Sewing Jeans, the Second Pair

Second pair of wearable jeans, check!  These ones are my version of skinny jeans, which means close-fitting but not super tight.  They fit pretty much the way I want right out of the dryer, but after a few hours of wear they stretch out about 10% in width through the hips and thighs.  So, do I make my pattern smaller but risk not being able to get them on, do I live with the extra bagginess, or do I use a different fabric?  The next pair will have some spandex in them so I'll see how that works.  I still have a list of fitting changes to make to the pattern but I feel like each pair should keep getting better.  This has been really fun so far and I can't wait to have a whole new jeans wardrobe!

Sewing Jeans, part 3 - The Finished Product

Yay, the jeans are done!  I sewed the back in part 1, the front in part 2, and now it's time to put it all together.

For the most part this was really easy.  I basted the inseam together, all the way from one ankle to the other, with a long machine stitch.  The thigh area is longer in the front than in the back so I had to stretch the back A LOT.  (Which tested my patience A LOT, but I think the results were worth it.)  I then basted the side seams together with the chain stitch on my cover stitch machine.  I have to say that's a huge time saver when I know I'm going to remove a basting stitch - as long as I can find the right thread to pull the whole seam disappears in a couple seconds!  I tried the jeans on to make sure the fit was good enough, and yes it was!

I whipped out those chain stitches in the side seams, sewed, serged and topstitched the inseam (and left the basting stitches in place), sewed and serged the sideseams, and wow, they look like jeans!

The waistband was a little more time consuming.  I followed the suggestion in Kenneth King's Jean-ius class on Craftsy and cut a straight waistband then steamed it into a curved shape.  It's probably a great idea for someone with a fairly straight waist but I have a lot of curve between my waist and hip so I need a lot of curve in a shaped waistband.  Next time I'll try a contoured waistband so I can compare the results.

Otherwise the waistband went on quickly, except that I somehow made a little mistake on the front edge and forgot to compare the two waistband edges before topstitching, and they are absolutely not the same size.  To make things worse, my sewing machine completely refused to make a buttonhole between all those thick seam allowances.  I finally just cut it, zigzagged around it the best I could, added a few hand stitches, and called it a day.  I know when I'm beat.

I really like the "boyfriend" fit of these jeans when they're rolled up.  Not so much when they're not rolled up.  Then they just look big and sloppy.  But that's ok, these will be great spring and summer jeans. I've learned some things about how jeans fit my body and I'm already halfway into a slimmer fitting pattern. Regardless of style, these are the best fitting jeans I've ever owned and I'm really looking forward to making some more.

Sewing Jeans, part 2

I finished the back of the jeans in part 1.  Now it's on to the front!

The front has lots of pieces.  So many that it's hard to come up with the right names for all of them (since I'm drafting my own pattern and don't have the luxury of pre-named pieces).  Besides the two large front pieces, here's what we have:

Fly facing
Fly shield
Coin pocket
Side front
Pocket
Pocket facing

I cut my pocket and pocket facing out of some leftover quilting fabric, partly to add a fun colorful touch to my jeans but mostly because that's what I had on hand.  I cut the pieces with the lengthwise grain going across the body, and the pockets extend from the side seam all the way into the center front seam allowances.  This should reduce the stretch across my stomach and hold everything in, right?

Of course since I'm not following a pattern I started putting the pockets together in the wrong order.  I should have sewn the coin pocket to the side front, serged the curved edge, then sewn that piece to the pocket.  I ended up sewing the side front to the pocket first, then realized I needed to finish the curved edge so I did using a decorative stitch, then I attached the coin pocket.  Lesson learned.  Next time I'll do it right.

