Tag Archives: Embroidery

Mum’s Alabama Chanin skirt

02/08/2014 1:38 pm \ 61 Comments \

I am so glad that Mum brought around her finished Alabama Chanin skirt for me to ooh and ah over; and has allowed me to photograph her wearing it and to show it here on my blog too… thank you so much, Mum!

This is the mid-length skirt from the book, Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, by Natalie Chanin.  Mum used a deep blue upper layer over a black lower layer, both cotton jerseys bought in Tessuti’s in Melbourne during our truly fah-bulous Mum/daughter/grand-daughter trip over there together last November.

The upper layer is stencilled with the Anna’s Garden design from the same book, enlarged by 306%, then the two layers are embroidered together using Gutermann’s upholstery thread in a pale grey.  The stencilled areas are then cut away in the “reverse appliqué”  method to reveal the black under-layer.  Mum used a doubled strand of upholstery thread as per the book’s instructions, but found the two strands a pain in the neck to work with; they constantly got twisted up awkwardly together and were subsequently difficult to pull through.  Just for comparison sake, I used only a single strand in embroidering my own two pieces.
The surface embroidery is all done by hand of course, and Mum decided to sew the finished pieces together by machine.  The waistband is pale grey fold over elastic, also from Tessuti’s.
The stencil was applied to the upper layer in watered-down acrylic house paint using a small foam roller as described here.  Since I did the stencilling for Mum I know there is one more piece in the works!  and now I’m roolly excited to see that one too!  🙂

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“Baseball” skirt and tee

12/04/2014 2:53 am \ 67 Comments \

This is just a bit of silliness really; remember I said I had some idiotic plans for my leftover off-white leatherette? well I just hopped straight into it.  This is a new skirt, leatherette with red stitching to delineate the seam lines, baseball-like.  Yeah I know, kinda weird; and I’m still wondering if I ruined the skirt with that stitching! but it’s just a bit of fun really.  I figure if I absolutely hate it down the track I can always pull out the baseball stitching  🙂

I used this picture to help me

source

The pattern is Vogue 1170; my fourth iteration of this pattern.  I chose it because it had lots of seam lines! and I lengthened it as much as I possibly could given my small piece of leatherette.  Actually, this is a good skirt for a smallish odds and ends of fabric; surprisingly good considering its flippiness.  It’s only the two large front-and-back pieces that take up the most fabric; the smaller pieces can be cut out of edges and corners and other off-cuts.  I left off the pockets and fully lined the skirt with cream polyacetate lining fabric; and I cut the waistband a lot narrower and on a curve to follow the curve of the skirt top.  This resulted in a much better fitting waistband than the original straight one, imo.  Also, I’ve learnt my lesson from my previous leatherette skirt where I found the leatherette waist facing kinda icky worn against the skin; and cut the waistband facing in white linen.  Much nicer!

The stitching is in red silk thread, which I’ve had for years… er, 21 *blush* but who’s counting!  😀 a leftover from knotting Tim’s quilt; and a small portion in matching red topstitching thread, which I ended up having to buy new (grrr!) when I didn’t have just quite enough of the silk.  Don’t you hate that!!
I did the stitching in two passes, first time you do alternate halves of the “wings”, and the second pass you finish off the other side of each one.

And because a baseball skirt needs a baseball tee, I made one; just because  🙂   I used two old Tshirts from my refashioning bag.

OK, I thought that this is what a baseball tee looks like; but imagine my disappointment when I googled images of baseball players to see that they actually don’t wear this sort of two-coloured raglan-sleeved tee at all! but instead have a big baggy short-sleeved top, sometimes with a close-fitting long-sleeve top underneath.  NO raglans to be seen.  Confused!   So; why is a tee like this known as a baseball Tshirt, when actually it is not?!  I would love to be enlightened.  Anyhoo; I made it from from my own custom pattern, using an old raglan sleeve tee to help get me started and then fiddling and fine-tuning to fit me.  The embroidered motif on the front of the blue Tshirt, I positioned on the back of the new Tshirt.  It was either that or cut it in half, and even though my new tee is a cobble-together job, doesn’t mean it has to look like one!

