MizzSmartyPants – Page 5 – Clothing Hacker

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P4P Summer Kimono with Elephants!

February 14, 2016 / MizzSmartyPants / 0 Comments

Last Summer I bought a bunch of Patterns For Pirates patterns including the (at that time) brand new Summer Kimono. Fast forward 8 months later and I’ve finally made my first wearable item from that group of patterns.

I made the straight hem length, but I copied the curve of the curved hem version to the longer length. I’m so glad I did, because that shorter length wouldn’t have been good on me, I don’t think. And I really love how flattering the curved hem is. I’m thinking the next one I make might be even a little longer.

The pattern was simple to make and it’s just so lovely. I foresee a few more of these in my future.

The fabric was from my January Knitfix from Girl Charlee. It was listed as Blue Elephant Ethnic Rows Jersey Rayon Spandex Knit. It has a beautiful drape and I love the color.

Top 5 of 2015

January 7, 2016 / MizzSmartyPants / 1 Comment

I’m a little late to the party, but I decided to participate in Gillian’s Top 5 lists. Here they all are in one big post!

Hits

Pride Dress. I’m so proud of how this dress turned out. I decided to do it at the last minute and had no idea how it would work out. I’m very proud of it and I got so many compliments on it at the Seattle Pride Parade.
New Year’s Blue Velvet Dress. I think the fabric is beautiful and with the full lining it just feels nice and weighty, like some of the more high end RTW dresses I’ve owned throughout the years. I’m very pleased with how it turned out and how it looks on me.
Seahawks Superbowl Dress. This was also a dress that I decided to do fairly last minute to show off my Hawks pride at the Superbowl. I have worn it to work several times on Blue Friday and it’s usually a hit.
Rainbow Ethnic Chevron Lady Skater. (Unblogged) I’ve been buying the monthly Knitfix bag from Girl Charlee for a while now and this was one of the fabrics I got way back in May of last year. I only have a couple patterns I can make with 2 yards of fabric, one of which is the Kitschy Coo Lady Skater, one of my TNT patterns. This dress is one of my favorites to wear because the fabric is just so pretty! I ended up scoring some more of the fabric and even made a matching GreenStyle Laurelette for my niece.
Seahawks Mojave. This didn’t necessarily fit me the best of all my me-makes in 2015, but I just love the way it came out. I would like to devise a way to make this pattern more wearable for everyday use.

Misses

Seamwork Moji. (unblogged). I’m not blaming the pattern on these. I modified the pattern because I thought they would be too narrow for my thunder thighs. So I’m not 100% sure if that’s what caused the problem or what. But the fit is just terrible. This was the first pair of pants I attempted to make, so I may be able to make this pattern with with some fit adjustments.
Dahlia. (unblogged). I didn’t even finish this dress. Since I was making a muslin, I used some random fabric I had purchased decades ago for some weird idea of a pants suit I was going to make. This dress just doesn’t fit well and it looks weird on my body. I suppose at some point I’ll finish it and see what I can do to make it work.
Seamwork Mesa. (unblogged) I should have known that this silhouette was just not going to work on my body. And the unfortunate placing of that green smile leaf right on the bottom of my tummy really didn’t help things. In this photo, the lining and the outer fabric are hemmed together and so there’s a wrinkle. I’ve since ripped that out so I can hem the two layers separately, but it’s still in my “to finish” pile because I just know I’ll never really wear it.
40s Tea Dress. I love the idea of this dress. And I love the way it looks in some of the photos. But it’s a fit disaster. And the hem is horrible, but the dress is too short to just redo. The neckline facings flip up and the sleeves are just weird. Overall, I will likely never wear it again, which is a shame since the fabric is just so pretty and a great color on me.
Dr. Who Dress. This dress just didn’t turn out like I had envisioned. It looks like pajamas and I swear I cut the pieces so they should have matched in the front waist seam, but it didn’t and it drives me insane. I aquired a wide blue TARDIS stretchy belt after my blog post was written, and it does cover up the annoying waist seam and so I will wear this dress to conventions and whatnot. But overall, I’m not pleased with how it turned out.

