Try, Try Again

Here comes the first test of the Yui pattern. I traced off a copy of the Misato shoulder and marked the shoulder seam line.

Do I remember those waza names?

For this first pass, I just went straight on with the forward shoulder section to the jacket front. Putting the corners together and then the point of the other end on the jacket front line, the two sewing lines matched up almost exactly. Which is to be expected, since it really wasn't for shaping on the Misato.

Flip the shoulder piece over and hit the other side and this is what you get. When making up the muslin pieces, I just traced one half and then shifted the pattern over and traced the other half.

For the back, I moved up the dividing line. While I was looking at it, I thought the top half would end up with such long, thin points, that they would be difficult to handle. By moving the line up, I get shorter points, with less acute angles.

The pieces are cut so hopefully they'll go together tomorrow.

This latest bolt of muslin got really bunched up on the bolt and I'm pressing the hell out of it as I tear sections off, but it's putting up a good fight. Well, it's laying flat enough while I trace and cut out, but not very photogenic.

New Parts

Another bag of silk taffeta is what I ended up with from the last vouchers. This latest idea is supposed to have a dress and a jacket based on the Akari and Misato projects, so today in lieu of any great ideas, I started tracing out potential pattern pieces.

I'm thinking that the front of the jacket may not have any closure, just two edges meeting in the center front. I started tracing the two fronts, overlapped as the garment would be, but leaving out the "notch" in front.

The bottom edge is straight across and I put a center line in. This piece will get cut into two separate pieces eventually. A similar back piece was traced out, omitting the "step down" in back.

For the moment, I'll keep the shoulder and sleeve pieces from the Misato on top of the pile. I haven't decided on the neckline either, but I'm leaning towards nothing. The jacket may be heading boler-ish, just by coincidence.

For that shoulder piece, I'm debating cutting it in half at the shoulder seam and integrating the front section into the front jacket pieces and leaving the back section as-is. I could have sworn I took a picture of the rear body piece, but the combined front looks almost the same, so I'll use that for a quick idea. As part of this, I would split the rear body piece also as below and then sew a test up to see if it looks like it does in my head. In the meantime, I'll try to come up with fabrics and how I would use them if I go for that.

Fictional Garments

The latest round of vouchers expire at the end of the month, so I have to get back to work and plan what to get with them. I have a general idea what I want to do, but am still sketching and thinking. First pass, it looks like it will have some cross-over with both the Akari dress and the (Not) Chanel Misato jacket. How much that holds up though, I wouldn't want to bet on.

A new line, sort of

A new center front

Something in this direction, but not exactly

Unfortunately a mostly whole bolt of 44" muslin was lost last night when I went to tighten a light bulb and it exploded, throwing glass everywhere. The muslin was standing upright next to the lamp and as I was cleaning a million pieces of glass, I decided to skip not finding all them in the folds of the fabric until... Oh no, only 10 bolts left! Well, Joann's has a 60% off one fabric coupon at the end of the month if I can hold out that long.

Back to the Skirt

Not much today, but I want to get back in the habit of doing "something" every day to try to make some visible progress (eventually). Put the darts into these front and rear skirt pieces and then pinned them on Lucy to think about possible adjustments to the patterns.

Oops, one side should have been folded over along the top edge a bit more and pinned a little lower, but I was distracted by Penguins fighting on TV. I'll mark the guidelines for the "placket" closure before taking these back off.

Got a good match of the various points on this side of the front. That is, the side seam of the skirt matching the side seam of the form, and the darts lining up with each other and the princess seam of the form.

On the other side, you can see that the front piece is overall correct. The side seam matches the side seam of the form with the rest of the waist pinned in place. However, the bodice and skirt darts don't match up. It feels like the skirt dart is closest to the princess seam of the form, while the bodice dart goes a little over to the side seam side of things. The overall bodice piece also matches the form fine, and with the ruffles on, this shouldn't be visible, but I'm sure I'll mess with it again before I'm done for psychological reasons at least.

The length of the skirt section also needs to be determined. With the ruffles going over it, it technically doesn't need to be that long. But even though no one will ever wear it, I'm still going to set it long enough to cover Lucy's backside, if she had one...

