A Double Dog Dare!

 Yes, I have been stalling on my September white shirt post.  I made my September shirt as part of our Threads Digital Ambassadors' Challenge this year.  Threads invited us to make an outfit/garment using a designer of our choice as the inspiration.  Now that the articles have been posted on the Threads website, I can share my shirt here.

We were asked to write three different posts about 1. the designer we chose, 2. the way we interpreted the designer in our design and 3. a technique that we used in making the garment.  I will send you to those posts on the Threads site rather than redo them here.  The four inspirations are very different, but very much reflective of their authors.  It is really fun to see them as a group.

I chose Isabel Marant for my designer and this was my inspiration image.

Marant's designs are often dripping in lace and layers...very different from the things I make and wear.  I am intrigued by her use of textures and mixing of different materials to create her garments.  It was definitely a challenge to use her as my inspiration.

I chose Isabel Marant because she seems to strike a balance between very feminine, and surprisingly masculine elements in her work.  Her garments are over-the-top lacy, yet they are anchored in strength with broad, exaggerated shoulder lines and wide leather belts.  I had a really tough time figuring out how to make a garment that was inspired by the very lacy Marant garments, without using lace!   I had a huge collection of lace but just couldn't get it to feel like me.  I ended up doing a faggot stitched vest worn over a layered tunic with raw edge details.  I wrote much more about the inspiration and the final design in the Threads posts, so please take a look over there for more of the gory details!

Here is my final design.  The folks over at Threads took some lovely pictures that they sent for me to show here.  (They always make my things look so good.) 

So this is my September white shirt.  I knew that it would take a bit more time than some of the other months and that is why I wanted to figure out a way to make a twofer.  Something that would be part of the Threads challenge and also part of my monthly white shirt challenge.  

I also made a little video of me dancing around on my new deck with my Isabel Marant outfit....kind of corny, but you can see that over at Threads as well.  HERE is a link to the Threads article.

So now I move on to October.  It has been quite warm this month so far, so I may not be moving into fall quite yet...we'll see.  

Reversible Do-over

I made a vest last spring to take along on my trip to Wales.  I had made one in wool jersey that I took to Italy earlier in the year and really liked it.  It was comfortable, and added that extra layer of warmth that was just perfect for traveling in the changeable weather of March.  I knew that the weather in Wales would be VERY changeable, it always is, so I decided to make a spring/summer version of the same vest.  

Here is a very dark picture of the vest on an outing with friends in London.  It's difficult to see the colors, which is a good thing...I had made an orangey shirt to wear with the vest and it was really way too ORANGE for the muted colors of the silk broadcloth of the vest.  Trust me...it was not my best matching effort.  And to top it off, the shirt was not particularly comfortable.  It would ride up under the vest and bunch at my waist.  Again, it is a good thing that the photo (and the restaurant) did not have very good lighting!

I was, however, happy with the way the vest had turned out.  So I really wanted to have something that I could wear with it that was not too orange.

I have been carrying around a scrap of the silk vest fabric all summer!!!  It is an impossible color!   I am not sure that what I ended up making is the final solution, but it is much better than the first go 'round.

I will share the vest and the new shirt now, but time will tell if this will be a repeating post!


The fabric for the vest is some that I got while I was traveling in China.  It is a silk gingham, that has been over-dyed with mud so only one side of the fabric is really dyed.  I am not really sure how it works, but the end product is a lovely muted rosy-orangey color on one side and the other side looks as if there is a filter of black over the original check pattern.  It turns out to be a double faced fabric that makes it impossible to decide which side to use as the face side!  I stared at both sides and finally decided to 'not decide!'  I made the vest reversible!

Double sided fabric is really fun to work with, but requires a bit more head scratching than simply lining a garment to make it completely reversible.  

Seams and Edges...

All the seams are french seams.  This keeps one color on each side of the vest.  I finished the edges with bias that was stitched and turned like a narrow facing.  Again, keeping each side all the same color.  

Pockets...

There are two pockets on the vest, one breast pocket and one just below the waist.  On the dark side the pockets are cut on the bias and patched to the outside.  On the lighter side the opening is a welt-type pocket and the top stitching from the patch pocket forms the pocket on the opposite side.  Almost as difficult to describe as they were to engineer and put together!!!!  The facing of the waist pocket on the dark side is the only place where I used the contrast.  The light side is all the same side of the fabric.

I added a 'fake' pocket to the center back yoke for a bit of interest on the back of the vest.

Closings...

Earlier this year I had discover, purely by accident, that if you use snaps on a reversible garment, the closing ends up being right over left on both sides of the piece. (or left over right if you prefer!)  For this garment, I used two different colors of caps.  A tarnished silver for the dark side and a taupe/brown for the lighter side.  The spacing is also unique.  (no, I didn't mess up, I did it on purpose!)

You can see that the dying process makes the colors of the silk very muted and so a solid color tends to look too intense with the vest.  I really have not found anything that I am totally happy with, BUT I want to wear the vest!  I found a dark brown, almost black t-shirt weight knit in my stash(I think it is a cotton poly blend) that looked OK with both sides.  I didn't want to make a plain brown shirt.  It needed some other interest.

I ended up adding a couple of pieced stripes to the front of the shirt, using a small amount of the orange that I had used in the first shirt, a goldish color and a tiny black and white stripe.  Kind of an odd mixture, but I really like the way they work together and give a nod to the colors in the vest.

So, here's the second version of my reversible vest and shirt....

I am very happy with the way the stripe of the shirt peeks out at the neck of the vest.  And, yes, it was intentional!  When the vest is closed, it is the only bit of the other colors that shows.

I'll give this new shirt a test drive and see if I like it any better...and I will keep a look out for the 'perfect' fabric just in case there is a round 3.

Another UFO (unfinished object!)

I've kind of been on a roll finishing up "lost in mid thought" projects.  While I was scrounging around looking for something that I'm sure was critically important at the time, I came across this vest that got started at some point, I think last year.  

The fabric had been residing in my stash for quite some time  It was a piece of wool jersey that I had intended for a much larger project, but when I pre-washed it, it did as wool is want to do and, I ended up with a significantly smaller hunk-o-wool.  On to "Plan B."

What you see on the dress form is the entire piece of fabric, pleated and gathered to look more or less like a vest.  The obvious problem being...no armholes!

There!  That's better!

I love the weight of partially felted wool jersey and it is so moldable!  Most of the shaping is done with a good head of steam from my iron.  The edges and selveges felt and curl into wonderfully organic shapes that must end up as a feature on the finished product!

I used my sewing machine in two spots.

To stabilize the gathering at the neckline and form the loose ruffle for the collar, I stitched a length of grosgrain ribbon to the underside (which is the outside) of the neck.

I also ran a stabilizing row of straight stitch around each armhole before I cut them out.  I didn't want the gathering at the top of the shoulder to open up too much when I released the armhole.  The stitching is about 1/8th of an inch from the raw edge.

The darts are all sewn by hand with button weight thread.

I haven't decided what, if anything, I want to do about a closure.  I have several lovely button options, which would require some sort of buttonholes...I think it works fine with no closing devices...I could use a pin or shawl pin, which means I could change it up...still pondering.
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The scarf is an 'infinity scarf' made from a wonderful piece of Malaysian silk that is printed in 4 yard panels to be used for their traditional tunic and wrap garments. Some of the print is a border and some of it is for the center design of the tunic...very interesting fabrics.  And gorgeous!

I considered a couple of pockets out of my armhole leftovers, but couldn't figure out where to put them.  I guess they will get saved for another project!