White Jumpsuit - Pattern details

Here are some additional deets on how I put the white jumpsuit together.

I was able to find some additional photos of the original jumpsuit online, which helped me figure out how it was made and where the seams where.

Now onto the Frankenpattern:
For the top part, I used Vogue pattern V8831:

It is a loose-fitting knit top with cowl neck, princess seams and two-piece dolman sleeves. I originally chose it  because it had the "custom fit" options, with different cup sizes to choose from. The two-piece dolman sleeve also turned out to be perfect. All I had to do was sew the top seam of the sleeve over the shoulder only, and leave the rest open to create the top slit.

I lenghtened the sleeve above the elbow to get the "hamac" effect, as well as below so that they would bunch up a bit on the forearm.

The princess seams where the only part that I didn't want, as the original jumpsuit doesn't have any bust shaping. My model is small busted, which made removing the princess seam easy, especially using the a-cup pattern (no sba necessary!), the curve was already pretty minimal. I just overlapped the two front pieces by the amount of seam allowance. Where the overlap was bigger, I added the difference to the side seam (which in hindsight I probably didn't need to do since I ended up taking at least 1 cm in at the sides  and back seam on the final garment). I did the same thing to the back pieces.

Overlapping the edges of the princess seam to get rid of them.
This only worked because I was working with an A cup and the curve was minimal.

For the pants, I asked K. to bring me a pair of well-fitting RTW pants to copy.

I looked online for different techniques on how to copy RTW without taking the garment appart and ended up following this tutorial, which uses painter's tape. I copied the front and back leg and left out the waistband.

I used painter's tape to copy the pant legs

then I pasted the tape onto tracing paper and added seam and hem allowances all around

Next, I needed to make the top and bottom into one single pattern, since I didn't want an horizontal seam at the waist. Instead of cutting the top on the fold, I added seam allowance to the CF and CB so that it would match to the pant's center seam (crotch).

To figure out where to connect the two, I measured the distance at the "center seam" between K's waist and the top of her pants when worn (below the waistband). I made a mark at the same distance on the top pattern below the waistline and drew a horizontal line perpendicular to the Center Front.

The top of the pant pattern isn't actually parallel to the floor so I  drew a line starting at the top of the side seam and perpendicular to the grainline. Then I overlapped the two lines, lining up the center seams. Finally, I trued up the side seam between pants and top and bam, I had a one-piece jumpsuit pattern!

For the hood, I used the hood pattern from BWOF 118-11-2007 ( I was looking for hood patterns in my stash and randomly found that one).

The pattern has darts at the shoulder line, which made it easy to measure how much I needed to add to the front and back to match the top's neckline. Once i adjusted the back, I drafted the cowl addition to the front part of the hood to match the total length of the neckline.

For modesty I didn't extend the neckline as low as the original jumpsuit, but I still wanted the cowl to drape lower than the neck opening so that it reached as low as the original. Instead of drafting a perpendicular angle at the bottom of the cowl I made it at an approx 120-degre angle. This meant I ended up with a point at the center, which I later recut on the garment to be round.

Inside the hood I added a small thread loop so that K. could use a bobby pin to keep it up over her head. Because of the added stay tape to prevent stretching, the seam allowance of the neckline where sticking up and showing so I stitched it down with a couple rows of topstitching which are hidden under the cowl.

Because the fabric was so stretchy, and the neckline so wide, I didn't need to add any sort of closure, which was another big time saver.

Here's a final comparison of the original and my copy...(You can see the neck opening doesn't go quite a low on mine but the neck cowl goes  about as low). Pretty good, eh?

2001 Called, They Want Their White Jumpsuit Back...

Here are the final photos of the jumpsuit!

I'm really happy with how it turned out! I only made a few adjustment tweaks on the final garment - because I had done the muslin in a woven garment, there was a bit more ease to the pattern than requirered with knit fabric, so I just took in here and there and voila!

I have to say, once again it was nice to be working out the fit on somebody else than myself - no weird contorsion required in front of my bathroom mirror.

My coworker told me the outfit was a big hit at the party she attended down in Palm Springs - as she was getting out of the car, people turned around wondering if she was some sort of celebrity and she got lots of compliment for it.

