I made a post awhile ago about this Renfrew, however I never photographed it while wearing it. This is definitely one of my favorite shorts I own and made. Super comfy and a little different. The fit is great and I think it has a lot to do with the fact that the knit fabric is very stable.
And who does not love a nice cowl neck?
Wore on 5/10/13
Last Friday, was Sewing/Knitting/Crafting Space themed Me-Made-May day. I knew I was not going to get my friend to photograph me at home, so I came up with the idea to photograph at work. Sometimes, while I am at work I get ideas for designs. Sometimes I might sneak off and do some hand sewing and then there is buying, reading blogs and getting other inspirations during my free periods at work. My photographer had a busy day, so I took my own picture being caught in a moment of inspiration.
Here is a better shot of me wearing my Sorbetto. I decided to go with a black jacket, because I am not too happy with the way the armhole came out. I can pinch out an inch of fabric to get a better fit.
I made some changes for this version:
Extended the length about 2 inches
Went down a several size in the shoulders and armhole
Shorten the length of the bust dart.
Use packaged bias tape
Serged all the seams
Sleeveless
I think this is my favorite Sorbetto out of the two despite the armhole. Mainly because of the fabric. The fabric was very nice to work with even if it was starting to fray.
I think I will hold off making anymore Sorbettos for a while. Especially since my bodice block has a great fit and I should be able to make a simple top pattern for myself.
I can’t wait to share with you what I have wore and will be wearing this week.
This week marked the first week of Me-Made-May and if you read my last post, you would have saw my pledge to wear 2 garments a week. I actually wore 3 garments this week because I jumped the gun and wore something on Tuesday thinking it was May. I did not realize until the end of day that it was still April. D’oh. I really liked my outfit on Tuesday too, but I’ll just have to wear it again later in the month.
May 1: I rocked my just off the sewing machine Colette Sorbetto Blouse, with a pair of jeans from JcPenny and Kaydon Boots from Blowfish. I will give a little more detail about the blouse after the round up.
May 2: Today, I am wearing a skirt I made many moons ago, when I used to live back East. I have not worn this skirt in a very long time. I think I found it after last years MMM. I find it funny that it fits nicely, since I used to make clothes a couple inches too big when I started sewing. Actually, it is not funny, I blame Cali and Mexican food.
I absolutely fell in love with this fabric. light-weight and flowy. I believe it is a rayon, definitely has a rayon feel to it. I think I am the only one that loves rayon, but I do not like to sew with rayon. It is a bit of a bastard. Anyway, When I made this I just wanted to showcase the pots in the simplest way. The border print was printed on to the fabric and the gold areas were painted or screen printed on. It is very lovely and I probably should have hand-wash the skirt to make sure the gold did not flake off.
Isn’t that just cool?
Okay, now back to the Sorbetto blouse.
This is my first Sorbetto and first project I made by Colette Patterns. I have several patterns in my collection from them, so why has it taken me so long to make something. Your guess is as good as mines. For this blouse, I decided to just cut it straight with no alterations except adding sleeves. The fit is pretty good. I decided that I want to be lazy and just trace and cut the size close to my actual measurements. So yeah, not a bad fit for no fit alterations. However, the next version I do plan to make some changes to make a better fit.
Shorten the bust dart (I think it is too long)
Add overall length (I do not like having to tug it down.)
Shorten the front armhole. I think it is screaming for a armhole dart.
Oddly, but not too surprising this shirt was not as easy as it should have been. It started out easy. I decided to be fancy and do a french seam. I am so proud of myself. I have only done samples of french seams, but near actually used them in a garment.
The trouble came when I tried to make the bias tape. I hate cutting, so making my own bias strips are capital EVIL. For cereal-o. I might have had a cosmo and tasty Italian food in my system when I was working on the bias strips, but never mind that. Evil. I tried to do the continuous bias strip method and I did something wrong and that did not work out. I tried it twice. Using the strips that I got from the fail attempt, I made them using the piecing method. Attaching the bias strips to the neckline would have a decent time, expect my bias strips were not the best, so I am not as happy with the neck edge. Which lead me to REALLY want to add in sleeves.
I ended up making two pairs of sleeves since the pattern that I downloaded from Sew Weekly was not the same as my arm sleeve. So, I want to warn you to check before you cut.
Oh and don’t you love the fabric? Yeah me too. I got it at Discount Fabric, which is around the corner from my house. *GRINS* It feels like a linen, but i can’t actually recall what it really is. Very easy to sew. I might have to buy some more of this fabric.
The next Sorbetto, of course there will be a next, will be in a polka-a-dot with purchase bias tape. I love polk-a-dot.
