Category Archives: adventures in patterndrafting

Pants class – skinny jeans

October 19, 2017 Peneloping

jeans: self-drafted // sweater: hand-knitted

These are the jeans I drafted for my pants drafting class!

I’m so so thrilled with these jeans. The only jeans pattern I’d tried before were the Jamie jeans by Named, which I adored, but only after I made tons of changes to the fit, by which point the legs were totally offgrain and the inseam would be pointing outward. Plus, even though I now know how to fix the fit properly, it’s always nice to have a pattern for plain, simple jeans. They definitely worked, but not ideal. I now have a basic pant draft from which I made a basic jean draft (which has basically no ease because let’s be honest, I’m usually dressed like a sausage. Or a cupcake).

This is round 2 of tweaking this pattern and I’m pretty happy with the way these jeans turned out! I used the same book and same pants draft I used for my overalls: . Once I get everything properly tweaked, my plan is to make like three pairs of skinnies and then a pair or two of flares or bootcut jeans. So far for my wearable muslins I’ve been using a really shitty stretch denim I got at Sewfisticated in Boston. It’s just kind of crunchy-feeling and the recovery really doesn’t last that long. It’s only $2.50/yard though so it makes perfect muslins and then I can just wear them until they wear out a few months later.

For this nicer pair, I bought a scrumptious stretch denim at Stone Mountain and Daughter in Berkeley that took me like a week to build up the courage to cut into. It’s just so soft and buttery and makes me do a happy dance. I think I have enough for another pair of skinny jeans, or at least a pair of shorts, and I’m thinking I’ll need to go back and pick up some more for the flares.

All the jeans!

Swing

October 16, 2017 Peneloping

This is a pretty simple dress but I want like ten of them. These are definitely my most-worn garments the past few months and I love them so much. There’s not too much to say about them though.

I started with Stretch and Sew 1500, which we used in my beginning clothing class. I think it’s out of print now but if you can get your hands on it, it’s a great pattern. (Here’s a copy that’s on Etsy.) I’ve kind of started using it as my unofficial knit sloper. I pretty much just lengthened the front to dress length, lengthened the back slightly more, and then slashed and spreaded the whole thing to add extra fullness. Then I curved the front and back hems to create a nice high low curve.

The maroon one is made with a really nice cotton interlock from Stretch and Sew Fabrics. (They’re no longer open as a store but they come to my school twice a year with a selection of knit fabrics at great prices.) The elephant one is a really interesting knit that has an almost brushed flannel feeling on the back. I snagged that one from Sewfisticated in Boston.

And that’s about it! Interestingly, the elephant one originally had long sleeves and I wore it literally once and then it sat in my closet gathering dust. Then I came across it again a few weeks ago, hacked off the sleeves, and now I wear it all the time. Especially to buffets.

Hmm maybe I should make a slightly dressier one for Thanksgiving.

5 Comments adventures in patterndrafting - finished sewing project dress - elephants - patterndrafting - sewing - swing dress

Adventures in drafting // christmas dress 2016

January 30, 2017 Peneloping

OHAI. It’s been a while.

I realized the other day that while I’ve alluded to certain things, I haven’t actually talked about anything life-related in a while. So here’s a life update in a nutshell:

Last year I decided that my old career was not exactly panning out to be what I wanted (a lot of this had to do with licensing regulations in California, but that’s boring and not sewing-related). At the same time, I had signed up for a flat pattern class at the local CC just to have something to do while I looked for a new job after moving from Boston back to California. Pretty much by week 3 of the class I decided I was going to need to switch careers. The next semester I signed up for a full class load. Now I’m finishing up my last semester (well, technically I’ll have one last class next semester) while interning as a pattern maker for a local designer.

So, lots of changes going on in the last year! Spoiler alert: I love it.

Anyway, full time school + internship + part time job means not so much time for blogging, which I really miss. I have a whole pile of clothes I’ve sewn in the last six months that need to be photographed. I keep being hesitant to do it because it’s too cold outside. And then I remember I used to do this in Boston, in the snow, in 30 degree weather. I’m shivering just thinking about it. -_-

ANYWAY, now that we’re all caught up, meet this year’s Christmas dress.

The backstory is that my friend kept buying these gorgeous velvet dresses from Anthropologie, and then we planned a weekend holiday trip and decided one evening we would wear velvet dresses. So I got on Pinterest and looked for velvet dresses and found this lovely one by Holly Willoughby.

Making the pattern was pretty straightforward. Move bust darts to waist and turn them into gathers, neckline yoke thing, V-front cutout that meets in the middle, puffed sleeve with gathers that don’t go all the way to the armhole. Since I was using velvet and didn’t want to bother with a separate lining, I made facings for the front and yoke to make it easier.