With the neckline binding; I cut strips from the sleeves of the cream tee and joined them to get one long enough to do the neckline.  And this time I cut the strips with a bias joining edge: you can just barely make out the join in this picture.  This gave such a vastly superior finish to my usual method of joining on a straight seam!  and I can’t believe it has taken me sooooo long to work out this might be a better thing to do.  Up until now I’ve used a straight joining seam, and the bulkiness of all the layers in that bit make for a slightly bubbly and bumpy bit at that spot on the neckline.  So I hide this by positioning it at the back of the neck somewhere; but if the seam is on the diagonal, like here, then there is less bulk and very little bump issues.  Don’t know why it’s taken this long for the lightbulb to go off, but better late than never  🙂

Details:
Skirt; Vogue 1170 with minor modifications, off-white leatherette with red decorative top-stitching; my review of this pattern here and my tips for working with leatherette here
Tshirt; self-drafted, made from two old Tshirts
Shoes; Bronx, from Zomp shoes

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Pink Alabama Chanin T-shirt

18/03/2014 6:20 am \ 47 Comments \

I’m very happy and pleased that my Mum agreed to let me photograph her wearing her very recently completed hand-dyed-embroidered-and-stitched creation, and to show the pictures here on my blog …
thank you so much Mum!
This is Mum’s third Alabama Chanin project, and the first completed one… she has very nearly finished a more wintery skirt and top but has put those aside for a little bit in order to make something with the flavour of summer.  She wanted to have something to wear now!

Mum hand-dyed white cotton jersey in three different shades of pink for her top; pale apricot pink for the under layer, a deeper apricot-rose pink for the upper layer, and a true pink- pink for the neckline binding.  The floral design is her own, and she made a stencil using dressmaking paper from Jackson’s but does NOT recommend this; it buckled and was apparently a nightmare.  The design was rollered on to the upper layer in slightly watered down, regular household paint applied with a small roller.  Mum used double thickness Gutermann’s upholstery thread to hand-stitch the floral motifs, all seams and the flat felling of all seams; and pink stranded embroidery cotton for the cretonne stitch to secure the neckline binding.  We had some debate on whether the armscye seams should be stitched down to the sleeves or the body?? a quick recce of the Tshirts in the general vicinity seemed to indicate that there is no convention here but men’s buttoned shirts are to the body so this seemed like a good example to follow.

The pattern is the Tshirt pattern from the book Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, by Natalie Chanin, with the neckline from the tank/dress pattern, and short sleeves.  Before launching into all that time-consuming embroidery Mum wisely tested the pattern and found it necessary to make small adjustments for fit… both of us loathe muslins and generally avoid them like the plague and yeah, it does seem ludicrous for a basic Tshirt in a forgiving stretch knit, but an Alabama Chanin project is kinda exceptional.   It doesn’t take long to run up a test Tshirt on the machine using a long basting stitch, and is well worth the effort.  And could save lives!!  Well; at the very least, a tantrum  😀
Thank you so much Mum!

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Alabama Chanin; a tank top

06/02/2014 1:01 pm \ 68 Comments \

Fortunately I have managed to finish the matching embroidered tank top to go with my skirt.  Hurrah! for plane trips and the resulting enforced hand-sewing time!  I’m so happy with the full ensemble; I like how it looks like a full dress, and that if I choose I can break it up into the separate components.  The pattern is the fitted top from the  Alabama Studio Sewing + Style book (Natalie Chanin), and is made from the same fabrics as the skirt; a thickish, cafe au lait cotton jersey substratum (KnitWit) with a dark olive, lightweight jersey overlay (Potters Textiles), the latter stencilled with the Anna’s Garden stencil from the same book as outlined here, and top-stitched with Gutermanns topstitching thread.  

I took a slight swayback wedge out of the tank pattern…. looking at the picture below I could possibly have gone further with that, oh well, next time.  Otherwise it has the same width shoulder straps and the same low rise of the back neckline as the original pattern.  The stitching throughout is in exactly the same style as the skirt; with all seams stitched and flat-felled by hand, and the neckline and armhole binding sewn on using herringbone stitch.

My Mum wanted to know if the jersey fabric loses its stretch though being embroidered; it does lose a little, but not all of its stretch.  The fabric also shrinks ever so slightly through the process of quilting the two layers together. Not drastically, but if your muslin is skintight then I reckon this is definitely something to bear in mind.

