Donna's Nightgown

Donna comes to see me on Tuesdays. She originally started taking  sewing lessons to learn how to  sew things for her grand babies.  That changed very quickly and  now sews  mostly for herself! :) 

She made this nightgown for herself  a few weeks ago. 

Isn't it lovely? She used a very pretty  eyelet fabric. 

The pattern is  Simplicity 3504, the same pattern I used to make this shirt . 

For the inset, she used a solid white cotton and inserted a bit of lace into it. Above and below the lace is an heirloom stitch.  We used a wing needle to get the traditional hand stitched look. 

The lace we used is  lace hem tape. We used this method to insert it. 

 For the sleeves, she omitted one of the sleeve layers . The pattern shows the flutter sleeve with two layers.  On the edge of the sleeve she used a satin stitch for the hem. We set the machine to a short length and zig zagged over the edge a couple of times, stretching the fabric slightly as she sewed. This produces a soft  lettuce leaf effect on the edge.  This type of hem is nice and floaty and allows the fabric to drape nicely. We were worried if we put a double fold hem , or even used the rolled hem foot, the hem might be stiff and  the sleeves would stand out away from her arms giving her a bird in  flight look. We wanted soft flutter sleeves and this type of finish is perfect for these sleeves.

 I love how she changed the shirt pattern into a nightgown.  To change it from a shirt to a nightgown, we added a bit more ease  and lengthened it. Pretty easy alterations! :)

Great job Donna! It is lovely!

Sweet dreams to you in your  pretty new nightgown!

The itchy, see through, floppy fabric Perfect Shirt

Donna, my awesome Tuesday night student :) , chose this  shirt pattern to make for our current project together. We looked through my patterns and  this one really appealed to her. I have had it in my stash for a  while, I just hadn't gotten around to making it yet. This shirt has no buttons or zippers so again she avoids closures of any kind (The next item will have a zipper. Or buttons or anything. You can't avoid them forever, Donna! :) :) ) I liked all of the options that the pattern came with.

 I like to have made a pattern made up at least once before I teach it, to work out any issues  it may have.  So I got to making a shirt real quick before the next weeks lesson with Donna. 

I made a shirt but Donna is converting the pattern over to a nightgown. She has planned for it to be white eyelet , much longer and  flared out at the bottom. She is using the flutter sleeves for extra comfortableness.  ( Is that a word- comfortableness? Did I just make up a word?) 

I did not make a muslin with this.  I'm such a risk taker! No not really. This pattern didn't have any darts or any thing I needed to work out, so  I just fit as I sewed. I added some extra room to the front gather under the inset when I cut it out and moved the gather mark up the neckline.  I took up a lot in   the shoulders and the back seam .  That's it. 

 The fabric I found  I really like. It is flowy and very nice for spring and summer.   It was also   sooooo flip floppy when working with it.  I could not get it to stay in place when cutting , or pinning, or any of the process. 

For the inset, I used an  iron on  tear away stabilizer applied to the wrong side of the fabric,  to apply the lace.  I tried it without stabilizer on a test piece and it slip-slided all over the place. I couldn't get the lace straight. Because there are little stripes in the fabric, it is very obvious when the lace was crooked. 

Soooooo I iron on the stabilizer and stitched the vintage lace on with tiny zig zag stitches. They disappear nicely into lace. 

The lace is vintage lace collected over the years from thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales and who knows where else I got it from. I have had it forever. I use little pieces in projects here and there.  

 I tried it on after I got the sleeves basted in and was going to wear it during a lesson one morning to test it out before I finished off the seams, but I ended up tearing it off after a few minutes . It itched so bad!!!    It was insanely itchy!! There are little tiny clear threads running through the fabric which gives it a really  neat tiny shimmer in the sun.  However those little tiny clear threads are evil little imitators. Any cut edge of fabric  that touched my skin  had those little tiny threads in it. Sooooooo each seam in this shirt is either french seams or bias tape / binding covered. Every one. Not a raw edge anywhere. Even  where the bubble on the end of the sleeve attaches- all covered in binding. So my quick  little shirt which should have taken no time at all took a few days.

