What else is new?

I haven't posted for a while but I have been sewing a few things. I have been fortunate to have had a lot of (local) business lately both alterations and custom work.

African batik fabric, cut to be sewn into skirt

The custom work has been fun because I got to work with some gorgeous African Batiks. I made two skirts. One (which I did not photograph, sorry) required a careful matching of the intricate pattern. It turned out very well and was definetly not an "off the rack" item. The other skirt needed the "right" pattern to display the beautiful colors and unique patterns of the fabric. Together the cutomer and I choose a tiered skirt with a yoke waist and ruffled lower edge.  The skirt was more than a full circle which allowed us to show off the fabric's beauty but did not make a skirt that was so large to overwhelm the petite wearer.

Finished skirt

Today, I was able to hand over the skirt to the customer and not only did it fit perfectly, it looked stunning, so I was very happy with the result.
My next major project will be to start building tutus for my (rental) business. I have three dancer's who have volunteered to be models. Yesterday and today I drew new basque patterns using the techniques I learned at tutu school and I made some adjustments to the panty patterns I had made to get a better fit. I'll keep you posted about this process as I go along.

It's beginning to look a lot like....

I have been promising my dear husband (dh) a new pair of pants for, months. Either I have been too busy, too tired or just too unmotivated to get on with it.
Let me say, making a pair of well fitting, men's pants is hard! No wonder tailors used to have apprentices work for them for years. At a tailor's there are many specialized jobs: a cutter, a draper, a shirt maker even a button hole maker.
In this project I reverse engineered a pattern from my husband favorite pants, then set about making new pants from a quality linen.
One of the things that is difficult (and different on dress pants) to draft is the pockets. Jeans have patch pockets in the back and an appliqued pocket on the front. Both types of pockets were discussed in the online class that I took.
I started by thread basting all the seam lines and the lengthwise and cross wise grains. After that everything was transferred to a piece of organza; then I made a paper pattern and then I cut out a muslin.

Original pants thread basted

I fitted these on dh and found that I needed to give him some more sitting room, and straighten the side seam. After making these changes to the pattern I  ran into a major hurdle: the pockets.
Dress pants have inset pockets, front pleats and back pockets with welts. It is very difficult to draft a good pocket pattern from the actual pants. Also, these were Australian pants, and they have some interesting (and highly desirable) features, including a change pocket hidden under the waist band.
After trying several things, becoming terribly frustrated because they just were not right, I broke down and bought a men's Vogue pattern. It had the inset pockets, the welt pockets and most importantly the instructions! Reading those was such an "aha, erlebness". Nothing is hard once you can "see" the solution. After that I sewed those pants up in no time flat (less than hour).

the pants! are ready to try on

Voila! here they are. I tried them onto dh and  by golly they fit perfectly. Alas, once I put the waistband on they seemed a bit snug, so I had to let them out a bit. After finishing them, I pressed and hemmed them, hung them up and forgot about them. The next day, dh asked me: Well what do you think of my pants? I gave him a strange look because I did not realize these were the new ones?!
That means I must have done a good job right?

Sending mom to the prom in style: mp dress part 3

 After my last post about the mom prom dress, I worked hard to get it ready. I sewed all the pieces together, added the sleeves, the hooks and eyes in the front and some hanger loops so that the bodice could be hung up easily.

front of bodice

back of bodice

I finished the skirt adding a stay tape to hold the pleats to the back of the skirt and also added hanger loops.

bodice and skirt front

back of bodice and skirt

The little hat also needed finishing. I had covered the buckram frame with a layer of cotton flannel so that any fashion fabric added could be pulled smooth.

Crown tip and brim covered with flannel "mull"

Initially I had wanted to make swirls on the top and side but after trying several things I ditched that as it was too much on such a small hat. In the end I opted for covering the tip with purple taffeta, black satin and using some patterned black satin bias binding to finish the edges.

