Poll results, weekend plans and other housekeeping.

Morning you lazy basset hounds! Oh, wait, there’s just ONE lazy basset hound here – fast asleep on the loveseat, on her back with her legs sticking up in the air and her ears hanging off the edge of the cushions.

It’s Friday and tomorrow Mr. Bug, the lazy hound and myself are packing up and heading north. A friend is getting married (remember the feverish quilt plotting?) and the wedding’s on Saturday. I still have a bit more quilting to do and the binding to attach. I’m going to cheat on the binding and do the whole thing by machine!

Before I log off to lug my machine into the kitchen (more space on the kitchen table for quilts!) I thought I’d report on the results from my recent poll activity! Last week I asked in a SUPER SCIENTIFIC POLL what kind of posts all y’all would like to see more of. I used the free survey tool at Zoomerang and as such am limited to only seeing the first 100 responses. Here they are.

In order we have…

1. Tied for first: More tutorials, more reveals. 68% of the vote.OK. A no-brainer. I mean, that’s why we’re all here, right? That’s my favorite thing to read on blogs as well. Actually, I WAY more like reveals than tutorials. Unless, of course, I’m trying to figure out how to do something. I really love seeing the results on real people! That’s why I like Pattern Review and Burda so much as well.
2. More shop stuff: new patterns, fabrics and other fun things. 57% of the vote. OK, you surprised me here! I thought this would come in LAST! I’ve been reticent about talking too much about the shop, so this was an eye opener! Going forward I’ll do more posts on the goods that we’re getting in and I’ll also try to be better at listing sources and information on fabrics, etc. that I’m using! BY the way… did you know that we ship patterns in the U.S. for FREE??? Did you know that we carry Colette and Sewaholic?? If you’re needing to stock up, head on over to our Etsy shop! And while you’re there, check out all the voiles that we have in – shipping on fabric is a a flat rate of $4.95!! I think we have enough of that Anna Maria Horner voile left to make one more maxi dress…
3. Inspiration and planning posts. 54% of the vote. This one was a surprise! I tend to shy away from too much “this is what I wanna do” type of stuff, as I’d rather wait and post about what I actually got done!! And I don’t want to be accused of being the blogger that is just posting pictures of other folkses’ stuff. Because I know how accusatory we can all get here in the sewblogging world (hee hee – sarcasm. Sewing bloggers and friends are the least accusatory people in the world. Unless we’re accusing each other of awesomeness, right??) When I think about it, though, I love seeing inspiration posts that all ya’ll are doing, so I’m not sure where I got this anti-inspiration bias!
4. Sewing school posts! 48% of the vote. yay! I like these too! I’ll definitely keep going with these! The first school session will continue to be Patterns 101. I’ve got a fun interview-type post planned with a girl who worked for one of the pattern companies! Watch for that in the (hopefully) near future!
5. More style posts! 46% of the vote. I was curious where this would end up in the ranking. About you half of you voting-hounds like the style stuff. I like it too. We’ll do more of that.
6. Philosophical posts. 33% of the vote. I haven’t done many of these – I’m not sure I’m that philosophical by nature (I guess. What does it mean to be philosophical??) and much like the inspirational posts, I’m more inclined to do a show-and-tell than throw stuff out there, although you all have super-interesting things to say and I love, love, love reading comments! Start looking to see a few of these posts tossed in the mix every now and again! I have a fondness for yay or nay style posts… AND I’m plotting on some technical changes ‘round here that’ll (hopefully) mean threaded comments for all – very conducive for conversations in the comments!
7. Let’s see the garden. 25% of the vote. Wow guys! I just threw that in there because it’s been on my mind lately and I love to take pictures in my garden. I’ll continue to do so, just for those of us who love the catmint and compost as much as dresses and thread!
8. Daily outfits. 22% of the vote. I’ve been really behind on my daily outfit posts lately, although I keep notes and do catch-up photo sessions! Hopefully, July will be a little easier for me to get through! I don’t really like having two blogs, although I totally get that many of you are into sewing, not style blogs. I’m hatching a plan to have the best of both worlds… more on that soon!
9. Crafty projects. 16% of the vote. OK. You guys are just not that into the crafty stuff! That makes perfect sense, as I mostly write about garment making, so naturally most people who bother to stop by my blog are also interested in garment making! BUT, since I work at a sewing shop that is adding yarn and needlework supplies to its stock AND I just re-whetted my taste for quilts, all ya’ll are going to have to budge over a bit to make some room for the crafty-curious. I’ll keep those posts to the reveal-eye-candy type, though. Even the most hardened garment makers amongst you cannot resist brightly colored cotton. Admit it.
10. Bring back the dream jobs. 10%. Last place. Poor dream jobs posts! As much as I love knowing how things work, I have to agree that these should stay low in the content rotation!

