Jacket Success!

I trimmed down the seams of the RTW jacket, and it's looking much better.  It's pulling a little oddly, but I'm hoping that's just from being pinned and from the facing kind of drooping because the lining isn't holding it in place.  But the fit is SO much better.  It may make the jacket unwearable if my body changes much (my mother pesters me to "make clothes that you can wear after you have babies") but I'm ok with that.  Here's the before and afters:

Before

It has a much more tailored fit now--thanks to almost a 1/2 inch taken off every seam except the center back and center fronts.  I'm not really looking forward to making both of these modifications to the lining, since I didn't make great notes about what changes I made, but really, it's just shaved down on all the seams.

Posting may be light the next few days, since my mother is in town to visit for the week.  I'm hoping to get some pictures up of the garden and the farmer's market, but we'll see whether my digital camera wins out over her grocery store instant in number of photos taken.  It usually loses, but I'll try to take some photos.

Boudoir Photos

Not really, but here are some pictures of the beds in our house.  J and I went to an awesome party on Saturday for some friends who finished their Master's (Mistress) degree exams, and we had a little bit too good of a time.  So on Sunday, we headed out to the greasy spoon near our house for some pancakes, eggs and fried ham, but that didn't quite settle my stomach.  J, knowing me, suggested that the thriftstore next door could cure what eggs and toast couldn't, and indeed it did.  There's several thrift stores in Overcast, and this one specializes in furniture and local art (new, not resold) so we don't usually get much, but we got two amazing finds. 

We found a quilt and a quilt top--the quilt for 80$ and the quilt top for 40$, both hand sewn.  My mother has a house full of quilts she got when she was my age, back before antique quilts were collectible, when she would pick them up for ten bucks at garage sales.  But I haven't seen any in my price range at all, and I've been looking for several years.  Most of my vintage table cloths are ones picked up for a song, but I've never seen quilts for less than 100. 

Here's the quilt top on our guest bed, spread out so I could see how big it is.  It must be around a king, since it reaches to the floor on both sides of the full guest bed.  It's not a color combo I would have picked, but it's really fun without being overwhelming.  I've never made a quilt before, but I think I'm going to at least figure out how to back and bind this one, since it's too pretty to leave folded up.  I have no idea how old these might be--the pink and brown looks and feels like it's all quilting weight cotton, and it's a little 70s in the colors and prints, but I really don't know.  The white and pink looks like it's pieced from garment fabric, and the white fabric is several different kinds, and none of it feels like synthetic.  Don't know.

 

The white does have this odd header/footer band which looks like it must have been added later.  When we first bought it, I thought it must have been added because the maker ran out of blocks to make a bed-length quilt, but after getting it home, it looks like the band was added right over the quilt blocks at both the top and bottom.  From what I can feel through the fabric, it feels like the blocks are intact, so I'm thinking of snipping a few threads to see, but I'm not sure if I should take the whole thing off or not.  We'll see.  Expect some unscheduled quilting adventures later this summer.

In scheduled sewing adventures, the RTW jacket continues to vex.  It at least looks like a jacket now, and the lapels look great after all that work, but the fit is terrible.  I made my muslin modifications, but it still feels huge.  There's a lot of extra room in the underarm, which pulls on the front oddly.  I may make another go at widening the seams in the front princess seams, the back sides, and all the underarm seams, but the pieces in the underarm are so small already that I'm afraid of narrowing them too much.  At least the lapels and the pockets look ok.

Sewing and Errands

I've finished the handsewing for my RTW jacket (all the padstitching and interior taping) and it looks ok.  I think the interfacing may have been a poor choice for this project, because it's delaminating around the edges of the pieces which have spent a lot of time in my bag, but it'll be sewn into the seams, so hopefully that will keep it from coming all the way off.  Plus there's plenty of interior sewing holding it to the shell fabric. 

I don't quite know if my pad stitching is going to do what it needs to do, since this is my first time padstitching anything, and I'm not sure if I helped it roll or just puckered the fabric.  I suppose we'll see when it goes together.

 

I thought today was going to be spent sewing and doing some research work, but that's not to be, because I need to find a new power cord for my computer.  The computer is fine, thankfully, but the powercord no longer transmits electricity, so but I need a new one in order to use my computer.   I finished my current round of grading, though, so at least I'm not pressed for time until exams come in in about two weeks.

Speaking of grading:  I usually try not to take student misbehavior or slacking personally, since 9 times out of 10 it's due to something non-academic, and I did my own fair share of it in college.  But without getting into the specifics, I'm more than a little annoyed at a paper that a student turned in.  The paper is about a politically sensitive subject, and bases a rather vague but well meaning argument off of a lot of fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of American government and about religion.  The problems of the framework are not wrong because I disagree with them politically: they're just factually wrong.  