Flannel covered crown tip and sating covered brim

After sewing the crown to the brim, I added a band of ruffled black lace (the same lace I used on the front of the bodice), a lace bow and decoration of feathers on the side of the hat.
Finally, I attached a band of horsehair so that Heather could pin the hat on and a ribbon to tie as well.

Mini top hat

Two days ago I was able to do the final fitting for Heather's dress. When everyone saw her in the dress there was a hushed, WOW from everyone. She really looked wonderful and elegant.

The bodice needed one or two final little tweeks and we agreed that it needed a touch of sparkle. The front hook and eye closures did not gape but the edge was noticeable. I think that if I were to make something like this again I would do it differently because such front closures are not as attractive as back closures. I added a strip of black lace along the neck line  and then hand beaded it with some beads and sequins.

I took several photos of Heather in the dress with her camera and with mine. When I returned home I found that my camera was broken ?! and the pictures I took with Heather's camera were not very good. I think it is time I take that photography class!!!

Just so that you have a vague idea what the dress looked like I am posting three photos and will replace these ASAP.

Back of dress

side view

Heather in her mom-prom dress with mini top hat

M.P. dress takes shape (part 2)

Since my last post, the mom prom (MP) has started to take shape. After our first fitting Heather and I ditched the draped bodice opting instead for a simpler bodice.
I then began to cut out the skirt and bodice. The two iconic Worth dresses that formed some of the inspiration for what I was going to make reminded me of something very important: making sure the pattern matched.

Worth flocked taffeta dress

Worth evening gown

Worth was a master of creating beautiful lines, that were pleasing to look at and flattered the wearer. He also had the advantage that the fabrics for his dresses were specifically made with the dress design in mind.
The flocked taffeta I was working with not only had a pattern, the pattern had a repeat. It was very important to make sure that the pieces matched or it would be ugly.
I started working on the skirt because it was "easier". It took some time but I was able to cut and then sew the skirt so that the pattern matched very well. The skirt could have had a train but it was left off so that is would be easy to dance in. The skirt was cut as a walking length skirt with the bottom edge faced in a black satin.

Back of the skirt with pleats

Next step was to work on the bodice. I started by cutting out the lining, applying bone casings and then flat-lining the fashion fabric to the back piece. Every time I cut a piece I would line it up and sew it before cutting the next to be sure that it all matched. The result was worth the effort.

back of the bodice with fabric carefully matched

Bodice front (inside part facing), quilted for strength.

I then cut and worked on quilting the two front pieces as I had learned in the couture bodice class I took at Tutu.com's school. Normally this is done on the back pieces of a (high end) ballet bodice where the hooks and bars go because these pieces have a lot of stress on them. This bodice does up the front instead of the back, so I felt it was important to  treat these pieces this was.  Tomorrow I will continue to work on the front of the bodice and hopefully finish it. I made the sleeves out of a plain black satin and laid out how I want to cut the front of the bodice. Again I am going to apply a technique I learned during Travis Halsey's class, called decorative fold backs (these techniques are detailed on a new DVD by Mr Halsey, available through Tutu.com)
One other thing I worked on was the little top hat. I began by making a wire and buckram hat shape.

wired buckram shape for hat

I then covered the crown and brim with black cotton flannel to create a smooth shape. I used some Fabritac glue to attach the flannel to the hat shape. Once it has dried I will cover the hat shape with black satin and add decorations in peacock feather colors (purple, dark green) and sew the brim and crown together.
More in my next post.

The "mom prom" dress

It is finally time to start on my friend Heather's "mom prom dress". Heather is our local MOPS (Mother's of Preschoolers) representative and she is going to their conference soon. New this year at the conference is the so-called "mom prom" with featured artist Plumb.

Since Heather helped me set up my blogs and has generally been a wonderful friend I want to make sure she goes in appropriate style.Together we came up with  a Worth inspired bodice and dress with a few "steam-punk" twits, including a miniature top hat and time permitting lace gloves.

