Into the UFO bin it shall go

Butterick 5283 is a no-go, for now. I got the front and back of View B (lower left)...

... done and sewn up at shoulders and sides in about :45 for a quick try-on. I'd taken the risk, when cutting the muslin, of not lengthening the upper bodice. My fabric has more than the "moderate" stretch called for, and is stretchy lengthwide as well as across, so I was concerned that that V neckline might end up down at my navel. Mistake. In spite of stretchiness, I still need an inch and half more length up there to get that bodice seam to sit where it should (which is not perched halfway upslope toward the "bust point," folks). And even in a soft stretchy fabric there's something off about how the gathers sit on my chest, perhaps due to length deficiencies, perhaps not. And the back is still a bit too wide for me, even though I cut it a size smaller than the front.

I've set this one aside in the UFO bin, as it's got potential and is worth trying again. Before I do, I'll want to add sleeves to the muslin and assess those, too, but since this is no longer on my suitcase list I'm moving on. I only have a week of sewing time left, and the less fussing around with fitting I have to do at this stage, the better.

BTW, I happened no notice (when snagging the image) that this pattern is on clearance for $3 at the Butterick site. In case you'd like to try it yourself.

two wrong sides?

Couldn't capture this in a photo, but perhaps you've encoutered something similar: a fabric with two wrong sides.

I'm muslining the Jalie 2908 stretch jeans in a too-stretchy something I picked up for 1.99 to test the pattern with. It's an icky pale blue, light-denim weight but not a twill; the weave on one side looks exactly like the "wrong" side of real denim. The other side looks exactly like the wrong side of something else. What, I don't know.

While cutting the fabric I changed my mind several times as to which side was the "right" side, and finally decided there wasn't one. I picked a side and decided to go with that. Today, basting up front/back for a quick try-on, I went the other way.

Not that it matters. One glance in the mirror was enough to convince me that light-colored stretch anything is not a good choice on my butt, especially in a jeans fit. Unless I wear a tunic over it, which is a possibility. I wasn't going to stay in them long enough to find out, though, as it's too hot in the sewing room for trying on pants for more than a nanosecond.

I wish I'd remembered to cut the muslin with extra-wide side seams. "Boot cut" and I are not friends, so I straightened out the taper, adding some width at the knee and bringing in the flare to a straight line. The end result would be fine if I were slimmer through the hips, but as things are now the narrow leg makes my wide parts look even wider.

On the whole, though, not bad for a first muslin. I'm already thinking these could be cute at capri length, under a tunic. If nothing else, it might be worth finishing these pants for those days when I don't feel like working out. I could put them on instead of my exercise clothes and admire my rear view for a dose of instant inspiration.

Speaking of pants, I finally got the Marrakesh pants pinned for hemming. It took about six tries, spread out over ... how long has it been? 10 days? Felt like for-frickin'-ever. Anyway, as of this morning they are pinned and ready to hem. As soon as it cools off enough to plug in my iron I'll press them and try to remember how to use the blind-hem foot on my machine.

I've heard that every blog post needs a picture, so here's my little cutie enjoying one of his favorite toys. This box had one open end for pantry use, and when he became fascinated with it I cut a large hole in the other for greater play possibilities. He likes to "hide" in there (sticking out both ends) before pouncing.

Marrakesh Pants Progress Report

Finally moving on from the muslin stage: whoot! Here's my fabric for MPant #1 (assuming I love them and make more than one pair; not a sure thing, but I'm choosing optimism):

There's a bit of flash glare going on here, but you can see I'm using a teal cotton chambray (warp threads are bright teal, weft are black), which may or may not work well for the pattern in terms of weight (similar to linen) and drape (minimal). I chose it because I dearly want a pair of loose, light-weight pants to wear here in the winter, when it's often too cool for a short cotton skirt (but not cool enough for jeans) in the middle of the day, when I'm most likely to be out and about. I originally justified the purchase of this fabric (from Fabric.com last year sometime) by the thought that this color would be great on Mr. deHilo and that it might be nice to make him a shirt someday instead of just sewing for myself all the time. (Snort: who was I kidding?)

The pocket and waistband lining is a cotton that's been in the stash for many years, that I've been snipping away at for various quilt projects. It's a Liberty (Wm. Morris repro?) knockoff, nothing pricey. It will make me very happy to walk around with butterflies in my pockets, even if no one else knows they are there.

