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Making Sewing Patterns

Friday, April 30th, 2010

My first dress pattern! (The second photo shows more accurately the color)

I made the pattern for this dress with the help of Cal Patch’s Design it Yourself Clothes and Modern Pattern Design via vintagesewing.info. Cal’s book is a fantastic introduction to pattern making, but it is very basic: she teaches how to draft a shirt pattern, for example, but the shirt includes no darts, which makes many design elements impossible. So, when I needed a more complex construction, I consulted Modern Pattern Design.

After drafting the pattern, I made samples, and moved lines around and around. Finally I made the full dress out of a nice black chambray and finished it off with vintage buttons. But it’s still not quite perfect. I’m not at all happy with the flare of the skirt, which also needs more ease in the hips, and the buttons don’t rest quite right in the button holes (which is fixed easily enough).

However! This is the second dress I’ve ever sewn, and a first with my own pattern, so it’s quite an accomplishment, and I’m really pretty chuffed. I feel a little like prancing around when I wear it.

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Tie Collar Blouse

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

In which Ella sews her first major project in–maybe–100 years. Now that’s longevity!

(Excuse the dreadfully dark photos–it’s been raining non-stop in these parts!)
By way of getting acquainted, Ella and I joined forces to create this cute pink blouse. It’s based on this Burdastyle JJ pattern, and made of a light, cotton lawn. This was my first time using Burdastyle’s printable patterns, so, of course, the sizing isn’t quite right; next time I’ll make it once size larger (I foolishly made the smallest). But I’ve got to say, I love the print-at-home goodness of these patterns. Yay for Burdastyle!

In my version, I omitted the ruffles and the belt loops and opted instead for a tie collar. Cute, eh? (I have to use ‘eh’ now that I’m a Canadian, you see!)

Now, about Ella. Oh, she’s so sweet and unassuming, but we sure did have our squabbles over this project. First, what she doesn’t do: Ella doesn’t use electricity or plastic or anything but metal, leather and thread. She doesn’t sew zig-zag stitches (my mother was shocked). She doesn’t sew backwards or sideways or any way but straight. She doesn’t have adjustable-length stitches.

But she does sew such perfect, tiny, straight stitches. After more than 100 years, all her pieces are in complete working order, down to her tiny tension springs and cracked leather drive belt (isn’t that amazing?!). She has a simple little bobbin winder and a treadle peddle strong enough to smash my sadly misplaced toe. Every once in a while, she skips a stitch or two, though I haven’t yet discovered the cause.

I did have to do quite a bit of tension adjustment to prevent the awful gathers on this light fabric. I set the tension screw to the loosest possible setting and still had to give the seam a little tug to smooth it all out. Also, while some machines will sew quite peacefully over pins, Ella’s presser foot is too heavy and a mess ensues.

All of this meant that learning to use this machine was quite a challenge! I needed one hand to rotate the wheel to get her stitching, one hand to guide the fabric under the foot, one hand to remove pins, and another to tug the fabric coming out the back, to prevent bunching. Ahhhh! I don’t have four hands!! But we’ve resolved our differences and by now we’re quite on happy terms.

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Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Fantastic Shirt-Yoke Sweater

Monday, April 19th, 2010

This is the two-continent, three-country sweater.

I started this dreamy, manly sweater in Hamburg, knitted on it in London, and finished it up here in Vancouver. It’s made from Honorwood’s DK weight, natural black Shetland yarn (available on their site), and I just adore the greyish-black tone of the wool and the strength and softness of the finished garment. The sweater’s hem facings are mustard yellow, and stand out nicely when you happen to see them. All in all, I’m utterly thrilled with it!

Want to make your own? Go now, go go go, and buy EZ’s Knitting Without Tears. I also consulted Brooklyn Tweed’s fantastic post on this sweater, and guessed a bit at the yoke construction, but the guessing is half the fun!

Those saddle shoulders and simple lines flatter a man’s shoulders so nicely, don’t you think?

