Another Maxi

Here is the item I made just before going to SF - yet another Mission Maxi. 

This one is made from a fake batik-print jersey I bought from Girl Charlee at the end of last summer.  My original intention was to make a Kimono Dress with it, but something kept holding me back - it just never felt quite right.   Finally I decided that I'd like it better as the maxi.

I've made this so many times, there's not much to say about it - except that I've decided from here on out, I'm going to do the bindings the way they're done on the Renfrew neckline.  As drafted, these bindings are narrow, so you're instructed to sew them to the opening, then turn to the inside and topstitch down.  I can never seem to get my topstitching to be stretchy enough though, and the armholes end up being constricting.  This time I used the "lightning bolt" stitch in hopes that it would help, but it's just as constricting as all my other ones.  So from now on, I'll make a wider binding piece, then fold it in half lengthwise before applying both layers to the neck and arm openings.  I think it will be much more comfortable to wear, and it will also give me a little extra width to hide those bra straps.

I'm still using the pattern I traced out a year ago - my adjustment is a size 4 at the bust and down to the waist, grading out to size 8 at the hips, to give me a body-skimming silhouette.

I wore this out to dinner and then a jazz concert last night.  When I met Hubby at the restaurant, the first thing he said was, "You look pretty."  Awwww!  He hadn't seen the dress yet, so I was glad to get a thumbs up.

It was chilly, so I added on this old, old blazer from Old Navy:

And then a very soft scarf my sister-in-law bought me in Turkey a few years ago:

And my new clogs!

Which I admit are hard to see because they're almost the same color as my skin!

Because I was wearing a longer blazer, and because we were going out for sushi, I made the bold decision not to wear any shapewear, but I am wearing a half slip.   Made it much more comfortable to sit through the concert - those seats at the symphony hall are the worst!

I've got two more new things to show you in the next couple days - and one of them is a pattern I've never made before!  Imagine that!

The maxi I haven't shared yet.

This is actually maxi dress #4, but I'm wearing it today for the first time, three weeks after wearing maxi #5.  Photo taken in Chinatown, courtesy of Niecy-poo!  I'm standing in front of the Dragon sculpture, which is the zodiac animal for my birth year.

If my tummy looks a little poofy, it's because of the crab rangoons we had just devoured :-)   Niecey-poo's first, and she gave them a thumbs up.

This is another piece of knit jersey from Girl Charlee, a magenta and orange hibiscus print.  I went over there to see if it's still in stock so I could link it up, but I think it's all gone.  However, there are LOTS of new prints that have appeared since I last visited the site.  Must. Stay. Strong.  Too much fabric around this place already!!

One more maxi, then a blog break.

The title says it all.  Between my computer dying on me, coming down with the flu this week, and having my niece here, I think I need a little down time.  But before I check out for a week or so, I wanted to show you the fifth (and probably final, but who knows?) maxi I made.

This one is made from a nice, soft faux ikat cotton jersey I ordered from Girl Charlee pretty much immediately after telling myself I wouldn't be making any more maxis.  This one is my favorite of the bunch, even though that brown circle ended up right over my solar plexus.  I did twin needle stitching in hot pink around all the bindings.  Of course, I didn't take a picture of that.  These pix were snapped as I was getting ready to leave for the airport to go pick up Hubby and Niecey-poo.  It was super hot that day, but I knew I'd need the shrug inside the airport.

I have one more maxi you haven't seen yet, and my co-blog project with Alicia to show you when I get back.  There's even some new knitting!  I'm hoping that in a week or so, my nose won't be so red!

Two for One

Two more FOs today, one of which you've never even seen!

First off, here's the "real" maxi dress:

I've mentioned that this fabric is pretty thin; if you look, you can see that I'm wearing a full slip underneath for modesty's sake.  I'm still not sure what to do about the bra strap situation with this dress.  When I wore my blue one, I did wear a racer-back bra which didn't show in the back, but was visible at the front neck.  Here I'm wearing a plain old bra, which isn't visible at the front but can be seen, along with the slip's straps, at the back.  I know people do this all the time and it's not too shocking, but it kind of bugs me!

