Taking on a technical challenge - Tide Loop Top knitted by machine

At left, my latest machine knitting project. This is a mostly self drafted top that is based on a hand knitting pattern that references the ripples left in wet sand by departing waves.

At right is the inspiration, the Tide Loop Top pattern by Other Loops. 

But I wanted to make it by machine, to use different yarn and to reimagine the shape.

The original pattern called for two yarns to be knitted together - one alpaca, the other a blend of linen and cotton. I chose a mystery cone of yarn from stash, which I think is cotton. It wanted to be knit at a much smaller gauge (30s x 41r in 10cm) than the pattern called for (24s x 32r), but it was more or less the colour of sand. 

I completely redesigned the shape of the top. The original has a deep scoop at the back and is quite high in the front. Mine has a reasonable scoop at front and is quite high in the back.  

I used the pattern (sort of), knitting size XL to get a circumference approximating size S. But above the armholes, I made up the shaping as well as the patterning. 

My edges are also different from the pattern. It called for a sewn hem and I did ribbing. It called for the neck and armhole openings to be finished with 3 rows of stockinette that would roll towards the RS. I finished these edges with iCord, knitted by machine.

Knitting it took a while (read on to understand why) but I am super satisfied with this project!

What was the technical challenge?

The defining characteristic of the fabric of the Tide Loop Top is the uneven horizontal stripes of reverse knitting, creating irregular textured stripes or ripples. In this top, most of the stitches have their purl side facing out, but the recessed stripes are the opposite (knit side facing). This apparently simple texture is quite hard to create on a knitting machine. Purls have to become knits, but not an entire row at a time. And the patterning is quite irregular across the rows as well as between the rows of recessed stripes. The in and out texture combined with the irregularity means that this is the hardest type of fabric to knit on a domestic knitting machine.*

The U100E is a tool that helps make this type of texture. It is a transfer carriage. All it does is move stitches from needles on one bed of the machine to needles on the opposite bed. Once moved, the (formerly) "knit" stitch can be worked as a "purl" or vice versa.

It works with Passap knitting machines. It didn't come with my machine, and I no longer remember where/how I purchased it or, for that matter, how long it had sat on a shelf. I had bought it, but I had never used it.

In more detail (possibly TLDR, you can skip to the next section if you want)

The Passap is a "true" double bed knitting machine, which means it has two functionally identical beds of needles that sit at a fixed angle. Each bed is equipped with almost 200 latch hook needles. 

The beds are oriented as in this diagram.

Because the hooks of the needles on one bed face in the opposite direction from those on the other, stitches made on one bed are the physical reverse of the stitches made on the other. One side makes the knits and the other side makes the purls. 

On a double bed machine, you can use needles on two beds (as in the diagram) to knit a tube - first the machine knits all the needles on one bed and then it knits all the needles on the other bed, and then it repeats. This is the same as knitting in the round in hand knitting. 

Or you can use both beds at the same time to make a ribbed fabric. This involves knitting a few stitches on one bed and then a few on the other and repeating so that the yarn zigs and zags between the two beds along a single row. You can do the same thing with hand knitting needles. There will be some knits, and then some purls, and some more knits and purls along the knitted piece. 

When knitting by hand, it's quite easy to make fabric that isn't ribbing, but has a texture created by both knits and purls in a single row. You can work either a knit or a purl into any stitch along the needle. You can do this either in the round, or when turning the knitting between rows. Garter stitch is made with only the knit stitch, but when you turn the knitting and work knitted stitches on the back side of the fabric, you are always working a knit stitch into a purl stitch (the back of a knit stitch).  

Making some knit/some purl fabric (other than ribbing, which lines the knits and purls up vertically) is not at all straightforward on a machine. You need a mechanism for transforming a stitch (physically turning it around so what was front is back, or vice versa). This can be done completely manually - unravel the knit stitches that you want to be purls, hook them up backwards and rehang. Or you can use a double eye transfer tool to switch stitches, one by one, from one bed to the other. 

