Lander Shorts July #SewMyStyle2018

I basically feel like I can take over the world after making these. I’m a sewing bada**. One of my sewing goals for summer was to sew with denim. Obviously since July’s Sew My Style Challenge had Lander Pants by True Bias, I had to attempt. and I slayed. They are basically perfect except for one fit issue.

Since pants are tricky, I did want to make a muslin. If you know me, you should know I hate making muslins. I feel like I’m wasting my time and money on it. So for me, wearable muslins are the way to go if I’m making a muslin. I had just enough fabric leftover from my amber pinafore to make it. I thought it would similar enough to denim. It’s a twill, I think.

 

I do wish I had taken these photos before cutting out the denim. I tried them on and they fit pretty great. But looking at the back photos, you can see it rides up my butt a little. I think the lightweightness of it makes me not notice it, but I can tell in my denim pair. Next time I make these, I’ll add some length in the crotch. A change I did make from the muslin was I added 1/4″ to the front crotch, below the buttons. I noticed some wrinkles there. I think that was a good change.

You can see it riding up a little. 1/4″ to 1/2″ added to back crotch length and maybe lowering it 1/4″ would probably solve that problem. I know I’ve seen several others post with this problem, I should’ve known. I’ll forever be mad at myself, haha. Now what I am pleased with is the pockets. If you look at the shape, you’ll notice it’s a different shape. I did not take another pattern pockets. I took 1/4″ out of each side as the pockets seemed a bit large to me. Then I marked the center and 1/4″ up from the edges and created a pentagon. I just like this look much better. The square pockets give me camp counselor vibes.

I have never worked with topstitching thread before. Overall, it went well. It was a bit annoying switching thread and needles every time I needed to topstitch though. The buttonholes are not topstitching thread. I tried it with the topstitching thread and it was a disaster. So I unpicked it and used a similar color of normal thread to do the buttonholes. I didn’t use the automatic buttonhole on the top button because the edges were too thick, so I just used a zigzag stitch, marked the length, went back and forth several times. It doesn’t look as nice as the other ones, but it’s not bad.

Shall we talk buttons? Do not buy dritz jeans buttons. I repeat, do not buy Dritz. I bought 2 pack ( I think there are like 6 in each one) for both my versions. Went through both packages on the muslin and still didn’t have jeans buttons on it. The tacks kept bending. I bought some from blackbird fabrics, and not one tack bent. And they look nicer.

For the muslin, I folded up the bottom. I decided to go with a frayed look on my final. So i shortened the length by 1 1/4″. I did a line of stitching 5/8 from the bottom to prevent it from fraying more than that. I basically hacked at the bottom with my seam ripper.

Pattern: Lander Pants from True Bias

Size: 6 in the waist graded to 10 in hips

Fabric: midweight denim from Stylemakers Fabric

Alterations: Pockets put inside using True Bias Tutorial, 1/4″ added to front crotch, made back pockets smaller and pentagon shape, frayed bottom hem (will adjust back crotch next time)

Overall: I’m on cloud 9 with these. Will I make another before the end of summer. No I won’t have time. Will I next summer, probably. The fit is pretty great, minus the back wedgie. It is a lot of work using denim, so I gotta be in the right mindset of slow sewing to work on these.

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Suki Hack: Taylor Swift outfit part 2

This is my 3rd time making the Suki Kimono by Helen’s Closet. I  rarely ever make the same pattern twice, but when I can hack a pattern differently, I don’t mind making it again.

If you are interested in the first part of my outfit for Taylor Swift’s Concert, you can read that here. I still have some faux leather shorts to make and then a jacket for my friend for the concert.  I took inspiration from here outfit below. The leather shorts are from the red era, but I needed some shorts to bring some modesty.

The fabric is Nylon Chiffon Tricot from fabric.com. The nice thing was that it’s 108″ wide, so I really didn’t need as much yardage as I thought. I ordered 3 yards, and probably had at least a yard leftover. That being said, such a thin, sheer material, it was hard to cut out and slightly hard to work with. It took my serger just fine (some slippery/thin fabrics don’t) but attaching the front band was fiddely, especially since I shortened the width of the band.

So I lengthened this a bit. Not to be confusing, but I used the shorter version as my base (as it was already printed out and cut from my first robe) and lengthened that 9 inches. I bet it’s longer than the other version of the pattern, but Im not sure.

I added a slit by finished the seams, sewing the seam till I wanted the slit to start, Then pressing the seam open and topstitching the slit open.

I also shortened some things. I shorted the sleeves by 4 inches and the sleeve band I halved the width. As well as halving the front band. The front pieces is straightened using Helen’s Kimono Hack which I recently did for a Minerva Crafts make that will come to their blog soon.

Most of the magic of this make is in the fabric. I’m not sure how much normal wear I will get out of this, but I am excited to wear it for the concert.

