DP Studio le 205: Asymmetric zip front jacket

 This has been on my queue for a bit, and I have promised friends I would make my own merino jacket to wear hiking, which prompted me to get on with it.  I actually have loads of hoodies and lightweight jackets and interestingly....none that I've made myself.  I have made nice ones but somehow they have always gotten wings and gone to new owners.  I'm suddenly thinking, as I write this, of a nice scuba hoodie I made, and loved and was proud of... and wondering who it went to.

Anyway so I committed an entire day to this.  Would have cut it out the day before but I didn't manage.  It takes full concentration.  I cut a size 38 as I'm not a perfect match to the size chart and I thought 34 1/2" was a better bet for a jacket than 32".  I didn't look at any measurement below the bust.  

The fabric is lightweight scuba, I bought it awhile ago and made a top out of it then found it beautiful but totally useless.  I love the fabric and hoarded the last piece for this project.  It was quite a leap of faith to use this fabric rather than the merino I have for a second version - especially since I have 3 meters of the merino and it was really really cheap.  

The instructions are nicely illustrated but they are not particularly well translated.  With knowledge of what you are aiming for in general everything ends up where it should be, but in terms of properly finishing seams it was hopeless from quite early on.  This is something I had foreseen and that's part of why I used scuba, but it's always that wee bit sad to have catastrophic pocket/zip/jacket intersections.  

The jacket got put together in the day I had allocated, but sewing down the facings was another story.  Really this needs to be heavily understitched on the facing, collar and hem.  My scuba does not iron.  I mean, ironing doesn't do anything to it at all, so I had kind of puffy parts, like the hem just puffing out.  Understitching would have helped.  I've taken a lot of notes for the upcoming merino version.  After about 2 weeks of sulking about I finally took a very deep breath and stitched in the ditch to get all the facings down.  I strategically tacked the pockets to hold them in.  The facings kind of overlay the pockets, but a few tacks here and there are helpful.  

 

Result was good.  I topstitched the bottom of the hem to get rid of that puffiness but decided not to meddle anywhere else (it kind of lettuced but I hope it settles with time, and it's better than the previous puffiness.)  I adore this jacket.  Everything comes together pristinely on the outside!  The fit is good and I'm glad I didn't size down.  Of course, a wee bit shorter would have suited me but this type of jacket can be a bit longer without looking oversized on me. 

 

 I think I prefer the pocket side with the open pocket, it's perfectly angled for hands and objects, and it's easier to get a good finish on it.  Zip pockets in stretchy fabrics are always a crapshoot and this one does need to be held at the top as you open it so the fabric doesn't pull, but it's a nice secure pocket - both of them are huge and fully fit hands!  This is a functional jacket!  Don't be led astray thinking it's a wimpy fashion piece...

I would add to the instructions the following clarifications: 

-on the open pocket, understitch after attaching pocket to the body 

-really understitch everything - the facing against the zip, the neck at the top and the hem.  

-For a clean finish fold the hem in by the seam allowance before sewing it to the side facings.  Also, baste a line along the front facing and the inside neck piece to know where to fold it in afterwards.   Stitch in the ditch in one go from front up the neck and back to where the pockets get in the way.

-re the pockets: finish every single edge before you start.  So, overlock the pockets all the way around.  Overlock pocket openings first.  Then sew together.  You will not get a second chance!  

The good news is that the mucky bits of my pockets are on the invisible side and actually it looks reasonably neat now.   The only zip that fit is a precious Riri zip which I think I bought in Switzerland so once I'd committed to that this project had no choice but to be awesome.  I'm now quite keen on making the second one and seeing whether I can get perfect innards too! 

Misusu Dia sweatshirt x 3

Oh I saw this and wanted to make it right away now now! I had other projects in the way but it jumped to the top of my winter sweatshirt queue.  I used stable sweatshirting from The Fabric Box and a colour combination that I knew would pop...though I wasn't entirely sure how well it would work together.

