Crepe Sew-Along, Conclusion

It's finished! I had intended on providing a more play by play summary of the process, but these past two weeks have been busy. Namely, just trying to get this dress done by the wedding it was intended for. And violin practice. Now that the wedding was held yesterday, (and a beautiful one it was, at that!), neither are requiring nearly as much attention, and I feel ready to return to the world of blogging.

The color on this picture is probably the most accurate.

So, a few notes about the sewing.  Though I was working with a deadline, I tried to take my cues from Tilly's Sewing Productivity Project and all the insights I gained from the experience and all of the wonderful feedback others were able to provide.  Namely: enjoy the process, and don't rush it.

The crepe I used was quite shear, so I used a pale pale blue satin as my underlining. Well, not quite satin (not that shiny), but very silky polyester lining material. Whatever term you'd use for that kinda fabric. That's what I used. And I really enjoyed working with both fabrics; they cut easily and smoothly, they didn't move around a great deal, and they got along very well. Because of the time crunch, I followed Gertie's recommendation for basting liquid (I got the spray). It simplified the process a great deal, but didn't last long through the actual sewing process.

The contrast fabric had presented a bit of a problem, because I didn't buy enough to go with the grainline as the pattern specified. I had a little less than required even when I used it against the grainline. So, I used some interfacing to stabilize the fabric and topstitched the edges to prevent the non-faced portion of the tie from stretching out too much. I have some lovely lace that I plan to hand-stitch to the ends to add softer edges.

You can see the insert of fabric above the wrap.

As I stated in an earlier post, I did make a bit of a mistake cutting out the pattern--the back was about an inch shorter than the front. On looking at how it wore, I just added a strip of the underlining fabric to the back bodice pieces. I didn't add the crepe to it, because I thought it'd be nice to take note of the fabric without pointing the addition out as an error. I did have to dart that portion too, in order to match the skirt. It's pretty subtle, so I think it all worked out.

The facing, though understitched, still likes to flip out (you can see one of my sleeves is upturned in all of these pictures). I am planning on doing some embroidery stitches along the sleeves and neckline to help keep it under control.

What I'd do differently? Measure the pieces better before cutting. Buy enough contrast fabric. Drop the front darts a little more, but not by much. Understitch a little further away from the seam. Sew closer to the time of cutting if I use spray baste again.

What did I learn? This was my first time sewing with a border print, and I feel like it turned out well. I altered the pattern for the sleeves to have a contrast print, and it behaved itself nicely. I did french seams for the first time. I followed the advice given to Vintage Girl about adding an inch to the side seams in case I have to let it out in the future. Finally, I will be finishing the waist seam with binding tape sometime this week.

What am I happy with? The dress is comfortable. The fabric is excellent. I learned lots of new things. I didn't let this project become too stressful, even when staying up until 3am a night or two. I didn't rush the process, even when working with a deadline (well, except for spray-basting). I was ready to walk away from it if I had to. And most importantly, this dress is great for dancing! 

This won't be my last Crepe, as I already have plans for the second one (in the black print I did the muslin in). I am contemplating some interesting additions for it, though, so it likely won't be done for a bit. I like this growing in competence and confidence business. 

Crepe Sew-Along, Coming Along

I'd post pictures if it didn't mean I had to go take them and then upload them.

I just want to say that a) I am quiet on here in part because I am sewing (taking the Sewing Productivity Project's advice), and b) no matter how hard I try, I always manage to make some egregious error in my measurements. My back bodice pieces are about an inch shorter than my front bodice piece. Ugh. After I tried to adjust for it being too long previously, no less. I think I can flub it when I attach the skirt, but I find myself trying to think of creative corrections that don't involve tearing it all apart again. How do I always do this?

As I plan on wearing this dress on Saturday, pictures and progress will be posted soon, though.  I'll go more into my random improvisations to save this dress then, and I'll look all heroic with the finished product too. (I hope!)

