Silk Charmeuse blouse - Hidden Buttonhole Placket, plus enter the Holiday Giveaway

So back in October I was searching for the perfect blouse pattern, or at least one I liked a lot.  Once again I turned to a Simplicity Amazing Fit pattern, S2339.  Thus far I have had total success with these patterns, they do fit well, have lots of options and the multi-size pattern lets me fool around with fit very quickly.  Of course I can't just make something right out of the pattern envelope as it is designed, so I decided to create a hidden buttonhole placket.  


I have a burgundy color silk charmeuse blouse (purchased at Ann Taylor two holiday seasons ago) and I love it, wear it all the time in the winter.  I found some blue silk charmeuse on sale at FashionFabricsClub.com and when it arrived it wasn't quite the color I expected, but very nice, classic deep sapphire blue, with a touch of Lycra.  Yeah! for the Lycra - when wearing.  Yuck - for the Lycra when sewing.  I have decided that woven fabrics with more than 2% lycra are annoying to sew,  they don't behave like wovens and want to stretch out just enough to create ripples.  But they don't sew like knits.  Really the worst qualities of both.  However if the lycra is 2% or so, that seems to be just about right and not give the problems.  Also for silk, part of the fun in sewing silk is the crisp press you can get, but that doesn't quite work with the silk that has stretch, as you will see.  Ok that is my fabric rant for today. 


Here is how I modified this pattern to include the hidden buttonhole placket.  This pattern has a sewn on placket, kind of a more casual look that is perfectly suitable for cotton shirts, but I wanted as few seams or stitching on the front.  To achieve that I added the placket to the shirt front, matching/overlaping seam allowances so that the front of the shirt had the same dimensions as if the finished blouse included the placket.  Not sure I am explaining that very well, but hopefully you can see what I did.  I also created a front facing, you can see that on the left.  Very important at this point to include the seam allowance where the facing will be sewn to the center front, you can see it marked with chalk below. 

A look at the pattern envelope.  I do like the ruffle version, might have to try that in a cotton lawn in the spring.

Here is a closer look at the placket modification, the piece they have you sew on is just incorporated into the front, plus seam allowance.

I created my own pattern piece for the hidden placket.  It will only have 5 buttons and the buttons start around the bustline, so it is about 12" long.  I cut two of these and interfaced completely, and then marked the buttonholes.  I used the selvedge of the fabric as the inner edge to reduce bulk and eliminate need for edge finishing.

So that is the tantalizing start to the case of my mysterious disappearing buttonholes!

Next post finishing the blouse front.

And what about that holiday giveaway?  A random drawing from those who comment between now and Dec. 20. As I mentioned in my previous post, a box of See's Candy for a commenter in the US, and for international commenters, a choice of 2 sewing books (Palmer & Pletch Tailoring, or Singer Creative Sewing)

How to enter?  I put out a challenge to ask what Vogue pattern you would like to see me make and post about from start to finish (fabric, fitting and sewing).  The suggestions so far have been fantastic and it is fun to see what others might want to make.  You don't have to suggest a pattern if Vogues are not on your radar, just say hello and say where you are located. 

So comment away !    Happy Holiday Sewing,  Beth

SunnyGal Holiday Giveaway

Happy Holidays to blog readers and sewers everywhere.   Time for a SunnyGal Sewing Blog Giveaway! It was very popular last year so one lucky reader will receive a 1/2 lb. box of See's Candy.  Last year we had an unfortunate incident with the international mail, so the candy giveaway is limited to the USA only.  But international readers - I have something for you too, so keep reading. For some background on See's Candy, a West coast favorite, see last year's post.