Highlights (non-sewing)

I went to the Superbowl! Dream achieved!
I painted my house purple!!! Another dream achieved!!
Awesome new job. I have a job where I’m appreciated and it’s been very low stress so far. Plus, it has some really nice benefits.
I was able to walk out of a miserable job. I’m not going to go into too much detail here, but overall, I was made to cry at work multiple times, I would dread going to work every day and tried to find an excuse to call in sick as often as I could. It was good to be able to literally just clean out my desk and walk out one day.
Much improved sewing. I’ve definitely improved my sewing skills this past year. I’ve been sewing most of my life, but I didn’t really sew very often until the last couple of years. And in 2015, I probably made more items than I had in my entire sewing career up until then.

Reflections

In no particular order:

I’ve been feeling unsatisfied in my current career path. It’s been building up for a while and I had some unpleasantness at my previous employer this past year that led me to up and quit without something else lined up. I was lucky and was able to work out a deal where I got a little something out of my quitting, and I knew I would find something before I was in trouble financially. But it was the first time I was unemployed that I wasn’t extremely worried about finding a new job and I was able to just enjoy not working. I got quite a bit of sewing done during this time, which led me to wonder if it’s time for me to make some sort of career change in which I can use and improve my sewing skills as part of my daily life. I don’t have any solid plans at this time, but I’ve been trying to brainstorm on how to make something like this work and I’ve got a few ideas banging around that I hope to get fleshed out in the next couple years.
I need to do something about my sewing space. Right now I’ve pretty much permanently taken over the dining room table with my pattern cutting materials. But it’s frustrating for the other members of my household. So my husband and I have been talking about some options to give me a space where I can have a large table dedicated to cutting. Hopefully we’ll get something worked out and implemented in 2016.
I enjoy the little extra details in sewing projects. I haven’t done many things yet, except for using some of my decorative stitching on my Seahawks Mojave and my Ottobre Optic Flowers wearable muslin. I need to figure out the little touches that make me extra proud of my garments.
I find that I tend to be happy with a pattern if it fits my body and doesn’t look bad on me. But I’ve noticed a few things that I’ve been letting slip by, like fabric pooling at my lower back and creases along the side my bust and I should focus more on really noticing these issues and fixing them on my patterns.
I’m completely addicted to buying fabric. I buy fabrics on sale that I like, without any real plan on what to do with it. As a result, my fabric stash has gotten completely out of control this past year. I should be more mindful of what fabrics I purchase and only purchase fabrics with a specific project in mind or fabrics that I absolutely fall in love with and I know I would be sad to not get.

Goals

These are my goals for 2016, in order of most importance.

Rhythm dance dress. I owe more posts on the evolution of my current smooth dress. But I really need a rhythm dress of my very own. I am attending a dance competition at the end of April, so that is my deadline to have one done. I’m going to start out simple for this first one and I have all the materials I need to make one, with several options for the fabric color. So I have no excuse.
Pants. I’ve been watching the blogosphere make the Closet Case Files Ginger Skinny Jeans and I’ve been wanting to buy and make that pattern. I even picked up some denim in anticipation of doing so. But this past year I attempted 2 pair of leggings and a pair of Seamwork Moji pants and none of them turned out. My body is difficult and fitting pants seems so intimidating that I have been shying away from just doing it and working through the issues, but I vow that this is the year that I find and alter a pants pattern that can work for me.
Outerwear. I’ve been wanting to make a coat for some time and I purchased some fabric to do so several years ago. My vision is a mid length swing coat with fur accents, possibly removable. But, again, that is fairly intimidating to do. So my goal for 2016 is to make at least one piece of outerwear. I’d even be satisfied with making a Seamwork Camden. Although if I make the Camden, I’ll need to add welt pockets like Kristin from Briney Deep Designs did on her version.
Sew more new-to-me patterns. I’ve been a subscriber to Seamwork from the get go, but I’ve only sewn up 4 of the patterns so far (only 1 of which I’ve blogged about.) Plus, I buy many other patterns, both indie and big 4 (when they are on sale for $1) that I end up not making. I would like to strive to make two new Seamwork patterns each month (not necessarily the latest ones though) and one other new to me pattern at least each quarter.
Be a better blogger. I suck at taking photos. I don’t take the time to do photo shoots outside, which I always want to do before I blog about a make, which then means I’m not blogging about my makes until it’s been so long that I just get impatient and post something with poor photos. I think the first step to this is acquiring a tripod so I can take some photos outside without the need of a photographer.