If you want to knit garter stitch (knit rows and purl rows alternate) you can use a garter bar to flip the fabric, physically, before knitting every single row. Other, more complex types of patterning can be done automatically with a garter carriage (only Brother machines). Or, if you have a Passap, you can use the U100E to transfer all the stitches in a row to the opposite bed, or just some of them.

For all readers

This knitting project provided a perfect opportunity to finally learn how to use my U100E. 

This wasn't entirely smooth, at first. The U100E initiates a physical process requiring some pressure and determination. There are a series of steps that had to be completed in order to do the transfer. There were a series of things that could go wrong. It liked me when I approached the task with confidence. Even pressure, proper alignment of the beds and assertive movement of the carriage from side to side, and the U100E would bend to my will. Any hesitation, and I, or the stitches, or the needles themselves, could be lost. After the transfer was complete, I had to make sure that all empty needles were removed from working position. Then I had to remember to actually knit a row before setting up for the next one. 

My swatch (at right, especially the first bit at the bottom) looked pretty bad. 

But it turns out that repetition does eventually turn into knowledge and/or skill. I dropped fewer stitches, had to un-knit fewer rows, and generally got a better result as I continued to use the U100E. 

At the end of the day, I have a nice tank top with an interesting texture. 

* Of course, there are knitting machines used by manufacturers that have automated knitting for this type of thing. They are far out of reach, price wise, of the average hobby knitter. 

A retired lawyer's dress ensemble

As a retired person, I'm still trying to figure out what my new "look" is. For years, it was tailored. Suits, separates, dresses and coordinating jackets. Now it's ... what? Comfy clothes? Well yes, but I don't want this to be obvious. For years, at least since the pandemic, I've been trending to "secret pajamas". More stretch, more function, less structure. But I still like a well-constructed outfit. 

Enter my new dress and "jacket" ensemble, my latest foray into non-tailored separates.

This is the new Jenna shirt from Closet Core, coupled with the Rova dress from Jalie. 

As you know, if you are a regular reader, I've made a few big shirts recently. I think these function really well as jackets in warmer weather. Something to ward off the chill in an air conditioned interior, or on a patio on a cooler evening. 

However, I hadn't loved the patterns I had tried. The Phen shirt is deeply unsatisfactory on a number of levels even though I still love some of its details. The Olya shirt is no better, from a pattern drafting perspective. Don't get me wrong. I wear the garments I made from these patterns. They work (the Olya more so than the Phen, which is just awkward) for the wearable jacket stand-in ward-off-the-chill purpose. But I didn't love sewing them.

Enter Jenna. This is just a breath of fresh air after the mannered or even contorted drafts of the other patterns. It is a standard shirt. But it is a "big" shirt. It is wider and longer than a standard tailored shirt. It has a lovely collar with stand (2 piece) that fits really well. The pattern has a separate under collar piece, and the seam allowances for these small pieces is reduced to 1 cm. The method for constructing the collar is really good! I appreciate the attention to detail that has gone into these decisions.

The shirt has deep shirt tails with a little triangle of reinforcement. It has a placket that looks really professional. It's all provided for in this pattern. I actually shortened the shirt by 5cm and think I could have reduced the length even more without losing the "big shirt" vibe.

I made this shirt from linen - actually a remnant from another sewer that I acquired for a measly $10 (CAD) at the Fabric Flea Market in May. It has an interesting and very irregular stripe with build in texture. I was delighted when I discovered a coordinating remnant in my own stash of yellow linen - from a dress I probably made in about 2005. There was enough of this plainer weave to make the Rova dress (with pockets) and to use for the details in my shirt (including the under collar, collar stands, plackets and yoke lining).

And enough left over for the Rova too, even though I almost screwed it up!

Rova has a pocketed and non-pocketed view, as well as a tunic length. The pieces required for the pocketed skirt are the front skirt (with pocket cut-out), the back skirt and the tunic length FRONT pieces (with and without the cut out). Well, after a glass of wine, I cut out the tunic length of the back, which is narrower than the front. 

Further (also after the aforementioned glass of wine) I realized I needed to cut a back seam due to lack of fabric and that I could put the seam along the selvedge, but failed to notice that the selvedge was MUCH wider than the seam allowance I was adding. 

