MPB Second Annual "Leopard for the Holidays!"

Friends, do you remember the leopard print pants I made at precisely this time last year?  Oh, if I had a dollar for every time some stranger emailed me asking if I would make them a pair of these pants, I'd have enough to buy a large coffee from Starbucks with muffin!

Well, I was fabric shopping/wandering aimlessly in the Garment District yesterday, and at my new favorite craptastic fabric store, Nahir (renown for its grumpy owner, lousy service, and unpredictable prices), I found this stretch denim leopard print -- in a vivid cherry overdye -- for just $2.99/yd (from a 60" bolt)!



Now you might be wondering why, with all the wonderful fabric stores at my disposal, I should frequent a place like Nahir.  Friends, I can't explain it; I like a challenge, I guess. What's the fun of going to a place like B&J and finding exactly what you're looking for?  You'd never be looking for cherry stretch denim leopard print in the first place, so you'd never find it.  Do you know what I mean?



Wait -- could this be cheetah? 

For me, fabric this loud and (let's face it) tacky has strong associations, none of which I will share with you.  But if you told me it was a remnant from the Material Girl line at Macy's or something that fell off the Forever 21 delivery truck, I wouldn't be at all surprised.

That said, it's fun, and the price was right.  So today I'm deciding what to do with it.  I'm leaning toward jeans, but I don't know...maybe it calls for something wilder, like a hooded jumpsuit!

In any case, as you can see, this is the week of the mindless sewing project.  Nothing of substance till 2012 -- though you never know when inspiration will strike.

Speaking of inspiration, I bit the bullet and bought this Simplicity dance hall girl pattern.  It has some cool elements I think will be useful down the line, even if I never do an homage to Angela Lansbury in The Harvey Girls.
. 

Friends, that's all for today.   If you have strong feelings pro or con about a man in leopard print stretch jeans, please let me know.  I think, paired with a simple white dress shirt, it could work.  Or no shirt at all.

Happy Tuesday, everybody!

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All The News About Poly Charmeuse

Readers, one of the best things about giving yourself permission to change your mind is that you're also allowed to change your mind back again, with the end result being like you'd never changed your mind in the first place.  Do you know what I mean?

This time yesterday, very much in a wiggy whirl, I doubted I wanted to make my 1944 blouse with the two yards of poly charmeuse I'd purchased for it.





It looked too shiny, too slinky, too too.  But rather than pitch it altogether I decided to try to make friends with it.  I did some research in Claire Shaeffer's Fabric Sewing Guide.  I took out my featherweight (my go-to machine these days), inserted a fresh #9 needle, and experimented with stitch length.  The test darts I'd made the previous day that looked shabby with a medium-long stitch came out beautifully with a tiny stitch.  I experimented with iron heat settings (my iron runs cool) and steam.  The results were encouraging.



Michael said he liked the fabric.  The alternative was to make the blouse out of an old cotton sheet I use for muslins.  I decided to give the charmeuse a try.

I chose the darker of two thread colors, not that you'll ever see the thread.  Normally I sew with serger thread -- there, now you know! -- but I received an 18-spool kit of Coat & Clarks thread from the BurdaStyle dress sew-along project I led, and was eager to use some of it.



Did I mention that my charmeuse has a little width-wise and diagonal stretch?  I steam ironed it on the wrong side, and got ready to cut.  It cut beautifully with my rotary cutter, with very little fraying. 



The polka dots made it easy to line things up.  As you can see, this is not a printed pattern.  V-cuts and perforations are all the information you get, which can be confusing at first but you get used to it.  The instructions are very detailed, if a little dense.





The back has two inverted tucks, and the front has something similar, referred to as "dart tucks."





I'm using french seams where I can.  Not sure what I'll use for the armscye seams.  Any suggestions?



I serged the edges of my front facings.  I know that's not historically accurate but it sure is easier, and won't show throw the front of the blouse when ironed.



Anyway, there's still much to do.  Maybe it's the quality of the poly charmeuse I bought (which wasn't all that cheap at $5/yd at Chic Fabrics), but I am cautiously optimistic. While it doesn't have the beautiful creamy quality of real silk charmeuse, this poly charmeuse is a pretty good imitation.