OH BTW! a little tip I forgot to mention before… when the pattern pieces have been cut out and stencilled, stay-stitched and are awaiting embellishment; the very first thing I did was to tack a scrap of paper to each piece as above, marking the centre front or centre back of each piece, as applicable.  The pattern pieces for both tank and skirt, are actually all so similar to each other that I think this is an essential precaution!
Well, was it was worth all the hours of hand-work?  But of course.  I’m not going say otherwise now, am I?  😉

Actually, seriously, I totally love my AC pieces and it was no biggie to make the tank top; each pattern piece is quite small and manageable and the embroidery can be knocked off in a couple movies or a short plane trip quite easily.  A little tank top is not really the sewing marathon that the midi skirt is.  I’m even feeling optimistic about taking on another Alabama Chanin project…! (gasp!) um, well… in a while.  Maybe, hehe.  Well, I should really, I bought a whole lot of beads while Mum, Cassie and I were in Melbourne, in a zealous fit of enthusiasm, so hmmm.  (blush)

Details:
Top; the fitted top from the Alabama Studio Sewing + Style book,  hand-embroidered and -stitched cotton jersey knit in two solid colours
Skirt; the midi skirt, same as above, all sewing details here
Sandals; Zomp, from Zomp shoes

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Alabama Chanin skirt and tank

05/01/2014 5:03 am \ 119 Comments \

Hello!
So! after hours (and hours… and hours…) of aeroplane and in-front-of-the-TV stitching, I have finished my first AC project(s).
This is the mid-length skirt and the fitted tank top, both from the book, Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, by Natalie Chanin.  The two are actually just one pattern, a full length dress pattern, which you cut off at the relevant places to make either a skirt or a top.  Or a tunic or a dress.
Great idea, by the way.    I love the economy of one all-inclusive pattern.  Means you only have one thing to store, but about a zillion “making” opportunities in there.  OK, to be accurate there are eight garment possibilities from the one pattern, but surely at least a zillion wearing and layering combinations to be had.

My skirt!  I’m so pleased with it!  It is totally hand-quilted and stitched in the reverse appliqué technique described in the book;  using a top layer of lightweight deep olive bamboo/cotton knit, bought originally from Potters Textiles years ago, and the base layer is a thicker and more stable dirt-brown cotton jersey from KnitWit, also bought years ago.  These are my colours, yo  🙂  I also used some of that same brown cotton to make part of Tim’s hoodie, here.

The stencil pattern is Anna’s Garden from the AC book, enlarged 306%.  I applied the stencil to the olive fabric using a small foam roller and regular household paint, as described here.  The thread used throughout is a brown/grey Gutermann’s upholstery thread, although Spotlight ran out of my colour (grrr!) so a small portion was done in the same colour of Gutermann’s topstitching thread.  Top-stitching thread is kinda OK stuff but I really prefer the upholstery thread; much smoother and less prone to the strands separating from each other.
All the seams are hand stitched too, and felled by hand.  I had initially toyed with machine stitching the seams; but of course after all that hand embroidery I knew I had to finish off properly….   This took a blink of an eye compared to the embroidery side of things, so I am so pleased I opted to “do it right”, so to speak.  I like the way the felling shows upon the right side as a row of dimples; barely hinted-at stitches along the seams.

I finished the waistband with chocolate brown fold over elastic, bought from Tessuti’s in Melbourne. This stuff is extraordinarily expensive here and pretty hard to find in Perth.  Believe it or not; this colour is the closest match that I’ve found… anywhere. 

My top: I actually do have a matching deep-olive-and-dirt-brown fitted tank top printed, planned and ready to go, but as soon as I finished the skirt I had a Vision; only the plainest of plain white tanks would be the absolutely perfect-est accompaniment to this busy busy skirt.  I had the immediate compulsion to make such a thing.

I bought the white cotton jersey from KnitWit, and made up a very simple fitted tank; no frills but still constructed in the Alabama Chanin way, so stylistically it matches the skirt really well.    The seams are stitched and felled by hand, and the binding applied with herringbone stitch.  Although there a visible knots aplenty on the inside of the skirt… unavoidable!  I went out of my way to hide them on the inside of the tank top, concealing all the knots inside the layers of the felling and binding.
Neckline and armhole binding and seams: below left, right side view; at right, inner view with felled seams

Fitting-wise;  I raised the back neckline of the tank and made the shoulder straps a little wider also.  In my early experiments, I sliced a biggish sway-back wedge from the pattern which affected both the tank and the skirt pieces. 
Time-wise; the tank top took, like, one day at the most? while the skirt has taken weeks!  Although I would like to add more Alabama Chanin pieces to my wardrobe, there is no danger that I am going to get addicted to this technique.  It is basically identical to hand-quilting and I have made enough quilts to know I can only take so much of that.  My left pointer finger needs time to rest and recuperate.  The tip of that finger has skin like a rhino now.  Seriously.
Obviously I am thrilled to bits with my first Alabama Chanin project, and the second!  however there will be one little hurdle; I’m going to have to force myself to wear the skirt and not treat it like a museum piece.  I’m having visions of unwittingly sitting down on a patch of oil, or brushing against a spiky bush or someone carrying a glass of red wine tripping and falling in slow motion  in my direction…. aaagh!  The stuff of nightmares!  😉

