The Sewing Lawyer's latest lawyer's suit

It's not so much that a sewing slump has hit The Sewing Lawyer; but the output has slowed to a crawl as she compulsively knits away the evenings.

So, I am thrilled to announce that the skirt to match my jacket is now finished.  As predicted, with temperatures in the low 20's (C) during the day, this outfit will have to wait until fall to be really enjoyed.   But I put it on to take some low-light pictures.

Does this look like a lawyer's suit to you?

I need some interesting tops to wear with it.  I like the red colour with the suit, but this top is pretty old.











I've already given you all the interesting construction details.  There's not much more to say about this skirt.  It is straightforwardly lined to the top edge.  I did not do anything fancy to justify the extreme amount of time it took to finish it.  There is no inner corset, and no boning.  This fabric is so soft and cushy and I didn't want to interfere with that.  Besides, it's a little stretchy, always a good quality in a pencil skirt with a high waist.  The skirt should be very comfortable.

I also got lazy in relation to the back walking vent.  Instead of making a concealed vent, properly lined (as per my tutorial here - the most-visited page on this blog, by far), I just folded the vent facings back at the seam line and tacked it invisibly by hand to the facing, leaving a little extra length for ease above the top of the vent.  I mitered the hem and facings for a clean finish but it's practically invisible in this fabric.    

And that is that.

Ta. Da.

I finished the jacket, just in the nick of time as temperatures plummeted (frost warnings three nights in a row) so I could actually wear it.  The entire suit, alas, will have to wait until fall, since I will be lucky to finish it this coming weekend and surely it will be unsuitably wintry garb after the long weekend in May (Canadian tradition demands that one shift mentally to spring after this holiday which nominally celebrates the Queen's birthday).

Anyway, here it is.  The photo of the front  is pretty bad due to bright light conditions and camera operator ineptitude.  I darkened it but unfortunately, the jacket looks kind of drab.  It isn't, in real life.  I'm wearing it with these pants. The fabric leftover from making them supplied the contrast for the piping and buttonholes.  Therefore they must "go with" this jacket perfectly.






Speaking of those details, here's a closeup of the jacket front.  As I said in my last post, I was very pleasantly surprised by how smoothly the piping insertion went.  Shortage of fabric meant that the bias strips were pieced.  The piping is therefore marginally thicker in a couple of spots, which are however functionally invisible if you follow the 6 foot rule.*

Buttons are plastic with silver metallic inserts.  The lining is Bemberg which, as you can see, has a woven-in pattern.  All materials - every last bit - came from stash.

I really am going to finish the skirt very soon, after which I'll record it here, put it lovingly in my closet, and switch to writing about sewing lightweight, airy cotton items.  I have such a thing already cut out, in fact, and am dreaming of white linen jeans...



* If a sewing mistake cannot be seen by the average viewer standing a reasonable distance away, it doesn't exist.

I'm still heeeeeeeere!

Hello.  You may remember me.  I'm The Sewing Lawyer.

Again, I have been busy, in what passes for real life around here.  I have this full time job which takes me away from sewing, knitting and blogging.  Nevertheless I have slowly been making progress on a few fronts, though not blogging, evidently.

Easter sunrise socks

I made some more socks.  I know, yaaawwwn.  But for posterity, they are precisely the same as the last ones; the blue pair (finished in Halifax).  Except obviously they are a very different colour.

On Ravelry, there is a free pattern for a stitch pattern to disguise ugly sock yarn (the Ugly Duckling Socks, if you are on Ravelry).  I kind of wish I had started these socks with a sober solid colour for contrast.  They are (ahem) very bright.  My sole innovation was instead to try to start sock #2 at the same point in the colour progression as sock #1.  This was very unscientific and it only almost worked.  However I consider it close enough.

I'm also knitting another little summer top.  It's a free pattern from Knitty called "Etherial".  I'll save my review for the next post.  For now, This will have to suffice:  Lace weight.  Oy!

I have been sewing too (Yay!).  The suit is somewhat closer to being wearable, and The Sewing Lawyer has done it again folks.  The wool suit will be unwearable once complete, due to a very predictable break out of warmer weather, expected to last for months.  I console myself with the thought of the delightful surprise I will have, come September or so, on rediscovering its pristine, probably unworn newness in my closet.

Sorry for having to feed you with more progress shots.  But the jacket has really taken shape.  It does actually have sleeves, and a (partially completed) lining, but it seems I'm going to make you wait until the thing is completely finished with arms in it.

You can see I inserted piping at CF, around the lapels and collar. I'm really pleased at how easy this turned out to be, and how good it looks.  I thought of using two pieces which would end/overlap at the notch, but then thought I'd first try a single pass, and to my amazement it worked really well.  Much trimming of the bulky fabric, along with strategic clipping and much steam and pressure, was required to get it all to lay flat enough.

BTW, if you haven't already, get a really good iron (I love my Consew gravity feed iron and Reliable board).

