Simplicity 2618 knit blouse

I love posting reviews and reading reviews for the website paternreview.com. Whenever I'm going to sew a commercial pattern I like to look up the finished products on this site to see what they look like on regular people since most anything looks good on the models on the pattern. Originally I made the dress in the third picture above with this Missoni like rayon fabric I bought last year . I envisioned a really fashionable dress with a slight seventies feel. Well, the dress looked pretty horrible with a drop waist and it was extremely unflattering in the tummy area so I ended up chopping off the skirt to make it back into the top shown in the first picture on the pattern.  I then realized the top was too short so I added a double layer band to the bottom. This project ended up being a real headache but the end result is pretty cute.

  

Stitched down tucks at the neckline

The double sided band I added at the waistline to make it longer.

European Grain Sacks

A chair upholstered with an antique grain sack

Some details from my grain sacks above.

Well, my daughter broke my camera over the weekend so I haven't been able to take photos of my current projects. I await my new Canon G-12 in the mail, a splurge but a worthwhile one I hope. So the past few days I have been thinking about my blog and my original concept for it which is sewing, country living, French vintage, and parenting. I have been focusing only on the sewing lately which I've enjoyed but I feel it's time to focus on some of my other interests. I'll still be blogging about sewing but you will start to find a smattering of other subjects here and there which bring me to something I have been into for awhile, European grain sacks. I know they have gotten trendy lately and you can even find fake grainsack pillow cases at Pottery Barn,  but I  still love them. There is something about their rough texture and simple embroideries which brings to mind the kind of life people lived long ago. The care which these sacks are made is extraordinary to me, each sack is like a work of art. I have two and haven't yet brought myself to cut them up and make pillows out of them. Can you imagine someone taking the time to hand embroider their initials on something so utilitarian as a sack used to store flour in ? Farmers individualized these sacks so they could be identified when they were transporting grain, flour, or sugar to the market or from the mill. This was a time when nothing was wasted and things had to be made to last . Some of the sacks date back to the early 1800's. Most have stripes in blue or red on them and many are initialed with monograms. The colors of the linens range in shades from greys, to creams, to sun bleached whites. Ten years ago when I had my place in the South of France, they were easy to come by and were quite inexpensive. Not so anymore. Last year I was at the Rose Bowl Flea Market and some sellers from Idaho were there. It seemed they must have gone to every flea market in Europe because they had hundreds of grain sacks and were selling them for as much as sixty dollars apiece! Handwoven or homespun from strong hemp or linen,  they have stood the test of time.

1920's Blouse

My husbands' friend came over on New Years Day to go duck hunting with him . He brought me a large box of vintage hats someone had given to his daughters . His daughters had picked out their favorites and he thought I might like to use the rest at the theatre for costumes. The hats are from the fifties and sixties and I was grateful for this kind gesture . I was going through the box when I found a wrinkled piece of silk at the bottom,  which didn't look like much, maybe a scrap of fabric from one of the hats. As I unfolded it, my pulse started to quicken as it always does when I think I might be finding something interesting. I realized it was some sort of shirt and after carefully ironing it this was how it looked below. 

It is a navy silk blouse with a striped colar and cuffs and a lace inset with silk buttons. I did some research on it and I believe it's from the 1920's. Sadly the sleeves are in shreds so I'm not sure what to do with it. Maybe I will reuse the collar and cuffs somehow.

          Above is an ad from a 1920's magazine. The blouses are a similar style to the one I found. That was a pretty good sale !

Above is a photo of a ladies tennis club in the 1920's. How did women run around in those outfits? They also wore long woolen dresses to swim in which would have gotten extremely heavy when wet.

This is a detail of the collar and lace inset. The quality of workmanship in antique garments always astounds me. I love the detail of the sewn on silk buttons at the center front, collar, and cuffs.

The mock cuff.

Making Alencon lace seams McCall's 6221 Baptism dress

One of my friends was looking for a baptism gown for her baby and was having trouble finding one. This is the same friend who lives in Paris and I was surprised she couldn't find one she liked there so I offered to make her one and send it to her by Express mail. She wanted the dress to look like the Empress Josephine's dress at her coronation but without the gold. That was a tall order but here is what my finished dress looks like above. It is Alencon lace with a silk charmeuse underdress which is underlined with light pink cotton flannel. The pink underlining gives a slight pinkish hue which I like. It was the first time I worked with lace and I would like to share some tips I learned from working with lace.

Empress Josephine

This was the pattern drawing for McCalls 6221, the pattern I adapted. I had to ignore the directions since I was making a lace overskirt that requires a totally different technique which I will now try to explain. I also had to shorten the dress since my friends' baby is one and walking and would trip on a long gown.

This is the Alencon lace I chose. You have to lay the pattern crosswise on the fabric when you cut. I wanted the border to be at the waist and and at the hem . The measurements of the babies length has to be perfect because you can't hem it if it's too long or you will ruin the border. I hope it fits her!

You have to use an applique seam method when working with thick lace. If you make a normal side or shoulder seam it will be too bulky. Applique seams are overlapped and fell stitched by hand. The motifs are matched up and then the overlapped part is folded over to the other pattern piece, on top of the matching design and hand stitched over it. The overlapping lace excess is then cut away from underneath. Above is the overlap on the front bodice I am explaining. When it is folded over the back bodice and sewn down and trimmed from underneath, the seam will be invisible. 

