My Latest “Avoid Compounding Errors” Moment

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· by | in Process, Sewing supplies | tagged , ,

Readers,

Of all the great things my sewing teacher Edith has told me, the one that has made the biggest impression is “Avoid compounding errors.”

At the time she was talking about the need to be precise in patternmaking, but I have thought of her principle dozens–no, hundreds!–of times over the years and have never found a situation where it couldn’t be applied.

The last time “Avoid compounding errors” came to my rescue was yesterday, when I was mulling over the Fall Teaser selection from my Sawyer Brook Distinctive Fabrics swatch subscription.

Sawyer Brook had notified its subscribers that the latest batch of swatches had been mailed out Monday and would be arriving soon in our mailboxes. To whet our appetites even more, Sawyer Brook linked us to photos of all the fabrics we’d have exclusive access to for a limited time, so we could start planning our sewing projects.

I was especially taken by the vivid colors and high contrast of the photos of “Cameron – Red”:

A softly combed cotton fabric in a beautiful red coral, gray, navy, and an off-white plaid pattern. This fabric is lightweight and has a soft hand. This fabric is lightweight and has a soft hand. Pattern vertical repeat is 4 inches. Suitable for shirts, skirts, and dresses.

Cameron – Red

 

So yesterday, when the envelope arrived I was expecting to see something bright and high-contrast. Instead, I saw this. It was drab.

Was my computer monitor off so much?

It took me awhile to realize that my sample didn’t include the brightest shade of this red coral. Now, did I right away think to e-mail Sawyer Brook to request another sample that included the bright coral red so I could make a sound decision?

Nope!

Because I was too busy trying to find matches in my fabric and button stashes, my wardrobe, and even in another swatch subscription service.  A gray linen-cotton blend from Vogue Fabrics perfectly complemented this plaid.  Woohoo! 

Or was I heading for “Boohoo”?

Because I was getting dangerously close to committing a fabric-purchasing mistake I’d made numerous times in the past.

Sure, this plaid swatch worked beautifully with the gray linen blend, which I think would be a good pants weight. But did I want to build a capsule around gray–one of my least favorite colors?

I hadn’t found one stash fabric or wardrobe item to coordinate with this plaid for early to mid-fall. Was I confident then that this fabric could be the basis of a new capsule? Would it be worth designing around?  Worth investing the time, money, and effort in?

I couldn’t give a definitive yes to any of these questions.

Also, I noticed uneasily that my main enthusiasm was centering on justifying the cost of my swatch subscriptions. “If I buy this plaid from Sawyer Brook, and this coordinating solid from Vogue, I can earn this or that privilege…” popped into my mind. Discounts, credits, free extensions of swatching services should be only nice bonuses–not reasons to buy fabric.

I had been down this road before: allowed enthusiasm, insufficient reasoning, and misapplied logic to overrule common sense.. I was in danger of making one error–buying fabric too speculatively–which was likely to compound over time.

I would start by buying this yardage that I hadn’t confirmed was right for me, although it wouldn’t be bad–I’d just have to find the right coordinates to bring out its best qualities. After its taking up space in my stash for several years, occasionally being unfolded and folded again, I might buy a coordinating fabric to keep the first one company. In the meantime my tastes, activities, or coloring might change.

In any case, this fabric would never be quite right, never be worth investing effort in–and never get sewn.

I eventually acknowledged that I was up to my old tricks and stepped away from those tempting swatches for a cooling-off period. It was close, but I managed to avoid buying fabric for the wrong reasons.

Funny enough, though, also yesterday I did swoon over a fabric and I did buy it, and I had only online photos to judge from. I was paying my daily visit to Emma One Sock to check its latest additions and came across a blouse-weight striped cotton in summery tones:

The description ran:

From an unnamed NY designer, this is a wonderful semi-opaque linen/cotton gauze novelty weave with a beautiful stripey (vertically oriented) design in shades of tangerine, orange, sorbet and greenish gray (PANTONE 18-1629, 15-1247,15-1318, etc.). Casual and light with lovely drape and gauzey texture, delightful coloring, make a fabulous blouse, top, tunic, shirt, dress, skirt, etc. Hand wash cold, hang or lay flat to dry (please test first!).

