My Latest Project

Another thing I've been wanting to do-- show some of my own work.  And today, in the spirit of weekend projects, I'd like to share the last thing I finished.

The fabric was so totally inspiring.  I found it as a very rough scarf on my last thrift store outing.  It was a large enough piece that I know I could make some sort of garment out of it.  It's a Tanzanian cotton, but the motif reminded me so much of traditional Japanese fabrics that I decided this would be my first pass for the season at a kimono style garment.

Now: kimonos need a lot of yardage, and I really didn't have it in this piece.  So I went way, way, way back in the history of clothing and decided to do a very primitive T shaped jacket.  To accomplish this, I folded my fabric in half the long way, and then cut a slit up the fold that ran half the length of the fabric, creating a front opening.  After this, I cut away the corners of fabric to create the T shape.

The corners were then pieced together to form a kimono style collar, which I interfaced to encourage it to lay crisply.  The stitching of the body of the jacket was remarkably simple.  If you do this yourself, you will have to make sure to clip your corners where the body turns to move into the sleeve.  The sleeve will never lay right without this.  I attached my lining through the hem first.  This picture will help you understand why, I think.

I was lucky enough to spend about a year training under a tailor, and I just love the way tailored hems look.  With this garment, hemming first was the easy method to accomplish what I wanted, and it provided the most efficient and durable construction.  I was able to machine stitch all of the finishing on this.

The next step was to baste the center fronts and neckline together with the wrong sides facing each other.  I applied the collar to the inside of the garment first, and the pinned the front side of the collar in face and stitched in the ditch to finish it off.  I also ended up doing a topstitch around the collar, because even with the interfacing, it was not behaving as I wanted.  The cotton was a looser weave and had a mind of its own.  I'm a firm believer in beating such fabrics into submission by whatever means necessary.  Back on track though-- after that, it was a simple matter of pinning up the sleeve hems and topstitching them, with the lining set back a bit from the cotton.  If I were to do this project again, I would probably break down and handstitch the sleeve hems.  The machine stitching gave the hems just a titch more body than I really wanted.

Next time I will try to be patient enough to take pictures of my process!  I do plan to do a few more T shaped garments, and hope to post a tutorial about how to cut one in the next couple months.

Fashion Week Faves Part One

I love fashion week with a special devotion reserved for things that are a guilty pleasure.  I love the creativity.  I love the hype.  I even love the excess, but very, very guiltily.  I love the detail and clean construction.  I love watching what's happening with trends as they translate back and forth from street to runway to street.

Of course, I'll never own any of the things you see on the runway.  I don't have that kind of money, and if I did, I don't think I could bring myself to spend that way on clothing.  What I can do is get ideas though, and look for ways to have things inspired by the runway for myself.  With that in mind, here's my round up of favorites from New York fashion week.

I won't argue that most of this outfit from Theysken's Theory is a big yawn, but I'm digging the jacket.  It would be such an easy upcycle too!  All you need to do is find a men's suit coat that hangs over your acromion process about 2 inches.  (The acromion process is a fitting point on the shoulder-- a knobbly bone.  It lands right where a traditionally fitted armscye is supposed to fit.)  Bust out the sleeves, give it a nice finish by trimming away any awkward bulk and turning the lining and wool in to be whipped together.  This would work best with a jacket from the 80's or later.  Earlier vintage will be too substantially built up with padding to provide these kind of lines.

There's a whole combination of things to love here.  The wide sleeve on the coat, the brocade fabrics, the drop waist dress...  It's all designed for a girl thinner than me, of course, so if I did a version of this I'd have to make some significant changes to make it flattering.  I'm definitely inspired by the fabric choices in this ensem from Libertine, though.

This is one of the better looks I've seen from The Row for this collection.  I actually love their stuff as far as it goes, but to my mind, they're more about wardrobe essentials than about statement pieces.  The generally conservative take on fashion from these ladies means a lot of their runway looks are only so so to me, but their pieces mixed with other designers can really wow.  This blouse could definitely be a thrift store upcycle from three old pieces.  Not feeling the exaggerated cloche though.  It's a bit too far to the pith helmet place.

I have usually found Oscar de la Renta to be a bit too stiff and middle aged for my tastes, but this dress is doing a lot to change my mind.  Holy embroidery, Batman!  And what a fantastic color!  I'm not sure if it's just that I'm getting older and catching up to Oscar's demographic, or if this dress is really a winner for people with a younger sensibility, but I'm seriously in love here.  I'll never have the patience to do this much embroidery on my own, but I'll definitely be looking for embroidered yardage at the thrift store now.  The lines of this dress are so simple and basic that they almost don't matter-- it's all about the fabric and embroidery.  With enough fabric, you could base a top, skirt, jacket, or dress on this sort of look.

Great, flattering shape with some nice nods to vintage style in this dress from Cynthia Rowley.  You're not likely to be able to do exactly this as an upcycle, but you could borrow trimming ideas from it.  It wouldn't be a terribly difficult dress to just build, either.

Last tidbit for today, if you're only going to view all of one collection from NYFW, I highly recommend Naeem Khan.  You can see it here.  This collection is utterly feminine, with a mix of classic cuts and bohemian lines that all serve to showcase some truly divine ethnic inspired fabrics and embroidery.  

More to come on another day, but I'd love to hear what everyone else is loving from fashion week!