!)

My mother had wanted to be a dressmaker but her father deemed that no, she was to do secretarial training. Fortunately she was a person of resource and could - and did - turn her skills to a variety of jobs - bus conductor and pharmacy assistant for a start, and then anything that came along in her new life in Canada. I often think of that autocratic father, and how that decision made her life so different. Perhaps she was a bit jealous of me being able to do what she hadn't, or perhaps she was eager to encourage me. Perhaps a bit of both.

Now, the project - my son's wedding shirt was tailored to fit him - long arms, slim body. The idea is to use it as a pattern for subsequent shirts, half a dozen casual classics that will last for years. But first I need to brush up on a few skills and get a few tips on fitting and finishes.

Next, making a prototype from some of the acres of fabric that's on hand. Then comes the joy of finding lovely fabric -  recently when I was buying a bit of sinamay (to resume a previous project, the dipped pots), I noted in passing that shirting comes 150cm wide and costs £18 a metre. Probably online is a good source, but I really like the idea of an expedition to a fabric store with my son. He's no slouch when it comes to sewing (and printing) teeshirts and sweatshirts, and took to my serger like a duck to water, but doesn't have much time for such frippery at the moment.

Studio Saturday - sewing a slippery slip and a cosy cover

The main event in the home studio this past week was a bit of garment sewing, thanks to a bit of slippery fabric found in the local charity shop. It suggested "bias cut slip" and I went along with that suggestion, first making the pattern from a slip on hand, then laying it out on the fabric... 

 ... and cutting bias strips to face the neck and armholes and extend into delicate little straps...

The slithery, limp, cheap, synthetic, floppy, slippery fabric was a nightmare to work with. Cutting with a rotary cutter was All Wrong. Sometimes, good old-fashioned SCISSORS are the right tool!

It took me a while to realise that visible pencil lines could be drawn on the back of the fabric (rather than invisibly on the front) for cutting the bias strips - and that delicate straps could be made by simply pulling on the strips, which obligingly rolled up, ready to pin and stitch. Of course an extra hand would have been useful for this manoevre -

 Sewing the french seams, on the (uncertain) bias, was another slippery-sloppy nightmare. Lots of pins, use lots of pins....

 Uh-oh, what happened to the hem??

Pinning it up to hang evenly was challenging. In the end I put it on over the dress and pinned it at an inch above hem length, which gave 1/4" at the shallowest part. Adding a bit of false hem (deeper hem would help it fall better?) did my head in - this was after about 10 hours of grappling with the whispy item, figuring out how to get the bias binding to lie flat and undoing and redoing those wobbly side seams even as they willfully frayed....

Instead of prolonging the hem agony, it was basted, cut to 1/4" all round, turned up again, stitched, and is DONE. Now to finish the top, simply attaching the straps at the right length and without too much lumpiness -

For a quick'n'easy project, I made a hot water bottle cover out of on old woolly jumper, first making the pattern out of two pieces of A4 paper, to be cut as one for the front, and to have a bit added as overlapping hems on the back.

The front is two layers (the hidden layer has lots of moth holes and has been in and out of the soapsuds and freezer to deal with any sneaky lurking moths). A bit of intact ribbing adds a jaunty look -

The back uses intact ribbing as the hems (any holes are hidden in the bit turned under) and decorative embroidery hides the unavoidable mothholes -

It was pronounced cosy and serviceable. Job done!

Studio Saturday - in the sewing studio (and elsewhere)

A commission to make a travel bag (Central line) has got as far as the handles and a bit of a dither over the lining fabric -

None of these were quite right for my "vision", but I've found something that feels right.  It will probably take an hour to finish, once I sit down at the sewing machine.

There's also this dress, which has been hanging around (literally) for about 4 years. It's been even longer than that since I put in a zip. Time for a refresher (via youtube etc) and some quiet time at the machine -

 The dress is now somewhat too large so my aim in finishing it is to be done with it and to get it off my back, and conscience - and onto Freecycle.

While searching high and low for my secateurs I discovered these pots carefully wrapped up in a drawer -

 Some are a bit chipped and might be faux-repaired with my slapdash version of kintsugi, which uses (real) gold leaf to highlight the broken edges -

One or two, the simply-stitched ones that got a bit slumpy in the kiln, are very much to my liking and might be the start of a series, or grouping. Ideas are knocking into each other and as soon as the weather gets warmer I'll be back in Studio 6, dipping and firing. Oh, and as soon as the series/grouping is stitched in fabric - there do seem to be a number of other things going on.... For instance, there never seems to be enough cuddle-time with the grandbaby -

and the gardens-over-the-hill needs a bit of TLC, but up close they're looking pretty good (imho) -

And there's my own little garden, with geum, tulips, forget-me-not, that grey plant that grows so well but whose name I've forgotten, the huge rosemary bush, and at the top of the steps, the pot with the luminous pelargonium and the euphorbia, which needs watering daily...