 

Overall, this was a pretty fun project to put together, and thankfully didn't present any major fit issues - the tight-fitting/knit fabric element certainly helped in that matter. Another adantage of the knit is that I was able to leave all of the edges raw - and as you can tell, between all the slits and cowls, etc, there are a lot of them.

The final fabric used is a bamboo/lycra blend found at Dressew. It's super soft and drapey, extra stretchy and sufficiently opaque (a lot of white knit fabric tend to be see-through) but surprisingly heavy. I added stay tape to the entire neckline as I was affraid the weight of the cowl might end up stretching it down.

I'm planning a post with a bit more details about the pattern and adjusments I made to get from three different patterns to one frankenjumpsuit.

Spring

Spring is here! We have had amazing weather here in Vancouver BC, with temperatures unusually warm for the season...Unfortunately that means this baby, which is still sitting unfinished on my dress form, probably won't see any action until next winter - no biggie, story of my sewing life...

One of the reasons that it's been left untouched for so long (I started it in early february if I recall correctly), is because I have been busy with this guy:

I know, it doesn't look like much...This might give you a better idea:


Kylie Minogue - Can't Get You Out of My Head from Sonny London on Vimeo.

Yup, I'm making the white jumpsuit from Kylie Minogue's 2001 video of Can't Get you Out of My Head...It's not actually for me: a woman that I work with is going to a "White Party" next week and she asked me a little while back if I would make it for her.

Now, I don't usually make clothes for other people, but this sounded like a pretty fun project and not overly complicated. So this is obviously the muslin, the final fabric (a crisp white lycra-bamboo blend knit) is all cut up and will be all sewn up before the week-end is over.

It was fun to make as I basically had to piece together the top, altered from one pattern, the bottom copied from a pair of pants she owns and the hood/cowl, traced from another pattern and redrafted.

I'll share more details on the pattern pieces soon, and hopefully will get a picture of the final garment...

After that, once the fur vest is done (and put away), I want to finish a button-down shirt I started a few months ago, get started on a muslin for a pair of linen pants I've had in mind for quite a while now, and possibly knock off this pretty Tibi top using this equally pretty cotton voile found at Dressew last week.

source: The Glamourai

In other totally unrelated news, I got these babies today:

 

My first pair of skis! Can't wait for next season to ride them out!

This is how they do it at Hermes

I found this video on a french blog today, and wanted to share: this is how they hand-sew the hem of their scarves at Hermes'



She makes it look easy, doesn't it? I'm impressed...

WIP: Playing with (Faux) Fur

 Here's a sneak peek at my latest take on the current pink fur trend:

The picture really doesn't do justice to the brightness and softness of this fur

I've been totally inspired by this Versace number and it so happens that I recently managed to get my hands on some (free) left over hot pink fun fur. It was a sign: I had to go bold for my next project, and so, I am.....


Just kidding.


Although I do admire anybody who can pull off something like that and make it work as a fashion statement, (like this lady) I don't think it's quite...me.

So the truth is, I've been working out the muslin for the fur vest in this pattern:

Why bother making a muslin, you ask, it's a loose fitting vest?...Well...Exactly.

It's the only pattern I could find that somewhat resembled the vest I have in mind, but I didn't want to end-up with a boxy, shapeless garment, especially for 40 bucks worth of faux-fur...

So I made a muslin and I'm glad I did.

The back was WAYYY too big. I didn't want to add darts as I was afraid they would create to much bulk. So after playing around and pinning extra fabric here and there, I actually ended up with princess seams.

The back was big enough that I managed to recut all the pieces from that one original piece

The front was pretty straight forward at first. I pinned a horizontal tuck of about 2.5cm above the bust and did a SBA. After that I still had extra fabric at the armhole that looked like it wanted to become a dart. I tried pinning said dart and rotating it to the side seam instead of the armhole but that was a fail (haven't had much luck with rotating darts in the front so far....). So next I tried lowering the armhole, and as I was about to recut a muslin of the front, I remembered that I did, in fact, have some (free) left over pink fun fur from a recent stuffed animal project, so I cut my new front in it.

