Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Linen Silk Skinny Pants


Happy Tuesday! Here is another garment made from a lovely Britex fabric! You can find the original post on the Britex blog here.

Since spring fashions hit the stores earlier this year, I've been a little obsessed: I keep seeing a style of skinny pants called "joggers". I was particularly taken with joggers made from linen. Joggers typically (though not always) feature an elastic waist with a drawstring, patch pockets, and hems finished with either elastic or ribbing. You can see a few on my Joggers Pinterest page.

When Britex asked if I would like to sew a garment from their linen selection I was immediately drawn to this beautiful white linen silk blend with a green abstract reptile print:

Sheer Emerald Snake Print Linen and Silk Blend

I have always loved linen blended with silk! It wrinkles less than 100% linen and has a lovely drape. Because this fabric is a bit sheer, I lined it with Snow White Viscose.

For the pattern, I used Vogue 8909, view C. I did a simple alteration that I often do, because I am a card carrying member of the "Impossibly Tiny Bottom Club" (extra points if you get the reference): I used a medium for the front pant and an extra small for the back pant, cutting the crotch in a medium for both front and back.

I shortened the pants by 1", omitted the cuffs (I decided against elastic at the hem), and replaced the inseam pocket with patch pockets (which are difficult to see in the print).

I lined the pocket and reinforced the slanted opening with a strip of selvedge from the white viscose

The finished pocket

In effect, I made two pair of pants: one from the linen/silk, and a second pair from the white viscose. I hemmed the lining 1" shorter than the linen, and joined both layers at the waist. They are joined only at the waist.

Finishing the waistband by hand

I love my linen pants!
Right now we are experiencing cold, wet, foggy San Francisco weather (it's a good thing you can't see the goosebumps I had while doing this photo shoot), but when warm weather eventually arrives...
I am ready!

Vogue 8909

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Shams' Sewing Tips Video #1


Happy Tuesday eve!

I have several little updates for you.

My briefest update is this: with my last post I exceeded 2 million views on my blog! Woot! Thatsalotta views! THANKS!

And here are the rest:

Shams' Sewing Tips video #1

I was recently preparing for a sewing get together—some friends and I were going to learn how to make jewelry using narrow tubes of fabric. Turning lots of narrow tubes of fabric turned out to be a pain point for all of us. One friend was using a Fasturn tool to turn her tubes, but the wand broke. Another was using a small safety pin to turn her tubes, but it was causing her hands to ache.

When I mentioned that I keep a bobby pin near my sewing machine for this purpose, they were unfamiliar with the technique. So I decided to document this little trick.

My original plan was to ask one of my friends to shoot a quick video using my iPhone. But Sarah, who loves technology, suggested that we use her camera and then she offered it edit it together.

So, thanks to Sarah, here is my first video, a short tip on using a bobby pin to turn a narrow tube of fabric. It works with knit tubes, bias tubes, and straight-of-grain tubes.

Margy pointed out that when you buy bobby pins at the drugstore, that you are compelled to buy at least a hundred of them. No worries, why not use the extras to make a bobby pin necklace! (I took this photo at Puyallup.)

If you notice the credit at the end of the video, that is Sarah herself. She celebrated her 70th birthday by bungee jumping off the Kawarau Bridge in New Zealand. She is pretty amazing! She also taught us the technique she developed for making the jewelry.

THANKS, Sarah!

So, what do you think. Should we do more quick videos?


Making Jewelry

See, it happened like this: When I was in Puyallup this year with Sarah and Sue, Sarah brought along several necklaces that she had made featuring "beads" made from fabric tubes.

Sarah wearing one of her necklaces at Puyallup

Sue and I admired Sarah's bead necklaces. I actually made a necklace similar to this more than a year ago, but when Sarah described her technique, I couldn't quite visualize it. One evening, in our hotel room, I had Margy on the speaker phone and the four of us decided to get together at some future date to learn Sarah's technique.

The necklace I made 1.5 years ago

Last week, Margy flew in for our little get together. But before the jewelry-making commenced, we attended a local sewing gathering. I include the photos here, because you might recognize (and miss) some of these wonderful sewists, and you will certainly enjoy seeing the clothing of these stylish women!

Ann and Margy. Margy has blogged about her outfit, but Ann is wearing a Liberty shirt that she recently made.

Dorothy, Ann, Arna, and Margy. Dorothy, Ann, and Arna are each wearing the Liberty shirt.