The pieces are now all cut out, and I will begin construction as soon as I finish this blog post and have one more mug of coffee in me. I would have started on the sewing yesterday evening, but I got distracted by something else (all Shelley's fault), which I will ramble about in my next post.

I cut the seams off my last muslin, traced the pieces onto lengths of butcher paper, then added seam allowance. I'll use the original pattern pieces for pockets, etc., my pattern for pant front and back. Here's a brief recap of fitting adjustments.

1) Back crotch curve:

These are close to the pattern 16 through the hip (I moved the HP piece a few inches up, so it doesn't cover my pattern lines). As you might be able to see here, I added about 2" in height at the center back waist, changed the crotch curve slightly, also extended crotch point a little. After all the tweaking, it came out closer to the original than I'd expected.

2) Front crotch curve:

I changed this curve more than the back, to a much gentler slope, That HP "J" shape did not fit me at all: weird pooching going on there on the first muslin. Took a few tries to get it right. Added to the height here as well, but not as much as at the back. I also added a distressing amount to the inner thigh. Maybe in a future version I will divide that extra more between front/back pieces, but this seems to work okay. Maybe in a future version I will have worked out more and not need all that inner-thigh pudge room. My front ended up at about the HP size 14 after tweaking excess from the hip.

3) Hip curve:

I'm happy to say it did occur to me I ought to make sure the outside pocket shape fits my hip curve, which it does. That's nice. Unfortunately, I forgot to add to pocket height when I cut them, so these may sit up higher than I'd like. If necessary I can nudge the pockets down a little by minimizing seam allowance at top and bottom. I doubt it will be a big issue.

The other adjustment I made was to correct the leg width. Somehow through the lengthy muslining process I'd managed to reduce the wide leg quite a bit. That's because my learn-to-fit-as-you-go method involved much trial and error, and at a couple points I tried resewing the out- or inseam to help correct the hang of the leg, when (as I eventually figured out) pulling up at the side hip works better. Anyway, as I was drafting the new paper back/front pieces I redrew the outseam from the hip point down to be perpendicular to the hem, and matching the original pattern leg width. I may decide that's too wide, but I can always taper in.

So, I'm ready to sew baste these up. I plan to baste the front and back together and try on one more time before adding the pockets, waistband, and fly front. More updates to come...

Inching along

OMG I got no sewing done at all, this week, in spite of waking up every morning determined to fit a few minutes on something wardrobe-related into the day. The thing is, I'm deeply into some important-to-me (but dull to you, so I won't go into details) work projects that I long to complete, and that's been keeping me busy until it's too late in the day to attempt sewing without a too-large risk of stupid sewing errors. I've ended up collapsing on the couch to watch such intellectually challenging shows as Wipeout, which is good for a few belly laughs at hapless contestant expense every time. I find the compulsion to laugh at pratfalls fascinating, and the more laughs I can fit into the day, the better.

So, onward: here's where I'm at with the Marrakesh pant:

I ran out of actual muslin some time ago, this is rendition #2 from a sacrificed set of old cotton sheets. Believe it or not, I think I almost have a muslin that might possibly result in a good-enough-to-wear fit. I say "almost" because I have not dealt with the elastic/drawstring casing at the waist. What I did was cut a very tall front/back leg (literally about 6" extra at the waist) so I could do the thing where you tie elastic at the waist and pull the muslin up/down here and there until something looks right. I tried to get the elastic at where I'd like the pant drawstring/elastic to be, then took a black gel pen and marked at the bottom edge.

You can see in the photo above that the center back seam on my almost-fitted muslin is about 3/4" higher than the side seam. I am going to have to firmly remind myself, when I cut my fashion fabric, that as wrong as this looks it is right for me. The good news is that after making several muslins, each from the last without reference to the paper pattern, it looks like the back waist casing is a pretty close fit to the pant I've ended up with.

Not so much on the front, though. I'm going to try the front waist casing at the size 14 length and see how that goes:

Next up, cut casing pieces from some one of the previous muslin-fails lying around here somewhere, and sew those on for a final (please God let this be the last one) fit. I've read all kinds of reminders that when fitting pants it is imperative to include the zipper and fly at the muslin stage, but the thought of doing that makes me want to put a gun to my head. Seriously, I've been fooling around with this pant for about as long as I can stand. Dealing with fly extensions and a zipper is just too much. Plus, the waist isn't exactly "fitted" on this one, so I'm going to wing it.

