How I Spent My Summer Vacation, Part 1

Yes, it's time for the "how I spent my summer vacation" post....which could also be called "why I haven't blogged for more than an entire season of the year."  When we last spoke, I was sewing and packing for a trip to England and Scotland.  I'm going to share what I made, what I packed, what we did and what fabric souvenirs came home with me.   
Please feel free to leave the room whenever you like.  You see, I remember being much younger and my parents bringing out the slide projector and screen to show vacation pictures to perhaps unwitting friends and neighbors.  Now, thanks to the virtual anonymity of the internet I won't know if you clicked on this page and read all of the post or if you left in a nanosecond...and thanks to some eventual maturity on my part I won't mind if you leave quickly but I will be happy if you stay and join in the fun.
Mr. Lucky and I were last seen heading out to England and Scotland for another walking holiday.  I watch the weather patterns obsessively in the previous weeks and watched it go from cold and dreary to gloriously sunny, real Royal Wedding weather.  
Here are the outfits and sewing projects that I completed in time for the trip...and one that got left behind.  Layers are an important part of my travel wardrobe so first up was a Margarita Tank Top by Lyla Messenger, a staple in my wardrobe. Margarita Tank Top I wanted to use some navy stretch lace and auditioned several knit under layers.  White was too bright, navy was too dark and the lace detail was lost.  

Margarita Tank Top by LJ Designs

I ended up using an almost cornflower blue/purple which worked well with a solid navy cardigan and with this navy striped cardigan.

The selvedge had little pleat like the lace so I used it to finish the neckline.

Ok, that was one new garment ready for the suitcase.  Next up was a simple white lace shell from my TNT t shirt pattern, boring but oh so useful.

Pamela's Patterns Perfect T as a tank top

Now let's make a third layer that will go with that lace top.  I have had this tropical silk print (Fabric Mart, of course) in my resource center for years and the kimono pattern, Simplicity 1318 1318 is so classic that it is still in the catalog.  

Simplicity 1318 kimono jacket

And now something else new for the black cardigan that is a staple in traveling...a blue, black and white silk bias top sewn using a shorter version of a Sandra Betzina bias dress pattern that I love for summer. original post about Vogue 7823 bias dress 

Vogue 7823 as a sleeveless top

And then I decided to sew up one more blue and white item for that travel scheme.  I bought this oh so beautiful gingham print cotton lace-like fabric at a Fabric Mart fabric store buyout in the spring.  And I have my trusty boho tunic pattern ready and waiting, New Look 6110, now OOP unfortunately.  It was fussy sewing since the fabric is so lightweight and full of holes.  Used a Linda Lee suggestion and sewed with tissue paper underneath most of the seams and then tore it gently afterwards.  

I love, love the result but decided at the last minute not to pack it.  The fabric is just too fragile to stand up to much wear and tear so it's saved for special casual occasions but not for packing and unpacking.  And yes, it does need a white or flesh toned camisole top underneath it.

New Look 6110

So those are the me made items that went into my suitcase.  The next two posts will be about our time in London, the South Downs and the Highlands of Scotland.  And yes, sewing friends, fabric will be purchased.
Here's hoping you too are reminiscing about your enjoyable summer days and planning your fall sewing projects. 

Disappointed But Undaunted

Does it annoy or frustrate you it when what you thought was going to be a wonderful new garment just doesn't live up to your expectations?  I've two of those experiences in the last month.  When I just got back into garment sewing in the mid-90s, that experience would really throw me for a loop.  I'd be angry with myself, annoyed at "wasted" time and money and frustrated because I didn't clearly understand what went wrong.  Then I started going to American Sewing Guild neighborhood meetings, attending lots of sewing expos and conferences and along the way heard great advice....and also commiseration from even the most experienced teachers.  So I'm sharing these to encourage you to move forward, learn what you can and let go.  They are still making more fabric....and if you live near me I'll probably bring some of my excess to one of those sewing get-togethers.
Disappointment #1
A bias silk charmeuse nightgown....doesn't that sound decadent and sultry and very 1930's pre-code movies ( Turner Classic Movies article about those multi-dimensional women in early 1930s films)  I imagined I'd be vamping around the house like Jean Harlow.  Not how it turned out.  I sewed another Vogue 7823  bias dress, shortening it 7 inches and lowering the neckline about 1 inch front and back.  Self-bias binding  and a little poly fabric flower and it was looking comfortable and flattering....

