What are you doing next Saturday?

I'm going to be shopping with like-minded friends in New York's Garment District, and there's still space left if you'd like to join us. 

The expedition was organized by Elizabeth, and I am shamelessly filching her schedule to post here:

9:45am Gather in front of Starbucks at 494 8th Ave (corner of 8th and 35th St). I will hand out maps of the garment district and we’ll split into 2 groups.

9:55am Each group will walk to either Metro Textiles (265 W 37th St, Ste 908, between 7th and 8th but closer to 8th) or Elliott Berman (225 W 35th St, #7, between 7th and 8th but closer to 7th).

10:00am Shopping to commence!

11:00am Start having your fabrics cut.

11:30am Leave for other store. If you started at Metro, go to Elliott Berman and vice versa.

12:00pm Shopping!

1:00pm Start having your fabrics cut.

1:30pm Finished at both stores.

At this point, you can use your maps to shop at other fabric or trim stores in the district, have lunch or just go home. I look forward to seeing you all there!

The trip was originally scheduled for the weekend of Hurricane Irene, and wisely canceled as NYC evacuated and the rest of us couldn't get in or out.  Both Kashi at Metro and Elliott Berman are opening epecially for us, so it's important for enough of us to show up to make it worth their while or they might not do it again.

Come on, people, show up and support the Garment District, spend the day hanging out and talking sewing with people who understand you, and go home with a little fabric as a souvenir.

I don't know, it sounds good to me.

Autumn Watercolor

Ottobre Design - Woman, Fall Winter, 5/2011 #15

Pattern Description: The simple, minimalist style of this dress is always trendy and interesting. Admittedly, they also require a little more attention from the sewer as they need to be carefully tried on and fitted. The body-hugging silhouette of the dress is produced both by the pattern design and by shaping it by pressing during construction. The waistline is raised slightly above the narroest part of the body. The skirt has contouring darts at the waist, and the slanted bust darts start at the side seams of the bodice.

Pattern Sizing: Ottobre sizes (similar to Burda) 34-48. As I was using a woven, I made a 40.

Did it look like the photo/drawing on the pattern envelope once you were done sewing with it? The shape was the same. Their dress is a nice, quiet, well-bred gray. Mine is not.

Were the instructions easy to follow? Ottobre's instructions are fabulous. You don't even notice the lack of illustrations, and anyone who has tackled even one Burda pattern would find these a breeze.

What did you particularly like or dislike about the pattern? I liked that it was basically a blank slate for any print that I decided to throw at it. Ottobre's patterns aren't always exciting at first glance, but upon further study they're actually very good starts to a lot of interesting garments. Another nice thing about Ottobre is that many of their pattern pieces can be swapped - the 4 dresses in this issue have interchangeable skirts, sleeves and collars; only the bodice is consistently the same, so if you get the bodice fit right, you have a lot of options to play with.

I also liked the neckline - nice and wide, a flattering look, without having to worry about the depth of a Burda neckline. Sometimes it's just nice to go to work and not worry about flashing too much cleavage at the wrong lawyer.

Fabric Used: Cotton voile purchased at PR Weekend Chicago at Fishman's Fabrics. I waffled about the purchase, but several PR members, including Sherril Miller, basically strong-armed me into it. (Thank you, ladies, you were right).

Pattern alterations or any design changes you made: No changes other than tweaking for fit. Ottobre patterns tend to fit me without a lot of manipulation, which can be a nice change of pace.

The dresses in this pattern series had some nice vintage touches, but the only one that is really structural is the dart at the back neck/shoulder which I think makes such a difference in fit. The inside facing is cut without the dart, and makes the neckline lay beautifully.

I had issues with lining the dress - not technical issues, but color. Because the cotton voile is somewhat sheer, my first choice of lining (black) made the print muddy. Brown wasn't much better. I scrounged through the lining stash until I came up with some ivory, which brightened the light parts of the print.

I did not line the sleeves. The sleeve is fitted, and I was afraid that it would be too snug if I lined it, so I turned the bodice lining under at the armhole and hand sewed it to the seam allowance. I also hand sewed the skirt and sleeve hems, and attached the lining to the invisible zip. Lots of hand-sewing on this dress, but the fabric was so lightweight that I knew any machine stitches would show, and not in a good way.