This is bad enough, from a graduating senior who is an American, and, presumably, is qualified to vote.  But the students also had to turn in a proposal on which they got feedback early in the semester, and I spilled a lot of ink informing the student of the errors in hir* framework for understanding the interaction of religion and government, and explaining in a basic-civics kind of way how the American government actually works.  I also met with the student in person a few times, and we discussed at length how religion and government interact in relation to the student's paper topics, the student asked questions, and kind of sounded like zie* got at least the basics of how the Supreme Court is in fact different from the legislative branch, and does different things.  

But, I get the paper, and the same fundamental misunderstandings are right there, and underpin the whole argument of the paper.  IF those the student's assumptions were true, it would still be a bad paper due to poor writing, lack of sources, and vague argumentation.  BUT it also has these deep factual errors, making it both wrong and incomprehensible.  

Normally I would chalk it up to just not getting it and move along, but I met with this student on a number of occasions, talked hir through the problems of hir framework, and made detailed suggestions about where to look and how to reframe the topic so it was based on factually true things.  And the student did none of them, so I was kind of pissed while grading the paper.  I've assigned a grade, but I'm going to wait until grades are due to put an official grade in for the paper, because I'm not sure if I'm being more harsh because I spoke with the student so many times than I would be if I hadn't spoken with the student.

*What's all this "hir" and "zie" business?  If you haven't come across it before, hir and zie are used as gender neutral pronouns.  I prefer them when talking about students or about anyone else I want to keep anonymous.

In which links are substituted for content

Today is a sewing, errands, and perhaps even reading day, so here are some links that I'm thinking about.  The insightful Ethel Louise has a very smart post on the recent celebrations over Osama bin Laden's death, and her discomfort (which I share) regarding both the message such celebrations send abroad and their meaning for policy and thought at home.  While I saw my facebook overflow with the kind of nationalistic celebration at the news which is being reported in the media, I'm skeptical regarding the extent of such celebration.  The reports I've seen, at least of the street celebrations, seem to have been small in number and in participation, making me think that they are being reported out of proportion to the number of people participating in them.  Which makes me wonder why the media finds it important to focus on these celebrations--perhaps to convince viewers that the news of bin Laden's death is more important than it is, both symbolically and strategically?  EL has much more on the symbolic importance of the news.

Tenured Radical has a provocative piece on the intersection of war abroad and the war on women, responding in part to a piece in the Nation on the recent rollback of American women's access to basic health and reproductive services.  While teaching the 20th century history course this semester has been very difficult given my background, that course and the Obama administration's ambivalence towards the attack on half the nation's (and, through foreign aid spending policy, half the world's) population have convinced me of the conservative turn of both the GOP and the Democrats.  When Eisenhower, Nixon, and even Reagan look progressive compared to the sitting Democratic president, you know the left in this country is in trouble.  Which makes the use of socialist as a political slur all the more infuriating: what we have seen is the expansion of state power without the expansion of state protection.  Given the erosion of citizens' access to government after the Citizens United SCOTUS case, the non-wealthy in this country, especially women, are increasingly subject to the will of the government without a voice in its implementation.

In less upsetting news (or possibly more, depending on how you feel about sewing), I'm going to do So Zo's Me-Made-June challenge, and try to wear one item of self-sewn clothing during the month of June.  I'll be trying to take daily photos of what I'm wearing, but I'm only going to do weekly posts of the photos.  I like the idea of trying to move more away from purchased clothing, and I think I finally have enough clothing made to go for a month.  I'm planning on making a top or two to round things out, though, because I have a lot of dresses and skirts and not much else.

In RTW news, the jacket is coming along, but I'm stumbling on the handsewing in the jacket front.  Well, not so much stumbling as taking a long time.  I'm cheating all over the place by mixing methods.  I'm doing some of the RTW techniques, like the block fusing for some pieces, but the jacket front has different interfacing requirements, so I'm doing a mix of the pattern's couture methods and the pattern's suggested RTW methods.

As you can see in the photo, I'm doing fusible interfacing but also handstitching things like the tapes for the roll line and the pocket fold, as well as the pad stitching for the collar.  I also forgot somehow that the couture method requires an underlining (a layer between the outer shell fabric and the regular lining) to provide body, so I had to rip some seams and put in the underlining, which took some time.  It's also not benefiting from being schlepped around in my bag, which is the primary reason my knitting is on hold, because the second little sweater has suffered a few too many dropped stitches in my bag going from home to class for me to want to pick up for a while.  My jacket fronts were stuffed in my bag yesterday for between-class sewing, and suffered quite a bit of wrinkling in the interfacing.  It doesn't translate to the outer surface, but I hope it doesn't mean the interfacing will peel off at a later date from wash or wear.  Has anybody found a way to keep your bag from eating your projects?  (Or a way to follow the news without becoming totally disenchanted?)

