A long delayed present

18mths ago there was a conversation or two with my friend Alan about me maybe making a shirt for him. “A nice linen shirt” was what he said he wanted. Some time earlier he had sent me home with some surplus fabric including a really nice piece of tiny checked linen in navy and white. This wasn’t enough for a whole shirt, but if I made the back from something else? Well I had an idea. You see, Alan has a strong fondness for mermaids and I’ve been having fun making stitched shibori pictures. So back in April, nearly a year after the above conversation, I made a mermaid for him.

First draw your mermaid. I wanted a vertical design and a cheerful elegant mermaid. I couldn’t find exactly what I wanted but I found a scary mermaid in a good pose and softened her

Then transfer the design to some nice linen with soluble pen and stitch the lines.

Then draw up all the strings tightly and knot them off. Doing that in pairs is much easier.

Then pop her in a dye bath and after rinsing, pull all the threads out (that takes longer than you might think!) to reveal your creation. This picture is slightly amended. All the lines came out pretty well except the one outlining her bosoms. That didn’t work at all. Bother. So I carefully painted that in with white fabric paint.

Then for his birthday I made a completely different shirt out of a fun elephant tablecloth. This was my cunning plan to get sizing information for the mermaid project.

Then we got popped back into lockdown. I went ahead and made up the mermaid shirt. Nice neat checked linen for most of it. Looking at the buttonhole distortion, maybe i should sew my shirt buttons on with stalks, hmm.

And a fun mermaid for the back

Yesterday I was finally able to deliver it, hurrah and well received it was.

There is actually a second mermaid shirt under construction. The stitched resist works better on two layers of cloth, but my design was not symmetrical so I did the whole thing on two layers of linen. So there was a second mermaid to do something with.

Customised Merch

I don’t normally buy merchandise but I’m a fan of Laura Kampf and her YouTube channel. I’d wanted a “Let Glue Dry” shirt for ages. Not only would buying it support her, it is nicely subtle merch plus I regularly need that reminder for my own woodwork. Sadly when I decided to order, I found that all the clothing was only available in straight cut styles. I’m curvy and pear shaped. Straight cut so doesn’t fit me! However, I’ve several times successfully altered large sized straight cut shirts to fit me better. I need a big size to get the width in the body. The only garment left in XXL was the logo hoodie. Never mind, I like the logo too.

Eventually it arrived. Hurrah! Here it is straight out of the post bag, wrinkled and of course the wrong shape for me.

I tried it on and found these problems that needed remedy, most expected:
-Too long in both body and sleeves
-Too narrow in the hips
-Too wide in the shoulder
-I dislike the central pocket and besides, it’s too low
-I can’t stand the hood. Feels like it’s strangling me and conflicts with my default hairstyle of a single bulky plait.

This is ok. I can deal with all these. So, unpick the pocket, cut it off carefully where it joins the ribbing and slice it in half:

Chop a lump off the bottom:

Cut the sleeve off and take a slice to move the armhole inwards. This makes the armhole too deep but I need the width for bust circumference so I’ll put a piece in.

Unpick the side seams to the waist, try it on to see how much infill is needed:

Then chop the hood off, leaving enough for a collar. The rest of the hood provides fabric for the infill pieces:

Then to sew it all back together. I started with the collar. I wanted to keep the eyelets, and the cord with it’s aglets for interest. The hood was lined, so I had the two layers to form a new cord channel. So I folded the collar edges inwards and sewed them together. Then ran another line of stitching to make the channel.

Then I sewed the pockets back on near the sides, attached the infill pieces, redid the side seam and set in the sleeves. Later on I top stitched all those seams with a twin needle to imitate the original finish but I forgot to get a picture of that. I also top stitched the shoulder seams with woven tape underneath to support them and help the the garment keep it’s shape.

Then it was time to deal with the hem. I didn’t have enough ribbing to do a full width hem of course, but I could cut the old hem in half lengthwise to give a half width hem finish.

All done! It still looks like a real thing but now it fits me. Hopefully the mark from the original pocket position will go when I wash it. This was near a day’s work plus a bunch of thinking and planning. I say it was worth it.

and right next to it’s old self though possibly not quite the same scale

On me to prove it works. Front and back. It’s very comfy, a bit baggy but that is nice I think.

Not the original plan but I like it

Take about three metres of black and white wool jersey. Use it to exhaust some dye that you don’t quite understand the behaviour of yet. End up with a messy streaky ombre which was very much not the aim. Get grumpy with it and throw it in the naughty corner for a year or so.

A year or so later, realise that you can cut two skivvis, one from each end. The darker blueish grey end makes quite a nice darkly grungy shirt without further effort.

The paler end just looked dirty until I had some fun with food colours. There are days I would enjoy some mad colour to wear. I amused myself by making sure the red and green are the right way around for port and starboard, or they in wearing.

Buttonhole tips

Machine made shirt buttonholes. Quick brain dump for a friend.