Despite my print being somewhat (!) busy, I decided to add some embellishment to the neckline. I purchased a jacket a few summers ago at a yard sale, specifically because it had these brown wooden beads sewn around the neckline and down the front. The jacket was white pique and filthy; I cut the beads off and have kept them all this time waiting for the right project. I thought that they suited the fabric, which despite its watercolor effect is not shy and retiring at all. The beads weren't too heavy, and they're hand-sewn down and tacked to the facing, which has a heavier interfacing than I would have normally used specifically to support the embellishment.

The embellishment doesn't go around to the back neckline because Lily the sewing room cat made off with 3 of the larger pieces. When they resurface on the sewing room floor, I'll add them. Or not; I don't actually miss them despite having made fun of RTW tops with embellishments that stop at the shoulders.

Would you sew it again? Would you recommend it to others? I would definitely recommend both this pattern and Ottobre generally. It's not an exciting looking magazine if you're used to a steady diet of Burda or Patrones, but it's full of good, basic, useful patterns that can be used in a variety of ways. Since I got the bodice fit the way I want, I'll definitely be using this pattern again.

Conclusion: I was told that this pattern had great potential to be dowdy, but I think fit and fabric can win out any time. I'm happy with my dress, and I think I'll get a lot of wear out of this one.

Do you Ottobre?

I tend to forget, between twice-yearly issues, that I like Ottobre patterns. 

Admittedly, they don't have the glossy lure of Burda or Patrones, the fashion magazine styling and photography, the on-trend clothes, but they do have something I like (when I remember). 

Reality.  Or at least a really close pattern magazine facsimile thereof.

Ottobre uses real women (I swear I think they scoop up their office workers and let them wear the clothes) and they're women of various sizes and shapes.  I like that in addition to the description of the pattern, you get the model's name, her pattern size and height.  In the Autumn/Winter 2011 issue, the "models" were between European sizes 36 and 42, and I've definitely seen women larger than that, and older, and shorter. 

Instead of looking at a 7 foot tall, rail thin Burda "plus" model, and trying to figure what that dress would look like on me, it's kind of comforting to look at someone whose figure issues are similar to mine and know pretty much what it would look like. 

The Fall/Winter issue had a series of 4 vintage styled dresses that caught my eye.  It wasn't so much the "vintage"details, which weren't vintage enough if that's what I wanted; I liked that underneath those details seemed to be a very good, basic dress pattern.

And it was.  And because it's Ottobre, the varying sleeves and skirts and collars for all 4 dresses are interchangeable, so you only have to do bodice-tweaking once.

So, yes, all this talk about Ottobre does mean that I've sewn something from this issue.  I chose dress #15, the dress on the left in the upper photo.  Probably the most basic shape in the bunch, and as I was advised by a dear friend who shall remain nameless (BECAUSE SHE WAS WRONG), a dress that had great potential to be frumpy. 

Thankfully great fabric (and a lot of effort on fitting) can work wonders even with a potentially frumpy pattern.  Full review hopefully tomorrow; I just wanted to check in because I've gone missing for the last week.  Labor Day weekend is never a vacation weekend for me, it's the 3 days where I try to pack in all the projects I've neglected all summer, and possibly pre-summer. 

Let's just say I was glad to get back to work to get some rest.

Fabric pictured above is, obviously, my new dress, and was purchased at Fishman's in Chicago during PR Weekend at the urging of Sherril Miller and several other PR friends who insisted that I didn't need to step otuside my color comfort zone - I should buy what I like, and what I know works for me.

If Burda gives you lemons

make Sorbetto with them.

I wanted to deal with the remains of my BWOF 9/11 #132 dress before it became a crumpled silk UFO taunting me from the floor of my sewing room - or worse, a crumpled silk sleeping mat for Lily, no longer taunting me because it's full of cat hair. 

What can make you feel almost as good as a successful sewing project?  Taking scissors to an unsuccessful one. 

I cut off that unfortunate upper portion and threw it out.  That left the lower section, and once cut along the side seams, I had a very large piece of fabric for the front, and a reasonbly-sized piece for the back. 