Interestingly, I had a hard time figuring out how to accessorize this dress.  In the end, I went with bronze metallic sandals, gold earrings and necklace, a bronze beaded bracelet I made years ago, and this olive green shrug I knit years ago.  I really like this shrug:  I made this pattern 3 times!  This one is pre-Ravelry, but here's a link for a brown one I made.  And here's a picture of my bracelet, which I don't wear nearly enough:

And here's FO #2:  I finished my Adrift cardigan a couple weeks ago.  Since I've made this one before, and since this is supposed to be my "winter" version, it felt kind of anti-climatic.  I just took one picture of it yesterday, so you can see how gorgeous the color is, but if you want to see many different ways in which it can be worn, see this post.

And last but not least, today is the last day of my Seamless Pledge.  I haven't written about it since I made the commitment on Jan. 1 to refrain for 6 months from buying any new clothing or shoes, because it's pretty much been a non-event!  I wasn't sure I could do it, clothes horse that I am, but I was able to complete the six months relatively painlessly!  So as of today, I'm committing to another 6 months of Seamlessness, to make it a full year!

Knit Adventures, part 3: The Real One

So I think I may have mentioned that the first maxi dress (blue) and the second one (green) were both trial runs for the "real" one I wanted to make.  Before I get on to the good stuff, let me show you Sunday's fail:

This is the experiment I did with the kelly green interlock knit, attaching the neck and sleeve binding in the same way they're applied in the Renfrew top*, using my serger.  You can see that didn't work - I ended up with a wavy mess. 

I've come to a couple of conclusions:  1) interlock is a pain to work with and 2) it's just way too heavy for a maxi dress anyway - or any summer dress I think.

For the "real" dress, I had a nice, drapey rayon jersey print in my new favorite color, coral:

Isn't that pretty?  It came in my big knit order from Fabric.com.  I looked yesterday to see if there was more, but no such luck.  I really love this medallion print.  Unfortunately, it wasn't printed in line with the grain of the fabric.  I was able to get the front almost straight, but the back is slanted, and I'm OK with that.

I was worried that this fabric was going to be too thin, but as has been my experience with knits so far, it plumped up after a run through the washer and dryer**.  It is quite drapey and stretchy, which made laying it out to cut very tedious and time-consuming, especially once I figured out the print wasn't straight.  I probably spent an hour just on that step.

I also spent a lot of time doing samples of different stitches and binding applications, but no matter what I did, I just couldn't get the topstitching to work for me.  So I hand-stitched it to the reverse like I did the first time - for this dress, the finished product was more important to me than trying out new techniques. 

I will say that for my samples, I did cut armhole-shaped pieces of scrap to apply my fake bindings to.  I've started to think that part of my difficulty is that is some sections, you're sewing vertical grain to horizontal grain.  Even in hand-knits, this can be a challenge.

Also, this time I finished the side of the binding that was going to be turned to the inside with my serger, and that made the hand-stitching a lot easier:  the overlock stitch worked as a stabilizer and sort of "gathered" the fabric into a curve.  I did all seams on the serger as well.

I'm pretty happy with this dress, although it's a lot more body-conscious (and therefore revealing) than the first one because of the nature of the fabric.  But this thinner jersey gives a much better result.  I will admit that I'll be wearing a slip under it to smooth things out.

I don't have time for a photo-shoot today because I've got appointments throughout the afternoon with different contractors.  But I was excited to share this version of the Mission Maxi.  Frankly, now that I've finished this one, I'm not sure I'll be wearing the blue one!  (And there's no way I'll be wearing the green one!  Well, maybe for lounging around the house - it is pretty comfy.)

I have a little too much on my plate at the moment, but once things settle down a bit, I'm planning on compiling all the fantastic tips you guys left me in the comments and trying them out.  Thanks again to all of you!


* I measured the neckline and armscyes, then took off 1/2" from the armhole bindings and 1" from the neck, sewed them closed and then folded them in half and sewed the raw edges to the armhole and neck edges.

** Conversely, the interlocks seemed just about right before I washed them, but then got too puffy!

Knit Adventures, part 2

For my second go-round sewing knits, I made a maxi dress.

Yes, you read that right.  A maxi dress.

I was hesitant for a quite a while to go down this road because 1) I'm short, 2) I'm not super slender and 3) I'm on the old side for this look.  But my BFF talked me into it; she thinks it's OK, and she's shorter and older than me!