Pattern: Suki Kimono by Helen’s Closet

Fabric: Nylon Chiffon Tricot from fabric.com

Size: small graded to a medium at waist

Alterations: Lengthened front and back pieces, shortened sleeve, divided width in half for sleeve band and front band, straighted front and lengthened front band

Overall: I love playing around with this pattern. By using it 3 times, I’ve brought the price of the pattern down to $3.73 per use. Very versatile pattern.

 

Culottes Minerva Crafts Make

I made Simplicity 8092 Culottes using Poplin from Minerva Crafts. Check out the full review on their blog here

T Swift Inspired Bodysuit S8513

Taylor Swift comes to KC Sept 8th and I’ve been planning my outfit. I’m actually going to be making 4 pieces. 3 of which is for my outfit and 1 for my friend I’m going with. Today I’ll be sharing the main piece of my outfit.

Initially I wanted to replicate one of her outfits completely. You may have seen me mention if you follow my insta stories, I wanted to make her rainbow outfit. Ultimately, I decided to make an outfit inspired by her, because I wanted to make something I can wear over and over, and be cost effective.

If you are T Swift fan, you’ll know this is the era of the snake, claiming the snake emoji. A lot of her rep outfits have snakes in them somewhere. Below is the outfit I’m basing my look off of.  The other 2 pieces I need to make for this is a sheer black coverup (gonna use the suki kimono) and black leather shorts (as I won’t go out in public in just a bodysuit).

I used Simplicity 8513 as my base. Mainly because it was a bodysuit. I went back and forth on what view to start with. I was going to initially use view E, eliminate the sleeve part, but I decided against a turtleneck, and the pattern has you use elastic to finish the sleeve, and I didn’t really want to do that. Then I thought view A, eliminate the sleeve, ties, and add a collar. But the pattern has you finish the V with a facing, which might have made the neckline part difficult, and I didn’t want a facing. So, I used view B as my base.

I made a whole lot of changes. Since I was changing so much, and didn’t want to ruin my good fabric, I used leftover swimwear fabric to make a wearable muslin. To start off, I traced off the pattern like normal in my size (small graded to medium in waist). On the front, I cut a triangle piece off. I actually used view A to see their V, but knowing how low that was, I raised it about 4 inches. I doubled the width of the neckband, as it looked thin and I wanted it wide.

I did not trace the sleeves. I took 1/2″ out of the armcyce, but kept the bottom part so it wouldn’t be too low. I then drafted armbands about 10% shorter than the armcyce, that would be 1/2″ wide, keeping in mind seam allowance and folding it in half. I also took 1/2″ out of the neckline on the front and back pattern to count for the extra width.

I wanted to finish the V neck with bias binding. So I drafted a bias piece. I used this tutorial from So Sew Easy. Below is the resulting muslin.

I was actually pretty happy with it. Very wearable. I just wanted the neckline to sit a little lower and the V neck a bit lower. So I lower both by about 1/2″. The lower back and legs were a bit big. I could have retraced in the full size Small, but I just shaved off 1/4″ in the back and 1/4″ on the sides at the bottom.

This sewed up very quickly. The biggest problem I had was with the snaps. I was using the cheap blue thing that comes with the snaps. Do yourself a favor, splurge and buy the $20 snap fastener. I have since bought it, and it was way easier. I went through the whole bag basically trying to apply snaps. Tearing my fabric a bit. I ended up cutting off the holes and adding more fabric. You’ll notice what I’m talking about in the pic below.

Shall we talk fabric? I used snakeskin jersey from StyleMakers Fabric. This was my first time using Stylemakers fabric. I was very happy with it. They are a bit higher priced then I can afford typically, so I’ll be using them sparingly. It is very soft and comfortable.

Pattern: Simplicity 8513

Fabric: Jersey from Style Maker’s Fabric

Size: Small graded to Medium

Alterations: A lot! Read above for the full changes.

Overall: Super easy pattern. Needed very few fit changes. I probably won’t use this pattern much as bodysuits aren’t really for me. Unsnapping the snaps all the time tear up my nails. And I like to go to the bathroom quickly, haha. No fault on the pattern, just personal preference. But if I do decide I need more bodysuits, I’ll use this pattern.

 

 

Swimsuit using free patterns

One of my summer sewing goals was to sew a swimsuit. I not only checked it off my list, but hit it out of the park. My photos are once again indoors. I live in an apartment building (with no pool) so I wasn’t comfortable standing out there in a swimsuit. But once I take it out for a swim, I’ll for sure get some pics and put on insta.

Let’s start with the top. It’s the Sierra Bra from Madalynne. I’ve seen several posts about using this for a swimsuit, but not many that detailed the changes they did to make it work for a swimsuit, so I’m gonna try to break that down a bit for you.