There's my really cute pocket!  Next I stitched the pocket facing to the jeans front along the pocket opening, turned, pressed and topstitched.  I attached the pockets to the pocket facings with a french seam along the bottom edge.  Then I basted the pockets to the fronts along the front edges.  

the WRONG way to offset the seam allowances at center front

I pretty much followed the directions from my basic pants pattern for the center front / fly.  That pattern didn't have jeans-style topstitching so it didn't go as smoothly as I hoped but it worked out in the end.  Of course I didn't take notes on how I SHOULD have done it so I get to figure it out again next time!  One of the tricky parts was getting the center front and center back seams to meet at the crotch.  The center back was between the lines of topstitching and the center front was along the edge of the fly.  I compensated for this by having the center front seam allowances match right below the fly, then offset the seam allowances below that so that at the inseam they were the same as the center back: 3/8" seam allowance for the left side, 7/8" for the right side.  Of course when I worked all that out in my head I had the left and right mixed up.  I even wrote down the wrong directions so I wouldn't get confused, I followed those directions, and I sewed the pieces together wrong.  The above picture is proof.  But it only took a couple minutes to realize my error and correct it.

And here is my finished jeans front!  I'm so excited that it really looks like a pair of jeans!  The finished product is coming soon...

Sewing Jeans, part 1

My desire to make my own jeans began a couple years ago when I wanted to make a pair of pants.  I thought it might be easiest to adjust the fit by comparing a pattern to a pair of pants that already fit.  I rarely wear dress pants so I thought I'd start by looking at some jeans that fit well.  I had several pairs that seemed to fit, but to make sure I decided I better take some pictures from the back.  Yep, I set my camera timer and took some shots of my rear end.  And I decided that day to never wear any of my jeans in public again!

Since then I've worn the offending jeans many times, because, you know, I had to leave the house eventually and a bathrobe just doesn't go over well in the grocery store.  But my quest for custom-fit jeans had begun.  I bought denim.  I bought patterns.  I bought two Craftsy classes (but didn't necessarily watch them).  And then I waited, but other projects got in the way and the jeans never materialized.  Until now, that is.

Because I like to figure things out on my own and not follow someone else's instructions, I decided the best way for me to start was to make a basic pants pattern, get it to fit, and draft a jeans pattern from that.  I used Vogue 1293 for the basic pattern, minus the pockets.  They have a lowered waist and the fit is slim and tapered, a fairly good starting point.

I made my first muslin without any fitting changes.  Then the fun began.  As with ready-to-wear jeans/pants, the front fit fine but the back didn't.  It's really not very fun or easy to fit the back of pants by yourself!  With the help of a tripod, camera timer, pins, trial and error, and a whole lot of patience, I managed to somewhat fit the muslin to my body and altered my pattern accordingly.

Then came muslin #2.  I had to talk myself into making several muslins before I even started this project or I totally would have given up at this point.  I hate making muslins, which is probably why I have so many nearly-completed projects that I know I'll never wear.  #2 didn't look great, but I kept plowing ahead, trying to get a better fit.

One thing that really helped in this process was that when I got stuck I put the project down and walked away.  Usually at night as I was falling asleep I would think of a solution to whatever fitting problem I was having that day.

By muslin #3 I was almost there, so I tweaked that version of the pattern just a little, drafted the yoke, pockets and fly, called the pattern Jeans #4, and cut it out of denim.  For pocket sizes and shapes I sort of measured a few old pairs of jeans and averaged or estimated measurements from there.  It work out fairly well, for the most part.

One thing I learned while measuring my old jeans:  in ready-to-wear the center back is between the rows of topstitching, not along the seamline.  That's the way I always thought it should be but I'd never actually measured before.  I'm not sure how sewing patterns handle this since I've never read the directions for any of the jeans patterns I own, but here's how I handled it:  I laid the back pieces (with yoke already sewn in place and topstitched - and in this case the pockets too but that was unnecessary) right sides together, with the right back seam allowance extending 1/2" past the left back seam allowance, stretching slightly to fit.  I marked a stitching line at 3/8" on the left back seam allowance (which would be 7/8" on the right back) and stitched along that line.

After stitching, I folded the excess seam allowance from the right back over the left back seam allowance and pressed in place.  Then I folded the whole thing toward the left back and topstitched two rows on the outside.  I used my topstitching foot for this, with the first row 4 needle positions to the left of the seamline and the second row 1/4" from the seamline.  It actually looks like jeans! Well, except for the weird grainline on the yoke but that will be fixed in the next version.