My reaction was swift and sure. I loved the colors, contrast, the unbalanced stripe pattern. I saw myself wearing this, in another rendition of the Vogue 8772 sleeveless blouse I have now sewn many times. I could see real possibilities for coordinates that I really would buy or sew and wear–soon. This could be a blouse for August heat or for warm September days.

I pondered requesting a swatch first, but yardage was limited, so I took the plunge last night and ordered a couple of yards.  I noticed this morning the fabric was sold out.

Although my decision was quick it didn’t feel reckless. I think I had enough information to go on–not only from the seller but from myself. I know enough about my coloring, contrast, style preferences and silhouette. I have a fitted pattern I enjoy sewing, and know what coordinates go well with it.

In other words, I am beginning–at long last!–to experience the satisfactions of frictionless wardrobe-planning. This process, which has taken me far too long to recognize and develop, is the opposite of compounding errors. It identifies benefits and builds on them over time.

By the way, it eventually occurred to me to drop a line to Sawyer Brook requesting another swatch of the Cameron plaid, in both the Red and Pink versions.  I had pulled all the possible coordinating colors from my palette for each plaid and am seeing some intriguing possibilities.

(Note: My palette, “Enigmatic,” seen above, is part of a color analysis system developed by image consultant Imogen Lamport and is one of the benefits of her 7 Steps to Style program, which is described here in case you’re interested.)

My Latest “I’m Glad I Sew!” Moment

· by | in Design, Process, Sewing Projects | tagged ,

Readers,

If you sew, you’ll know just what I mean.

I’ll pop into a clothing store and, after checking out the shoes and accessories, browse the racks, admittedly without enthusiasm.

The usual comments run through my mind like a news crawl:
Too big. Wrong color. Too trendy. Boring. Huge armholes! What is this weird fabric? They want how much for this?

Minutes later I’ll walk out, shaking my head.

Then Jack and I will have our usual conversation:

“Find anything?”

“I’m glad I sew!”

My latest “I’m glad I sew!” moment came last Friday morning when I accompanied my sister on a jaunt to the salvage store and outlet store of a famous outdoorsy clothing brand searching for plain, black, rugged, classic shorts for her. Oh, and with back pockets . That’s not asking for too much, right?

Wrong. Nothing ticked all these basic boxes.

We moved on to a discount department store chain, where she fared somewhat better. We left that store with two pairs of shorts, with a top thrown in for good measure. But the purchases were not made with any sense of satisfaction, let alone excitement.

The faces of the women I saw entering and exiting the fitting rooms expressed a grim reality : depending on ready-to-wear to meet all your wardrobe needs is an iffy proposition. And pretty much forget about meeting your wardrobe dreams.

It was already on my to-do list to sew pants and shorts for my sister once we’d gotten a pattern fitted for her, but after that morning’s rounds I was downright adamant. Having clothes that dependably fit and flatter despite the vagaries of fashion isn’t just a wardrobe upgrade–it’s a life upgrade.

Being able to sew my own clothes has given me a sense of agency that being a ready-to-wear shopper never did and never will.  Even though I still don’t have a full complement of sewing skills or a core collection of fitted patterns (both of which I am actively working toward) I’m still benefiting greatly from what I do know how to do.

If you sew, I think again you’ll know what I mean. Sewing is not just the production of a tangible result: a garment, draperies, a tent. It’s a process of aesthetic and technical judgment calls that is often profoundly satisfying.

I remember years ago as a pastry intern at the Campton Place Hotel in San Francisco saying to the head pastry chef, “Now I see what your job is all day long: making decisions,” and he agreed. Cooking and baking from scratch, as well as sewing from scratch, are processes that depend on a body of knowledge that can be very rewarding to build over a lifetime.

That Friday afternoon was about as different an experience as possible from my morning of rummaging through dozens of rumpled pairs of pants and shorts piled in bins at the salvage store. I spent it in my sewing room, mulling over which color stripes I wanted to accentuate in the blouse I was going to sew.

I made “preview windows” of the front, back, collar, and collar band pattern pieces to help me imagine my blouse before I made a single cut into the fabric.

I had already sewn Vogue 8772 many times before, and the fit and construction were close to perfect. Now I could concentrate on how I could play up certain colors and contrast to flatter my own coloring and contrast.