Heather is wearing a beautiful jacket made from OOP Burda 7364. (And you can bet that I tracked down this pattern!)

Margy, looking stunning in her Marcy Tilton crinkle raincoat.

Dorothy in her snazzy prescription sunglasses

From there, we proceeded to the jewelry making!

Margy is just getting started

I love this pic!

Margy makes a mega-bead!

Margy and Sarah, two technology mavens

Focus...

Sue finishes her necklace

Finished!

Sarah's whimsical necklace

Sarah and Margy compare their self-made black-and-white bags. Margy's post about this bag was her first blog post ever. Sarah used the Poolside Tote Pattern by Noodle Head.

Filming the video...

... with Sarah

Sarah is also an amazing cook. This is her asparagus soup topped with black lentils (and some other stuff) and her homemade cashew cream. YUM!


Mini Movie Reviews: Iris and Dior and I

Both of my kids were far away on Mother's Day, so I was happy when Jillian suggested that we go see some fashion-themed movies! We saw two movies, back-to-back.

First we saw Iris, about Iris Apfel who, at 93-years-old, is a genuine style icon. The movie follows Iris through her incredibly busy life, talks about how she got started as a decorator and later moved into textiles. She worked on the White House under several presidents, including Kennedy. She is funny, witty, with a strong sense of her style, and a gigantic heart. It was particularly sweet to watch her interact with her husband, who celebrated his 100th birthday during filming. It's a real love story.

I liked this movie more than I expected—highly recommended!

Following Iris, we saw Dior and I. You might remember John Galliano, the head designer for the House of Dior until 2011, when some of his ugly behavior caught up with him and he was ousted. In 2012, Raf Simons, a Dutch designer who had been designing for Jil Sander, was hired to replace Galliano.

This movie picks up when Raf is being introduced to the employees at the House of Dior. He speaks minimal French (his English is good, but most of the employees don't speak English) and he has eight weeks to prepare for the Dior Haute Couture Spring fashion show. Eight.Weeks.For.Haute.Couture.

This movie chronicles Raf's journey, and the journey of the highly skilled and dedicated artisans of at the Dior atelier. The movie is also interspersed with voice-over excerpts from Dior's memoir, "Christian Dior and Me", written in 1956. The parallels between his memoir and Raf Simon's experience is fascinating.

Both Jillian and I felt that this movie had a slow-ish start, but by the middle of it we were totally engrossed. Another great film—highly recommended!

I'm sorry that I don't have a photo of Jillian, because she was wearing a gorgeous vest that she made from a Kantha quilt—it is very Meiko Mintz. I asked her if she plans to blog about this vest and she said yes, so maybe it's a good thing that I don't have a photo, because you will enjoy seeing it first on her blog!

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Thursday, May 14, 2015

Gwen's Studio, Corvallis Fiber Arts Guild, Rain Shed


Just arrived at DD1's house
She is wearing a tee that is very apt. It says, "Ways to make me happy: Buy me food, Make me food, BE food."

My last post described a visit I recently made to Portland. When I mentioned this impending trip to my eldest daughter, who attends university about 1.5 hours south of Portland, she pointed out that if I stayed another 5 days that I could see her spring dance performance.

She offered to put me up in her house and made her car available to me.

My trip was just days away, and I had to pay a fee to change my return flight, but I couldn't resist!

Last September, I took the Coast Starlight train from Salem to Seattle; this time I traveled from Portland to Salem. I love train travel through the Pacific Northwest!

Portland's train station

The Coast Starlight

As soon as I knew I'd be in the area for several days, I contacted Gwen Spencer, who lives in Corvallis. Gwen and I go way back—we first met as roomies at Design Outside the Lines. She has a lovely sewing studio, Turn of the Cloth, where she takes in alterations.

You might recognize Gwen's name from Marcy Tilton's blog—Gwen helps Marcy test her patterns for Vogue and she helps out in Marcy's booth at Puyallup. She also often assists at Diane Ericson's Design Outside the Lines retreats.

It's always such a delight to see Gwen!

Gwen and I planned an afternoon where I would visit her studio. She mentioned that the Corvallis Fiber Arts Guild would be meeting on the evening of my visit: did I want to attend and, in fact, would I mind speaking?

SURE!