Vogue 7823 bias gown

before I wore it to sleep in one night.  

Holy hot wrinkled mess.  Needless to say this is not the look I wanted.  I think the idea is still a good one but would work better in a four ply silk or a heavy rayon crepe backed charmeuse like I've done before.  

Wish I could have captured her beauty and style

Disappointment #2

Chico's silk velvet jacket that I love

I've been crowing about my success with the Elle skinny pant look but knew that I would now need some new jackets and tops to make that look work on my body.  The picture above is my inspiration piece for a jacket to wear with slim pants.

I used a pattern I've made before (Vogue 8089) and even made a muslin.  But when it came to the real fabric and lining, I was disappointed with the initial result.  It's wearable but not really what I was imagining.  Here are the pics:

I even look uncertain about this one.

I did like the even shorter version of Vogue 7823 as a bias top

What don't I like about it?  Well, to begin I think it's about 2 inches two short for the look I wanted. Ok, easy to fix on the next one.  Next, I hate the lining technique that Sandra suggests in the pattern and will use a traditional lining next time of just make it unlined.  Even though I made pattern alterations it's still much roomier than I wanted so that means taking out more ease, particularly across the front.  The sleeve head needs to be adjusted to put the ease at the side front up into the sleeve head.  So, a bunch of adjustments before I make my next one.  Not awful, but also not what I had hoped for on this project. 

Maybe with the belt but that's not really a look I like on me.

Lined to the edge hemming technique doesn't work well in light or drapey fabric, IMHO.

 Is it worth putting my efforts into these changes?  I'm up in the air about that question but no need to rush a decision, there are plenty of other sewing projects to keep me busy in the meantime.

But here are two things that did not disappoint me.  A garden club friend recommended this first book.  it certainly wasn't great literature but I found it interesting and engaging.  It's a historical novel based on the life of Hilda Klager, a German immigrant homemaker and farmer who has a passion of breeding new varieties of lilacs, apples and daffodils.  It's certainly not an expected activity for a turn of the 20th century woman but her cross-pollinating and hard work have brought beauty and new discoveries that we still enjoy today.  If you have any interest in gardening then I think you will enjoy this one.

When I got my hands on Cold Mountain years ago I think I read it in three days.  This one is much shorter but just as beautifully written.  Amazon:
Charles Frazier, the acclaimed author of Cold Mountain and Thirteen Moons, returns with a dazzling novel set in small-town North Carolina in the early 1960s. With his brilliant portrait of Luce, a young woman who inherits her murdered sister’s troubled twins, Frazier has created his most memorable heroine. Before the children, Luce was content with the reimbursements of the rich Appalachian landscape, choosing to live apart from the small community around her. But the coming of the children changes everything, cracking open her solitary life in difficult, hopeful, dangerous ways. In a lean, tight narrative, Nightwoods resonates with the timelessness of a great work of art.
 I made sure I read this one slowly to savor very description and subtle point of view.  Simply beautiful.
Reading good books is sort of like sewing up a TNT pattern.  They revive my sinking spirits and encourage me to give a new project a chance.  Hope your latest projects bring you more shouts of joy that sighs of disappointment.
  

LBD....Little Burgundy Dress

There's been sewing going on in my house and it's about time that I put it down into this record.  I've been avoiding blogging, heaven knows why, but I do like having this diary-like record of my days, weeks and life so it's time to catch up.

