i am Artemis jacket pattern review

 I planned this quite awhile ago. It was something like, I saw the fabric in the shop (Draper's in Auckland), I knew that a large scale plaid would be a terrible pain in my arse, I still for some reason couldn't resist, and I thought of this pattern which I have considered for other difficult fabrics a few times.  It doesn't use too much yardage (though the width is important for the attached sleeve).  Also, it's unlined.  That has made it tempting for a number of challenging fabrics, but anyway I bought the plaid.  And it's a huge thick fluffy pile, which is annoying as it takes up a lot of my sewing fabric shelves.  That meant the project stayed near the top of the list.  I got a lot of sewing done this winter because we were moving and I wanted to clear out some projects!  

Many details: buying the pattern. Buying tracing paper for the pattern.  Tracing paper doesn't exist in New Zealand and sadly, the sewing tracing paper sold by Miss Maude is terrible - it's not actually transparent at all but I bought it together with the pattern.  I am patterns all need to be traced.  I made size 38 per the pattern chart.

 Once I committed, I really put pattern matching as the priority. Sewing this is extremely easy. Pattern matching, meh. Not so easy.  B for effort.

 

So it was done pretty quickly and here we are.

 

 

It's very soft and cozy. The pockets droop a bit more than I would like, and the sleeves are relatively narrow compared to the rest of the fit, though I think that's good as otherwise it would look sloppy.  I think the grown on sleeve is a bad fit for me due to the width of my back.  I need to size up but then it's not proportional.  There is overall nothing really wrong with this but honestly, this is one of those projects I make not because it will suit me at all, but because I am just sort of artistically curious how the fabric and pattern will go together.  There's no chance of me ever wearing this, even though it's cute and cozy.   

Though honestly I might come back to the pattern with a cozy and boring fabric and make a sweatshirty jacket thing.  That might be more my style.

i am Cassiopee, not for the first time

 I finally made this pattern with the recommended fabric. 

Here are the previous iterations in orla kiely and ice dyed fabric.  Size 36.

Rayon that's been in my stash with this fantastic print. I got it at Tessuti Fabrics when I was buying something else. The colour scheme isn't my usual and I thought it would be nice for a change.  

I shortened the dress a few inches, I shortened the sleeves to below the raglan attachment, enough that I thought it wouldn't gape when I raised my arms. 

I always sew down the facings but you know, I never thought about how I could make it a skinnier facing and sew it down closer to the edge.  I thought about that too late and didn't do it.

Pockets harvested from something else on my floor.  

It's really such an easy sew, there's not much to say.

 

 

I wore it that night to dinner.  I am finally happy with this pattern.  A fabric with no body is best suited to this very wide dress.  I see there's a new jersey option, which would be interesting.  It's so wide that I feel like you would need to narrow it to make a nice jersey dress though.  All the online pictures don't make it look as wide as I felt in my previous iterations! 

i am Cassiopee dress + some ice dye

 I've really wanted to make a second Cassiopee (first is here) and maybe cut down the sleeves.  In silk.  I bought some lovely flowered silk.  Not enough.  Drat!!  This dress is so wide, I think optimally a super light fabric will be amazing but I have to quit my habit of buying 1.5m of everything.  It's easy to think a simple dress doesn't take up much fabric, but these huge raglan sleeves consume, and any gathered skirt always needs more than you think.  It would be possible to narrow this pattern by taking out some of the side seams of the skirt and sleeves, but it would be quite a major change to the pattern pieces.

Cue my new ice dye obsession.  White jacquard cotton from The Fabric Box (along with so much other white fabric!  White is not safe!  Ice dye it all!) Colours are fuscia-navy-cobalt which according to the Procion colour chart should create a mixed dark purple.  I purposely added different amounts of the dye to different parts of the dress by cutting out all the pieces, overlocking all the edges, then dyeing them, and then sewing it!  (triple the work!!  Plus I am not sure you can even tell!)

 

So of course this is not really a lighter fabric than my first attempt, but at least it has pockets (did you need to ask? Bardon pockets.)  When I made the first dress, my love for Orla Kiely was outweighed by my annoyance at oversized things and I gave it to a friend who wore it as a tunic over leggings.  Now I'm looking at it and it seems all the great oversized fashion of NOW, so I was just ahead of the trend.  I don't know how this particular version of the dress will go but I'll give it a chance in my wardrobe, might try layering it over a silk slip or something. I also might chop down the sleeves at some point.

Still want to make a short sleeved one in silk.  I think that's really where this pattern would shine! 

i am patterns Magdala dress aka The Layer Cake Dress

This pattern came out in October, when I was thinking about the sew frosting challenge.  In theory, I would have whipped up this fantastic ruffly dress in time for the challenge!  In reality, nope.

