Spring and summer sewing #1: Caftan and stripes and a failure, oh my

Hello again, how is everyone coping? I feel like everyone I know had a really tough week this week, now that the novelty of working at home (or trying to) and kids being off school unexpectedly has worn off and the reality of the lockdown has really set in. Plus I have several friends who are sick/have sick family members, and many many friends who are facing serious economic uncertainty. Times are very hard, friends. Take good care of yourselves, whatever that means to you right now.

On a more positive note, spring is finally here in the northwest of England! I broke out my spring wardrobe last weekend and put a lot of heavier clothes away until winter rolls around again. I'm also sewing up a storm here in anticipation of warmer weather and sunshine. Bizarrely, despite the constant flow of grim news and ever-present anxiety, I am having a pretty creative period. The big tension right now is between my goal to keep control of the overall size of my wardrobe and my desire to distract myself from the news by sewing ALL the things. At the moment, wardrobe control is losing that battle.

Thus, after finishing the Not-Wedding Guest Jacket, I immediately decided I wanted to make several easier garments. Here are 4 successful easy garments and one sad failure from the last couple of weeks.

1. The Umbrella Caftan

Decades ago, when I was a kid in the 80s, my mum made me a really simple caftan style dressing gown that I ADORED and wore until it was quite literally threadbare. I decided now is the perfect time for a caftan revival. (And I'm not alone: I've seen one or two other people on Insta who obviously had the same thought!) My specific version was made with the intention of using it as a sort of throw-it-on house-dress/cover-up/dressing gown for the summer.

Burda 03-2011-12 pattern technical drawing

I used Burda 03-2011-12, a pattern in the great tradition of Giant Rectangles in Burda magazines. I actually had several possible patterns to choose from in my Burda stash, but I rather liked that this one is not quite as Giant-Rectangle-y as some, and has the placket feature (although that actually disappears into the print fabric in my finished garment).

My finished Umbrella Caftan

For fabric, I used this block printed super light-weight cotton I bought in 2018 mail order from India, with an umbrella and rain motif. (And yes, I did spend the whole time I was sewing singing Rihanna's Umbrella under my breath.) I made one adjustment: the stitching lines (shown above as a dotted line) as written were perfect if I planned to wear this as a dress or over e.g. just a swimsuit, but as I want to use it as a cover-up over PJs among other things, I added some extra width between the two lines so I could throw it on as a outer layer. The big down-side of this pattern is that the hem is about 30 miles long. I did a rolled hem using my rolled hem presser foot because trying to turn and press it all would have ended up with me losing my mind.

Umbrella/raindrop pring close up and the "wings" of the caftan

I really like this caftan. Actually, if I were in the habit of buying massive pieces of fabric I'd probably have made a dozen more of this pattern, I like it so much. (This particular version took 4.5m of 110cm wide with almost nothing left over, and even if you used 150cm wide fabric you still need 3.5+m)  Alas, I rarely buy huge pieces of fabric, and the few pieces I do have are not right for the pattern. India is on total lockdown right now, of course, but if/when my favourite Indian cotton print vendor returns to selling, I will be ready and waiting with my credit card so I can make at least one more.

2. The Multi-Direction Stripe Shirt

This is honestly my favourite thing I've made in a LONG time.

My new multi-direction striped shirt using a vintage pattern (Vogue 9906) and striped linen

I am having a love affair with stripes at the moment, and just keep buying and buying striped fabrics. This shirt and the t-shirt below are just the START of the stripes I have planned for this year. However, in some cases I bought the striped fabric ahead of any kind of sensible plan for what I was going to do with it, and I have therefore been searching for inspiration images on and off for a few weeks on Pinterest.

Inspiration image

This particular garment came about like this: late Thursday night I was scrolling through Pinterest in an insomniac haze when I saw this photo and really liked it, although it wasn't really right for the linen striped fabric I had earmarked for my next project. I saved it and carried on looking at other images.

Pattern envelope for Vogue 9906 -- though not my personal pattern envelope (which is a size 14 and also much more beaten up!)

