Category Archives: Sewing projects

Egyptian Entourage

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How to Measure a Man’s Hips at the Widest Part:

This was partly inspired by accidentally getting caught in Regretsy’s “self gratification” category and by trying to get myself worked up to make some Egyptian-style terrycloth men’s skirts for a Lady Gaga impersonator’s entourage after a 14-hour day of Tyler Rose Festival sewing and Cartier velcro strip edging. Yes, I just typed that.

 

The Project: make this 3D:

I started out on the periphery of this project–Lady Gaga was to be carried in to her performance while riding in a bathtub that was hoisted by an entourage of men. The towel accessories were too wide and I cut them narrower and finished off the new edges. This was terribly exciting, and I couldn’t wait to tell my Lady Gaga fan friend. Then I heard that it was to be a Lady Gaga impersonator, which was somewhat less exciting.

Now the entourage needs outfits. Aside from the fact that terrycloth-by-the-yard is fabulously expensive (it would probably be cheaper to buy the towels you need, burn them, then buy the towels you need again than to make your own), it’s also a lot thicker and denser than would look good as a men’s skirt, so I got a set of white towels to cut up.

I’ve decided to put off finishing the project for the night until I get some more feedback on the current stage in the process, since I can’t un-cut a towel:

Velcro, velcro, velcro, and more velcro

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It’s that time of year again! Velcro strips! There is a long, multi-person, multi-step process to creating and assembling the deceptively simple-looking panels that adorn Cartier store windows and interiors. Part of that is stitching sticky-back velcro onto rectangles of fabric.

My part of the process is longer than would be obvious due to periodically having to stop and rub alcohol on my needle. With needles that have a groove on the back and not just the front, this has to be done every couple panels, and quite a bit of glue can/has to be scraped off with a fingernail twice per panel. I found a brand of needle with no groove on the back, which stores significantly less glue, but all that glue has to go somewhere. And that is into the machine and along the bottom of the presser foot. So I need to pull apart my machine and scrape all the glue and sticky lint out at least once and probably twice whenever there’s a complete panel-changeout for all stores.

All those thin boxes stacked in the back left are different stores (though some large stores have two boxes).

This is about half the stores we do, done ones on the right, to-do on the left, under the cat:

Several hours later:

Emergency Tablecloth, Stat!

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I made an emergency tablecloth today for a show this evening.

Serge and topstitch a seam down the middle, then cut off 5-6 inches on each side to keep the seam centered.

I prepared a paper template to round the corners. I’ve tried to do a rounded tablecloth without a template before, and also without coffee fairly early in the morning (my version of morning). The curve wound up getting cut into the fabric backward . . . always better to be more careful than clever.

While cutting out, I said hello to a handful of humans, two dogs, and someone I kind of know, but didn’t know she sewed. She was wearing a shirt of her creation and asked for assistance with making another one.

Ahhh, I love the atrium!

And apparently other sewers do, too, as someone else had left this behind:

 

Confidential!

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Those who are not involved in professionally decorating for the holidays may think starting plans and some production at the beginning of September to be too early for Christmas. It’s actually a little late, but we’ve got the staff that can pull it off.

Until the unveiling, however, it is confidential. So here is a context-less taste:

Worst Commercial Pattern EVAR

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The Project: 6 bridesmaid dresses made from blue pima cotton

 

I sewed one of the six dresses first so it could be tried on and we could make sure that was the design the bride wanted. Usually, those little notches and dots marked on the pattern pieces aren’t terribly important; line up the left side top of piece one with the right side top of piece two, then sew. Generally, therefore, I skip all but the ones I know I’ll need, like ones identifying the back and top of sleeves. However, the edges on this pattern’s pieces don’t line up corner to corner; most of them–but not all!–line up about 3/8″ off. So sewing the first dress was a bit of an adventure, and I had to go back and add some of the markings.

I usually sew seams together on a serger, which calls for a 3/8″ seam allowance. This pattern had a very insistent 5/8″ seam allowance, which was huge and difficult to work with on these awkward curves.

The first dress looked pretty good, needed to be taken in some, and have the top modified as follows, but it turned out well enough that the bride gave me the go-ahead on the other five.

