SOSM Round Four: The Carolyn Pajamas

I'm going to remember this as the project where all my sewing equipment failed me! Cutting everything out took frustratingly long (I'm still not used to not having a rotary cutter!), then my machine kept eating my fabric, the tension just wouldn't cooperate, and the threads kept getting tangled. It also decided that it only wanted to do two stitch lengths: either quite small (about 1.5 mm) or medium (about 3 mm), which meant that basting (and removing it) took quite a while.

I was already behind and definitely feeling the pressure of the deadline, and then to top things off, my iron died on me. Fantastic.

My parents were visiting during this challenge, which was both good and bad in this situation. The bad part was that they were out hiking and had taken the car that I drive, so I was stuck without an iron until they came back (I was actually considering biking to the hardware store when it started pouring rain). The good news, at least, was that they were happy to go to the store for me to buy a new iron once they got back, so I was able to stay home and focus on my project.

Technology issues aside, I really enjoyed this round of the Super Online Sewing Match, the Carolyn Pajamas by Closet Case Patterns. I really loved the pattern as-is, so unlike other rounds, there wasn't anything I really wanted to change. Instead, I focused on construction - I underlined everything and used the underlining to finish the seams, I replaced nearly all the topstitching with hand sewing, I made my buttonholes by hand, and I added covered buttons to match the piping. The result is a couple of the most well made garments I've ever finished! It's almost a shame that they're just pajamas... although I should point out that there's something very indulgent about making pajamas this nice!

I cut out a size 0 top, grading to a 4 at the hips, and size 4 shorts. I knew that I wanted to make the shorts and short-sleeved top, because I have way more winter pajamas than I ever wear, but in the summer, I sleep in a pair of Disney boxer shorts that I bought in Disneyland 4 years ago... all summer long. Needless to say, I really did need a new pair of summer pajamas!

I made a muslin, and the fit of the top was great, but I did have to fiddle with the shorts a little. I raised the rise 1", so that they sit at a more comfortable place for me (although I'm short, my waist is really high on my torso, and I don't find anything sitting low on my hips very comfortable). I lengthened the crotch seam 1/4", then I carved 3/8" out of the seam to make more of a "J" shape in both the front and the back. I'm pretty new to fitting pants, but I've had to do the same adjustment before, so this may become a standard alteration for me.

The fabric is a silk and cotton blend voile that I bought in Calgary, the nearest big city (it's just over an hour's drive from Canmore, where I'm staying). Finding it was a bit of an adventure... first we went to a place called Fabric Depot, which looks a lot better online than it really is. It was almost entirely home decor fabric, so I didn't see anything that was even close to what I was looking for. My mom asked if they had any rayon and the guy there didn't even seem to know what we meant!

The nicest fabric store in Calgary is a place called Olga's, but unfortunately we were too late in the day to make it there before they closed. In slight desperation, we went to the nearest Fabricland, which I usually avoid because I've never really had any luck there. I did manage to find this fabric, though, which I didn't love at first, but once it was away from the store and the other fabric there, I liked it a lot more! As the pajamas came together, I realized how perfect it was for them. It's bolder than I would wear normally, but I absolutely love the print and the colours.

Since it was fairly sheer, I chose to underline everything. I couldn't find a similar weight fabric that was white, but I did find a light yellow cotton voile that matched quite well and took care of the sheerness. Since I don't have a serger, I'm experimenting with different seam finishes, and this was the perfect time to try a seam finish I've been wanting to try for a while - flatlining! Basically, you cut the underlining larger, and wrap it around the raw edges of the main fabric. I followed this tutorial at Cashmerette for the basic technique.

The only problem with this technique is you can't use it for all the seams because you can't deal with corners (I tried a couple different ways of approaching this, with no luck). I considered finishing the other seams with bias binding or French seams, but both of these would have been too bulky with the underlining. Instead, I finished some of the edges with flatlining first (the side seams, the shoulder seams, and the underarm seams), stitched in the ditch at the ends of the seams to secure it (I didn't find that I needed to stitch in the ditch along the whole seam, as the two cotton fabrics stuck together pretty well), and then turned it inside out again. I then sewed the main fabric and the underlining together with a 1/8" seam allowance, clipped the corners, turned it right side out, and pressed. This way, all my finished edges had a 1/2" seam allowance (you lose 1/8" with the flatlining technique). It made for more rounded corners, but they're inside in the seam allowance so it's not a problem (you can see this at the edge of the shoulder seam above).

The edges that would be later enclosed by a cuff or facing, I didn't finish, but I did finish the bottom edges of the pockets with French seams.