Gertie's Crepe Sew-Along: Final Muslin, Or How I Sew to Be Like Dr. Frankenstein

For those of you who don't know this, I am small. Quite small. About 5', just over 100 lbs. And none of that poundage is in my bust. I'm this little androgynous pixie that can rock the Justin Bieber look without even trying. And I like it that way. Except when it comes to adjusting patterns.

As stated in an earlier post, I knew that I'd have to do an SBA (Small Bust Adjustment), but that I wasn't sure of the approach that I wanted to take. Gertie's try-it-on-and-pinch-it-out method, or the flat-pattern method that Fit for Real People, Hungry Zombie, and Casey all discuss. And I had to decide when to do it: before the first fitting, or after.

I opted for after the first muslin. The first muslin looked alright, and I thought I had the fitting pretty well figured out, without even having to take out extra fabric. Silly me.  The second muslin was done in a thinner, more slippery fabric for me to get a better sense of the actual fit of my future dress. Verdict? Baggy as all get-out. I pinched out the excess fabric, thinking I knew what I needed to do: adjust the dart and take out some fabric from the middle. I did remember to adjust for my bust apex too.

I don't have pictures of what ensued, because it was obviously not going to work. Unless I had bigger boobs. (Where's my dad's mom when I need her?)

Back to the drawing board! (Sewing board?)

I think I spent a good hour or so fretting about how to go about this process. Even though I already have done an SBA for the Swing Dress Sew-Along. Anyway, to make a long story short: I did the pinch-out method that Gertie does to find out how much to take out, and it worked out all right. But in transferring the changes to the pattern, I followed the flat pattern methods mentioned above. The result? A much mangled pattern and a much better fit. It's at times like these, that I feel a mild kinship to Dr. Frankenstein. Start out with a giant monster, and eventually creating a similarly sewn together, but more approachable monster that is smaller and more feminine. Or androgynous, in my case, I suppose.

It's like a jigsaw puzzle meets modern art

Conclusion: anticipate the SBA and change it according to the flat-pattern method, generally taking about about an inch on the side and a half-inch on the bottom.Otherwise, it's a horror story in the making.

Sewing Productivity Project, Day 6

Day 6! The week goes by so quickly!

- How many hours per day/week do you sew? I think I spent 2 hours or so sewing. It may have been more, but today I didn't focus on my time.

- What are you spending/wasting the rest of your free time on? meditation, prayer, church, qt with the hubby

- When you do sew, how do you feel before, during and afterwards? I started the day with the intent to only sew if that's how I felt and to do so without feeling like I had to achieve any goal. I found that it made the process more appropriate, less manic.  When I get in the "must. sew. something." mode, sometimes I am actually less helpful to myself and less productive. I'm happy with the end results, as I made some good progress on fitting my Crepe.

- What factors are you aware of that impact upon when you make time to sew? My tendency to feel like I should be doing 10 things at once, even when I don't. I do much better when I slow down. And when I remember that sewing can wait without me having to feel guilty about it.

- What are you learning about sewing productivity from this process, if anything? What tips can you share? Don't make the sewing experience an obligation. Doing so can take the fun out of it and stress you out more. Take your time to accomplish things. It works out better.

Day 6: My schedule is harder to quantify today, as I made a point not to pay attention to time so much. I had other things I felt were more important to think about. I did refrain from most computer time, though I did use the computer to respond to some folks about upcoming events and to look up tutorials on my fitting adjustments. (A post on that is forthcoming.)

I'll break this down as well as I can, but I won't do full on percentages, as I don't know how much time I spent on things.

Wake up, shower, go back to bed.

Hang out with husband, watch stuff about the solar system (it's amazing stuff, our universe).

Meditation

Prayer

More solar system, along with a small lunch with my Buddy

Church

Sewing: first attempt at third muslin, ending in an unusable piece.

Small dinner

Sewing: perusing multiple tutorials to determine what technique I wanted to use and to figure out how to do it. Success!

Meditation

Part of a bad movie, then bed

I think overall, my sewing part took about 2-3 hours. Maybe. 

I'll post on my results later this week, I think. :)

In the meantime, I have to get ready for a roadtrip to Pittsburgh. I'm still trying to decide whether to pack my sewing machine... Silly me.