Sewing and Beer

Not together, unfortunately, since the beer was last night and the sewing is this morning before class.  Although it's the last week of class, I'm sure the prof would mind if the TA showed up tipsy.

The RTW jacket is coming along, but I'm trying to be much more careful in the sewing than usual, which also means going much more slowly than usual.  There's basically a million pieces to this jacket, and almost all of them are interfaced and/or underlined, even the facings, so that part is taking me quite a while.  It's gotten warm enough to keep the windows open, so the cat is helping by keeping things weighted down and not blowing around.

Things for the pot

J and I pitched a British bitter last night, a brown ale type with a lot of floral hops but not too much bitterness. I was going to do a tutorial-type post, but we got rolling and I forgot to take pictures.  We ordered a kit from Northern Brewer, along with some new equipment, which made life much easier.  The kit was about USD45, and came with everything necessary except for steeping bags for the hops (that's the little pile of cheesecloth and kitchen twine on the far right).  This recipe had both dried malt extract (the big white bag), actual grain, and malt syrup (the jug on the right).  The two silver bags are the hops and the inflated blue/black bag in back is the yeast, which we activated in-bag by popping the nutrient capsule the morning before brewing.

Things which need sanitizing

Yes, we sanitize in the bathtub.  We use bleach because it's cheap and easy to get, and doesn't foam up like dish soap.  There are specialty sanitizers you can buy from brewing supply houses, but bleach is at the grocery store and hard to run out of.  

Despite having dried malt extract, malt syrup, and grain, the recipe was actually very easy.  If you can make soup or tea, you can make beer, because the grain steeped at one temperature for 20min, the extract and syrup were mixed in at a higher temp, and the whole thing with hops was boiled for an hour (mostly to pasteurize).  We bought a candy thermometer for this batch, which was much easier to use than the digital meat thermometer we've been trying to use before.  Made life much easier, and was two dollars instead of twenty for the digital thermometer.  Also wonderful: cheesecloth bags which keep the grain and the hops neatly contained and easy to get out.

After everything was boiled up, the pot was chilled down in the sink full of cold water, and then poured into the carboy (big glass jug).  More cold clean water was added to the carboy to bring it to room temperature, and after everything was aerated (sloshed around to bring in oxygen and mix the different density liquids) we siphoned out some liquid to test its density (there's a special, but cheap, tool for this called a hydrometer that makes you look like a scientist), poured in the yeast, and put the beer away to do its thing.  

Sounds easy because it is.  This one will be done fermenting May 14; look for a bottling update then, and it'll be ready to drink May 28.  For today, I'm off to work on the RTW jacket.

The Reworked RTW Muslin

After some helpful advice from Carolyn, who writes a very pretty blog and is making the same pattern for the RTW Sewalong, I decided to take in the muslin quite a bit.  

(I had to take my own pictures without even a timer, because J left the house with my camera and I had a hard time figuring out his.  Please excuse.)  

I took in every seam another 1/4 inch, and reduced the width of the shoulders by almost an inch.  The sleeve cap will have to be redrafted as a result, but that's for another day.  

I think the pulling in these photos is a result of trying to hold up the enormous camera--when I look at it when not trying to take a picture, it hangs nicely.  I'm so much happier with the fit having taken it in.  I didn't take in the center back, and I think for the fashion fabric I won't take in the side back seams--it really just needed a reduction in the sides and front seams.  I'm also contemplating shortening the torso and adding a little more length to the hem, since I like the length of it, but the narrowest part of the waist sits a little too low for my liking.  But, when I just pinned a tuck across the torso to check before sewing, moving the waist up suddenly made the whole thing look much less slimming.  I may not move the waist, since it bothers me less in photos than it did while I was wearing it.  

I'm struggling with this muslin more than most things I've sewn, but I'm really enjoying the experience (when I get the time to work on it).  This is definitely the most complex pattern I've done, even more complex than the suit jacket I made for J and more complex than the historic patterns I've done.  (I started sewing because I got a job in a museum's costume shop in high school, and I stuck with it through college).  It's got so many pieces!  And I think the fit for women's clothing is less forgiving than for men's clothing, at least when it's tailored, since women's tailored clothing is meant to sit so much closer to the body.  But I'm also enjoying the difficulty of fitting this since I feel like I'm getting a better understanding of my measurements and making adjustments.  This pattern is definitely outside my comfort zone, but it feels like a good stretch.