Gwen Spencer's Studio

Gwen in the doorway to her studio

The front room of her studio

Gwen's studio is in a beautiful part of Corvallis—in an area with a mix of homes and businesses—and it's a hotbed of creative types.

At Puyallup Sew Expo last March, I attended Diane Ericson's class on designing your creative space. She featured some photos of Gwen's studio, and I can see why. I have been home now for over a week and I'm still thinking of her studio.

Let me give you a bit of a tour. (I didn't take photos of the back room with her fabric shelves and cutting table, so it's just a bit of a tour.)

Gwen's design wall

A large bulletin board acts as her design wall. I'm sure that she constantly tweaks what is on the wall. At Puyallup, someone asked Diane, "How often do you change your design wall?" "When you stop looking at it," she responded. What a simple, and brilliant, answer.

Close ups of her design wall

A dress form sits in a corner of the studio. When I was there, it was draped with Gwen's fabulous spring shawl, which Marcy featured on her blog.

Gwen's artistic shawl

Close up

Gwen let me try on her shawl - I wasn't sure how it would look on me, but I loved it! The fact that it's cut on the bias and made from a lightweight cotton means that it lays nicely and doesn't slither around too much. A slithery shawl can be maddening.

I love Gwen's shawl! Though she did have to help me arrange it.

On a low table, she had the issue of Vogue Pattern Magazine that featured me as "Star Blogger", open to that page. Next to that is a humbling piece of fabric.
See that fabric? See it?! It's pretty awful, right? Well, it's a piece of fabric that I created at Design Outside the Lines when I tried my hand at fabric painting à la Diane Ericson. I was going to throw it away but Gwen asked to keep it. She plans to use it, one day.
She claims that it's not out of pity, but I wonder.

I really liked this feature in Gwen's studio. This beautiful wooden hangar currently holds two pieces of fabric that will soon become a garment. She auditions fabric here while the creative ideas percolate.

The larger piece of fabric, which is more purple than denim-colored in real life, features a flaw on the left edge. She purchased this piece from Marcy, and she loved the flaw. I'm sure that she will find some way to turn the flaw to an advantage in her final garment.

Gwen's studio also features art work. Some items she made, but other items are made by her artist friends.

This "cow quilt" is a large piece created by fiber artist, Clay Lohmann. (The cow face is made from a painted piece of wood that is affixed to the quilt.) Clay popped into Gwen's studio while I was visiting and invited us to come visit his nearby studio. We jumped at this rare opportunity!

It felt intrusive to take any photos inside Clay's studio, but here are Gwen and Linda, as we walked to his studio.

This beautiful glass tile was made by an artist that Gwen knows and, in fact, provided inspiration for Gwen's shawl. I really like how her shawl interprets the glass without being an exact copy of it.

I briefly met the fiber artist who made this ship. She was leaving Gwen's studio as I arrived, so I guess the ship metaphor is rather apt. Such a fun piece!

Gwen made this interesting bag. She knit it from a paper yarn and the strap is made from belting from a belt sander. So clever!

I so enjoyed my visit to Gwen's studio. She makes me want to flex my artistic muscle. In fact, she gifted me with a few items from her stash of hardware and I've been enjoying mulling over how to use them. (I love challenges like this!)

Thanks so much, Gwen!

Corvallis Fiber Arts Guild

After a quick dinner at the vegetarian restaurant, Nearly Normals, Gwen and I headed over to the Corvallis Fiber Arts Guild meeting at the Corvallis Arts Center. The May meeting featured a fabric swap and, wouldn't you know it, I came home with a few pieces of fabric. <ahem> I already have plans for 2 of the pieces. The creativity of this group is quite diverse—one member specializes in Katazome dyeing, another in basket weaving, others in quilting, and some, like Gwen, in wearable art.

The group is coordinated by Nancy Bryant, who formerly ran the fashion department at Oregon State University (OSU). Nancy is a lovely woman with impeccable tailoring and sewing skills, and with a penchant for reproducing pieces by Madeleine Vionnet. In fact, she shared an in-process dress by Madeleine Vionnet that she is re-creating and I am disappointed that I will miss the June meeting, where she will show the finished garment, made in 2-ply silk.

My eyes landed on Nancy almost immediately on entering the room: partly because of her welcoming smile, but partly because of the garment she was wearing. She is about half my size, or I might have been tempted to pull this jacket right off her body. She graciously allowed me to take several photos and to share them on my blog, so you can enjoy it, too.

