Make do & mend: T-shirt to camisole
Another day of Self-Stitched September, another new self-stitched garment!
Whatever happened to the girly tee? For a few years, back in the 90s and early noughties, things looked promising. Retailers, slowly realizing that women have money of our own these days and occasionally buy logo T-shirts too, introduced lady-specific blanks with scoopnecks, cap sleeves and shaped waists. I liked being able to buy a flattering, figure-hugging Elephant 6 or Trogdor tee. It said, “Yes, world! All this and great taste in pop culture too!” But lately — possibly for recession-related reasons — a lot of vendors seem to have gone back to the dark days of unisex, offering only traditional designed-for-men boxy tees, or as I call them, pajama tops. Which is fine if you only want to proclaim your love for a band on days when you’re too sick, hung over or depressed to leave the house.
I have too many T-shirts with great logos but unflattering cuts, and not enough form-fitting base layers. The next logical step was obvious.
To cut down this T-shirt into a camisole I used Jalie 2564, which like many Jalie patterns has received tons of positive reviews over at PR. The nice thing about the camisole is that it has a built-in shelf bra, and both camisole and bra can be cut from one T-shirt with a little fudging. This project was ridiculously easy even for me, with my limited experience of stretch fabrics and total lack of experience of fold-over or plush elastic. It whipped up in a little over an hour. It doesn’t even require an overlocker/serger; I could easily have used my machine’s zigzag and 3-step zigzag stitch instead.
My only quibble with this pattern is a matter of personal taste: I like my camisoles a bit sluttier. Next time I make this pattern I’ll definitely alter the design to make the straps wider-set, the scoopneck lower and the shelf bra shorter for increased balcon effect.
Obligatory Shearwater plug:
I’m loving my first tentative forays into the world of DIY lingerie! However, I am finding stretch lace and lingerie elastics (FOE, plush elastic, picot elastic etc.) difficult to source in colors other than white, black and nude. Tips on where to find these things are most welcome.
Blog awards
I have a confession to make: blog awards worry me.
Don’t get me wrong. I love awards. I love getting and giving them. I adore the camaraderie of the sewing blogosphere, and I love the way craft bloggers — such a warm-hearted bunch! — use them, along with things like comments and backlinks, to build ties with other bloggers.
But the thing about awards is that they require each recipient to pass them on to multiple other recipients. That’s when I start doing the math, and the result is usually that the award can only go through 10 rounds or so before the number of potential recipients exceeds the population of the entire planet.
So I apologize to any of you who have sent me an award that I failed to pick up. It’s not personal — it’s almost certainly because I got my brain tied up in knots trying to figure out new recipients to pass it on to.
Here’s one I can just about manage. Steph from 3 Hours Past the Edge of the World has very kindly nominated me for a Beautiful Blogger Award. We seem to have a lot in common: we both lead secret fantasy lives, we both adore Sara Crewe and we both share a weakness for the guilty pleasure of the Renaissance faire. (Another American friend and I are trying to figure out how to capture the joyfully inauthentic fun of a RenFaire in London without getting arrested, stabbed or relentlessly mocked.)
Ten things you probably didn’t know about me:
- I once spent nearly a year watching every Western film I could get my hands on. That was a good year. Women, if you want to understand men — their hopes, fears and dreams — watch an assload of Westerns.
- No matter how healthily I eat, I cannot break my passion for snacks that would make a nutritionist weep — Kool-Aid powder eaten straight out of the can, pizza dipped in crack sauce (Frank’s Red Hot + melted butter), popcorn doused in butter and dusted with powdered taco seasoning. I am anybody’s for a fistful of smuggled Slim Jims.
- Even though I see other women wearing them with pleasure and panache, I have an irrational aversion to wearing fabrics that imitate other fabrics — animal prints, faux fur, pleather, mock croc. I blame the Margarine Fallacy.
- My sense of personal style is still secretly stuck at “15-year-old grunge tomboy”, so I am over the moon that boots like this are back in.
