I’ve been sewing again lately, which I really enjoy. Part of what made me get back to it was the gift of a new-to-me serger. Oooo, what a wonderful thing! I could sew all those knits that had intimidated me before! I bought some patterns and scoured the discount bins of my local fabric stores for knits. I haven’t had much luck with patterns for woven fabric in recent years – nothing seems to fit, despite my efforts – so I wanted to test the knit patterns first.
This w
as a plunge back into the pond.
There are two funny things about the results:
1. I haven’t used the serger yet. It intimidates me, so I’ve been using the overlock stitch on my favorite machine.
2. Every single garment I’ve sewn of knit fabric fits. Really.
First time.
Every. Single. Garment.
This is incredibly exciting!
So, let’s look at some of the results. First up, a Sandra Betzina pattern, Vogue 1477, which has a va-voom gathered front. Apparently, it’s also out of print.
I bought a remnant of this olive green print. I don’t know all the names of the various kinds of knits: this one feels like a silky t-shirt knit.
I cut my size and held my breath as I sewed it up.
The body was a bit long. I shortened it by almost 3″ before hemming. The v-neck plunges a bit deeper than is my usual style, but I like it (and I have no idea how to modify it.) Here’s the result – the ever-stylish Nell is wearing it with a favorite black wool 8-gore skirt of mine from Daniel Hechter Paris.
You can see that the neck plunges deeply, but it still looks good.
I also bought about 3 meters of a russet and black print. It feels like it belongs in t-shirts but is more cottony than the first one. So, I cut another of the Sandra Betzina tops from it and sewed it up.
Another great fit!
I’m going to cut a dress from this pattern in a green abstract knit, extending the lines for a flared skirt instead of the squared-off one shown in the tunic pattern. I believe this knit fabric is called a scuba knit. I’m pretty excited about this, and will show it to you once it’s done. It’s still on the dining room table right now. 🙂
Next, I cut a Marcie Tilton swing top out of the russet and black fabric. This is a fun t-shirt with a bit more style. The pattern is Vogue 9300. The line drawing doesn’t really show that there’s a little horn on that diagonal seam at the front.
I cut the shorter version, but because I’m short 🙂 it probably looks like the longer version on me. The neckline is a little deeper than I wanted, but I followed the pattern the first time.
Here’s my test swing top.You can just barely see that Nell decided my little black suede boots would be perfect with this combo.
I liked this top enough that I started to think about variations. (I also discovered Marci Tilton’s blog, which has a post about this pattern and possible variations. It would have been good if I’d found this before I started sewing the pattern but there you go.)
In my treasure hunt for knits, I found a fuzzy knit in the discount bin, which is very soft, in black with cream. I’ll call it a sweater knit, because it makes me think of cozy dresses, although that might not be technically what it’s called. I changed the neck to more of a cowl and extended the length to make a dress. I also went down a size in the bodice – even though I made my size in the orange top, it seemed a bit generous. I thought negative ease might work better, especially as this softer knit was more drapey.
This post is getting a bit long, so I’ll show you that dress, and the green one from the Sandra Betzina pattern, in another post. What have you been sewing lately?
Time for more reports about sewing from Japanese pattern books. Today’s feature is a sleeveless dress pattern (A) from Stylish Dress Book.
It came out beautifully, although I found it a little tough to roll the narrow bias hem with the linen. The pattern calls for a lighter fabric and the weight made a difference on that narrow bias. If I used linen again, I’d cut the bias strip 1/4 wider.
Here’s the neat neckline. It’s a little detail that gives the dress the perfect interest, I think.
The stripe was on the selvedges, so I cut the dress crosswise to have the stripes at the hem. This meant that it took very little fabric to make the dress: I only had 2m of this because I bought the end, and it was just 42″ wide. I was excited to be able to get a dress out of it. I matched the position on the hem and let the height fall. You can see that there is more of the stripe on the opposite selvege at the shoulder on the front than on the back—that’s because the bodice darts make the front slightly longer than the back. That’s an excellent reason to match the borders at the hems rather than at the shoulders.
This floral print was in my stash. I bought it for $1 a meter because it’s a nice weight of cotton. It’s not really my style, though, so it’s been waiting. For this dress, I used a Kaffe Fassett stripe as contrast to keep it from being too sweet.
This turned out to be one of those comfy summer dresses to wear on a hot day. I wore it a lot last summer and will probably make another for next summer. The cotton lace insert proved to be a bad choice because the lace wasn’t prewashed – it shrank in the wash and now there’s a bit of gathering wherever there’s lace. It’s quite full. I’d take some of the width out of the back if I made it in cotton again.
What’s funny about this fabric is that the turquoise photographs as a medium blue. The fabric also came in this color combination, but I didn’t like it as much. This one is actually a vivid turquoise.
Almost two weeks ago, we took a day trip to the 
The Earth Stripe Wrap is striped shawl designed by Kaffe Fassett and knit in ten shades of Rowan Kidsilk Haze. It was published in Rowan magazine #42 (Autumn/Winter 2007/2008). The image to the right is from the original magazine – I found it online but the copyright on the image belongs to Rowan.
In the new version of the pattern, Rowan has made these substitutions:
Alive & Knitting 