The Aiken Pullover... Just in Time for Summer!

If you've been following my Me-Made-May 2016 pictures on Instagram, you might have seen that I wore a new handknit sweater on day 1! It's not actually that new - I finished it in January but it took me a while to get photos taken.

This is my second handknit sweater, and I'm SO happy with it! It's the Aiken sweater by Andi Satterlund - a fitted pullover with a beautiful lace detail at the neck. I wish we had a chance to get some close-up photos of the lace, but a thunderstorm came along just as we started taking pictures so we finished up pretty quickly!

I started this project pretty much right after finishing my Marion cardigan, in February last year! It went pretty quickly at first, and I had the body finished in a couple of months. It just took me forever to knit the sleeves! I barely knit at all over the summer because I was focusing entirely on work and sewing for the Super Online Sewing Match, and then I really struggled to find time for knitting during first semester. After finishing up knitting some Christmas presents, I worked on this a lot over Christmas break, and finished up early in January.

It wasn't a difficult knit - like most of Andi Satterlund's patterns, it's knit mostly in stockinette from worsted weight wool, so it goes really quickly, once you actually make the time to knit! I had never done any lace before, but I picked it up pretty quickly and the pattern wasn't difficult to keep track of. Once you get past the lace, it's just knitting in stockinette in a circle with decreases every few rows. Great mindless knitting!

The wool is Malabrigo twist, a gorgeous merino in the colourway 'Velvet Grapes'. It was on sale at a store that was closing in Canmore, when we visited the summer before I worked there. I love Malabrigo, but it's pricey at regular price, especially if you buy enough for a sweater, so this was a great find! I bought 6 skeins, which was everything she had left, but I only used 5. I'll have to use the rest for a cozy scarf or something in the fall!

Malabrigo doesn't give a very specific gauge for their wool, so I tried a couple swatches with different size needles to see what I liked the texture of. Using 5 mm needles as suggested gave me the texture I wanted (thick, and therefore warm!), but the gauge was a little tighter than recommended. If I went up a needle size, it wasn't as thick as I wanted it, so instead, I took a bit of a gamble and just made a size larger than I normally would (small rather than extra small). I know that this probably isn't the best way to adjust, but it worked really well in this case! I don't think there's anything I would change about the fit.

I think the only thing I would change if I made this again would be to knit the ribbing on a size smaller needles - I know that a lot of patterns have you do this, and I'm not sure why hers never recommend it (maybe it's assumed?). I think I'd prefer the look of a slightly tighter rib, especially at the sleeves.

The trickiest part of knitting the sweater was trying to prevent striping! Since the yarn is hand-dyed, I alternated skeins throughout the whole sweater (except for the short rows at the sleeve head), but I still had some striping, so I had to keep cutting the wool and trying to start using it again when it was a different colour. It took me a good few rows to finally stop the stripes, but I think they're only noticeable to me (?).

This also meant that when I was finished knitting, I had SO MANY ends to weave in. I don't like weaving in ends much (who does?), so it took me at least another week to finally finish up after I was done knitting!

Overall, though I'm SO proud of this sweater! I love the lace details - it's subtle, although a little more noticeable in real life! It's also so warm and cozy, and I wear it lots, even now that it's May! It's finally warmed up a little, but the first week was pretty chilly for May.

Also, thanks to my friend James for taking these photos for me! I think this one was taken just before we decided it was time to head inside...

Completed: Wool Muse Jenna Cardi

When I went back to school in September, one of my main goals was to make time for sewing, knitting, and blogging, especially since I now have not only one sewing machine, but two!

Three months later, I'm at that point in the semester when all my labs are finishing up, I've been done with midterms for a week now, and I'm realizing that I definitely haven't been keeping up with that goal! In fact, my sewing machines are still sitting on my living room floor because I don't yet have a desk for them. My desk for studying never seems to be clear for long enough to use it as a sewing desk! I'm lucky enough to have space in my student apartment for a small dedicated sewing space, but I still haven't bought the table I need to set it up.

Anyways, although I haven't been sewing, I still have so many unblogged projects to write about. I originally wrote this post back in the summer in between rounds of the Super Online Sewing Match, but never finished editing the photos for it! Now that Montreal is starting to feel a little wintery, I've been wearing this a lot lately and thought it was a good time to (finally!) post about it!

