... Is very gold

Let me explain what's going on here:
a)    This is the front skirt. At least, the thin wedge is. The stretched hexagon it's attached to is the ruched waistband
b)    Lining for the ruched front
c)    Back skirt
d)    Ruched front
e)    Unruched front
f )    Back

Everything is angled for bias, which gets a bit awkward once you've corrupted a pattern so much the grainline is more of a grain-angle.

The semi-circle is only there as a guide for the moment. I had done a test layout of the circles and estimated that they might take 8m which suddenly made my generous 10m of chiffon look positively constricting. The line across the fabric is marking out the 2m point so I didn't go much past it. My estimate ended up being exaggerated, so fear not, I didn't run out of fabric at this time.

I sewed the dress together before cutting the circle just in case something went wrong and I needed to re-cut a piece or two, because, if I really needed to, I could probably manage with slightly less than 2.5 circles in the skirt.

The back and unruched front pieces serve as a kind of foundation, and the other pieces are sewn onto them rather than meeting at seam allowances. I found the mere thought of trying to chalk this fabric distressing, so decided to try basting my guideline instead. This worked wonderfully and is a technique I will absolutely be using on future projects. I sewed through my paper patterns and fabric pieces on the marked lines with long stitches and then cut the stitches so I could remove the paper while leaving the thread in the fabric.

Here is the ruching sewn to the lining with tacking to show where that should meet the other front.

Figuring out the sewing order was a puzzle in its own right. The back top and back skirt went together fine – this seam is hidden under the ruching. To join the fronts, I bound the edge of the unruched side and placed it over the ruching. I then hand-sewed them together, with a row of stitches on each edge of the binding. It seemed easier and neater than trying to control it through the machine.

The next step was the long side seam on the skirt. I finished the edges of the waist ruching with Hong Kong binding so it was ready to be draped into place. The front skirt has a small slit in the seam allowance so it can fold out of the seam once it reaches the ruching. The unruched bodice also goes in this seam.

Pause again for another interlude of handsewing to attach the waist ruching. This time the easiest way was on the dressform. Then, finally, the second side seam could be sewn.

Then I cut and sewed the 5 semi-circles and embarked on handsewing the roughly 13m of rolled hem.

All that glitters…

When I design dresses, I usually start my drawing on top of a person outline I copied from a how-to-draw book: a basic, standing straight, facing the front, 7 heads tall, two heads wide kinda deal. At some point (probably in a high school textiles class) I was given a page of 'fashion figures', outlines of wispy ladies leaning this way and that, with legs at least a third longer that your average human. I do not understand these. One of the great woes of art is that the thing you end up with never quite reaches the glory of what you imagined – so why would you start your design even further in the realm of the impossible?

Even so, one day I thought I'd try out these figures, and drew myself a 1930s style evening dress.

I decided I didn't like the figure but I did like the dress, and thereon kept an eye out for gold lamé. I eventually found a Very Shiny gold chiffon while shopping in Cabramatta. I knew I would need a lot, but at $4 per metre I could afford to give myself a good margin. I bought 10 metres of fabric and a coordinating thread and Hong Kong binding – a dark khaki that disappeared into the gold perfectly.

Time Passed. This year, the dress filtered to the top of the 'potential project' pile in my mind. A couple of friends had weddings coming up, which a floor length bright gold dress would be Wildly Inappropriate for, but I was also invited to a 30th birthday at a speakeasy-style bar and that made a good goal for a 1930s dress.

I started with a couple of decisions, one being to omit the cape so I could wear a jacket. The other was to make the waist ruching part of the skirt piece instead of a separate sash – mostly to make the patternmaking more interesting.

To make the pattern, I first tried to drape the kind of look I wanted onto my dress form, but that didn't get me what I wanted. Then, I decided to do an initial flat pattern and drape from there. Of course, when making a woven evening gown, the obvious starting point is a pattern for a knit pyjama top (what?) – but it worked.

My steps were:

1. Making a tunic with the right fit
2. Dividing the front into the two panels
3. Expanding the smaller panel to allow for ruching

I started by doing cut and spread. Given that I wanted the ruching to lead back to the shoulder seam, I ended up with very fine cuts. This didn't give enough ruching, so after experimenting some more with the mock-up, I lengthened the pattern at some points down the body.