The top of the bodice is designed to pouch out like the pour-spout of a measuring cup for some reason, so that was a blast to fix, as there were multiple pieces coming together into a tight point. The largest part of the bust is shaped like a tiny Madonna cone-bra and is about two inches diagonally up from a normal girl’s largest bust-point (for “normal,” read “human”). Trying to alter this counterbalances fixes on the pour-spout modifications.

I decided to learn my lesson on marking all the pieces and put on every notch and dot. It took more than one full day to cut out and mark the remaining 5 dresses. Once I started sewing them, I realized this was largely a waste of time.

Many of the notches do not line up exactly. Pieces that are hard to determine top and bottom of have the same kind of notch on the top and on the bottom, so that there are no markings to help indicate. The flare-out at the top of the bodice under the arms (for under-arm boobs? What Hindu goddess is this dress designed for??) adds to the confusion of all the “wait–is THAT the top? The angle of that edge can’t go there–wait, oh, it does.” I sewed both sides of one bodice back together with all the pieces upside down and had to rip it out and start over.

Some pieces are lined up using dots in the same way that the notches are used on others, with no apparent rhyme or reason. The enormous seam allowances and the quantity of same made it hard to see the dots that actually *were* helpful, and also made the inside of the dress bulky and lumpy. Clipping them meant cutting into the serged edges and leaving them raw.

I at last finished the 5 remaining dresses and we started having the first fittings for the other girls. This style of dress only fits certain body types, and the first girl to try it on happened to have the right kind. Ohh, but it’s not that simple. My first guess was that it only works easily on slim girls. Then a curvy girl had the best fitting yet. It seems to vary based more on…height? no, maybe a strange reverse correlation of height and curves? It’s randomly specific, so on some girls, I had to wrestle with the bust and the skirt, on some girls, I only had to wrestle with the bust. The pockets flared out on some girls and laid almost flat on others. The skirt puffed up like a balloon when some girls walked and stayed in place for others. Without exception, every single girl needed the skirts’ back darts to come down about two inches longer so it wouldn’t look awkward and pointy.

On top of taking the sides in, I also had to shorten every single dress along some of the semi-horizontal seams. Which meant ripping out a ton of top-stitching and easing the change into other curved seams going in the opposite direction. It also meant that the edges lined up differently and affected the side seams. Go back and reread that. Every. Single. Dress. This was a spectrum of girls of varying heights. Who the heck was this dress designed for? No body type fits this horrible pattern without modifications.

On one, I had to take in the edges of a horizontal seam in unevenly to make it lay right, then had to cut and serge the wide edge so it wouldn’t lump into the skirt-to-bodice seam.

 

Extras:

I decided to make cute labels:

and make a bag for the groom’s pocket square:

 

Afterthoughts:

I’ve tried to figure out how the pattern could have been designed better so that it could actually work. Number one was the impossible bra area. Seriously, Butterick? You hired people who couldn’t tell that the point of the bra goes in the center? Seriously? I mean there is no way whatsoever that ANY shape of woman would be able to fit this bodice properly without modifications. Which is not supposed to be necessary on a commercial pattern. Especially not one marked “Intermediate” sewing skill level (???!!??!!).

I really hate commercial patterns that have drawings of the garment on it. That just shows what it was supposed to look like, not what it actually looks like. This pattern DOES come with a photo of a model wearing the dress, however. But her bodice doesn’t look like *$#&. What gives, Butterick? Did you pin it on her? Was it photoshopped? Plus, the model has her hands in the pockets, covering up how much the pockets flare out. Why do they feel the need to cover design elements rather than display them? Some people might want the large, puffy skirt look. Not this particular client, though. Let us see what the garment ACTUALLY looks like before buying the pattern, mmkay, Butterick? I thought that request should be obvious.

This dress would probably have been improved with more support than the design called for. We left the lining off–which was, outrageously enough, designed to be an exact copy of the complicated outer dress, instead of a simplified version that had the same shape–but that wouldn’t have added any structure anyway. A grosgrain ribbon around the waist might have helped. I also felt like boning might be an improvement, but that can seriously change the fit, potentially by several inches, and there wasn’t time to try this and refit everyone.