Inside the shirt, the seam allowances are covered in bias  tape binding.

     The edges of the neckline are in binding of the same fabric but packaged bias tape could be used in place of  it and look awesome. I pulled out some black bias tape to see if I could do it on this shirt but  the blacks were different .  :(  However, on Donna's nightgown, white bias tape will be used.  This will speed up the construction time on this a lot.

     The sleeves were super puffy on the first go round. I had added some extra room in the sleeves for my massive shoulders  and that created a some super pouf at the  top sleeve seam. I risked the itchiness and put it back on to take this  picture of the sleeves before I took them off.  Those sleeves were  costumy. I wanted a vintage feel to the shirt but sometimes too many details can look like  a costume.

      I like the bubble a the bottom of the sleeve.  I wasn't sure about it when I was making it but after wearing it a couple of times- it is very comfortable.

Here are  the sleeves getting ready to have the binding attached and some top edge  'pouf ' removed. .

      I took pictures outside this time as it is a black shirt and those haven't been showing up too well in photos inside my dark dungeon house. Here is the shirt in full sun so you can see all the details ... and right through it.

Look Dad! I am on the Internets in a see-through shirt!


When the photos loaded up on the computer I realized this shirt is see through. (My husband: Yea I noticed that, I thought you knew.  Me: Noooooooooooo I did not know it was this see through. Thanks for the heads up on that one,  honey :) )  And the majorly see through part isn't even on good stuff- like my boobs. :) :)  It highlights my stomach.  Not groovy.  In the wearings after these photos were taken, I wore a black undershirt. Problem solved. :)

This  is as glamorous as it gets, standing in the front yard, in the overgrown winter garden, in a see through shirt whilst the elderly neighbor walks his dog past.

I love this shirt. After solving the  King Henry sleeve pouf and the Itchy and Scratchy  problems it has become the Perfect Shirt.  It is extremely comfortable and  I have worn it  many times now. 

2 Jasmines

I am unhappy with my curent wardrobe.  There, it is out there. I have stated it for the universe to hear. I don't feel like me in it.   Somewhere after I had Eden  I started wearing jeans  and t-shirts all the time . I had never been a jeans person before- I have always preferred skirts & dresses. But as a new mommy, jeans were play friendly, easy, and cheap. Now she is 9 and here I site typing away in my wine me up and watch me go t-shirt ( very appropriate T for me, - thanks dad :) )  and  red corderoy jeans. Blah. 

So I have come up with a plan. A wardrobe plan. I am going to make two items of clothing a month  for me. And they won't be jeans and t-shirts!! ( though Sewaholic has a new knit pattern that I might try :) )  I have decided that I want to go back to how I dressed before I  had a daughter and learned how to bake and then eat cupcakes  and cookies  and brownies and all that stuff little girls love to make.  To sum up - the way I dressed before I got happy and  fat :)

 Yea, I work from home so I don't have to  be too dressy but still.. I miss fun clothes.  Sooooooo I am going to make them!  Because  I can! I am going to make a minimun of two garments a month- a top and a bottom  and at least one fancy date dress for the year.

I am actively going to build my wardrobe of items that I actually want. What a concept!

Each morning when I stand in front of the closet and  choose my clothing from the 5 pieces that actually fit , I am goingt to think about what I would like to be in there.  First up, I need shirts. Not t shirts. Shirts that fit.  Cute easy shirts that can go with anything. 

 I  found  this blouse in the  Victorian Trading Company catalog a while back.  It is $59.99 and available only in white.   I cut it out of the catalog and pinned it up on my noteboard in the sewing room as an idea of a shirt to make.  It looks like a swiss dot in this photo but when you use the magnify feature on the site, it is actually an eyelet lace

the shirt and pants up on my pin board.

  The Jasmine blouse pattern from Colette patterns is the closest pattern I have found to recreating it. It has the tie, the cute sleeves and the shape. The pattern does not button up the front but that is ok, I can always add a button placket to  it.