Akari's Back

Today I put the back pieces on the new Akari bodice. Before starting, I realized that I had already put the band on the front. Next time, I imagine I will make the band up in one piece and add it after the sides/backs go on.

The heavy 12" shears are probably overkill, but I still like them for trimming all the layers of the seam allowances. Since the side/back pieces are also underlined, they had enough weight to them to match up okay with the front section, just by folding over and pressing them. The separating zipper was added similar to on the Misato (Not) by Chanel jacket, with the one sided presser foot.

I tried to sew things "tight". That is, to err to the inside of the sewing line. This mostly went well, though I did come up not quite skin tight on the sides. Even though there should be additional bones added to the side and back seams, it still needs to be a touch tighter coming around the sides, given that this is basically a corset.

Next step will be to add the skirt base for the ruffles. I have pieces drawn up based on my best guess as to where on the bodice I want it to sit.

Akari Returns

Finally I got a chance to get in some sewing today. I've been spending my little free time between shoveling snow and other fun stuff studying Japanese, but I can feel my brain getting full. Maybe tomorrow I'll make a review to be sure I'm really remembering everything.

There was already a pile of pattern pieces on the ironing board based on the next theoretical construction plan. For these, I cut two of each front and side/back pieces and then a band to go along the top. The two each were so they could be sewn up as underlined pieces. Of course, both pieces are just muslin here, but it's the thought that counts.

The underlining test is mainly for the front, since that is the one with all the darts. Ecru thread on unbleached muslin isn't the best for photography, so some of these pictures may stink. Underlining involves basting the two pieces of fabric together and them working them as a single piece. First, the pieces were outlined and then the darts also basted together. I had read competing articles on how to baste the darts together, but what I went with was to baste the two legs.

Despite the thread becoming invisible, it was easy to feel on both sides as I was basting the darts together with the green silk thread.

For this round, I'm going back to my previous theory about making a band along the top edge of the bodice that would then attach to lining pieces on the inside. Based on the bodice pieces, I drew up some pattern pieces for this. The side and center back parts are individual pieces but for the front, I darted this single piece up.

The band piece was basted on with the contrasting silk thread. Thread basting this long waving edge instead of using pins really makes life easier on the sewing machine. The sewing line of course goes back and forth, but also at this point, the pieces are darted which makes them not flat anymore.

Usually I would end up using a lot of pins to keep all the lines lined up and account for the 3D nature of the fabric. Getting them out while steering on the machine ends up being a distraction and you can end up with puckers sewn in or some drunken sewing lines. If you ran off outside of where the sewing line should have been, it's not so bad to go back and resew that section but if you went inside of it, then you get to practice your seam ripper skills.

Once the band was sewn on, the seam allowances were trimmed and clipped. Then the twisting and turning of the ham and seam roll got under way to help press out that edge.

The seam allowances were pressed towards the band. I think this picture is beforehand, but the band was then pick stitched to the underlying seam allowances.

The cased steel bones from a previous test were transferred to the long darts of this front bodice. Because there is an underlining layer, the bones are only stitched to that, so that the stitching doesn't show on the outside of the garment.

Trying the front bodice on Lucy, I found all the points lined up well. With that small triangle shaved off this side of the pattern piece, I finally have it matching all of Lucy's seams.

Up next, I will put on the side back and center back pieces, including a separating zipper for a closure. Also, I have "skirt" sections that will go over the lower portion of the bodice per my previous post about taking this section in more of a Grace Kelly direction. The skirt will be attached to the bodice, and the rear closure will just be an overlap that snaps closed. This piece will end up being the base for the ruffles (maybe).

Akari Shinohara Meets Grace Kelly

Time again to rethink the Akari dress project following the results of the last test. Reviewing the book (Grace Kelly: Icon of Style to Royal Bride), I noticed a couple things that I think I will incorporate into the next tests. As I mentioned in a previous post, I've been trying to balance making this dress use Grace Kelly dress construction "theory" with Akari dress appearance, making arbitrary decisions about what's "correct". Now I'm going to lean more towards the Grace Kelly construction and the first thing to go is the button closure from the Akari.

Keep in mind that one difference between the Akari and Grace Kelly dresses is that Grace Kelly bodice/underbodice unit opens in front, while the Akari closes in back. The Grace Kelly has a two part front that opens, while my Akari pattern has a single front piece and opens at center back.