Nancy Bryant wearing a jacket that she made that features a very Miyake-esque vertical pocket. She traced off the pattern from a jacket that she purchased.

The fabric at the collar, sleeves, and hem with the embroidered circles was purchased, but she added the coordinating embroidery on the front and back body.

She used the same contrasting fabric on the pocket welt and as piping to delineate the contrasting hems at the sleeves and body

Following the fabric swap, there was a show and tell, and then I spoke for a bit. What a fun evening with a fascinating group! Thanks for having me!

The Rain Shed

When I first met Gwen, she suggested that I come visit her some time and also to visit The Rain Shed. You are probably aware of The Rain Shed but, if not, they have a thriving mail order business for folks in search of technical, active-wear, and upholstery fabrics, hardware, and the like. They sell fabric specifically for dark-out shades, for example, as well as bathing suit, polar fleece, ribbing, and rainwear fabrics. I thought that The Rain Shed was in Corvallis, but when I entered the name into the Waze GPS app on my phone, it directed me to Albany, Oregon, about 20 minutes from Corvallis.

It turns out that The Rain Shed moved about 1-1/2 years ago from Corvallis to Albany. I certainly didn't need anything from The Rain Shed, but I wanted to visit anyway! I can't help it—I like to scope out suppliers. I had the day off from work, and my daughter's snazzy red car, so why not?

The first thing I noticed—Albany, Oregon has no parking meters! That, in itself, was worth a photo.

I took several pictures of the inside of the store, to give you a peek.

The fleece aisle

Their clever display of cuff ribbing

And WHO wouldn't love any fabric store that actually has a room dedicated to hardware?!!

The hardware room

A tiny sampling of their hardware

I bought some bungee cord and was impressed with this device. The owner had it made to her specification: it's a lazy susan with a rod inserted in the center. It makes it very easy for them to measure off lengths of cording or elastic.

What I liked most in the store were the hand turned seam rippers made from local types of wood! (Yes, I'm a sucker for these.) You can see their seam rippers on their website (look under Notions), but here are a few that I photographed.

A sampling of seam rippers. Some are double-ended, with a larger and a smaller seam ripper. Some of the single-ended ones have a pen clip. I like the variety.

It was so hard to choose, but two seam rippers came home with me:

The double-sided ripper is made from black walnut. The single-sided seam ripper is made from the wood of a Pepper Tree

Bolt in Portland

When I visited Gwen, we chatted about all the great fabric stores in Portland and she told me that one of her favorite fabric stores in Portland is Bolt. Somehow I had totally missed hearing about this store. I looked it up on Google Maps and saw that it was located near the Portland airport, so I asked my daughter if she minded if we stopped there on our way to PDX.

Bolt Fabrics is a small independent fabric store in the heart of the Alberta arts district. What a great area! My fiberly group didn't visit this area on this trip, but I can see spending some time here on a future visit.

While I visited Bolt, my daughter and her friend had lunch at nearby Bunk Sandwiches.

Bolt has a lot of quilting fabrics, which doesn't interest me so much, but she also had quite a few reasonably priced ikats, and two came home with me. She has a smallish selection of knits, and she also carries several lines of independent patterns. It's definitely worth a visit.

Bolt Fabrics

Three sides of this table hold patterns from several independent pattern companies, including Jalie

Farewell, Oregon!

Oregon was great! I was wonderful to see my daughter, her roommates and other friends, perform. I enjoyed 10 days of gorgeous weather (what, no rain, Oregon?!?!). I played "mom" for several days: doing dishes, taking out the garbage, folding laundry, buying lots and lots and lots of groceries, doing some cooking: basically doing my bit to repay my daughter, and her roommates', kindness to allow me to take over their living room for 5 days.

After DD1's performance

With some of her dance friends

Riding bikes with DD1. (Trust me, I took this photo while riding a bike.)

Her beautiful campus (with more gorgeous weather)

The Alberta Arts district has lots of painted murals. This whale is near Bolt, and the pic was taken just before we drove to the airport. (Where my flight was delayed because President Obama was also leaving Portland. His entourage drove past us just as we were entering the airport.)

Bye bye, Oregon! (Thanks to Ann Steeves for this pic of Mt Hood.)

P.S. Since returning home, I am eager to sew, but I haven't had a lot of time. Well, I have made several pair of pants, but I am mostly auditioning patterns for a Britex project. I am eager to do some creative work!