Thank you so much for your comments over the past year.  I like to write multiple posts on one project and you have no idea how happy it makes me when someone comments that they are looking forward to the next post in a series. I love to sew and discovering the world of sewing blogs really energized my creativity and brought whole new way to share my enthusiasm.  For many years I worked in the corporate world, and while I mostly sewed all my clothes, that sewing was a very solitary endeavor.  After I stopped working full time I stumbled upon the pattern review sites and thus the wide world of sewing blogs.  Its a good thing that I had not found them while I was working, I would definitely have accomplished less at that job. It can be quite addictive to open up my reader and see new posts from all the great sewers.  So thank you to everyone who writes and shares their creations, daily blog reading now accompanies my morning coffee.

For international readers, 2 giveaways.  I find all kinds of sewing books at estate sales and thrift shops, here are today's choices.

Palmer & Pletsch tailoring book, these books are fantastic, I use all their fitting books for reference and this one explains lots of tailoring techniques in a very easy to follow style.  Published in the 70's but still current.

 

Singer Book Series, Creative sewing Ideas.  I have collected all these Singer books, the photos are really good.  This one has some clever variations on buttonholes and pockets plus tips on embellishment.

So how to enter?  I will throw out a challenge to myself. Is there a particular pattern you would like to see me make?  Let's limit it to Vogue patterns, but other than that, I am game to try anything.  I don't promise I will wear it - but I will try to make it.  Fitting, fabric choice, sewing techniques.  I will go through all in a series of posts.  And I will try to choose something out of my usual comfort zone !

Leave a comment below to enter or sign up as a follower.  (you don't have to suggest a pattern to be entered, just comment, but I think it will be fun to see what suggestions you have) 

Also when you comment, let me know your country.  Entry period will go until Dec. 20.

Up next, I finished my silk charmeuse blouse which has a hidden buttonhole placket so I will have a post about that soon.

Happy Holiday Sewing to all, Beth

Wedding photos - Fabric Challenge Kimono Silk wedding dress

The fabric challenge is complete and the wedding photos are here.  As I described in my first post this was one of my most special projects. Susan asked me to make a wedding dress for her using some vintage kimono silk and laughingly told me she was planning a hippie wedding in San Francisco's Golden Gate park, with the guests arriving on bicycles.  I did imagine a few different scenarios, but was totally charmed when the photos finally arrived.  A lovely wedding in the park and a beautiful smile on Susan's face.

Here is Susan with her mom putting the final touches on her look.

Susan and Brian in front of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.  

I think this photo may be my favorite - the colors are fantastic. Wedding photography is by Tim Daw, website timdawphotography where you can see his portfolio. I did make a shawl with the remaining kimono silk, lined with ivory silk faille. As it turned out, the weather was a bit chilly that day so she wore the wrap during the outdoor ceremony.

And lastly - there were bicycles!  Susan and Brian opted not to cycle themselves, I think that was a good choice, although you can see the vehicle they are riding in appears to have 4 sets of pedals. Some of the guests did arrive in the park on their own bicycles with many in full victorian and steampunk finery.  

Can I say it?  So San Francisco!   I loved creating this dress and getting to know Susan. I wish them joy and happiness for their life together. 

If you are interested in the background on this project here are the links to the previous posts: 

first post:  with background on this vintage fabric

second post:  starting the design and fitting

third post: underlining with silk organza and completion, photos of dress

Thanks for reading, and Happy Sewing, Beth

Fabric Challenge - Kimono silk wedding dress - part 3

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments on my previous posts.  This kimono silk wedding dress was so much fun to create and I did wonder if the unusual fabric and color would appeal, but the response has been wonderful and I appreciate it very much.

I will tease you with one wedding day photo of Susan and her mother.  More photos to come of the wedding in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Once I had the bodice assembled, it was time to figure out how to do the skirt.  When making the muslin, I seamed together 14" wide lengths of the pink cotton, in order to be working with the same type of yardage as when I used the silk, and then gathered it into the waist.  Recall that Susan wanted to be able to bicycle to her ceremony, so the skirt needed to be full.  Once she tried on the muslin, we both thought she wasn't really the gathers or ruffles type, but reserved judgement until we got to that point in our collaborative design process.  By now I had underlined the whole bodice in the silk organza and it gave the fabric such a nice weight.