Finishing the inside of the bound buttonholes required some mental preparation.  Given how much my fabric ravels (and that I had not used any fusible on the jacket facing), I decided to use silk organza squares to make no-bulk windows in the facing.  I located the corners of the buttonholes by jabbing pins straight through all layers, then double- and triple-checked these by measuring, before using a small stitch length to sew the organza via buttonhole shaped rectangles, clipping and turning.  I have now sewn the facing to the buttonholes from the back, by hand.  And all I can say is that it's a good thing my fabric is all black, and that hand stitches virtually disappear in the fabric of both the jacket and the buttonholes themselves, because it is not all that wonderful a hand-sewing job.

However, onward!

Next I am going to complete the jacket lining, and the jacket will be all done but for the sewing on the buttons.

The skirt is also almost in the home stretch.  I have to assemble the lining, and do the hem.

Maybe I can finish them both today, while there is still some chill in the air?

Various activities - but not so much sewing

Bound buttonholes

Two weeks of blogging silence is due to the fact that I had a trip to Halifax Nova Scotia last week, partly work (for which I had to use valuable potential sewing time to prepare) and partly pleasure.  I did manage to vanquish the bound buttonholes but got very little else done in the sewing department.

The buttonholes will match the piping perfectly because I am using the same black fabric for both.  Considering that this fabric is pretty ravelly the buttonholes weren't too hard to make.  I used my usual technique except that I did not try to press open the teensy tiny seam allowances because the fabric used for the lips is much less bulky than the fashion fabric.  The fashion fabric fills in the lips very nicely and the relatively thin lip fabric doesn't make the buttonholes feel much thicker than the rest of the jacket front.  Nor did I attempt to sew the ends of the buttonholes by machine, since I thought the tiny triangles would disintegrate with the handling that would have had to happen while I wrestled with them at the sewing machine.  Instead I took tiny hand stitches to finish the ends (short sides) of the buttonhole and then hand back-stitched in the ditch to anchor all layers along the long sides.  I think the buttonholes look pretty good (at least from a polite viewing distance).


I took some knitting with me to Halifax since my husband wanted to play in an open session at the Old Triangle Irish pub and knitting on a sock would give me something to do (other than drinking excellent beer) while I listened to the music.  It worked admirably well - I both enjoyed myself and almost finished the sock.  Knitting was even a bit of a conversation starter.  (The Old Triangle is a great pub if you are in need of food/beer/musical entertainment in Halifax.)

This is a very bad picture of the sock, but does sort of prove that we had a partial view of the Halifax Citadel from our hotel room window.

Better depiction of the socks

As I make more socks, I have learned that a snugger fit is better than comfortably loose.  These are the closest fitting socks I have made yet, so much so that I was a bit worried they would be too small.  But the wool relaxes and the fabric stretches slightly when worn so they are very comfortable but do not slide around when putting shoes on.  I immediately started another pair the same.  This is the "Ridgeline" master pattern from Cat Bordhi's New Pathways for Sock Knitters book.

I've also recently started knitting a summer top in lace weight yarn (slubby cotton) which is scary skinny stuff.  So far I have knit about 12cm from the cast on edge which makes it about 40 rows.  It's quite a different knitting experience, not to mention slow going.  Even sock yarn feels very substantial in comparison.

I leave you with a couple of pictures of The Sewing Lawyer, wearing this coat (perfect for a blustery March day), at Peggy's Cove.  I swear it is impossible to take a photograph there that doesn't turn out looking exactly like a post card or a painting by Alex Colville.

Postcard

.

"Alex Colville"

In progress

The overwhelming consensus is that it is not just not a bad thing but actually a good thing to re-visit and re-use a pattern already made.  (I thought so too.)

I finished cutting out the jacket and skirt last night and the biggest left-over bit of my 2m of fabric is about 35 x 45 cm (maybe 1 sq.ft.).  I sure hope I didn't make any mistakes!

I am going to insert black piping at the curved line formed by the pocket edge and front waistband seams, just for fun and because the detail of this line is really rather beautiful but would completely disappear if I didn't do something to make it pop in my dark and textured fabric.  To unite the two pieces, I'll continue the piping at the CF, collar and lapel edges in the jacket.  Or maybe at the horizontal seam...

Here, as a reminder, are the line drawings:


Where do you think piping would best be inserted?

Is it wrong?

The Sewing Lawyer is glad that a couple of readers noticed the little teaser at the very end of her last post.  So here are a few more tidbits.

In stash is this luscious pure wool fabric, purchased for me in Italy by a good friend a few years ago.  She claims to have forgotten giving  it to The Sewing Lawyer.  But she did.  Anyway, here is an extreme close up view of said fabric (there are about 5 little bumps to the inch so you're looking at about 2.25" worth of fabric).

Black, textured, with tiny sprinkles of red, white and green.  It's a little more vibrant in real life.

There are only 2 metres but I can get a suit (jacket and skirt) out of it if I use the pattern for this jacket again.

Pros:  It's a real fabric miser; I've got it fitted perfectly, and it's a cute and wearable shape.

So my question.  Given that I have dozens of patterns for jackets I have never made, is it wrong to make the same one again?