Simplicity 2364 as a dress

First up, my LBD....better known as my Little Burgundy Dress.  I've been in love with the Simplicity 2364 top for more than a year now and decided to try it out in a dress.  I love it!  I used burgundy stretch lace (maybe from Jomar) and burgundy slinky...really nice stuff with the rayon in it for great weight and drape.  I've adjusted my photo to better show the contrast.  I had enough fabric so I made a top in the same fabric which will head to Florida with me in November.  Basically I added 20 inches to the top hem area.  Now I have plans for another version in navy.

The rest of August's sewing was productive and  filled with a lot of repeats.  When it's hot and humid or I have other more challenging things on my mind, it's not wise to start a new complicated sewing project.  The pattern adjustments I make need a clear head and August wasn't the right month for that.  But sewing something fun and easy is a great distraction and break from other tasks.  So here' s look at what else got made up last month.

McCalls 6201 dress

Vogue 7823 in Fabric Mart linen

Five Pamela's Patterns Magic Pencil Skirts...skirt pattern

One self-drafted silk chiffon poncho

I also enjoy a thoroughly distracting, fun book when I have other more distasteful tasks in my life and here's one that fit the bill.  Loved it, loved it.

USA Today's #1 Hot Fiction Pick for the summer, The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both.

Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever.
For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.
Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s,’30s, and beyond--from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women--Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them.

I seem to be on a historic novel kick this summer but have been disappointed by the few others that I have read.  This one was well-written, interesting and rewarding to read.  I had not seen the good reviews on this one, found it at the library by accident and it was a delicious diversion for the last weeks of summer.

Next post, how I spent my summer vacation....and how my first quilt is progressing.  Until then, it's good to be back in the blog world and back to some more "serious" sewing now that fall is in the air.

Another New TNT Pattern

Vogue 7823

Why did I wait so long to try this pattern, Vogue 7823?  Well, mostly because I don't like the cover picture with its high neckline and long mid calf length.  And because I was nervous about a bias cut dress on my less than svelte middle aged figure.  I definitely should not have waited to give this one a try.


Last summer I joined the dress making bandwagon and churned out a half dozen stretch woven sheath dresses McCalls 6201 sheath and a few empire waist knit dresses  Simplicity 3678.  I liked how easy they were to wear in the summer and decided to try a few more dresses this summer.  

One of my friends in Florida was raving about the benefits of linen during a heat spell last year.  I have collected a lot of linen over the years when I thought I was going to be making Louise Cutting or Sewing Workshop patterns.  Turns out they are not garments to get me through sultry mid atlantic summers so that linen has been sitting in my collection since then.  But sewing that bias linen top (Vogue 7717 post)  this spring gave me the idea to try a linen bias dress....only what pattern to try?  I was going to place a simple sheath on the bias but turns out that I had this pattern in my drawer, hooray.  Now I'm loving it in linen and lightweight wovens. 


I made size D, cut the neckline about 1 1/2" deeper, raised the armhole depth about 3/8", otherwise I used the given two armscye darts and two back shaping darts.  Bias trim the neckline and armholes, stitch a baby hem and it's a cool, lightweight way to get through summer.
Here are the four versions that I've sewn in the last four weeks....with a few more in mind.

The first picture is actually my third one.  It's a denim/navy colored linen and I am wearing it with a handwoven silk shawl from Mekong River Textiles  Mekong River Textiles I added a band of trim around the neckline, some blue toned braided mini soutache from the PA Fabric Outlet that I hand stitched in place after I had bias bound the neckline.  
Since our temps were in the 100s in late June and early July I planned on wearing this outfit to an outdoor wedding in the country two weeks ago.  But then that little thing like the derecho storm hit that Friday night and all bets were off.  We missed the wedding, about three hours away, and lost power for four days.  Thanks, however, to our more than generous next door neighbors we were able to hook up our refrig to their generator and keep food safe, a fan or two running and by Monday I was even hooking up my sewing machine and doing some sewing.  But that's another post for another day.  In the meantime, here are the other three versions.

