Everything I sewed in 2023

January 1, 2024 Erin4 Comments

Early last year I claimed that 2023 was going to be ‘the year of the shirtdress’ and, for once, I was right.

The biggest winner in the shirtdress sweepstakes (prize: Erin makes a lot of you) was the Isca dress from Marilla Walker, which I made a dozen times:

Isca shirtdress — The first iteration (blog post)

Isca in Nani Iro cotton/linen — Round three (blog post). This is where I began replacing the set-in sleeves with a kind of modified cap sleeve.

After those three, they kind of came in a rush:

Rainbow Isca dress with yellow buttons — Heavy rainbow chambray. This almost certainly came from Stonemountain.

Liberty blue waves Isca — Liberty Tana lawn.

Gray-blue lawn Isca with a jackstraw-like pattern — I think I bought this lawn from Stonemountain? I’m bad at dress selfies but I made an attempt for this one in a hotel in Copenhagen.

Black and gray needlepoint-roses print Liberty lawn Isca — More Liberty, this time a little longer for autumn/winter wear. (The buttons are little flowers too.)

Isca shirtdress in cotton poplin with a distressed stripe pattern in shades of gray, teal, purple, black, and pale yellow — This one is probably my favorite? I have no idea where I got this fabric, it’s a light poplin or maybe a heavyish quilting cotton.

Liberty paint-splash poplin Isca with pink piping — Another Liberty print, this time, poplin, and again in the longer length. The piping is a very candy pink that I think goes well with the 80s-esque splatter print.

Faux bois flannel Isca shirtdress in pale green and gray — This is a warm and cosy faux bois flannel I bought from Josephine’s and sewed up the very next week. The buttons on this are very nice.

Gray and black check flannel Isca — Another warm flannel version (I just wear a long-sleeve tee underneath to make those little sleeves wintery).

Blue plaid with floral elements shirting cotton Isca — This was going to be my Plaidurday dress for this year but I didn’t quite finish it in time. It’s a plaid with a floral overlay, again in the longer “wear it with knee socks for autumn” length. The buttonholes are done in the same(… ish) red as the flowers.

Did I have time to sew anything else, you might ask? Well, yes. I also made two (and a half) of the Matilda shirtdresses:

Blue Liberty lawn paisley Matilda shirtdress front view — A blue paisley Liberty lawn (blog post).

Black and gray minicheck Matilda dress with band collar — I’m not entirely sure I made this one in 2023; it might have been a late 2022 entry. I left the collar off this one but forgot to reduce the collar stand/band. That, combined with the stiffness of this fabric, basically makes me look as if I should be saying “Yes, Lord Vader—immediately, Lord Vader!” every time I’m wearing it.

Half-finished dress in teal cotton with red cherries, with red pockets and shoulder bands — This dress is going to have to wait until spring for me to finish it; I bought the fabric in Korea, realized I didn’t have enough, faffed around to try to find a coordinating solid Kona cotton, finally got it and cut out the pockets, piping, sleeve bands, button bands, and collar, and then lost all interest. I’m sure at some point I will get motivated to find tiny teal cherry buttons, but until then it will probably live in the UFO pile.

I also made two of my favorite Farrow jumpers, one at the beginning of 2023 and one a few weeks ago, both in basically the same color.

Dark fuchsia stripe wool jumper with pockets — This is a nice piece of wool that I’m pretty sure I bought at Vogue Fabrics in Evanston in the 90s? It only goes to show that you should never, ever, get rid of any fabric, ever. Someday the right project will come and wake it from its slumber. (It’s not so grabby around the hips when it’s being worn; my dress form is fuzzy and I am not.)

Maroon speckle Shetland flannel jumper — This is in that nice Kaufman Shetland speckle flannel. I love this style for winter; I wear it over a t-shirt and with ankle-length leggings and boots.

I also made one (heavily modified) Simplicity 7512:

Pink and yellow abstract Liberty lawn Villager-style shirtdress with pink buttons — Liberty lawn, pink buttons (blog post)

The most challenging thing I made this year was absolutely the Hove jacket from In The Folds:

Gray nylon hooded jacket with front zipper — You can see a bit of the bobbly stitching on the zipper at the bottom. All the seams are bias-bound! I underestimated the amount of fabric needed and had to reorder halfway through! All I can say is, my vast vocabulary of epithets and interjections really came in handy during this project. However, I wear it basically EVERY DAY, so it was worth it. And there’s some heavier wool fabric and reflective piping waiting on my sewing table right now for round two … gonna do a button band or snap closure for the next one (or maybe even toggles!) though.

