Merchant and Mills Box box dress, a review

I decided to make this as the final make before moving house.  It meant I didn't have a lot of bandwidth for anything complicated!  I assumed...it would be easy.  Well, mostly it is as long as you choose a fabric that doesn't shift around too much.  Also of course just before moving I found the absolute best spot for taking photos.  Of course!

Started out with the size hunt.  Sadly no blog reviews of this up anywhere so I turned to Instagram where indeed lots of advice was to hand. Seems this tends to be big, and the drop shoulder made me immediately think about future sleeveless versions.  Because of the reviews suggesting it was pretty roomy, I went with size 8.  It was not a good choice.  Being snug on the shoulders "worked" in that my shoulder is within the drop shoulder, but it's not the designed fit and it felt uncomfortable.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I think you are fine to go with the size chart (I would have made 10) rather than sizing down, unless you are narrow through the shoulders. 

Fabric is a beautiful piece of plaid...Mind the Maker...tencel.  It has the best drape and dry cool feel.  It is shifty.  It has vertical stripes!  Did I mention above how I wanted something easy? 

Also, this has a facing.  I really hate facings.  It's a small facing, and you can attach it down in a lot of places, but it is still rife with potential for flipping out.  

So I cut out the dress with a rather lazy grain, and pleated my pleats which just would not line up, and then corralled them down, still not straight.  (I really like the z-lines that you sew, this bit is very fun and feels like wild cowboy sewing!)  The dress was a simple sew after that and I was pleased with my choice of button.  The fit is not terrible but it is too tight across the shoulders.  To salvage the pattern I would do best at this point to turn it into a tank top dress and cut out some roomy armholes.  

 

Of course with all those mismatched front lines no way could I keep this, it went to a friend who suits that colour more and isn't nearly as picky as I.  

I think it's worth making again.  The facing is not avoidable, you need the back button to get the dress on or the neckline is too tight, and a facing is the best way of dealing with the front pleats.  But it's not too substantial and I was happy enough with it staying in place.  The way the pleats open out into the skirt is really lovely.  It feels like there's a lot of volume in the skirt but it's flattering.  I will probably skip the sleeve, and then make the dress or top and cut down the armhole til I am happy with the coverage.  No immediate plans to go there, but some food for thought. 

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.)

Szeki 7115 & the Japanese dress

Otherwise known as Japanese pattern-copy-hell.

We all know from Japanese pattern books that the pattern pieces are deceptively simple.  A few pleats here, a slight angle there, and a pattern piece which is functionally a big square turns into an amazing, truly ingeniously draped work of art.

Despite which, when one of my work colleagues offered to let me borrow this nice dress from the pattern designer Szeki, I said yes with enthusiasm instead of with foreboding.  The dress was still on the website as the "kimono dress" in another colour, though I believe the one I was borrowing is a few seasons old.

Here is the original dress that I'm trying to copy.
 

The fabric is a blend of linen and viscose which gives it a lot of weight, a certain crispness, but also luxurious drape.  I had to search to find a similar fabric, which I got from Germany on Etsy. The seller has vanished, but the fabric is great - it was about 50/50 tencel and linen with a slubbed texture - just what I wanted.

In the meantime I had some cotton that I had bought in preparation for this pattern, just plain lawn.  However what happened is that I tried to trace the dress onto paper, and something in the middle was getting lost.  This dress is 2 copies of one just about rectangular pattern piece, with a mid front seam and a mid back seam.  There's a shoulder seam that creates the armholes.  So simple...yet not.

I could not properly capture the curve at the shoulder.
I had to cave in and use my fabric to make a muslin.  I basically pinned it onto the dress and cut around it and then copied my "muslin" and basted the two pieces together.  Then I laid the dress over it and tried to figure out what I'd done wrong.

The complexity was compounded because both the front and the back are V shapes, and I kept mixing them up.