- Other early and guilty secret sartorial influences include Sarah’s running-around costumes in Labyrinth (jeans with gowns!), Michelle Pfeiffer’s cod-medieval drag in Ladyhawke, the fashionable yet extremely hard-partying outfits of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, more-than-merely-decorative Morgaine from The Mists of Avalon and the sword-swinging heroines of Robin McKinley’s Damar novels. All of which feature athletic if not outright cross-dressing women, which I suppose is why I find it hard to get excited about so many modern trends, including any women’s shoe that doesn’t allow the wearer to outrun the Cleaners, marauding Saxons or rage-infected zombies.
- Despite having grown up hundreds of miles inland, I am happiest and most calm by, on or under the sea. If you ever get the chance to go scuba diving, do it — it’s the closest you’ll get in waking life to flying.
- My most valued group of friends in London are a coven of women who share my love of projects revolving around dressing up in ridiculous costumes and taking pictures of ourselves. To date we have stampeded around central London dressed as Alice in Wonderland characters, floated down the Dordogne in silk frocks and splashed around in swimming pools wearing prom gowns.
- Endings that have made me cry: A Canterbury Tale, Shortbus, The Remains of the Day, Persuasion, Jayber Crow.
- I adore trashy romances, especially historical romances, the less well-researched the better. Top of my list are romances set in historical Britain but written by Americans or Australians and romances that shamelessly travesty and fetishize a particular ethnicity (fantasy-sheikh, fantasy-Highlander).
- Like millions of other American girls, in an adolescent vacuum of accurate, candid and unbiased information about sex, I unfortunately derived many early impressions from the novels of VC Andrews. WTF
In turn, I nominate:
Go forth, my tribbles!
Self-stitched September: day 1 of 30
Self-Stitched September has begun! Although I will be taking daily evidence pics to keep myself honest, I don’t plan on doing a SSS daily outfit post — partly because I doubt I’ll be able to come up with 30 outfits I’m willing to show the world, partly because (let’s face it) I am lazy and a binge-blogger. I’ll probably opt for the occasional roundup post instead. But Day 1 of Self-Stitched September gets its own post because it features a new garment! (The top, not the hat.)
I’m modeling it at 221B Baker Street, home of one of my favorite literary smartarses.
Although I didn’t realize this until I moved over here, Sherlock Holmes is one of those literary characters who also represent a British type. He’s the posh, cerebral careerist who’s far too busy and important to waste time ogling mere women. Whitehall, where I work, abounds in them. (Perplexingly, they tend to be young; it’s the men over 60 I hesitate to get into an elevator with.) Excuse me, Mr Snootypants? My boobs are down here.
I made the top in creamy off-white 100% bamboo jersey from Eco Earth Fabrics. I needed a simple, light-colored top to mix and match, so I adapted a Jalie pattern to make a boatneck with 3/4 sleeves and a slight drape at the neckline. The bamboo jersey is lovely and thick and easy to sew — I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I could buy a top made of fabric this substantial. It doesn’t even have the usual transparency issues you get in light-colored tops. The only problem is that, as I think Steph also noticed, the fabric tends to relax when worn, meaning that this top gets larger over the course of the day. Apparently it regains its original size after washing, but it’s something to watch out for — maybe next time I’ll opt for a jersey with a small amount of Lycra.
This is a boring top because I need more boring clothes in my self-stitched wardrobe. At last night’s Burdastyle meetup we discussed the problem of impulse-sewing — the habit of making a series of “statement pieces”, all of which may look fabulous but none of which go with anything else. Apparently I am not alone in this tendency. (Of course, Liberty prints are dangerously available in London, which complicates things.) But for now, it’s strictly useful basics.
August was a month of little blogging. I spent most of it in rural Wales, first on a retreat and then camping, which provided a much-needed holiday from city life, from London and from my wardrobe angst. I spent 2 weeks wearing the same 2 pairs of trousers, 3 shirts and 2 sweaters in rotation — bliss.
Camping also meant release from the elaborate grooming regime I seem to have evolved at home. I’ve figured out that in the course of an average day, counting cleansers, toners, moisturizers, shampoo, soap, sunscreen etc., I apply 17 different types of unguent to my body. Seventeen! And that’s before makeup or perfume. This is why I buy fragrance-free. I can’t imagine what would happen if I went with the flow and started drenching myself in the cheap industrial fragrances they seem to put in everything these days — from vanilla and patchouli body lotion to jasmine laundry soap to baby-powder deodorant to strawberry lip balm. Olfactory cacophony, I imagine.
