Sunshine Day: Vogue 1020

Can I just say this is my fourth rendition of Vogue 1020 and I really don't have anything new to say except this fabric is supremely sunny and soft? It is. I got it on special at Vogue Fabrics.

The Girdle edition: Vogue 1020, version 2.0

Vogue 1020, view C, is a dress pattern that's incredibly kind to nearly all figures. No alterations are necessary since all that side scrunching on the left side hides most evils. Short-waisted? Just yank the thing up. Long-waisted? Pull down. And, from what I understand, no full-bust adjustments (FBAs in sewing lingo) are called for either. Besides, it goes together so quickly. Really in a few hours, if you ignore the pattern's clarion call for a side zipper and just use clear elastic to gather the fabric.

You do want to use a stretchy fabric. Mine is the last of $1.29 a yard fabric. Isabella, Vogue Fabrics crackerjack sales lady in the main room, conned me into buying two panels of this stuff. Yes, conned! I was thinking view B of this same pattern but the flower print cried out for something more and I'm so glad I purchased more. Sure, this fabric would look cute in a top, but as an entire outfit, I think it's much more outstanding. I first embellished the hippeastrum with some tiny bright blue dots, also on sale at Vogue. You can see a closer look here. Extremely easy, and makes it look boutiquey!

The fabric was sheer, so I interlined it, but it got all bunchy, especially toward the hem, so I had to undo it. You can still see some of the pale pink mesh getting too friendly with the main fabric, but I'm just going to let it go. Here's what I learned from ace seamstress Mac Berg, also at Vogue's Evanston store: you need to cut the fashion fabric and the interlining as one. You can either baste the two together, or you can opt for the quick-o method. Lay down one fabric, spray it with Sulky KK2000 temporary spray adhesive, put the other fabric down, pin on tissue pattern. Cut. There will be no shifting (unless there's a politician involved), and everything will be on grain.

All in all, I'm pleased as green peas with the dress, even if I must wear a girdle (also known as a body shaper) underneath. I suppose if I had cut the dress a wee wider in the hips it wouldn't hug me so much in that area. I feel a tad bit self-conscious about the rear view, and it's given me extra incentive to add more vegetables to my diet.

Even so, I'll wear this dress. I think it would be great for Easter, weeks away. Maybe I can work on a hat to complement it. What say you?

Embellishing the Hippeastrum* for Vogue 1020, the dress

This fabric floral, believe or not, is the centerpiece of a panel of one-way stretch jersey (?) that I bought the other day at Vogue Fabrics. Each panel has one massive flower for the entire length. There's actually a really long brown stalk and leaves that you don't see here that's on the backside of the dress version of Vogue 1020. It pained me greatly to separate the flower and the leaves and actually leave the flower off the back of my dress. One of these big beauties on a dress is enough and I just remembered the signature Sarah Jessica Parker dress from the movie version of "Sex in the City." One is enough, two is overkill, three makes for the beginning of a garden if you know the dress I'm talking about. Anyhow, I don't have a mint green thumb, so I'm not entirely confident that the flower above is a Hippeastrum, but it looks like the one on this Wiki page. Am I wrong or am I right? I was totally tempted to call this an Amaryllis, but I understand Amaryllis is often confused with Hippeastrum, and I'd like to get the correct name of the plant if it's going front and center on the garment I'm sewing. Any flower experts out there?
* I decorated the center of the flower with glitzy blue dot Hot Fix transfers also on sale at Vogue Fabrics. It was $1.29 a yard. I bought a 1/4 of a yard, plenty for my purposes!

Pastel Dye Sticks+Fabric+Vogue 1020=Great Top (The Kind You Wear)

Ok, this is a project for someone who likes to sew and draw. Not everyone who enjoys lowering the presser foot likes to cut loose with crayons (in this case, Pentel Fabricfun Pastel Dye Sticks). I do. I have ever since I was less than 4 feet tall. I'm a leftie, so all that painting, drawing, doodling comes naturally to me, although none of creative scribbles are valuable yet. That last word is the operative one.

