Alpaca Reflective Walking Coat

I’ve been working on this coat, in some form or another, for almost a year. I’ve been planning it for even longer. I think my New Year’s resolutions for two years ago included something about “sew a garment with my handwoven fabric.” And now I finally have!

handwoven alpaca wool walking coat.

The lining is used in piping details around the neckline and front closure.

The back of the coat features princess seams with piping that draw the eyes to the narrow waist and flared hem.

The sleeves are fully lined, and also feature edge piping.

Rainbow buttons adorn the front of the jacket and give it a cheerful attitude

The fabric for this jacket was hand woven on my 54″ 8-shaft macomber loom. In fact, this fabric is the only thing I ended up weaving on that loom before reselling it. There was nothing wrong with the loom, but it was simply too monstrously large for my needs. It worked great for this one project though.

54″ 8-shaft macomber loom.

Yarn braids all measured and waiting to be warped on the loom.

Yarn through the heddles.

Fabric as its being woven on the loom.

Finished fabric off the loom, before wet-finishing and felting.

I used a simple tabby draft, and counted on the fun colors of the yarn to make the fabric work. And the reflective strips of course! After weaving, I wet-finished the fabric to encourage a bit of felting. It “blurred” the colors of the yarn together, but I’m still quite satisfied with the results. The reflective bits show up nicely, and don’t affect the drape of the heavy fabric.

This coat is very imperfect. I ended up rushing a bit at the end, because I decided at the last moment that I wanted to enter this piece in a textile art show at a local gallery! Which is super cool, and which hopefully I will mention again if the coat gets accepted, or even if not! But yes, I had a hard deadline for photos to submit, so I was definitely trying to get some of the bits done at the very last minute.

I’m still incredibly happy with how it turned out. The lining fabric is Spoonflower’s satin, in a fun patchwork-like design I was excited to find just for this project. The pattern is McCall’s M6800, it had good instructions and a decent fit, though as mentioned I was moving fast and not paying a whole lot of attention.

Reflective strips seems to light up when this jacket is photographed with flash.

Back of jacket with reflective light.

Jacket is fully lined.

Jacket with lining and reflective strips visible.

Monet’s Water Lilies

A few months ago I saw a random image on pinterest of a model posing in an artist’s studio, and I absolutely fell in love with the dress she was wearing. After searching the internet for awhile, I could find nothing about the dress in question. Even with no information to go on, I wanted to recreate it, so I did.

Artist Marc Chagall posed model Ivy Nicholson in his studio.

There weren’t many higher quality versions of the photo, so I couldn’t get a whole lot of details about the design on the fabric. I chose to make my version out of a print of Monet’s water lilies. Its not exactly right, but I love the effect it creates.

Finding the right pattern was tough too. I eventually settled on heavily modifying the Vogue 8997 dress. It closed with a zipper in the back, instead of buttons down the front. But the neckline was close enough, and it had the fitted bodice with wider skirt I was looking for. I reviewed this pattern here: Vogue Dress V8997 ★★★★★

Since I was going to be changing this dress’s structure in a fairly dramatic way, I did what I so rarely do and actually made a muslin first. Madness, I know! I didn’t actually use muslin fabric for my muslin, haha. Since I have spoonflower, I created a “graph paper” design that I really thought would help me layout the pieces, check that everything is on grain, measure it right on the fabric. It helped a lot, and its an idea I think I’ll keep using in the future when I effectively want to draft a dress from scratch, or modify a given pattern.

Please forgive the horrible lighting in the next few photographs. I was trying to get this dress ready to wear to a friend’s wedding, and didn’t actually take the time to take good pictures while making the dress.
First I laid the stupid tissue pieces out on my mock up fabric (I’m so spoiled by Sprout Patterns at this point). I traced my modifications in permanent marker, and then cut out the pieces.

Then I basted all the pieces together, and played with the fit until I liked out how my button band modifications worked out. Then I used the mockup pieces to cut out my real fabric.

I am well and truly pleased with this dress. Its not perfect, it has some sloppy places that I wish I’d been able to take my time to do right. But it is gorgeous on its own, and I like how close I was able to get to my inspiration dress.

Colette Zinnia in Yellow Silk

The skirt that should have had pockets…

So I was making this lovely skirt out of some yellow striped silk, following the Colette Zinnia pattern. And because it is silk, I decided I’d do all the right things. I’d take my time, measure twice, pin everything, even put proper french seams in it. And I got so into “being good” that I completely and utterly forgot to put in the pockets. And that was one of the things I am always most excited about. Oh well, lesson learned, don’t pay so much attention to the little things that you forget the big things you wanted in the first place.

You can read my review of the pattern here: Colette Zinnia Skirt ★★★★★

Regardless, this skirt is wonderful, and I quite like how it turned out. The pattern is simple and easy to follow, and workable in many different fabric types. It has twelve pleats around the skirt, and an invisible zipper and button closer in the back. It can have pockets, if you remember to put them in.

I also used some of the scraps to make a matching headband for myself. I never used to be in love with the color yellow, in my own clothing that is. But I’m really warming up to this sunshine not-quite-orange but not-quite-mustard definitely not pastel color of yellow.

Summer Shirt Dress

Over two years later and this dress is still one of my favorites! The fit is fantastic, the fabric is comfortable and attractive. I get endless compliments on it, and my choice of buttons. This is a dress that makes me say this is why I sew!

I finished this dress about two weeks ago. Hands down, it is my favorite dress that I’ve ever made (so far.) I am ridiculously proud of this dress. It was just one of those charmed afternoons where I saw this fabric on sale at Joann’s and decided to do something with it. Then I saw the buttons, and knew they’d be perfect. Then I just started sewing and at every step of the process I was more excited and happy with this dress.

The pattern is Vogue V8577. A shirt dress with pockets that I’d been meaning to try out for awhile now. Its an easy pattern, though a little time consuming, what with the pockets, and the gathers at shoulders and back, and the button placket and all. Its extremely flattering though. The skirt is super flowy, and makes it perfect for a sunny spring day. I reviewed this pattern here: Vogue Shirt Dress V8577 ★★★★★

And yes, the uneven hemline is actually intentional. I never really pay attention to match up the hems of skirts and dresses when I’m sewing, I always know that I can fix that up at the very end. But when this dress got to that stage, and I was trying it on to decide where I wanted to put the hem, I decided that I actually really liked its sort of random unevenness. Its not even classically asymmetrical, where dresses are long in the back and short in the front, or only long on one side. I decided to exaggerate the sort of dips and curves that naturally came out of my sloppy sewing. To me, it makes this dress interesting and surprising, in the same way the orange buttons do.

This dress is perfect. When I’m done with a project, there’s almost always something I’d change about it if I wasn’t too lazy, or it wasn’t too late to go back, or just a different fabric choice or something. Not this dress. Its perfect.