Slow sewing, High Stakes sewing

Thank you for your kind comments about scrappy sewing. I have moved on to high consumption, low progress sewing instead. I have agreed to make my daughter a formal dress for her year 12 graduation dinner-dance. Actually, she just assumed that I would make it, which was a pretty fair assumption.
I have a sketch.(by my daughter)

I have fabric, selected by my daughter.

(The green silk duchess satin)
I have instructions - it must include lattice smocking at the bodice, have a full skirt, be fitted at the waist, and include no horizontal seam at the waist.
I need to franken a pattern.
I have, my daughter tells me tonight, 75 days left to finish this dress, and I started 2 weeks ago. So far there are 15 hours of work in this project, most of it in the smocking, and there is very little visual progress (thanks Andrea of Fabric Epiphanies, for this useful term).
These are the patterns we have chosen for frankening purposes.

I made a toile of the Belville Sasson pattern- without the train ;)

The gown has a built in foundation corselet, which is what we really wanted from the pattern, and have done considerable fitting work on this corselet, which will sit under the lattice smocked upper bodice.

I have not tried it with the boning yet, which on further reading may be a major fitting error requiring starting from scratch, but I am optomistic at this point. I have some stiff silk, maybe Matka?or a thick Duponi? with only a few small slubs, originally bought by my grandmother for silk painting, which I think will be the right texture and hand for this type of under structure. This corselet section is project part A. The rest of the outer dress toile is Project part C, currently on hold.

Project part B is the outer upper bodice. I have done some lattice smocking on Irish linen, which has a similar bulk and drape to the silk satin. I have tried some experimental edge finishing - machine rolled hem alone vs rolled hem with raw edged bias organza trim,  and a half lattice smocked edge vs smocking finishing one inch from the hem to allow a more flowing  ruffle edge.


My plan is to use this smocking for a sundress, similar the Vintage reproduction Vogue pattern,
to trial draping the upper bodice and attaching the smocked fabric to the unsmocked fabric  before  I ruin  I use my limited silk satin.
This will be slow, but I am enjoying the process - so far.

Making someone else's dream dress is a project with some intrinsic difficulties

What do you do with your fabric scraps? I promise this is not a green post.

The title question seems to come up in blog land quite often, and usually fills me with terrible guilt. Wasting fabric, I know, is a henious crime, even aside from the modern environmental angst we must  dutifully adopt as consumers.
When I first started sewing, it was mainly doll clothes, and my mother's scraps. This induced no guilt in me what so ever. I chopped and slashed, hand embroidered and pintucked, and made just as many wadders as I did fashionable outfits for my dolls. It was great fun, then I turned 12.
My parents instituted a wardrobe budget for me. This was suitably small, and had to provide me with all of my clothing. I was given a lump sum every quarter. (We were a frugal family, and most of my wardrobe at this point was hand- me- downs (Thank you, thank you my stylish  and extravagant Sydney cousins) and things my mother had made - and she does not like clothes sewing).
I started to sew, seriously, for myself, sewing in Australia in the 80's being cheaper than buying RTW,  and believe me, I eeked out every scrap of fabric I could, always buying 10cm less than Vogue or Simplicity told me to, and managing in most cases to squeeze out the garment. Now that I think of it, this may have been part of the reason why my pastel check blouse in completely the wrong colour and shape never pleased me, pattern and print matching was not within my fabric budget. A wadder was a financial disaster. I did not enjoy this necessary frugality. I learnt early that sewing with cheap fabric is a waste of money.

Now, being gainfully employed and having a completely self imposed sewing budget, I am still frugal with my sewing (my husband would be surprized to read this, fortunately he doesn't look at my blog), but my application is quite different. My time is valuable, and I don't buy RTW for myself not just because I object to  buying Chinese made garments, and make it better anyway (I have a big-headed opinion of my sewing) but because in the time I spend on alterations to RTW, I could make a (generally) well fitting garment.
I buy good quality fabric, and buy with great pleasure, mostly well in advance, in vaguely garment lengths, with plenty for fabric matching, should I need it. This means that I often have a bit too much fabric.
Can you make a top requiring 1.2m from 2.0m of fabric? I often fold up the fabric again and put it away, so as not to waste 80cm. There is 5m of Liberty Tana Lawn in my stash that has been suffering in this way for far too long due to my wasteage fear problem.
I notice Roobeedoo does this as well. I felt better when I read this post.
How about from 1.5m?
What do you do with 30cm and scraps of very expensive and luscious terry wool jersey.

After making this top I put it away the scraps in the cupboard for 3 years where, HORROR, the fabric was nibbled by insects. (The top wore out from constant use over 3 seasons)
What is worse, is that after I had carried out insect inspection of all the fabric, rewashed, deep cleaned and  insect repelled (last winter) I put the insect damaged 30cm and scraps back in the cupboard, next to the despised- by- insects- among- others polar fleece, which you may notice I have just used up - except for the scraps.
See how I wasted my time revisited my childhood sewing practices?

It was still great fun.

Here you can see how I dealt with the insect holes. Much more appealing than darning don't you think? The way the edges of the merino jersey curl up at the edges of the petals is very pleasing to me.

I had considered felting fulling this piece, all the fabrics being wool, but it was only just big enough to fold over and sew into a cowlish sort of tube to keep my neck warm.

 It is very cosy, even if most of the flowers are invisible.
Unfortunately, one member of the teenage fashion panel told me that wearing the cowl made me appear to have 3 chins. What was even worse was that my husband agreed with her!