So what’s next? Well, my hound-friends, I’m working on a major overhaul of the site. As in, hello Wordpress. When I initially started this blog, it was more of a small house-and-wedding thing for Mr. Bug to read! I already had a blogger account and off I went. Once I started blogging about SEWING and caught the blog-bug, I already had a few followers and didn’t want to do a platform switch. I’ve always, always wished that I’d gone with Wordpress and recently Facebook made a change that renders the images from Blogger/Picasa hosted blogs in a super-craptastic manner, which was the straw that broke this blogging camel’s back.

Last fall I set up my current domain (www.pattythesnugbug.com) and hopefully most followers and subscribers are going to my actual there and not the blogspot address, so I think the time is ripe for a switch. It should be relatively painless, you’ll just wake up one day to a slightly flashier Snug Bug. Flashier as in awesome, not as in everything is animated. Because animation makes me buggy. We’ll make the big change in the next few weeks, there’ll be a few new things that some of you may love, and for those of you who are happy just the way it is, there’ll be an option for you to continue almost-as-normal! In any case, I’m not changing my blog address, just my looks, so you can just sit back and enjoy the show!

Since it saddens me to see a blog post so woefully low on photos… here’s a few snapshots of the B&B that the bears will be staying at this weekend. A dog-friendly B&B, ya’ll!! We stayed there last October, so if you’ve been ‘round these parts since then, you’ll recognize these pics!

A super-duper quick make-up post! New ‘clothes’ for the living room.

Evening narwhals! Here’s a quickie post to make up for my lack of one earlier today! A sneak peek at the makings for a little make-over for our living room! Look how bright and springy!

The oranges and blues will be pillows and the textured white fabric are our new Ikea drapes. Everything’s sitting on our white sofa, with our coffee-with-cream walls as a backdrop. Here’s what’s currently in the room…

Green curtains, white and green pillows and my old red and green quilt. I still love all these, I’m just angsty for a change. Here’s (recycled) room-shots.

I’ll probably leave the windowseat cushions alone. For now. They are the perfect mix of cream and black pattern to hide all the hound slobber and fur that ends up on them!

So… any suggestions for cool pillows? I really want to re-use my pillow forms – the rectangles. Although, I suppose I COULD make them into different shapes!

I’ll be back tomorrow with a new reveal! Old pattern, new dress.

TTFN, sweet fleshy fishies!

A short history of modern quilting, plotting and suggestions needed for baby loot.

Greetings you orange-skirt loving penguins! I’ll admit to having a slight bias towards the orange skirt when I hit publish on my last post, but I did NOT anticipate such overwhelming support for the pencil skirt! Lucky for all penguins and fellow avian-kind, I worked on TWO MORE of those skirts yesterday (of course, neither is finished.) And then I got distracted… Mr. Bug and I are headed north for a wedding at the end of June and I realized that I really want to make a QUILT as a gift!

Now… I’ve made a number of quilts over the years, but they aren’t my favorite thing. The stress of choosing the right fabrics and FORCING myself to pick some ugly ones so my quilts don’t look like a boring mish mash is eclipsed only be the tedium of all that cutting and sewing of straight lines. And math. And that’s before I even get to the truly horrible point of the project where I accidentally attach my unassembled quilt to the carpet with safety pins while trying to get the two layers of fabric to lie smoothly against that freakishly magnetic batting. No, quilts are not my thing! And yet, look at this lovely stack of fabric I picked out anyway… quilt time here I come!

