Outfit Round-up: May 6 through 10

I haven't made a pledge to do Me Made May, but the outfit documenting spirit is in the air and so far it's been motivating me to take a picture almost every day.

Monday, May 6: Hi, I'm Your Substitute

Inspired-by-Vogue-8691 knit dress, Simple boots. A comfortable dress for my very first time ever substitute teaching--for middle school, no less! All I can say is, I did it and no one died.

Tuesday, May 7: Playing Freelancer at Home

Simplicity 9816 blouse, the orange version (green version discussed here),  Butterick 5649 button front denim skirt, orange cropped cardigan by MAK, navy ribbed tights from Target, Simple sneakers, J. Crew belt.

Wednesday, May 8

An oldie-but-goody: Simplicity 4171 shirt dress, MAK mustard cropped cardigan, me-made black elastic belt with purchased buckle, Munro American oxfords

Thursday, May 9: Stitches Removed

Vogue 1203 brand-new denim skirt, New Look 6071 dress worn as a top, Kwik Sew leopard print camisole, Joan & David vintage combat boots (from eBay), No-Nonsense tights, thrifted black belt

Friday, May 10: Substituting Again!

Indygo Junction Day to Night Dress/Burda 7560, me-made flower pin, Munro American oxfords

And next week, I'm booked to substitute on Monday and Tuesday. Let's see what teacher-ific combinations I can come up with for that.

Vogue 1203: Another Denim Skirt

Can't. Stop. Making. Denim. Skirts.

I've made a flared version and then a straight version, but neither one has pockets. I love Beth of Sunny Gal Studio's versions of Simplicity 2152, but I don't have that pattern in my cabinet. It seemed silly to buy it, seeing as how I do have lots of paneled skirt patterns.

Which brings me to Vogue 1203, an out of print Tracy Reese design.

Somehow I remember that it was Eugenia's lovely version of this skirt, posted back in 2011, that prompted me to buy the pattern.

Plan: combine the 1203 skirt with pockets like the Simplicity 2152 design.

So, I'm not going to lie to you: the pockets are a little too low. But I love the skirt anyway! It has a different kind of contour waistband (not a yoke, like the Simplicity 2475 straight skirt I recently made). The band is narrower where it attaches to the skirt, and then it flares out above the waist. I had no idea how this would work for me, but it's great. It gives me the high-waisted effect with no binding.
Actually, I did have to tweak the fit at the waist during construction. Even though a 12 is usually about right for me, the waist of this skirt was really big. Hips were fine. But the waist was flopping about, and that wasn't going to work for this style. I removed 1" from either side at the center back, tapering back to the original seamline by the bottom of the zipper. Strange, huh?

But whatever, because now I love the way it fits.

As you can see, I didn't do the cool exposed zipper per the pattern. And thank goodness for that, because ripping it out to shrink the waist would not have been fun. The only 9" metal zipper I had was lilac. I stopped at the fabric store handiest to my house, and they only had 7" metal zippers. It seemed to me that 7" might not be quite long enough and I was right. The 9" invisible zipper only barely lets me in and out of the skirt. 11" would be better (and would that I had known that, since I shortened a longer zipper from my stash).

This fabric is, um, awesome. It's a 75% cotton, 25% bamboo denim from Waechter's. I was drawn to its combination of drape with substance. Love it. I only got one yard of 57" wide fabric, which did not turn out to be enough for a with-nap layout. I alternated the orientation of the pieces with no discernible ill effects.

With the skirt I am wearing a New Look 6071 dress, never before seen on this blog! Here is the dress on its own:

 

I made a matching camisole to wear underneath the dress, because it is cut way low! I adore this dress, but it doesn't make it out of the closet much (too sexy for my life!). I did wear it to my 25th high school reunion last fall, which was worth the making of it for sure. I'm happy to get into circulation today. I'm off to have stitches removed from my face. Two weeks ago I had a surgery to remove a squamous cell carcinoma from the outer part of my left eyebrow. Hence the headless photos! I haven't been able to wear much makeup, which looks rather washed out in pictures. I'll be back soon to show off my scar (which isn't so bad, and will surely fade a lot over time).