Sewing Productivity Project, Day 4

Here I am at Day 4... I'm sure you're riveted by my exciting life.

- How many hours per day/week do you sew? none today. just not feeling it.

- What are you spending/wasting the rest of your free time on? work, computer, dinner

- When you do sew, how do you feel before, during and afterwards? Ended the day in a funk, in part because I left my phone at work, I think. Though I have been in a funk relatively regularly these days, so maybe it's just me. Didn't really want to think about sewing today. So I'm just blogging about it.

- What factors are you aware of that impact upon when you make time to sew? mood

- What are you learning about sewing productivity from this process, if anything? What tips can you share? Make sewing seem accessible even when you're preoccupied. Perhaps have some easy tasks to complete without significant calculations (I'm fitting my second muslin, and can't figure out what to change to actually get it to fit. I wasn't up for actually tackling it tonight when I was already in a mood.)

Day 4: Work (including commute) 8:30-6:30 (10 hours)... 71.4%

            Computer 6:30-7:45(1.25 hours)... 8.9%

            Dinner alone, reading a book, and waiting outside for my phone (thanks Lisa!) 

                               7:45-9:15 (1.5 hours)... 10.7%

            Prep for bed/shower/etc 9:15-10 (.75 hour)... 5.4%

            Computer 10-10:30 (.5 hour)... 3.6%

However, I don't want you to feel completely deprived of sewing stuff:

Here's a pic of what work I did last night. I used a thinner. more slippery fabric to start getting a sense of what it will be like to work with the fabrics I have in mind for the Crepe dress:

You can't see it very well, but there are huge tucks taken out in the front, essentially increasing the dart breadth. But the pinheads look like part of the print.I may just try taking out about a half inch to an inch out of the bodice, vertically. I just don't need all that much fabric to cover me.

Crepe Sew-Along: muslin fitting

I spent some of Sunday night fitting my first Crepe muslin. The construction of the muslin was quick work, and it didn't look horrible at first fitting. However, lining up darts to where they're supposed to be, and cutting down the size of the sleeves resulted in more extensive tweeks than I expected.

Here is a fast pic of me wearing the pinned up muslin.

I sort of felt like I was designing a futuristic outfit, with big shoulder embellishments and strange random tucks everywhere.

Having done the muslin, I have learned a couple of things that I wish I had thought about sooner. First, I shouldn't cut out any pattern pieces for facing until after I've made all of my pattern adjustments. I'll be doing some major tweaks on the sleeves and back, as well as some minor ones on the neckline. Second, it really does help to do yoga if you're going to try and fit a dress pattern on yourself without any help. (My husband did help me once in the process, to be fair.) I'm glad I had just come out of a 2.5 hour yoga workshop that morning.

I have decided I'm going to make two versions of this dress. One will be a black/orange/red number to help me figure out skirt length and to play around with piping. The second will be the original white/blue/green number with the border print. I fell asleep dreaming about how to pull off certain details for each.

Crepe Sew-Along, pattern cutting

I finally cut out the muslin for the Crepe dress this week. Yay! I was a very bad hostess and traced my patterns during a friends-over-for-movie-night event. I was in the same room as the movie and the friends, but I was just looking down a lot at the pattern pieces I was adjusting.

Besides showing that I really am working on this dress, this post is actually about the small conundrum I feel I'm facing. One of the benefits of doing a sew-along is that I get to learn new techniques from more competent folks. In this case, Gertie. With the Swing Dress, it was Casey. Both amazing seamstresses and engaging bloggers who obviously know a lot about what they're doing. 

But they do things differently. Casey traces onto paper; Gertie just uses the actual pattern. Gertie uses tracing paper and transfers markings that way; I can't remember what Casey does. Casey uses interfacing, Gertie organza to stabilize fabric. Casey does a small bust adjustment (SBA) one way, Gertie another. Casey adjusts the muslin a little before the fitting, Gertie does it all after.

Finishing seams is another beast altogether. French seams, pinked, zig-zagged (I don't have a serger)?

