She Wears the Pants no. 15: Draped Cardigan

After I made no. 12, the draped minidress, I was less secure about my choice to size up to a M for this cardigan as well, but I forged ahead. My waist and hip measurements are M but my bust is S, so in this cardi I thought it was meaningful that it fit well about the hips.

The fabric is a drapey merino and tencel blend. It's a beautiful fabric, but it's relatively heavy and has quite a lot of drape for a loopback knit.

The pattern - I found it hilarious and so much fun to make!  It comes together really quickly and there's just nothing quite like Japanese patterns, I mean, the entire body is one single piece.

What I did determine: you should pull tension on the neckline binding between the shoulder seams, and then pull NO tension on it for the rest of the length of the cardigan. I pulled a little bit on it the whole way along, and I find the neckline is too loose, and the cardigan pulls inward because of my binding.

AND it's very big.  I like the sleeves a lot.  But the whole cardigan goes halfway to my knees!  Those models might possibly be really tall, but also my knit is heavy and has a tendency to pull downwards.

I'm happy about this result, but also disappointed, and I had to pause and remind myself that just lately I was confirming the need to make something multiple times before you get it right.  I'm not going to bother with buttons this time around - I had thought about interfacing the button part of the band, which would be wise if you can figure out which part it is!  It doesn't need to be stretched so the interfacing won't interfere that way - I would definitely interface in future, especially on a lighter knit.

There's nothing in my stash that works for this, but I definitely want to try again. I've been doing a lot of Alabama Chanin experimentation, and actually I think this might work perfectly with 2 layers of overlock cotton - they aren't very stretchy, but the two layers creates a substantial result.  There's room for improvement.  (I don't think I'll size down until I've tried a different fabric first.)

Drape Drape #5, V-neck dress

I had a huge pile of black jersey in my stash.  It was originally for a friend who ended up not wanting anything.  Since my stash is one single bag, I get annoyed when everything doesn't fit into it and I start coming up with projects to use up these big pieces of orphan fabric.  I was attempting to make it into the Goddess dress in the Drape Drape book, but I couldn't even succeed in tracing that pattern.  While perusing the book I started to get a deep yearning for the V-neck dress!  I remember it from Kim's version because I was just learning about Drape Drape when she made it and I was so impressed...it's unusual for the drape projects because it actually has a lot of structure in the top half, which is a nice contrast to the drapey bottom.

A trawl through the webs provided enough successful outcomes that I thought I'd do it.  I cut a size small.  Everyone has noted that it runs huge - particularly odd for Japanese patterns. My jersey is a cotton blend with spandex and is quite heavy. I found the pattern a relief to cut out, it was quite easy to identify the pieces and trace them (unlike that Goddess dress, although I like it I think I will never try to trace it again.)

I put in some effort to overlap the fronts quite a bit so I would have good coverage.  The instructions were adequate for the pattern and for the most part I was not confused.  The skirt though, the drapes...I did them a bit hesitantly and a bit delicately, and I think I could have draped more vigorously!  I didn't get confused but I took my time and found it pretty straightforward.  I also realised that you can't go wrong with draping because as long as both sides are the same it looks quite good : )

I did have to apply a zip.  The waist band is kind of empire waist, and is nice for shaping but is very tight- size small I think is about 32".  It fits exactly around my rib cage.  I interfaced it with some jersey-interfacing which is a bit stretchy but gives the jersey quite a bit more shape.

The dress is very comfy! I feel like the side drapes should be pockets!!  I keep looking down at them when I am walking wondering where my pocket is.  The dress moves nicely and feels good so it seems like a win of a project, and although the back coverage isn't perfect I think it's good enough for a summer dress.  I didn't try it but probably it has enough support that I don't need a bra.

Drape Drape 2, no 4 in stripey rayon

I bought a bunch of lovely fabrics to make into these tops - I was really surprised to find a variety of interesting rayon blends at Joann Fabrics, and they were all cheap.  But I thought I could eke out 1 meter of fabric...for a one piece pattern that calls for 1.4 m?  Oops.  That didn't work.  So this is the only fabric I had enough of.  It's a nice drapey rayon, with quite a bit less stretch than the cotton that I used for the first version.  It's a bit heavier as well.

I was going to raise the front neckline, but totally forgot.  Also, I had the fabric face down on the floor, meaning that the drape moved to the other side.  I forgot that a non-symmetrical pattern can't be flipped over at will...luckily I didn't care about the drape side.

I was going to do a nice Renfrew style neck binding...but I again forgot my sides and I sewed it to the inside.  Sigh.  I folded it over and sewed the edge down just to have a clean binding but it still looks rather nicer on the inside than the outside.  On this version I made an effort to clean up all my seams, because my first version feels very flimsy.  I still didn't sew the bottom at all since it is snug.

It ended up a bit tighter.  I might loosen the opening for the drape side armhole next time so that it doesn't cling to my arm.  It's still amazing! 