And here's the inside.  I serged the seam allowances together where the yoke meets the back and pressed them down.  I could have done a flat felled seam here as well but that would have created a lot of bulk at the point where the yoke and center back seams meet.  I haven't decided for sure how to do it in the future, but for these jeans I'm satisfied with this seam.

Ok, that's enough for now.  More jeans adventures to come soon!

Sewing with Half a Plan

Last fall, Stitcher's Guild announced the annual SWAP (sewing with a plan) contest for 2014.  This seemed like the perfect opportunity for me to 1. actually sew with a plan and 2. make a sewing commitment and work toward a goal.  It seemed simple enough: 3 3-packs + 2 wild cards for a total of 11 garments.  Honestly, I really needed to do this!  I spend most of my time at home wearing things I wouldn't be caught dead in out in public, my closet is getting pretty bare, and I went to Hawaii for a week this summer which meant I'd be seen by other people for a whole week. Definitely a good excuse for new clothes!

I started with a pretty good plan, I think.  3 pack #1 = two skirts and a top; 3 pack #2 = two knit tops and shorts; 3 pack #3 = 2 button-up shirts and capris; wild card #1 = white denim jacket (for the airplane); wild card #2 = casual dress.  I even had a color scheme in mind: "black, white and brights".  My go-to colors are pretty much black, white and fuchsia, and a nice bright turquoise could work well in the mix also.  So far so good, I was ready to go!

All of this happened last year, in early winter.  The only obstacles left were patterns and fabric.  (Hey, at least I had a sewing machine, right?)  I have some extreme fitting issues so most patterns require HUGE amounts of adjustments to fit me well.  I have one good t-shirt pattern, one adequate button-up shirt pattern, and a great pencil skirt pattern, if only I can remember which one it is.  It's way past time to come up with a good pants/shorts pattern, I had a jacket pattern that could be altered fairly easily, and I figured I could wing the rest.  So I felt pretty confident about the patterns.

The fabric on the other hand...  I'm pretty sure I live in a fabric desert.  It's probably because I'm so close to San Francisco, but I'm nowhere near close enough to just run to the Bay Area for a couple hours of fabric shopping.  No, it requires a whole day, and a willing husband to drive me because I don't do traffic.  Oh, and I've actually never found a Bay Area fabric store that I absolutely love and can count on to have what I want at a price I can afford.  My first breakthrough came in the form of an email from Mood, a half-price sale on a stretch sateen with a black, white and turquoise (sort of) print.  The colors were good, the print reminded me of Hawaii, and I could plan the rest of my wardrobe around it.

Armed with my inspiration fabric, I set out to find some co-ordinates.  I planned a fabric shopping trip in Los Angeles in December.  I don't know why I expected to find summer fabrics in December, but I did my best and here's what I ended up with:

1.  White stretch denim (ordered online from Fabric.com)

2.  Pink & black striped shirting from Mood LA

3.  Blue - gray striped shirting from Mood LA

4.  Teal-ish stretch denim from Michael Levine

5.  Teal knit from Mood LA

6.  Sateen print from Mood.com

7.  Knit stripe from Mood LA

8.  Knit stripe from Michael Levine

As of now (October 2014), only 4 of these fabrics have been made into anything.  Here are my results (the black capris are previously purchased):

And here's why I was sewing with only "half a plan":

1.  Because that sounds better than saying "sewing with a poor plan"

2.  I don't wear big prints.  Never have, never will.  Nothing personal against the prints, it's just not my personality.

3.  Teal is not a bright color and it's not a great color for me, although it definitely looks better in photos than in real life.

4.  The teal top (Vogue 8534) looked like it should fit with no alterations.  It didn't.  And the more I altered, the worse it got.  

5.  The teal skirt (self-drafted) flared from the waist.  It should have flared from the hip.  The knit is a little heavy so the folds stand out away from my abdomen, adding more bulk than I need or want.  It is also, in my daughter's words, a difficult length.  What looks great on a fashion model looks frumpy on a middle aged woman with short legs.  