What to do with those pieces?  I looked through a few patterns, but most of the ones that appealed wouldn't work with the fabric (either the size or the print), so I reached for the Colette Sorbetto pieces which were still on the table from the other week. 

I guess there's a point to being a slob.

When I made this pattern a week or so ago, I thought it was a quick, easy, cute top, and now I can add one more positive to this list:

It's a quick, easy, cute top that saves me from having to look at this failure of a dress crumpled on the sewing room floor. 

Take that, Burda.  It may not be the dress - or even a dress - but it's a wearable, finished garment and I can now put the Burda dress behind me.

Hurricane update:  I really thought with the weather we were going to have this weekend, I'd get a ton of sewing done.  Not so; I got about as much sewing done as we got hurricane weather.  (I'm glad about the weather - this is one of the times when I was happy the weathermen were wrong - but sad about the sewing).

Philly got about 6" of rain, which is less than we got two weeks ago.  The winds were rough but nothing the house couldn't handle, and for the first time in many, many years, we took on no water.  It's comforting, knowing that the house is finally just about watertight. 

For anyone who's curious, the chickens made it through the storm just fine - it was, after all, less water than they've had several times since moving into the back yard.  In what turned out to be an excess of caution, we took a fashionable blue tarp, some bungee cords and a few bricks, and made sure that the girls were as close to protected as we could manage.  All that did was keep them relatively dark all day yesterday, and so they laid no eggs, but at least they were dry. 

Tomorrow is a vacation day for me, though I'm not sure now what we're going to do with it.  Originally it was supposed to be a shore day but I think the shore's still closed, and even if it's not, most of the roads between here and there probably are.  So maybe it'll just be a vacation at home day, sleeping late, cleaning up some debris outside, . . . getting a little bit of sewing done?

Hope you all made it through the storm unscathed, and got more sewing done than I did. 

Not for the faint of heart

Or, apparently, for the big of boob. 

I'm not going to call BWOF 9/11 #132 a wadder, and it really isn't the silk twill potato sack I feared it would be, but I think that I'm going to cut my losses before it becomes either, and reserve what's left of this beautiful fabric for some other project. 

The back of the dress doesn't look too bad, and the front doesn't either, but I made one mistake that I've made before - I love dresses with that nice straight line above the bust, and I have too much bust beneath that nice straight line for it to look, well, . . . nice. 

The drape looked good on the dress form.  It doesn't look bad flat on the table, either. 

But on me, not so much.  The drape just wouldn't drape properly - it centered itself over one boob and stubbornly refused to drape the way it did on the form.

Anybody ever see that Julie Andrews movie called Thoroughly Modern Millie?  This dress reminds me of the scene early in the movie when her strand of pearls kept locating itself over one or the other, until she finally went out and got the 1920s version of shapewear and flattened herself out.

Flattening would work, but it's not happening, and I don't think generic shapewear woudl be enough.  Certainly my most minimal bra made almost no difference at all.  Shapewear and I aren't particularly good friends, and this isn't the dress to push me over the edge into wearing it. 

Despite having absolutely the worst Burda instructions I've ever encountered, they were right about one thing - this is definitely a dress that would look better on a taller woman.  A taller, thinner woman.  A taller, thinner woman with smaller boobs. 

I couldn't bear to get Mario involved in taking photos of this dress.  He thinks I walk on water, or at least sew that way.  Some projects don't need witnesses.

On the plus side, I got the spring and fall Ottobre magazines today.  Their patterns never do much for me in the magazine, but I always tend to really like them made up.  Off to trace something practical and keep myself occupied while the hurricane attempts to wash away my chickens.

Some Progress

I'm still wrestling with this dress (which is BWOF 9/11 #132, since I forgot to properly identify it last time around), and I think we've reached some kind of agreement.

What you see in these photos is the upper bodices sewn together at the shoulders (self-lined on the upper bodice), piping basted to the seam, and the lower front folded and pinned to the piped seam. 

There's a bit of sag at the fold, but I think this is mostly caused by (a) the weight of the fabric; (b) the fact that there's no back on the dress yet to balance out the weight; and (c) the upper bodice linings aren't pinned or stitched to the lower part of the dress yet.  I think once everything is together the way it should be, I'll have a straight line across the front.