Colette  Jasmine

I trudged through the depths of Joann's and Hancock's to find a fabric and only came up with a swiss dot.  It was on sale half price so  it was $5 a yard. I bought three yards so this shirt was $15. Compared to the $59.99 at VTC .   It made up quite nicely in Version 1- here it is!

Look ! It ties!

I shortened the sleeves quite a bit because I don't think that almost-to-the-elbow-sleeve that the pattern comes with  is flattering on me and I also wanted to re-create the white  top.    I lengthened the fabric tie by about 4 inches and also made it slimmer. I slightly altered the  collar too, angled it in near the front. After I wore it once, I went back in and chopped about an inch off the inside facing- jeeeez it was huge.

Yes, funky  colored photo- I weirded them up a little so you can see the details of the black shirt. 

Detail of the collar

 I love this shirt. It is so comfortable to wear! And flattering, I think.  Making it was wonderful- there are no closures to create!  The pattern was great as I didn't have to alter the main body pieces at all!  The darts were even in the right place! That  never  happens to me so this was like  the paterrn equivelent of winning the lottery! It is cut on the bias which  makes it very comfortable as the fabric  has so much more give on the bias.   I have noticed in wearing it that I need to alter the neckline of the next one I make, as it can tend to bow out a bit, exposing a bit more cleavage than I  intend to. ( A bit of exposure is fine- 'hey I can see you belly button down your shirt' is not fine  :) :) )  And the next version I make will not have the neck  facings, I think they made  the neckline kinda stiff- I might just bias wrap the  edges instead. 

I want to make it out of an eyelet fabric , a thin velvet and a print. For each shirt I can change the neckline a bit, make it round, make it square, omit the tie, omit the collar, change the collar shape, change the sleeves, etc. Not one of these shirts will look alike :)



Jasmine #2


I found an awesome print at Joann's last week.  It is all synthetic- no cotton in sight here! It is going to be a  pain to sew.   It is  soooooooo slippery. I bought an extra half yard in case I flub up the neckline, which I am sure is going to happen.  I always mess up collars in slippery fabrics so I just go ahead and plan for it now! :) :) Plus it is synthetic which means at some point I am going to melt a sleeve or the collar  while  pressing.  I always melt synthetics- I think I have the iron cool enough but I never do...
But look! It isn't solid black!!!  There is black in it but look- there are other colors!!! Yea me! :)

I have already cut it out and the pieces are hanging over a chair down in the sewing room waiting for me to  get drunk enough , I mean, waiting for me to sigh a big sigh of 'here we go' and sew it.  I cut the Sleeves of version 2 this time- so no gathering in the sleeves.

Two weeks later....
 I finished it! :) Ahm..there is gathering in the sleeves- somehow I thought sleeve #2 would be sleeker. It isn't. It stands up there. Next one I make I will get rid of that little pouf at the top of the sleeve. It isn't terrible, it is kinda cute, but I do want them sleeker.
I changed up the entire collar. I did cut one like the black shirt but I made it much narrower.  It was terrible. This fabric is sooo slick, the collar was all kinds of crooked. I tried to rip the stitches out to fix it but it was impossible so I scraped it and started over. I cut looooong  bias strips and sewed them into a mini collar. I also raised the neckline up a bit- after wearing the black shirt a bit, it noticed it gapes open when I lean over my sewing table. Not good.
The fabric was a royal pain. But it feels super nice on. Almost slinky! All of the seams are french seams so it is nice & smooth on the inside.

I feel like Peggy Olson in this shirt. My hubby and I have been watching Mad Men lately and I am smitten with the clothes. Each episode I will  say at least once- ooo I like that dress. I do like Betty's clothes and of course every single thing Joan has on is to die for but I really relate to Peggy's wardrobe.
I love the little bow collars and cute sleeves. Hence what you see here :)

Just so ya'll know- I feel really goofy  doing these photos. 

Eat your heart out Joan Holloway. 

And that's my two jasmine's!