I'd really like to get this next step done today, so tomorrow I can try to figure out length (my muslins are cropped to flood level because having to roll or pin up the bottom was driving me nuts) but it's about as hot and humid and sticky as it gets here. Where's a cool and drizzly day when I need it for comfortable sewing conditions?

Speaking of which, on recent cool and drizzly late afternoon I looked out the window of my home office and saw this fabulous double-rainbow (part of it, anyway; I grabbed my camera and climbed up to the top of the empty lot next door to capture the whole gorgeous thing):

What I saw from my house was more like this:

Liverpool Shirt - in process

Not so hot and stick today, but that doesn't mean I'm in any mood for modeling. So, herewith, a work in process on the hanger:

This is the popular Amy Butler "Liverpool" shirt/tunic/dress pattern. Believe it or not, this is the shortest -- "shirt" -- length, with the 3/4 length sleeve option. It's not hemmed yet (or even pinned up) but even so. It's a long shirt.

It's either going to be awful or wonderful, and right now I'm close to hating it. On the other hand, it's a muslin, so marginal fit and questionable fabric choices aren't the end of the world at this stage.

You might think I''m nuts to use such a yummy fabric for a muslin, but it has been in my stash since the dawn of time, and for good reason: it's a tightly woven, super-crisp cotton, poorly suited for garment use. I got about 3 yards of it several eons ago at the Pierre Dieux store on Madison Ave. in Manhattan (I think that location closed long ago, but I could be wrong), where they used to sometimes put bolt ends and remnants on sale at normal-people-can-almost-afford-it prices. The print is "me" in that over-the-top way, and I love it enough that I was getting sick of seeing it in the stash. The urge to use it for something, anything, came over me while I was rooting around in the stash for a fabric to test this pattern with.

The contrast trim is a kooky quilting cotton, also of ancient vintage, with abstract football-ish shapes in blue-red-yellow on brown. I like that it almost has a leopardy look to it from afar. There's a good chance I'm the only person on the planet who thinks these two fabrics go together. On alternate minutes, when I'm not wondering what the *&%$#! I was thinking.

As you see it here, it's all done except for buttons/buttonholes and hemming. The front edges are pinned together, as it will look when buttoned. I left off the sash, BTW, and the cuff buttons.

You'd think 6 darts on the front would result in good shaping, but eeesh, the shape of this shirt is not matching up to my shape very well, in spite of great efforts taken with flat measurements and pattern adjustments. I cut a size L, but used the lower, XL, dart positions, because I need more length in the torso and the L darts were clearly too high. I also moved the waist down a half-inch.

Something about the waist is still not right: the widest part of the fish-eye darts is now at my waist, but it still looks like it's sitting a little high at the side seams. And I either need to open up the side seams and put in the sash I left out, or add a couple fish-eye darts to the back, which is schlumpy and shapeless compared to the front.

Usually a size L top is huge across the back on me (and too narrow across the front), but this one is too large (though not too wide) in front, and pulling across the shoulders if I move my arms. The armscye is way high, to the point that I almost have to wriggle into the sleeves, and couldn't possibly wear anything but a sleeveless T under this. Which is a problem, as at this point I'm thinking that getting a good fit buttoned up may be impossible, but it has possibilities if worn open as an overshirt.

This may sit in the UFO pile for a bit. I think it's salvageable if I:
1) Fiddle with the bust darts, which point straight in from the side seam (odd), and I think they need to be at an angle
2) Fiddle with the fisheye darts: I think there's too much nipping in at the waist for this fabric; slightly narrower darts might ease the poor draping (although this crisp fabric will never, ever drape well)
3) Experiment with adding small fisheye darts to the back, which is huge at the waist
4) Lower the armscye (no idea how to do that, but I've got several books that cover that kind of thing) enough so it doesn't pinch, without losing mobility

Ugh. None of those tasks is the kind of thing I feel at all enthusiastic about. On the other hand, I've come this far. And look what a nice job I did matching up the print on the L/R front pieces... abandoning it will feel like a loss.

I need to focus on sewing some clothes for my trip, and I don't think this one is going to make it. Unless I get around to muslining jeans out of the sky-blue stretch twill I got super-cheap for that purpose. In a perfect world this shirt, over a light blue pant, might end up feeling groovy.

Chances are slim, at best, that both "muslins" will turn out wearable, but I can dream, can't I?

Frankensizing

(warning: another long and rambling post that may be of little interest to anyone but me...)

