Sunshine and Skirt from Sheet

This skirt was my refashioning project this weekend. It started out as an old bedsheet from the dollar-a-pound that I'd gotten for my fabric stash probably two years ago and then promptly never done anything with. I have a bunch of other vintage sheets that I want to dive into soon! The cotton is really easy to work with, and it's easy to find sheets with fun prints. (I also signed up for So Zo's Me Made May, so am going to want to add a few more spring pieces to my self-made collection before then.)


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I used this 1969 Simplicity pattern. I'd definitely make this one again, as it came together fairly quickly but still has some nice details like the darts on the front and the waistband that makes the top very neat.


Funny story...I was really pleased when I finished this with how I'm improving the construction quality of what I'm sewing and perhaps it doesn't immediately look homemade. So I wore this today to go walk around Harvard Square (needed to get new running shoes), and while I was there I walked through a couple of stores looking for a new white shirt. I was in American Apparel and one of the saleswomen there comes up to me and says, "I know this is going to sound funny, but I could swear I had a pillowcase and sheets in that pattern when I was a kid!" (She was confused that the same pattern would have been sold to a clothing company as well...at least I cleared that up for her!) So I suppose it is obvious that this might have been a sheet, at least to those who recognize it.


I hope everyone's had a nice weekend! I was glad to get some time outside today...the weather's acting more like the end of May than the middle of April. Even though we've had a fairly mild winter, I'm still really happy that spring seems to be here! This is the first time I've actually gone out in short sleeves and bare legs for months...certainly enjoying the moment of time before it moves into the heat of the summer. Which...well, tomorrow and Tuesday are supposed to be in the high 80's. So that could be soon.

Other than that, I've been keeping busy with work and such. We've got our big demo week coming up the week after next, so a lot of coding and creating that has to happen before then. Then my group's next big project launches in a month, so that's been keeping me busy as well. It's been great to watch things come together, though...always exciting when code works!

Creative Fabric Project

Today I was in a mini fashion-show-of-a-kind for everyone who participated in a January workshop on creative uses of fabric and patternmaking, so I thought I'd share my final project here. Most of us spent the three-day workshop learning how to make a particular skirt from Tokomo Nakamichi's book Pattern Magic. Nakamichi's pattern-making process was really inspiring to me, particularly in the way that she encourages prototyping sculptural, 3D patterns with paper and then recutting the paper to form new pattern pieces. The skirt pattern we were working from used the same technique as Nakamichi used in this dress, the otoshiana (or "drop-hole").


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So I set out to make a skirt with a drop-hole. I constructed it out of denim, since I needed something sturdy to hold the shape of the skirt and that was the heaviest material I had in my stash. While I've sewn clothing from patterns before, this was the first time that I ever drafted a pattern (given only the dimensions in a book), altered it to fit me, and turned it into a wearable garment. A really good learning experience, I think!

And then...well, the drop-hole in the skirt looked to me liked it needed to have something coming out of it. So I added a speaker cone in the hole, and a pocket to hold a little amplifier circuit, batteries, and an mp3 player. So now I have a skirt that can also play music. (A very, very heavy skirt, because of the weight of the speaker). A bit silly, perhaps, but it was a fun project!

Outfit Log: Green Velvet

This was my outfit from Tuesday, when I wore another long-sleeve shirt that I made last weekend (for some reason, I was feeling compelled to make velvet shirts...I guess it really feels like winter these days, after a slow start). I started out with the shirt, pulled out the skirt in my closet that complemented the shade of green, and went from there. I'm not sure I'm a fan of the proportions here, though, especially as they look in the photographs. I generally prefer to tuck my shirt in when I'm wearing a fuller skirt, but this one bloused out in unflattering ways when I did. If the top were a bit longer, I'd wear a belt over it to define my waist. In general, I've found that I now almost always try to define my natural waist in the silhouette of my clothing. I've done that since I figured out it was more flattering on me, I guess. I think I need to now experiment more with variety on that theme, or at least being a bit more comfortable when an outfit (particularly a skirt-based outfit) varies from it.


