Tag: butterick

Pinstriped velvet coat and cape

The tidy side

Remember when I bought this fantastic Ikea unit for the Shed, and tidied everything into neat little cubby holes?

Today I had every intention of making a hat. I had everything I needed laid out on the sewing table. Instructions, fabric, buckram, wire, lining, curved sewing needles… but no pattern. I knew it was in the Shed somewhere – most likely in the ever increasing pile of stuff I haven’t put away yet.

THE PILE

This is my (technically Paul’s) big comfy chair – where I can sit to do hand sewing. Except I can’t, because on the chair lives THE PILE. Anything that doesn’t have a tidy home yet, or anything that I’m going to “put away in a minute” tends to be dumped in the pile. I knew the hat pattern was in there somewhere, and I found it almost at the bottom – alongside the missing pattern for my niece’s dress. The last time I’d looked at either of those patterns was May. Eight months ago. Oops.

What you can also see overflowing from THE PILE is a mountain of pinstriped fabric. That’s about ten metres of cotton velvet, which I bought way back in the mists of time when I worked in a fabric shop. Scrunched up underneath it was the pattern for Butterick 5266, a pattern for a Victorian-ish coat with a cape. (Now out of print.) In my infinite wisdom, I decided that the best way to tidy this fabric and get it out of the Shed was to finally sew the dratted coat.

Cape and sleeves

So, I now have the cape part, and a pair of sleeves. Unfortunately I have also remembered how much I absolutely loathe sewing with cotton velvet. And the pinstripes aren’t helping either. They look great, but they’re printed onto the fabric rather than woven in, and they’re not printed on the straight grain. Which means that I have to choose either to follow the pinstripes or follow the grain. Not an ideal situation, particularly with velvet.

Pinstriped velvet

Isn’t this lovely though? That glorious moment when the pinstripes actually match at the seams as though I meant it, makes up for a lot. Unfortunately, it doesn’t make up for the frustrating way that velvet moves around when you sew it, even with the usually fantastic differential feed on my machine. So the pinstripes only match beautifully on one of the sleeves, and of course that’s the one where the fabric kept slipping as I was sewing in the lining, because the velvet was off the grain. And the sleeve that isn’t puckered around the cuff? The pinstripes don’t match up at all. Of course.

And that’s the easy bit.

The front and back panels are so big that they each have to be cut twice from a single layer of fabric. And then lined. I think from now on I’m going to ignore the instructions, and just leave out all the fiddly bits that could go wrong. No braid trimming, no side vents, no slits to put your hands through (what are they for anyway? the thing has sleeves!), no loops for the buttons – nothing. I’ll bag out the lining so it can’t slip around, and I’ll sew on enormous poppers with buttons over the top. Or buy frog fasteners.

It’ll be a few days before I can get back in the Shed to finish this off (my Real Job calls), but hopefully I can get this finished very soon. Then I can gleefully THROW AWAY* whatever’s left of the velvet, and rejoice in my decision to NEVER SEW WITH IT AGAIN.

 

*No, of course I won’t actually throw it away. I’ll give it to a charity shop, or donate it to anyone daft enough to take it off my hands after they’ve read this.

[edit] Well, Lisa of Off With Her Head has admitted to being daft enough – so when I’ve finished the cape, I’ll be sending her a big parcel. Look out for pinstriped velvet millinery, coming soon!

First Birthday Dress

First Birthday Dress

It was my niece’s first birthday last week, so of course I wanted to make her a little party dress! I was very tempted to make something very floofy and over the top, but given that her primary means of locomotion is crawling at high speed, I decided it made more sense to sew something that she could move about in.

This is Butterick 3772, in the smallest size. The fabric is half a metre of Alexander Henry, which I bought because I fell in love with it a couple of years ago. I’m glad it’s finally made its way out of the stash and been put to a good use.

Milly's First Birthday Party

As you can see, the dress saw a lot of action at the party!

I have lots of little pieces of interesting and unusual fabric in the stash, so I can feel a few more of these simple little dresses coming on. I’ll wait until she’s a bit bigger before I go for the full-on floofy party dresses, I think.

Butterick 4731

Butterick 4731

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like. An evening dress, in wet-look lycra.

Another one for the “it seemed like a good idea at the time” pile, I suspect!

This is Butterick 4731. It looks a bit odd (relatively speaking) on my dress form because I’m in between sizes. The bust on my larger dress form doesn’t go small enough, and the waist and hips on the smaller one don’t go big enough. Typical. So there will be slightly more curvaceousness (is that a word?) going on in Real Life, but it won’t be quite skintight except at the bust, which obviously is holding up the dress.

The dress went together remarkably smoothly, considering I made such a radical departure from the suggested fabrics. The only change I made to the pattern was to leave out the centre back zip. The fabric is so stretchy that it doesn’t need any fastenings, and I didn’t fancy trying to top-stitch on this fabric. Having said that, it didn’t stick to the machine anywhere near as badly as I’d expected.

I do still need to add a lining or facing to finish it off though – the top edge is just folded over at the moment. The pattern is constructed with a boned foundation made from interfaced lining, but there’s not much point in trying to bone a stretchy dress, and the edges of the bones will show through the outer fabric anyway. Instead I think I’m going to make an internal girdle, of sorts, using powermesh. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to achieve that yet, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out!

Bow Ties are (still) Cool.

Waistcoat & bow tie

Back in March I managed to find a lovely TM Lewin women’s shirt for a bargain price in TK Maxx. We were going to see Mr B the Gentleman Rhymer, so I thought it would be a good idea to make a gentlemanly sort of an outfit for the occasion.