6.  The pencil skirt hits at the widest part of my calves.  And it's not very pencil-y.  I spend much of my skirt-wearing time sitting at church where I teach teenage girls (among other things) to dress modestly and keep their clothing not too short or too tight.  I figure they'll go shorter and tighter than I do, and of course skirts look shorter and tighter while sitting.  I think in this case I over compensated.  

7.  The white denim I ordered ended up looking like polyester gabardine from the 70's.  I knew it had some polyester in it when I ordered it, but I expected cotton-wrapped polyester, not textured polyester.  I washed it thinking that might help, but it only got spongier.  I haven't ordered any fabric online since.

I didn't complete the SWAP, I have some clothes in my closet I'll never wear and some fabric in my stash I'll never use, but this was a valuable experience and I'm so glad I did it!  The t-shirts turned out great.  The one with shorter sleeves is nearly worn out because I've worn it so much.  The other t-shirt is currently my favorite article of clothing but since it's a medium weight poly/cotton/spandex blend I haven't been able to wear it much in the summer.  Once the weather cools off I'll be wearing it all the time.  I've actually worn the pencil skirt several times.  As long as I don't look in the mirror it's not too bad!  It's lined with stretch satin and it's super comfortable and luxurious feeling.  I guess I'll keep it until I replace it with something better.  The teal skirt might be re-cut into a straight skirt or it might be donated to charity, I haven't decided yet.  The teal top...  well it's a total loss.  I wore it once and felt so self conscious that I'll never wear it again.    

I'm still excited about some of the fabrics, even if they didn't work in my SWAP.  If I ever get a good jeans pattern worked out the teal denim will make some amazing skinny jeans.  The two shirting fabrics have some potential as well.  

My new plan, which will work much better for my situation, is to come up with a few basic patterns that I can use over and over again, and THEN I'll be ready to tackle a whole wardrobe.  First on that agenda: jeans.

Optic Neuritis - One Year Later

Last April my life got suddenly complicated (not to mention scary) when I suddenly lost much of the vision in my left eye. That part of the story is here.

Over the past year I've experienced small victories and big frustrations,  I've learned to adapt, to be patient, and to have faith. Thankfully I haven't had any kind of relapse or had any other symptoms that would indicate a serious health problem. Each day that passes makes me more confident that my doctor was right, this was a random event, a strange misfire of my immune system, probably triggered by an ordinary virus. I really don't like not having an absolute explanation or definite answers to my many questions but I'm grateful that for now my explanation doesn't include MS or one of the other autoimmune disorders that causes optic neuritis.

I'd guess I now have about 80% of my vision in my left eye. I can see most details but very little color in the center of my vision. It's like a gray film is in front of my eye. I also see slower in that eye. Not much registers with a quick glance but the longer I look at something the better I can see it. Officially my vision is 20/25 in that eye, good enough to pass the DMV vision test.  My field of vision is normal and my eye is working fine but as of December my optic nerve was still not a healthy pink color. Luckily my right eye still works great and in most situations I hardly even notice a problem with my vision.  I can drive and do everything else I need to do.  I don't feel limited in any way by my unusual way of seeing things. That doesn't mean I can do everything well, but I can do everything I want to do.

I've started wearing reading glasses a lot and that has felt like a miracle! Ok, so I'm 46 years old and I could have used reading glasses for a few years now but until a year ago my vision was good enough to see small print, just not good enough to see it really clearly and easily. Now without the glasses, for the first time in my life, there are things I just can't see. I have a new level of compassion for people who wear glasses.

My depth perception is still a little off. I've figure out most things. I can now serve food and eat without spilling although I still don't judge portion sizes very well. I can get things in and out of the oven without burning myself. I have to measure carefully when I'm cooking because if I'm not paying attention I can't tell if something is heaped up in the measuring cup. When someone hands me something I usually reach for it with both hands and that keeps me from missing or dropping it. The only problems I have are when a cashier hands me a receipt (it would look weird to reach for it with both hands) or when I'm working in the garden (lots of abstract shapes at all different depths). I think with my limited depth perception I might actually be able to learn to draw better. I've always had a hard time translating 3D real life into a 2D sketch. It's on my to-do list but I haven't found much time to work on it yet.