Onward to self-stitched glory!
Self-Stitched September: I’m in!
Is this a good idea?
Too late now!
I, Susannah of CargoCultCraft, sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched-September. I endeavour to wear at least ONE handmade or (in a pinch) refashioned item of clothing every day for the duration of September 2010.
The Inventory
Self-stitched items in my wardrobe:
- 4 tops (1 basic, neutral knit top, the rest not-very-mixable “statement” tops)
- 4 dresses (all either summery or costumey, none work-friendly)
- 4 cotton skirts (great till the temperature drops below 70)
- 2 tweed skirts (armor of warmth!)
- 1 pair wide-leg 1940s trousers (fun and versatile but very very bike-unfriendly)
- 1 floor-length Edwardian walking skirt with matching petticoat (wild card!)
Refashioned items (excluding minor alterations/reshaping):
- 1 tunic top
- 2 dyed and/or restyled blouses
- 2 pairs cropped and reshaped trousers
- 1 gray wool chopped and reshaped skirt
- 1 refashioned silk cami
- 2 restyled cashmere sweaters
Thoughts:
- My kingdom for classic, mixable knit tops! American Apparel used to do awesome ones but seems to have dropped them in recent years in favor of chartreuse spandex unitards and ironic pastel polo shirts. I guess it’s time to buy some Jalie and Kwik Sew patterns (highly rated for stretch garments) and learn to make my own knit wardrobe staples.
- I am still afraid of sewing pants.
- The easiest items to sew (cotton skirts) are also the least suitable for someone who lives in a cool climate and is constantly apprehensive about being caught unprepared by sudden temperature drops.
- Priority for fall: a warm, tailored wool dress to live in.
Interesting ensembles are sure to emerge as I struggle through 30 days of living with (and in) my sewing mistakes!
London: habby hell (part 3)
SCENE I
The Place: A central London haberdashery shop that shall remain nameless.
The Characters: She, a sales assistant; Me, the narrator
Me: What’s your minimum cut?
She: One meter.
Me: I’d like a meter and a half of this elastic, please.
She: We don’t do half-meters.
Me (frowning): Uh… fine. Two meters, then.
She : There’s about 2.25 meters left on the spool. Do you want the extra?
Me: Sure.
She: You’ll have to pay for it.
Me: ???
She: It’s up to you.
Me: Just the two meters then.
(She snips off the excess and rings up my 2 meters of elastic [£2.50].)
Me: Just out of curiosity, if your minimum cut is 1 meter, what are you going to do with that leftover piece of elastic?
She: (shrugs)
Me: So whoever came up with store policy would rather throw merchandise in the garbage than give customers an extra few inches free?
She: (shrugs)
Exit Me, boggling silently.
SCENE II
The Place: Another central London haberdashery shop.
The Characters: Whoever made this sign.
McCall’s 9087
This dress started life before I was born. As a French tablecloth.
Fashion on the Ration rules allow me to purchase secondhand clothing and fabric items coupon-free as long as they come in below a certain price threshold. The threshold is set low enough that I usually can’t thrift in London, but while behind enemy lines in Strasbourg I picked up a vintage tablecloth for €2. With that print, it was crying out to be made into a classic 60s shift dress. This pattern dates from 1968.
The fabric was limp, had transparency issues in places and didn’t feel particularly nice against the skin, so I decided to give it body and softness by underlining it. I stripped off the back of an old Ikea duvet cover thoughtfully donated by a friend (thanks, Lila!), dyed it chocolate brown with Dylon and used that as underlining, which didn’t complicate things as much as I’d thought because the dress consisted of only three main pieces (1 front, 2 back).
Ease seems to be the randomizing factor in any given pattern. You never know until you pull the pieces out of the envelope and compare them against your body measurements whether a size 12 will actually be an 8, 10 or 16. In this case, the pattern was marked for a 32.5″ bust but, even though I am a 34″, I ended up taking it in rather than grading it up. The ease around the bust was fine for a 34″, but the waist lacked any shape and there was way too much room at the hips. I redrew the waist curves to give a bit more definition and slimmed down the hips by about 2″.
