Clothing Engineer

A Few Thoughts From Other Blogs

~ Michelle ~ 10 Comments

This week I want to share a few thoughts I’ve had from reading other blogs.

The first one is from Erin. Do you follow The Sewing and Life Adventures of Emerald Erin? On her June 11th post Erin made an announcement:

“A Special Summer for the Bra-A-Week Challenge!

Hi All! I said earlier this week that I would announce the summer host for the Bra-A-Week Challenge – and here is the announcement!
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I am delighted to announce that the Bra-A-Week Challenge will be hosted by the lovely….

Michelle!
 
 
“Michelle is such a wonderful fellow bra-maker, and I’m sure you’ve all admired her work over the last 21 weeks like I have, and she most generously offered to host the challenge for the months of July and August for me!!”
Thanks, Erin! I’m pretty excited about hosting the challenge, and hoping some of my bra-making friends will join me and sew up a bra or two (or more) along with all the other wonderfully creative sewists who have contributed.  There’s more information on Erin’s blog if you’ve been participating in the challenge already and want to continue. You’ll still send your submissions to Erin. I’ll just be doing the write-up and posting it.
It’s great that the challenge will continue over the summer months!
This next blog comment I want to make really has nothing whatsoever to do with sewing – or does it? My good friend, Valerie over at Intricate Knits has been blogging about and telling me about her favorite author for years now. She just recently posted some scarves she designed that were inspired by Susanna Kearsley’s novel A Desperate Fortune. You can see Valerie’s designs here. After seeing the scarves, and having heard so much about Susanna, I decided I’d get A Desperate Fortune and read it myself.
This photo is from Valerie’s blog and shows a couple of the designs Susanna’s book has inspired. Valerie does such beautiful work. Check out her blog, and if you see something you love, she sells her beautiful creations on Etsy.
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Aren’t these lovely?  This morning as I came into my sewing room, I didn’t even want to sew! I wanted to get back into A Desperate Fortune. So far, I have to say, I can recommend Valerie’s favorite author as well.
Happy creating!

My First Barb Pants… Not Quite Finished

~ Michelle

When we were having our early Christmas, I was spending a little time with my son and he asked me if I could just do what I wanted, what would I do? I’d sew!  If only I had time to just sew…

Being a curvy girl means pants and I don’t always get along. Until a few years ago when they came out with curvy styles of pants, they were one of my most dreaded clothing pieces. I hated having to shop for new pants because they weren’t going to fit anyway. Any curvy girls out there who know that large gap at the back of the waistband? However, pants are fitting much better now that manufacturers have realized woman aren’t all straight up and down.

Hearing how difficult pants were, I’d stayed away from them. Even though I’d made maternity pants for myself ever so long ago. I just figured they were ‘hard’, and I didn’t want to even think about it.

However, I needed pants, so I went shopping for a new pair of pants. I wanted a casual dress pant. And I did find a pair. However, they were $60, thin and static-y. I started thinking back a few months ago and how if I signed up for the Style Arc newsletter, I’d get a free Barb pant pattern. I had signed up and had the pattern. So I bargained with my hubby. Instead of buying a pair of pants, how about you let me buy material to make a few pair. He thought it made sense.

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Here’s the Barb Pant. The photo is from Style Arc. Click here to take you to the free download.

This free pattern comes as a digital download. That’s not a problem. I’ve worked with digital patterns before. But this time, for some reason, I really didn’t like working from the paper pattern. It was so stiff. It’s possible that because it’s a lot longer than the apron pattern I’d done before, it was just a lot more cutting. For my next pair, I’ll trace the pattern off onto tissue paper for cutting.

Style Arc are also very generously in that they give you three sizes. I wasn’t quite sure, so I ordered what I thought would be closest to my size and then one up and one down from that. And the sizing is spot on.

I sewed up a first draft in some Ponte I have. It was one of those purchases that I wondered about afterwards. I don’t love the color and don’t even know if I’ll ever wear that color. So why did I buy it? Well, I bought it because they didn’t have the color I wanted. However, it was perfect for a muslin of the pants.

Before I got to sewing, I took out my favorite pants and drew off a quick clone of them to compare to the pattern. That helped me right away to know how much to shorten the pants.