I had quite a few comments on this cardigan during Me-Made-May this year - it's my second version of the Muse Jenna Cardi, made in a wool double knit that I bought in Montreal during my first fabric shopping trip to Rue St. Hubert. I made this when I was home for Christmas (so, almost a year ago, oops!)

My first version of this pattern fit pretty well, but it needed a couple adjustments. When I first made it, I was expecting it to be much too long, so I shortened it 1 1/2". This turned out to be too much, so I lengthened it 1", so this version is only 1/2" shorter than the original, which is just about perfect.

I took in the shoulder seams 1/4", which makes them sit a bit better on me. They could still be narrowed a little, although they may have just stretched out a little. If I make another, I'll stabilize the shoulder seams with clear elastic (in fact, I might go back and sew some to the seam allowance of this one, to stop them stretching out more).

Although I ended up shortening the sleeves on my first version to 3/4 length, I noticed that they were quite wide before I chopped them off, so I narrowed them by 1/2" on either side for this version. I narrowed the cuff to match, and I shortened them 2". I think Muse patterns are drafted for someone quite a bit taller!

I sewed all the seams on my mom's serger, and the topstitching was done on my regular machine, with a ballpoint needle and a straight stitch. Oddly enough, I find that a straight stitch stretches more when it's topstitching a serged seam allowance flat. It's all I've ever used for this kind of topstitching on knits, and I've never had any problems with broken stitches! For hems, I still use a twin needle or a narrow zigzag, though.

Although this fabric is amazing to wear, it was tricky to sew with. I didn't really have any problems until the button band, which I realized was far too short when I went to attach it! I think it shrunk when I fused the interfacing to it (I did pre-wash it, but in cold water)! I luckily had enough fabric left over to squeeze an extra button band out of it, making it extra long. After I'd interfaced it, I cut it to the right length.

The fabric also definitely has some spandex, whereas the fabric I used for my first version didn't. The vertical stretch from the spandex made attaching the button band quite difficult! The top layer kept stretching, and as a result, there are a couple little tucks in the stitching on the inside, but nothing is visible from the outside, so I decided to leave it. Unpicking serging is such a pain - that's one advantage to sewing knits on a regular machine!

The topstitching was equally tricky, because the fabric kept wanting to stretch and bunch up. I eventually got it to look decent, though it's definitely not my best topstitching. This would be a lot easier in fabric with less vertical stretch!

After this, I decided that making buttonholes in this fabric would be far too finicky, so instead I attached snaps by hand. These buttons are only decorative!

These buttons have a somewhat interesting story - I finished this cardigan while home for Christmas, aside from attaching snaps and buttons. I didn't have any buttons that I wanted to use, but I knew that I would be able to buy some in Montreal. Once I attached the snaps, though, it took me at least a month to get myself out to buy buttons! It's not that it's really that far by metro to Rue St. Hubert, but it was difficult to find time to make the trip.

When I finally did, it was an afternoon that I had no labs and no immediate studying to do, but it was also one of the coldest days in February (and Montreal had a record-breaking cold February)! I was planning to go to Rubans Boutons, a store that specializes in buttons, but it was so bitterly cold and windy that I just ducked into the first store I saw that sold buttons and bought these. It was a really difficult shade to match, so instead I went for these black-brown buttons with a little flower detail. I love them, and they were really inexpensive.

I think that with the little tweaks to the fit, and a nicer (to wear) fabric, this second version of the Jenna turned out much better than the first. It's a super versatile piece and nice and cozy! The only things I don't love is that the style doesn't look so nice unbuttoned, so I might experiment next time with making it into a V-neck with a continuous binding around the neck and button band. In some of these pictures, I unbuttoned the bottom half, but it's not the most flattering way to wear it!

I should also mention the top I'm wearing in this post, since I probably won't post about it on its own. It's my fourth version of the Bronte Top by Jennifer Lauren, my go-to knit to pattern. I whipped it up when I needed a simple project to get back into sewing when I was home for reading week. The fabric you might recognize if you've been following for a while - it's leftover from a Moneta dress that I made last summer.

I made it with 3/4 length sleeves and added on extra ease at the hips, like my third Bronte, and I'm pretty happy with it. I goofed and overlapped the shoulder too much, so when I took these pictures, the neckline was really tight and not super flattering.