A Chilly Spring Flower

Our gray and not-warm weather pattern has me stymied when it comes to dressing in a spring-like manner. This morning I couldn't help but pull down my box of winter woolens, which was waiting to be taken off to the attic for storage (a bad place for wool, but I've no other space for it) to find something cozy to wear today.

I've been "needing" a black flower pin/hair ornament, so I decided to make up a piece of black silk ribbon I've been saving for that purpose. I like it so well I'm tempted to pop over to Waechter's Silk Shop to buy some more colors. This ribbon is bias cut, so of course it is very amenable to manipulation. If I do make more, I'll take photos as I go to show how I put this one together. 

The actual warm parts of my outfit are the Ottobre 5/2009 knit wool dress, wool leggings from SmartWool, a purchased long sleeve black t-shirt and black short boots from (sadly) defunct Simple Shoes.

May Days Two and Three, and Vogue 8691

Thursday, May 2

Vogue 8691 by Katherine Tilton, and Kwik Sew 3115 bloomers

Rayon wool fabric from FabricMart

Fabric flowers incorporate some of the perforated selvedge, along with tiny black beads. The crossover collar is my adaptation.

Friday, May 3

Ottobre Woman Everywoman's Favorite Cardigan,  Simplicity 2475 denim straight skirt, Hue tights

New Look 6700 dress, adapted as a t-shirt (first appearance on blog)

New Look 6700 t-shirt, back view showing center back seam

Simplicity 9816 blouse + Weed the Garden skirt

Fitting a simple blouse isn't as simple as it should be, in my opinion. Only time will tell how this latest effort will work out. For today, I'm mildly pleased with this top and its sister, a cantaloupe-colored version.

A convertible collar is one of my favorites; it has the substance of a real collar, it isn't too frilly or girly, it frames the face, and yet it doesn't sit up high enough on the neck to interfere with hair or get makeup rubbed on it from the chin. This blouse pattern is a basic convertible collar offering, Simplicity 9816, now out of print. My copy came from the thrift store; it was 10 cents! This must have been one of Simplicity's earlier cup-sized patterns.

I have finally learned that the cup sizing should not be taken too literally. Even though I wear a D cup bra size, the D pieces give too much room in the bust for me. C is just right.

I think roundness at the upper back (which surely isn't getting any less as I get older, let me tell you) is at the root of my blouse-fitting challenges. I really want to master adjusting a yoked shirt pattern for this issue, but I thought it would be sensible to achieve a good fit on a non-yoked pattern first. Since my fabric is a very nice seersucker (from FabricMart, what isn't?) with a stripe, I didn't really want a center back seam. Threads has a great alteration tutorial with an awful name: The Dowager's Hump. Even though this article covers the various possible approaches to altering for this problem in a more comprehensive way than Fit for Real People, it's hard to look that truth in the face.

Oh well, Threads showed me how to add length at the upper back and then add neckline darts to do the High Round Back alteration without using a center back seam.

I still feel a little restriction at the sleeves, though. I may need to add a bit of width to the back at the mid-armhole level. Or something.

The collar turned out well! I narrowed it 5/8" from the original pattern, and really, I might even narrow it some more for future efforts. Patterns generally only vary the length of the collar (the part that goes around the neck opening) with the different sizes, not the width. Which doesn't make much sense, considering that my shoulders are a good three or four inches narrower than the largest size for this pattern.

Other adjustments were to shorten the blouse 1 1/2" and to omit the front darts.

I'm wearing it this first day of May with another recent item, a cousin to my Walk the Dog skirt. The mud color of this fabric (a verrry stiff cotton canvas by Marc Jacobs by way of FabricMart) makes it appropriate to utilitarian uses, so I am thinking of it as a Weed the Garden skirt.

The main thing is, it has pockets. Nothing else matters that much.

Walk the Dog Skirt

In spring and summer, I hardly wear pants at all. It's skirts and dresses for me, as soon as the weather is warm enough for bare white legs. The best thing about jeans is pockets. The worst thing about skirts is having no pockets or, nearly as bad, unsatisfactory pockets. A cell phone in a side seam pocket in a full skirt is a dangling irritation, banging around with every step. So I wanted secure, slant pockets for this skirt, just like...New Look 6100, a shorts pattern. In theory I could make this pattern into a skirt, but in practice I felt confused by exactly how I should remove the crotch area and orient the grainlines.