First of all, it's actually a top (here.) The dress is an add-on extra.  And I was committed to making this dress from literally the first minute I saw the pattern.  It had nothing to do with sensible, or with what I needed, etc.  I mean, clearly what I needed was...the layer cake dress.

Thus started an odyssey.  In Flagstaff, there is no fabric, and I didn't need just one perfect fabric but two perfect matching fabrics in different materials. I started out with the silk-cotton voile that later became a Metamorphic dress (here) and some dun-coloured cotton twills which were too thick and didn't match well. I considered silk noil to go under the voile, but it was not quite the same shade of blue and I wasn't convinced.  In December, my cousin asked me to make him pants and so I bought some random fabrics at Mood, including a perfect forest green cotton poplin.  Now for the voile...I hunted far and wide and knew my goal was in sight when I discovered cotton-silk voile at The Fabric Store. The Colourway is Abbey Pool Y.

I went by my measurements on the pattern envelope and planned to cut out a 38, forgetting that I have made i am patterns before (here's the Cassiopee) and they are boxy and oversized.  I did spend a lot of time looking at the model pictures before I decided to lop off a good 6" I think of the length.  I took half from the bottom and half from the middle of the bottom layer, meaning I also shortened the bottom ruffle.  I didn't make any other changes to the pattern.

I wasn't in any rush to sew this up.  I hemmed all the ruffles manually with a micro hem, that took a day or two, then I put the dress together -it's quite fun to see the pieces come together, and see how far I've moved from my ruffle-and gathering-hating stance?

The collarstand and collarfell (what a perfect name for it!) were fine though I suspect instructions elsewhere are better (the Deer and Doe Bruyere comes to mind as having very nice instructions).  Mine is fine.  Not quite perfect.  I topstitched the collar to make it look neater, as I also did on the button bands.

As for the buttons...the shitty sewing machine sort of made most of them ok.  Enough that I could get the buttons into them once.  They are definitely the worst buttonholes I've ever made.  The best news is that this dress is so huge, I can pull it on over my head and will never open the buttons.  Success!

The worst quality bit is the armhole binding.  I was using store bought binding and despite that it gathered all over the place.  There's a funny angle at the depth of the armhole that I struggled to get around, and if you look at it with any attention you can see that it's not well done.  I tried to iron everything flat, with limited success.

I was a bit fragile feeling after some of these weak efforts - bad buttonholes, only ok collar, terrible armholes...

Then I realised once I put on this massive dress that no one will ever notice any of that because I have created a masterpiece of ridiculousness.  To prove it is streetworthy, I applied my cardigan and smooshed the ruffles into compliance.  The wind also arrived, to help keep things interesting and show you the way the ruffles shift about.

Apologies for so many photos, I had a lot of fun and figured I'd share them all.

Everyone at work deemed this dress adorable.
But I will make the next one in a size 34. When it's time for the next one. 

i am Cassiopee dress in Orla Kiely stems

I'm in love with this fabric and for once found a great showcase for it.

The fabric is some Orla Kiely remnants, from the etsy shop Saved Fabrics, and the idea that I'm also saving this great fabric from the landfill is a nice perk.

The company i am patterns is new to me - I discovered them right before I left Arizona, and bought a bunch of their patterns to try.  I made the Cupidon (here) and found it to be very simple and consisent with what I expected.  They have a fun aesthetic and I'm excited to try more of their stuff too, eventually.  I really appreciate that they have English translations.

I cut a size 36.

I have a large length of stems and quite a bit of the yellow hatched fabric, which is slightly denser and with an almost water-resistant feel although I believe it's still 100% cotton.  For that reason I used it for the skirt, and also to keep the pattern less busy.

This was no. 1 of my dress project: goal is to find 2 dress patterns that I really like and want to keep mixing/matching/working on to finally attain a good fit. As you can imagine this pattern isn't in the running for that.  It is cute in this fabric but it's too simple to be really interesting and it's not a shape I'd like any more of.  However, it was so very fast to make and it's pretty foolproof for a variety of body shapes; as the pattern remarks you could also use any fabric - something thick and furry for winter might be nice, although I'd probably narrow the skirt so the gathers don't become overwhelming in a heavy fabric.

It's hard to have more to say.  I used french seams on the body, but didn't on the sleeves and I top stitched them down, and because of the gathers I didn't attempt french seams on the waist.  It was a super easy, fast sew and I know it's shapeless, but I think that the cool fabric makes up for that. Plus it's really nice for layering!

However I didn't shorten the skirt.  So if you are average height or above and you don't want a tunic dress, you might take that into consideration. I'm 5'4"!