Drape Drape 2, no 4

Similar to the first drape project, the onerous part was sitting on the floor tracing out these big rorschach-blot monster pieces and sticking them together.  The piece was easy to cut, and then again I sewed it in the order I liked.  Basically it just gets folded over and then all the loose parts are sewn.  I did not pay attention to how you are supposed to roll and sew the drape side sleeve opening, and mine was a bit messy.  The Singer really showed how it didn't like knits here - I had to constantly tug my stitches to get them straight, and my final seamlines are wavy.  I attached the neckline as I did on the first drape project - I sewed the inside like a bias binding and then folded it over with the raw edge out.  I did initially hem the opposite sleeve, but my hemming was too tight, and so I cut the sleeve edge off.  I left the bottom raw as well.

I cut the S/M again here.  
The fabric is a mostly-cotton, very very thin knit, from one of the shops in Milan.

This turned out to be an amazing tshirt that I loved right away.  Lizzy was right!  I already have about three more planned, most of them in stripes.  I am not sure how to finish the neck and the sleeves better, though. 

Drape Drape 2, no 2

I admit it, I'm a follower, at least when it comes to sewing.

Lizzy got me interested in Drape, Drape - book by Hisako Sato, in case you haven't heard of it - in January, when she was overflowing with her plans to try out some of these patterns.  Initially I had zero interest, but while in Bern my interest grew since I was seeking projects that weren't equipment intensive.  (I got a sewing machine at least!)  I managed to buy some cheap mystery stretch fabric in Italy and got to work.

The most intensive part about the Drape Drape projects is tracing the pieces.  As others have mentioned, the pieces for all the projects are overlapping on 2 sheets, and so they must be traced.  Luckily, for this project the tracing is mainly straight lines and simple curves.  I used a 1cm seam allowance, not whatever was marked.  My measurements would have me be a M/L but I cut the S/M as I know people have said these patterns run large.

I basically folded the dress in half and then sewed everything in my favourite order (shoulders, side, hem) leaving the bindings for last because I do not like sewing them.  I found the lengths advised by the pattern - 80 cm neck and 60 cm armhole bindings - to be generous and ended up cutting off 10 cm from the neck and about 6 from each sleeve.  My technique for sewing these on is not very glamorous, I just started at one side, pulling some tension until I got to the end.  I didn't fold my "bias tape" over for a clean finish, just folded it once over to the front and sewed with the fabric edge out.  I think this look matches the style of the dress pretty well.  On the sleeves I decided to try just sewing the binding on the outside and letting the jersey curl naturally, but it required then finishing the seam inside and I may still later sew it down, so that wasn't more efficient.  I know others have used a variety of different options for these bindings but my goal was to avoid walking allll the way down to the basement to iron anything so I wasn't keen to actually iron my bindings flat.

Initially I wasn't sure what to think but sure enough this dress has really grown on me!  I love the drape after all.  I gave it a generous hem, which I just eyeballed (and yeaaahhh, I didn't iron it)  but even the ridges in my hem, um, match the drape.  When I put this on it was super comfortable so I'm thinking it's going to get quite a bit of use.  Especially if I can make it work-appropriate, as I'm being shunted back into the office for the summer. I definitely think of this blah taupe version as a muslin for a more beautiful set of stripes though.

I did finally learn why many people are afraid to handle knits.  My old Janome My Style 20 was not well known in New Zealand - it must be a model that has gone by other names - but it was a hard working beast and never caused any trouble with knits.  My stitches stayed even and I didn't have trouble getting good tension.  With my little plastic Singer, I had huge issues with tension.  I had to sew everything once normally on a straight stitch, pull it until the fabric flattened and the stitches snapped somewhere, and then resew the spot where the stitches snapped.  I'm sure that's not what you are supposed to do.  I've noticed that it left my seams very shaggy looking.  I don't know if it's because this fabric is a super super thin knit, or if it would happen with all knits.  I used a 70 ballpoint needle.

On the topic of the cheap mystery stretch fabric: fabric shopping in Italy is not, actually, a wonderland of cheap amazing things.  I tried out my luck in Como and in Milano.  In Como I found an expensive shop with some lovely wares (Chanel fabric!) and ended up with a few silk and linen scraps to try making into pants, but they weren't really cheap.  In Milan I checked out three places: Self-service dello Scampolo near Porta Genova, Tessuti Raponi, on Via Panzeri, and Tessuti & Scampoli, at Via Lario.  My experience was similar to shopping in LA.  I think I'm just not really keen on shopping for fabric when I don't know what I'm getting, and the huge bins of different coloured stuff turn me off really fast.  Luckily this time I had the drape projects in mind and so I concentrated on finding fine cotton or rayon jerseys. There is some great striped viscose in Bern, but of course it's 39 franks/meter.   

From Milan I ended up with 4 different pieces of stretchy maybe-mostly-cotton.  The sum total of my shopping was about 40 euro for these four pieces (a total of about 6-7 meters) plus the silk and linen pieces that I mentioned above.  Definitely cheaper than Switzerland...but still not very dreamy.