 You have to hand baste the seam lines with a colored thread so you can know how to lay out the pattern because you won't be sewing it at the seam line but around the edges of the raised flowers. Don't use red thread for the seam lines because it leaves lint behind. The net around the edge of the motif also needs to be neatly trimmed.

Lining up the two blue thread seem lines. You can pin it so it doesn't shift when you sew it.

Sewing the motif down with a fell stitch.

I also sewed the lace down from behind to make the seam stronger. This is after I trimmed away the excess from behind on the wrong side of the lace.

This is the finished bodice shoulder seams .The seams are not noticeable

Pinning the lace bodice to the silk charmeuse dress underneath. The neckline will have a silk bias binding and it will have a flannel hand stitched lining inside to make it warmer for the Paris winter.

Above is how you cut the skirt. Insted of one front and two backs like the pattern says I sewed one continuous piece to avoid seams.

The one seam in the skirt has to be overlapped the way I overlapped the lace at the bodice. Do you see how the seam need to be overlapped?

The flannel hand sewn lining with snaps. I was afraid to sew buttonholes on the lace. I sewed silk buttons as decoration on the outside. I think it turned out pretty nice. I hope I have done a good job explaining lace seams .

Thoughts for the new year from Sewcountrychick

Put your best foot forward in the city

or in the country

Love

Dance

Make yourself at home.. wherever you are

Don't forget to clown around!

Give thanks for the simple things

Pray

Stop to notice the roses

Don't hold grudges like Barbie

Vintage and Couture techniques: Underlinings

Pink Silk Shantung vintage style dress

I got this great book at the thrift store Called The Better Homes and Gardens Sewing Book from 1970.

I've been trying to improve my sewing techniques and signed up for an online couture sewing class on patternreview.com and discovered underlinings. It's a couture technique of facing your main fabric with another fabric. You cut the exact same pattern from a fabric which will compliment your fashion fabrics' drape. In reading this old book I learned that most dresses in those days were underlined. It wasn't just a couture technique but something recommended for everything but basic cotton dresses. It gives them an improved drape and gives you a surface to make hems and pin down facings without showing through on your outside fabric. It's not the same as a lining . I decided to get ambitious and make a silk Shantung dress with a home made pattern that would be underlined with a silk organza on the bodice and some old sheeting on the skirt portion. It also was to have a lining from China silk and self fabric facings on top of the lining. Below are some photos and descriptions of the underlining and construction process of the dress :

I used an old sheet to underline the skirt to give it more body. I cut two panel widths and fist tried the dress using only one but then decided it wasn't pouffy enough so I ended up using two panels.

This is a photo of the inside of the bodice underlined with silk organza which is very sheer so It's hard to see. The flipped up part is the China Silk lining. 

This is the hand picked hook and eye tape closure. this is the first time I tried this and I love the way it looks.

This is the back of the dress with the skirt draped. I decided it wasn't full enough so I used two panels.

These are the shoulder straps above. You have to leave them open so you can pull the lining and dress through to be right side out.

This is the finished bodice lining with the facing on top. That makes four fabric layers 1) fashion fabric 2) underlining, 3) lining, and 4) the facings.

The back of the finished dress

Ready to knock em dead at the high school dance !

Designing a bridal gown: Part one

So I have been working on designing and making a bridal gown for a bride to be who is getting married this April. She had a photo from a blog pictured below but the photos on the blog didn't show a lot of detail. For instance, I can't even tell where the waistline is or what type of lace fabric it is. I almost said no to making it but then I thought " It's really only an evening style dress which happens to be white." So I ordered  Bridal Couture: Fine Sewing Techniques for Wedding Gowns and Evening Wear from Amazon. This book must be in high demand because it's the first time I've paid over the original retail price for a used book! I also signed up for an online couture sewing class by the Author of this book, Susan Khalje on patternreview.com. Well I finished the class yesterday and here are some things I've learned about making a bridal gown:

• If you use a delicate lace on the bodice and skirt you should interline or back it with silk organza to make the lace stronger.
• Your main fabric should always be interlined or backed with another lighter fabric. For instance, I'm using silk charmeuse and I'm going to interline it with china silk.
• As well as all the above layers, the dress also needs to be lined. That's five layers of fabric. The lace, the organza, the charmeuse and China silk backed to it and the China silk lining
• As you can see that's a lot of silk fabric. It's going to be expensive. It's a good thing we are buying the fabric from a wholesale jobber in downtown Los Angeles. We would pay about double at a retail store.
• Have a picture with you when shopping for a pattern. I couldn't quite remember the picture of the dress as I had only seen it online and didn't print it out. As you can see from the pattern I bought it's very different from the blog dress. Once I saw the blog dress again I decided to make a new dress from scratch. I made my own pattern, something I probably should have done in the first place since luckily, the bride is the same size as my dress form.
• Zippers on bridal gowns are not elegant. The gown should have either buttons or hooks and eyes to close.
• The finer the gown the more hand sewing required. And you can forget about ever trying to use a serger on a wedding dress.

The blog dress photo.

The first pattern I tried.

The dress with a princess seamed skirt.

The bodice, nothing like the photo and it has a raised waistline.

The new design with a sweetheart neckline and natural waist.
It also has a one piece skirt which can fit the lace without having a lot of seams which are hard to do in lace.

The back with a scoop opening.