I’m pretty stoked about these fabrics, and here’s why… starting from the bottom I’ve got… a piece of wool that Mr. Bug found for me at Goodwill…green dupioni silk from my stash… green cotton/silk Sateen from local quilt shop, Glad Creations… chocolate flannel polka dots… natural linen… lime green organic cotton with BIRDS from the shop where I work… more organic flannel dots, this time the color is ‘grass’… a few more prints from Glad and Sewtropolis (that’s where I work!)… a few more silk/cotton sateens and a couple of prints from my stash. All topped off with a bit of vintage trim. Just looking at that stack of fabric makes me feel a bit euphoric.

When I last was immersed in quilt-making it was the mid-90’s and batiks and ragtime quilts were the thing. Very country couture. I also seem to remember a stained glass look that was quite popular. Nikol, the owner of the shop where I work, is a mad-quilter and as it turns out, things have changed in the quilting world in the last fifteen years. “Modern quilting” is super popular, and I have to admit to being quite intrigued by the new styles, although I’m sure I’ll still pin my quilt to the floor and want to toss the whole project into our chiminea before it’s fully quilted.

I had heard of the term ‘modern quilting’ before starting to work at the shop, but I just thought it meant, you know, making a quilt right now. Possibly with fabrics that had cartoons on them. Obviously, I hadn’t put a lot of thought into it. The Minneapolis chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild holds their monthly meetings at Sewtropolis and so I’ve been hearing a bit more about this whole modern quilting thing. I even joined the Minneapolis guild’s site and will probably go to meetings when I can – according to Nikol they’re super fun (and free!)

So, turns out modern quilting is NOT about using theme fabric! From looking at quilt blogs and such, I picked up a few main themes that make for ‘modern’ quilts – restyling traditional quilt patterns, lots of negative space, wonky piecing, unique backings and super-fresh colors. NOT country (or cartoon) couture!!

Restyling traditional patterns

For instance, here’s a traditional log cabin quilt, complete with the red centers on the blocks…

[image old quilt company]

And here’s a modern take … oops! Looks like those red centers migrated!!

[image craftster]

Negative space

Oh, and I mentioned negative space, didn’t I? Let’s take a look at this hexagon quilt. Totally a style I recall – I mean, don’t those terrible corner seams look like a bear to stitch? Who could forget that?

[image stitchin’ post]

Here’s a modern take on a hexagon quilt…

[image Film in the Fridge]

Wonky wonky

I don’t quite understand the mechanics of it, but let’s talk wonky quilting… First, here’s a house quilt in a style I recall. I’m SURE I made some blocks like this from a ‘learn to piece’ book I had…

[image laundry basket quilts]

And now for the wonky modern take…

[image craftster]

Hello, you look better from the back…

One of the coolest details I’ve seen since I’ve started snooping around quilting blogs is the backings! My memories of quilt backs are all centered around complicated match, trying to get as much bang for my buck piecing together the fabric and a giant sense of letdown. My favorite part of quilting (not surprisingly) is piecing. The backs were just tedious, boring, and if making anything larger than a wall hanging, pricey. My biggest innovation was loyalty to flannel-as-backing-fabric to improve the coziness factor. Check out these quilt backs! Not only are they cool LOOKING, they use up extra scraps and aren’t mind numbingly boring to sew!! This totally reminds me of fun garment sewing details like contrast facings, cuffs and bias finishing on seams…

   

 [images Film in the Fridge upper left, upper right, lower left, lower right]

3-2-1 Color!

While this is just as much a shift in the general style over the last 15 years, coupled with the fabulous fabric designers out there, one other detail that has caught my eye while looking at the quilt sites is the use of COLOR!! Here’s a photo of the booth of Laundry Basket Quilts that I snagged from the Bunny Hill Blog. The photo was taken last year, but the palette and style are what ALL the quilt shops looked like when I last ventured into them…

The colors and designs are lovely, but very traditional, soft and muted. Compare that to this photo I snagged from Tall Grass Prairie Studio of the the Robert Kaufman booth with Modern Quilt Guild Challenge quilts. This photo was taken at Quilt Market which just happened a few weeks ago. Quite a difference from the more traditional Laundry Basket booth, isn’t it?

My plan

Alright penguins, my brief intro to modern quilting is now over. If any of you are more well-versed, pipe up in the comments!