I used a cheapy stretch velvet from Fabrics ‘r Us because this was kind of an experiment. We’ll call it a Christmas muslin. It actually wasn’t that hard to sew together. I basted the tricky bits but other than that the pile of the velvet sort of acted like velcro and it mostly stayed put. I used stitch witchery for the hem and sleeve edge to avoid having a row of stitching. It stays put and I just think it looks nicer.

The beading was super fun and so quick now that I have a beading needle. I didn’t even bother buying new beads. I’ve done so many beading projects in the last few years that I have an assortment of extra beads and the original dress didn’t seem to have any distinct beading pattern so I just used what I had.

Anyway, I do kind of wish the insides were a little prettier (I was kind of rushed because this was one of two finals week procrastination projects) but I’m in love. It’s one of the comfiest fancy dresses I own and I’ve already worn it twice. The velvet makes it look dressy but the stretchy means more room for feasting.

Maybe I need one in green too..

7 Comments adventures in patterndrafting - finished sewing project adventures in pattern drafting - beading - christmas dress - holly willoughby - outfit - sewing - velvet

Adventures in drafting // linen dragons

August 5, 2016 Peneloping

This top completely unintentionally reminds me of Daenerys from Game of Thrones. I originally set out to copycat this top from Urban Outfitters and decided to use the leftover linen from my Mystery Fabric Contest dress. Somehow I ended up with a cute summery top that totally looks like something Khaleesi would wear if she were summering in modern day California.

This top, along with my off-the-shoulder tops, has basically been my uniform this summer, and I’ve been experimenting with different fabrics. The problem is that I feel like this linen is a little too stiff and sort of sticks out awkwardly from certain angles. But then I tried a much drapier fabric and it was too lightweight to hold its shape. I’ll have to keep playing. I did have to make a special bra to wear underneath which is basically a nude halter the same shape as the front.

Drafting was pretty simple. I drew lines, then contoured. The one thing I did differently that helped with fit was before I added the bias binding and straps, I put it on the dress form and pinned the straps and pleats into shape rather than trusting the lines. It ended up fitting pretty much perfectly that way.

Now back to fabric experiments.

4 Comments adventures in patterndrafting - finished sewing project - sewing linen - outfit - pattern drafting - summer - tank top

Adventures in patterndrafting // mystery fabric contest

July 30, 2016 Peneloping

My school hosts a mystery fabric contest every year. This year participants received a bundle of mystery fabric, each one marked only with a number and the general color scheme of the fabric inside. You have from October to April to put together a garment using at least 50% of each piece of fabric included. Some people received several yards of the same fabric. Other people (ahem, me) received mostly tiny samples, with nothing bigger than a fat quarter. You can add as much fabric as you want too!

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I was pretty stumped for a while after getting my bundle. At first I was thinking of doing something big and dramatic a la Regina from Once Upon A Time (season 1-2), with one side done in a cool patchwork pattern and the other side in a solid or floral print, but I kept coming back to a fear of it coming out looking like a quilt so I nixed that idea. Then one day when I was working on Cinderella’s ball gown while simultaneously daydreaming about doing Cinderella’s wedding gown (I am a crazy person, yes.), I had a lightbulb moment. Why not do a modernized party dress version of Cinderella’s wedding dress, but with the same floral/mesh/gauzy look?

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I started off drafting a pattern for a dress with an upper yoke in a sweetheart neckline shape. Since I knew I wanted to sew the upper yoke in mesh and since I wanted it to have a more formal party dress kind of look, I did a lot of contouring around the princess lines and sweetheart neckline to make it more form-fitting. Then I just used the same skirt pattern as my Christmas dress. Since a lot of the fabrics in my bundle were linens in earthy colors, I went for a similarly earthy (but still somewhat fancy-looking) linen from Joanns in ivory.

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Construction-wise, I started off by taking the three identical pieces of sheer gauzy curtain fabric and sewing them together as a dirndl underskirt. Then I tore off all of the sample rectangles and cut up the backing fabric into similarly sized rectangles and sewed them together into a long piece (similar to what I did for my Cinderella ball gown). I then pleated those and attached them in two tiers to the underskirt so they would peek out a bit under the main dress.

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I’d had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with all of the thicker embroidered fabrics (especially ones where the background fabric clashed) so I decided to cut the embroidery out of the fabric and sew it onto my dress.

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One of them was some kind of burlap-ish canvas and had a floral vine pattern so I cut out the vines and used them as the base for the hand-stitched design. Then I cut the background fabric into little flower shapes and folded them slightly and stitched them all over the garment.

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You may also have noticed the gorgeous colorful embroidered flowers on the horrid mustard background up there. Since the mustard really didn’t fit with anything, I decided to cut out all those little designs too and sewed them all over the dress for little hidden bits of color. Some of the bigger pieces ended up on the side of the skirt too.

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The end!

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You can check out some of the other submissions here. Tiny spoiler alert: my dress won first place!

17 Comments adventures in patterndrafting - finished sewing project - outfit - sewing dress - linen - mystery fabric contest - outfit - sewing