It’s interesting. A dress like this must be custom-fitted to look even halfway decent. That’s incredibly easy for the home dressmaker — this pattern, for instance, has only three seams and four darts — but in RTW, women expect dresses to fit right off the rack, so custom-fitting isn’t really an option. This means the simple dart-fitted dress has become something of a rare bird. When I wear one around London, people register it as unusual without really knowing why. (A massive screaming psychedelic print doesn’t hurt, of course.)
In honor of its bedsheet-and-French-tablecloth roots, I call this the Alain’s Psychedelic Breakfast dress.
Lessons learned:
- Underlining can boost the capabilities of a fashion fabric. Underlining in fairly tightly woven 100% cotton made this fabric much, much easier to work with, gave it added body, hid handstitching on the hem and facings and made it crisp and comfortable against my skin. Excellent for a semi-fitted shift. Top tip: cheat by sticking the layers together with 3M SprayMount before machine-basting them together!
- Determine the fiber content of your vintage fabric before you press. Alongside the vintage cigarette burns, this dress now also features a nice scorch mark from my iron. Whoops! Synthetic!
- Insert zippers on the flat where possible. I can’t remember whose blog gave me this handy tip, but it made all the difference — I inserted the center back zip before I began assembling the main garment pieces, and it was so much easier.
- Resist the urge to overfit. I nearly did my usual and went too far with the darts and side seam shaping. This dress is meant to be fairly straight-up-and-down.
Burda 7517
Why did I decide to sew this pattern? I can’t remember now. It’s a typical Burda design– I’ve gotten all the way through the project and still can’t make up my mind about it. Is it quirky-in-a-good-way or just plain weird?
The fabric went on a long journey before ending up as this dress. It started out as yardage in Ikea’s “Josefin” print:
I decided last fall that this fabric would be our curtains and then, in a totally and inexplicably illogical move I am slowly coming to recognize as classic Susannah, wildly overbought. By now I am sick of the sight of this print, but I’m on the ration and fabric is fabric. And I do love the idea of a dress made out of curtains.
I dunked the fabric in a bleach bath until the color changed from deep teal to pale green, then plunged it into a vinegar-and-water stop bath. Then I overdyed the fabric in Dylon Amazon Green, a color to which I’ve become strangely addicted. The result is a green that goes well with my summer tan and a print that’s toned down but still noticeable.
I hand-sewed yellow ribbon at neckline and hem while watching Cranford and drinking gin. James came home during the last episode and we took turns doing Convalescent Blonde and Soppy Regency Doctor.
When virgins get typhoid, we poo candyfloss!
Gandalf??
You’re a long way from Rome, Octavian! But I digress.
The verdict on this dress: undecided. Like many “easy” sewing patterns, it did go together quickly and fit without a fuss, but the end result kind of reflects the effort spent. It’s fine but not ravishing. Also, if you’re at all the perfectionist type it will drive you bonkers that the arty pleats shift and gape every time you move. Still, on the whole, a good throw-on-and-go wardrobe staple for warmer weather. Crisp, tidy and ladylike.
Lessons learned:
- Unless you wear a crinoline, think hard before buying 20 meters of anything. What was I thinking??
- Test your fabric to make sure unpicked stitches won’t leave needle holes. This is very tightly woven cotton and it’s difficult to steam away the traces of former seams.
- Beginning a dress “to wear in this hot weather” will instantly cause the temperature to plummet below 70°F and stay there.
Make & mend roundup
Halfway through the Fashion on the Ration year, only 22 of my original 66 coupons remain. I’ve had to buckle down to some serious make & mend to eke out my wardrobe. It’s included a lot of the usual jeans-to-cutoffs stuff that doesn’t merit a blog post, but here are some other highlights.
Most of the garments in my Please Try Harder drawer have needed little more than refreshing and reshaping to bring them back into play. This green cardigan started life as a soft and lovely but rather frumpy thrifted Brora sweater — round-necked, demure and with a bow under the chin. Sweet on somebody, but not on me.