Note to self: just because you've already made a pattern three times, doesn't mean that it wouldn't help to glance at the instructions! They say clearly that you line up the notch on the front piece with the edge of the back piece when they overlap, but I went ahead and lined up the notches on the two pieces, meaning that I overlapped them a lot more than I was supposed to!

It would mean a lot of unpicking serged seams to fix this, so I just left it, accepting that it wasn't my best make. But, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn't wearing it, so it needed to be fixed. The first thing that I unpicked was the stitching that tacks the two layers together, and I realized that this fixed the problem! It now bunches up a little around the shoulders, but with such a busy print, it's not noticeable. For such a simple knit top, it was an easy fix, so I'm happy with it! I haven't had a chance to take any pictures since fixing it, but I find it much more flattering now.

Anyways, I'm not going to convince myself that I'll have time to blog again while studying for finals, but you can keep up with me on Instagram, where I'll share some sneak peeks of my holiday knitting (that I'm NOT going to leave to the last minute... right???)

Until next time! Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers, and thanks for reading!

SOSM Round Five: The Cascade Duffle Coat

Two months after sending in my audition email for the Super Online Sewing Match, I still can't quite believe that I made it to the final round! This round's challenge was the Cascade Duffle Coat by Grainline Studio.

I'll admit that I may have panicked a little bit when I found out... I've always wanted to sew a coat (my current wool coat needs replacing), but I imagined that it would be a summer-long project, not a week-long project! I also had no idea what I would do for fabric, and figured that I would probably have wait for shipping to Canada and get a late start. We were given a gift certificate to Fabric Depot to use, but as with the other challenges, shipping to Canada would have taken longer than is practical when you only have just over a week to sew.

To my complete surprise, I visited the local quilting store where I've been able to buy notions, and found that they had some nice wool coating literally tucked away in a corner! It looked like it had probably been there a looooong time (it was quite dusty), but I was so happy and so excited that I didn't care. I decided on this teal wool and mohair coating which is cozy, thick, and really nice quality. Mohair is one of the warmest wools out there so this should be great for Montreal! I'm not sure it'll get me through January and February, but that's what my down coat is for.

Before buying the wool, I went home and thought about design. Like most Grainline patterns, I liked the pattern, but it wasn't really my style. I knew that I would want to make the shorter version, since a longer boxy coat would overwhelm my small frame. I experimented with making it a little more A-line and adding a box pleat at the back, similar to shorter swing coats from the 50's.

I really wanted to use buttons because I knew I wouldn't be able to find leather for toggles, but to have a functional button closure, I would have needed to add another band to the front, which would make it too bulky. Instead, I made button closures from leather cord. I changed the pockets so that I could get my hands into them more easily, and I added decorative buttons tabs to those as well.

The last thing I couldn't decide on was whether my coat should have a hood or a collar - I love a good collar, but I've been caught in far too many Montreal storms to deny the practicality of a hood. So, I made both! The hood is removable, and attaches with snaps underneath the hood. I made the collar a little smaller to accommodate the hood, and a little rounder, out of preference. The finished coat is a little retro, a little modern, and super practical!

When I bought the wool, I found some black silk lining hidden in all the polyester. I love silk lining because it adds extra warmth, and just feels amazing to wear! I would have preferred gray to match the leather cord, but they only had black and white. I was really happy with the leather cord and buttons that I found, though! They have such a random collection of notions at this store, but it worked out well this round. They only had three colours of metal zippers, but the light green zipper tape with silver teeth looked nice, so I went with it.

I also chose some flannel to line the pockets and hood, and to use for the zipper band. It's a charcoal gray and light green herringbone, but looks gray from a distance. It matches the leather cord nicely, and up close, the green goes well with the teal (and is pretty close to the zipper band). It makes the pockets and hood so much cozier!

I made a muslin to test the fit around the shoulders, because with the more flared shape, I wanted it to fit really well there, so it wouldn't look too big everywhere. I found that it fit quite well with very little adjustment, which is really nice! To make the A-line shape, I placed the back piece 1 1/2" away from the fold, to allow for a box pleat, and I slashed and spread the front piece, then re-traced the armhole shape. I thought I might have to shorten it, but I actually lengthened the sleeves 1/2"! I think that's a first for me. I think they ended up just the right length, and so did the coat - it's short enough to be flattering, but long enough that it'll cover my sweaters.