This picture got me thinking about the bodice I've been working on for the Akari. So far, it's basically been a corset, but at some point, it was going to have to have something added to the bottom. Since I hadn't decided on how to do the skirts, I hadn't worried too much about it. For the next round, I'll add on the charmeuse slip section.

The slip section might start higher than I was previously thinking. Originally, I was thinking of attaching something at the "hip" line below, but now I'm considering shortening the bodice to the "Mid" line and starting the slip at that point.

Alternately, I might leave the bodice the current length, but attach the slip starting at the Mid line, to give it  more stability on the body. I don't know if it will matter, given the other structural components, like the boning and wide petersham "belt", but will probably keep it hip length.

Looking at this picture, there is a separating zipper for the closure.

While sketching things out, I was wondering how to  put a slip on the bottom of the bodice and have a separating zipper. The solution I think will be as mentioned in the notes (snap closure). The slip section will start above the lowest part of the bodice (and bottom end of the zipper) and the rear seam will have an overlapping, placket type section. That section will have a snap closure which when opened, will allow access to the  zipper. This will allow the rear opening to be large enough to step into, while also being able to have a finished looking closure.

Thread Tracing

Realizing that at some point, constructing these garments can't involve me drawing on muslin with a pencil, I started trying thread tracing. Somehow I've never used thread tracing, but here we go. I think I'll like it since it shows on both sides. Since I'm marking sewing lines rather than using the cut edge of the fabric as a guide, it makes it easier to line up adjoining pieces and see the sewing line.

Most of my thread is ecru or whiter, but in the closet I had an assortment of Clover silk thread in dark colors. Amazon sells these six spool assortments and I have several of the two white/two black/two "winter white" boxes on standby. The price on these is a little higher now ($21-22) but if you look at camelcamelcamel, you can see an average price of about $17 and a low of $14 for the black and white assortment. I'd wait til it goes back down again before getting more.

Before I started, I traced out some fresh pattern pieces on paper and cut them to the sewing line instead of just generally around them as before. The paper piece is laid on the fabric and running stitches made around it. At corners, they say to exit at the corner point, turn and come back out at the corner point heading in the next direction. Probably easier to just look at it here. The paper is shifting away but I'll use the ol' blue tape to hold it in place next time.

You get the idea.

Eventually you end up with something like this. The dart's not marked here but you can see the shape of one of the front pieces of the Misato (Not) by Chanel jacket taking shape.

New Tests

My mother sent some tags for the pillowcases, to say who they were made by (the group, not me), but they turned up a little smaller than expected, so I had to think about how to insert them. Originally I thought these would just have one end in the seam as it was sewn. The actual tags are a little small with small enough borders, that I don't feel confident about that. Plus, I'm not sure the ends are meant to be left completely unstitched. I didn't want them to unravel down the line.

Rather than make my mother try to attach them by hand later, I'm looking at ways to attach them by machine while in production of the pillowcase itself. I decided to center it inside the band. The band is ripped to length, and folded in half on the long edge, in preparation for attaching to the body of the pillowcase. Once that center line is established, I just center the tag on one side of the band and sew down the ends.

Back to the bag of feet for a narrow presser foot so I can see what I'm saying.

Threads are pulled to the back and tied off and when the pillowcase is finished, it looks like this. I made sure to pay attention to how the band went on to make sure the tag didn't end up on the outside.

I also cut out another pile of pattern pieces for the next Akari test.

Since this was to be a test of the new pattern pieces for the back closure, I ended up doing a test of the test. From my left over pieces of muslin, I ripped up four new pieces, two a little wider than the other two to represent the outer and inner layers planned for this construction. The sections were sewn together at the ends to make two units, and then pinned together with an idea to sew them together along the top edge to connect them.

If these two were the same width, this wouldn't be a big deal, but here one layer is wider, since the center back sections are wider on the outer unit to form the overlap pictured in the manga drawing.

I didn't even sew it, but folded over, you can get an idea how this isn't working.

One of these edges is going to get turned in an unfinished looking ugly way. After thinking through a number of ways of stitching this that didn't work., I came up with the idea below.

