One meter wonders

Last week, Lady Tiny left a comment with an interesting question. A question, in fact, which I think is very common for anyone who sews and even more so for a beginner: she will soon have a 1 meter piece of beautiful fabric left-over and is looking for a suitable project.

Now, I think it might be useful to give you my personal tips for guessing how much fabric is needed for what kind of garment, but first, I will attend to Lady Tiny's case.

Her fabric is kashmir (wow!). As far as I know, kashmir fabrics come in lots of different weights, mostly ranging from suiting to coating variaties. This matters when you have to decide what to make from it.

For a coating weight fabric, I'd recommend looking for a pattern for a fairly short jacket with three-quarter length sleeves or, considering the information in your profile, a short cape (Lady Tiny, if you can read even the smallest bit of German, check out Natron und Soda for tutorials for fantasy clothing. It's on my little list of links)

For a suiting weight fabric, you've got plenty of options. A skirt always works, even if your piece of fabric is a bit smaller that 1m. Depending on the length you want for your skirt, you can pick from several styles: 1m of fabric would make a long straight or A-line skirt, a knee-length semi-circle, pleated or gored (I made a tutorial for one of those here) skirt or a short circle skirt. A pair of trousers might be possible, if you are slightly below average height and have a small enough size that you can cut out the trouser legs side-by-side. And there is still the option of a little jacket or cape.

Because you are using beautiful and probably quite expensive fabric, I'd recommend making a muslin: just try out the pattern, without any seam finishes in a very cheap fabric.

A lot of this advice can be applied to any fabric you may want to plan for. Personally, I tend to think that buying as much fabric as pattern tells you to, plus a bit extra to be on the safe side, is a recipe for a huge stash of left over pieces. Of course, that attitude may be strengthened by the fact that I make my own patterns. However, I have quite often heard fabric sellers recommend fairly outrageous amounts of fabric to their customers (sometimes I interfere).

As with everthing in sewing, there's nothing like experience to get your fabric-buying right.

In a lot of cases, you can actually place your pattern pieces closer together than the drawing on the pattern says you can (without compromising the grainline or seam allowances). Also, pattern-manufacturers tend to group sizes, recommending the same amount of fabric them. If you are at the smaller size, you may be able to make do with less fabric.

It also pays off to keep your 'standard pattern changes' in mind when fabric shopping. If you are below the pattern's standard height, you will (with experience) know how to alter it to fit you. Which means you will need less fabric.

If you often buy fabric without a specific project in mind, it is also good to develop a 'rule of thumb' for the amounts of fabric needed for styles you like to sew (there are cards available to help with this but don't have any personal experience with those).

Mine is as follows:

- 70 cm will make me a straight or A-line skirt at knee-length. Or a vest, or shorts, or if it's jersey, a top.

- 1 m will make me a fuller or longer skirt, capri-length trousers or a short-sleeved top. In jersey, it will make a sleeveless or cap-sleeved dress.

- 1,20 m will make me a pair of trousers, a more complex top or a short-sleeved dress

- 1,50 m will make me a blouse, a jacket or a fairly full skirted, short sleeved dress.

- 2 m is needed for a jacket with a big collar or a dress.

- If I'm going to make a true 50's style dress, with a very full skirt, I will need 3 to 4 meters, depending on the design and the skirt length.

These are the rules I buy by, given for fabric which is 140 cm wide (which most are). In all cases, I am refering to basic styles of each garment, added details may require more fabric.

It is worth knowing your leg length (waist to ankle) and hip circumference. You can always make a straight skirt out of a piece of fabric which is of the desired length plus seam allowance and a bit extra for waistband or facing, if it's width is more that your hip circumference plus seam allowance (if it is less, you will need twice the desired skirt length).

For trousers, the calculation is more complicated and only those with the smallest sizes can really place the legs side by side. Keep in mind that, on a fabric without nap or directional print, you can often put one leg up and the other one down. Most of people will be safe when buying 1 and a half times the desired length (and again, twice the desired length for large sizes).

For all tops and some dresses, it's sleeves which take up a lot of fabric. The general rule here is that you will need garment length plus sleeve length.

Ok, that's a lot of text, I hope it is helpful and don't hesitate to ask any questions which remain or are raised now.

To answer a question

In her comment to my latest post, Barbara asked if I could explain how I did the swayback adjustment on those trousers. And well, that's not such a difficult question to answer...

