Monday, August 29, 2011

I must be crazy

because I have signed up for Zo's Self Stitched September.


My pledge is:

I, Sharon of Petite and Sewing sign up as a participant of Self-Stitched September '11. I endeavour to wear at least one self made garment each day for the duration of September 2011. 

I still need tops and the one I made on the weekend, isn't going to go very far.


September will be an interesting month.


Sunday, August 28, 2011

Perfect way to spend a weekend ...

is with 12 other sewing friends, at the Courtyard Marriott from 8am on Saturday to 5pm on Sunday.


This year was a new venue for us and they did an excellent job fitting us in, but their guarantee that we would all fit in one conference room just wasn't going to happen, so thankfully they had also assigned us a 2nd conference room to use for fitting etc, so we were able to set up some of the group in there. This meant a lot of crossing the hall to see what each other was doing, getting advice and general chat.

I worked on two projects:

  • Vogue 7881 Claire Shaeffer's Custom Couture Collection Pant.
    These had been fitted by Angie Zimmerman at the fitting weekend I referred to in a ink blue wool crepe and are fully lined.

  • Kwik.Sew 3740 with a bit of variation in a chartreuse/grey/ink navy knit fabric.

Both of these are up to the finishing stages, the pants only need the button holes, buttons (these hadn't been purchased) and both the pants and knit top need the hems completed.

Hopefully it won't be too long before I can show you the finished items as I am rather pleased with how they have turned out.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Australian Stitches - Volume 18 Index

Here is the latest Index for Volume 18 for Australian Stitches, please take a copy if you want.

I have also sent a copy to Lynn Cook, Editor of Australian Stitches.

Enjoy

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Cargo Pants

I finished the cargo pants two weeks ago, and have only now had the chance to take the photos.

For the workshop, Angie suggested that we use a track suit pattern for our cargo pants and stretch fabric. Now the only tracksuit pattern I had in my stash was Simplicity 3640 (OOP) which I had seen reviewed on Pattern Review and tracked it down as it is a slim fitting track suit pattern which is what I prefer.



So before the workshop I had traced off a copy of the pants and found a blue stretch twill in my stash for the toile.

Angie started the day off explaining all the features of cargo pants, the seaming details, pocket styles, and adjustments that we may want to consider.

First up we had to compare our hip measurement with the finished hip of the pattern and make sure that we had 2.3cm of ease as the minimum and thankfully that worked out to be the size 8 I had traced off.

By the end of the workshop Angie had tweaked my fit and had made the changes to my paper pattern, which were:

  • Extend the centre front by 0.5cm to just where the crotch curve starts.
  • Added a fly extension.
  • Raised the centre front by 0.5cm.
  • Scooped out the back crotch curve 0.5cm
  • Redrew a new waistband due to my sway back
  • Took in the centre back seam.
That night I was very enthusiastic and removed the chain stitch from all the pieces ready to do the adjustments, and this is where is sat until the ASG meeting at Alexandria on 2 July.

I soon realised that I didn't have enough fabric to cut a new waistband, so I transferred all of the above adjustments to the toile fabric and figured out I would continue with the toile using the waistband/yoke from the original fitting, as I really wanted to see how these were going to turn out.  The waistband/yoke needed a wedge out of the back yoke seam of 1.5cm on the fold and back to nothing at the cut edge, and then I added some elastic in the back yoke to keep it against my waist, needless to say I won't be wearing my tops tucked in.

The cargo pockets on the legs were traced from a Burda magazine that I had with me and then I have added some Antique Bronze snaps that I purchased in the US to keep the pocket flaps flat.  The patch pockets are the original from the pattern with some top stitching on them.

So here they are,

Front
Back
Cargo pockets

As you can see they still need fine tuning, which Angie has now given me, as a group of us had a "fitting session" at her studio last weekend, so I might try the adjustments on this pair which can be done with some minor frog stitching to the back waistband and crotch depth.

***************

Now I must apologise as there is no photo of the formal outfit, we had a lovely time, so much so that we forgot to take any photos of the evening.