I found a gorgeous black flocked taffeta,

black flocked taffeta

dug through my stash of fabrics for velvets, taffetas

deep plum taffeta

and laces to combine for the bodice.  I am going to use two patterns from Laughing moon Mercantile with some modifications: their five gored skirt and matching bodice pattern.

Today I did a first fitting and will begin constructing the skirt and bodice soon. We decided to make the sleeves out of a plain black satin, rather than the flocked taffeta and I am going to use some of the techniques I learned at  Tutu.om's tutu school to modify the front of the bodice. It will have some of the plum colored taffeta, some black velvet piping and a dark green flocked taffeta to create longer lines. The skirt will be made of the black flocked taffeta with a satin facing at the hem.
To finish off the ensemble, Heather will have a little top hat with peacock feathers and peacock colored accents (these colors and fabrics are mirrored in the bodice).
I need to get on to that now and will post photographs soon.

Tutu school = too terrific!

This year, thanks to my wonderful parents who gave me the classes and my family who took me there, I attended Tutu.com tutu school in Charlotte North Carolina.

It was an interesting educational experience, which despite being 5 days of grueling hard work was fun?! I am still trying to process the years of experience that is crammed into you in a very short time.
A good friend of my husband's, who had studied at both MIT and Stanford, was once asked "how much fun was that"? He answered, "well, if you think taking a sip from a fire hose is "fun" than yes it was". Tutu school is like taking a sip from a fire hose.

packed and ready to go 

Packing for tutu school

The first thing that needed to be done was pack up my sewing machines and other sewing paraphinelia into something that would fit into the back of our car. We managed to pack everything and set off before 8 a.m. for the long drive down to Charlotte.
The journey went very well and we arrived at 8p.m. at out hotel.
The next morning at 8 a.m.,  tutu school started in the hotel's conference room. My project was to make a Spanish skirt, while the other women were making mostly classical tutus, a few Romantic tutus, one ribbon candy tutu and two contemporary tutus.

I had previously taught myself how to make basques using the method described in Claudia Folts' book The Classical tutu, so I was told to sit in with the groups taught by Travis Halsey. He uses  a mathematical method to draft a basque and the resulting basque has hip seams as well as a back seam.
After cutting everything out, sewing and serging the skirt and ruffles, I needed to sew many yards of lace to the ruffle edges and then ruffle the layers. Next, the ruffled layers were sewn to the skirt.

Finally, the basque was attached to the top of the skirt and hook and closure were sewn to the edges.
The skirt turned out well for a first attempt and was finished in the two days set for it, working from 8-6 each day.

Sewing the third ruffled layer to the skirt

On the Tuesday I made a tutu bag for carrying tutus. I had wanted to spend some time studying the tutus that were in the room and photographing one or two but ended up not having time.

The tutu carry bag I made.

The last two days of tutu school were spent learning couture bodice techniques from Travis Halsey. I had brought some lace and trim  from home, some lovely fabric was in my kit and the school provided huge bags of fabric pieces to work with. One of the hardest part I felt was deciding what would look good together as there was so much to choose from. I found a small piece of gold duponi, some gold flowered brocade, a black mesh with red sparkly flowers and a black and red ribboned fabric.

bodice front

My assembly of the parts of my pattern was much simpler than some of the other students because I felt the bodice design did not need to be over embellished. The variety of couture techniques that I learned made the bodice easier to assemble while at the same time resulting in a superior result.