So, I'm faced with having to decide what option make the most sense for me. Decide on techniques that I don't even know enough about to know the appropriate times to use them! For fabrics I've never sewn, fabrics that are slippery and delicate, where matching prints matter. I have gotten a lot of information that I feel I can use from the Swing Dress Sew-Along, but I hesitate to go straight to that approach, or even to Gertie's approach. What if I choose the wrong one?


Therefore, I am making the following executive decision: I do what I want. And what I want is to not buy more supplies than I have to right now (so, sorry, Gertie, no transfer paper!). BUT, I will try to use all other alternative approaches offered in this sew-along in order to expand my knowledge base and get better and discerning the best techniques for different projects. Anyone have any advice? Though it may add to the information overload, I would love to learn from you too. You may be the piece that finishes my puzzle. :)

On a side note, I have laid out the pattern pieces and found that the fabric I've chosen will have enough to make the dress, which is exciting. As the fashion fabric is a border print, I have to cut the fabric against the grainline recommended on the skirts. Which is iffy, as I don't know what the end results will be. (Maybe I'll do the same with my muslin just to get an idea?) I also have to spread out fabric pieces in a less economical way, since the bottoms all have to be lined up with the bottom. But I have enough, so that is good enough.

I was going to do my muslin of the top in a remnant crepe, but I didn't have enough of it. I would like to see what sewing with crepe is like before cutting the fashion fabric. In case I'm setting my novice skills up for a disaster, you understand. So, is there anyone who wants anything small made out of crepe? I don't even know what I can make; a handbag was suggested. Any suggestions?

Gertie's Crepe Sew-Along: Basics

I'll be starting with the pattern alterations and cutting this weekend, if all goes well. Before I do, I'd like to wax in admiration of the Colette Pattern Aesthetic (it all gets capitalized, because it is that good). People across various sewing blogs have been noting how Colette does such a nice job on their patterns, but this is my first time getting to enjoy it myself.

Observe:

Not only do I not get confused by some horrendous fashion options on the front cover, I get a clear description and an attractive presentation.

The size range within one pattern is also great, as I can make myself a dress from this pattern (I'm petite), I can make more average sized people a dress from this pattern, and I can make a dress for those who are larger too. Dresses for everyone!

Now, you can't see it from this view, but unlike the envelope style of most patterns you buy from the big companies, Colette's pattern is actually a book with the pattern pieces in an envelope on the inside.

And they are so cool, they give you a nice welcoming start that lays out the basics clearly. Most patterns explain the basics, but aren't as easy to read.











They even have a section in the book for you to make your own notes! Be still my heart!

And the coolest part? 

Gertie's Crepe Sew-Along

Now that the swing dress chapter has closed, I am hoping to try the next sew-along on my list: Gertie's Crepe Sew-Along.

I've come to enjoy Gertie's posts on vintage styles and her take on sewing. The information she's given on sizing, techniques and doing a small bust adjustment (SBA) on patterns was what hooked me, but she is thoughtful and engaging in her blog posts. I've been tracking her sew-along the past few months, and she's just finished it up in the past week. People have been posting their versions of this dress all month, so I am a latecomer. The disadvantage is that I won't likely be getting the same feedback from fellow sew-alongers as I did from the swing-dress crew when I post my progress. However, I will still be posting, in the hopes that I'll get some input (you're welcome to give yours, also).

I had decided to do this dress only after I got this fabric that I felt would do well. It's a border print, so I am adding a complicating factor to the whole process. However, after snagging this lovely crepe print on ebay, I really felt it'd look perfect for this dress. I had a hard time finding any substantial posts on using border prints and the complications that they present in sewing different patterns, so I expect I'll be whingeing on here often about my choice. I'll have to underline this dress too, since the fabric is so sheer and light, but have chosen a thin satiny lining this time around. Having seen other folks' underlining choices and from the nonchalant reaction from JoAnn staff about how to choose a proper underlining, I've decided to give this a try. My muslin will likely be done with an underlining too, just to make sure I get a sense of how to sew with two very thin fabrics. I'd rather know if it'll be a disaster before I tear my hair out on the fashion fabric.

Any advice?