Oops! I did not have extra fabric to re-cut for either mistake. 

I was able to finesse the pocket issue by splitting my too-narrow pocket piece in the middle and sewing two vertical seams that split the kangaroo pocket (as designed) into two still very large pockets. Honestly, this is probably an improvement, from a functional perspective.

Betcha can't see it...

I fixed the too-narrow back by cutting a strip that sits between the front and back skirt pieces at the side seam. I can now (a couple of weeks later) barely remember this fix, which is really quite invisible. As you can (or may not be able to) see at right.

The Rova, like most Jalie patterns, is carefully drafted with great details and finishes supplied in the instructions. In the case of this dress, you finish the neck and armhole edges with self fabric bias strips. The pattern includes a piece for cutting the bias and tells you precisely how long each piece should be. No guessing; it turns out perfect!

Finally, in keeping with the fact that everything else in this outfit is a remnant, I knitted a length of i-cord using left-over yarn from this knitting project instead of using purchased cord or sewing a fabric belt. A deep stash is truly a wondrous thing! I only had to buy the pattern and some buttons for the shirt. 

The completed Olya Shirt - along with some more observations about the drafting and instructions

 

Aaaaand here it is. 

Disclaimer - the shirt might look better if I had chosen a drapier fabric, perhaps linen. This is fairly stiff chambray from deep stash (chosen to test the pattern and not because I love it) and I doubt it's pure cotton. However, this fabric, being less forgiving, highlights some features (issues) of this pattern arising from the unusual draft.

I could also probably have chosen nicer buttons in a better colour but ... stash. I have a million of these. 

So let's talk about these features.

After I let loose my frustrations regarding the pockets, I moved on to the "interesting" task of assembling the sleeve/yoke/body combination. 

The back pattern pieces (yoke and lower back) look about how you'd expect for any shirt pattern. However, the lower front and yoke/sleeve combo do not.

You can see how the yoke piece and lower front join up above the pockets. And that inside corner? Well, it wraps around the shoulder seam and armscye edge of the back yoke piece. And then, the sleeve does a bit more wrapping under the arm until the pointy bit at the top in this image joins along the veeerrrrry tiny armscye curve of the lower front and then operates as a continuation of that yoke seam. It extends right to the shirt cuff. 

So there are a couple of tricky bits of sewing associated with this. The first is joining the inner corner of the yoke/sleeve piece to the outer corner of the back yoke. 

I have joined this type of seam many times in my sewing career. In fact, there was the same type of inside outside corner in the dart of one of the first dresses I ever made. 

Until now, the instructions I've seen go like this: 1. Sew a line of stay stitches just inside the seam line (on the piece with the inner corner) for a few cm either side of the corner. 2. Clip from the inner corner up to the pivot point of the stitching, but without cutting the thread. 3. Line up the pieces with the edges even. Sew along the seam line, pivoting at the corner. 

Sometimes, especially if the inner corner is sharper than 90 degrees, you are told to reinforce this with a tiny square of bias cut fabric. Here is a Style Arc tutorial adopting this method and one from Threads Magazine. 

A key element is that during sewing, the stay-stitched inner corner is on top so you can see what you're doing. I usually put a pin at the pivot point and sew (carefully) right to the pin before removing it and (with needle down) turning the corner. Or you can do this in two passes, as Kenneth King instructed for Threads Magazine.

Cranky old lady warning!

I do not understand why the Paper Theory abandoned this tried/true approach in their instructions for the Olya Shirt.  

They tell you instead to sew this seam without any form of stabilization for the inner corner. Moreover, they think you ought to sew it with the yoke (outer corner) on top. Sew merrily along until you get to the (concealed) pivot point. Then, with needle down, "rotate the whole garment until the next seam is lined up in front of the presser foot in the correct position to sew. You will then need to cut a small slash line from the inside of the bottom corner. Don't cut it right to the needle, stop about 1-2 mm away from the needle."

The photo is from Paper Theory's sew along tutorial.

No thank you. The likelihood of sewing in a hard little pleat or (worse) leaving a small hole at this critical point is far too high. 