Surely there exists a current pattern for this skirt style, but I dipped into the "archives" (a.k.a., the file drawer holding my dodgy recent-vintage thrift store patterns) to find this one. Simplicity 9825 offers "misses' slim and a-line skirts each in three lengths". To Simplicity's terse description, one could add that there are a contour yoke and center front and center back seams.

Searching on the pattern number reveals that this skirt was fairly popular before going out of print. A recent devotee, Sew Hopeful, sewed three versions and makes some excellent points about the virtues of this style.

When I layered the pattern pieces for the New Look and Simplicity patterns, it seemed likely that Simplicity (which owns New Look) had drafted the shorts pattern directly from a master pattern that also was the basis for 9825. The yoke and notches and everything matched perfectly. I cut out the line for the pocket on the skirt front piece and then used the pocket pieces from New Look 6100 without any changes.

For my short-waisted, round tummy-ed self, the contour yoke is about as good as it gets for fitting the waist and high hip area. As I mentioned in my review of Simplicity 2475, the contour treatment actually stays at my waist, without creeping, crawling or shifting. With an elastic waist, I usually find myself tugging at the garment to alleviate bunching at the back waist or the gradual assent of the waistband to higher territory. With a straight waistband, the skirt wants to migrate left and right over the course of the day. With a high waisted style, I can forget about sitting comfortably unless I fit the waistband loosely.

Aside from adding pockets, other minor alterations were to take off 3/8" at the top of the back skirt piece (swayback adjustment), to add 1" length at the center back (full seat) and to shorten the height of the contour yoke by 5/8" (which made it a similar proportion as the yoke for the shorts pattern). Otherwise it's a pretty standard size 12.

FabricMart Fabrics had the most amazing sale a week or so ago and I couldn't say no to some of their incredible clearance prices. This charcoal ponte knit is one of those purchases. This skirt only required one yard of 60" wide fabric ($2.40/yard during this sale!) and one 9" invisible zipper (on hand from a previous FabricMart bundle purchase, and probably cost about $1), so it was quite economical indeed. As you would guess, the slight stretch of the ponte makes it a very comfortable bottom-weight fabric to wear.

Now when it's time to walk the dog, I won't need to stuff my cell phone into my waistband or, worse, my bra. I won't have to juggle the plastic bags for poop with holding the leash. I won't have to tug at my skirt to put it back into place. And, thankfully, I won't have to wear pants. Trouble is, I need about five more of these skirts, and I must get cracking on some non-sewing projects (the garden is calling).

Something More Frivolous: Simplicity 1882 Dress

It's time for me to show you something a little less practical, a little more frivolous. This dress is so frivolous, in fact, that it's never been worn out of the house. It got all finished but not hemmed by the end of last summer--and it's been hanging in the closet ever since.

It just feels so...saucy. I ought to like that, but I'm not sure how to pair the dress with an occasion. I will wear it swing dancing soon. Even though it's very fitted through the bodice, there's lots of room for movement in the gentle a-line skirt.

Love that collar and the bow! My sleeve insertion, not so much.

Piping is a royal pain, but it's also very pretty. The cotton sateen used to make the piping and collar may have been a little beefy for that purpose. Getting those midriff seams to line up at the center back was no picnic, and the invisible zipper is quite balky at that point. The added bulk of the piping creates a drag there (though I clipped as much as humanly possible). Getting in and out of the dress requires caution! Once I'm in, it's comfortable.

This is another Amazing Fit pattern, and again I didn't hesitate to choose the "curvy" option. The bodice is size 8, C cup option, and the skirt is size 10 in a fairly stretchy woven fabric. I should have given myself a little more room in the side seams, and in fact I still could--the whole 1" side seam allowance is still all there. I just can't make myself rip out the piping! It seems easier to diet...

The skirt would be great made up on its own. The pockets are so well integrated into the overall design, and the soft pleat at the inner edge of the pockets gives a nice shape to the front of the skirt.

Do you think I should to bite the bullet and wear this dress out of the house, or wait for a "middle aged mommy vintage pinup" contest?!?