Fun At Mood Fabrics

What's more fun than getting together with fellow sewers?  Getting together with fellow sewers to participate in a focus group, the subject being how to revamp Mood's website to be 'the' destination website for sewers.  There were some old friends there, Carolyn from Diary of a Sewing Fanatic , Elizabeth from SEWN and a couple of people I had met on PR shopping days.  There were also people whose work involved them in social media for their jobs.  Meg formerly of Lindsay T Sews was the moderator.  Many of you may know that she now works for Mood and she organized the group.  


Readers know that I have bitched loudly about Mood's website.  I love the store but the website is a frustrating experience.  They listened to our gripes and to our ideas on what the perfect website would look like.  Be patient, it's going to take about 6 months to get it up and running.  They aren't just revamping but starting from scratch.  There are some great fabric sites online, but no one has the resources that Mood does.  They want the website to be the destination for online shoppers, just as the store is a don't miss stop for out of town sewers and locals alike.  It was a fun time, unfortunately I couldn't stay to chat  but rushed off to catch my train or I was destined for the milk run if I missed it.  
BTW, the store has been getting revamped as well over the last year or so.  If you shop the garment district you know that most stores don't carry patterns or notions.  In other words you can't buy thread, zippers or buttons to match that fabric you just bought.  Mood has expanded to carry all the buttons, trims, zippers thread and almost any notion you'd need to complete your project.   
Of course I didn't  go in just to attend the focus group. It's about 2 hours door to door for me to get into the garment district.  I buy a lot of stuff online but there are a couple of places I like to visit in person that don't have websites.  I hit SIL to refill my zipper stash.  They have YKK zippers at about half the price of buying them at JoAnn's  You aren't paying for packaging so they can be a lot cheaper.  They have added a higher end metal zipper line in Excel.  Nice quality.  They also strangely, redecorated that aisle to look like a high end boutique in the midst of the bare bones of the rest of the store.  I found a mesh tape invisible zipper which is lighter in weight but they only have it black and white.  This is the place to find separating invisible zippers if you are in the market for one.  I also splurged and bought a gross each of hooks and eyes, in black and silver.  These are the heavy duty ones you put on pants or a skirt.  I have some that are no sew but I have a love hate relationship with them and would rather just use sew on hooks.  Of course I bought a few pieces of fabric.  I hit Metro Textiles which is not usually one of my regular places, but I was looking for inexpensive summer fabrics and I found two. Kashi of course would have liked me to buy more, but two was enough. On the right is a bottom weight cotton teal and black snakeskin for pants. You know how much I love an animal print!  It's pretty subtle though, which I like.  The white is a linen and rayon blend.  The black and white knit is from Elliot Berman is for a summer dress.  

Keeping these lovelies company are my sale purchases from Michael's half price sale.  The gray silk is much more gorgeous than you can see in a photo; that I'll put away until fall and the royal blue Zegna cotton will be another pair of pants for my blue collection. 

 By the time I got to Mood I was a bit shopped out, but there will always be another day.  

Do You Wear White Jeans?

I saw this post this morning http://keepitchic.com/ on the website Keep It Chic on loving white jeans.  The images struck me as fresh and appealing.  Of course the pictures show two size 0's or there about wearing these white outfits.  I like Gwyneth's look better. It's less studied and more practical for the mother around town.  White cotton is good since I'd need to bleach these on a regular basis being a wear my food type of person.  But the question is really can you wear these at any size?  Probably not in this skinny extreme, but in a style suited to your body?  Are a pair of white jeans in your future? Would you wear an all white outfit or wear them more casually like Gwyneth?  

I liked Peter's blog yesterday commenting on pinups. Real women  with more meat on their bones like most of us, certainly as we age.  It's been hammered into us that we need to wear dark bottoms to 'hide' our hips.  Well these hips are hard to hide no matter what the color.  I am really considering buying a pair of white jeans, or making a pair if I ever get my jeans pattern worked out!  How about you?  Are you so concerned about looking thinner that you would never wear a pair of white jeans or are you ready to embrace the body you've got and damn the fashion magazines?

Sewing Outside the Box

With color that is.  Almost everything in my wardrobe can be worn with black or gray.  I have one pair of brown tweed pants and a few things that go with them, but that's it.  Last year or maybe it was the year before I bought this lovely blue and white herringbone bottom weight  cotton from Zegna at one of Michaels fabulous half price sales.  The only problem is that the only thing in my wardrobe that it would go with are a few white knit tops and they are pretty shabby.  Since I really wanted to make a pair of pants with the fabric I needed to build a plan around it.  A capsule wardrobe would do, and  all of the tops will actually go with other things in my wardrobe, so double duty.  
Color blocking is big news this season and that was my starting point, that and everything except the paisley below was in my stash.  