Last hurrah for 2015

January 1, 2016 / MizzSmartyPants / 0 Comments

I haven’t been posting much. Mainly I think it’s because I haven’t gotten much chance to get some good photos, which is also evident ink
I had some vacation time to burn before the end of the year and my company takes a holiday break, so I’ve had the last 2 weeks off. I started out strong, sewing 3 new dresses in the first 2 days. But then my husband and I started watching Orphan Black and we binge watched the heck out of that.

Lady Skater with some custom holiday fabric from Aqua Splash Customs.

Lady Skater out of a knitfix fabric. It’s fully lined with a gray cotton from my stash.

Optic Flowers from the Ottobre 2/2015 issue.

My wedding anniversary is December 31st, so I was planning to wear the purple and blue wine glass dress. But then Fabric Mart had this 70% off velvet sale and of course I had to look. I picked up a few things, one of which was a dark blue ogee-like embossed velvet for $3.50/yd. I got my standard 3 yards since most of the dresses I make can work with 3 yards. And when it arrived I fell in love and knew it needed to be my new favorite dress. So on December 30th and part of the 31st I whipped out this gorgeous Sew Straight and Gather Uptown/Downtown dress.

Uptown/Downtown dress in an embossed blue velvet.

I fully lined it with a royal blue knit from my stash. My husband loves this dress and so do I. We wandered over to the hotel where we had our wedding party photos done and had a couple photos taken together. My eyes glow strangely in his camera phone shots and I don’t know how to fix those, especially since I pretty much only use my phone these days.

We were doing timer photos with the phone propped up on a pillow when a young lady came along and offered to take our photo for us. The timer was going when she offered and resulted in this, my favorite photo of the night.

I previously made a wearable muslin of the Uptown/Downtown dress on my birthday earlier in December and loved it, although the fabric I used was super thin and I have to wear a slip or something under it.

Sew Straight and Gather Uptown/Downtown dress.

There are a couple minor fit issues I need to address that were more evident in the blue velvet version, but as drafted it fits well and looks nice.

I hope everyone had a fun and safe New Year’s Eve. Happy New Year!

A couple more GreenStyle Laurels

September 29, 2015 / MizzSmartyPants / 0 Comments

I really like my blue polka dotted Laurel. So I made a couple more.

The first one I used the seashells and seahorses fabric that I dyed purple a while back. It’s a thicker cotton knit, where the blue and white polka dots was a soft, drapey rayon lycra blend. So I was curious how that cowl neck would do.

It’s hard to really see in the above photo, here’s a selfie where you can really see the cowl.

I just didn’t like how it draped in this fabric, so I took it out and put in just a neck band instead.

I like it way better this way. I’ve worn it a couple times.

But, I’ve been thinking I need a shorter version of this dress. So my next version uses the shorter length of the pattern. Well, I should have known better. I’m pretty tall and the shorter version was several inches shorter. So yeah, I now have a very lovely tunic. I don’t have any action shots though. Just on my dress form.

I love this fabric and I’m sad that I don’t have a wearable dress out of it. But it does look cute with leggings, which is how I wore it to the Pink Martini concert. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to get any photos.

I’m sure there will be more versions of this dress coming in the future too.

12th Man Seamwork Mojave

August 16, 2015 / MizzSmartyPants / 0 Comments

I decided some time ago that I was going to go to Ocean Shores for the 12’s Fan Fest weekend to celebrate the end of NotFootball season with other Seahawk fans.

When planning my wardrobe for the weekend, I knew I had lots of jerseys and t-shirts I could wear, but i wanted something a bit more special. Now, I have my Seahawks Lady Skater Dress, but that would only get me through one day.

I decided to try to sew up a Seamwork Mojave in some Hawks colors in my stash.