Here's my recipe for success, at least for this particular pattern. Vogue 1020, view B. Your sewing-mileage may vary (well call that YSMMV).

1. You need a lot of space to draw. I choose to do my artwork in the Vogue Fabrics classroom where there are several cutting tables. I don't have that kind of furniture in my own home, so when I must spread my stuff out like that, it's off to the Vogue I go. You can draw on the floor if you don't mind kneeling on a hard surface for a long period of time (or you can wear knee pads, another item I don't own right now).

2. Sullivan's Fabric Stabilizer is your BFF, although it failed me miserably in my time of need. It wouldn't spray, not even when I poked the nozzle with a pin. I proceeded forwarded without it, but my masterpiece would have been easier to create with fabric temporarily stiffened by the spray.

3. Think larger than life when you're decorating a t-shirt. A gorilla-sized fruit (strawberry), a humongous smiley face, or porthole-sized sun or moon. Actually my blossom was too big, and I had to cut away some parts, especially the part when I signed my initials and dated it 2008. Sob. If I had to do it over, I would trace the pattern piece first, do my scribbles, plop the pattern on top of the fabric again and snip. I'd also use fabric markers that instantly set - I had to press an iron on top of paper to make my flower permanent.

4. Do the creative stuff one day, the nitty-gritty cutting and sewing another. It makes the process so much more enjoyable and satisfying, besides there's the danger you'll smudge other pieces of fabric while you're sewing and that will make you so cranky, you'll want to ditch the whole thing!

5. Do some strategic placing. I really tried to put the flower center elsewhere besides my bust, but it just didn't work. Oh well. It doesn't bother me that much, but will my friend Paulette care? She's getting this top for a Christmas present. I trust she will not say A Word about the stigma.

6. Embellish with embroidery and crystals to make it look it super ready-to-wear. A NY Collection tee decorated with a woman's face had purple crystals on the brow, red ones on the lips. I thought that was so clever, and I just might try to create my own version sometime.

More on the pattern shortly.

Hamlet's Holiday and My Pre-Vacation Silliness

Hamlet is gone for the weekend, vacationing right across the street from Lake Michigan. Yes, his weekend get-away is a mere five blocks away from my apartment. He's staying with a woman who has a dog named Hazel. I'm hoping he's behaving - yesterday he went to the bathroom inside this lady's home, not five seconds after entering the place. Oh dear.

In the meantime, I'm actually thinking of doing some pre-sewing fun with the above fabric. I've got a sheet of this iron-on copper. Here's the plan: I'm going to cut a bunch of circles. I'm debating whether or not to cut out the pattern pieces for this top and then adhere my circles, or figure out where the pattern pieces go, remove 'em, then iron on the cut-outs. At that point, cut the front and back pieces. Oh yes, I'm thinking of sticking a few circles on the back just for a little coming-and-going surprise, which is what I like to do when I make hats (which is rare right now, but that might change now that Deepika tells me there will be a Patternreview hat contest, I'm feeling competitive.)

I plan to do all this cutting out stuff while I'm on a mini-vacation. I'm considering bringing my sewing machine with me. Just contemplating. Then again, won't that be too much stuff to carry around? I just really wish I had a knitting project in the works, but I don't. Not right this minute. But if I were to haul my machine with me, this project would be done pronto. It's an easy topic after all. I'd have to remember to bring pins, twin-stitch needle (for the neckline), regular jersey knit needle, matching thread, some clear elastic for the ruching, along with my sanity. A little Steam-A-Seam wouldn't hurt.