Details:
Skirt; the mid-length skirt from Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, hand-embroidered and stitched cotton jersey in two solid colours
Top; the fitted tank from Alabama Studio Sewing + Design, hand-stitched, white cotton jersey
Sandals: Franco Burrone, from Marie Claire

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Aquarius

31/01/2013 10:00 am \ 76 Comments \

… the water bearer!
So this dress incorporates the design from page 56 of Pattern Magic 2, by
Tomoko Nakamichi.  It is described as “a flip turn draped design tie appears from the
slit in the front bodice for a complex and beautiful effect.”
When I was playing with ideas for the Aquarius theme I had in my head; I imagined that front panel as a swimmer shooting out of the watery waves that are embroidered around the hem of the dress, up the front of the dress, and diving back into the water at the neckline.  Yeah, I do occasionally have an overactive imagination….  🙂

To represent the Aquarian waves I embroidered a running stitch sine wave around the lower hem of the dress, and on the full-length front panel.  I originally had lazy-daisy water droplets going down the side of that front panel too… but the family veto-ed that one,  thought they were naff.  Hmf!  😀
I do like the visually peaceful hypnosis of sine waves.  Design-wise I’ve used them before.
And Aquarius is sometimes represented with a waves vaguely reminiscent of sine waves too.
The deep blue fabric is slightly rough and slightly crinkly cotton from Fabulous Fabrics.  I absolutely love this stuff.  It feels like it’s going to be so comfy and easy to live it.  When I found it in the store I bought some in each of the four colours!  This blue is the first piece to go under the knife scissors  🙂

I really like this longer length too.   I’ve already got a few short dresses and I wanted to go with something different this time.  I think it’s quite elegant, and the proportion of skirt to bodice lend the dress a more graceful and refined silhouette.

Details:
Dress; partly self-drafted, based on the flip turn design from page 56 of Pattern Magic 2, by Tomoko Nakamichi, blue cotton
Sandals; la soffitada Gilde, from Zomp shoes

Construction blah blah blah…
I drafted the dress a little differently from that suggested in the book… in this case I gave the dress a long darted true A-line skirt with satisfyingly deep deep inseam pockets.  To fit the back skirt to my slight swayback, I sewed modified darts in the skirt, and folded pleats in the bodice at the same position.  This allows the bodice to blouse out nicely from out of a fitted waistline.  The front skirt and bodice have the same dart/pleat thing happening.  This is a waist-slimming trick  😉

It is photographed here on Bessie who is bigger than I am, so it does blouse out more blousily on me.  The back of the dress is quite plain…

The dress is put on and taken off with a long invisible zip in the left side seam, and that long front panel is invisibly stitched down to the dress at the waistline.

The front neckline has to accommodate the flip turn tie, so I finished it with a narrow hem.  The back neckline and armscyes have interfaced facings.  The bodice slit has been finished like a letterbox opening, with a hemmed rectangle of facing fabric.  Like a welt-less and pocket-less welt pocket, if that makes any sense.  After wearing the dress for a few hours the pokey-out end ceased diving obediently into the water, and instead kept slipping sneakily back inside the dress, so I anchored it firmly in position on the inside along the sides of the letterbox opening.  It’s not going anywhere now!

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Vegetable placemats

13/12/2012 11:00 pm \ 21 Comments \

Occasionally I still come across old things, handmade by me, but still not shown yet on this blog (blush)
I found this set of eight linen placemats tucked into the back of my linen cupboard.  These were entirely hand constructed and embroidered by me…  I hadn’t forgotten them precisely, but they were one of those things that I kept thinking; I must dig those out and take photographs of those things one of these days…  which has now finally been done!
I made these yonks ago; not even sure exactly when now.  But it was when we had all three kids, and they were very little.  I was heavily into cross-stitch for a coupla years.  Note: was.  It’s a good thing I have these, yes? even just to show that I once did have the patience, if nothing else  😉
I bought natural linen, and measured off the placemats and finished the pulled thread-work and hand-hemming on all eight mats before I allowed myself to do any of the fun stuff; the actual embroidery.  
For the pulled thread-work: I pulled two threads from along just inside each edge, which were then each woven invisibly into the border.  I then hand-stitched along each edge, pulling the loose threads into pairs to form a long skinny “ladder” inside each border.  I’m calling it pulled thread-work, but I’m not absolutely certain that this proper name for this kind of embroidery?