To modify the pockets, I first removed the extra that gets folded under when they're sewn as instructed, then folded under a corner of the pattern piece. I then drew in where I wanted the button tab, and made a pattern piece that size plus a seam allowance and a little extra for turn of cloth. When I sewed them, I sandwiched the tab in between the main fabric and lining, and sewed along the diagonal, reinforcing the seam with the selvedge of my silk lining, sinc I didn't have any twill tape handy. I understitched, then sewed the other edges, leaving an opening at the bottom, and then turned it right side out. When I attached it to the coat, I made little bar tacks at the edges of the opening, for strength. I made them narrow enough that they sink right into the wool and blend with the topstitching, but they're there!

I ran into a bit of trouble attaching the zipper, when I realized that the recommended zipper and zipper band didn't fit my coat! I went back to the pattern pieces, and the button band is indeed longer than the front band for the size 0, unless I made some mistake somewhere and was supposed to take a larger seam allowance on the zipper band or something. I had to unpick it and shorten my zipper, then I added bar tacks on either side to prevent the zipper pull from coming off. This did set me back a little and I actually emailed Jen about it - I could have made a mistake with it somewhere, but it could also be a problem just with the size 0, since the coat does get a little shorter with every size.

Making the button closures was a little fiddly, but I'm so happy with them! It was a lot of trial and error - I figured out the right length to make the loops, but I had to twist them in precisely the right way before sewing the loop shut so that they would lie flat once I made the twists. I couldn't pin the leather, so I used a glue basting stick to hold everything in place before I could stitch it. I wanted them to be really secure and lie flat, so I stitched them to the coat at every point the leather overlapped itself.

I added some matching twisted leather cord to the button tabs as well, so that they would match. They're completely decorative, but I love the little detail!

I actually originally added similar button tabs to the sleeves as well, but once I tried on the coat for the first time, I just didn't like them. They were too much! There was enough detail on the body of the coat, and with so much flare, having something at the ends of the sleeves just looked odd. The fabric is also super thick, and I found them to be quite bulky and annoying to wear. So, off they went!

I also made shoulder pads out of cotton batting to add, but found the same thing. Maybe I just made them too thick, but with so much volume at the bottom of the coat, they were just way too much. With the heavy fabric, though, the sleeve looked like it needed some support, so instead, I drafted sleeve heads for them. What a difference! They're subtler than a shoulder pad but make the shoulder sit so much more nicely.

I sewed the collar as suggested, but I had to modify the hood a little to make it removable. I initially made it longer because it would be sitting below where it would if it were sewn in, but it ended up too big so I trimmed off the extra I added. I sewed it mostly according to the instructions, except that I attached the snaps, then sewed the bottom shut, leaving an opening to turn it right side out. I only attached the snaps to the lining, after interfacing the places where I would attach them, so that they wouldn't show when I was wearing the hood. To get the placement right, I pinned the collar on so that it sat nicely, marked the places I pinned it on both the hood and the coat, and then attached the snaps. After attaching the snaps to the hood, I topstitched about 3/4" from the edge to give them some stability.

Attaching the snaps to the coat was a little terrifying! The outer coat was completely sewn at this point, and with the brand of snaps that I was using, you have to punch a hole in the fabric first, so there's no going back! I figured that if it didn't work out, they would be hidden under the collar and I just wouldn't mention them... but, they worked really well! The hood sits so nicely and comes off easily (but not too easily!).

After that, I was finished with all the changes that I wasn't sure would work out, so I followed the instructions a little more closely. I'd never sewn a bagged lining before, and while I was attaching it, I was convinced that it wouldn't work. It just seems so bizarre while you're sewing it, and then you start turning it right side out, and all of a sudden you have an (almost) finished coat!

Once I finished, I couldn't quite believe what I had just made. I think it looks so professional, and it's definitely one of the most involved sewing projects I've ever finished - possibly even more so than my grad dress, and I spent months on that!

Over the course of this contest, I've learned so much, and I've made five amazing garments that I'm so proud of. I've tried some patterns that I probably wouldn't have picked on my own, and I've learned to modify them to suit my style - it's made me so much more confident in my sewing!

Thanks for reading! Be sure to have a look at Leah's and Teresa's coats as well - they're both beautiful! And keep an eye on Sew Mama Sew for a showcase on Saturday, with the winner announced on Tuesday.

Lastly, another huge thank you to Micheal from Photoflow, a family friend, for taking these photos for me!