Do You Staystitch?

When I get a new pattern I immediately, well as soon as possible, start reading the instructions.  I know sewing nerd here.  I don't always use the instructions but I like to see if there are any surprises or I make notes on how I want to change things. Usually I make notes on where I will change sas on Vogue patterns. I trim the enclosed seam allowances to 3/8 and add in case sas to the side seams. Then I note the sewing order, not necessarily writing it down but I never sew in the order they advise.  I like to group details and sew everything I can before I get up to press.  The first one I looked at  is this Vogue  top.

I knew from the notions list that they call for packaged bias tape.  I'll make my own.  Wouldn't it be nice if they mentioned making your own and how to do it?  But, no this is an Easy Vogue pattern and I guess they deem it too hard.  But I digress, the topic of this post is do you stay stitch and before they  get to the binding, they tell you to stay stitch the neck edge.  I don't do this anymore.  I used to when I remembered and then for the most part I just stopped.  I still  do it for opposite curves like a very curvy princess seam that I have to clip, but mostly I don't stay stitch anymore.  I don't think it keeps a seam from stretching.  I'd be more inclined to stay a bias edge with tape, interfacing or a piece of thin 

fabric.  I also see directions for stay stitching a knit neck edge.  This I really don't get.  I do do this with Lynda Maynard's knit binding method, but I use interfacing on the neck edge first and the stay stitching is a placement guide for the binding.  

If you've been watching Peggy Sagers webcasts she is vehemently opposed to stay stitching and other archaic home sewing methods.   I feel vindicated in my laziness!

How about you, do you stay stitch and if you do when do you do it?

Spring Sewing

Vogue came out with new patterns this week and I managed to buy a few on sale.  I missed the last day of the regular sale but gave in and bought a Club BMV membership. They have finally included 15% off on Marfy patterns which was an incentive. With the decline of Burda's offerings I am having to branch out and sew more Vogue.  I used to sew Vogue almost exclusively until I was introduced to Burda World of Fashion, as it was then called.   Times change and the new direction at Burda Style mostly doesn't work for me.  I was hoping that the excellent May issue was a turning point but the previews of June are pretty dismal.  I also bought two dress patterns from Hot Patterns catching their 20% off sale, which runs through the end of the month.  I run hot and cold with them. The fitting seems to so uneven across the line.   That's one of the things I've loved about Burda, the fit consistency was better than average.  I love wearing easy dresses in the summer.  We don't have ac and the loft I work and sew in gets pretty hot.  Dresses are comfortable and cool.  I was looking for semi fitted dresses and decided on these two.  The Plain and Simple Dress and Top for some lovely linen I've got and maybe even a casual LBD in some silk linen blend I have. 

I have two pieces of fabric in search of a dress and I think that this one will fill the bill, finally.  The shorter version with the v neck would work for me better than the round neck or the maxi dress. I can see that one getting caught in the wheels on my chairs. 

How many unmade patterns do you own?  I have quite a few, but that doesn't count the Burda Style magazine patterns I haven't made.  The cheap sales make it easy to succumb to patterns that really don't either work for our bodies or our lifestyles.  I've been trying to be more discriminating lately so that I might actually make them up!

Here are my picks.  This is not to say that I didn't like some of the others quite a bit, but these meet my criteria of fitting my lifestyle and being flattering or at least having the potential for looking great on me.  I am very careful to buy patterns that work on  my body, not patterns that I love but won't love my body. All those unmade patterns in my drawers have taught me a lesson.  Finally.

The round neck on this isn't the best for me, but I wanted the 3 piece sleeve and the jacket instructions.  I will have to take a look at Chanel and see how I can change this to make it more flattering for me.  I don't think that I'll get to this one until late summer for fall.

I wasn't interested in the fuller top, but this princess seam version looks interesting as well as flattering.

Finally, I bought this peplum blouse a style I've been looking for to knock off a blouse I have up on my idea board.  I like the second view in this one as well.  The high round neck has to change though.

I've got fabric in my stash for most of these and that's good for the budget.  
Add pants from my tnt pattern, a skirt or two and at least one more cardigan and you have  my spring sewing goals.  The leather jacket is on hold till summer for fall. I've got some reservations about the neckline on that one so I'll have the summer to decide.

The Never Ending Quest

Hubris does come back to haunt you and in the case of making jeans it's certainly bit me on the ass.  I was so sure that I could make a better fitting pair than the jeans from Net a Porter I posted some time back.  Quite a while back. 

