Sewing Tips > amy a la mode

A Little Vintage Sewing

Posted by Amy on February 25th, 2011

** If you haven’t filled out my quick little online survey about Amy a la mode quilt patterns, you can still do so until Monday night to have a chance to win the Denyse Schmidt fabrics!**

Do you remember way back when, when I showed you this awesome vintage pattern than I’d gotten?

Well, I finally managed to squeeze in a little time here and there to do a muslin of this! The last muslin I did in the dark brown was really hard to work with, so I did this muslin in a lighter color.

It was a single-size pattern, but it looked like it might work for me out of the package, so I gave it a go.

I was too lazy to make the belt for the muslin, and for the first version I also didn’t bother with the pockets. Don’t mind my wet hair or the hem that isn’t staying pinned up correctly.

I was hesitant from the beginning about the round neckline. I NEVER buy anything with a neckline like this. The reason is that, well, it looks like this. And feels like I’m choking.

But I took a class a while back on making a sloper, and I learned that my front length is kind of short compared to the pattern norm. Which means that things fit funny at my neck, just like this. They come up too high.

So, I adjusted the pattern. I marked on the dress where the top of my collarbone is in the center front (you know, that little notch). It was 1″ below the top of the dress. You can actually see the mark in the photo above.

I redrew the front yoke and front facing pieces so that they came 1″ lower in the front and then curved back to meet the shoulder seam at the original spot. I didn’t want to alter the back of the dress because it might start interfering with the darts on the back shoulders or the zipper. Besides, the back fit fine.

And here’s the revised version. I’m no longer all choked up! (The sunglasses are my attempt to look a bit more like the pattern envelope.)

I also tacked on the pockets to check their placement and finally checked the waist — which I need to shorten as usual (1 1/2″ this time). That’ll bring the pockets and the hem up that amount too, which I think will be just about right, and more like the picture on the pattern.

This pattern is a keeper, but I unfortunately don’t have any fabric on hand to make it out of. I’d love to find a funky geometric like the one shown on the pattern envelope, but we’ll see!

Happy sewing, everyone!

The Frankenstein Muslin

Posted by Amy on February 2nd, 2011

I’ve been working on a muslin for New Look 6557, a pattern I bought last March at a JoAnn’s sale. This is one of those patterns on Pattern Review that everyone loves — a “best pattern” of 2007.

I’m planning to use a brown and cream linen that I bought in Vietnam, but I don’t have quite enough for the whole dress. When we went to Hart’s Fabric in August, I picked up a piece of solid brown linen to use for the midriff piece (around the waist in the front), the bodice lining, and the back facings.

I call it the Frankenstein muslin because I’ve been using up all kinds of things I have lying around. This is actually the third muslin I’ve made of this dress, and at this point I ended up with a green bodice, brown skirt, gray facings in the back, red thread, and a light blue zipper. Totally cracks me up. Though I actually think the contrasting bodice looks kind of cute.

Just ignore the fact that I didn’t do my best zipper installation ever. Or sew on the hook and eye. The zipper will definitely be installed correctly on the final version! (Of course, it also won’t be light blue on brown fabric!)

I loved the style and cut of this dress when I made the first muslin, but it needed some alterations and a fitting with my awesome friend Dolin to get it to a wearable point. I don’t have photos of any of the earlier versions, but I wanted to show you the alterations I did.

The dress had two major issues. One was serious gaping at the armholes. The dress has gathers under the bust and no darts, so I couldn’t increase the dart size and I thought adding darts would look funny. And there was no shoulder seam to take anything out of, so the majority of the problem was fixed at the side seam.

The red line shows the original pattern lines and the green shows my adjustments. I took out a bunch at the top of the side seam and tapered it down to the bottom. Later, I also went back and folded out another tiny bit from the bust like a dart, without actually making a dart (that’s the green oval). These worked like a charm and there is absolutely no more gaping at the armholes! (I talk below about the adjustment to the bottom seam of this piece.)

My other problem was tons of bunching around the waist and especially in the back, since I’m a bit sway backed. I’m short-waisted, so I shorted the waist 1/2 inch all the way around (so the back and the midriff piece that goes just under the bodice in the front). That’s the fold you see in the piece above and the smaller fold in the piece below.

But I also had to take out more for the back, and I did this by removing another 1″ from the back and smoothing out the side seams again. When I got to the side seams, I needed to blend that inch down to nothing at the first notch in the midriff piece in the front. I took half the amount out of the top of the midriff piece and half out of the bottom of the bodice, which you can see in both of those images.

Some other suggestions from Dolin (who is totally brilliant) were to line the midriff piece to keep it from collapsing and to adjust the position of the straps in the back so they are closer to the center back line. The repositioning also helped with armhole gaping and made everything lie much more nicely in the front.