Luckily, this shirt turned out to be incredibly warm and comfortable, especially because of the full cowl collar. I'm starting to think that keeping my upper chest and neck warm is a huge component to my feeling warm in general. (Does anyone else find that?) And being toasty warm all day is definitely high on my list of winter priorities!

Coral Velvet Shirt

Here's the shirt that I mentioned yesterday...my Saturday afternoon/evening sewing project. The velvet was leftover from a skirt that I'd made with my mom shortly after I got my sewing machine several years ago. I had just enough to finish this shirt...well, at least by making the collar out of two pieces instead of one, and by ending up with 3/4 length sleeves instead of full long sleeves. And cutting the body pieces the wrong way in relation to the nap of the velvet...well, that wasn't so much for lack of fabric as by accident.


This pattern worked up fairly quickly, especially since I decided to try using pattern weights instead of pinning my pattern to the fabric. And when I say "pattern weights" I mean a few cans from the pantry cabinet used to hold the pattern down. I'm now quite a fan, especially as pinning pattern pieces on is one of my least favorite parts of sewing. Well, that and zippers...but at least I'm getting slowly better at zippers. This top has a zipper in the back, which went in fairly well.


I also hadn't realized that the sleeve would end up having quite so much gathering on it. I'd originally tried to skip the gathering step ("I can just pin the ease in!"), only to find there was quite a bit of extra fabric...so, gathering it was. I think this detail probably is accented by the heavyweight nature of the fabric, too...if I made this shirt again, I'd do it in a lighter knit. I might make this again, now that I've figured out how to do it (including the fold-down collar detail).

All in all, this shirt actually makes it into the "quite wearable" pile, I think. I wore it out today for dim sum brunch with a friend (so many amazing pork buns! Why have I not eaten in Boston's Chinatown before now?) and running some errands. Comfortable, warm, and doesn't obviously look like I made it? Works for me!

Sewing Project Sneak Peek

I finally broke out the sewing machine today for a bit more complicated project... I was going through a box of random patterns that I'd stashed away because I wasn't interested in or didn't fit them, and found a few that were actually pretty nice. Since the winter weather has been making me realize I'd really use more long-sleeve shirts, this pattern was calling my name.


So here's just a little peek of what I made this evening...I'll show you the rest tomorrow, once I've styled it up and worn it out!


Hope everyone is having a relaxing weekend so far. Except for a run to the grocery store, we've mostly been at home today, cooking various things (including banana bread and some beef/vegetable stock). I've been thinking about doing some cleaning, but instead have been making messes with projects...

Joining Me-Made May

I've been following the lovely Zoe of So Zo... for a while, and was especially interested by a challenge she gave herself in March to wear only clothing that she herself had made, every day for a month. So I was excited to see when she posted the idea for a group Me-Made May, where others would take the pledge to wear their own handmade clothes for the month of May, or make their own variations on that idea to challenge themselves.

My version of the pledge will be a "lite" variation...at least one item that I wear every day in May needs to be "me-made" or at least refashioned by me. I'm hoping this will push me both to dive into the pile of thrifted dresses I have waiting to be refashioned, and to really start working on some of my fabric stash and vintage patterns. I did start a dress this weekend from one of those patterns (actually, two combined), which was just going to be a muslin for a class project I'm working on with my brother's girlfriend...but the muslin ended up looking pretty good on her, so I'm going to finish it up and make it a proper dress for her.


I've also gotten a bit behind with my daily outfit images. This was what I wore on Thursday...it was sunny and a bit warmer again, so I felt that spring greens would be fun. The top is actually a dress, but the whole thing is a bit frilly for me, so I tried wearing the green skirt over it to tone it down a bit. And then the neckline of the dress is a bit low/gaping so I wore a shirt underneath. I'm not sure what I think of the resulting silhouette, though. (The dress is really a bit too big for me...I got it at Forever21 years ago when I fell in love with the print and they only had one left in an XL.)


Details:
Green print dress (worn as top): Forever21
Green skirt: Evan Piccone, thrifted
Brooch: vintage, Ebay
Shoes: Naturalizer, thrifted
Black shirt (under dress): Express


I borrowed the brooch-on-a-waistband trick from Karla of Karla's Closet. She's done this really beautifully in a couple of outfits I've seen, including this and this.

Now...off to start the week...