Friday, April 21, 2017

Sewing: V1530 - Dress for Spring and Summer

This is Vogue Patterns V1530. I love this dress with all its subtle detalils, although it took a bit of fussing to get the fit right. First off, I love the fabric, which are two different colors of this stretch cotton/linen chambray that I got from denverfabrics.com This is the yellow/pink color and this is the olive/black color. I'd buy more of this stuff if they had other colors available. I bought them on a whim because I'm always on the lookout for a good cotton/linen blend. They turned out to be great fabrics with a soft hand, great texture and weight, with the perfect amount of stretch for a woven. Also, the two colors looked great together. Winning!

I made quite a bit of small adjustments for the fit. I'm not including the photo here, but I did make the blouse version version to get an idea of the fit. The pattern says it is loose-fitting, which was fine for the blouse, but too loose for a stretch woven dress. I added these slanted front darts, some back darts, and took in the back seam a bit. I knew the slanted side seams would be difficult to adjust when completed with the trim so I sewed them with a basting stitch and tried on just the dress body without the yoke to check the fit and then re-sewed with the trim. It turns out I didn't need to adjust those seams because the darts were good enough.I trimmed away about 3/4" from the capped sleeves because they covered too much of my upper arms and seemed too large.

The details that I love most are the front hole, the slanted side seams, and the cross-over back yoke pieces. The upper yoke back required more adjustment that I thought it would. Having two back yoke pieces made it easier to fit after I narrowed the back seam a bit, but I still couldn't get as perfect and smooth a fit as I would have liked.

Here's a photo of the inside of the top front section. The pattern instruction for making the hole was far to complicated for me. What I did was wait until the yoke was complete and then sewed the hole with a piece of facing on the outside front. I then cut the hole and turned the facing to the inside. I machine edge-stitched the hole instead of the hand stitching method in the pattern. Also, you can see that I used a wide facing piece for the top of the dress body instead of a half-lining. My fabric is thick enough not to require lining, and it's hard to find a suitable stretchy lining. A lot of folks use tricot lining but I've never liked it's slimy texture and it never feels good against the skin in hot weather. And one final note -- I just sewed my side seam bands in place and did not use any of the fusing techniques in the pattern.

Wednesday, April 5, 2017

Kakasu Shawl

This is the Kakasu Shawl pattern. I'm not a big fan of shawl knitting, since I don't really like to wear them. However, this one is more of a capelet style which I think I can deal with. Also, I bought some Rowan kidsilk haze yarn on sale at 50% off and I've always wanted to knit some kind of project using kidsilk haze. It's a pain to knit with, but I sort of got used to it. I tried about 4 different types of needles before finding a circular one that I liked with just the right amount of smoothness in the wood along with a smooth join to the cord. It still took longer to knit than other garments with the same amount of yarn.

My version has a different look and feel from the pattern's version. My yarn gives it a much more ethereal look and I don't have stripes to show off the wedges. Since I don't have stripes, I added some eyelets at the last row of each wedge to show off the shape. At the bottom edge, I slipped the first stitch on every row to give it a smoother finish. At the neckline, I added a neckband in garter stitch that is folded over to the inside for a double thickness. You can't see them in the photos, but I also added a few beads to the neckband. Finally, I added 8 rows of garter stitch at the start and finish to form borders for the front edges.

Here's a photo of the shawl laying flat. It's not a full circle, but it's close.

I'm quite happy with the finished product. It's remarkably warm and I think I can wear this as a cover-up with dressier clothing.