This fabric was interesting to sew, and had some quirks that added to the fabric challenge aspects.  The silk is so tightly woven that it was almost impossible to get a pin through it.  I generally use long pins, probably a bit too big for fine fabrics, so I knew I would need to pull out the silk pins from my stash.  However they would not even pierce the fabric.  Amazing.  At the fabric store I bought a package of each type of extra-fine pins and tried them all out, finally found one that seemed sharp enough to get through the fabric.  On the sewing machine I used a Schmetz Microtex Sharp Needle 70/10.  My metal thimble was absolutely necessary for the hand stitching, or I would have had a punctured finger in no time.  In doing some research online I learned vintage kimonos made from this type of fabric are unstitched, completely disassembled to be cleaned and then re-sewn together.  I thought that seemed unlikely but now I understand that despite being very thin and light this fabric is unbelievably strong.


Which is a long way of saying that this fabric would not gather.  Have you ever tried to gather some heavy fabric and it would not cooperate?  Despite its light weight I tried and gave up. At that point pleats seemed the only option, so I played around on the dress form with various size pleats. Final version had the center front smooth and then large pleats taking up the fullness around to the center back.

This also served to hide the seams of the 14" panels and gave the dress a hint of kimono styling which seemed fitting.  


I had basted the skirt with pleats onto the bodice and at that point realized that it needed a bit more oomph, so I underlined the whole skirt with silk organza as well.  This gave the skirt the perfect fullness and body without being too stiff.  I can't wait to try this technique again on another dress. 

For the hem I machine stitched the organza to the pink silk, inside the seam allowance, and then turned up the hem and hand stitched it to the organza so there is no hem showing on the right side.  I didn't press the hem or the pleats to keep the soft look.  The dress was completely lined in pink bridal satin, a very heavy lining that gave it even more body.  Clothes that feel good are so nice to wear, and this dress has the added treat of making that swish-swish sound that only silk on silk provides.  Lovely!

Finished dress on the form.  This photo is the best of the bunch, when I finished the dress it was a gloomy day and the lighting was less than ideal.  As it happens, I had it about 75% percent finished when my back problems struck. I did finish the dress but I wasn't working at my full speed, in fact I stopped working on it entirely for about 5 weeks. Consequently the photography was less than ideal.  But the important thing - finishing the dress - that was accomplished.  Whew!  And Susan was as sweet as could be, considering she was anxiously waiting for her wedding dress. 

Next post, photos of the wedding.  And yes, there are bicycles!

Link to the first post on this dress, how it started,  Kimono Silk wedding dress.

Second post on this dress, design and initial construction. Kimono Silk wedding dress, part 2.


Thanks for reading.  Happy Sewing,  Beth

Fabric challenge - Kimono silk wedding dress - part 2

Sometimes procrastination is my friend.  I can tell you now that I very much procrastinated when starting and then making this dress. Sometimes there are technical issues that I seem to work out in my mind and this fabric created a lot of them. So I let my thoughts marinate, or percolate, or just stew until I come up with some solutions. 

The overriding issue in this fabric was the pattern, which was large, boldly colored and repeated every 14', which was the same as the width, so it was tricky to lay out the floral elements as a design motif in the finished dress shape.  At first I tried to cut around the floral design for the bodice pieces, so that it would not be uneven or have any bull's eye effect on the bust.  After playing around with it for what seemed like hours, I finally realized that I needed to use the floral design as a focus, in fact choose where to put it instead of trying to avoid it, and then everything flowed from that. The largest single pattern piece in the bodice was the center front, so I placed the floral element in the center front, where it would be folded into the pleats and give a symmetry to the whole dress.  Even though the bodice was composed of smaller pieces, I wanted the overall look to have the same spacing in the flower pattern as the finished skirt, so I cut the midriff pieces in mostly solid pink areas of the fabric. 