I pulled colors from my palette to consider for sewing coordinating skirts, jackets, cardigans, and pants.

I thought about buttons. The best ones I had were kind of purplish-pinkish-grayish imitation mother-of-pearl. They decided me on placing the purple and pink stripes at the right center front.

What color should the buttonholes be?

This was an unbalanced stripe, which made me think about whether I wanted to have the stripe pattern on the two fronts as mirror images or have the stripe continue in one direction around the body.  The back was one piece cut on the fold.  I could have made the back with a center seam and done mirror images on the back, too, allowing me match the stripes at the shoulder seam, which would have been a cool effect.

Do I want the prominent stripes positioned like this?

Or have the stripes like this?

I didn’t think about that at the time, and even if I had, I might have been too lazy to do the extra work of matching.

The whole afternoon I moved at the placid pace of fish in a dentist’s aquarium, shifting my preview windows around and contemplating various possibilities.

Finally, I cut the right front. That dictated the cut of the left front.

Then I decided where to place the prominent color bars on the back.

Later, I pondered the colors I wanted on the collar, right next to my face.  I cut the collar. Then the band. (Armhole facings, too, but I didn’t do any matching.)

Over the next few days I sewed the blouse. Tuesday evening I sewed on the last button.

I like my new blouse.

On a different day I may have chosen differently. I could have put a green stripe on center front and looked for green buttons, or matched the shoulder seams, or done some other effect. But I’m happy with what I did.

I’m happy not just with the result, but with this absorbing process.

Is it any wonder, then, that I’m glad I sew?

Sur la Table: Quilted Placemats

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· by | in Interior design, Sewing Projects, Sewing techniques

Readers,

After months of pants pattern-fitting and muslin-making without much to show for my efforts (yet), what do you suppose perked up my sewing spirits again recently?

An easy project using existing skills, with virtually guaranteed success,  requiring no fitting:

Placemats.

It’s ridiculous how long it took me to make placemats from this cotton print. We bought the yardage traveling through France in 1997. I loved the gutsy mustard-yellow background. (Could this be called an ocher yellow?)

I hemmed this yardage and used it as a tablecloth a couple of times, but then returned it to my stash. We don’t use that table anymore, and even for me, this was a large dose of color and pattern.

Plus, I just like placemats more.  One spill on a tablecloth, I have to wash and iron the whole tablecloth. Placemats are easier to clean and return to use and can dress up a table without looking fussy.

When I got to a stopping point in my pants-fitting saga, my eyes landed on my stack of table linens and yardage waiting to be converted to placemats. This was just the sewing break I needed.

Years ago I had made placemats from another fabric bought at the little fabric store in France in 1997.  I liked the cheery print–

–but my hamhanded efforts at applying the bias binding annoyed me every time.

And over the years the binding faded while the print remained vivid through dozens of washings. I wanted to ensure my next design would avoid these blunders.

It turns out all I had to do was search “How to make quilted placemats” to find a nifty method disposing of binding altogether. Thank you, Deborah Moebes of Whipstitch for providing the inspiration.

Here’s how I made my placemats:

I liked the size and shape of this commercially made placemat, which is 17 by 13 inches. It became my template.

Just to be sure this would be a good size for eight placemats, I traced the placemat onto newspaper,

and laid my pretend mats on the table.

(Reminder to self: finish that chair-painting project before planning dinner for 8!)

Yes, I liked that size.

I cut my rectangle and rounded the corners using my dandy pocket curve template.  (I love it when I can think of another way to use a gadget.)

I cut my placemat template from sturdy tracing paper and drew intersecting lines on it for aligning the pattern.

For the first three placemats I used the same fabric front and back.  I realized I’d want the quilting lines to appear in the same place on both sides, which would require the print motifs on the underside to be in the same location as on top. I did my best to match the motifs:



The printing was done well on the straight of grain and cross grain, so the quilting lines did line up in the same place on both sides.

When I saw that I wouldn’t have enough yardage for eight reversible mats I switched to an old linen tablecloth to supply the remaining reverse sides.

I am 90 percent sure I used The Warm Company’s Soft & Bright polyester batting to create my placemat “sandwich.” I laid the two fabrics right sides together with the batting on the wrong side of one fabric.