The other "interesting" bit in the Olya pattern is its very small (really vestigial) front armscye. This is a truly atypical underarm/armscye. 

In a typical garment (illustrated at left) the lower front armscye and the lower back armscye may look a bit different but they each feature a right angle corner at the side seam. Once the seam is sewn, there is a smooth continuous curve under the arm. 

Then the armscye continues its curve up towards the shoulder. In the front, the inset of the armscye recognizes that your arms take up space at the side of your body, typically more space in the front than the back. Moreover, they move most naturally forward. So the inward curve of the front armscye lets your arms move naturally while you are wearing the garment. 

In the Olya, the lower back armscye looks pretty normal. 

However, the armscye in the lower front is a really tiny and barely curved indent. It looks nothing like the back. When you sew the side seams, the front armscye is so minimal that it practically disappears. Where there would usually be a somewhat horizontal curve under the arm in a typical garment, in the Olya there is an acute angled corner. 

In the photo at left, the lower front pattern piece is sitting on top of the lower back. The front armscye is barely there.

Initially I thought it would be impossible to sew these two pieces together to produce any kind of armscye that would work. The front armscye curve is so shallow that it's less than the 1cm seam allowance in depth. In other words, if you ran the side seam straight up from the bottom of this curve, you would still be sewing on the fabric of the front yoke. 

I went to the trouble of drawing the seam lines on both pieces and measuring the length of the entire armscye seam and comparing it to the length of the sleeve cap seam from the pivot point. They matched, so I proceeded, suspending judgment.

At right is a photo of the two pattern pieces with the side seams aligned, on top of the actual shirt body after the side seams were sewn. 

See what I mean about an acute corner under the arm?

To sew the sleeve around that corner without puckering was not easy. If memory serves, I did a line of stay stitching along the armscye and then I needed to clip into the bottom of the underarm "curve" near the side seam to facilitate sewing the relatively much shallower curve of the sleeve. 

The last thing to do in assembling the shirt body is to sew the rest of the yoke/sleeve seam. 

The lengths of these pieces matched (thankfully) but the front yoke/sleeve nevertheless seems to me to have too much fabric relative to the back. Have a look at these photos of the shirt when it is spread flat on the floor.

This first picture is lined up just like the line drawings in the pattern. The front yoke is perfectly flat. The lower back sleeve wraps up under the armscye to the lower edge of the perfectly on-grain edge of the front yoke/sleeve piece. 

But notice where the side seam is. It has wrapped around to the front of the shirt. The line drawing does not show this happening. Presumably, the illustration is meant to show the shirt folded flat along the side seam.

If I reconfigure the shirt so it is folded along the side seam, see what happens in the front yoke? It bubbles. It will not lie flat. This seems to me to demonstrate that the upper front of this shirt body/sleeve is actually wider than the back. 

Which would be exactly opposite to the usual human body (anyway, mine), which needs more width in the back than the front (because arms typically sit forward of the midline and mostly move forward).  

Maybe the pattern could be adjusted so that the front yoke/sleeve seam would be shorter than the back sleeve seam. Or maybe there could be some kind of fisheye dart that would remove fabric in a vertical line from the point of my shoulder down to the bottom of the front armscye. 

OH WAIT! That would start to look like a conventional sleeve/armscye combination. Which would kind of miss the apparent point of the Olya Shirt pattern.

Which brings me to the question. So Olya, what about the fit? 

Well, it's a baggy shirt. Which is as advertised. I will probably wear it open most of the time, as an overshirt. 

It looks OK. I like the collar. The cuffs/plackets turned out well. The length is right.

But there's definitely extra fabric in the front sleeve/shoulder area. It generates diagonal folds in the sleeves. Even when I am sort of trying to hold my arm out straight and slightly back I can't really get the yoke to lie flat.

The sleeves are too long for me, but this is normal. I can roll them up, and probably will. I could shorten them, if there's to be a next time. 

The back looks like a normal loose fitting shirt. 

By the way, I sized down and made the smallest size (6) even though my bust is closer to the body measurements for size 8 and my hips are closer to size 10. 