 The size chart is very precise, I cut BB, based on the fact that the finished measurements had a hip of 39" which is a nice amount of ease for my 37" hip.  I sewed all the diamond pieces together before overlocking and the stitching got pretty thick, and then my overlocker broke a needle!  I've never changed a needle on my overlocker so I didn't even know what I could use and that slowed things down a bit.  I ended up using a normal sewing machine needle, which the machine didn't love, but it did work.  (I was in a hurry because I wanted to take it on a weekend away with me, which I did.)

 

There's a tiny mismatch at the base of the diamond but everything else came up perfectly, and it is a pretty fun project to tetris together.  The high-low hem of the sweatshirt is hard to shorten - you have to shorten through a lot of pieces, but I think you could also just shorten at the hem.  I was lazy with the hem and didn't snip into the turning points, which I would do in the future.  You do not need to stretch any of the hem bands to fit.  

Basically after this I wanted to make more!  I thought I'd shorten the high-low hem in future, but I also thought I would make the tunic length next, and then I changed my mind and instead I decided to do another one exactly the same, plus a straight hem version in normal tshirt weights of lovely hoarded scraps.  

I went scrappy first: 

And oh, it's too long.  That was foreseeable...drat.  I am going to cut it by just cutting off the binding and shortening it, but I wanted to wear it around first and get a sense for how much to crop, so for now it's staying long.

I went straight on to my precious bamboo sweatshirting from Blackbird Fabrics.  This stuff is so cozy, soft and very stretchy, feels a bit thinner than standard cotton/poly sweatshirting.  I was happy to have a few run throughs done because I already knew the pitfalls.  Really happy with this - and this time I did snip the hem after sewing it on the machine, so that I could overlock it cleanly.  

 

 

On all three versions I heavily leaned on my sewing machine. I sewed each part of the diamond and the front with the machine then overlocked to finish it.  When sewing the top and bottom of the diamond together, I sewed just the match points until they matched (3 tries...) and then sewed it together.  I think this is necessary to get good matching on all these geometric bits.

This is a project that takes more than the usual hour for a sweatshirt, but it is so fantastic that it's worth it.  I'm done with Dias for now but I am looking over Misusu's other offerings. I loved the instructions, the drafting was great, the detail was fantastic.  Rare these days.  

some new knickers: Orange lingerie Montgomery briefs

 These are very pretty. 

The question was, of course, whether they would adequately translate from a pattern made out of plastic (that's YOU stretch lace and power mesh) into a pattern made from my cotton fabric scraps (the goal).  

I started by following the instructions (is it funny that this is rare, unusual, and requires comment?)  I made size S. I used some navy power mesh from my stash, matching lace, and some pink picot elastic.  The instructions are fine. The problems are technical.  Four layers coming together on the back of the crotch.  A weird edge where that all meets up.  Other than that, the fit was fine.  

I cut out two pairs of mixed rayon and silk jersey.  In retrospect I should have gone for the beefier interlock I had sitting around, at least for the front.  One pair got entirely scuppered as I decided to change things up a bit and sewed the edges of the crotch pieces together with right sides facing, then flipped the crotch out to avoid putting elastic along the crotch piece. However, the result was that the front and the front crotch didn't match up.  It was not a salvageable mistake.  

Take 2 I did the same thing but I *also* did that to the front, which I doubled.  So I avoided any picot elastic, which for me is a good thing as all the stuff does is shred all over everything in the wash and then fall apart.  I did a clever thing where I put the crotch into the front and sewed them together inside out, so I got a nice finish there too.  Of course I was still stuck with four layers at the back.  This pair of underwear is wearable, but very loose.  I won't avoid panty lines - because the back won't really fit under tight pants!  Haha I will wear them to bed anyway.  I'll try out the plastic ones too and see what I think.  I have a lot of power mesh and it would be nice to have a way to get rid of it.  I don't really have much lace, because I dislike sewing it and I dislike wearing it...

This was a fun experiment but it seemed to conclude in: 

Acacia panties are best. 

Watsons are just a bit narrower so they cut my butt cheeks in half.

Between these two patterns I can happily upcycle tshirts into underwear for me and all of my friends basically forever...except when we don't want pantylines. 