I shall wear it anyway - but maybe not in public.




The scrappy soft slippers are for my poor studying daughter. Queenslanders are not good houses for winter temperatures.
 
The mittens would probably have turned out better had I managed to find my Green Pepper pattern, but tracing around your hand works pretty well. These will be good for running gear, so I can throw them in the washing machine - not something I like to do with my hand knitted gloves.
Do you think I could pretend that I was being virtuous, thrifty and green?
 I don't think so either. I even feel mildly guilty - I could have made some work trousers from my  boring sensible sewing list.
Maybe there is enough of that green merino jersey left to make something.......

Waste time, waste fabric, waste space - take my pick I suppose!

Useful sewing New Look 6816

Dear readers, you are such kind people. I particulary appreciate the encouragement to buy more fabric with the newly revealed space in my stash. I so appreciated this wonderful idea, that the horrible thin Spotlight polar fleece lurking next to the scrappy bits of good stuff came under direct fire. It is an unfortunate circumstance that the less you use up your not-very-nice-fabric, the more it breeds behind closed doors and makes you think there is no nice fabric in there.
This fabric, I remind you, was purchased with some urgency 3 years ago during the winter school holidays, as my daughter fancied making herself a dressing gown. She picked it by the colour, which is rather pleasant aubergine. I assure you that there was no better quality stuff in the shop.
My daughter did not quite get around to sewing the dressing gown, and really, it would be terribly pot - like for her mother to rebuke her for having sewing plans greater than the time available.
I gently mentioned the polar fleece during the following winter, and the next winter, and was strictly forbidden on each occasion to use this fabric myself.
This winter I was more cunning and sewed it up without any warnings.

It did not take very long. The alterations are an added back pleat, so there is a bit more backside room (IMO unisex patterns are usually bottomless and waistless, which does not suit the female figures in this house), a bit of waist shaping and some extra sleeve length. I added a patch pocket, ,backed with quilting cotton, and did not use the in-seam pockets.


The completion of this garment should mean that my husband will be allowed to wear his polar fleece jacket occasionally.


Can you see how all the applique praise has gone to my head?
You should see the big empty space in the fabric cupboard. I have plans for that.
ETA:Oops, I forgot to say that I sewed this for my older daughter, the original fabric acquisitor, as she is very boringly busy this 4th winter school holidays since her purchase, doing Yr 12 assignments and cannot possibly do any sewing;). She is kindly modelling this for me in a study break. Or was she reading in bed? I had better not ask.

Something for nothing Jalie 2795 jacket

I have just returned from Esk, where our family spent 3 days cycling the converted rail trails on mountain bikes with our local cycling group, a terrific, albiet muddy and slightly tiring trip.
 
Wait, this post does have sewing content.
On the Wednesday morning prior to this trip (leaving 8am Friday) daughter the second told me that she had outgrown her polar fleece hoodie, and in fact, had nothing warm to wear for our mini holiday. She has grown very little in the past 2 years, so I was not very impressed with the timing of this statement.
As the overnight low on Sunday was forecast 4* C,despite my inclination to sew something else for me, me, me.. I had immediate visions of a teeth chattering teenager who would rather freeze than wear an ill-fitting jacket, and  pulled out the polar fleece for my daughter. This fabric takes up an incredible amount of room in my stash, so you can imagine my shock when I discovered that, apart from some rather thin and unsuitable stuff from Spotlight earmarked long ago by daughter the first for a dressing gown, I did not have sufficient polar fleece in any colour to make an adult sized jacket.

 
Fortunately, colour blocking is not completely unfashionable at the moment, and my trusty Jalie 2795 has a lot of pieces already, so I combined 2 colours of Polartech 200 (source Seattle Fabrics) for the main sections of the jacket. I did not have enough Polartech for the (added) front facings, so used a thin Spotlight fleece remanant in another purple shade for these.
However, I found the contrast piecing visually unpleasing, although it is cut  (mostly) according to the pattern, as the underam sections do not meet the princess line seams at the armscye. I also felt that the 3 colours did not quite work together.


The jacket needed a little distraction IMO. I appliqued polar fleece flowers randomly to the body (prior to pocket construction) using the two polartech colours and the Spotlight polar fleece, with some scraps of green for leaves. This applique took only slightly longer than the entire actual construction of the garment.

(I hand basted the zipper at the seam intersections to get them to match at these points. Jalie does not mention this step, but theirs match anyway, very clever of them)
I have made this pattern several times previously, and like to approach the zipper fastening differently from the Jalie instructions.
First I like to add a facing, as, not being in Canada like Jalie, our jackets are often worn open, and the Jalie instructions leave a raw edge and the zipper tapes exposed when the jacket is worn in this manner.

To this jacket I have also added a zip guard, fluffy side out due to operator error.

I prefer an enclosed seam for the bottom band zipper attachmentl. Here I have left the inner section of the bottom band free, so that I can fold the band inside out over the end of the separating zip and sew this over the original zipper tape seam.

 (The fold is marked with a tailor tack). When this is turned right way out, and the facing catch stitched down  by hand over the free section of the inner bottom band, the inside has a clean finish in the sections that are visible when the jacket is worn open.


I did not tell my daughter that the jacket was made from remnants.

She was quite pleased with it when I handed it over, although I had to induce mild guilt to convince her to pose for photographs on a nippy evening during our holiday.  I hope she still likes it after she reads the post.