In closing, I think one of the tricks to success with this fabric is to use a straight stitch machine, which gives excellent control, especially on darts and tucks, and especially with potentially slippery fabrics.  Sometimes I think sewing machine manufacturers perpetrated a huge hoax on home garment sewers when they introduced the zigzag machine.  But let's not even go there -- unless you must.

Have a great day, everybody!

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Halloween recap + NEW FABRIC!

Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen?  Princess Margaret and nephew Prince Edward?

To say Michael and I weren't exactly the most-easily recognized couple out on Halloween night is an understatement.  But at least neither of us was Zombie Steve Jobs.  Or a sexy secretary.

I'm not entirely sure what Michael was dressed up as, but I think it's obvious which one of us grew up in the suburbs (Hint: it's not me).  That "Woof" tee shirt is Michael's own creation, made with Swarovski crystal letters we ironed on with my Elna Press -- the first time I've used the darn thing in months.



The leopard leggings are something Michael bought for the cabaret show, though he ended up wearing my leopard pants.  We never did make it to the Halloween parade -- Michael was cold and my feet ached -- but we had a lovely Italian dinner at Donatella on Eighth Avenue instead.  We were seated next to a witch, a zombie, two pirates, and a French couple.



File under Don't Ask If You Don't Want To Hear The Answer -- the topic of Cathy's hair color.  I asked Michael if he thought Cathy needed to go a shade or two lighter.  Cathy has such a delicate complexion and she is a "summer," like myself, after all.  (A few months ago I did try to find Cathy's do in a somewhat lighter shade of brown, with no success.  Apparently Motown Tress has discontinued her style, do you believe it?!)



Not only did Michael answer Yes quite emphatically, but he also asked if we couldn't find something with perhaps a little gray in it!  Cathy was not amused.



Friends, even I am getting a little tired of seeing Cathy in that vintage McCall's rose-print cocktail dress, so let's move on, shall we?

I went fabric shopping yesterday and am now ready to begin my 1944 outfit project!



As you'll recall, I'm making the Butterick coat (above left) out of the dusty rose vintage wool blanket I bought a few weeks ago at the flea market.  I hope to enter it in the Pattern Review Refashion contest, if all goes well.



For the jumper, I wanted something with a pattern -- classic and a little conservative, to go with the period.  Here's what I chose:



For the blouse, I bought a cream and black polka dot poly charmeuse.  I've never made a Forties blouse before and never worked with poly charmeuse, so it should be interesting.





And that, dear readers, is that!  It seems like Halloween kicks off a holiday season of overeating that doesn't really end till Easter.  Oye.

Your fabric and hair color comments are most welcome.  You'd be surprised how hard it is to find a good pixie-cut wig that has some length on the sides and doesn't have all those irregular razor-cut edges.  What are all the Jane Wyman clones doing?   Could this work?

Have a great day, everybody! 

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Revisiting Vinyl

Readers, you are to be forgiven if you assume that today's blog post is about my three-plus yards of faux snakeskin, which has been sitting in my fabric stash for nearly two years now.  I am still waiting for the perfect project for it and I don't think it will be Prachee's dress.

No, today I am writing about something related to my daily ditch ritual, which continues, btw, though I sometimes forget to mention it.  Remember how I recently sold my oversized bike on Craigslist?  Well yesterday I finally dumped all the bike-related clutter: helmet (did you know those had expiration dates?) and lock (This is one of those Kryptonite designs it was later discovered could be picked with a hairpin or something, but I still had the bracket and keys, so it might be worth something to somebody.).



One of the best results of the daily ditch was that I have rediscovered my record collection.  To those who have no familiarity with records, this was a form of recorded music on vinyl.  Most people bought lp's or long-playing records that came in albums, named thus because at one time they were stored photo-album style in multiple sleeves.

I hadn't had my stereo set up for many years, and I had winnowed my record collection down considerably over the years.  But I still had my favorites.  Hundreds of favorites.







