Spoils

We interrupt the shirt making schedule to report on (insert glorious organ sound here) acquisitions.

My friend: “C’mon Ruth, come down with me to the thrift/recycle/antique shop”

Me: “No, I want to go home”

My friend: “Just come with me and check it out”

Me: “No, I always go there and never find anything”

My friend: “Just come with me to keep me company, it’s only a bit out of your way”

Me: “OK”

And a short while later . . . . .

 

With the double tracing wheel and the rotary cutter guide arm I will conquer the seam allowance yet!

 

DAYS 3, 4 and 5 shirt making

DAY 3 

Progress made – cut back, cut sleeves, cut out all small pattern pieces except placket underlap and overlap.

DAY 4 

Progress made –  wind bobbin and did some test stitches on fabric scraps. Although many, if not most of the hobbyist sewing folks use a 2.5 mm stitch length, Peggy recommends a longer stitch length, which makes sense for long construction seams. I decided to use a 3.0 mm length stitch.

DAY 5 

Progress made –  None.

Here’s a picture of my fabric and thread. Both sides of the fabric look great but on very close inspection, one side has more of a deconstructed look so I decided to use the smoother looking side for my RS.

DAY 2 Cutting into the fabric

DAY 2 Wednesday Jan 2nd

This was the day I ironed my prewashed fabric smoothed it out on the floor and started to cut.

Immediately the pattern instruction sheet and I started to lock horns.

Here is the suggested pattern layout on 45″ fabric from the instruction sheet:

Clearly this layout is weirdly incorrect. There is NO WAY that the shirt left and right front pices (I and 2) can fit side-by-side on this width of fabric. And look at the collar piece (9/10), it is drawn as big as the sleeve! Although you don’t expect a schematic like this to be drawn to scale, it seems reasonable to expect that the sizes drawn are roughly proportionate.

I just relaid the fabric single ply and started cutting out from the top of the fabric with my left and right shirt front pattern pieces. These are the pattern pieces needed first in the instruction sheet so these were the ones I started with.

After cutting out the left and right front pieces I was exhausted (the stress of cutting a striped fabric on grain when I can see every little push and pull of the fabric that distorts the pattern). I decided to call it a day and to investigate shirt pattern layouts to make sure I wasn’t going to run out of fabric.

David Coffin’s book came to the rescue with an ingenious pattern layout that makes maximum use of the fabric.

To summarize the method he describes, the major pattern pieces are cut out as indicated in the diagram below, and then the smaller pattern pieces are placed to be cut out in the areas between the larger pieces after the fabric is unfolded.

Things to note:

A woven striped fabric such as the one I was using makes it relatively easy to lay out the pattern pieces on grain and also to figure out the grain from fabric scraps.

Figuring out the grain from fabric scraps has several advantages.

First it means that I don’t have to worry about cutting out the small pieces alongside the large pieces when I still have an intact selvedge to measure from, so I can just concentrate on fitting the large pieces onto the fabric.

Second, this approach results in a more economical use of fabric.

Third, it means that I can cut out these pieces just before I sew them. I know that I’m not be going to make this in a hurry and the longer cut fabric hangs around without being sewn, the more opportunity it has for the edges to fray. Much better to sew with a freshly cut edge of woven fabric.

DAY 2 Summary:

1) Progress made – cut left front and right front

2) Learned about an economical pattern layout for shirts

Note on Silhouette pattern #6012 George’s Shirt

One note I should add about the pattern. I chose the Silhouette pattern #6012 because I have been following Peggy Sagger’s webcasts and getting an appreciation for the fascinating process of pattern making. I wanted a pattern that I know will “work” right out of the envelope so “all” I have to concern myself with is the sewing and fitting.

One of the interesting aspects about Peggy Saggers seems to be how strong she is in the fundamentals and depth of her knowledge, it is really obvious that patternmaking is in her DNA. What I think is a challenge for her is to translate that knowledge for us, the newbie sewers. Something that seems so obvious to her is utterly opaque to us newbies. It must be frustrating to her to do the type of hand-holding that we need, or get bogged down in the nitty gritty of explaining basics that we don’t know or that need repeating many times before we finally “get” it. I also get the sense that Peggy doesn’t realize how much us newbies can be thrown off track by small details.

For example, the blurb for #6012, George’s shirt pattern says “this shirt has been duplicated, with permission, from one of New York’s finest men’s dress shirts” which seems really good to me.

But to my mind, a good men’s shirt always has a yoke. If you look on the website, the schematic for the pattern doesn’t indicate a yoke. In fact, the pattern does have a back yoke. I’ve added it in where it should be with the red line below.

Now probably Peggy is confident on the fundamentals, she would probably never make a men’s shirt pattern without a yoke and, if you know her well, you would be aware of that. But, missing this detail from the schematic would throw off newbies such as myself. When you are starting out, it is very easy to be confused by sorting out silly mistake from fundamental error. For instance I can now read a knitting or crochet pattern and it is obvious to me where there is a silly mistake or typo. Being new to sewing, I can’t do this. To reduce the barriers to initial sewing success it really helps when EVERYTHING is accurate, and you can streamline your effort productively.