In this plan, the center back (CB) sections are finished before the side back/front sections are sewn together along the top edge. This should get the two units connected a good ways around the body, but leave the center back sections separate from each other. That should make the fake closure look that much better, but as always, I'm on standby for this plan to not work exactly as expected.

Akari's Wedding Dress

It's been a while since I worked on the Akari dress, so I tried to make a little progress over the long weekend. I kept going back and forth on how the back is going to come together, so I started with the front.

After re-reading my notes on the Grace Kelly dress, that this is supposed to be an R&D project for, I ended up coming up with a four layer test plan. The four layers will actually be two layers. One, an outer layer made up of four-ply silk underlined with a fabric to be named later. Two, an inner layer made up of two layers of cotton.

The outer layer will have a phony closure made up to resemble the drawing of Akari in the manga. The inner layer will have a separating zipper to reflect, more or less, the underbodice unit of the Grace Kelly dress.

For the center back, I started working over the pattern pieces to account for the phony closure. That part will be 2" wide, centered on the center back. To modify the pattern pieces, I had to draw in the closure. On both the right and left center back pieces, I drew lines parallel to the center back line, 1" over in each direction.

On the left side, this should become two pieces as noted above. There's a good chance of this become several pieces, so the "closure" becomes a separate flap. The right side will be extended in width, but I'm not sure if this will make it look more like it's two sides, buttoning up as-if it were a real closure or screw it up because it will look like things don't line up. I need to draw it out on paper some more.

Okay, I thought about it again and that flap idea was wrong. The overlap version is the correct one.

After the Fact

Why am I making the same thing again and again? Because I have to work through the things that are obvious after the fact. It's also good to practice when the final garments will be made of all sorts of fancy silks and laces. And by fancy, I mean, I don't want to have to buy all that stuff again!

While I cut all the pieces to test other stuff, like the armhole adjustments, today's sewing focused on the zipper. Here's the "under" half with the zipper in it's approximate placement along with a piece that will become the "extension". It occurred to me, since this is Misato (Not) by Chanel, that I might use the selvedge here to help cut down some of the layers. The extension is to be attached and turned back so that the selvedge becomes the point inside that meets up with the lining.

It looks like a ripped edge, but the selvedge was fringy on this bolt of muslin.

The zipper needed to be basted in place before attaching the extension, since it will be sandwiched in along that edge.

The extension is pinned in place. I had pressed it over while I was messing with it, but you can see here which way it will go.

To sew along that edge, I went to the bag of feet and found something appropriate. This foot has the hole to the side, or rather, it doesn't have both sides,so the hole and thus the needle, can get way over there despite the zipper teeth.

Simple as that! When I turned the extension to the inside, I ended up just catchstitching it to another seam allowance. On the actual garment, I'm currently assuming it will be fell stitched to the lining fabric.

On to the "over" side. Here I'm basting the zipper side to the "extension facing" so that when it gets folded back, the zipper will be right to match up to the "under" side.

Here's where "obvious after the fact" gets sewn in place.

Next comes the "real" extension facing, sewn on sandwiching the zipper in place.

 

The "real" facing gets turned back away from the zipper, getting ready to turn the works to the inside.

Here it is, turned to the inside, so that the zipper sits inside the outer edge and to the back side.

When I was putting this together, I did it such that stitching wouldn't show on the front face of the jacket. However, when I tried it on Lucy, I realized that the outer fabric, while creased to form that edge, could easily pull back, exposing the zipper underneath. So I says to my self, Self, what would Susan Khalje do? And so I got out the needle and thread and pickstitched it in place. This would probably be good for the final garment too, since with the raw silk, you'd have to do a pretty bad job for it to be noticeable.

I meant to do that.

The last test collar was still pinned to Lucy and I left it on, but I imagine it will have to come off as I work more on this. I folded under some edges just to look at, and all the pressed but otherwise unaccounted for seams make this a little messy at the moment.

Zipped up though, here comes the obvious thing. The "over" side zipper half needs to be moved back from that edge 1/2" or so. I like the placement of the "under" but the "over" should be covering that seam. Also, with zipper pulls like these, if you don't allow a little something for it, it's going to be sticking out. Overall though, the test went well enough. Next up, the fun of setting in sleeves and thinking about how to manage all the odd seam allowances in this thing.