I just washed the fabric in the bathroom sink. I'm not sure that was a brilliant move given that I'm leaving within an hour and that sodden mess is coming with me. I'm certain it will dry out quickly, but carrying that thing will be heavy. But it had a stain on it (which is why I got this huge swath for one dollar at Vogue Fabrics) and I wanted to get rid of it immediately so I can get down to business once I arrive at my destination. I'm actually thinking of draping this knit on the backseat of my brother's car so it can dry while we're in transit. Practically speaking, I'm not sure this will work. It might as long as the windows are open, but that's going to make our highway trip really noisy and windy. To other motorists, it might look like we're in Chicago's Blue Bag program in a big way. That economical, quicky dry is one way to ensure that I can dive into my hobby when I arrive. However, haste makes super-waste, at least in my notebook. I wish I had a book to read. Sigh. Wait! There might be some novels on the shelf where we're going. I'm off to finish up prepping for the trip.

Model Moments At A Knitting or Fabric Store Near You*

This post got me thinking (generally hard to do in the a.m., but it is doable). If you read the article, you'll see that customers are encouraged to try on clothes and pose in front of an in-store camera. They leave and later receive a print of their modeling sessions, which are also automatically uploaded online, a natural boon for bloggers worldwide, of course. A new link for their readers! Now the shop mentioned in this Springwise story fervently hopes that the customers like the outfit they're wearing in the pictures so much that they buy it or their friends snap it up after admiring it on the Internet.

I'm just wondering how all this could be applied to the netherworlds of knitting and sewing. Both fabric and yarn stores are known for hanging handmade garments on the walls or dressing up mannequins. Now what if they encouraged shoppers to try on these same clothes and had a camera set up nearby so they could see how they look? I'll bet my well-worn U.S. dollar that these same folks are more likely to buy the pattern, and the fabric too. Knit Daily has regular folks trying on the actual sweaters, dresses, skirts, etc. modeled in the latest issue of Knitscene. Some of what I thought was ho-hum in the magazine actually looked spectacular on different shapes and figures. It was eye-opening in a way that sometimes my Dunkin Donuts iced coffee isn't.

I know there's a risk in letting people slip on one-of-a-kind garments. They can get ripped, stained or worst yet (but perhaps the ultimate compliment) stolen. But if you can deal with these kind of risks, the rewards can be great. For example, did you know that Vogue Patterns Magazine has an alliance with the Vogue Fabrics? Yes, some of the same fabric you can find in the store is used for the actual garments in the magazine! But the store doesn't promote this very well. There are some links online, but that's about it. Imagine if an in-store model wore the Vogue 1020 dress with the fabric featured on the pattern, perhaps while balancing a bolt of the fabric in one arm, with the pattern in her other hand? Not terribly graceful, but what a statement! If she did that a couple of times, the fabric would disappear in nanoseconds along with all pattern copies even though they're never on sale at Vogue. If customers could test out the dress (perhaps in a temporary exchange with their driver's licenses), I'd bet more even more sales could be rung up at the cash register.

While ready-to-wear shoppers have the advantage of actually testing out clothes they like in the store, sewers and knitters don't have that opportunity, making sales a little more difficult, especially for dress fabrics (in fabric shops) and yarns (knitting stores). Dress fabrics, even nice ones, are at least available in different price points; that's not the case in the stand-alone yarn shops. Nearly every skein (all of it generally great, I might add, which is not the case for the department-store variety).

Whatever yarn store owners can do to close the gap for knitters would be very helpful, especially when it comes to pricey, pricey fiber. These days it's a little difficult to buy $60 worth of Noro for a pretty (but untested) knitted skirt, especially when that same amount of money can buy a tank of gas. However, I'd might actually make the leap of faith (with my wallet) if I got to twirl around in the actual skirt I'm dying to make in front of a mirror and a camera. The camera set-up wouldn't be expensive either - just as an inexpensive tripod and digital camera in front of a blank wall works wonders. Upload the images to the store's blog later that day or week when time permits. Print up the picture for the store's mailers or postcards. Let people use 'em as Christmas cards, birthday cards, you-name-it cards!

Anyhow, I'm ready to get off my Cascade Soup box. Weigh in (or out) if you're so inclined.
* I have Vogue 1020, maybe I'll whip it up in time for the PatternReview invasion on Monday night.