Well, I am going to wrap this up. I hope you all have a great weekend.
I was really on the fence about joining Me-Made-May this year. I do not have a great collection of me-made items to fill up a month’s worth of wear and I did not want to do the same exact challenge that I did last year (1 item a week). However, I did want to join in on the fun and deadlines seems to be great motivation for me, so I am caving in. I have some project lined up, that should be quick
I, Trice of Sewtell (sewtell.wordpress.com), sign up as a participant of Me-Made-May ’13. I endeavor to wear me-made garments twice a week for the duration of May 2013.
I am planning to post here once a week on what I wore and probably will be posting on instagram, twitter and maybe flickr the day I wear my Me-Made garment.
This passed weekend, two of my beloved friends got hitched to each other and I wanted to have a nice original dress for their wedding. Enters the Shaner Dress. I am calling this dress The Shaner Dress in honor of my two friends. They are pretty awesome people and I am so happy for them.
Okay, so let’s talk a little about the process of making this dress.
Last semester I designed the above dress in my Flat Patternmaking class. The mini dress received a good response and some people wanted me to make them one. I got my invite for the wedding and knew this would be a great dress for the wedding. As soon as the semester was over, I started making my own custom sloper. The process of making the slopers were a nightmare and I still not really done. You can see most of the process on instagram, click on the link at the end of the post. I was so serious about this, that I had a fitting done at a restaurant.
In the middle of last month, I moved to a new apartment (and official done with my old place Monday). You can see where this is going. My teacher kept telling me that I knew what I was doing and I just need some confidence. She thought I was going to be done in time for the wedding, until 2 weeks ago when she realized how anal I am about pattern making and that I really had no help with fitting things except for the few minutes I got to see her. She was a little worried about me. After that I went off to my own devices and just started working on the pattern and making some design changes.
Changes I made:
Sleeves that I loved to sleeveless
Removing darts from the skirt
Having the band only in the front
I originally wrote out a long drawn out version of what happened, but who wants to read all that. So here are the cliffnotes:
Started cutting the dress in the fashion fabric on Friday, insanity allowed me to agree to hemming pants. Everything was smooth sailing until I thought I screwed up on the dress, so I went to bed ripping out the neckine. Next morning, hemmed pants while cussing, did a walk-through of old apartment and went to buy a invisible zipper. Had lunch dropped off by friend in exchanged for hemmed pants. Realized that I did not need to rip out the neckline but the back skirt seam to turn in/out the lining. BullShhh, the waist and skirt parts since I still had yet to figured that out in my muslin stage. Started sewing the zipper, breaking the needle shortly before I had a little melt down, which told me it was time to shower. Finished the zipper, sew all the seams, serge the hem of the skirt and decided it looked done but not too sure about that hem. By the time my friend came by, I put another dress on. She convinced me that my hem was fine and the dress looked great so I wore it to the wedding. Everyone loved it and was shocked that I made it in less than 24 hours. The wedding was great, I was buzzed before the ceremony and I did a lot of dancing.
Cliffnotes done
It is amazing what I get done with deadlines, but yet take forever when I don’t. Perhaps I need to give myself more deadlines. Tho, my interiors for this dress needs attention. Especially the raw seams will ALL need to be serge. The fabric was mostly easy to work with besides the fraying but the lining was a pain. I have a lot of extra fabric of the polka dot, I might just make a summer top out of it. What do you think?
Here are some more pictures of the dress. Sorry for the quality.
I forgot to add interfacing to the band which is why it is a little baggy in that areas.
Check out that invisible zipper. I highly suggest getting a invisible zipper foot that is specific to your machine over the generic ones.
In conclusion this was an interesting project and there are somethings I still need to work on to make if fully finished. However, right now I am taking it easy and slowly unpacking. I do look forward to making more self-drafted patterns.
I recently decided to join twitter. Okay, that is not entirely true. I already have a personal twitter account but I did not have one for my sewing blog. So what I really did was make another account for SewTell. Feel free to add me here. There seems to be some fun things happening and I don’t want to miss out. I made some awesome friends in the sewing community and I want to make some more. Yes, I am being greedy.
I have been working more on my sloper. I sewed up a muslin for it last night (posted on twitter). I have one of my sewing machines at my new apartment. Sadly I forgot to pack my feet for that machine, so I ended up sewing the whole thing using an invisible zipper foot, while standing. Yes, standing. Was not fun.
Oh yeah, I have a new apartment. I signed the lease on the 16th and I have been living there since last Tuesday. I am also still at my old apartment which is currently being used as a “work studio”. I’ll probably post a little more about it in another post.