The other thing I made in 2023 and use almost every day (and which gets the most comments of anything I wear, by far) is this project:

black canvas bag with 'you can always quit' in puffy-paint with a rainbow — I bought the “You Can Always Quit” t-shirt from the *Today in Tabs* newsletter, but (surprising nobody) I am not a puffy-paint t-shirt wearer. It sulked in my sewing room until I bought a cheap black canvas crossbody bag from Amazon. Then I cut out the logo and just zig-zagged it onto the bag.

It’s not technically sewing, but 2023 is also the year I made my first pair of footwear! I splurged on the (totally worth it) Rachel Sees Snail Shoes sandalmaking workshop:

Pink leather fisherman-style sandals with a quarter strap and black rubber soles

Absent on picture day: the Peppermint Pocket Skirt in black and white gingham seersucker (which I’ve actually not even worn yet); a complete failure of a shirtdress that will have to be broken down for parts (but might be tried again in a different fabric and/or size); an attempt at the Tilly and the Buttons Zadie dress in ponte (I made a mistake and ripping stitches in ponte is the ABSOLUTE WORST).

Which one do you like the most? (Pass over the ones you don’t like in silence.)

Iscatology

August 7, 2023 Erin3 Comments

I’m excessively pleased with this new variation of the Isca shirtdress. This is my third iteration (see #1, #2). The biggest change from the last version is that I swapped out the sleeves for a band sleeve (following Gertie’s great instructions) and somehow it lightens the whole mood? I made the band sleeves about 3 inches wide at the top which takes them darn near to flutter-sleeve territory, but not quite.

The fabric is Nani Iro Grace, in a linen/cotton—I don’t think it’s available any longer, but you can still get a few colorways of the gauze, which I’ve sewn with as well.

Don’t get me wrong—just because I’ve made a lot of changes (collar, sleeves, pockets …) to this pattern doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a good pattern! It just means that I have very particular tastes. I like to think of these variations like a cover song. If it’s done right, it brings something to the original without taking anything essential away.

I’ve already picked out the fabric for the next round, it’s a rainbow stripe. I will probably change the armscye a bit to move it in at the top of the shoulder and up underneath the arm, but otherwise I’m pretty happy with my cover version!

Might as well jump(er)

May 29, 2021 Erin3 Comments

This is one of my favorite fabrics (and favorite patterns). (You might recognize the fabric from this dress—which I still wear—and this one, which I took apart and from which some of this yardage was recovered.)

The pattern is the Grainline Farrow, modified a bit to turn it into a jumper. (The Farrow has a sleeveless version, which is not quite the same as a jumper version …)

back Grainline Farrow jumper — Farrow back (The bright dots on these pics are sunlight—weird for where I live, I know!)

Because I didn’t have much fabric, I kind of took a “this is deliberate” approach to just picking a stripe direction for each major section and rolling with it. The center front stripe below the pocket isn’t quite right but … eh. “Good enough for Zoom”, that’s my new motto.

pockets Grainline Farrow jumper — pocket + piping

bias binding Grainline Farrow jumper — neck bias

other side Grainline Farrow jumper — side view, slightly dizzying, in a ‘welcome to Castrovalva’ way

I’ve made a few other Farrow jumpers, mostly in denim/heavy twill/corduroy, but I don’t think I’ve blogged any of them. They’re pretty utilitarian, but make a great work-from-home uniform with a long-sleeved tee and leggings underneath. (If you’d told my eighteen-year-old self that someday I would wear Birkenstocks and socks every day for a year, BY CHOICE, I’m pretty sure she would have looked at you with horror.)

I’ve been trying to plan out more projects that will sew down my stash/remnant pile. (I thought that making a metric faceton of masks, a braided rag rug, and enough 2″ squares for a king-size quilt would have taken care of the remnant problem but … lol no. Comments are open for suggestions …) This is the first of two (the other is a buffalo-plaid Fringe that I hope to finish this week, it’s all done but the neck facing/waist seam/hemming/shouting).

Summer is for stripes

May 15, 2021 Erin6 Comments

blows dust off top of blog, hits power button

Well, I’ve gotten two shots (shoutout to my Pfizer Pfriends) and in a week or so I can perhaps consider leaving the house, so I suppose it’s time to start sewing again?