Thread: I often use a different thread from the that used for garment stitching. Something a bit boofier that will give better coverage. Vintage cotton thread can be really nice. I understand most people don’t have that in stash and even I often don’t have a good colour available. Modern cotton thread will often give better coverage than all purpose polyester. However, whatever you used for construction sewing will do.

Stitch length (yes really 🙂 ) Don’t go too close. Even a noticeable zigzag will make a functional buttonhole. If you try for a very dense satin stitch effect, any hangup in the fabric feed will be magnified in lumpiness.

Tension: increase the bobbin tension slightly, some machines have a little hole in the end of the bobbin case arm for this purpose. Or decrease the upper tension slightly if that is easier. This makes for a smoother effect, the stitch interlock is dropped to the back of the work.

Work a test buttonhole, or several until you are happy. Test on the same assembly of fabric and layers as your shirt bands. Check the stitch density, tension, how your machine behaves with your fabric, length of the buttonhole for your button. For that last you will need to cut your test buttonhole.

Positioning: The collar buttonhole is non negotiable of course. Then mark the widest part of the chest, where gaping is most likely and put a button there. For women, this would be the bust level. Then work out your preferred button spacing. The top button on the front band is often not far below the collar, but this is not a defined point so offers flexibility. I sometimes widen the spacing incrementally below the critical widest point. Visually, this works to even things out due to the usually higher vantage point.

Marking: If you have a fully automatic buttonholer as part of your machine, you will likely only need to mark the start of the buttonhole. Remember that this is not the same thing as the middle of the buttonhole that you were likely considering in the positioning phase, if you are doing standard vertical shirt buttons. If not automatic, then you will need to mark both start and end. It is also worth saying you need choose where the centre of the buttonhole will be, usually the centre of the front band. If you have edge stitched that band, the visual centre will shift inwards slightly. I use either a soluble marker or a chalk pencil, depending what will show on the fabric.

Cutting: buttonhole chisels are da bomb. Scissors can be used if you haven’t got a chisel. If using scissors, I suggest starting in the middle of the buttonhole and cut towards each end.

After all that, work out your button position by laying the shirt out with the bands neatly overlapped and stab a pin through the middle of the buttonholes (or the inner end for the collar band one, also cuffs)

 

That’s enough for a first cut. Pictures would be good but this is just a quick thing.

Blackened Jethro

“How much shibori can one woman wear” I said once to a friend. The answer it seems is “quite a lot”. I found this book in december and pounced apon it as a Chrissie present to self. It’s brilliant.

I combined my first experiment inspired by the book with a dissatifaction with the dingy yellow of my Jethro Jumper.

Natural dye from my own crabapple tree. That’s nice, but I was forever having to spot clean it. I’ve also been wearing more and more black. So I had a bit of fun.

I did some spot smocking on sleeves and hem

Here is the whole thing ready to be washed, then dyed.

and here are the patterns that resulted. Earth Palette wool dye again.

I’m really pleased with the outcome.

It’s even significantly more flattering than the original

 

Yoke wrinkle solved

Long time no post. I’ve been too busy working on the house, struggling through the big brown cardigan, preserving food and worrying about this rotten virus. Finally I’ve pushed all that aside long enough to test this theory.

Many of my shirts end up with an unwelcome wrinkle on one side of the front yoke seam. Always the same side. Like this:

I eventually concluded this was likely to be caused by sewing those two seams in one direction, one interrupted pass. Apparently, sewing outside to in is recommended, and the good side is sewn in that direction in my standard shirt construction method. So of course I needed to test this. I pulled out this length of Irish linen I had happened across for very little money.  It’s so nice I wish I’d bought more, but bright orange and charcoal shot was a bit weird. As it is, I threw this in the last of a dark blue dye bath to take the curse off the orange. Anyway, I cut out a shirt and made it up as a straight forward shirt. Nothing fancy but making sure I did the front yoke seams outside to in. Voila, nice and neat, no nasty wrinkle. Rotten colour accuracy- I would try to take photos in a thunderstorm. By the way, I’m pretty jolly pleased with the collar. I don’t make proper two piece collars very often but this one worked well.

This shot shows the colour best. I forgot again to put the label on the yoke before construction.

and the whole shirt while we are here

So my shirt method has another small improvement. I might have to make another.

 

Last of the First – well almost

This little T top used up the last piece from my first indigo dyeing session. Oh! no it doesn’t, oops. There is another small piece I haven’t cut into yet. That actual last one is in my “probably for patchwork” pile. Well, this uses the last of the ramie voile pieces anyway, augmented by a couple of strips left over from the little kimono jacket I made earlier, and which I don’t seem to have written up here?

Just a little project. One of five with fabric prepped and fairly firm intentions. One more turned into a garment and not just bits of fabric cluttering up the place.

Front

and back, which I now see isn’t hanging evenly.

a detail shot. The darker strips increase interest, make up the desired length and increase the decency factor.

and on. Not shapely but it will be very cool to wear. Yet again I’ve finished a garment when the weather is not appropriate for wearing it.

Comfy and Colourful

A couple more shirts made for a friend who can’t buy what he wants to wear. I’ve been snaffling interesting fabrics that I think he might like, purple is a favourite colour. Here are two I made up last week.