The only thing I probably should have done differently was how I finished the fly - I finished the vertical edge with flatlining, and then the bottom edge I sewed the two layers together. This made the fly look rounded with a bit of a wrinkle, so I probably should have just made it rounded anyways, since I made my topstitching at the fly rounded.

Overall, though, I love this finish, and I really want to use it again sometime soon! It's a great alternative to a full lining if you're worried about a fabric being sheer. The only problem was that it took ages - I really underestimated how much time it would take to underline everything! It was only my second time underlining anything (the first time was my grad dress), and I forgot how long it takes.

I used the same fabric for piping and covered buttons, which are accents that I absolutely love. After my Caravan Tote, I was really anxious to use piping on something else!

Since my underlining was yellow, I knew that the pieces that were interfaced with white interfacing might look a little brighter than the rest. So, I tried tea-dyeing again! I remembered from making samples for my Marianne dress that rooibos tea, despite often being called "red tea", gives a yellowish colour when using it to dye. I made a batch, then put it in an ice bath to cool it down, and let the interfacing sit in it for about a half hour. I rinsed it in cool water, then dried it on low heat for few minutes. It's not a perfect colour match, but it's close enough that the main fabric looks the same colour from the right side.

Issues with my machine and my iron aside, putting this set together went pretty smoothly. I left the topstitching along the cuffs and other piped edges for last, because I wasn't yet sure how I wanted to finish them. My original idea was to do some sort of decorative hand embroidery parallel to the piping.

Once I made some samples, I had decided on a blanket stitch along the piping, done in coordinating yellow embroidery thread. I knew that for the breast pocket, I would want to topstitch it first for strength, but once I had topstitched it, I really didn't like the way it looked. I've never been a big fan of topstitching, and I found that it was just too much with the floral print and the piping. I realized that if I thought topstitching in matching blue thread was too much, what would I think of the hand embroidery? I decided then to leave off any topstitching or embroidery stitches, and instead to secure the cuffs with slipstitching for an invisible finish.

Rather than topstitching around the collar, I catchstitched the two layers together just outside the seam allowance. This enclosed the seam allowance and secured the two layers together.

The pocket was a little tricker - I knew that the topstitching would make it more secure, but I really didn't like how it looked. But, being honest, I will probably never use this pocket (except for tissues or hair elastics) when there are bigger pockets in the shorts. I don't think I've ever used a breast pocket in a shirt before, so for me they're purely decorative! So, I unpicked the topstitching on the pocket, then slipstitched it in place, making the stitches closer together than I usually would, and tacking the corners with very small whipstiches that I managed to hide pretty well. It's surprisingly strong!

I also raised the pocket 1", and moved it 1/2" farther from the centre. It just seemed to hit at an awkward spot on me!

I sewed the hem by hand, which is completely invisible because I only caught the underlining.

The last problem I ran into was buttonholes. My sewing machine, like many, is a little finicky when it comes to buttonholes. Sometimes they turn out fine, and sometimes they're disastrous! This fabric is much too light for bound buttonholes, but then I remembered this post at By Gum, By Golly on hand-worked buttonholes. This seemed like a perfect project to try this technique! There are only 5 buttonholes, and if they ended up looking terrible, at least they were only pajamas, right?

As it turns out, they turned out really well! I might never do buttonholes by machine again. They're not perfect, but that's the beauty of hand sewing. Not to mention, the moment I started on the buttonholes (right after my iron died), all my frustration at my iron and my sewing machine seemed to fade away. Hand sewing is so relaxing!

As someone who used to be an extreme perfectionist, I love that I can appreciate the beauty of creating buttonholes by hand. Although I love the precision and concentration required to make the tiny stitches even and tidy, they're not all identical, but that's because I'm human and not a sewing machine. These buttonholes were made by my own hands, and a needle and some silk thread, and I'm so proud of them!

For next time, I'd love to get my hands on some buttonhole twist, which everyone seems to recommend, but there was no chance of me finding in time. I just used two strands of silk thread, which worked reasonably well, although something thick enough to only use one strand would probably have worked better.

I'm so proud of these pajamas - as I said earlier, they're probably two of the highest quality garments I've ever made! I only took the photos this morning, so I haven't slept in them yet, but I can't wait. The silk/cotton blend is so light and soft!

The pattern is fabulous, and I'm really tempted to make a flannel pair in the fall, despite already having lots of fall and winter pajamas. I'd love having a coordinating set, though!

Special thanks to my parents for putting up with my sewing mess everywhere and my frustration at technology while they were visiting. Thanks also to my mom for taking photos for me!

I should also add that my machine seems to be working fine again. I'm not sure if it just didn't like the fabric, or if it was just having a bad couple of days, but it seems to be fine now, thank goodness!

To see the other entries, check out Sew Mama Sew tomorrow. Thanks for reading!

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.