Here is a look at the side, the yellow flowers on the front and back ended up matching so well at this point, with a similar match on the other side, partly due to placement when I cut out but also just luck at the size and shape of the pattern pieces. 

Lest you think that things always go well here at Casa SunnyGal, I had a moment of horror when I had the entire dress basted together for a fitting.  Something I didn't notice when I was cutting out the bodice pieces, but there was a very slight color difference between the first yard of the bolt and the silk further inside the roll.  Maybe inside the roll it was completely protected and the first part faded over the years.  In any case, when I started the dress I was trying to conserve yardage since we weren't sure how full or long the skirt was to be, so I cut the bodice pieces from the first part of the roll.  I cut out the entire bodice, hand stitched each piece with silk organza underlining, and then sewed 5 lengths together to make the skirt.  As soon as I had finished the bodice (including basting in the zipper) I noticed that the midriff portion was a bit yellowed.  No one else could really see it, until I pointed it out, and then everyone could see it.  (everyone being my usual gang of style consultants, including sis, mom and assorted friends).

It may not appear that horrifying here, but look at how yucky and yellowish the piece on the left is, especially where it was seamed to the upper bodice and skirt.  I could see it miles away, just taunting me.  And to think that this was the first time I did a silk organza underlining.  All hand stitched.  So much work.  Sob . . .       The silk organza was lovely to work with, I ordered it from Fashion Sewing Supply, and you will see in the next post I ended up using it for the entire dress.   

That is the pink satin lining you see peeking out at the top of the strap. Since the fabric was 14" wide something had to give, so I pieced the top of the shoulders together with the pink silk fabric.  Call it a design element or something. In the scheme of things it worked out fine.

So I did the fitting.  Did not mention it to Susan.  She did not notice at all.  Anyway I knew I was going to take it all apart and re-do the midriff portions.  Which I did. So much better . . sigh of relief and lesson learned, scrutinize those vintage fabrics carefully in all types of light.

Next post, skirt portion and finished dress.  I will try to post this weekend and I do have some fantastic wedding photos to share.  

I am currently working on about a zillion (only slight exaggeration) projects but making great progress on a silk charmeuse shirt - with hidden button placket that is turning out very nicely :)

Happy Weekend Sewing,  Beth


Here is a link to the next post in this series.

Fabric challenge – Kimono silk wedding dress

Sometimes a project comes along that delights me from the beginning.  I was contacted last year by Susan, who found me on the web and asked if I would be interested in making a wedding dress for her using some Japanese kimono silk.  We talked briefly on the phone and then decided to meet in person so she could show me the fabric and talk about possibilities.  Once in a while you meet a person and have an instant connection. That night she decided to have me design and make her dress.  Talk about faith – I have never made a wedding dress before, but faith is her business, so to speak, as she is a hospital chaplain. She had a roll of kimono silk which she received as a gift many years ago when her family lived briefly in Japan.  Pink floral silk, 14 inches wide!  Very beautiful but certainly unusual for a wedding dress.  I was shaken a bit by this fabric challenge, but she told me she and her fiance were committed to a green lifestyle as much as possible, her words were “we are having a casual hippie wedding in Golden Gate Park” and she liked the idea of using this vintage fabric instead of buying something new.  So challenge accepted and I got to work on the design. 

First task was to measure the roll and see how much I had to work with.  Once I unrolled the bolt I was really struck by the quality of the fabric. 

Here is a closer look at the end of the fabric.  The length of fabric was folded in the center and rolled on a 1" dowel. There were a series of colors on the end which seemed to be hand painted.  The gold stamp in the lower left corner says "Daikey Kyoto".