The final verdict is that I do not love the Olya Shirt anywhere near as much as some others apparently do. It is merely OK. Too bad. 

Oh dear - Paper Theory Olya shirt pattern

So I'm making the Olya Shirt pattern in trial fabric found in stash. As with my last foray into indie shirt-land, I fell for this pattern as a result of seeing really lovely versions on line. Such as this one, from Love, Lucie.

I'm not finished yet, but felt moved to write about my experience wrestling with making the pockets as per the instructions. On further investigation, I realized that the vast majority of the versions out there (not Lucie's) had omitted them. Hmmm there must be a reason for that?

Yes! There is! The pocket instructions are (to put it charitably) almost incomprehensible as well as physically very difficult to accomplish. And yes, I do realize that there are tutorials and videos out there. Even on the Paper Theory website. But they did not help. 

This doesn't need to be so, surely. The first time I made a blouse with pockets of this type was in the 1970s, using a Vogue American Designer pattern (#2281, Scott Barrie). I remade the same blouse in 2013. I sewed these pockes with French seams! Both times! With no problems!

The key difference between the Vogue pattern and the Olya shirt is that the Vogue pocket bags were cut on to both the yoke and lower front pieces, whereas the Olya shirt has separate square pocket pieces that have to be sewn to the yoke and lower front pieces. 

So the Vogue instructions (pictured) were to sew these pieces together around the pocket bag. When assembled, the lower front pocket folds down, the upper pocket hangs down, and the seam allowances lie nice and flat all around the pocket and the yoke seam, pressed towards the hem of the shirt. The pocket is very fluid because there is no seam along its upper edge. 

That's not what happens in the Olya shirt. Because it has separate pocket pieces, there are two separate seams at the top of the pocket. One seam is between the lower front and the pocket bag sewn to the lower front, and it is edge stitched on the pocket bag side and folded in on itself (seam allowances caught between the lower front and pocket bag. 

The other attaches the second pocket bag piece to the yoke. The Olya illustrations say that after sewing these seams and understitching the lower front pocket bag, you are to sew the pocket itself WRONG sides together (sewing right up to the upper edge of the pocket bag) and then turn the pocket so the seams are enclosed within it. Then you are to sew the yoke seams (either side of the pocket opening). And then, somehow, you press the seam so that all seam allowances are ABOVE the pockets, where they will later be topstitched in the manner shown in the line drawing. 

Okay, but this (at right) is what happens if you sew the pocket bags wrong sides together all the way to the top of the pocket bag, and then turn the pocket so the seams are enclosed within it, and then sew the yoke seam to either side.

We're looking at the yoke/pocket seam. The lower front/pocket seam is underneath. The pocket is to the top right of the photo and the yoke piece is on the lower left. 

There is some nasty folding/wrinkling happening at the junction between the pocket bag and the yoke seam. There is no way that little sucker is going to lie nice and flat, even with careful pressing (which I admit to not having done for this photo).

Now the instructions say that you "might" need to clip into the seam allowance "for this to lay all flat and in place". But they are much less than clear as to what exactly you need to clip. Clipping wasn't going to solve the entire problem. Plus, as far as I could tell, the instructions wanted me to clip into the exact point where the yoke seam and pocket opening joined. I was worried this would weaken this critical point. 

My fears were not allayed by further investigation on the Paper Theory website, which has a long set of tutorials on sewing this shirt. Here is their photo - sewing that seam after clipping right to that point without leaving a little hole at a critical point is not going to be easy. 

So what did The Sewing Lawyer do?

The first step was to unpick the sewn-wrong-sides-together pocket bag. While I can appreciate the beauty of a pocket that has no cut edges visible on the inside, I couldn't see the point here, especially since the cut edges are not enclosed by a second line of stitching around the pocket bags. Rather, the seam allowances would be inside the pocket. I'd rather have them on the inside of the shirt. 

The second was to serge the yoke seam edges because my fabric frays and I wasn't sure I was going to get a second chance. 

Then I sewed the pockets right sides together, serged the pocket bag edges, and considered. 