Completed Knit: Marion Cardigan

Allow me to present my favourite finished project ever: my first handknit cardigan!

Despite learning to knit when I was really young, I never really thought of knitting anything other than accessories. Sweaters just seemed so daunting!

After finishing my Pseudo Shibori Scarf though, knit with 3.5 mm needles and kidsilk, I felt like I was ready to tackle my first sweater. Unfortunately, my tendinitis hit just after finishing the scarf, so I didn't knit at all during my grade 12 year. After I graduated, I slowly got back into it, and found that I was okay so long as I didn't knit too much at once. 

I knew that I wanted to make a cardigan, and I've always loved all of Andi Satterlund's patterns, so it wasn't hard to pick out a pattern. I ended up going with the Marion cardigan, because it was mostly stockinette (aka simple), but had enough shaping and cables that I would learn something new and not get bored. 

When I first downloaded the pattern and read through it, I almost gave up then and there. I had no idea what so much of it meant - short rows, cables, picking up and knitting, yarn overs... it was pretty overwhelming!

I ended up just looking up videos on every stitch that I wasn't sure about, and practicing until I felt reasonably comfortable with all the stitches. I'm glad I picked a relatively simple pattern, because it still felt like I had so much to learn!

The yarn I picked is Colour Adventures Sweet Aran, in the colourway Midnight Blues, which I bought from Wool and Wicker in Steveston. It's 100% superwash merino, and comes in lots of colours. The yarn itself is a little pricey, but I didn't need very much so it didn't end up being too expensive overall. I don't know if I would buy it again because since then, I've found cheaper yarn of a similar quality, but it is quite nice to work with, and really comfortable to wear!

I also bought a set of interchangeable needles, which is a great investment if you plan on making lots of sweaters (like I do!). It makes it really easy to change the cable length as needed, and you never have to transfer stitches to holders - instead, you just take off the needles and screw on these little stoppers at the ends of the cables. When I was knitting the upper front and back, I used a 24" cable, then switched to 32" when I connected it all. When I knit the button band, I went up to 40" (or possible 47", can't remember). For the sleeves, I bought a second set of 5 mm tips, and used both circular needles with 24" cables. I tried to use the magic loop method first, but I found it really awkward to use for the short rows at the sleeve cap.

Since the yarn is hand-dyed, it recommends alternating skeins, which I did throughout the body. At first, I didn't know the best way to do this, so I just tied a knot and knit with a new strand every 2 rows. About 10 rows in, I realized that I would have way too many ends to weave in if I kept going like that! Instead, I just kept all three skeins attached and just picked up a new one every two rows, similar to the way I imagine you would do colourwork (although I've never done colourwork, so I can't say for sure). I didn't bother alternating skeins when I knit the sleeves because I wasn't sure of the best way, and I honestly don't notice any difference, so I probably didn't need to have alternated skeins for the rest of it. Oh well! 

Over the summer, the knitting went pretty quickly. I made lots of mistakes and had to frog a lot, but I kept going pretty steadily until I finished the main body of the sweater. In September, though, I pretty much stopped working on it altogether. I did actually find some time to knit, but I couldn't figure out the short row shaping at the shoulder. I knew that I needed a solid chunk of time to sit down and figure out what I kept doing wrong, and I just never seemed to have that time. Instead, I worked on a hat in little bits and pieces, and didn't really touch the sweater until I was home for Christmas break.

Once I figured out the short rows, the sleeves went really quickly, and I finished this within a couple weeks of the start of the winter semester. 

The next part that took me forever was, of all things, buying buttons! I really wanted to go to Rubans Boutons to find them, but when I finally found an afternoon free to go to Rue St. Hubert, it was one of the coldest days in February! I literally just ducked into the first store I saw that sold buttons, and found some that matched surprisingly well. They're nothing all that special, but the colour is a perfect match, and I like the simpler buttons because they keep the focus on the cables.

It took me so long to buy the buttons that I actually started wearing it without buttons for a while! I think it looks good unbuttoned as well, but you can see the cables better when it's buttoned up, so that's probably how I'll wear it most of the time.

I am so proud of this cardigan, but it's definitely far from perfect! First of all, it could be just a little bigger. Despite swatching and measuring my gauge, my gauge when I actually knit this was a little tight, and I never checked it along the way. It's still very wearable and comfortable, but if I want to wear anything bulkier than a camisole or thin t-shirt underneath, it's a little snug. 