Has anyone tried sewing using the wrong “tools” and has not completely failed using them?
Anyone else using twitter? Any suggestions on who I should follow?
By now, everyone probably knows that Google Reader is on its way out. This upsets me because I really love Google Reader. I like the layout, and that most of time I don’t have to click out of the site unless I wanted to comment or for some reason the website will only let you preview.
I am not a huge fan of Bloglovin, but I do have an account and all my Google Reader subscriptions has been imported to Bloglovin. However, I plan to use feedly. Feedly works real nice on my phone and you can use it in the Chrome browser. I just started using the Chrome version. I really like it a lot so far. BONUS!! Google Reader transfers over seamlessly, you can log in using your Google account. You all should check them out.
You can follow me on Bloglovin, just click the link below:
Or you can use another Rss service, like Feedly and use the below link to follow me.
Nothing really new to update in my little sewing world. I have not touched my sewing machine in a couple of weeks. I’ve been dealing with a lot of annoying personally things in my life. Things have been stressful and by the time I get home I am bushed or it is late. I have drafted a bodice and skirt for myself, but I do need to get it fitted correctly. My curves have their own agenda.
Anyway, I was up in LA a few weeks ago and headed over to the fashion district to do some mini-shopping and here’s some of the things I purchase.
Stripped Knits from The Loft to make skirts. Stretched lace to make lingerie.
Polka dot mystery fabric from a self-made dress. Cream lace, cream powernet, polka dot mesh and chocolate eco cotton for lingerie.
Red and cream edge elastic, bundle of shoulder straps and fold-over elastic.
I think I spent $5 on the shoulder straps and $10 on the fold-over elastic. Hopefully, I will use all those straps. lol
I also bought a hip curve and 2 french curves. I was well-behaved at The Loft, mainly because I wasn’t in the mood to be diving into fabric. I am super happy I found fabric very close to what I envisioned. I know I wanted polka dot and I did not want a natural color. So score. Over a good trip.
Since I really enjoyed answering the questions and reading the answers to my questions from the Leibster Award, I decided to answer my own questions, so you all could get to know me a little more.
Here goes.
1. What is your favorite part about blogging? My favorite part about blogging I would have to say is the people. You guys are awesome. It is especially nice to know people who are passionate about fabric and pattern. My other friend’s thinks I am a little crazy. I am, but not really.
2. What is your favorite type of food? This week Korean BBQ.
3. What was the most embarrassing outfit or item of clothing/accessory you have worn in your life? When I was in Elementary School, I thought it would be cool to wear my jeans on backwards like KrisKross. To be honest, I am not as embarrassed about it like I should be.
4. What song do you currently have on repeat? Right now I am obsessed with Icona Pop. They are a Swedish dj, pop duo with electro house, punk and indie pop influences. I would love to see them live especially when they have their DJ equipment setup.. Amazing. I came across them via Pandora on the f(x) station. Icona Pop’s song Good For You stays stuck in my head like all the time now. I love the layering. The layers remind me of a song I mixed. Yes I have mixed a song (work in progress), if you want to hear it just let me know.
5. I scream, you scream, we all scream for _____? COOKIES. I am a cookie addicted.
6. What is your 9-5 job? I work for a company that is planning to change the automotive industry. My job title is Administrative/Purchasing Assistant. I am also the assistant to the CEO. I wear many hats. I have been working their for 4 years.
7. If you could go back to any time in history when would that be and why? I think I would go back to Victorian times. Probably because I do enjoy steampunk but also I like Victorian Architecture.
8.Who is your favorite blogger? This is too easy, Oona from Oonaballoona of course. Following shortly behind, Lauren from Lladybird. I am sure you all know who these two ladies are and clearly know why I love their blogs.
9. Do you have any goals for 2013? Make self-draft clothing for myself, finished the tailored jacket for my best male friend and make a lot of bras.
10. What hobby takes up most of your attention? Sewing, if sleeping does not count.
11. What is your favorite book that you can read over and over again? So, in case you have not notice. I am a big fan of Christopher Moore. He is not for everyone. I enjoy dark humor and he has made me randomly burst out laughing in public. It also helps that he is a really nice guy in real life, that remembers some of his fans. The book I can read over and over again from him is Dirty Job.
Well, it is passed my bedtime and I have to try to be really clever, so I can get an apartment. Everyone clearly wants what I want, so I have to outsmart them. Go figure.
Some Live Icona Pop
I just love watching these ladies do their thing. I have a soft spot for djs especially female djs. I spent a big chuck of my early to middle 20′s around djs. I really love how they experiment with sound.