While I still like the traditional quilt designs, with all their points and precision and begging for hand-piecing, I want my wedding-gift quilt to be a bit more fresh and appealing to the groom, who I haven’t met. Since I also haven’t met many men who love soft calicos and flying geese, a traditional quilt style didn’t seem quite the thing. Also, I’m already swamped with projects and don’t have the time to piece anything complicated in the next few weeks, so I decided to showcase my fantastic stack of green and brown fabrics in a random-width stringy quilt. This looks easy, doesn’t it??

[image Film in the Fridge]

For the back I’m planning on an offset stacked strip of the prints on a white background… like so.

[image Film in the Fridge]

I have some lighter linen for the front. I might do a bit of hand stitching on the linen with darker brown and green perl cotton a la Anna Maria Horner’s upcoming stitchery genius..

[image  the Anna Maria Horner blog]

I also piled on the vintage lace, thinking that I could affix that to one of the strips as well. I only have enough for one strip, at most, but the trim is 3” wide and would add some texture.

Fun, huh?? I won’t subject you to TOO many quilting posts, but I couldn’t resist sharing my euphoria-inducing pile of fabrics!

What’s good for babies??

One question before I sign off… I just got an invite for a baby shower (in TWO WEEKS!) and would like to include something handmade – normally I knit a sweater, but I don’t have the time! We will be also giving the ever-practical Target gift card, but any suggestions for a quick sewing related baby gift I could whip up? It seems that little babies are dressed in some sort of sack-like garment, so clothes sewing doesn’t seem reasonable. Plus, they appear to grow quickly… any help is appreciated! I’m baby-ignorant!

Off I go to save the world… I may be heading out for a last minute running trip to the great state of Iowa this afternoon. Mr. Bug is heading down to do a 20k, and if my last lesson of the day wraps in time, Lucy the hound and I are going along and will return to roadtrip work on my Miette sweater. At least, I will. Lucy will undoubtedly snore her way to Iowa. The car is puppy valium for her! If we miss our ride to Iowa, we’re staying home to sew. It’s a win-win for us!

Maxi Dress. Obsession, plotting, muslin #1.

Greetings semi-tame burros of Custer State Park. Next time, we’re bringing carrots. Your big scary teeth are getting way too close to our fingers. Now, will you kindly remove your giant head from our car window so we can go find some bison??

Since burros such as yourselves are naturally clever and curious, I know you’ll understand when I tell you that I recently because OBSESSED with the-making-of-a-maxi dress. It was a natural progression. Again, I’ve left off making this month’s dress for my Year of the Dress project and here we are, within waving distance of June. Take that, add in my project of the week of putting together the class schedule for July (all dresses in July, donkeys. All dresses!) and then top off with eight yards of lighter-than air silk/cotton voile and what does a jenny like me get? A plotting-about-it-while-you-should-be-falling-asleep sewing obsession. The maxi dress.

[image Anthropologie]

Getting inspired

I’ll start at the beginning. As I’ve mentioned before (and will undoubtedly mention again) we’re doing ‘theme’ months in our class lineup at the shop. May is the month of skirts, June is all about shirts and in July it’s all dress classes. As I flipped through the Kwik Sew catalog, looking for dresses that were stylish and appropriate for a beginner-level class, my peepers fell upon this magnificent goddess caftan.

[Kwik Sew 3856/3868]

Perfect, right? Easy to sew, fun for this summer, totally on trend, available in regular AND plus sizes… I added to the class lineup, picked out my sample fabric and moved on to other things. Specifically, working on my May dress.

I originally intended the May dress to be a shirtwaist made from some completely over the top rose-print quilt weight cotton. But when I cut out the pieces and made muslin #1, I realized that fitting the dress is going to take a while. Plus, next month is our one-year anniversary and we were married under a rose-bedecked gazebo, so perhaps that would make a better June dress.

But we’ll save that for another month. In the meantime, what to make for June?? While prowling around Joann’s the other day (for muslin, actually, but I got distracted) I found some simply lovely cotton/silk voile in a pseudo tribal print that I found strangely compelling. Tribal print is not my thing. I also found a coordinating crazy poly butterfly print, and not wanting to have all that nasty poly against my skin, I stopped by fabric warehouse SR Harris and raided the $5.00 silk bins where I found some hot pink cotton/silk blend lawn perfect for lining what was shaping up to be a fine romp of a dress. I mean, anything that involves 10 yards of fabric is going to be a whizzbang, am I right, my braying equines?