Once sewn up, the extra fabric and armhole gap were still there but it didn't look as bad as on the cotton muslin. I managed to remove the excess almost completely by doing a sloping shoulder adjustment and taking in a bit at the front side seam just under the armhole.

I'm really glad I had the opportunity to try the adjusted pattern on the fun fur. It worked out great as the nap of the pink fur is pretty similar to that of the faux-fur I'm planning on using (i.e fairly long), so I can expect this to be quite accurate with what the final garment will look like. Also, I wasn't sure if the flaws showing on the cotton muslin would show more with the fur (due to thickness) or less or the same, and now I have my answer: small wrinkles definitely show less, thanks to the thickness, and although main flaws are just as obvious, it was easier to find a satisfying fix with the fur rather than spending more time tweaking the regular muslin.

I've made all the adjustments to the pattern now and I can't wait to actually cut into my faux-fur...

Knitting: Chunky and Cozy

After this knitting fail, I wanted to make something quick and easy. I always wanted one of these chunky cowls that look so comfortable.

I had two skeins of Loops and Thread Cozy Wool yarn in Golden Rod from Michael's. I'd actually already used one skein to make a different cowl last year, which I wasn't in love with...So I took it appart and combined both skeins to make this cowl.

 

I didn't use a pattern, it's just a seed stitch that I knitted in the round on size #11 needles. I can't remember how many stitches I cast on, probably around 100...
I really like the color, it adds a bit of peps to any outfit and it kind of goes with everything too.

 

 

I've been wearing it outside with my winter coat, as well as inside with sweaters and cardigans. It's already become a favorite...

I have two other knitting projects lined up: this winter hat as well as this cotton sweater for spring...

Finished Project: The 3-hour Skirt

After making this skirt for my friend Judy, I couldn't help but make one for myself.

It's such a simple pattern, but I really like the 70's vibe of the style, so when I found a dark blue wool remnant at Fabricana, I knew I was going to make myself a version.

Pattern is 116B from September 2012. Burda tagged it as "easy" and it definitely is, starting with the fact that it only has two pattern pieces (4 pieces to cut with the lining), front and back, both cut on the fold. There are 2 darts in the back, two in the front and an inverted pleat at CF, which is the main design detail. Simple but classic. 

 

Back when I made a muslin for Judy's skirt, it appeared that she didn't need the front darts (it added puckering more than anything else), so I felt confident I wouldn't need them either and removed them right off the bat, using this simple tutorial.

For my version, I didn't bother making a muslin, instead I took measurements on myself and transferred them to the pattern. The pattern doesn't have a waistband, but instructions specify that the top edge should sit 3cm below the natural waist. So I took my measurement 3cm below my waist and transfered it to the top edge with an additional 1cm on each side seam for ease. I also measured around my hips and transferred that number to the pattern, with the same ease. I think I could have done without the ease as in the end it feels like the skirt sits a little lower than intended, but I'm fine with that. Another change I made was to add 5cm to the length.

I didn't have quite enough fabric to do a proper hem at the length I wanted, so instead I used twill tape that I sewed to the bottom edge of the skirt, then folded to the inside and slip stitched by hand (similar to this technique). I didn't have dark blue tape on hand, and because I wanted to get this skirt finished right away, I just went with the next available option: baby pink twill tape. It doesn't look as neat on the inside as it could have but for once I put my endless quest for perfection to the side and just went with it. I'm 100% happy that I did.

This project was all about making something fast (took me about 3 hours, cutting included) and having the instant gratification of wearing it to work the next day (which I did!). And it turns out I really love this skirt, it's everything I had pictured and I know it's already a perfect addition to my everyday wardrobe.

My only comment would be that the fabric I used might not have been totally ideal. It's a medium weight 100% wool, and althoug it's a woven, it has almost a knit-like quality to it, with a bit of stretch. It's a bit too drape-y and light, and if you look closely the pleat isn't as neat as it was on the version I made for Judy. I would definitely recommend a thicker fabric for this particular skirt, but I have to say, my version is really comfortable so I hope it holds up well with time...