Posted in Clothing, Crafts, Knitting, Pretty Things | 3 Comments »

“Handmade Nation” or Handmaking the Nation

Monday, August 17th, 2009

Etsy, a documentary, and ever-increasing blogs and crafters indicate that crafting and the handmade is experiencing a giant boom right now. Without a doubt, this is something to be celebrated, as it is allowing greater numbers of people to explore their own creativitiy and ability to create their own material culture; it’s also a step away from the excessive materialism that has driven the modern world for nearly a century. Crafting is busy raising practical arts like needle work from the realm of women’s work to legitimate, valued art.

However, the “Handmade Nation” is not without it’s flaws. First and foremost, most of the crafters and their products are spare-time and spare-money oriented, and many of the products, while being lovely and challenging, are superfluous. Specifically, they have little practical use. For, indeed, zines, jewelry, and beer-soap are fun, and do adorn and inform, but they do little in the face of real human needs of clothing and protection. Handmade seems to have left the purely practical behind.

Additionally, the handmade movement is working almost entirely with industrially-produced supplies. So, then, I may be able to buy a t-shirt that was sewn by an individual crafter, but what of the cloth, the fiber, the farmer? Exploitation is reduced at one level, but many others remain; the creation of my product is now more local, but incomplete. Imagine the continuity of locally hand-sewn, woven, even grown trousers! A true revolution will take into account not just the finished product, but also the individual ingredients in each project.
Of further concern is the fact that we see very little diversity among crafters, who are mostly women, mostly middle-class. Where in the past, hand-crafters may have been engaging in cottage industries because doing so was a practical method of earning extra cash, when wearing homespun was a mark of poverty, now the poor have only small opportunity to do and make. This may be because they lack the knowledge, as much of crafting knowledge is now no longer passed through generations but is learned at universities, and is certainly affected by the high cost of tools and materials. Also, the lack of non-rich crafters is also surely a result of the scandalously cheap availability of pass-produced goods–why make it when you can buy it for $2? But, of course, the poor (and the rich!) buying cheaply-produced products only continues to reinforce poverty, both domestically and abroad.

How might, for example, being able to create durable, practical shoes improve the life of a poor city dweller? What would the economic and material landscape look like if not only the rich first considered making their products before purchasing them? It could mean an important change, not just in the prominince of materialism, but also in sustainability, peace, even equality.

Because, then, a major barrier to crafting, is the cost of tools and materials, I plan a project that would use the internet to disseminate practical and academic information about crafts and would work to establish community crafting centers. How might the situation be improved if communities had publically-available crafting tools? I imagine a community center that includes sewing machines, looms, leather cutting materials, torches, kilns, and the like, so that expensive tools could be shared widely. Practical steps to solve a practical problem, and contribute to the growing revolution!

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Dressing Habits

Monday, December 8th, 2008

This isn’t anything directly about Germany.

For a long time my wardobe has been a simple one. I remember the Middle & High School years and being constantly reminded that I had more than the same three shirts in my closet. It was true, I had more, but I didn’t want to wear them. They didn’t fit with me. I’ve always had a small handful of clothes which I really like, and I usually over-wear them.

In the last couple year I’ve refined the it a bit, as I haven’t bought much. Leaving active duty military, you only have so many civilian clothes, quite a reduction from my earlier years. Over the next two years (until I left for Germany), my wardobe had slowly inflated, not so much from purchasing new items, but by hand-me-ups from my brother and the old clothes I left behind in boxes at my parents’ house.

For the last six months of our American residency, we had used most of my excess clothing as floor pillows. I don’t have to reiterate what has already been stated, but there was a good amount of donated clothing. Bags full. Two cars-loads worth.

I enjoy wearing solid colors. I don’t like a lot of patterns, images or designs. I like darker solids, though typically not black. Blues and browns are my favorite. I also like the look and feel of hand-made clothing. It’s basic. It’s simple.