As you can see, the inner pocket bag (attached to the upper yoke) is lying nice and flat with its upper edge above the yoke seam. But the seam itself is open. What did I need to clip to get the seams to lie flat so they could be pressed up, ABOVE the yoke seam?

Just this. So simple. Clip into the seam allowance of the lower front piece, a bit to the side of the pocket opening. No stress on any critical point. No bubbles. No worries. Why couldn't Paper Theory just say so?

Another pair of Shop Pants

 

"Muslin"

I'm pretty sure that loosely woven wool tweed isn't a suitable muslin fabric for a pair of jeans, but whatever. I was confident enough of the fit of the Shop Pants pattern to go ahead and cut it out of rigid denim this time. I'm much happier with these than my expression would suggest. 

Silly me, it was only when I got to the step of sewing the side seams (FYI that's after finishing the front and back pockets and the fly, and stitching and topstitching the inseam and crotch seam) that I discovered I had not fully adjusted my revised pattern and the side seams didn't match! The front was approximately 2.5 cm longer than the back. 

Whoops! But The Sewing Lawyer does not easily back down when confronted with a sewing setback.

I briefly considered redoing the back with a narrow yoke but then figured I could shorten the front a tiny bit at CF and more at the side seam (like maybe 1cm), and then sewing the waistband on with a really uneven seam allowance (normal 1/2" in front, much less in back) and it would all come out in the wash.

And so it was, although honestly, when seated I feel like I could use that extra bit of length in the crotch depth, at least until the denim does its thing and stretches out. (For future reference, self, I adjusted the paper pattern to add enough length in the back so it matches the front.)

And so I have new jeans! These are absolutely rigid, very dark indigo (blue fingers dark). The pocket bags and waistband facing are leftover fabric from my newest pajamas. As you can see in the photo at right.

I didn't even think about trying to make a buttonhole in the waistband. I just got my trust Dritz heavy duty snap pliers out, and went to it. First time! I love these snaps.

I'm happy with the fit and shape of these jeans. They look good in the front and (if I say so myself) in the back as well. 

It's curtains!

These colourful PJs are a much nicer product, IMHO, than the extremely badly sewn curtain panels the crazy print used to be. The cotton fabric is courtesy of my husband, the expert thrifter. He texted me a photo and I responded "buy immediately!"

The striped fabric was also originally intended for home dec, but it was unused yardage, also sourced at a thrift store. I loved the combination, which I think works because of the black and white stripes bounding the squares in the print. 

If not, it works because ... they're pajamas! Mostly I'll be wearing them in the dark and under the covers. 

This is the relatively new release Closet Core Fran pattern. I've really liked many of their stand alone patterns and am amassing quite a collection. 

Which reminds me - I still intend to make more Pietra pants. Must shop the stash... 

Anyway, back to Fran. 

This is designed as a pajama pattern, but it would make a perfectly lovely shirt and pants combo for day wear. I think it's very versatile, style-wise. 

The pieces are quite boxy by comparison with the other pajamas from Closet Core, the Carolyn pattern. Carolyn has a shapely top with curved collar, lapels and shirt tail. The pants are low rise, as designed (not as made by me, however) and have front pockets. Fran has a convertible collar, a back yoke and generous box pleat in the shirt, and wide, elastic-waisted, straight legged pants with pockets in the side seams (as designed). It has deep cuffs and hems, and a faced slit at the side seams. As you will know from this blog, I didn't love the Carolyn's collar shape and I drafted a simpler convertible collar for it. The Fran is more to my liking straight out of the envelope. 

Fran comes in "alpha" sizing (XXS, XS, S, M, L etc, up to 4X) rather than numbered sizes. Comparing the size charts, XXS combines sizes 0 and 2, XS combines 4 and 6, S combines 8 and 10 (mostly), etc. I made the top in XS, based on my bust measurement. There's a very generous 21.5 cm (8.5") amount of ease built into the sizing. XXS would have been totally fine.

These pants have a high elastic waist that I think looks really nice due to the topstitching above and below the elastic.