And the maxi does have its benefits:  you don't have to shave your legs.

So on Thursday I made the dress, and let me tell you, for a garment with only 3 pattern pieces and 7 seams, it sure did give me a lot of trouble.  But I'm pretty happy with the outcome:

This is how I actually wore it today, with a little blazer, a hat and some flat sandals.  But I wanted you to see the actual tank part of it, so I took my blazer off:

As Hubby took these pictures, he kept saying, "Pull your stomach in!"  Sadly, I already was before he even said that.

I have a lot to say about this dress, so let's dive right in!  If you don't sew, you might want to skip this part.  Or even if you do sew.

The pattern I used was the Mission Maxi by Jamie Christina.  This is the only pattern of hers I've used, so I don't feel like I can really comment on the quality of the pattern, since this is a pretty simple and straightforward garment.  The fabric I used was 100% organic cotton interlock knit from Fabric.com, and it was the source of most of my troubles, I've decided.

Remember how I said I ordered a bunch of knits without really knowing what they were, and my red polka dots ended up being a thinner fabric than I was expecting?  Well this one was quite a bit heavier than I was expecting, but I decided that might not be a bad thing for such a body-conscious garment.  And it was cheap, so I wasn't going to be too heartbroken if it didn't work out.

When I traced my pattern pieces, I followed the lines for the size 4 above the waist, and graded out to an 8 at my standard 10" hip drop.  My actual hip size according to the pattern envelope would have been more like a 12, but I measured the pieces at that 10" drop line on the size 8 and came up with 40".  My actual hip is 39", and I felt this dress should skim the body pretty closely, so I stuck with the size 8.  I think this was exactly the right adjustment for me.  The only other adjustment I might do in the future is to take a little bit off the straps so it's not quite so low-cut.

front view (after wearing it all day)

back view, slightly racer-back

I decided that I'd try using my regular sewing machine for this one, and even went so far as to get out my ball-point needles and walking foot.  I did several seam samples before starting, and found that the "stretch stitch" on my Kenmore (which seams to be a triple stitch) does produce a firm yet stretchy stitch.  When used with the regular straight stitch foot, the top layer of fabric did end up being longer, but the walking foot elimated this problem.  Unfortunately, it also really aggravated me:  it's very clunky and loud.

I also learned that the walking foot really doesn't work if you don't have the fabric extending all the way to its edge.  I was trying to do a very narrow seam when I applied the binding to the neck and armholes, but the walking foot just wasn't letting me, so I ended up having to make those seams wider.

By the time I got to doing the side seams, I'd had about all I could take of the walking foot, so I did those on the serger.  SO much faster and easier, even taking into account that I re-threaded the left needle to black!

Disaster struck when I tried to fold the bindings to the back and topstitch them.  No matter what I tried (and I tried a lot:  stretch stitch, straight stitch, zigzag) the bindings were getting very stretched out and wavy.  Each time I tried something new, I tried it out first on a scrap; when it seemed like it would work, I tried it on my dress and got a wavy mess which I then had to pick out!  Finally the binding on the right armhole was so stretched out that I stopped sewing and threw the whole dress into the washer and dryer to get it back to its original shape.  A bonus was that it also shrunk about 3" in length, so I didn't have to cut any fabric off the bottom like I originally thought I'd have to.  (And yes, I did pre-wash and dry my fabric!)

After all that, I just wanted to finish the darn thing, so I hand-stitched the bindings to the back and washed my hands of the whole business.

But I was really puzzled about why this happened, so I did some research and also whined about it to Alicia, and my conclusion (and hers) is that interlock is a difficult fabric to work with and behaves completely differently from jersey.

One of the little tidbits I learned in my quest for understanding is that interlock has a fair amount of horizontal stretch, but not much vertical stretch.  Well . . . I beg to differ on that one.  My dress that was exactly the right length so you could see my cute sandals continued to grow longer as we walked around the botanical garden today, until it was actually dragging on the ground!  I'll be very interested to see what happens in the second wash and dry cycle.

I have a second piece of this interlock, in kelly green, and I've already cut it into an identical dress.  My plan this time is to do the entire thing on the serger, attaching the bindings in the same way they're done on the Renfrew top.  So stay tuned for Episode 3 of:

Knit Adventures!