Alright. Inspiration, check. Fabric, check. Now for the pattern. I could have easily just made the Kwik Sew pattern, but I’ll be making up that pattern as a sample for the class and I sort of wanted to do something different. Also the Kwik Sew pattern has a surplice neckline (the crossover) and I had some detail work in mind that would work better with a centered front seam. I surfed the usual suspects to check out different styles out there (Anthro, Banana, Ann Taylor, J Crew, ModCloth and Asos) and after much photo flipping I determined that the Asos Maxi Dress models looked uncomfortably emaciated and that I wanted a kimono-type sleeve rather than sleeveless, an empire seam with some shaping in the front and some gathering around the shoulders. Here’s my top three inspiration photos.

   

[images left | center | right]

I considered just draping the whole shebang, but I haven’t made many garments with kimono sleeves and I wasn’t 100% sure the best shaping for the bodice pieces with the sleeves, gathering and V-neck. I checked out the pattern catalogs at Joann’s and found this pattern from Burda.

Here’s the technical drawing.

The bodice looked perfect, although the pattern is drafted for a knit and I’m working in wovens. The skirt shape isn’t what I want, but I thought if I used the bodice pattern pieces and graded up, then left off the gathers on at the waist and just added an elastic casing and the skirt pieces I could get where I wanted to go. So let’s get started.

Tissue fitting

Here is a shot of the front bodice piece and the trim piece for the neckline and center front – in case you, too, weren’t sure what the pattern pieces would look like for this style. I’ve marked the gathering points in pink. The pattern instructions say to run gathering stitches between the two pink dots and gather until they are three inches apart – they’re a little over six inches, ungathered. Once the gathering is done, the bottom edge of the bodice sits straight across the body and is not higher in the center front as it looks when lying flat.

And here’s the back bodice piece with the neckline trim.

The pattern ran through a size 20 – measurements bust 41/waist 32/hips 43.5. For comparison, the Big 4 size 20 is bust 42/waist 34/hips 44,  and the Hot Patterns size 20 for the 24/7 A-line and Pencil skirt is bust 46/ waist 38/hips 48.

Clearly, I would need to size up. Not only are the measurements too small, but the pattern is designed for a knit, so the built in ease will be different than it would be for a woven. AND the fit of the bodice is a bit more body conscious (at least, according to the envelope art) than I have in mind for my maxi dress. While I don’t want the dress to be giant, I would like to hit an easy, loose fit.

When I know I’m going to be significantly resizing a garment I follow these general steps. 1) tissue fit to get an idea of how much to add (2) adjust pattern (3) sew muslin (4) fit muslin (5) transfer fitting changes to paper pattern (6) if the fit was REALLY off or I’m working on a very fitted garment I repeat steps 2 through 5. Otherwise, I just start in on the garment.

To tissue fit I put regular scotch tape along all the ‘seamlines’ so that I can stick pins through the tissue and try on my paper garment without tearing it to bits. You also have to pin in any shaping at this time – like darts and gathers. I taped and pinned everything together and was lucky enough to have a friend help me with the next step. Slide on the tissue garment and get it to fit as well as possible at the shoulder, neck and side seam. Pin so that the side seam and shoulder seam are lined up in the center of your body, then pin the center front and center back as far as it will go, keeping in mind the desired ease (so don’t pin it super tight if that’s not the fit you want!) We pinned the tissue right to my shirt to hold everything in place.

Here’s the back view. You can see that it nearly reaches my center back (CB)- marked in pink. If I start with a size 18 or 20, I usually don’t have to grade up or adjust the back. However, since this pattern is intended for a knit and doesn’t have as much ease built in as I’d like, I’ll be grading up a bit. See how it veers out a bit more towards the top? That’s more because I’m wearing over another shirt and because the arm opening is a little small than because my back is wide there!

Hmmmm. You can see a LOT more width is needed in the center front!!

I also need more length overall. I’d like the front bodice to hit where the pink line is in the photo below.