I was excited and so I bought some fabric in the interim, from Miss Maude.  It's the viscose by Atelier Brunette so it's still luxury expensive stuff, but much lighter and floatier than the Japanese dress.

After the muslin, I traced that fabric onto a piece of tracing paper, lined *that one* up with the dress again, and finally decided it was as good as I could get.  I cut out my first attempt.  Here you go:

I had planned to make it shorter than the original anyway, but I only ordered 2 metres of fabric so I ended up also not having enough for the full length.  I reshaped the hem after cutting, to try to approach the semi-tulip of the original, and probably overdid it.  I just overlocked everything because I had little faith in my final outcome.  

On my version the shoulders sit a bit further forward and I originally thought I had it way off.  I realised after some tugging that the weight of this dress does not pull it backwards enough, but that my v shapes were close to the original - the back V is a bit smaller.  My armholes are much bigger. 

I modified the pattern after this, taking a strip out of the pattern piece that would functionally decrease volume and decrease how big the sleeve opening was.  I didn't change the V neck.

And finally in the viscose-linen:

I felt very frustrated at the end of all this and glad to be done with it.  My second copy mimics the original with all french seams on the inside.  It doesn't feel the same as the original when I have it on, but I was really surprised by my photos.  They look so similar!

This experience was hard!  I'm going to be even more appreciative of complex yet simple patterns, especially Japanese ones, after this.  The original dress & the identical copy go back to the owner, but I'm keeping the viscose version for myself.  I think it'll do as a summer dress.

Aomori twist tee by Papercut Patterns

Ah yeah, I dropped everything when this collection came out.  The last Papercut collection held little of interest for me but I love the aesthetic and I love something about the simplicity of Katie's designs so I was enthusiastic to try anything at this point.  This top was the most interesting thing to come out of the Sakura collection as far as I was concerned, also I was looking for long sleeved tops right now so it was good timing.

I picked up the pattern at The Fabric Store in Auckland along with this cheap tencel - only 4 $ per meter!  It's a fine and drapey knit.

Overall the pattern came together quickly. I was puzzled by the binding and somehow reasoned that I had to sew it into a circle and then apply it, which I did, and which was wrong.  You apply it flat, and I think the directions are relatively clear on that.  I was able to salvage the binding without any unstitching by a lot of stretching on one side, which is now not visible in the twist.

My one gripe with Papercut is that she seldom shapes the sleevecap and I don't really need more batwing tops in my collection.  I know you can whittle that down into a better fit, but it would be nice to have shape in the shoulder and upper sleeve.

However.
I made an XXS.  Reminding, I am 32-27-37 with a super short torso, I'm 5'4" and apparently most of that height is in my neck.

My friend Ellie, who took these pictures in Dunedin (she said she took a thousand pictures) also tried this on and it looked the same on her.  She is often the recipient of my sewing and is proof that some things I've sewn have stood the test of time!  She has a bigger bust than I do but it did not help with the chest being uncovered, if anything she had more on show.  But I obviously opted to wear a tank top underneath for the photo shoot.


My reflections afterwards are that a twist creates a >< shape in center of this top, which means that by the nature of the curve, it's dipping low at the bust and high at the belly.  If I elevate the shoulders about 4 inches, 2 front and 2 back, it brings that twist up to something more reasonable but leaves my belly totally exposed.  Suboptimal.  I would have given up on this and left it at that but then Fiona posted her top which looks great.  It seems like she has a lot less open chest space than I do, and the twist itself sits right below her bust, whereas for me it was hanging rather lower and most of my bra was on display.

So I might scavenge all my merino scraps and make one from merino to see if a denser, heavier weight material occupies more space.  Tencel is one of the recommended materials for this top but I think it probably pulls too much, pulling the chest more open.  I recommend heavier knits unless you want the top to expose a lot of cleavage/bra and pull downwards.

I have made one other item from this collection and it also seemed really huge to me.  It could be part of the theme/aesthetic to have these be less close-fitting but when I'm already in the XXS I don't have much leeway to size down.