And one tip from me — if you are using the same fabric for the lining and the exterior of something, label your lining fabric fabrics with chalk — and label them BIG! — so you don’t have to keep figuring out which side is which.

I’m excited at how it has turned out and looking forward to having a chance to start cutting out the fabric for the real thing!

Oliver + S School Photo Dress

Posted by Amy on November 17th, 2010

Last Friday I had the unusual opportunity to sew ALL DAY. I can’t remember the last time I did that. It was totally fabulous and I am really looking forward to the next chance I have to sew all day!

And what, you might be wondering, did I make while I was sewing all day? I made the Oliver + S School Photo dress for a shop sample for the Bobbin’s Nest.

I had cut out everything the week before, and I spent all day sewing it, including hand finishing the sleeve cuffs, the dress hem, and the inside attachment of the lining to the zipper.

It’s a really darling dress, but between the pocket, the sleeves, the collar, and the lining, I’d say it deserves the three-scissor rating they gave it. But still, it’s not too bad, especially since theses patterns are so exceptionally well-written.

I have to post some photos of the zipper. I did not do the invisible zipper and just did a centered zipper application instead. And I used a shorter zipper (maybe 14″ — I think it called for 18″ but we didn’t have any that long). This may be the best-looking zipper I have ever installed!

As I mentioned, I hand-tacked the lining to the zipper. I decided to make the zipper installation easier by using wash-away wonder tape to hold it in place instead of pins. But I failed to realize that this would make it harder to attach the lining by hand later. I kept having to rub the sticky goo off my needle. Blech.

So, just a little tip that it’s better not to use this tape if you have hand-finishing on the zipper to do before you have a chance to wash-away the tape. Or at least use as little tape as you can. I, of course, used a big long strip of it on each side, all the way down my 14″ zipper. Of course.

But I think it turned out really cute (this is a size 8). I strongly recommend these patterns if you have a little boy or girl you can sew for. I just wish they made some of these patterns in adult sizes!

And if you want to see this cute little dress in person, just stop by the Bobbin’s Nest!

Down to the Details

Posted by Amy on October 11th, 2010

Thanks so much for all your encouragement and good wishes regarding my quilts at the quilt museum. I would love some of them (or all of them!) to sell, but I thought that even if they didn’t it would be worth the exposure I might get there. I’ll let you know how it goes!

In the end it took me a while to get all the details sorted out before I could deliver the finished quilts to the museum. I had never worked out a way to permanently label my quilts with my company name. I’ve labeled all the quilts I’ve made in the past, but I have never come across a method that I was particularly happy with. But I needed to get these labeled before sending them off, so I finally settled on a minimum of hand embroidery.

I did this on a piece of fabric that matched the quilt back and then hand sewed them onto the quilt. It really did not take me that long once I just buckled down and did it!

The other thing they needed was hang tags. And those hang tags had to include a combination of 1) information required by the museum, 2) information required by federal regulations governing the sale of textiles, and 3) stuff I wanted to say. I finally come up with these:

The Zens Won’t Mind quilt has a two-part label (the one on the left) because I didn’t have room to explain the hidden message on the standard one, so I created another half label with that info on it. All I did was print the info off onto card stock and fuse scraps from making these quilts to the back using Wonder Under. The holes are metal eyelets — last year I acquired an eyelet tool and a zillion eyelets in a box of craft stuff off Freecycle. Worked perfectly for this!

And now they are off to the real world and I may never see these quilts again (that *is* the goal, after all!).

Slow Sewing

Posted by Amy on August 26th, 2010

In the wake of the discussion last week on hand versus machine quilting, I was making myself a skirt (photos to come). I had intended to use the blind hem on my sewing machine to do the hem. But when I tested it on the fabric, I was really unhappy with how much it was going to show.

I knew I didn’t want to just topstitch it. That’s how I’ve hemmed pretty much all the clothes I’ve made for myself recently, and it just wasn’t the look I was going for with this skirt. Then I had this thought — hem it by hand! I had a little internal discussion, with part of me not wanting to do something that was going to take “forever” (clearly one part of my brain is highly prone to exaggeration). In the end I knew it was the only method that would produce the look I wanted.

So, I gathered my little scissors, a spool of thread, a hand sewing needle, and a thimble and sat in my favorite chair. It was quiet and the windows were open, so I listened to the cars and the crickets and it was a lovely peaceful 45 minutes. And it turned out beautifully.

I encourage you all to choose a step in your next sewing project and do it by hand. Just something small. If you normally attach the buttons with a machine, do it by hand. If you normally attach your quilt binding with a machine, do it by hand. If you normally do your zipper installation or your topstitching or your embroidery with a machine, do it by hand. It will not only slow down your body, but also your breathing, and your mind.

Is there something that you can do with your machine that you tend to do by hand, just because you enjoy the process?