A real, useable garment

This weekend I still spent time decorating and remaking my sewing room.

I painted the legs of my ironing board white. This is a very old, very sturdy ironing board – which I inherited from my mother in law. Few ironing boards I have used are so heavy that they do not wobble when moving around the piece to be ironed. This one doesn’t budge. But the legs were ugly with stained, pox-marked and slightly pee-yellow paint and the board it self covered with a likewise stained and ugly cover I bought years ago from IKEA. So the board is practical but ugly. Now I am giving it a make-over and look forward to having a pretty ironing board to take its place in a corner of my sewing room. I love that I will easily be able to access it and do my seam pressing and final ironing – as well as doing my daily ironing in my pretty room. Previously the ugly board – and I along with it – were standing in the basement just besides the shoe shelves. Not a cosy spot to iron.

I have also painted the seats and backs of the two chairs I have in my room. I find it very practical to have two chairs at my sewing station – one for the sewing machine and one for the serger. This way I don’t need to move those around when I move between the machines.

The chairs are thrifted from my husbands work place where they were actually used in the sewing room there (he works as a stage technician at the Royal Danish Theatre where their costume design department is huge and goes through chairs very fast. There is still a lot of life in them for private use however and I am grateful to have 2 good chairs infused with professional creativity).

But sewing, well I haven’t really done much yet. One thing I have finished however and I am pleased with that – even if I am not too pleased with the actual making of the garment. I used a pattern from Stof og Stil (24022) making the shrug (the pattern envelope also includes a pattern for a coat). The style is cosy and as I have made it in bubble wool it is warm and fluffy. I lined all the edges with gros grain so the inside is looking nice.

But honestly it didn’t really feel like making a garment. I mean – I sewed two sides together from an H-shaped piece of fabric and that was it. No fitting, no construction, no matching pieces together (though I did manage to sew together the wrong sides of the H-shape – so maybe I am not really ready to take on something more complex!). But I like the shrug itself – it is easy to wear and I am sure I’ll use it a lot. And at least I have finished a project and put the sewing room to its proper use.

Such an annoying men's shirt

So this first blog post is something of a lament and not at all ‘a little something nice’. 

Having set up my sewing room (I know I am very fortunate to have an entire room to dedicated to sewing), which was previously an unused yoga room and before that my home office complete with my mother in laws old woollen and moth eaten sofa and desk that was pretty, but too small for modern office work (I suspect it would be great for writing love letters in the 18th century) I felt all the more ready to begin expanding my relationship with my sewing machine and my serger.

When I was a child I used to sew on my mothers Singer a lovely old school light green machine with an exposed belt and when I was 15 my grand mother gifted me her old reliable Riccard sewing machine which was more modern than the Singer, but still nothing fancy. I took teen-age design sewing classes after school during which I ate a lot of cake, tried making a silk bomber jacket which was all the rage in those days and dabbled with painting silk scarves which came handy as Christmas presents. I never really became good at sewing but I solidified my love of fabric, of imagining garments in my head and trying to make them come to life and I did become familiar with both sewing machines and the serger.

Today I sew on a terribly fancy Pfaff 2.0 Expression which has a computer and is very much more electronic than my previous machines. My serger is a Bernette 610D and though it is a noisy little brat it is reliable and it was much cheaper than its bigger, quieter sister. So I have my machines. I have my sewing room all set up with shelves, cutting table, good tools and fabric galore. And where does this put me? In a position to start sewing all those beautifully imagined garments that I keep seeing before my inner eye. 

So far I am a little reluctant to get started. I mean, cutting into that pretty fabric which I have envisioned to become something wearable and cool is so daunting. I am not sure I have the skills and what if it doesn’t come out as well as I would have liked? I have patterns lined up to give me some comfort (I am not quite ready to start designing from scratch although I have a knit pattern for a dress that I have designed myself based on an old t-shirt and which I have already made in 3 different fabrics with slight changes to each model – and I love each one of them; a navy stripy model, a brown, soft, velvet model and a party ready silver lurex model with a deep neck line). 

So I continue sewing squares. Yesterday I sewed a pillow cover for our sofa pillows. I made it from bubble wool with leather trimmings, gros grain and snap buttons. It looks pretty cool sitting alongside the other pillows in the sofa. I am rather proud as this was one of my first times working with leather and the first time using snap buttons. I am planning to sew curtains during the weekend. But these are square projects – I also really make something I can wear.

My husband dropped of one of his shirts in my sewing room asking if I could use it. The condition was good, the fabric something iron free and I instantly saw a refashion into a snug shirt for me with puffed sleeves. I don’t have a dress form, so I started pinning the shirt while wearing it and though I felt I measured quite conservatively (I didn’t want it too tight fitting) I took it in too far. And lesson learned – do not cut before sewing as you will find you have erred your measurements and you will end up with a shirt that cannot do up and cannot be saved; at least as a shirt. So I am frustrated. I feel my abilities in executing my idea are insufficient. I feel like a bad seamstress. And right now the shirt is lying on my cutting table mocking me with its tightness. I need to stand back and think what I can do 1) to salvage what I have and 2) how to avoid making the same or similar mistake again. 

I think I have a great idea to number 1. I’d love to cut the shirt top of at yoke level and sew this part on to a sweatshirt dress (I do love a knit dress) incorporating the puffed sleeves. I think that would look cool and I would get much more wear from that, than from an actual shirt. So good stuff. 

As for number to remediation I am thinking that I really need a dress form. I have an obscure vision of myself being at least a size smaller than I actually am and though my arms are quite flexible (thank you yoga) it is not easy pinning ones back. I also would like to see my garment 360 without having to get undressed and running to the hall entry to the only full size mirror we have every time I need to check the fitting. 

I am thinking of making my own dress form. It may be me trying to post-pone actually sewing something, but I hope spending time doing my personalized dress form will be what takes my future garment sewing from bad (or no) fit to great fit!
So my next sewing room project will be – with the help of my husband – wrapping my-self in duct tape. I am exited!