Beginnings of a lace applique for the front of the bodice

In the two days of the class, I finished the front and back, inserted the nude inset and piped the top edges. Since returning home I have piped the remaining edges and made an applique for the front. I also fit the bodice on E13 and will complete the bodice this week.
I would still like to add embellishments to the applique, make a matching headpiece and possibly add sleeves. I will post photographs once the project is completed.
We drove home, making the trip in one day which was good since we were all very tired.
I believe I would attend tutu school or some other intensive sewing course again if I had the opportunity since the wealth of knowledge that can be aquired in a very short time is vast.  The whole experience was intense and challenging and probably not something everyone would enjoy or could deal with. Going into the classes with the right attitude and expectations greatly helps.
To find out more about the training offered go to Tutu.com's seminars

Here are the Spanish skirt and bodice that I made at Tutu school:

Spanish skirt and couture bodice made at Tutu.com school

Transfering markings to organza

Silk organza pinned to project, ready for transfer

I finally reached the next stage of the Craftsy Jeanius class, transferring the thread basting to the silk organza. This technique is so clever, because you can see through the organza, and transfer the markings, without damaging the original piece of clothing.
My husband's pants were relatively easy because the fabric is a tight weave (more like denim even though they are dress pants). The other pair of pants are made of linen, which is a loose weave fabric. That was more tricky because the fabric tends to distort when you try to lay it down flat.
Yesterday I began transfering the markings from the silk organza to paper. Again, that is so easy it really is a brilliant technique.
If you use a regular pencil, you can transfer a few key points directly onto the paper. Much quicker is to use tracing carbon paper, which you place under the silk organza on the paper. Using a tracing wheel, you trace the lines on the organza and voila: you have lines drawn on the paper.
The next step is to true (measure the garment and then adjust any of the lines) up the paper pattern and then make a muslin garment to check the fit.
I'll keep you posted.

Reverse enginering

Seam lines thread basted on pants

I started taking an online Craftsy class, called Jeanius. If you are not familiar with Craftsy, I can highly recommend them. The classes are very well done, the instructors are knowledgeable, you can get feed-back from the instructor and what is even better you down load the class once and can look at it  when you  are ready. This has been perfect for me because life keeps getting in the way, and I have to put the project on hold to deal with it.
The class Jeanius,  teaches how to do something called "reverse engineer" a pattern from an existing garment. You do not need to take the garment apart (in fact you should not deconstruct the garment).
I'm making two patterns, one for a pair of my husbands favorite pants and one for a friend.
My husband put his knee through his last pair of Fletcher Jones pants. Sadly, Fletcher Jones has gone out of business so we cannot buy any replacements. My friend has some beautiful linen pants she bought in Europe and that too is not practical to replace, so both are perfect candidate for reverse engineering.
 At the start, the whole garment is thread basted, to show the seam lines. Next, the lines are transferred to a piece of silk organza (this is called making a "rub-off") and then a paper pattern can be made.
I have just reached the stage where I can begin to transfer the thread-basted seam lines onto silk organza to make a so-called "rub off".
 I'll keep you posted as this project progresses.

Alterations: Leather coat

Most of my(local) work is doing alterations for people and in the last week or so, I've altered a bridesmaid dress, hemmed dresses, skirts and pants, replaced a zipper (my least favorite job) and reset sleeves on a beautiful hand-made leather coat.

leather coat with reset sleeves

I was pretty nervous about the leather coat, because I had never worked with leather before.
I bought special needles to sew leather and the sales-lady at the local sewing machine store gave me some Teflon (tm) stickers to put under the pressure foot, so that it would glide smoothly over the leather.
Once I've saved up some more money, I am going to buy at least one Teflon pressure foot and maybe a roller foot for sewing leathers, velvet and other heavy, tricky fabric.
The customer who had brought me the coat, had taken it to a tailor but he had not wanted to do the job. It was not difficult, just fiddly. All the seams were top stitched, which required  me to redo them. My greatest concern was that it would show.
Thankfully it turned out very well and the customer was thrilled. That makes a job worth while to me, a happy customer.
Some people would say that doing alterations is boring but you can learn a lot from "deconstructing" garments and then putting them back together again. I think my sewing has gone up a notch and the business is good, steady work.