I initially cut the M pants because I'm at the upper end of the hip range for size S, but in construction I decided that they would be WAY too big, so I cut them down. This sacrificed the side seam pockets, but it's not a big hardship because who uses pockets in pajamas anyway. There is a patch pocket in the rear of the pants and another in the shirt if I ever (heaven forfend!) turn into the kind of person who always needs to have a kleenex ready to hand. 

In the result, I am sure I could have cut XS pants and been perfectly happy. In fact, I would cut XXS top and XS bottoms if using this pattern for anything other than PJs. It is a distinct possibility that I'll do just that. 

Washable wool - repurposing stash fabric

Now that the Sewing Lawyer is retired, there are vanishingly few occasions for the wearing of anything resembling a suit, but (surprise!) the stash is full of wool that was bought over the years to match dreams of future office finery. But it's too nice not to use. So I've come around to the idea of more casual wool clothing that won't demand to be dry cleaned. 

My first foray in this field was making a shirt for my son for Christmas. He has recently taken to wearing wool shirts as a work alternative to a jacket and didn't reject the idea of a mom-made version.

I considered using this McCall's unisex shirt pattern from 2003 that I had in my collection but had never used. 

On taking a close look at its shape, I decided to look further. This shirt is seriously boxy, has back pleats and very wide shoulders. 

I spent some quality time with Google, looking for a suitable pattern with a more modern silhouette. I came across mention of the Wardrobe by Me Overshirt pattern. 

While it doesn't have a stand collar, its other features seemed just right. It's a clean silhouette with no back pleats, has a sleeve placket opening in a seam in the sleeve, and the hem is pleasantly curved with side slits. 

I showed my husband two lengths of wool suiting acquired from the stash of a retiring tailor. He thought my son would like the neutral windowpane check better than a length of dark blue that I would have chosen. 

I threw the yardage into the machine for a cold water wash on a regular cycle. It came out slightly fulled. Not only was the fabric slightly thicker, even after a really good steam pressing, but the windowpane lines were pleasantly blurry. It shrank more in the length than the width, so the windowpanes were shorter rectangles than previously. 

Then I was back in the world of matching plaid. Sewing this shirt was straightforward except for the placket opening instructions, which I think I fudged slightly. As usual, the stash came through for everything, except my button collection let me down. 

The shirt fits and he even likes it.

My next project with washed wool is a pair of pants for myself. I had this subtly colourful but very scratchy wool tweed in deep stash. It hardly transformed at all after being washed, to my surprise. 

These pants are the Open Studio Shop Pant. I learned of this indie pattern from reading posts on Instagram about the Top Down Center Out pant fitting technique. I liked the high waist, roomy leg and barrel shaped leg. 

I did all the fitting before Christmas and can barely remember the details, but from comparing the printed pattern with my adjusted tracing, I lowered the back waist and raised the front to fit my tilted pelvis, scooped the back crotch curve a smidge, and graded from size 2 (hip 37.5-39") at hip to size 0 (!!) at the waist. 

I also added 3 cm to the lower leg because I didn't want exposed ankles in these winter pants. They are still shorter than I'm used to.

On the inside, I used a cotton twill for the front pocket bags and fly shield and to face the waistband, which is straight except for a curved bit in the CB and fits surprisingly well. Part way through construction I decided the wool was too scratchy and loosely woven not to be lined, so I added a warm lining (kasha flannel backed satin from stash) to the lower leg seam. I threw this fabric into the washing machine too and can report that it survived the ordeal nicely. 

The resulting pants are very warm and comfy in this cold snap we are having today. 

I think the fit is pretty good. Backside photo as evidence.

Mission accomplished - Dawn jeans

 

Here I am enjoying my new Dawn jeans on a wonderfully sunny, if quite chilly day. Winter is definitely coming, but there are still plenty of leaves on the trees. 

What to say about these?

They are very comfortable. Time and wearing will tell me if I should have made them snugger through the hip. 

I did slightly overreact on the waist seam adjustment as informed by my TDCO fitting experiment. I took something less than 1cm out of the front length and brought the back up by about 1.5cm at the very CB - these are sewn with a 4mm seam allowance at that point in compensation.