I must say, as a first draft, they fit quite well. I did take in the waist elastic as that was too big. But that’s quite normal for me. Another alteration that is still in the works is to take out a little extra fabric at the back, just below the waistband. But other than that, the fit is really good.

Pinned on Catherine

Here are the pants pinned to Catherine – just to show how they’re coming along. This was also before I took the waist in. I’d read Anne of Clothing Engineer had to do the same. You can read about that here. Another alteration I made was to shorten the height of the waistband. The pattern calls for 2-inch elastic, and I know I don’t have that much room. I’m curvy and short.

So, in the photo, my band has some wrinkles before I fixed the elastic, and after taking two inches out, it has more. When the pants are not on, they have a sweat pant look to me. I’m not in love with the waistband as it is. So, I’ve removed it and will re-do that this week.

on Catherine with top

And again on Catherine, this time with the top untucked – like I wear most things. I can’t see that waistband. Even though I will likely wear the pants untucked most of the time, I still wanted a cleaner look on the waistband. So I will make the band 1 size smaller, and the elastic 2 sizes smaller and it should look better.

These still need to be hemmed; next week when they’re done, I’ll put on some Spanx and show them to you on me.

I do have a pair of pants that I don’t use. Again, one of those ‘I don’t like the material’. But I did love the style. It was the waistband that sold me on them. It has a crisscross front. I love little details like that. So out came my seam ripper this week and after I’d removed the Barb pants waistband, I removed the other waistband.

There is still a little more work to be done on these, but they’re coming along a lot better than I had thought.

Happy creating.

One More Fantasie Clone

~ Michelle

I was so close on that last bra. And at this point, I do have a drawer full of bras I can wear that mostly fit. But I must admit, I am like a dog with a bone when I want to figuring something out – and getting that perfect fit is my objective.

I’d recently read something very encouraging from Annele, the founder of MakeBra said:

“An older lady, who was running her own lingerie business only few years ago, told me that you need at least twenty test fitting sessions before the bra pattern is ready to go.”

You can read about it here. Oh, that was such a relief to read. Then I’m not obsessed, or a terrible sewer. Whew!

Thankfully, at one time I’d bought the same Fantasie bra, but one size bigger. I think it was one size bigger. For example, what would be the size difference between a 34D and a 34DD? The only charts I have are from Bra Makers Supply, and they don’t do the double letters.

Back to the bra. I’d cloned it, and then after wearing it for a little while, gave it to a friend because I found it a bit loose in the upper cup. However, I was thinking this size would be perfect  with the firmer Duoplex material. All the materials are from Bra Makers Supply.

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Here it is. I think it shows the cups are a little fuller than the last bra. And just because the cups are fuller, it doesn’t show here how the bridge is really narrow at the top. The channeling and wires completely overlap at the top of the bridge. And the bridge goes all the way back!

As much as I loved the thin ribbon on the original Fantasie Vivienne, I couldn’t find anything in a beige or tan, only white. So I went with some bows I had for this bra.

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Here is a picture from the inside to show the wires and channeling overlapping at the top. It’s a bit tricky to sew this. What I do is sew the first channel down completely, and then the second channel is only sew down completely at the top and on the inside seam.

On the outside seam where the channeling pieces are overlapping, I do not sew it completely. There’s only maybe 2 cm opening where it is not sewn on the outside of the channeling. It has to be left open on the outside there so the wire can slide through that lower channeling.

On the top piece of channeling, I sew up to the outer seam line on the lower channeling, and it makes an attractive inverted V-shape in the stitching on the front of the bridge.

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And here is the back. I reduced this to make it a 2 hooks and eyes set again. This is how the original RTW bra came, so I wanted to do that again. It’s a wonderfully comfortable bra – and the bridge goes all the way back except for a tiny bit at the very top after I’ve been wearing it for a bit. It looks like I’ll be shortening my wires by 1/4″. But at least I’ll still have a full bridge.

Now I have a pattern that really works for me, the next thing I want to do is to take this pattern and use it to figure out what size I’d want to make in all my other patterns – the Sewy Rebecca, and the Pin-Up Girls Shelley and Classic, and the Merckwaerdigh E-BHST2 and E-CUPL 16.

And now I have one more pattern in my collection to try – Norma from Orange Lingerie just released a bra pattern! The Marlborough bra pattern. You can find the pattern at Orange Lingerie’s Etsy shop.

Happy creating!