I didn’t bring much with me to Germany, probably only 20% of what I had back in the States. It was difficult, but liberating, giving away that much stuff, especially stuff I didn’t really care about. One thing I did bring was a pair of brown hemp pants. I don’t treasure them because their made of hemp. They could be made of cotton, or linen. It’s the natural fiber plus the hand-made feel, and the basic brown color which makes me treasure them. The most valuable item, however, are the gloves Aza knit me. I had no idea how much I would need those here. I’ve worn them every time I’ve gone outside for the last two weeks.

Since I’ve been here I’ve picked up a couple other things. The first is a scarf. It’s a huge green scarf. I’ll take a picture as soon as we get another camera. It’s wonderful. The second is a hat. Not just any hat. A newsboy (or bakers boy) hat. Oh yes.

To return to the original purpose of this post, my wardrobe consists of simple items, of solid colors. It’s what I like, what I’ve always liked, just never really understood it until now. This reflects many other aspects of my life..I’m just realizing certain things that I’ve felt for years, but only figured out recently.

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Jobs, Friends and Other Details

Saturday, December 6th, 2008

It’s been quite a whirlwind week for me. I arrived in Hamburg and contacted a potential employer just in time to take part in a training session that began last Saturday. The training was five full days of information on a method of teaching English to children, accompanied by four full nights of making props and preparing for practice teaching the following day. Lots of jumping around and not a lot of sleep!

But now I’ve finished the training and have official employment! Beginning in January, I’ll take on nine classes of up to eight children, teaching English in an immersion method. I work for a learning center franchise of Helen Doron Early English, a company that operates worldwide teaching children as young as six months. The theory is that if you surround the child with a second language from infancy the new language is as familiar to it as the mother language. For me, the theory means that I get to play with children in English and get paid for it! Naturally it will not be that simple, since I’ll have to plan and prepare for lessons and keep the kids in order, but essentially play is the goal.

In addition to a job, I even got a friend out of the training! I’m mostly thrilled about that. My friend’s name is Maike (you say it “Mike-a”), a mid-thirties mother of two sons. She’s cute and little like I am, and wants to help me out because of a bad experience she had living in America and a friend who saved her. So, yay for me! Soon we’ll do something together and I’ll meet her little boys, Joshua, 4, and Nick, 15 months.

I had a little moment of joy when Maike discovered my German last name. It was as if, yes, I am a foreigner here, but some part of me, ancestrally, belongs! I’m still working out the plans for German classes so I can belong a bit more. When we go out here, people seem to think we’re German, because they come up to us and speak lots of German, but the second we open our mouths, our secret’s out! Nick’s right, it’s a little sad that our German is only “I don’t speak German” and “I’d like five please” (accompanied by a point at the oranges or whatever). It can only improve!

Nick has also secured his employment and will begin soon making a demo for the company’s browser game. He’s the only programmer on this part of the game, so he’ll really have a chance to prove his worth. But he’ll have to write about all that: I have no clue!

So, the snow is gone but it’s lovely outside nonetheless. Somehow, Christmas here really feels like Christmas. Partially it’s because there’s none of this political correct “The Holidays”. Christmas is Christmas. Also, wonderful Christmas markets–Weihnachtsmarkte–have sprung up in neighborhood squares where craftsmen and other vendors sell goods, many of them handmade. Thursday we did a bit of shopping in the city center and visited the downtown Christmas market and found a woodworker who was selling delightful handmade games, a glassblower with various miniatures, and many many food vendors. We drank Gluhwein (hot mulled wine) and ate fried cod and muscles standing around a trash can-table. I also got some yummy sugar-coated nuts. AND that day, I finally got a warm wool coat, which is really an essential here. Yay! It’s knee length and a wonderful purple color. Today I’ll wear it on a walk to the lake to collect pine branches to make our apartment a bit more Christmassy.