On Friday morning, I woke up with a Eureka moment. My subconscious apparently put together linen striped fabric + contrasting directions + ??pattern?? and came up with: Vogue 9906, a vintage pattern I have pulled out of stash about 20 times since I bought it back in 2014. Every time I'd look at this 1970s pattern and think: I love this, but I don't know how that centre front seam is going to work out. Except now I had an idea that NEEDED a centre front seam as a feature. I decided I would look at making View A (top left in the pattern image -- short sleeves, no drawtring at the hem). (I left off the pocket, because I never add bust pockets.)

Very dubious attempt to see what a contrast stripe front would look like

On Friday I did a dodgy "test drape" on Flossie to see if I still liked the idea, pulled out the pattern and did some fitting adjustments (square shoulder, forward shoulder, rounded back, added 5cm to the overall length), and cut it out. Not on that list? An FBA, even though my copy was a single size 1970s size 14 and I am not a size 14, at all. This was meant to be a very over-sized top. However, on one of the previous occasions I tried to use this pattern, I did an FBA and added a side dart to adjust the pattern to the size it "should" be, in terms of ease, made a muslin and: NOPE. This time I just made the smaller version that fits totally differently to the way the designer planned but which I like a lot. The other change I didn't have to make was to narrow the shoulder, which is a constant refrain most of the time. I could maybe have shaved off another 0.5cm from the shoulder, but it's fine.

Back of shirt, and the collar/shoulder detail. The photo on the right is actually a better colour match to the real thing

And then Saturday, I sewed non-stop and got it done.

Finishd shirt on Flossie. I actually like how the collar looks when it's popped like that.

I love how this turned out. Seriously. LOVE it. And I really REALLY love the contrast/multi-direction stripe on the front. The hidden joy this project was that the sewing went really well also. I didn't sew much at all for the second half of 2018 and most of 2019, and so I felt pretty rusty when I started again this year. This shirt felt like the project where my skills came back to me and everything just flowed. This is not one of those things where I look at it and think "I love this in spite of all the pain it caused!" for once!

3. Loose Fit Tee x 2

Every couple of years I pick a new looser-fitting tee pattern and make a couple of them. This time I decided to use a pattern from the book The Maker's Atelier (Amazon UK link, but I'm not an affiliate or sponsored, also, I did NOT pay that much for it!) produced by the pattern company of the same name. I'm not sure what I was thinking to buy the book because it's really not all that exciting, pattern content-wise, but since I already own it and I liked the look of the slightly shaped t-shirt pattern called The Oversized Tee, I decided to give it a go.

2x Maker's Atelier Oversized Tee

I made two tees, one striped, one plain. The only change I made is that the patttern calls for a turn-and-stitch neckline, which: no, absolutely not. I bound mine the way I usually do instead, which also gave me the opportunity to contrast-bind the striped version. I don't mind the higher-than-I-usually-make neckline but I think if I made it again I'd scoop it a little bit. I've already worn both of these and I really like them.

4. A failed sweater

Burda 04-2020-116 garment photo and technical drawing (from Burda.de)

I picked out a few patterns from the most recent (04/2020) issue of Burda, among them this simple sweater with a collar detail (04-2020-116), for future use. I hadn't really thought to make it immediately, but on a whim, I decided to use it with a piece of medium weight royal blue fabric. It was one of the very first fabrics I bought when I started buying knits back in 2012, but somehow I never got around to sewing it up.

Look how much that neckline GREW D: The one fitting measurement Flossie and I are identical on is shoulder width, so you can see how this would be a problem!!

I am really not sure how to apportion blame for the disaster that followed. Part of the problem is the unwise combination of a fabric that slowly relaxed more and more as I sewed and did not bounce back AT ALL, and a pattern with a fussy neckline that required me to perform multiple passes over the neckline seams. I also made a mistake early on in the neckline sewing and had to unpick, adding to the stress along that seam. Also the pattern did not call for any kind of interfacing and I thought of adding it in far too late for it to be any use. No matter why it happened, the end result is the same: beautifully sewn neckline, but twice the width that it was when I originally cut it out. :( Shame, because I loved the colour!

I'm dismayed that I failed so hard on such a easy pattern but... I'm actually not sure that anything I tried to make with this fabric would have been successful, so in that sense I am glad that this was an on-a-whim project rather than something I had really planned and looked forward to making.

So that's my recent sewing round up. Next time on my sewing table: more stripes! even MORE stripes! and also me vs. trouser fitting, round 87.

Stay well everyone!