That sent me to the web to do some research and I came to the conclusion that this fabric was hand painted in the Yuzen Dye method. The artist creates the outline of the design on the plain white silk fabric, then goes over it with a rice-paste resist which acts as a barrier to contain the colored dyes.  The colors are painted on and then it is heated to affix the design.  One of the final steps is to add the background color. The fabric is heated several times during this process to make it colorfast.  I have simplified this greatly and found some very interesting websites describing this method, Yuzen Dyeing at Ishida Mansen Koujo, Kyoto and Kyoto Yuzen Dyeing.  If you are interested in textiles they are worth reading. 

So onto the dress design.  Creating the skirt portion seemed quite possible, using the fabric lengthwise but the bodice was a puzzle.  And there was the pattern to consider.  The floral motifs were quite large, about 12 inches across and I didn't want them to look uneven.  In the end I cut out the front bodice piece across one of the floral sections and then cut out each piece based on that.  A couple of additional challenges to note, Susan is tall, 5'8" with a long torso, and she wanted to be able to enter the wedding ceremony on a bicycle.  Other than that it was up to me.  And as things turned out, she was a dream client who loved every detail I chose.  What more could a dressmaker ask for?  

Here is a look at the first muslin design. I made it in pink cotton so we could get an idea how it would look in the final fabric.  I cut out 14 inch wide panels and sewed 5 together to create the skirt to replicate the actual fabric.  For the bodice, I needed pieces that could be fit on the fabric width with the pattern in a horizontal orientation.   Not too promising when I finished this but when does a cotton muslin look good?  For the bodice portion I did use a pattern, New Look 6002.

The fit was just about right, I shortened the midriff portion a bit as I had lengthened it too much but otherwise it was good.  I had some doubts about the gathered skirt but that request for a bicycle-friendly design kept that for now.  As it turned out I changed that which you will see in my next post.  Until then,

Happy sewing,  Beth

Here is a link to the next post in this series.

Actually made some separates!

When it comes to dresses or tailored items I have no end of inspiration and ideas but as for separates - I rarely sew them.  And yet I look in my closet for something to wear.  I am trying to remedy that lately, a recent project was this shirt and I am about ready to use some blue silk charmeuse on a long sleeve shirt, hopefully before December is over.  But in the meantime I did make this knit top and denim skirt.  According to my photographer, I am a blinker - so this photo was the best of the bunch.

The top is the ubiquitous Jalie scarf-collar top, and I do feel that as usual I am the last person in the sewing universe to make a popular pattern.  Fabric is a rayon knit from Stone Mountain in Berkeley which I bought on a rainy Sunday shopping excursion with Jean of JKaori Designs. Not sure I will make that top again, the tie is a bit flip-floppy for me and it is kind of distinctive.  However the Jalie pattern fits well and I can see using it as a starting point for other tops.

The skirt is black denim with maybe 4% lycra which I am starting to think is too much stretch. Plus I have my hands in the pockets, creating some creases across the front which are really not there. I used Simplicity 2152 but the pockets are nothing like the pattern where the pockets are sewn on the outside of the skirt, albeit into the seams.   
I wanted the pockets to be inside the side fronts, plus I eliminated the pocket trim.  
Here is a closer look at the pockets.  As it turned out the pocket placement is much higher and nearer the waistband than on the original pattern design.

For the inside of the waistband I used a different fabric, I wanted something less bulky than the denim but not slippery, so that it would stay on the waist.  I have always found that skirts lined all the way to the waistband have an annoying tendency to rotate around and then my center front is somewhere on the side.  Or maybe that is just me? But to counter that I used this cotton fabric scrap and then lined the skirt portion in satin, as I wanted to be able to wear tights in the winter and I don't like it when the denim sticks to tights.  Whew, that is a lot of thinking about the inside of a skirt.  Oh well, the fun of sewing, you can do whatever you want! 

As evidenced when I made this dress last year - with the mix and match lining.

I have a feeling I will probably wear this skirt a lot more in the summer than now. . . is it spring yet?   And see in the first photo - we do get some autumn color here in CA.  

Happy Fall Sewing, Beth