The green is some sort of poly blend woven and the blue is a cotton broadcloth. I drew up my sketch with my awesome art skills.

It was a pretty easy pattern to cut out. My only problem is that the pieces are too long for my cutting mat, but that was easily fixed by just using my scissors on the bit that hung over.

While I was sewing up the green panels in the front, I got the idea that it would be a good place to add a little pizzazz. So I tested out some of my decorative stitches on a couple scraps of the green with my blue thread.

It was a tough decision, but this is the one I decided on:

Then I sewed the rest of it up according to the directions.

I wore it today as a swimsuit cover-up on the way to the hotel pool.

It’s definitely not anything I could wear by itself as a dress. It also just didn’t look good with any of my tanks under it. But it looks cute as a cover-up. I’m pretty pleased with how it came out overall. My measurements were right on the border between 20 and 22, so I went with the bigger size. I could easily get away with the 20, I think.

I’ve decided that I’m going to attempt to put a little elastic in the back waistline at some point after I get home to see if that helps give it a bit more shape.

It was fun to add a little decoration to a cute item. I need to go back and make all the previous Seamwork patterns now, since I’ve made two so far that I’m happy with. (The other is still unblogged because I need to figure out a design detail that I’m adding.)

Dr. Who Lady Skater

August 1, 2015 / MizzSmartyPants / 7 Comments

I found some adorable Dr. Who fabric from Aqua Splash Customs.

I bought a couple yards with the intention of making a lady skater out of it. I made it, but I’m not super happy with it.

I think it looks a little like pajamas instead of a cute dress to wear to work. I shouldn’t have made the entire thing out of that fabric. I think I would have been better off only using it as an accent.

I didn’t really have enough fabric to do proper pattern matching either and its bugging me. I thought I had cut the front to match up better, but apparently not.

I’ll still wear it like it is, especially to PAX, but I’d like to try to figure out a way to make it less annoying to me. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them. I have some more of the blue I used for the neck and arm bands, but I don’t have much. Although, it’s the blue I bought at JoAnn’s for my Pride dress, so they likely still have it.

Thoughts?

Polka dot Laurel

July 27, 2015 / MizzSmartyPants / 1 Comment

I’ve had this dress cut out for a few weeks. I finally have a good amount of time for sewing and have gotten around to sewing it up. I saw a photo that someone made of the GreenStyle Laurel in a Facebook group I’m in and I knew I had to make one. It uses 2 yards, even for the largest size, which makes it perfect to use with a knitfix fabric.

I would call this a wearable muslin, but I compared the pattern with my TNT Lady Skater and so I knew it would fit and just dove in using my good fabric. The fabric is a lovely rayon spandex knit with a very fluid drape. I knew I had to try the cowl neckline with it.

My husband and I went to see Grease downtown tonight and these photos were taken before the show, some in our neighborhood and some across the street from the theatre. You can see the reflection of the marquee in some of the photos.

It’s a bit longer than the other dresses I’ve been wearing lately. I’m not sure the length is very flattering on me, so I might take up an inch or two. Also, in case you are wondering, I am not wearing white stockings. Yes, my legs really are that pale. What can I say? I’m a Seattleite who avoids the sun at all costs.

I made a straight 3xl and it fits nice in the bust, but the waist is loose and I feel like it poofs out a bit making my tummy looking even bigger than it really is. It doesn’t bother me enough to take this one in, but the next one I make I’ll grade down to an XL at the waist and probably the hips too.

Overall, I really like this dress, as does my hubby. I’m excited to have discovered another TNT dress pattern that I can make out of only 2 yards and I can’t wait to make my next one!

Adventures in dyeing

July 26, 2015 / MizzSmartyPants / 0 Comments

I’ve been purchasing a couple knitfix bags from Girl Charlee the last few months. It’s fun to get random fabrics that I wouldn’t normally try. I’ve gotten some fun stuff.

I’ve gotten a lot of white fabrics that I wouldn’t really wear, so I’ve been planning to do some dyeing for a while. Here are some before photos. Not the best, but you can get the idea.