Barry briefs are for when I figure out the coverstitch binding attachment. 

And Esme panties by Evie La Luve are the epic wonder for avoiding pantylines and looking fancy.  I think it just won't get any better than those.  (Which just led me down a wormhole of panty patterns so expect me to be trying out two more in the next few weeks....oooopssss.)

Papercut Soma swimsuit review plus a guest visit from the Cottesloe

I had always planned to make another Soma Swimsuit (available here).  My first run through was in 2017 and it appears, shockingly, that I forgot to blog about it.  Gosh so much potential whinging, wasted!!  Also it seems lately that Papercut are taking many of their older patterns out of print as they no longer have this on their website.  It seems to be available by some stockists.

I made a size XS, and the fit was good. 

The idea on a remake: I wanted to make another suit and from that, measure the gaps and redraft pieces to basically replace all the fold over elastic and bra strapping (I'm not sure why I had to make another one to do this, but that was the idea.)  I bought this fabric something like 2 years ago with this pattern in mind, but couldn't quite settle on a background colour.  I wear my other version of this suit quite a bit because it has a back clasp and I need to take my suits off in a carpark with cold fingers, and so I finally gathered the bits and committed. 

While it does come together relatively quickly, this is not a fun sew.  The bottom chest FOE struggles to reach over the layers (I managed to use extra wide stuff on my first suit, but on this one I had to really stretch it to cover.)  There are spots on the sides where you have five relatively shifty layers that you have to sew, and my machine behaved accordingly (thread nests and broken needles.)  I made it worse by sewing the pants outer layer together inside out and I had to give up and just cut a new one, I couldn't break the overlocking and salvage the pieces.  (Luckily I have a huge piece of this star fabric!)  I didn't follow the instructions for the bottoms this time around - you are meant to use swimsuit elastic and fold over twice.  I overlocked everything together cleanly then added a waistband instead. 

This suit also uses a bunch of bra strapping.  I never have much bra strapping, and definitely not all in one practical colour, so in both of these suits, half of my bra strapping is, er, bra channelling, of which I have a strange, massive stash. 

I recall feeling the same way about my first version: if you don't look too carefully at the insides, it's totally serviceable!  Since I know it will go into high rotation in my surfing wardrobe, I'm happy.  But the idea of spending more time with this pattern, even to redraft away the annoying bits, is becoming less interesting as I have discovered the Cottesloe swimsuit pattern, which takes an hour to make including cutting, is totally adorable, and honestly I would prefer to just make a simple suit these days than faff around creating something crazy.  I have made 2 Cottesloes and I plan to retrofit them with swimsuit clasps.  I will also probably make 2 more because I have way too much swimsuit fabric. 

After seeing that there are nearly no reviews of this swimsuit in rotation, I sighed a great sigh of sadness as I really didn't plan in life to be a swimsuit model, and committed to some IRL photos.  I'm going to swallow up all the defensive things here and just say you can tell which suit I feel the best in:

 

The first (black) version was thrifted from some polyester top, with heavyweight black swimsuit lining.  It's held up pretty well in the 4 years since I made it, but really it's only gotten into heavy wardrobe rotation in the past year.  

The bra strapping can occasionally be annoying on the sides as it comes around to the back clasp, and on the front side where it reaches into my armpit a bit.  The crossover front is a feature I quite like despite the narrow FOE holding it together.  It also hides ok under clothes which is good as sometimes I spend a lot of time checking for surf and then give up and go grocery shopping instead. 

The dart on the front does create a pointy boob shape, and as you can see, my white bottoms with the added on waistband are tighter than using elastic. 

 

Since the Cottesloe has snuck in here:  I cut a size 4 in the Cottesloe, and I only used my overlocker - cut a lining exactly the same and sewed them together, flipped right side out then added the bands - for both top and bottom (learn from me and DON'T forget to burrito the top!!)  I care not at all that my lining slips out just a tiny bit - I used actual lining fabric on the jungle print because I had it handy, and I think using swimsuit material makes it a bit firmer and probably wouldn't do that. 

 

Go forth and make your own swimwear, and strut that stuff unapologetically!