The back waist band could stand to be a bit more curved as it is standing away from my body very slightly at that point. Not enough to fret about. Indeed, I predict I will forget about it shortly.  Otherwise, I'm super happy with the fit in the back. 

I used a fun print for the pockets and waistband lining.  For the buttonhole, I resorted to my trusty Singer Featherweight with the buttonholer. 

Do they make my legs look longer? I hope so!

1970s? Your jeans are calling

I lusted after jeans with long, wide legs in the 1970s. I have a specific memory of an ad that featured an impossibly leggy young woman wearing such a pair. If she had feet, it wasn't apparent; the hem of her jeans skimmed the floor around her (no doubt) very high platform shoes.

I thought this photo might pop up on the internet but sadly it did not. Instead, I found a bunch of snaps that will show you the general vibe, capturing my wish for my current sewing project. 

The essential features:

• The waistband sits at the actual waist.
• The hips are snug but not skin tight.
• The legs are wide and flared from the hip. 

I remember the lore of tight jeans. New blue jeans were dark, dark blue. The indigo would always migrate to your skin. The denim was thick. It had zero stretch, except for whatever relaxation you could hope for, over time, from the twill weave and 100% cotton fibre. The pants were so stiff you expected them to stand up and walk around by themselves. 

Ease was not desirable. To put them on you squirmed and held your breath. You inched the zipper up as you tucked yourself into them. Then you tried to wear them for normal activities. I heard that some people would sit in a tub full of water wearing their brand new jeans and then wear them while they dried, in an effort to get them to stretch and mold to the body. Eventually, the jeans might relax and become comfortable.

Now I'm not saying I had a pair that tight or resorted to these shenanigans. I wasn't a cool kid. Nor do I want to reenact any part of the must-wear-too-tight-rigid-denim-jeans-victim-of-fashion scenario. I just want comfortable high waist jeans that evoke my longed-for 1970s silhouette. 

Somewhere I came across mention of the Dawn Jeans from Megan Neilsen. With the exception of the (IMO) too-tight crotch and bizarrely fashionable cropped length, they looked promising. 

I also had heard of the top-down-centre-out fitting method and thought I'd give it a whirl.

I noted that the Dawn Jeans are meant for "rigid denim" and that for my hip size, which put me in size 8, they were allowing a miserly 1 cm of ease. Sorry no - see above re too-tight victim-of-fashion. The young woman in the pink jeans on the website does NOT look comfortable. So I immediately went for size 10 as my base. 

I'll spare you photos of the TDCO fitting process but it was interesting. I found that to make the crotch a comfortable length and to get the leg to fall straight, I had to add about 2cm to the length at the front waist and reduce the back length by even more than that amount. So the front rise needs to be longer and the back quite a bit shorter than the original pattern in order to have a level waist. 

I haven't done that to other jeans patterns, but now that I look at the 5 year old pair I'm wearing (Morgan jeans) I note that the back waist sits a lot higher on me than the front - from the side the waistband is very tilted. The only reason this works OK is that they are lower rise. With pants that are supposed to sit at my waist, there would be no place for all that extra back length to go. Imagine an incredibly baggy butt and all kinds of unattractive back leg wrinkling. 

Despite the TDCO expectation that you can get well-fitting pants without having to adjust the crotch curve or insteam, I noted that the front crotch on my one-legged muslin was pulling sideways and once I added a smidge of extra fabric there, I really wanted to add a cm of fabric at the inseam, to both front and back, to make the crotch curve less narrow front to back. Also, the extreme straightness of the upper inseam on these jeans, as drafted, just looks wrong to me. 

My TDCO muslin told me to take out so much back waist length that I didn't believe it. So I made a two-legged muslin with the pattern adjusted for slightly less of a reduction. 

And ... found that I did in fact need to pinch out exactly as much as I had added back and that the waistband was also too big. Proof at left. 

This gave me the confidence to adjust the actual pattern and cut it out in some denim I have lying around. In fact, it's the same very low stretch black denim I made the Morgan jeans out of in 2018. Now, as then, I feel like there's nothing wrong in having a little extra ease. 

To be continued.