Chiffon dresses

I am slowly making progress on the chiffon dresses and rainbow colored skirts. What appeared to be relatively easy and straight forward was much more challenging than I thought. Maybe because it is the end of the school year/season, maybe because I simply underestimated the complexity of the task but for some reason progress is painfully slow.

I first made the mistake of miscalculating the amount of fabric needed for the circle skirts. I ended up with 6 half circles instead of 6 circle skirts. Thankfully that problem was easily solved and the skirts only required one fitting. Once the little girls were wearing them, they were so pretty and worth all the effort.

 The dresses turned out to be another matter. I started by pleating the chiffon for the bodice and broke several needles. This should not happen with a light fabric like chiffon but it did. After taking the pleater apart, and adding new needles it did not take long to re-pleat the fabric.

Adding new needles to the smocking

Next I managed to do something to my serger and it made a horrible rattling noise. Again, this is not supposed to happen with a light fabric such as chiffon but after some tinkering the noise went away and so I sewed on.
I decided to use French seams because I thought it would look better and be more durable. French seams do look better on chiffon but they make altering difficult. You also need to take into account that they reduce the size of the garment more than regular seams. I forgot both these things and ended up, unpicking the dresses several times.
I had drawn a new pattern because these dresses were meant for young women rather than children. This meant that the dresses needed some way of opening them, so as to be able to put them on (minor detail). After some fiddling, I worked out a way to open them under the arm, without distorting the lines of the ruching. This meant that I had to back smock (add smocking stitches invisibly to the back of the bodice front and back) all the rows of pleating, which takes a lot of time but in the end I think the result was better.

back of chiffon dress

front of chiffon dress

The final piece of equipment to give out was my ruffler; it just seemed to get stuck. After cleaning and oiling it, the ruffler was back to "normal" and I finally was able to assemble the dresses.

sky blue chiffon dress

lilac chiffon dress with headpiece

The dresses have little flounced sleeves and will be worn over leotards. I will also add some matching flowers to the left shoulder.
Despite all the hassles, I was very happy with the results and the dancers looked beautiful in their flowing dresses.
I think that is the best past of a project: if you can keep going through some (minor) frustrations to see the results at the end. A happy smiling dancer makes it all worth while.

Start of flower circlets

Flower circlet

 Finally I assembled the flower circlets, using directions from Claudia Folts' (Tutu.com) book Finishing touches. I hand dyed some of the silk flowers light blue or lilac to match the dresses, sewed on some little loops so that the circlets could be pinned onto the dancer's hair and added hot-fix Swarovski crystals in colors to match the flowers.

Current projects: A rainbow of skirts

A rainbow of skirts and two chiffon dresses:

A few weeks ago I started on a new project, making some costumes for a dance recital for a Christian dance school. After meeting with the teacher,  talking about the themes of the recital and drawing sketches, I set to work.

Six colorful skirts and gold sashes

The little girls dance was about the nations of the World worshiping God. To represent that, we came up with the idea of colorful circle skirts, gold sashes (as each girl was to represent a nation or part of the World) and themed hair pieces.
Two teenaged girls were dancing a piece called the Beauty of ballet.  The teacher and I decided that flowing, chiffon dresses in pastels with circlets of flowers would be appropriate.

Dress design and beginnings of flower circlets

At first I was going to use a commercial pattern to make the chiffon dresses but the pattern was designed for a child, rather than a young teen. I therefore drew a new pattern, changing the bodice and making the skirt attach differently to the bodice. The bodice now is ruched both in the front and back, has a V-shaped insert and a sweet heart neckline. The dresses also have two full circle skirts, and small ruffled sleeves.
The head pieces will have pastel colored silk flowers, some dyed to match the dress colors and a little sparkle.
The is a much smaller scale project but it has been challenging and fun because I am designing for small children and teenagers.
The little skirts and sashes are done. I'll add more photos as the chiffon dresses and flower circlets come along.