RTW Muslin and Fellowship Dress #2

I'm so far behind on the RTW Sewalong--they're already fusing things, and I've only just got my muslin put together.  And it looks crazzy!  I think I might have to go down a size since it doesn't look that big in the photos, but there's so much extra in the side and hanging over the shoulder.  But the finished product will also be in wool with a lining, so I don't know if it's supposed to have that much extra room.  Or maybe I'll make some seam allowances bigger.

I'm sure the horrid thrift store acetate lining I used for the muslin doesn't help any.  And also rushing through sewing it before going to office hours.  Maybe I should put my sewing machine in my campus office so that I can get something done with students don't show up.

On AB's suggestion, I decided to go with the periwinkle.  J and I have been doing a spring closet cleaning/clothes purge, and going through my rarely-worn conference clothes, I think I do have enough to make outfits with a blueish blazer.  I mean, almost all my conference clothes are black, and everything goes with black.  But I think I'm going to sit on the muslin, and maybe iron it, for a while before cutting the real fabric because I'm so uncertain about this pattern.  I've made J a suit coat before, but I think this pattern has more pieces and more complex techniques than anything else I've done before.

In other news, I've FINALLY finished the second fellowship dress, and while I'm happier with it than I thought I'd be, it's not everything I'd dreamed it would be.  It's ok.  It's a self drafted pattern, so it has some crazzy in it because of that, and also some crazzy because the satin lining would not cooperate.  The inside is basically a trainwreck of the lining being way too big for the fashion fabric, despite being cut from the same pattern.  It also adds about two inches to my waist measurement because of the thickness of the fabric, making me feel very large in it despite the fit actually being pretty good.

But I also look like a super spy with sunglasses on, which is a plus.

I don't know about this dress.  Have you ever made something and then gotten rid of it?  I have another dress that I made for a holiday party, wore once, hated it, wore again a year later and still hated it, and I can't bring myself to get rid of it.  I'm afraid that might happen with this dress.  I don't hate it yet, but I can't see myself wearing it anywhere because it's so different from the rest of my wardrobe.  Since it's a dress, it doesn't really have to go with anything else, but I'm afraid it borders on costumey.  What do you think?  (Either about sewing outside your comfort zone, or about giving away/selling/getting rid of something you've made?)

Conference clothes?

I've been thinking for a while that I need another good blazer, so next month I'm going to do the pattern ~ scissors ~ cloth RTW Tailoring Sewalong.  I have this vintage Evan Picone blazer that I just love:

It just goes so well with everything, it has a nicely distinct waist (I tend to look lost in boxy silhouettes) and it's got nice structure without feeling stiff or rigid.  I really like it for teaching and conferences, because it's comfortable and can make jeans look professional, but since I only have the one blazer, I can't do that look for all three days of a conference or too often in a month of teaching.  So I'm thinking about doing this jacket:

It essentially has the same lines, and I'm not sure if I should stay with three buttons or go down to one.  I tend to like one button cardigans and blazers better than more buttons because I have a short torso and I don't like being all buttoned up, but it might be nice to have some variety.  I'm trying to clean out my stash, so these are the fabrics I'm thinking about:

The pink and the purple on the sides are lining fabrics, and the stack in the middle is the suiting wool.  I have a TON of the black and white plaid on the bottom (something my mother gave me) but I don't really care for it. It's very soft, and it's got kind of a slubby finish, so it reads a little too much like something my mother would wear.  Maybe some of it will go into a pencil skirt one day, but there's like seven yards of it.  The others are a periwinkle, a gray, and a maroon:

I like the idea of the gray best, but I already have a gray blazer!  I think two of essentially the same cut and color would be a little much.  The periwinkle reads as fairly gray in most light, but it's so light in color that I'm not sure whether it would go with my professional clothes.  I like the color of the maroon, but it just seems odd for a blazer to me.  I originally got it for the center look of this pattern:

But I think this pattern reads as more "light coat" than blazer, so I've been putting this off because I already have too many spring/fall coats.  I have this awesome houndstooth:

But there's only a yard of it, and my blazer pattern needs two yards.  The houndstooth might go into this little Butterick Retro vest at some point (the B look on the left):

So I guess the point of all this is that I don't know which fabric to do, and I don't want to buy more fabric (I have an entire dresser and a rubbermaid of stash fabric!).  Is maroon an odd color for a blazer?  Maybe I could get away with it if I wore it with something dark and more sedate.  Help me out, I need to get rid of some of this fabric.