I sewed a 1/4″ seam, leaving an opening at the bottom of the placemat for turning it right side out.

I don’t know whether it was strictly necessary, but with my tailoring experience how could I not trim the excess batting and notch the rounded corners?

I drafted a trusty old–clean!–wooden kitchen tool to slide between the layers of the placemat to press open the seams.

The next step was turning the placemat to the right side and slipstitching the opening closed.

I topstitched the placemat 1/4 inch in all around using my standard presser foot.

For the quilting I switched to my walking foot (aka an even feed foot).  Here was another item that had long languished in my sewing room waiting to be used. I must have bought it after reading (and ignoring!) multiple recommendations to use one to match plaid seams.

The contraption always looked daunting to me, but I am easily daunted.

The instructions for installing this thing were somewhat confusing. I needed a demo.

YouTube to the rescue!

All I really needed to see was how to position the lever over the needle clamp screw. Then I was good to go.

Okay, I confess I stuck the finished placemat under the needle to get this picture, as you can see from the line of stitching in front of the foot.

The quilting went really smoothly for my placemats using the French fabric on both sides.  But for the first mat using the soft and more loosely woven linen on the underside I had too much play in the fabric. Even using the walking foot I had a problem with the linen bunching up as I stitched more and more lines of quilting.

The soft and floppy linen on the underside sometimes bunched up as I quilted the printed cotton on top.

For my second try I cut the linen slightly smaller than the print, and pinned the raw edges together which reduced the play and created a little surface tension on the linen side. I also pinned ahead of my lines of stitching at close intervals to distribute the remaining play. This solved the bunching problem well enough to satisfy me.  The linen side of the placemats will never be visible on the table.

My second try, which worked better.

Cutting the linen smaller and stitching the linen and cotton together with raw edges matching caused the cotton to favor to the underside subtly. I did this so that all the placemats would look similar from the top–not some with two layers of the ocher cotton print and others with this little line of pale mint green linen showing. (It’s just a small thing, but something else I applied from my experience with tailoring and shirtmaking.)

Yes, I managed to make my five (so far) placemats more labor-intensive than your average whip-it-up-in-an-afternoon project, but I had such fun using souvenir fabric from France, learning to use a new sewing machine attachment, and applying my knowledge and experience to produce things we’ll enjoy in our everyday life.

It was such a welcome change from (groan) sewing pants muslins!

There was one instruction on the slip of paper that came with the walking foot that I thoroughly understood. In fact, it made me smile.

5. Place the fabric between the Walking foot and the feed dogs; sew as normal.

Yes–sew as normal! I had almost forgotten what that was like!

Voilà!

Fitting Conclusions

· by | in fit, Process | tagged

Readers,

In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve spent much of the last six months, it’s been down a very deep rabbit hole called Fitting a Pants Pattern.

More accurately, this particular rabbit hole should be called Not Fitting Several Pants Patterns.

Does this need further explanation?

For most sewers, a well-fitting pants pattern is like…gold.  At any rate, something rare, valuable, and coveted. And that is because pants patterns are devilishly difficult to fit.

However, pants are not hard to make. Their construction is well within the capabilities of most sewers and will repay the outlay of effort many times over.

Pants are a staple in almost every woman’s work and leisure wardrobe.

Pants are not fun to shop for: many women, including me, routinely find nothing that meets fit, style, and comfort requirements all in the same garment, at any price.

So for custom fit, style, comfort, and convenience (no more fruitless shopping!), making your own pants seems like the way to go.  It’s just that they are a pain in the neck to fit.

Much like a new diet, a new pattern, article, book, DVD, online class, or workshop devoted to pants-fitting offers a new possibility of success.  And some sewers really do succeed using each of these tools or learning aids, which have been created by very skilled, experienced,  thoughtful experts in their field.

But what applies to diets also applies to pants-fitting methods:

Results may vary.

Even though I know from the battery of aptitude tests I took some years back that my spatial abilities are below average, I took the plunge last November to try fitting a pants pattern.

On myself. By myself. As a beginner.

It’s not as if I’d had much of a choice. No fitting experts came running to pound on my door, pleading to let them help, only to hear me say No! As usual, I had to figure out how I might get to my goal on my own.