My vision seems to be a little worse in some circumstances. My left eye by itself doesn't seem to be worse, but my two eyes together don't cooperate as well when I'm hot or under a lot of stress.  Some lighting conditions cause problems too. I wear sunglasses in bright sunlight and that seems to make my vision almost completely normal. I see even better in the dark where there's less contrast between my two eyes. But somewhere between those two - overcast days or twilight for instance, when it's too dark to wear sunglasses but light enough to cause a little glare in my eye - that's when I have to concentrate really hard to see well. Fluorescent lights cause problems too. The CFL bulbs all over my house don't seem to bother me, but the long fluorescent tube lights in my kitchen are very disorienting. I also have a hard time with the fluorescent lights at grocery stores and at church. I suppose I could wear sunglasses indoors but usually if I feel too disoriented or annoyed I just close my left eye for a few seconds.

I've discovered two superpowers that I have now. There may be more but I haven't discovered them yet. The first is my built-in sunglass lens. If I walk outside into bright sunlight without my sunglasses I just have to close my right eye and then there's a nice gray film between the sun and me. I know I have to be careful not to damage my eye so I don't actually look straight at the sun or anything, but I might be saving myself some wrinkles by not squinting, right?  

I discovered my second superpower by accident. I've been trying to decide what color to paint a room and I'm notoriously bad at looking at a little paint chip and understanding how dark or light the color will look on a wall. I took some paint chips into my son's room because I like how his bedroom color is not too dark or too light. The paint chips I was comparing were a different color and I was trying (not very successfully) to compare the color values. In a moment of frustration I closed my right eye, and unable to see the colors I immediately saw the perfect value match! Yep, I have a built in value finder. The rest of the world can buy one on Amazon for $10 - $20. That superpower may only have limited usefulness, but I'll take it anyway.

You know, this past year hasn't been fun at times. In fact, a lot of the time it was really hard and I had to keep reminding myself to just make it through one day at a time. I'm not glad this happened to me, but I'm also not angry or resentful. We all have hard things to deal with. I'd gladly trade my hard things for someone else's easy things, but not for someone else's hard things. I also wouldn't want to give up the things I've learned. I know I have to be stretched, challenged, and pushed to my limits in order to be shaped into the person God wants me to be. I don't know if I'll see any more improvement over the next year.  I may get a little more color vision back, and it's even more likely that my brain will ignore my left eye more than it already does.  If nothing changes, I'm ok with that too.  I've got a great life, I'm healthy, and at 46 I think I can accept that my body doesn't work the way it did 20 years ago.  I'll embrace my new superpowers and I won't let a limitation define who I am.  

Back to sewing with a cozy flannel shirt

I know, it's been awhile!  It's hard to find time for myself in December and January.  In my real-life (aka paid) job I'm an accountant for our family business.  I won't go into detail, but December and January can get kind of ugly for me.  Throw in some dark, cold days and the craziness of Christmas and it's about all I can do to hold on until February, which fortunately is when my work deadlines are past and we start getting a lot of spring-like days.

I bought some purple and black houndstooth flannel in November and I decided I better get a shirt made out of it while it's still winter.  I'm trying to get a "perfect" button-up shirt pattern and I'm happy to say I'm getting closer.  I started with the pattern I used last spring for a chambray shirt.  I made the shoulders wider, the sleeves narrower, and I redrafted the collar.  I cut the front placket on the bias because otherwise I would have had to match the rows of houndstooth all the way across and that just seemed like too much work.

What I like about this shirt:  It fits fairly well.  I've got full range of motion in my arms and shoulders, which is something I can never find in purchased tops.  The fabric is warm and cozy, perfect for winter.

What I don't like:  The fabric is a little too thick for this type of shirt.  The seams are pretty bulky.  The collar still wants to stick straight out, even though the under-collar is cut smaller.  I'm happy with how the back fits but not how it looks so I'm going to start over on the back piece.  (No pictures - that's how much I hate it.)

I got a tripod for Christmas so I no longer have to balance my camera on furniture.  Unfortunately, my pictures still stink because I can't find a room in my house with both bare walls and good lighting, and my camera has some limitations.  Excuses? Oh yeah, but it gives me some problems to work on solving!