I get that it’s hard for a pattern company to include ways to change it for tall and petite on a pattern this complicated; can’t really blame them there. I think the best way for someone anal to make these dresses in different sizes for a perfect fit would be to start with a sloper that does fit the individual and then craft the individual pieces from that. I had wanted to try to modify the pieces before sewing them, but there are just too many places where they have to line up just so in the middle of the dress that any changes would have likely made it crooked. Plus, when I marked it on the girls, it wound up only needing shortening on the sides and not in the center front or back of the bodice, and there’s no way I would have guessed that before making them.

 

How likely am I to recommend this pattern to anyone:   0%

How likely am I to make this pattern again: 5%

Overall lingering hatred or fear of Butterick:  80% increase

 

Loft-size curtains

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I actually worked on this project last month, but have just come up for air after a flood of work with tight deadlines and can finally post about it.

The Project:

One curtain 40 feet long by 12 feet high. Casing at the bottom for a chain; stiff strip along the top to support grommets to attach it to hooks that will go into a track. The fabric is a knit much like suraline (which is very similar to the kind of fabric used in many cheerleading costumes; a thick but relatively lightweight jersey–that is to say, a small amount of stretch, but not a lot).

 

Also, this is a divider curtain that will be visible on both sides. I didn’t particularly want to self-line it as that would make it extremely thick and heavy, as well as make it take up quite a bit of space at the end of the track when it wasn’t in use.

There’s a legend that when a pope wanted to know if the artist Giotto would be capable enough for a job, Giotto sent him a perfect circle drawn freehand. Panel curtains are kind of like that. They look really simple, and anyone who’s not paying attention will think that being a simple geometric shape makes them easy. They are not. And the bigger they are, the more space there is to wiggle out of line.

So when I discovered my building’s atrium I was overjoyed for the space to lay out enormous curtains flat and have a greater chance of getting perfectly squared corners.

I got the 8 panels cut out, then used the scraps to test ways to hide the seams. My first plan, french seams, was outrageously bulky and caused a lot of puckering. Plan 2 was that seam style wherein one edge is sewn parallel to the other, but closer in, and the longer edge is folded over the short one. This was not only hard to line up on such wiggly fabric, but was also still too bulky. My last option before having to resort to lining it was to find a lightweight fabric with the exact same shade of burgundy.

The chain stores did not have the right shade in the cotton quilting solids, and I was about to test out a not-exactly matching shiny fabric intended to for lining clothes, that would not be invisible, but I that I hoped would at least be close enough to be inoffensive, when I found some misprinted flags in a last chance bin at one of the stores in the warehouse district. The stripes weren’t straight, it wasn’t dyed, but painted on top of crappy white fabric, and the paint wasn’t even, but for 3/8 inch seam facings, I was able to find enough of it to be salvageable.

Once I had all the long seams sewn, back to the atrium to pin the top and bottom. Everyone who passed by thought it was a giant red runway carpet and wanted to know what event I was setting up for.

When I had cut the 8 panels, I left several inches of wiggle room, but this time it all had to be cut perfectly straight. I’ve got a pretty good eye from just over 2 years cutting fabric at Hancock Fabrics. I lined the sides up with the seams of the hardwood floor, cut the top, then measured from that to pin the bottom hem.

The thing about sewing things this large where you can’t see either end of what you’re working on is doing the setup right and then trusting yourself. In the middle of sewing it, the straight edges may start to seem a little crooked. Modifying that while sewing can look right while it’s in the machine, but come out crooked. With something this big, do not eyeball it while it’s wadded up on your sewing table; the most important thing is trusting your cuts and trusting your pins.

Sooo, deliver the sewn item to the client; we get the grommets pounded in, the S-hooks squeezed shut into the grommets and the track runners, get the curtain hung, and it is about an inch too long. I kinda suspected this would happen, but wasn’t sure how much the puffiness of the fabric would counterbalance the weight. Too long is always better than too short anyway.

At this length, I’m able to set up my sewing machine and run the curtain through while still hung.