I had made admittedly feeble attempts to learn pants-fitting as far back as 1989, as the date penciled in my–autographed!–copy of Singer’s Sewing Pants That Fit shows. My sewing library boasted fitting books, DVDs, and the full run of Threads magazines.  I belonged to Pattern Review and bought Sarah Veblen’s and Angela Wolf’s online classes, which included student forums. My Craftsy library included pants-fitting classes.  My pattern files held the Palmer-Pletsch McCall’s 6901 and Pamela Leggett’s Pants…Perfected! pattern with DVD.

I even had a pattern drafted to my measurements in a class taught by a patternmaker, with two muslins I’d sewn, with her recommendations for further alterations.

All that did not guarantee the pants wardrobe of my dreams. All these wonderful learning tools went unused as I turned my attention to other sewing projects, weakly promising myself that I would get to pants–someday.

But last year there was this coming together of several factors that laid the groundwork that triggered my pants-fitting project:

An increasingly clear vision

The first factor was that my membership in Imogen Lamport’s 7 Steps to Style program was really beginning to help me pull together information about myself to help me design my wardrobe. I had expert feedback on my coloring, contrast, figure type, and most flattering silhouettes, and guidelines for creating my own “style recipe.” To create the outfits and capsules I dreamed of wearing, my current pants would have to go, replaced by ones I would be excited to make.

Saying no to the mediocre

The second factor was pledging not to buy any ready-to-wear clothes for a year as part of the Goodbye Valentino 2018 RTW Fast.  I hadn’t been buying much ready-to-wear anyway, so it was easy to join this challenge. But interestingly, stopping even browsing racks of pants made me realize just how much I had been compromising my fit and style requirements. Once I became aware of this habit of settling for less, I wanted to do better–permanently.

A new world of fitting resources

The third factor was innovations in conveying fitting know-how. Pattern Review forums and member critiques of thousands of specific patterns. Pattern Review and Craftsy classes with video, printed materials, students’ questions and instructors’ answers. Sewing blogs. Fitting DVDs. YouTube videos. Threads magazine website’s Insider articles and videos.  All these new means of conveying information, in addition to excellent new books and revised classics. Not to mention the expansion of Palmer-Pletsch workshop sites around the U.S.

Fitting is the bugbear of many sewers, and there are many talented people trying to serve a broad audience hungry to solve their fitting issues.  So I wondered which of these teaching tools could bridge my knowledge gap and lead me to a well-fitting pants pattern.

I’d been dissatisfied with ready-to-wear pants fit and styles for…my whole life, actually. But it was only when these new circumstances came together that the scales were tipped:  I found myself with

  • a creative limitation keeping me from going back
  • a vision helping me move forward
  • tools holding the promise of realizing my dream

So I started. During a six-month period my sewing and fitting focus was entirely pants.

Here are some things that happened and things I learned:

I learned how to battle a strong aversion to reading the fitting literature and watching fitting videos. They were really boring for my brain, and in the past I had always bailed out. This time I hung in there.

Why did I stay the course this time?

  • I defined the reward to be compelling enough.
  • I defined not getting the reward to be disappointing enough.
  • I recognized that I couldn’t overcome my aversion but I could work with it.
    • I gave my brain breaks.
    • I gave my brain stuff to do that it knew how to do. For example, I transcribed–yes, word for word–several of the videos in Sarah Veblen’s Fun With Fitting Pants class on PatternReview.com. It took a long time, and it was tedious (sorry, Sarah–not your fault!) but it was kind of like taking dictation in a foreign language class and slowly absorbing the grammar and vocabulary.

Much to my surprise, once I got some traction understanding fitting concepts–like what crotch depth and crotch length are–and had a muslin of my own to experiment on, I got absorbed in the topic. I read every Threads magazine article, every chapter in my books, scrutinized photos and illustrations, watched DVDs and online classes repeatedly, read Pattern Review discussions, and kept discovering nuances that had escaped me before. Incredibly, fitting books and articles even became my bedtime reading.

I began seeing philosophies of fitting.  I thought–to use the foreign language comparison again–that there were fitting “grammar books,” like Sarah Veblen’s Complete Photo Guide to Perfect Fitting that stress foundational concepts, and fitting “phrasebooks,” like Sandra Betzina’s Fast Fit, that diagnose specific problems and give specific solutions. Both are useful.