 

For the skirt, I started with Style 1353. I cut a back and a front, and mirrored the top halves to be all across the hips while allowing sufficient fabric for shaping later. I also left a lot of fabric above where the pattern ends on the front piece to use for the ruching. Once mocked-up, I took the skirt side seam in a fair bit, as this part of the dress is meant to be not so flowy.

 

Then I took it apart and updated my pattern. The back and front ruching sections are on the front skirt pattern, so the ruching goes around without a seam, while the skirt does have a seam.

The flowy part of the skirt I mocked up in miniature so I could see how the circle pieces would behave without using huge amounts of fabric. There are two of these spirals to go along the diagonal edges of the skirt and a semicircle between them on the long side.

With all my pieces worked out, it's time to cut.

Tripping around in circles

After nearly a decade of being a Long Skirt Person I have been expanding my wardrobe to include more pants and short skirts. A style I have long admired is the long-yoke-and-pleats look but didn't know where to get it or how to wear it. But, given the aforementioned style experimentation, I was beginning to see how it would fit into my wardrobe.

I had drawn a design a while ago and had mentally picked some stash fabric and a pattern, so it was time to get it all out and see if my plan would actually work. The design featured an asymmetrical yoke, two layers of ruffles over one layer of mesh and a circle-skirt layer over everything.

For someone who can't draw, a kids' fashion design book is a great tool.

Ingredients:
264 x 75cm curtain offcut
Black mesh
Kwik sew 3362
Interfacing
Lining
Thread-for-topstitching

From having made the pattern before, I knew where the yoke would sit on me and how it would hang (by which I mean it has a weird nobble on the side seam where the yokes go together that needs to be smoothed out a bit). I left the top yoke as is and extended the second layer down into an A-line shape. My plan was to make up the body of the skirt and then mock-up the circle layer onto it in order to decide how long to make it. Since I was dealing with a limited amount of fabric, I decided to line the yoke in a different fabric (black) so I would have more of the main fabric available for the circle and ruffles.

I didn't make a mock-up because I had made the skirt before, and tried it on as part of my pattern making. But when I tried on my new version it didn't do up – by a fair bit. The lower part was wonky and didn't fit together easily with the top. Some of this might be due to 'the mysteries of fabric' but I suspect the original pattern of being kind-of dodgy. I haven't worn my other skirt very much – there's something slightly off about it. I thought the problem was lower down than the pieces I was repurposing but maybe not.

Chief suspect

After a small meltdown, I significantly widened the pattern for the top yoke and re-angled the lower piece top edge to meet it. And got rid of the nobble properly because what I'd done the first time hadn't got it completely. Then, I made a mock-up of the skirt.

I then mocked up the circle layer by cutting out a very big circle and cutting out the waist to be a bit larger than the yoke measurement. I sewed the round waist into the asymmetrical yoke, then cut back the edge of the circle so it would be a parallel with the hem (ground/waist/horizon – I forget what I measured it from). It ended up looking like this:

So, with some careful placement, I could recut the yoke and skirt and just have enough left for the circle and several widths for ruffles. I made up the inner and outer layers separately as much as I could to avoid fitting things awkwardly around the sewing machine. This skirt was a whole conundrum of working out what order to do things in and which way to face the seam allowances. I got some of it right, but also ended up hemming the ruffles after everything was sewn together which was definitely not the best way.

Outside, inside.

I was worried that after a few years of not doing any invisible zips I would have forgotten how to do them, but I think this is one of my best.

I had originally imagined gathering the ruffles, but when I looked at how that would sit, it was a bit too plain, so I decided on box-pleating them instead. I sewed three widths together for each layer and eyeballed the pleat sizes. This came to almost the length of the hem, and I had enough left in scraps to make up gap.

The mesh layer is knife pleated. I tacked down the pleats before ironing them to avoid the fabric melting from the hot pins, and finished the top edge with Hong Kong binding.

When attaching the ruffles, I made sure to stagger them so one layer had its box over the other layer's inverted box.