I really strongly recommend the Peggy Saggers webcasts (freely available) and now I have all her DVDs as well. I have learned to trust her even though sometimes I haven’t the foggiest idea of what she is talking about. To be fair on myself, pattern making and garment sewing are enormous topics and one can’t simply absorb this stuff instantly.

I adore Peggy’s attitude, her accessibility, her willingness to put time into educating the public in how we can implement up-to-date sewing techniques for accuracy, and copy what is current in high-end RTW.

In the process, she is liberating hobbyist sewing from the 1050′s straitjacket it sometimes appears bogged down in. In my view, this seems is critical if the new generation of sewists will do more than Threadbangers style T-shirt refashioning projects and will actually make something that they will wear to a (successful) job interview.

As I go through the sewing process of this pattern I hope to document how I approached the sewing process and bridged the knowledge gap from my perspective as a newbie.

First Day Resolution 2013 Pattern prep

The first day was Jan 1st. I’m still in the midst of this project I took notes on what happened daily and I’m blogging with a little perspective built in.

This was the day that I prepared the pattern.

I briefly toyed with the idea of tracing the pattern so I could go back to it if I chose the wrong size.

In the Peggy Saggers webcasts, she always recommends just cutting out a pattern rather than tracing to preserve accuracy. As accurate tracing is relatively arduous process I decided to stick with Peggy’s recommendation, focus on one size and cut the tissue out. The money spent on purchasing another pattern is nothing compared to the amount of time I’m going to be putting into this and I wanted to get going.

But which size should I cut out?

The back of the pattern envelope gives finished garment measurements (also available on the schematic shown on the website).

I measured the circumference of one of my husband’s favorite shirts – 47 inches, which would give me a size 2 and I was all set to cut out this size. But fortunately I had the presence of mind to ask him what size shirt he takes and his answer was “neckband 15.5 inches”.

Checking the pattern envelope gives a 15.5 neck band size as a size 3. The pattern instructs that vertical darts can always be added later if a more narrow fit is desired (clearly what my husband likes), so 2 extra inches of circumference should not be too much of an issue, like the wrong neckband size would definitely be. Phew!

I cut out the size 3.

My husband has long arms and always complains that clothes which fit on his relatively narrow torso are too short in the arms. So I held up the pattern piece for the sleeve roughly against his shoulder and estimated he needs the sleeve to be around 1.5 inches longer. I cut apart the pattern piece on the lengthen and shorten line, inserted 1.5 inches and redrew the side seams.

The tissue paper on which the pattern is printed is exceptionally flimsy which is a concern if you have any intention of ever resusing the pattern.

Later I realized that the small pattern pieces can be easily scanned on a flatbed scanner. Scanners are very affordable and this is a terrific solution for any pattern piece that can fit onto the scanner and be printed on a typical home printer (a smidge smaller than letter sized, depending on the printer margin of your particular model).

2013 New Year resolutions

Resolution?

1) Sew shirt for husband.

2) Stay focused on project until completion i.e. try to do something on the project everyday, no matter how small. This was one of the rationales to have my own space at home, not only to gather all my junk paraphernalia but so I could be ready to jump into a project whenever I can snatch a bit of time.

This will be a first for me in a couple of ways:

1) First shirt constructed ever.

2) First garment sewn for husband.

Pattern?

I am using Silhouette pattern #6012, George’s shirt.

Resources?

1) The instruction sheet that came with the Silhouette pattern. I am using this as my major guide and supplementing with help from the other resources where necessary.

2) David Coffin’s book “Shirtmaking: Developing skills for fine sewing”

3) David Coffin’s DVD on shirtmaking techniques.

4) Craftsy class from instructor Pam Howard “The classic tailored shirt”. I subscribed to this mostly because I really liked the look of the instructor wearing her beautiful shirts and the class has been quite helpful.

Separated at birth

This is a blurry picture snapped while I was browsing Harvey Nicks and being asked not to photograph the clothes!

It’s an Armani sweater, in a playful shaggy, lacey style. I didn’t record the fiber composition but I think it was pretty rarefied, as was the price tag.

It immediately came to mind when I saw this sweater in Fall 2012 Vogue.

This is pattern #27, Dolman Hoodi from designer Jeannie Chin.

It is knit in a doubled strand of a laceweightmohair/silk blend with a looped stitch used to generate the furry look. The recommended yarn is Cascade kid seta but there are many other yarns that could readily substitute, Rowan kidsik haze, Elann silken kydd, Knitpicks aloft, S. Charles Luna.

I’d love to make this blending a coordinated strand of Gioiello in the looped section, and double stranding a plainer color for the ribbed cuff and collar (Gioiello is one of my all time favorites). I’m not so sure of the dolman style, I might prefer a raglan, but I definitely love the hood.

Pretty fun!