I tried several different ways to get the drape the way it was in the magazine.  You can see here that you can fiddle with it and get several different looks.  I'm not sure if you're supposed to be able to do that, and I'm not sure what (if?) I've done wrong that is giving me about an extra inch of fabric around the lower armholes, but I think if everything is draped properly and looks like a dress when it's hanging on the form, I'm just going to work with it as it is and see what happens.

It's looking much less like a potato sack than I thought, or at least it's a rather elegant potato sack.  I love the fabric. 
I'm questioning now whether or not I want the piping on that seam or not.  It's nowhere near as obvious in real life as it is in the photos, where it looks like I drew across the bodice with a black Sharpie.  The black in the fabric rises up to join it and it makes sense; on the other hand, I wasn't thinking how the weird shape of the lower front piece would play with the grain/pattern of the fabric and I'm not sure I want that interrupted by a line, however straight (or not straight) it may be.

I also may not want that black line there just in case I can't get everything to balance exactly.  Hmm.  Another reason to possibly unbaste.  I'll think on it; I'm probably not going to get any sewing done tomorrow night anyway.

In a dark wood wandering

Burda has done it again - delivered the English translation of their magazine with instructions that might as well be written in the original German, that is.

Or possibly not - I could probably feed the German instructions into the Google machine and get back something resembling instructions to make this dress.

Why do I want to make this dress?  That's another thing entirely, and I'm not completely sure why, but when the September issue arrived yesterday, that was what jumped out at me.  I hated the photo - the model was so contorted you couldn't tell what the dress was supposed to look like - but I found the line drawing intriguing, and when I looked up the online photo, I decided to go for it.

And then of course I see that it's a TALL pattern, and last time I checked, I'm still not tall. 

I decide I still find the pattern intriguing, though there's a chance it will make me look like a bag of potatoes.  Maybe that's why I find it intriguing?  Because most of the time I can't just head straight for a flattering pattern; I have to wrestle with something first to make it work?

I trace it off, noting that the front pattern piece is so ginormous (to account for the drape) that it's wider than my fabric.  Thankfully I've chosen a non-directional print (a silk twill from Paron's) so I laid out the pieces the wrong way and still had enough left to cut the front and back upper bodices, armhole facings and hem facings.

How did Burda go wrong this time?  Let me count the ways.  First off, the diagram where they tell you which pieces to trace - it specifically states to trace pieces 1 through 7.  Which I do.  And fold the page up and put it away, not noticing until later that the list of pattern pieces in the written instructions also includes piece 8, the back hem facing.  This is when I start muttering under my breath, partly because I should have realized that there were 2 facings. 

The swearing starts when I have all the pieces assembled (minus the missing facing) and I realize that the instructions begin with the drape.  There's no mention anywhere about the upper bodice.  Ever.  It's beside the point that I don't need them.  They're instructions - instruct, preferably from the beginning.  Someone will thank you, and not write cranky blog posts about your inadequacies.

Then I read the instructions for the drape.  Twice.  Three times.  That they are awful is an understatement.  Riddle me this one:  "For the draped fold on the front, fold the front along marked fold line, right side facing in.  Stitch along the upper edge from the fold edge to the seam mark (seam number 1), then stitch upward to edge of seam allowance at the seam mark."  Still with me?  "Here, clip allowance diagonally into the stitched corner.  Pull the draped fold out and push the pointed upper corner to the inside, approx. 8" wide."

From there, they deal with the back.  "Gather the upper edge of the back between the asterisks to 9 1/2 ins."  (They neglect to mention that pesky back upper bodice that you're supposed to connect it to.  Details, details.

After that, they cover side seams, the zip and some sketchy description of the armhole facings.  If I didn't know what I was doing, I'd be so stinking lost.

I finally figured out my mistake - the "marked fold line" is an almost invisible straight line next to the diagonal line where the 2 pieces of the front pattern piece are taped together, and it's noted on the pattern sheet with large words in Russian and German, and a discreet "fold" written below, so I missed it.  I'm still confused, but it's becoming clearer.

More later, when I finally get the drape draped.  And then decide I look like I'm wearing a silk twill potato sack.