Second of all, I really need to work on casting off loosely. The cast-off edges at the bottom edges of the body and the sleeves are tighter than they should be, and this makes the sweater ride up a little. You can see that in the photo below.

Another part that I need to keep looser is the part between the two needles that I knit the sleeve on - I was so worried about it being too loose that I overdid it a little, and ended up with a little bit of a ridge going down my arm where they stitches are way too tight. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who notices, but if you look closely you can see it a little in these pictures. 

Overall, though, I'm really, really happy with this cardigan! I love the colour and really suits my style. I've already almost finished my second sweater - hopefully I'll have it finished while it's still cool enough to wear it!

Ravelry notes are here.

Thanks for reading, and happy Easter!

Cardigan: Me-made (Marion Cardigan)
Camisole: Mom-made (self-drafted)
Skirt: upcycled from an old dress

Completed: Colette Ceylon Dress

With every project, I try to do at least one thing I've never done before. With this dress, I tried lots of new things! It was my first time using a Colette pattern, sewing with wool, sizing down a pattern, fitting a pattern completely on my own, making covered buttons, and making buttonholes. Whew!

This was also sewn for my first time participating in an online sewing challenge, the Frocktober challenge at The Monthly Stitch, but I kind of missed the deadline so I'm not sure that entirely counts. Oops. I blame this:

So, the dress! It's the Colette Ceylon, sized down. I sized it down one and a half sizes smaller than the size 0 at the bust, one size smaller at the waist, and a half size smaller at the hips and graded between them. I didn't think to follow any sort of tutorial but it seemed to all work out (even the notches, which I wasn't sure would line up when I was done). I used a bunch of math to figure it out but I won't bore you all with the details. It took a while, but I guess it's just another step that I'm going to have to get used to doing. I then traced all my pattern pieces onto Swedish tracing paper so that I could keep the original sizes intact (which I do with all my patterns).

The great thing about Swedish tracing paper is that you can pin or baste it all together before you cut your fabric, which sometimes completely eliminates the need for a muslin. I prefer pinning so that I can easily un-pin and adjust as needed. After pinning it all together, I knew that I would need to take in the shoulder seams and adjust the back. I made the alterations on the pattern pieces and it seemed to work, but I wanted to be sure so I made a muslin anyways, since the tracing paper doesn't drape (or gather) like fabric does.

As it turns out, the changes I made to the pattern pieces were spot on, and the only thing I changed after making the muslin was that I took a little out of the centre of the gathered back piece, since it just seemed to emphasize my slight swayback. I was amazed and pleased that I had to make no bust adjustments, which I think is a first.

I laid out the altered pattern pieces on my cutting table, and realised that I could get the whole dress out of 1.6 metres of fabric as opposed to the suggested 3 yards (2.7 metres). When I bought fabric, I got 1.7 just in case. The fabric is 100% wool that I found at a local discount fabric story for $12.99 a metre. It frayed like mad, but other than that was very cooperative and sewed up nicely. This fabric store is the kind of place where a lot of fabric isn't even marked with fabric content, so I don't know what this type of wool would technically be called. Maybe gabardine? It has a little more body than a crepe but still has nice drape and is thin enough to be gathered.

This being my first time working with wool, I wasn't entirely sure what I should do to pre-treat it. Honestly, I don't want to have to dry clean this dress - I'll probably wash it by hand. I don't mind dry cleaning fancy dresses like this vintage one because they're quite precious to me and they don't need it very often, but a casual dress? No way. After testing it out on a small square of fabric, I threw caution to the wind and put it in the washing machine. I find dealing with uncut fabric quite annoying, and didn't really want to handwash it (although in my defense, I did put it in the handwash cycle and my machine is quite gentle). After coming across this article on Coletterie while trying to figure out what the heck wool challis was (I was browsing online fabric stores), I wish I had tried putting it in the dryer with a wet towel, but oh well. Next time. 

On a side note, I've been pronouncing "challis" wrong my whole life, and so has my mom. It's "shall-ee", apparently. I'm guessing it comes from a French word, just like crepe or boucle, because that's how you would pronounce it in French.

Where were we? 