All the hems and the top and bottom of the yoke have two rows of topstitching, some of which were twin needled and some of which were just done carefully (so I could see the hem I was supposed to be sewing down).

I'm really happy with how the skirt turned out. I had moments of nearly giving up, but the finished product looks as polished as I'd hoped and I've worn it quite a bit. Most of me wants to never touch the pattern again, but there is a little part that thinks, cos it's fixed now, if I want a symmetrical yoke, I may as well just adapt it some more.

A defiant capitulation to entropy

When I like things, I tend to want to save them for the perfect project or perfect occasion. Or I work under the assumption that once I have something it will always be available whenever I need it. Unfortunately, the passage of time can have different ideas. My 'good' pyjama top, the one for wearing on camps or when visiting relative, isn't so good any more. After some fruitless searching for a replacement I liked as much – or at all – I elected to make my own. I traced a pattern from my old shirt and found a beautiful cotton knit at Spotlight (it's so soft).

I have some lovely, shiny paints left-over from some Barbie costumes I made probably 10 years ago. Faced with the realisation that these paints wouldn't last forever either, I thought it would be nice to add a picture to my new pyjama top. I have several peacock garments but nothing with butterflies, which I also like a lot. (There's a theme here – I like only the fanciest creatures.)

I printed the design on overhead transparencies and cut out a stencil. On opening the paints, I had a moment of panic as they are more gel than liquid now. Thankfully, they weren't too dried up to use, but I had to dab them on more than paint with them.

The final touch was a decorative stitch around the neckline. The original shirt has this in silver, so I kept with the metallics and used gold.

Once the butterfly was painted on, any 'what are you working on' discussions, with my parents or with visitors, ended in the conclusion that this garment couldn't possibly be pyjamas. So it has ended up in my daytime wardrobe as a comfy, casual tee which is great for getting the most out of my painting effort.

I haven't solved my pyjama problem though.

2020 Review

Thus endeth another year. I did some sewing this year, mostly for practical reasons but given the shortness of the list I am including more construction details than in my usual reviews.

Creating
The black knit skirt I made in 2017 has been a staple of my wardrobe ever since and was starting to wear out. I knew it would need replacing at some point during the year, so in March I made a trip to Spotlight to pick up some fabric. The next weekend lockdown started, so I got there just in time. I got a plain black, to replace my current skirt, and dark purple. The pattern is McCalls 6608.

I made a new corset, from the Laughing Moon Dore pattern, using only stash materials (except for the eyelets). I've changed shape a bit and am working out how to fit it – this was about 80% there. The fabric is two different curtain samples.

Adjusting
In utility items (usually my mother's sewing arena) I made myself a pillow. I prefer a thin, firm pillow and have found no commercial ones complying with those requirements so I bought an $8 piece of foam and covered it in some leftover cotton. Then I sewed a new side and back seam for my existing pillowcase to go over it.

I significantly altered a bought dress to fit me. I ordered the dress online and when it arrived it was the right size but was definitely made with a differently shaped person in mind. The dress consists of a knit underlayer and a woven mesh overdress. The underdress measured 10 cm smaller than my hip measurement and, while it could stretch around me, it got stuck on my hips and didn’t hang neatly or comfortably. The underdress has a feature print and, with the dress held still at the hip, the print got bunched up in places and did not look good.

My initial plan was to add some gores to the side seams but after I unpicked them and tried on the dress, I found it wrinkled horribly in the back. I cut the back up the middle and, on trying it on again, found that the fabric sat more naturally with a large split in the back and only a narrow separation at the sides.

I cut a gore the size of the back split and inserted it into the dress. I cut the side gores as strips and freestyle-tapered them in to the seams. The dress has its side seam allowances facing outwards (being a lining) so I matched that with the side gores but did not use that method for the back gore, where it would be more visibly messy.

It's not the neatest sewing I've ever done but from the outside, it doesn’t look like anything happened to it and the dress sits nicely now. While I was taking the dress apart, I also shortened the shoulder straps by 2 inches. The neckline had been lower than I like and the armholes were positively gaping. For this adjustment I did make a particular effort to be neat. I was quite happy with the experience of customising the dress and may figure this into my clothing shopping options in the future.