I tried tissue-fitting with McCall’s 6901 and Pamela Leggett’s Pants…Perfected! patterns. I tried Fitography’s Chloe pants pattern, based on my measurements and produced with software I downloaded from the company.  Fitography deserves its own post someday.  I also tried fitting the custom-drafted pants pattern I made in class.  I moved among patterns and methods, but stayed long enough to delve deep. Pages of Sarah Veblen’s trouble-shooting guide from her online class are underlined and creased from frequent use.

I learned more about experimenting and problem-solving in sewing than I ever have before.  I used Sarah’s grid method to examine the hang of pants. I tried to figure out how much I could learn from one muslin before proceeding to the next.  If the front was fine, I’d keep it, rip out the back and cut just a new back.

I learned to set up a tripod and put the camera on 10-second delay to take pictures of myself in muslins from front, sides, and back. Then I printed out the pictures and evaluated every wrinkle and drag line. I learned to be more observant.

I learned to look at terrible pictures of myself in muslins without flinching!

I really had no intention of spending this long on pants-fitting. I was going to participate in a Pattern Review sewing challenge in February and March with pants being part of the outfits.  But no–I was nowhere near meeting my goal.  I had to set aside every other sewing and wardrobe goal to concentrate on pants-fitting.  Partly because I have this low spatial ability, and also because as a blogger I was methodically recording everything–I have voluminous notes–my project took longer.  Also because I’m a beginner and a slowpoke.

I ended up overfitting one pattern and then another. My muslins would be too baggy; I’d experiment with taking them in at the inseam, back crotch, outseam…and then go too far. Also, excess fabric under the seat plagued me for weeks and I never completely solved that problem.  There seem to be many causes and as many solutions. I got some advice from Angela Wolf through her Altering Pants class on Pattern Review about what to do and count it as one of my greater life accomplishments that I completely understood what she meant.

It was when I was fiddling with small changes that were only different, not improvements, that I thought I really couldn’t get any further on my own.  So it was back to looking for an expert willing to help me. That’s where I am now.

I’ve learned a lot about fitting concepts and techniques that I’d never had the desire, patience, or fortitude to learn before. I learned to experiment and was excited to see when I’d made the right judgment call.

But I’ve also learned–again–what my limitations are. As Sarah Veblen says in one of her videos in Fun With Fitting Pants, it is possible to fit yourself. But for me, the odds are just too long.

What makes pants-fitting difficult is achieving a delicate, unique balance of all the interrelated parts to make them comfortable, functional, and attractive. To get my things sewn I need to achieve my own balance: when I can rely on my strengths and experience and consult experts’ books and videos, and when I need to acknowledge my weaknesses and inexperience and rely on in-person expertise, on a regular basis, to make up the difference.

I have had access to such expertise sometimes, but now I really think it is a cornerstone of getting things sewn. I will continue to think about how to access the in-person expertise I need.  I am more convinced than ever that it’s essential and worth working hard to get–and preserve.

 

My Own Little Piece of Givenchy

· by | in Fashion | tagged ,

Readers,

News of the passing of Hubert de Givenchy reminded me that I have a pattern dating from 1960 for a suit he designed, as the envelope proudly proclaims, “exclusively for McCall’s.”

I bought it in an eBay auction about fifteen years ago, and while I don’t remember what I paid, it couldn’t have been more than $10.

I have never sewn this pattern.  The waist definition and neckline are flattering for my figure type; the “sleeves in one with jacket,” not so much for my sloping shoulders. 

Maybe the right shoulder pads would remedy the problem. (Or is that wishful thinking?)

Whenever I happen upon this illustration, rifling through my pattern stash or leafing through my pattern catalogue, I imagine myself in this chic ensemble.  It’s funny–I just realized that when I look at many of my other patterns I look at them more objectively as projects, as construction challenges, as units in outfits and capsules.

But without fail, when I look at this suit by Givenchy I am transported to a smart restaurant that’s worthy of it. I imagine feeling well dressed but not upstaged by what I’m wearing.

Best of all, I always imagine feeling wonderful in this outfit.

I can’t explain why, but this design captured something special for me when I saw the pattern, and it still does.

That’s staying power.