This one was a new length of batik found at the Green Shed in Canberra for very few dollars. The bulk of the sleeves are from a different black cotton, with the border nicked from one side of the batik. I thought putting the russet section on the front looked more manly.

the back has pleasing symmetry with the two tall sprays of purple flowers.

The second shirt is elephantine in more ways than one. It has elephants,

and I cut it very wide so as not to truncate (see what I did there?) the circles too much. I think this is very fun. It’s made from very soft block printed cotton. Probably supposed to be a tablecloth or bed spread. I popped the label at the base of the neck slit to cover a flaw in the fabric. It also strengthens that point against tearing.

all seams flat felled to keep the insides nice and smooth. These are quick to make and fun to work out how to best use the strongly patterned fabric.

All of the above

Shirt? Dress? Coat? All of the above

This started with an experiment in diagonally folded shibori. The upper piece in the picture below.

I don’t recommend it. Diagonal means bias and that as you probably know, is stretchy. Getting this into neat parallel folds was NOT EASY. However, I bloody mindedly pursuaded it. I cut a large square from wide linen, heavy end of shirt weight and lovely quality. If I remember correctly, I folded the corners to the middle, then pleated it up on the bias and pegged it to hold, aiming for minimal resist. Grr. Big struggle to get it neat. There was a narrow strip left which I simply concertina pleated on the weft grain. That is where the finer stripes came from.

The bias experiment did make an interesting piece of fabric though. It was dyed all pegged up and then re dipped after the first lot had oxidised. Hence blue on blue rather than blue on white.

The dyeing happened back in about Feb 19. A few months ago I was frustrated with sewing fine silk and decided it was time for some nice friendly linen. I got this out and pressed it. Then got sick and hung it in the corridor. It made it to the cutting table a few weeks ago and then languished again. I changed my mind several times as to what I would cut from it. I was going to make a dress, but didn’t want anything too similar to the other things I’ve made from indigo shibori. I didn’t want a plain shirt. I ended up with a skirted shirt, a shirt dress, a lightweight coat.

I’m pretty impressed that I managed to get this out of a total of, I think, about 1.1×1.4m of fabric, plus a little plain dyed lesser quality linen for facings. Golly, can that be right? The back and sleeves did need to be pieced, but some good came of that. The bodice back became more interesting and gave me seams for shaping.

The sleeve piecing gave me an easy option for the vents- just leave part of the vertical piecing seam unsewn, press open and hem/fell.

There was rather too much inside out, upside down-ness during construction. Some got fixed, some didn’t.

Of course I put pockets on it. I forgot to put the label on the yoke facing as usual, so it went on one pocket instead. I was lazy. I haven’t given it a final press before taking these pictures, it’s only had construction pressing. I quite like the relaxed look of slightly rumpled linen.

Here it is on. Back and front

I really like it. It has 18thC frock coat overtones. Vaguely piratical. I’m thinking this shape would be nice in some lightweight coating I have in stash. I’ve been nice to future me and taken a pattern of the bodice adjustments before assembly. Pretty happy now that I did that.

 

 

Stripey! Trying a new dye

After dyeing other peoples handspun yarn blue, I had a bit of prepared dye left. It’s a kind of dye I’d not used before and I found unusual, though it did work well. The brand is “Earth Palette”. For their wool dye, you mix up 100g powder with 600ml hot water. It turns out more care is needed in that step than I used because there were some unmixed lumps at the bottom of the pot, that didn’t want to redissolve. You get a thickish liquid, which is not supposed to be further diluted but allowed to cool, then added to either dry or barely damp wool by pouring or dipping  and squeezing etc. Then you wrap and leave it for 24 hours!! Oo that waiting part was frustrating!

While being frustrated that I couldn’t rinse the yarn yet, I cut a skivvy top from the last of some off white double jersey. There wasn’t a lot of dye left, so I pleated and tied the pieces for a shibori effect.

I dipped each side of the dry bundles into the dye. There was barely enough. I resorted to a bit of dilution to get the collar done, which worked and says dilution is at least some kind of feasible. There certainly wasn’t enough to soak the fabric. Never mind, I got some good bold stripes this way.

Here are the bundles before untying the strings, and partially untied. A friend said the right hand picture looked like blue cabbage to her. I was amused. Both pics are underwater. I wasn’t doing well at slowing down to take pictures, partly because I was working in gloves while the dye was being handled.

Very little colour was released on rinsing.

After the pieces were dry, I felt they were too stark. Too pale where they were not blue. So I grunged them up with food colour. This also helped to deepen the blue and dull the green content.

Sewn up, I couldn’t get it over my head! Turns out I’d stupidly cut the neck band/collar lengthways instead of widthways. So I spent some tedious time unpicking it. Because I had no more dyed fabric, I cut it in three, and re-seamed so that the stretch ran the right way. It puts two extra seams into the neck, which is sad, but salvages the project, of which I am glad.

And all done. I might well buy this dye again later for more experiments.