I started out with copying a rtw pair that was too small but I thought had fit me nicely.  Enlarging them seemed to focus on how they really hadn't fit as well as I thought they had.  I guess I was just willing to accept less perfection from a pair that was really just ok as long as I didn't have to make them.  The front was fine, but the back had my usual problems due to a flat low seat.
I chucked those and decided that of the many jeans patterns I owned I'd make the Hot Patterns dressy jean.  It had that L shaped crotch that fit me and after all my tnt pants started out as the Razor Pant from Hot Patterns.  Enter many, many muslins and two pairs that were supposed to be finals.  The  black corduroy I posted were great in the front, but way too short in the back and pulled down uncomfortably. The  pants ended up with a really pointed back crotch and when I cut it off it made the back crotch too short, and if I didn't cut it off it made the front crotch look like this:

This is what the back crotch ended up looking like as I tried to get more room in the back crotch so that the pants wouldn't pull down when I sat.  

The back didn't look bad, unless you count the fact that they were just too low at the waist.
I've put them aside for the time being while I figure out what I want to do.  I've gotten so far from the original pattern, which by the way also had this very point back crotch, that I am considering starting over with another pattern.  But not now.  It's taken too much of my time and a lot of denim.  I need clothing for spring and summer so I am going to give it a rest and try again later.  I may even go shopping and try to find a pair that I can live with.
If anybody has a pattern recommendation that works for a flat low rear end do let me know.


I leave you with my pile of rejects and this isn't even all of them!

Variations on a Theme Part II

Lots of sewing has been going on, mostly for  my unexpected trip to Austin to see Alex and spend her birthday together. My wonderful husband surprised me with tickets and I was there last week during prime wildflower viewing.  The bluebonnets were spectacular.  After she picked me up at the airport we went to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower center.  It's a must see if you are in Austin.  I've always wanted to see the blue bonnets in bloom and this year they've had some respite from the drought and the wild flowers were everywhere.  Here we are in a field of blue bonnets at the Center.  I've got on another version of my tnt t shirt in a coated gold knit.  It's not like the metallic knits that I've gotten from EOS where the yarns are metallic, but it seems to be a printed light metallic gold on a beige rayon knit.  Not as drapey but nice for a t shirt.  I'm wearing it with a new pair of black pants from my tnt pants pattern not that you can see them all that well here, but there's nothing different from the last 6 pairs. It's fast and easy to make garments from a tnt pattern and I choose to make a very simple fly front pant without details that add to my hips.  However, these are a cotton lycra and  cut them out with a pair in a cotton acetate brocade without lycra and the non stretch pair fit better, perfect in fact.  It just proves that you really do have to fit as you sew even if you've made the pattern a dozen times.  Every fabric sews up differently.  

I've been trying to sew from stash lately but this brocade was a new purchase from a recent FM sale.  Half off a selected group of brocades and this one caught my eye.  The black and white floral looked very current.  I am wearing it with a top from Tom and Linda Platt in matte jersey from a few years back and another version, this one in a scrumptious cashmere knit from Mood, of Pamela's Pattern drape front cardigan.  I got a lot of use out of this cardigan all week starting out with wearing it over my gold top and black pants from the first picture.  A cold front had come through and it was in the chilly most of the day.  Here I am in front of the bat sculpture next to the Congress Street bridge before we went down to see the bats fly out at dusk from their perches under the bridge.  Pretty cool sight. Austin has the largest urban colony of bats in the world.  


I made two pairs of pants, the gold t shirt and the cardigan for my trip.  They all fit very well in my wardrobe and I wore the cardigan here over pants and a couple of tops from last year.


I took some pictures before I left but never had a change to post.  They are more variations on a theme.  

My completed Missoni cardigan.  I am wearing it with my Hot Patterns dressy jeans in black corduroy.  I am not completely thrilled with these pants.  The front is great, the back I over fitted and it pulls down at the cb.  I am going to make another pair in denim and see if I can't tweek them a bit to fit better.  

You saw this twin set on my dress form.  I think it looks better on me.  Same jeans.

The last piece I made was this nightgown from my tnt t shirt and a beefy cotton knit from EOS.  This has been one of the best things I made this winter because I really needed it and it's wonderful to sleep in.  It is hard and expensive to find a simple, long sleeved nightgown and my dh had been nudging me to make one for months. 

I leave you with a picture of Alex and I out to dinner on her birthday and a close up of the Tom and Linda Platt top Vogue 00P. I don't know why I haven't made another one in a washable fabric because I love it. (this one is in rayon matte jersey).

It was a wonderful trip; a time to see Austin and spend 'girl' time with my daughter.