First version in camel linen with some strange light reflections from that mirror

Plain black grey linen

mini check cotton rayon shirting fabric

  I also think I can slash off about 18 more inches and have a nice bias top pattern.  I am one of those people who loves a new TNT pattern and doesn't mind making a few versions once I get the fit refined.  I know others find that a little too factory-like or just dull.  I love those people because they keep sewing new things that make me ooooh and ahhhh all over the internet.  I'm not one of them but I sure appreciate the work that goes into sewing, reviewing and posting pics of the process.  Here's hoping your sewing is fun which ever way you do it.


Last post I promised to share what other activities were diverting my attention from sewing.  I love summer for reading....oh, heck, I just love reading and here are my most recent recommendations:

I believe Anna Quindlan and I are about a year apart in age and this book deeply echoes my feelings about aging.  I have been very fortunate (hence my blog name) that major tragedies have not stricken my life so I've enjoyed getting older without huge diminishment in my quality of life  Do I have regrets? Yikes, of course or I would hardly be human.  Do I sometimes envy today's thirty and forty year olds because they will see more of the future than I?  Again, yes, yes. I am so curious to know how the story continues.  Do I spend my time worrying about my wrinkles, bumps and sags?  Sure, sometimes, but most of the time I'm thrilled to be where I am in life.  This book was a celebration of all that is good right now...all the while knowing that it will not last forever and may not last for long.  That's what makes me grateful for each and every day of so many blessings.

I love a well-written "happy" book and this next one is just that.  

I've enjoyed Adriana Trigiani since I read her Big Stone Gap trilogy years ago (start there to get a good flavor for her) and then loved, loved, loved, Lucia, Lucia a few years ago. Lucia, Lucia Amazon blurb and reviews Sewists, grab that one and enjoy the pages of custom sewing descriptions for gowns in 1950's and 60's New York City.
The Shoemaker's Wife is another wonderful story, almost prequel to the characters of the of Lucia, Lucia.  It combines true historical characters, the opera singer Caruso, for example, with a fictional account of two immigrants from the same northern Italian region who come to America at the turn of the century.  Sweet, romantic, entertaining.  

For real life love stories here's a terrific collection from the NPR series, StoryCorps.  StoryCorps stories are audio stories taped in special booths set up around the USA and then broadcast on the radio. This is a collection of some of those stories which have been transcribed into a written format.  Sometimes funny, sad, touching, tender, but all of them heartfelt.  Three categories of stories are included:  Found, Lost, Found at Last.  Here are some samples from the Dave Isay interview on NPR  Love is All There Is

This last selection came from my monthly book group.  One of the guys in the group had read the new Stephen King novel, 11 22 63 which sets up various alternative endings to the day that President Kennedy was shot in Dallas.  The book group member had heard an interview with Stephen King who described the book below as the best time travel book ever written and he suggested we read it.  Well, in my case, that would be re-read it.  I loved this book when I first read it in the early 1970s and this is the copy still on my bookshelf.  I was curious to see if my opinion would hold up over time and it has.  It's a very detailed account of Simon Morley who volunteers for a government experiment to test a self-hypnosis version of time travel.  Not particularly fast paced but it combines a mystery, a historical novel, again blending real events and places with fictional ones, a romance, perhaps a little improbable but charming nonetheless and it has illustrations.  The book group participants generally enjoyed it and I was thrilled to have a reason to read it and love it all over again.  Most of the the books' action takes place in the Manhattan of 1882 which the author is constantly comparing to the Manhattan of 1970.  Since I was working in NYC in the summers of 1970 and 1970, these were places that were familiar to me daily and I greatly enjoyed such a lively account of what it had been like almost a hundred years earlier.  

If you've stayed with me this long I'll close with another project that has been stealing my time this summer.  I've always been interested in mosaics, sort of why I like fabric because of certain textures.  I took a three week beginner's class at a local mosaic store and wow, do I have respect for people who do this regularly.  This 9 by 12 picture frame was slow going and mosaic work is clearly not going to be my new passion.  I will, however, now work on the three projects I have had planned but that's it.  Nice outcome but too time consuming.  I'd rather be sewing.
Thanks for sticking with me so long this time.  Now let's get back to what we really love to do....dream up that next sewing project.