I spent a good chunk of yesterday "muslining" the HotPatterns Marrakesh Pant ("straight leg, relaxed fit" with one of those HP combined elastic-drawstring + zipper waists: sounds forgiving, right?).

Some of the reviews over at PR suggest that this pattern is not for pants newbies, but the fly front, faced pockets, etc., do not intimidate me. It's true that after muslin #2 I and ended up with a worse fit than I'd started with (resulting in some profanity and a creeping sense of despair), but none of the style details have anything to do with that.

I am not giving up, however. Here in Hawaii I can get away with wearing skirts every day in public, and yoga pants (at home only) in cooler weather, but pulling that off during my October mainland trip will be difficult. I dearly, dearly wish for at least one pair of medium- to light-weight pants that fit, and since RTW will never deliver on that dream, I have no choice but to keep on until I can make them myself.

After walking away from utter failure yesterday, I regrouped and spent an hour or so browsing sewing forums for advice and re-reading my two pants fitting books...:
~ Pants for Real People, which is highly praised but did not deliver good results yesterday; I got caught in a feeback loop of pulling up at the waist to resolve problem A, which made the cr.curve too high, recutting which resulted in problem A again. After going through that two or three times it was clear I was heading for no improvement in fit but with a waist at the armpit and the pants hem somewhere around my knee. I do appreciate the "real people" approach, but none of the real people in the book are shaped anything like me. Heads-up folks, some of us pudgy middle-aged ladies carry our excess in a very curvy bum, not so much the belly and hips (not as slim as they once were, but still a long way from huge).
~ Easy Guide to Sewing Pants, from Taunton Press, now available as PDF download, which is quite detailed, with many diagrams of how to change a paper pattern. More photos/diagrams to help identify the problem to which those pattern fixes refer would be helpful.
... and the Threads magazine article (#142 July '09) on fitting pants to a curvy figure, which so far has been the most helpful.

As frustrating as the unsuccessful muslins have been, I now have a significantly improved understanding of my fit issues, and that's an important first step. Here are some problems and hiccups I've encountered:

1) "Choose your pants pattern size by your hip measurement." Um, okay. I'm exactly halfway between a 12 and a 14 hip on the HP chart for both waist and hip measure. Based on my Kyoto skirt experience (and even a passing glance at my hip profile in a mirror), however, I know I'll need extra butt room. I decided to go one size up and cut a 16, figuring I could trim if/where necessary.

2) But wait, let's take a gander at the crotch length measurements. I am "long in the hip" (more distance than average between a low crotch and a high waist), but had not realized that on the HP chart my crotch length is between size 18 and 20, and cr. depth a solid size 20. My "center front" (floor to waist) BTW, is a whopping size 22! Gee, do you think maybe that's why the incremental pattern adjustments my resources recommend were not delivering a good fit? According to a flat measure of the HPMP pattern, the size 16 back crotch length, point to (low) waist, is 2.5" too short for me.

I'm not going to try a larger size because the only successful revelation of the muslins so far is that they hang better if I take at least an inch off the outseam (bringing the pant leg down to somewhere around a size 10). Going further up in size seems likely to deliver so much extra fabric at the back of the thigh (already an issue) that it won't be worth any hip/crotch improvement.

3) In the absense of one of those flexible ruler things to capture the full glory of my curves, this morning I followed an online tip and twisted up a coil of aluminum foil, pressing it firmly front and back. I don't expect it's truly accurate, but take a look at it overlaid on the pants back from my original HP size 16 muslin (no adjustments yet):

As you can see, I am not exaggerating when I say my butt is "curvy." My curve is so far off the pattern I'm not even sure where/how to line it up; either way it's somewhere between fascinating and appalling. When I am slimmer this profile does shrink some, but the basic shape remains unchanged. Where this JLo-worthy shape came from is a mystery, BTW: I am the product of a solidly WASP gene pool in which the most exotic contributing element is a scant touch of French from way, way, way, way back.

However, this does help me understand why the unaltered muslin is snug in the butt while I can pinch a half-inch or so extra out of the hip (two fitting issues that seem as though they should be mutually exclusive, a situation that utterly baffled me yesterday).

Anyhoo, now that I've taken a break to write up this post and play with the photos, I'm going to give the "Threads" slash-and-spread method another go and see how I do. I'll post more pics when I'm a little closer to a wearable solution. Wish me luck.