Besides the obvious of using swimwear fabrics and swimwear elastic, I also lined up the swimwear hook (bought a Joanns) with the end of the front (which ends up being part of the back) and cut the pattern down to match, leaving room to fold elastic over.

I also added swimwear pads. I just ordered them off Amazon. Nobody seems to mention this when sewing swimwear, but I do not want my nipples showing at the pool. Modesty is important to me. So I sewed up the bra tops (serging elastic onto it, then folding over elastic), when I added elastic to the bottom, I slipped the pads in first, locking the pads inside the lining and main fabric.

I made my own straps using this tutorial from Evie la Luve. I used her second method, but I did a zig zag top stitch, because my machine started skipping stitches, I switched out the needle, rethreaded, not sure what was wrong, but it wasn’t holding together as secure as I wanted, so I secured it with a topstitch.

The bottoms are the Maxine Panties from Evie la Luve. These were super simple. I mostly used this tutorial which uses that pattern to do so. Otherwise I added 1/4″ to the back and front legs, just because I did sew up  a practice version  using fold over elastic, and it fit great, I was worried I would lose coverage with folding the elastic over when using swimwear elastic. I basically used that tutorial for sewing the Sierra bra elastics as well.

I sewed up a Medium in both the top and bottom. I got the fabric from FashionFabricsClub. Main Fabric and it seems they took the listing down for the lining but there are plenty of swimwear lining options on their site. The Sierra bra calls for 2 yards of lace fabric, keep in mind that normal fabric is a whole lot wider. I bought 2 yards  and probably only used 1 1/4 yard for both the top and bottom.

 

Pattern: Sierra Bra and Maxine Panty

Size: Medium

Fabric: Swimwear fabric and lining from fashionfabricsclub

Alterations: quite a bit, all for making it work for swimwear, really no fit adjustments. If I make it again, I might take 1/4″ out of the back piece.

Overall: I love it, I’m so proud of myself. I really feel like it looks store bought. I think the high waist is really flattering on me.

Evelyn Romper by Ohh lu lu

I wanted to make PJ’s that go well with my new Suki Kimono . I’ve had my eye on the Evelyn Romper by Ohh Lu Lu for a little bit.  Ever since I saw a blog post from Amy Nicole Studio. I finally got around to making it.

This is a pretty quick make. I made it in 2 sewing sessions (a few hours each). Making the bias tape probably was what took the most. So if you skipped those pattern pieces and bought bias tape, it’d be even quicker. 3 sewing sessions if you count me redoing the bottoms, we’ll get to that.

I used Charmeuse Satin from Fabric.com. You have to order at least 3 yards. It’s really cheap though. This pattern only uses like half that. I had to use a bit more because I cut the shorts out twice, but I think I can still fit an Ogden out of it.

Originally I only  made one adjustment. I added one inch to the length of the shorts. When I sewed the top and bottom together using 3/4″ seam allowance, it rode up my butt quite a bit. I unpicked it all and sewed it up with 1/2″ seam allowance. Should have given me an extra 1/2″ in the length. After sleeping in them, I knew if I didn’t redo them, they would never get worn. It was fine when standing, but once I sat or curled up in bed, it was major uncomfortable

Here are the changes I made before I cut the second pair of bottoms out.  I added 1 1/4″ to the top of the shorts. I would have rather added this onto the top part, to have it sit more at my waist, but I didn’t want to re-do it all, and wanted to keep all my bias tape work. I added 1.5″ in addition to the 1″ I had already added to the shorts length, except for I only added it to the side. The pattern has a bit of a flare up, but with my long legs, it gave me diaper vibes. Not super flattering.  The last change I made was I added a tiny wedge in the curve of the back of the shorts, to help it not ride up my butt so much.

I want to show you a side by side of the bottoms. On the left will be the 1st pair, and the right will be my 2nd version. You can very clearly see where it pulled at my butt in the first pair. Many diaper vibes.

Sizing. I made an extra small in the top and graded to a medium in the waist on down. I used the recommended strap length for extra small but then tightened it just a tad bit more.

I did struggle with doing a narrow hem on the shorts. So I just serged the edges and then folded it under and sewed.

Pattern: Evelyn Romper by Ohh Lu Lu

Fabric: Satin Charmeuse

Size: Small graded to a medium a the waist

Adjustments: lengthened shorts by 1″ and then an additional 1.5 inch on the sides only, added 1 1/4″ to the top of the shorts, a small wedge in the back crotch curve.

Overall: They are super cute on and a quick sew. I’m not a huge romper person, so we’ll see how much wear these get before I decide if I’ll make them again.

Minerva Crafts Jersey Wrap Dress

My first collaboration with Minerva Crafts is up on their blog. I sewed up Butterick 6054 for Sew Together for Summer. Check out the full post here