White shells and seahorses on white cotton jersey knit

Black dots on white cotton spandex knit

White green daisy on white cotton jersey knit

Black vertical small stripe on white cotton jersey knit

Didn’t have a before of the bags I dyed, but it looked like this except the design was printed in red instead of purple.

I used a large cat litter bucket in the bath tub. I filled it about half way up with hot water from the tap, one cup of salt and 6 Tbsp of violet Rit dye and 2 Tbsp of Navy Blue. I dyed the white on white shells and seahorses in this dye bath along with one of the bags from June.

After I was done, i removed the fabric then added 2 Tbsp of fuchsia to the color already in the bucket and I put the green and white daisies in.

Then I dumped the dye out and mixed a new batch with 1 cup of salt, 6 Tbsp of Navy blue Rit and 2 Tbsp of fuchsia then added the polka dots and small stripes and another of the June bags.

And here they are all dried.

I’m very pleased with how they turned out. I had been hoping the ones on the right would have come out darker. I’m wondering if leaving them in the dye longer would have helped or if I just needed more dye. I like the color and I think next time I’ll try the same ratio but with a higher concentration and see if that makes a difference.

Ottobre Optic Flowers

July 6, 2015 / MizzSmartyPants / 0 Comments

A few weeks ago I made a wearable muslin of the Optic Flowers design from the Ottobre 2/2015 issue.

I made a straight 52 exactly as the pattern is drafted. After I made it up, the back bodice was pooling around my badonkadonk, so I shortened the middle of the back bodice about an inch and graded out to nothing at the side seams.

It’s hard to see, but this is where the waist piece sits when I pull the back down to where it is supposed to be.

Here is where it goes after I’ve moved around and the waist piece goes where it naturally wants to.

I’ll shorten the entire bodice a bit on the next version and lengthen the skirt to make up the difference.

I also took the side seams in quite a bit. I marked all these adjustments on the pattern so the next one I make should fit better right from the start.

For some crazy reason, I decided to play with my decorative stitches on my machine for the sleeve and skirt hems.

It is subtle but I think it adds a very awesome touch. I will likely be doing this for other dresses in the future.

I’ve been wearing it to run around and do errands and tool around the house. When I first made it, I thought it was too short for me to feel comfortable wearing, “for real,” but I really like it and I already know what fabric I’m using for the next one.

Pride dress

July 2, 2015 / MizzSmartyPants / 5 Comments

My daughter has been going to the Seattle Gay Pride parade for the past several years and has always really enjoyed it. I’ve never gone before and I decided that this year I would rectify that. After the Supreme Court decision last Friday and seeing the rainbows everywhere I decided that I needed to wear something special.

So on Saturday I went to JoAnn’s and bought 1 yard each of the rainbow in knit.

Then I went home, tossed my new fabric in the washing machine and sketched a few designs.

My husband liked view A best, but I decided on C anyway.

So, I took my TNT Kitschy Coo Lady Skater pattern and divided the skirt piece into 3 even pieces by measuring the waist seam and the hem and dividing by 3 and sewing a line between them.

Then I took the bodice pieces and equally divided the waist seam by 3 and then referred to my sketch and eyeballed where I should put the other end of each dividing line and drew them in.

I then traced each piece, adding a 3/8″ seam allowance to each new seam line and to the center edge, since it’s normally cut on the fold and will now have a seam too.

You may be able to see that I noted on each piece what colors that piece would be and I’m so glad I did that ahead of time because that’s a lot of pieces to cut out.

Once I had everything cut out, I just sewed each individual piece back together and then assembled the dress as usual.

I added in seam pockets, as I do with all my lady skaters now (in fact I’m going to go back and put them in my first one.) I cut one pocket lining out of the red and one out of the purple and as I was assembling the dress, I thought it would be fun to swap the linings so the red lining is on the purple side and vice versa.

And here is the dress in action.

I’m so very pleased with how it turned out. There are a few minor things that I’m not happy with. Since it was a last minute project, I was stuck with the fabric that I could find locally, so the red is a lot softer and thinner than the others and is the only one with a 4 way stretch, so that side of the dress just droops down a bit more. And the orange is the only one that has spandex in it, so the dress got bigger as the day went on. But overall, it’s the dress I’m the most proud of so far.

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