I unpicked the bow, slit the sweater up the front and cardiganized it — stitched a length of ribbon to each cut edge, turned it to the wrong side and worked buttons and buttonholes through center front and ribbon. It’s a fast and easy conversion, but it does require some nerve to take a pair of shears to cashmere. I also reshaped the side seams to be more figure-hugging, as Brora sweaters tend to have a mumsy silhouette. This is a mod I perform on most of my sweaters now — all it takes is a simple straight stitch with a ballpoint needle, and you’ve instantly got a much more nipped-in and flattering shape.
Then there was the beach cover-up I bought from Zara in 2004 and the monstrously unflattering ankle-length linen pants I bought from the Gap in 2006. I lopped several inches off the hems of both, shortened and elasticized the shirt sleeves, reshaped the pant legs and accessorized. Total garments bought: 0. Totally new outfit: 1. Valid grounds for a little smugness.
Next on my list: my new skinny jeans demanded a voluminous top. The Japanese are particularly good at this — until I got my hands on my first Japanese pattern book recently, I had no idea “loose” didn’t have to mean “shapeless”. I decided to convert one of James’s old shirts to a Japanese-inspired smock top.
I embarked on this project freehand. After all, I’ve screwed up the classic man’s-shirt-to-woman’s-blouse project enough times with a pattern to feel I could hardly do worse without one. I removed the sleeves, unpicked the fronts and back from the yoke, cut the yoke narrower to fit my shoulders and then reattached the fronts and back, adding some red piping and dart tucks over the bust and at center back to fit them to the new smaller yoke.
My modifications had made the armscyes smaller, so I redrew the sleeve caps more or less freehand, without ease, and stitched them on. This is against all the rules, including mine, but seems to have worked okay; I’m not sure what the moral is here, unless it’s “Don’t sweat the sleeve caps.” Then I cut a new neckline and finished it with bias binding folded to the inside, put on some new buttons, hemmed everything up and voilà! It really was that easy, mostly thanks to the shirt’s check print. I highly recommend using stripes or checks — it’s like having graph paper to guide you all the way. Cutting, pressing, tucking and seaming can all be done with mathematical precision.
In our next installment: dresses from things that weren’t meant to be dresses!
Fashion on the Ration summer clothing roundup
Whew! It’s been a while. I’d like to say I’ve been away from my computer and sewing room all this time because the weather’s been so splendid, but unfortunately, starting about three days after I wrote this post, the weather here has been less than uniformly stellar. (Yesterday it was in the mid-60s with a spell of lashing rain.) To tell the truth, I have been having a bit of project burnout, with a side order of biggish life changes. (All good ones so far!) But now I’m back.
Summer’s half over and I’m still confused about what wardrobe strategy to adopt. The idea of the season demands brighter, lighter, flowier and more relaxed looks (Already Pretty’s Summer Blackout was a brainwave), but summer weather here in the UK is still cool and variable, so it’s best not to let your guard down. The only place where it’s warm all summer long is on the Tube. I’m fine with a civilized maximum temperature of 85°F – any hotter and my IQ starts dropping anyway — but the unpredictability of the weather makes traditional summer essentials like sweet little dresses and short shorts a gamble.
In the end, I decided it wasn’t a wise use of coupons to buy clothing I could only wear in hot weather, so I made my “summer” purchases a matter of palette. I bought one sleeveless ivory top from Anthropologie (2 coupons) and one beige cardigan from Brora (5 coupons). I also splashed out on 2 meters of ivory bamboo jersey from Eco Earth Fabrics (7 coupons) to make into more tops to carry me from summer into winter. I also spent several weeks attempting to buy a pair of shoes that met my criteria — my budget went all the way up to a desperate £250 at one point — but I eventually gave up and muddled through with what I had in my closet. The UK is Shoe Hell.
Here’s the Anthro top and the Brora cardigan. I have styled this outfit as though the upper and lower halves of my body live in opposite hemispheres, because this is a Thing You Do in Fashion.
Also seen: make & mend jean shorts, 1940s utility shoes
Another Thing You Do in Fashion is to stand like your spine has collapsed. Here is my best J Crew slouch.
Coupons spent: 14
Coupons remaining: 22
Coming up: My make & mend roundup of new clothes from old; dresses made out of things that weren’t meant to be dresses.