Oh yeah, this dress. My wool looked just fine and not at all felted or shrunk after coming out of the washing machine, so no regrets there. Cutting it out was a pain and took forever, because I don't have a cutting mat big enough and have to shift it around. Usually this isn't a problem, but this wool seemed to want to stick to the mat and every time I shifted it it dragged the fabric with it, which meant I had to re-position the pattern pieces every time. I used pins up until quite recently (my second Cambie dress what the first thing I cut out using only weights, and I was amazed at how much faster it was), and now I'm too stubborn to go back to using them. In the end (after I'd spent over an hour re-arranging the pattern pieces) I gave up and pinned what was left to cut out.

After that, the construction went amazingly fast (for me, anyways). I sewed the whole thing except for the sleeves, buttons, buttonholes, and hem in one day, and I even took some - gasp! - homework breaks. I thought it would take a while because it has a lot more pieces than other dresses I've made, but I suppose being unlined helps.

Something interesting about how this dress is sewn that I never seen before is that rather than sewing a seam, pressing it, and edgestiching it, you staystich, press the seam allowance under, then just place in on top of the other piece and edgestich. I thought that I would have trouble with it, and figured I would probably resort to stitching it and then edgestich it, but it was surprisingly easy (although I was being a total perfectionist with my edgestitching, and made myself redo lots of it because it was too far from the edge). I'm not sure what the advantage to doing it this way is, but it seemed to work quite nicely.

Partway through the construction, I realised that I took a bit too much out of the back piece after my muslin (2 cm), because my gathering didn't look much like gathering. Because I didn't have enough fabric to re-cut the piece, I just took out an inch of gathering stitches (5 stitches) on either side, and then gathered it. I'm quite happy with how this turned out, and I might actually do the same for my next one, rather than adding back some of the fullness that I took out.

The only real hitch was my machine. It was doing funny things, so in the end I used my mom's. This was fine up until I finished the sleeves, but her machine (although a better machine than mine in many ways) doesn't do nice buttonholes. I wanted to do the buttons and buttonholes before the hem because I wasn't sure where I would want to hem it, and wanted to be able to see what it looked like buttoned up before deciding. So, this sat as a UFO for a very long time while I was too busy (aka lazy) to figure out what was up with my machine.

In the meantime, I made my buttons! I only bought 15 instead of 16 because that was all the store had in the right size, and they came in packs of 5 so it seemed to make sense. I figured that since I'm short and I was making smaller than the smallest size I could get away with it. I bought a tool for making them, too, to make things easier for myself.

I won't go into too much detail since there's plenty of tutorial out there on how to do this, but I quickly realised that a faster of making them was to cut a rectangle and cut away the excess as opposed to cutting a circle. If the circles weren't perfect, I had to re-cut them, so I figured that this way, they would fit perfectly every time.

And ta-dah! Covered buttons!

When I finally sat down to fix my machine, there were two things wrong with it. One, it needed to be oiled, and two, I was threading it wrong. I mean, duh! I felt pretty stupid. This machine is a relatively recent acquisition - I bought it secondhand because it was a great price, it's tougher than the machine I was using before, and it does nice buttonholes. I was going to give it its own blog post, but I have way too many other things to blog about. Sorry, machine! (It has yet to be named.)

Anyways, I have no idea when the last time it was oiled was, so that should have been the first thing I did when I got it. Actually, the first thing I should have done was had it serviced because it sounds like it had been out of use for a long time when I bought it, but I wanted to use it right away. Its performance improved so much after oiling it, but it would still get caught every so often. So, I admitted that I couldn't figure the thing out without a manual (it had been lost before I bought it) and bought one online. Turns out there's a little hook that you have to open up the machine to see that you're supposed to put the thread through, which keeps the thread from getting caught. Oops.

So, after fixing that, I could finally do my buttonholes. This was fairly nerve-wracking for me, even though I did a bunch of practice ones (this was only one of my samples...).

I don't know what's going on with this photo because the colour is completely different in the actual photo, and it just changed when I uploaded it. 

I ignored the button placement that was marked on the facing piece, and arranged them so that there would be no buttons directly on a seam. I didn't think it would look very good, and it would have made buttonholes trickier. At this stage, I also realised that it would be really nice to have one of those tools to determine your button placement. I measured the distance between every one individually and marked them with chalk, which took a while.

The first buttonhole was terrifying...

...but didn't turn out too badly!