The bow tie is Kwik Sew 3183, as usual, and the waistcoat is Butterick 4815, view C. They’re both made from a lovely silk dupion which is turquoise shot with purple. The buttons on the waistcoat have a little flower embossed into them, which is filled with purple enamel.

I also made a pair of trousers (Vogue 1034, view A) and a jacket (Vogue 1132, view B), but I don’t seem to have taken any photos of those. I must grab them out of my wardrobe and pop them onto the dress form for you!

Butterick 4731

Butterick 4731, View A

I know I’ve already made one little jacket in this fabric, but when I looked at the whole outfit together on the dressform I wasn’t sure. S, I had a little browse on the internet, dashed down to the fabric shop, bought another pattern and made another jacket. As you do.

This one’s Butterick 4731. It goes with a very smart evening dress, and there’s also a pattern for another little bolero. The body of the jacket’s lined, but I didn’t line the sleeves as I wanted it to be very light. It was really simple to make, just five pieces, and no darts or anything. If I make this again I might actually add a couple of darts into the lower back to make it a little more fitted, but I want to wear this one first and see how easy it is to move in. It only uses just over a metre of fabric, so I think it would be fun to make lots of these in different colours of silk, and use them to liven up a plain outfit.

The unusual shape of the front of this jacket is really flattering, and I think it will show off the shape of the corset much better than the other one. It was a very quick and easy thing to make, and I’m really pleased with it!

Sparkly Velvet Tunic

Butterick 5260

This is Butterick 5260, a variant on View A. I only had a very small piece of fabric, so I ended up shortening both the top and the sleeves. It was supposed to be a short dress, but it’s a long top now! I also did away with the little piece of elastic gathering at the front, because I just couldn’t get it to sit right.

I made this in one afternoon, before going out for cocktails and dinner with friends that same evening. It went together really quickly, and I’m very pleased with it. The only down side is that the glitter has a tendency to spread itself everywhere!

Butterick 5425

Butterick 5425

I bought this lovely wool fabric back in August, at a re-enactment event. Originally I was planning to turn it into a jacket and trousers, but when I saw Butterick 5425 I knew they were a perfect match. I particularly like the slightly puffed sleeves and the very full skirt.

Butterick 5425

The only thing I would have done differently is to use a woven interfacing. The pattern called for fusible interfacing on the collar and front facings, but I think the wool fabric would have draped better with horsehair in the collar and a lighter woven at the front. Still, too late now, and I’ll know better next time.

The lining is a lovely turquoise blue, to bring out the spots in the fabric. My next mission is to buy a pile of this yarn, to knit myself a matching hat, scarf and gloves.

Butterick 5425

The buttons are only plastic, but they were so pretty that I couldn’t resist them. They’re non-functional, because my sewing machine still refuses to make decent buttonholes, so there are five big poppers sewn down the front of the coat, with buttons on top. I make all of my coats this way.

Butterick 5425

This lovely brooch was given to me as a Christmas present, hand made by my friend Heather. As soon as I unwrapped it, I knew that it would be perfect for this coat!

Butterick 5260

Butterick 5260

This little dress is the first time in ages that I haven’t made a single alteration to the pattern as I was going along. I simply cut out the pattern, cut out the fabric, and sewed it all together according to the instructions. Very unlike me.

It’s Butterick 5260, view C.

The dress is much longer on me than the pattern illustration suggests. I’m about 5’5″, and it sits just above the knee. For some reason the sleeves have come out extremely long – they completely cover my hands. As it turns out I don’t mind that, but it was a bit of a surprise when I tried it on!

The fabric is a devoré (or burnout) velvet of unspecified fibre. I suspect polyester. It’s one-way stretch, and it was much easier to work with than I expected. There was the usual amount of fluff clogging up the sewing machine and the overlocker, but the pieces didn’t shift about too much while I was sewing.

I think a future project needs to be a range of slips in different colours, to wear underneath. Otherwise I’m not entirely sure how much wear I’m going to get out of a mostly-transparent dress!

Butterick 5250

Butterick 5250

I started making these trousers back in March, when I started my new job. Then I decided I didn’t like them, and they went on The Pile. Last weekend I was going to a party, and I wanted to wear my Jeffery~West shoes, so I thought it was about time I finished off the trousers to go with them.

The trousers are Butterick 5250, view D, in a herringbone linen blend.

Now that I’ve made the sway-back adjustment, I really like them – although I did make them a little bit too small around the waist which is why the waistband’s gone wrinkly. I know it might look daft to be wearing trousers that sit so high on the waist, and there’s probably a “rule” somewhere that says short-waisted people shouldn’t wear high-waisted trousers. I say never mind the “rules”, they’re really comfortable, and I plan to make another pair. And a matching little bolero-type jacket to go with these.

I think the only thing I’d change about them is the pockets – they’re just not quite big enough. Also, whilst the trousers look nice enough with a fitted t-shirt, I think that what they really need is a shirt and tie to go with them. Maybe a bow tie. (Bow ties are cool.)

Yellow Submarine Jacket

Beatles Jacket

Ta-Daa!

The pattern is Butterick 5254, view C.
I had been planning to make view B which is much longer, but there turned out to be a printing flaw in the fabric, and I couldn’t quite maneouvre the pattern pieces around it. So I made the shorter version instead.

The jacket is lined with polar fleece, so it should be nice and warm. The three giant buttons are vintage ones that I inherited from a friend’s grandmother’s button stash.

And just in case you think this jacket’s a little bit boring…

…have a look at the inside.

Beatles Jacket

The facings and belt are made from a matching psychedelic “rainbows” fabric.

I’m fairly certain that “hilarious” shouldn’t be one of the criteria for making clothes, but I think this is one of the funniest things I’ve ever done. I can’t wait to wear it!