I have basically been wearing the same seven dresses for a year, mostly in shades of gray and black, and I am assured that at some point I will emerge (like a cicada, only quieter) into the light of the sun. So this seemed like a relatively sunny fabric to start with.

heavily modified Chalk and Notch Fringe dress in Kaffe Fassett yarn-dye

I think I bought this fabric at Scrap in Portland, in the beforetimes, but I’m not sure.

So yeah, this is the Chalk and Notch Fringe dress, which is super-comfortable, even more so when you turn the skirt into a six-panel one and add gathering to the center front and back and extremely deep pockets. As you can see I also turned the facing to the outside so I could play with stripes and piping.

Fringe bodice — turning facing to outside means never having to match the center seam

Fringe back — back with gathering at the waistline

Fringe sleeve — bias finish for the sleeves

Fringe facing with piping — I forgot to interface the neck points so they’re a bit gentler than usual

Fringe hem — bias bind the hem too? why the heck not?

I’ve actually done a tiny bit more sewing since putting this together—I finally bought a cutting mat large enough for my cutting table, so I am now a late convert to the Church of the Rotary Cutter. (Wow, those things are neat!) Rotary cutting means that a bunch of knit projects I always bought fabric for and then dismissed as too much effort to cut conventionally are now within reach—I made my first jersey knit dress in more than a decade (a Cashmerette Turner) recently, and it was such a quick sew! (I also acquired some stretchy bobbin thread and a jersey double needle for topstitching, which was extremely satisfying.)

Anyway, in addition to not sewing, I’ve mostly been spending my time this past year appreciating how lucky I’ve been and trying to quash my incandescent rage at those who made the decisions that caused other people to be hideously unlucky. Also, as is now required by statute, I started a newsletter. (It’s free.)

How’ve y’all been? I’ve missed you.

Prisoner of my own device

February 18, 2017February 18, 2017 Erin12 Comments

This is the Rushcutter dress again—this pattern is definitely one of my favorites now, even though I’m convinced I look faintly ridiculous in it. (Actually, “Faintly Ridiculous” would be a great title for an autobiography.)

This is some old Marc Jacobs stripe denim/canvas—it’s plenty heavy, either way. I made another dress with this a while back, but it just didn’t work and I both took it apart AND bought more yardage. So I had plenty of fabric to work with.

This dress is all about the stripes—here’s the side panel:

And the pocket:

And the back, which is just kind of ‘meh’ but at this point it would have been masochistic to take it apart to get that back panel to be more even, so …
¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

And here’s a better view of the front insert, which I did actually take apart and recut when the first try didn’t work out evenly:

I didn’t actually make any of the adjustments to the pockets that I wanted to—mostly out of sheer laziness—so I am still having to bend over to fish things out of the very bottom. But that’s a small price to pay for HUGE POCKETS.

So far I’ve been wearing this with black tights and ankle boots, or black leggings and gray Keds. (The biggest issue is finding a coat that fits over it, because of the extreme A-line.)

Here’s what it looks like on (you can tell I’m bad at selfies …)

I was wearing it all day, so it was a bit wrinkled at this point. (Also, I needed a haircut, since remedied.)

Pretty sure there’s going to be at least one more of these before I’m done … maybe something in broderie Anglaise for summer?

The Hundred Dresses: Day 76

August 17, 2013 Erin3 Comments

I had really high hopes for this Heidi:

I love the pink and red and gray colorway:

I kind of bailed on trying to match the stripes, since I think it’s impossible to match stripes and gathers:

Pockets, lined in batiste:

Side zip:

The whole dress is lined in batiste, actually:

I’m not sure why I lined the dress, the fabric didn’t really need it. Probably just to see if I could:

But this is why I hardly ever wear it, and why it’s going in the Goodwill pile, finally — there’s a subtle flaw in the fabric and I managed to cut it right across the front bodice. Arrgh:

I know it’s almost imperceptible, but I know it’s there, and it drives me crazy. So … oh well. I scrutinize fabric a LOT more now, especially bargain fabrics (which this was). If I find a flaw, I mark it (on BOTH sides) with blue painters tape, so that I can’t help but see it when I’m cutting.

The Hundred Dresses: Day 71

August 12, 2013 Erin13 Comments

This dress was an indulgence:

It doesn’t really show up against the light background — it’s from this pattern:

It’s an indulgence because I really don’t need a light-colored seersucker dress (especially as cold as it’s been this month!) and things have been so busy that if I’m sewing, it should be sensible things. But I really loved this pattern, and the minute I saw it I knew I wanted to make it in stripes, with the yoke stripes going in the opposite direction from the bodice stripes.