I regretted using white interfacing, though. I really should have used black but I wasn't really thinking. So, out came the Sharpie. It wasn't a perfect match, but it worked.

Bottom right is before, top is after

Sewing on the buttons took me just as long as the buttonholes, which I hadn't really expected. I suppose it didn't help that my cat kept deciding that my dress was a comfortable place to sit.

Ready for the major blooper? I got to the end of my buttons, and still had a buttonhole left. I thought that I must have lost a button somewhere and looked around, but then I counted the buttonholes. There were 16 of them... *facepalm*. I don't know what I did wrong. I laid out the buttons so that I could see where they looked nice, and then I removed them one by one and drew in where the buttonhole should go. Somehow, though, I ended up with one buttonhole too many, and buttonholes are one of those things that are pretty permanent. I haven't decided what I'll do yet. I might go out and buy another five buttons, but I might just leave it. It's far enough down that it's not too noticeable... right? Maybe people will just think I forgot to button the last button... every single time. It's possible.

If you look closely, you can spot the lone buttonhole.

In case anyone is thinking that this was another mistake, I sewed the buttons on the wrong side on purpose. They're easier to get on that way, and hey, I don't want to be trying to button up 15 (maybe 16) buttons the hard way when I'm late for school. Most of you are probably familiar with this already, but men's and women's clothing have buttons on opposite sides because historically, men would usually dress themselves (and most are right-handed), so their buttons are on the right side. Women's shirts and dresses have their buttons on the left side because they would often have servants dressing them, meaning that the buttons would need to be on their servant's right. But quite frankly, I've been capable of dressing myself for quite a while now, so I see no reason to put my buttons on the side that's convenient for my non-existent servant. 

I thought that I would want to shorten the dress, since I'll probably be wearing it with boots and I find dresses worn with boots look nicer if they have a little bit of leg (or stocking) showing, rather than the dress going down to where the boot starts. But when I tried it on pinned above the knee, it just didn't look right. Below or just at the knee is much more flattering on me than above, and suited the style a lot more.

I thought that I would do a blind hem by machine because I didn't really feel like hemming by hand. Plus, a blind hem foot came with my machine and I'd never used it before. Honestly, though, I was disappointed. If anyone out there avoids doing blind hems because they don't have the proper foot, don't. Until yesterday, I had always done blind hems with a regular foot and had no problem with it. I actually think my blind hems without the blind hem foot look nicer because the foot makes the needle catch more fabric than I usually would with my blind hems.

I decided that this looked horrible, so I ripped it out and did it by hand. I used slipstiching rather than catchstiching, which I find just as invisible but much faster. The whole hem took me about 20 minutes.

For whatever reason natural light made this look a lot more purple. The other pictures show the colour better.

Overall, I love this dress! It fits me really well, and it's really warm. The fabric, being wool, is a little scratchy but no more than a wool sweater would be (and in my opinion, the warmth of wool makes up for any scratchiness). It doesn't bother me at the moment, but if it ever does, there's enough each in it that I could wear a slip or even just a tank top underneath. I usually avoid drop-waist styles because I prefer to emphasize my waist rather than my hips, but I find this very flattering. The only change I would make it I make it again is that I would add a little bit back onto the shoulder seams, because I think I took them in a little too much - I took them in an inch, when maybe I should have only taken in 1/2" or 3/4". I would also reduce the area that's gathered above the bust because it looks more like it was eased in rather than gathered.

Oh, and sadly it was too wet to take photos outside, so I shot these in my brother's old bedroom. He's away for university so his room is pretty empty, and this was the only place in the entire house that had a neutral enough background and decent lighting (although looking back it really could have been better). I think this may become my fall/winter photoshoot location anyways since soon it will be too cold to take photos outside in indoor clothes. When I took my close up pictures outside (because I thought the lighting would be better, when really it distorted the colour a lot), I had to wear my wool coat, so I don't think I would have been warm enough in only a dress, anyways (even a wool one!) I also took these photos with our point-and-shoot because I didn't really feel like bothering with the DSLR that I've used for my other photos. Theses aren't great, but they'll do.

For more pictures (I took lots this time!), have a look at my flickr.

Wow, that was a lot of writing! If you got this far, thanks for reading! (Heck, thanks for reading even if you didn't.)

Dress: Colette Ceylon
Tights: Hue
Shoes: Chelsea Crew

My sewing companion.