I decided that, not only would I not ditch my turntable and receiver, but I would set them up again, and listen with headphones.



Then, lo and behold, over the weekend I found a pair of Advent mini speakers in the trash.  Not great, but adequate.



Yesterday, for the first time in nearly five years, I bought new (to me) records, $1 each at the Salvation Army.  I don't think either will be available on CD any time soon, do you?



If you haven't heard Robert Goulet sing "Both Sides Now," you're in for a treat -- or something.  Seriously, I love Robert Goulet and was privileged to get to see him "La Cage Aux Folles" a few years back on Broadway and chat with him briefly after the show.   He was extremely polite and down to earth.  And short.

Friends, do you now or did you ever own records?  If the former, do you still play them?  Even on relatively cheap speakers, I find they have an aural "presence" you just don't get on CDs.  Maybe I'm biased.  Even the occasional hisses, pops, and skips sound charming.

And now I must away for rehearsal -- we open Thursday!  Come see us at the Duplex.

What am I going to do with my faux snakeskin....?

Have a great day, everybody!

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Pattern Mixing: Confidence vs. Competence

Friends, today I want to talk about mixing patterns.   

This is something I should be able to discuss with ease (this is MPB, after all) and yet it's complicated.  Most of us were schooled in What goes with what as children, when we were told by (anxious) parents-or-guardians that our paisley shirt and striped pants simply didn't go together (They were only trying to protect us, poor things -- as you do your children) and we took it to heart, never again daring to pair a print with anything other than a dark solid -- if at all. 

Usually we just played it safe.



Or wore jumpsuits.



Let's face it: mixing patterns takes confidence.  It also takes competence.





I flatter myself in thinking that my pattern-matching competence (ability) outweighs my pattern-matching confidence (I've never worn that beret-and-scarf outfit out of my apartment and probably never will.).  But sometimes the opposite is true. 

I chose my BurdaStyle sew-along fabrics from a thick (235 page) Westminster Fabric catalog.  I had hundreds of choices but I had to choose one or -- since I knew the dress pattern in question called for contrasting trim -- two.  I thought of Leah and the colors she'd look best in, and I came up with these (click on photo to supersize).  But it's nearly impossible to choose patterns well without seeing the exact scale of the fabric on the bolt, and I was, frankly, overwhelmed by the wide selection.



It wasn't until I received my fabric and realized how narrow the bolts were that I decided to cut the pleat underlay in the contrasting paisley.



I assumed the pleats would hang completely closed and you'd rarely see the underlay and when you did, it would be a fun surprise.  Instead, it was a very obnoxious pinwheel.



As my mother always says, when you're young, everything looks good on you (though she no longer says it to me), and lovely Leah would look cute wearing a lobster trap, but this dress does not work for me.  Maybe you like it -- it's your right -- but to me it looks like something Madame DuBarry would wear to a sock hop.

Do the two fabric patterns go together?  Well, you can see that in the catalog, they share a similar palette.  But the dress -- and again, this is purely subjective -- doesn't look right, and I'm not talking about the fit, which as you know, needs work.  The fabric patterns could work together, perhaps: a lot depends on the scale and proportion of the garment.  On those pleats, the contrast is too great, imo.

Anyway, yesterday, I took the dress completely apart.  Since I'd been sent extra blue fabric (even with the contrasting underlay, I didn't have enough), I recut the underlay panels and remade the skirt.



Now I know, based on your comments yesterday, that some of you are going to be like, I loved the contrasting underlay, why did you change it? and others are going to heave a sigh of relief.  I place myself squarely in the second camp.  The fabric is bold enough as is.  If you want to mix patterns, throw a paisley shawl on top.  At least that's removable.

Tasteful readers, in closing, how do you feel about pattern mixing?  Do you consider yourself more confident than competent, more competent than confident, or a disaster all around?!

Even the pros can get it wrong.

If you are highly skilled at mixing patterns, how did you learn and do you follow any particular method, or just go with your gut?

Can you mix paisley and stripes?

We're all ears!

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