Here’s a better look at the bodice:

And the yoke stitching detail:

The pattern wanted to you to turn in the yoke piece 1/4 inch and then topstitch it, but I thought that was a nightmare scenario … so fussy! So I faced the piece with some very very lightweight batiste, and then topstitched the faced piece:

Here’s the side zip:

And a closeup of the inverted pleats — the pattern wanted me to stitch them down, and I tried it, but it didn’t work with my body type (cough, apple, cough) so I picked out those stitches and let it be open pleats:

And here’s the back:

I definitely want to make this again … good thing I have lots of striped fabric stockpiled!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 38

July 10, 2013 Erin14 Comments

This is a totally new pattern! Well, new as in “I haven’t sewn it before/posted it before” not new as in “produced in this century.”

This is Vogue 8460, and I lurrrrrrve it:

(sorry for the fuzzy image, click on the pic to see it bigger)

I know on the pattern envelope it looks like a party dress, but I have enough party dresses … Here’s what I made with it, shown with belt (purchased):

This is a nice shirting fabric I bought online sometime last year. Here it is sans belt:

Of course, the pleasure in this dress is in matching those rainbow stripes!

They don’t match at the waistline, but that’s okay, the chevron effect on the skirt is what I was going for:

This zipper? This is probably the best zipper I’ve made in AGES. B+!

And the back stripe matchup:

I hemmed it with bright vintage hem facing, which I love. It’s getting harder and harder to find bright hem facing these days. (Also, I’m going to fewer yard sales.)

The shoulder stripes … you can see the facing rolling a little there, I probably should have understitched it:

Here’s a glimpse of the neckline facing. I zigzag finish my facings on the inside (and I also didn’t press this one very well):

And the back (the skirt’s not properly positioned in this one, sorry!):

I’ve made this pattern twice more since this one, and I really love it. It’s super-simple to wear (and yes there are pockets in all these dresses)!

The Hundred Dresses: Day 21

June 23, 2013 Erin9 Comments

Have you all picked up yet on the fact that I will basically make the same pattern over and over again until we both drop from exhaustion? Here is another Simplicity 5723, which needs a bit more pressing than it got:

This is in a nice slightly-heavier-than-usual shirting stripe. I had really high hopes for this fabric, and then this happened:

No matter what I tried, I just could not get those stripes to match up. I probably took it apart four or five times. I may take it apart one more time and use some fabric tape to stave off presser-foot creep, which is what I’m blaming for the mismatch. (Well, presser foot creep and my slightly off cutting out.)

The zipper is a C:

I have no idea why I had any navy bias binding at all. My guess is that I bought it in a big lot at a yard sale:

And what happened here? Your guess is as good as mine:

This is my favorite part of this dress … I really like the chevron effect:

I’m not sure where I bought this … it might have been on the remnant table at Britex. It has that slick expensive-Italian-cotton feel. (And hey, when did Britex start selling online? Ooooooh! And like I NEED more places to buy fabric online … )

The Hundred Dresses: Day 10

June 12, 2013 Erin6 Comments

Hey! We’re 1/10 of the way there! Don’t worry, there are still many, many dresses to come. Like this one, which is more than a little reminiscent of the Day 1 dress:

This is made from Simplicity 1538, which I really liked in the pattern illustration, despite the fembots-on-the-attack arms:

I’m not as happy with it in Real Life, though, and I think it’s my own damn fault for using this super-heavy Marc Jacobs cotton/linen canvas. Wrong fabric choice, despite the wonderful stripes. Here’s the back:

(As evidence that this dress would look much better in a lighter fabric, check out this super cute gingham version here on WeSewRetro.)

The back stripes are off JUST ENOUGH to bug me:

The side zip didn’t fare so well in the heavier fabric either:

And for some reason this pattern is about a inch too long in the bodice, a problem I never have with Simplicity B34 patterns. I might just make it again (but not in this fabric). And speaking of the fabric, using up this great fabric on a “meh” dress bummed me out, but then I found that it’s still on sale at Mood. (It’s a bit expensive, but maybe I can have a second chance!)

And … The Hundred Dresses was officially published yesterday! GirlsLife.com had a nice piece that makes me hopeful for the Youth of Today.

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Category: stripes