Our apartment, yes. We’re pretty happy with it, but it’s very empty! We made a trip to Ikea by train, but when we got there we discovered that they don’t take our credit cards and we had 100 eur cash, so now we have three plates, four cups and glasses, a pan, a (very very warm) blanket and sheets (but we bought the wrong size top sheet–everything’s in centimeters, it takes some getting used to), and a rack to hang our laundry on. (Yes, btw, our building has a washer, but no dryer, which is standard, so everyone air dries their laundry). But we don’t have forks or spoons. We have a mattress but the bed we ordered hasn’t come in yet, and our walls are bare so it echoes horribly! Oh, yes, but outside our window we see green trees, and outside the door is a city alive!

Happy Christmas!

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My New, Improved Boots

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008

Last fall, I picked up a wonderful pair boots at a second hand shop for $7. English-style riding boots, smooth brown leather to the knee. I wore them all winter and spring, and ended up wearing down the heel cap to the leather, and causing the sole to come unfastned from the top, which made for cold, wet feet. So, naturally, I had them repaired, and I’ve just got them back this week from Sandy and Vale’s Shoe Repair on Railroad. I’m so pleased with the new, inproved boots! For $19, the heel cap’s been replaced, and everything re-glued properly, and now they feel solid, warm, and ready for another winter. And yes, the repairs did cost more than the boots themselves, but that’s because they were a serious bargain. Well worth it.

In this vein, we were discussing repairable versus non-repairable shoes the other day. While it does seem that the cobblers are kept busy with Danskos, Birkenstocks and hiking boots, most people I see on the streets and bicycle paths are wearing shoes that cannot be repaired and thus must be thrown out once a hole develops or the heel wears down. Of course, most of these shoes are designed with the ever-changing demands of fashion in mind, and thus are not intended to be worn more than one or two seasons, so their repairability hardly matters. However, the cost of constantly replacing worn shoes, the undesirability of adding yet another discarded item to the dumps, and the tendencies for natural materials in repairable shoes make me wonder why they are so unpopular. Is it really simpler to choose and purchase an entirly new pair, instead of resoling the old ones? Yay for cute practicality!

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Mittens

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Last night I finished these:

It’s getting cold outside, and hands want to be warm for bicycle rides. So I knitted Nick some thick mittens to replace his “sock gloves”, an abomination of old socks with finger holes cut in them. He wears them while he works, and they serve a very practical purpose, but they’re so ugly! So now when we go out, he can have warm and pretty hands.

This was my first successful stranded knitting project. I’ve been knitting for about a year, but when I tried stranded before, I didn’t know enough, pulled the trailing strands too tight, and ended up with the tiniest hat ever. This time, I had the benefit of many more knitting projects behind me, and it worked out! Working maybe two hours a day, it took slow me only about four days to finish both.

By the way, I used this pattern from Knitty.com, with some yarn I had sitting around, 100% wool, of course. Turned out pretty nicely!

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New (Old) Patterns

Thursday, October 30th, 2008

Last week, I won a fabulous ebay auction of vintage lingerie patterns. I’ve been trying to figure out how to make my own bras for months, making many, many pattern attempts, and cutting quite an excessive amount of cotton attempts (from the wedding table cloths, that I made from thrift store sheets, so this fabric has had quite a life!), and all to no avail.

Yes, of course, I ought to have just bought a pattern, right? Except that I’ve had a very hard time finding bra patterns, especially ones that aren’t intended to be used with stretchy fabric, and especially ones that aren’t that horrible modern rounded shape, which is what drove me to making my own bras to begin with. Haven’t you noticed the current bra shape, which has ousted all others? When I was in high school, only a few years ago, my bras were rounded with a slight, natural point, and usually were made of knit cloth, with some padding. But now, bras are very different: they’re all pre-formed (and very firm) foam, which completely reforms any natural shape (and feels rather strange on another person–as I noticed when I hugged–not groped–my mother). Anyway, all of this to say, I wanted to make my own, and now I’ve found some great patterns.

Here they are:

These patterns are so ancient, all published in the 1940s, and they’ve definitely been used. To use them, then, I first trace the entire pattern onto brown packing paper, and then put away the original, so as not to damage it. Then I reuse the copy.

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