Tag: Cashmerette_Turner

January sewing

Erin6 Comments

I did some traveling in February, which meant (as usual) I had a minor flurry of sewing in January. Three dresses made it into the “finished” column:

Another Isca, this time in a precious length of Liberty Lantana (the print is called Adriatic).

Liberty Isca front view

I’m very happy with the color of the buttons:

Liberty Isca buttons

And, of course, the piped pockets (that’s a ruler in the pocket — although I am happy to see you):

Liberty Isca pocket (with ruler)

I also finally, finally, made the Tilly and the Buttons Zadie dress that I bought yonks ago and cut out in … 2022? I like the color-blocking:

Tillie Zadie dress front

This is some heavy ponte knit that I bought in Belgium in 2020, and it’s very comfortable; my intention was for this to be a good “airplane dress” for my long flight, but I think I need to tweak the pattern a bit before it’s really airplane-worthy. The pockets need to be deeper, and it’s a little short through the torso for me. I also think the skirt might need to be a tinch longer, as well. It hits me right at the knee, and I think about two inches more would do it.

Sewing the ponte was easy … unsewing the ponte was NOT. When I make this again I’m going to be much more careful, especially with those soft pleats at the front. I got one of them slightly off and, well, let’s just say that it’s still slightly off, and will remain slightly off for the rest of time.

As long as I had my double needle setup handy (and still in need of an airplane dress, because I was still going on an airplane), I decided to make another Cashmerette Turner. (The nice thing about blogging is that I could re-read that last post and make the fixes that I thought I should.)

Cashmerette Turner Paapii knit (hacked)

I admit, I could have taken more care in matching the print at the waistband (because I didn’t take any care, basically). As a reminder, I altered the Turner pattern to have a rounder neck and changed the skirt from a two-piece to a six-gore skirt, to make it easier to add these pockets:

Cashmerette Turner added pocket

This fabric is an incredibly soft, heavy jersey from PaaPii in Finland; I bought mine from an Etsy seller but it’s still available in another color on their website. This stuff cannot wrinkle—I had 20 hours of travel in this dress and it still looked pristine at the end (making the contrast with my travel-wearied body even more apparent). Very comfortable, too!

Here’s the neckband, if you like that sort of thing:

Cashmerette Turner round neckline binding

Three dresses in January seems like a lot but I didn’t sew a darn thing in February (two weeks of travel, then two weeks of recovering from travel). I did buy a reasonable amount (for me) of fabric on my trip, though, so let’s see what happens in March!

Picking Knits

Erin3 Comments
Turner with gored skirt and pockets
black knit t-shirt dress (Cashmerette Turner)

So a few Saturdays ago, I woke up with one burning idea: I needed to hack the Cashmerette Turner dress to have a six-gore skirt with patch-ish pockets.

Why? No earthly idea. If it were the beforetimes, I’d at least have the excuse of frequent air travel, but at this point I haven’t been on a plane since February of 2020. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This is my second shot at the Turner—I made a wearable muslin a while back just to kick the tires, so to speak. It was so easy to put together (and fit so well, with minimal adjustments) that I thought “huh, how can I make this more difficult?”

But even splitting up the skirt and adding on-gore pockets can’t overcomplicate the Turner. It’s SUCH a fast sew—I think I spent more time winding stretch thread on bobbins and remembering how to use my twin needle setup than I did actually putting it together. It definitely took me more time to trace and hack the pattern than it did to construct this dress!

This fabric is thick (think old-style Hanes Beefy-T, heavier than jersey) knit cotton with some lycra or spandex in it; it has a nice recovery. (It was on super-sale at Cali Fabrics, so of course it’s not available anymore.) There are some drag lines in the picture above, but that’s mostly because my dress form is a bit small now (it broke and is no longer adjustable, or, rather, I am more adjustable than it is, although over a longer time period).

When I make this again (and I probably will, if I can find the right fabric … it would be cute in a lightweight sweatshirting which I’m pretty sure I already have in my stash) I have some further hacks … the pockets would be better if they started a bit higher on the inner edge, or I might play with having them integrated into the gore instead of on top. I meant to reinforce the side seams along the pocket seams with some clear elastic, but I ran out after the waistband, so it will have to wait until I buy some more. The skirt could also be shortened by a few inches (I don’t mind the longer length, but I don’t really need it, either).

The heavy knit means it’s not very staticky (my main complaint about jersey knit dresses; evidently I have an electric personality which results in clingy, shocky knits), and it hangs nicely. It’s also very comfortable (I mean, why wouldn’t it be? It’s a giant t-shirt with pockets!)

Turner bodice
The neck binding here is some knit binding I had that miraculously was the same tone
Turner pocket (with errant thread)
a better look at the pocket (and the thread I didn’t clip yet)
Turner hem
the double-needle hem (I stiffened the hem with knit fusible interfacing cut in 2″ strips)

I definitely feel late to the ‘sewing knits is great’ party. I don’t wear a lot of t-shirts so the gateway project of “make a custom tee” never caught my eye. And until recently, I didn’t have a rotary cutting mat big enough for my cutting table, so cutting knits was always fraught—I always seemed to pull them out of grain when cutting with scissors. And the revelation that is stretch sewing thread! (Kids, come onto my lawn, I need to tell you about how I used to have to wind bobbins uphill, in the snow, both ways!)

Also, the knits available for home sewing have gotten a LOT better, especially for natural-fiber snobs like me. (I remember walking through the fabric store touching knits and hating the scratchy, oily, slippery hand of everything I could afford.) The prints are better now too, she said, at the end of a post about a plain black dress.