The hems were then folded under twice and hand-stitched, and each of the four corners on each placemat is mitred at the back.
Then I did the cross-stitch embroidery.  The designs are from a Prairie Schooler pamphlet that I bought from Aherns.

I’ve always been taught that the back of the embroidery MUST always look at least as neat as the front…

They all got used, but there were favourites; so there was often swapping and switching before the dinner came out so that a particular veggie was set in front of the appropriate person!  

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Check-mate

09/12/2012 11:00 pm \ 45 Comments \

… because I’ve made something in a check, and I’m accompanied by my best-est mate  🙂  The former, a rarity; the latter, far less so!
So, the searing-est of searing hot scorchers are but just around the corner, and like a war-wife stocking her air-raid shelter before the blitz, I am laying in supplies… I have made a new pair of shorts using Burda 7723, altered by lengthening and flaring the legs slightly, and adding a zip placket.
This is the eighth thing I’ve made using this pattern… yeah, so I’ve come to the conclusion that this pattern is one totally cruddy pattern which does not work for me at all… hehe, joking!  Just seeing if you were paying attention.  Obviously, this has been one of my favourite and most used patterns.
The green gingham was given to me by my friend C from her late mother’s stash.  I can tell it is a really old old fabric, a cotton gingham of a solidly satisfying quality you just don’t see very often anymore.  Seriously, I don’t want to come across all “oh-all-modern-stuff-is-crap-compared-to-the-good-old-days” since I think that is not true at all: but; a Case in Isolation…  like the proverbial man; good gingham is hard to find now.  This is a very good gingham; crisp, strong, thick and tightly woven.  The white has slightly yellowed to a pale-ly creamy ivory through age, but as this suits my colouring I consider it a plus.
Now.
There is actually something  rather special about my new shorts….  🙂
this is the very first garment fully made on my baby sewing machine; my tiny elna Opal, that lives in our beach house!  YES!  

I have used it for hemming curtains, but I really wanted to make a proper and complete “something” entirely using this weeny little machine while we were at the beach house, so took down everything I thought I might need.  Of course, I get started and quickly realise I did NOT have everything that I needed!  I remembered after the fact that I usually finish off a few internal raw edges in this pattern on my overlocker, which of course I did not have with me.  However, I did have a piece of white voile with me, which I had taken down just in case, like for pocket lining or something.  I did not use it for pocket lining, but it was sliced into bias strips and I finished off all the raw edges inside my new shorts with HongKong seaming.  This is a kinda high-end finish I would not normally bother with in a casual pair of shorts, so my overlocker’s absence really forced me to lift my game here!

Also, I also belatedly realised that my baby machine does not have a zip foot, meaning I had to insert the zip using its one and only foot, a regular wide one.  So the front fly top-stitching around the zip turned out a wee bit wonky… but that’s OK.  Seeing those sweetly crooked stitches on my machine’s very first garment is like looking at my child’s very first piece of kindergarten art.  
Likewise, the baby machine does not do buttonholes, that I can work out anyway: so instead I handstitched a keyhole buttonhole using embroidery thread in a tight blanket stitch.  Another example of a maybe higher quality finish than I would otherwise have employed!  Maybe I should make more things while I am away from my “real” sewing machines  😀

Just for fun, and “why not?” I added strips of bias-cut gingham in the pocket opening edges.  I was planning to put some welt pockets in the back with bias-cut welts too; but the unheard of happened, and disaster struck… I ran out of thread!  
(heard in Perth, all the way from Dunsborough)  “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

Oh well.  It’s not like one ever uses rear pockets… they’re just for show and I guess there’s already plenty of visual interest happening with the check and all.  But once something is in my head and I haven’t been able to see it through; it’s Unfinished Business and niggles at me.  Hate that.  Maybe I’ll bring these shorts down again the next time and put those welt pockets in… maybe.  We’ll see.  🙂

Details:
Shorts; Burda 7723, green cotton gingham; my review of this pattern here
Top; the ponytail top from Pattern Magic 3 by Tomoko Nakamichi, green jersey, details here
Shoes; bensimon, from seed
Hat; Country Road

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