Adjusting the pattern

I slipped off the tissue and did some math. I considered the flat paper measurements, the measurements I took during the tissue fitting and my own measurements along with how much ease I wanted in the dress. My hip meaurements are much, much larger than my bust, waist and midriff measurements. I’d considered making the top of the skirt and the bottom of the midriff the same width, but decided to make the bodice a bit smaller and gather the skirt before attaching to the bodice. I decided to add 1.5” to the front and back bodice pieces. This will give me six additional inches, enough to grade up and provide some ease. In addition, I’ll add 2” in length to the front and back pieces and I’ll add 2” to the arm openings.

First, adding 1.5” to the back. I thought the neck opening seemed a bit small, so I added the full amount at the base of the neck. I’ve marked the edges of the inserted tissue in green below.

In the front I added the tissue between the gather marks. The gather marks are in pink, the added tissue marked in green. I wasn’t 100% happy with adding here, but I didn’t want to add toward the center front as I didn’t want to make the angled neckline any longer, and I thought adding more towards the side seam might alter how the shoulders lie.

Next I did a little math. Rather than gathers, I was thinking it would be nice to use pleats. Here I’m working on the front. There’s roughly 8” between the gather points that, per the instructions, needs to be reduced to three inches. I decided to take five 1” pleats, removing 5” from the gather area and leaving three inches of fabric. Perfect! Since I want my shoulders to look symmetrical, I will need to also figure out the spacing between pleats. With five pleats, there are four ‘spaces’ (tip: hold out your hand and pretend each finger is a pleat. Count the spaces between the fingers – four ‘spaces’!) So I have four spaces that I have to fit in three inches. Three divided by four is .75. I will mark five 1” pleats, spaced .75” apart for a total of 8 inches.

Next I added length. Here I’m adding 2” to the back bodice piece. I cut along the shorten/lengthen line, then slid the bottom away from the top, keeping the center back edges straight – it helps to work on a gridded mat for this. I filled with tissue, but have one more little fix. See on the right, I’ve marked the two  corners where I’ve slid apart the pieces, they aren’t in line any more! When you add length along a curve seam you need to true up the seam lines – basically, redraw the seamlines so they are nice and smooth.

Normally, when I true up the seamlines after adjusting a pattern, I try do it gently over as long an area as possible. This time I did it as short as possible because I wanted to avoid adding more width to my ribcage area. I just used my curved ruler to ease back to the top of the line where I cut to lengthen the piece.

Trimmed!

Here’s the front bodice piece lengthened – shown in green.

The final adjustment is to add 2” to the arm opening. These arms are super simple – they are just openings left by not sewing the side seam all the way up the shoulder! The original marking for the arm opening is shown in green. I measured down 1” and made another mark. Since this is a double layer of fabric, by sewing 1” short, I’ll be adding 2” to the arm opening.

Analyzing the muslin

I sewed it together and was pretty pleased! Since the style of the dress is so simple, this isn’t much to look at, but I really like the kimono sleeves on my wimpy shoulders.

Front and side views.

 

The width feels really good. I think I might shorten the sleeves just a bit and I was thinking of lowering the neckline, but I don’t want it to be ridiculously low cut so I’ll probably leave it alone!

One change I’ll be making is to add a bit of shaping to the empire seam on the center front. I want the dress to be at more of an angle than straight across. It’s sort of messy because I just stuck a pin in it, but on the left is the muslin as sewn and on the right I’ve pinned up the center front.

 

Here’s a shot from the inside of the shaping. the green lines mark the fold and the raw edge. I’ll transfer these marks back to the paper pattern and trim a wedge from the bottom of the paper pattern.

One final adjustment – the pleats on the front and the back don’t line up and I don’t really like how it looks. I don’t know if it’s a result of my adjustment or if it’s just the way the pattern was drafted, but the green dot marks where the pleats start in the back and the pink where they start in the front. I’m not sure where I’ll move things too. I like the drape at the top of the shoulder on the front a lot,  but the pleats going so far down my arm cause a bit of weird bagginess that I’m not sure about. I’m probably overfitting, here! I will probably start the pleating a BIT closer to the green dot, perhaps a half inch closer to my neck.

That’s where I left off! Next up in the process will be transferring the adjustments back to the pattern pieces, then I will cut and assemble the bodice. I will probably construct the skirt a bit more by draping – no paper pattern pieces! I’m envisioning a couple of rectangles with some gathering, so it shouldn’t be too hard other than the shaping at the center front and figuring out how I want the layers to work together!