Before I start, however, I need to come up with a little disclaimer: I have often complained about how the 'swayback adjustment' is the most over-exposed pattern alteration in the sewing blogosphere. In most cases, this was about bloggers adjusting dresses or coats on which they might have done well to check the pattern's waist length. And yet, I've gone and used this term myself.

So, to avoid any confusion, I'll explain what I think my alteration on trousers is: a flat-butt-adjustment. I like high-waisted trousers, which made this adjustment needed. With a lower rise, the only 'issue' you would have, would be that the back waistband would sit a bit higher on your body than the front. Which, with a lower rise is not such a bad thing...

To show you what I did and why I did it, I will have to show you some close-ups of my behind...

This is it in my new trousers.

And this in my side-buttoned ones.

The light wasn't great and the focus is a bit off, so I'll add a side view to display the problem: There's a horizontal fold just below the waistband. Even when I'm not wearing heels.

I started to be aware of this fitting issue a while ago, so I was determined to fix is for my next pair of trousers. To alter it, I simply pinned the excess fabric on the side-buttoned trousers (for this, you would have to make a muslin if you're dealing with a new-to-you commercial pattern), took them off, measured what I had pinned and substracted that amount from the top of my trouser sloper.

In my case, the excess was at center back and tapered to nothing at the side seam. If you have a similar problem, you can use this type of flat-butt-adjustment. If the excess also exists at the side seam and/or at the front, you are dealing with a pattern in which the waist-to-hip distance (vertically) is larger than yours, and you should take out some of the overall height.

And finally, to answer a question nobody asked: both these pairs of trousers have straight waistbands. In my personal experience, straight waistbands work well on high-waisted trousers, when placed from the natural waist upwards. That's what you see here. I would never use a straight waistband on trousers with a lower rise. The vast majority of women, myself included, has curves in the waist-to-hip-area. And curves are not served well with a straight piece of fabric.

All the usual excuses...

Oops, it's been quite a while, hasn't it? I could try to explain why, but it all comes down to the usual 'life getting in the way of blogging'. Maybe more on that later.

For now, let me ensure you that 'life' didn't get in the way of sewing, thrifting, reading those few blogs I do follow (way to few, I know, I wish I could follow all your blogs, but I guess I'm just slow at those things), dreaming up new ideas for clothes and looking at fashion stuff.

To start with the last thing first: I finally went to see the 'Voici Paris' exhibit at the The Hague Gemeentemuseum. I will probably go there again with a friend, but yesterday, I was lucky enough to be invited to come along with the highschool class, to which M is teaching sewing technique. I went along as their 'house photographer' (note to any of you going to this exhibit, or the Gemeentemuseum in general: photography is allowed as long as you don't use flash or a tripod. That means phone pictures etc. turn out as rubbish, but I got some rather fine shots using my digital SLR camera on a very high ISO setting. I have had a few years training for that steady hand at the camera though.)

This is the display which awaits the visitor in the first room of the exhibit: genuine pieces from a very recent (I believe it was winter '09/'10) Chanel show, on loan from Chanel and set in these stunning, very appropriate surroundings. In this shot, 'my' class is milling around the pieces, but otherwise it wasn't that busy (several school classes on guided tours, but no more crazy crowds, at least not at 10 a.m.). These exquisite pieces of present-day couture were (almost) close enough to touch, so I could finally figure out just how that dainty square shoulder is achieved (maybe more on that later ;)

In the rest of the exhibit, the sense of decorum in creating surroundings for the pieces continues. There are loads of fabulous clothes, from Worth dresses to those last year's Chanels, and originating mostly from Paris but also from the Netherlands and China. I loved it, but it made me quite hungry to see more of the alledged 4000 pieces in possession of the museum. Please tell me: where do I go, what do I do, to become a fashion curator??

On other news: I kind of promised I would try to answer some of your questions as put to me in the comments. I'm always very happy with all your imput, but sometimes, people will ask me specific questions which require a seperate reaction. I will try, starting at the most recent one.

- lorrwill asked me, in the handbag refashion post, if I have any tips on sewing leather. I do, but none of those were used on that bag. I have made leather bags before, but for the one in that post, I just glued a piece of leather to a worn-out vintage bag.

If you want to make a leather bag you will definately need special needles. There is a special type of needle for leather (with a cutting tip) and it comes in sizes from 80 up to 110 (as far as I know). The size you need will depend on the kind of leather you use. In a lot of cases, especially with thinner 'clothing weight' leather, you can use ordinary thread, but if you were waiting for a project on which to use that 'extra strong' thread (as sold by Gutermann), sewing leather is it. Machine feet can be an issue as well. Leather tends to stick to your machine on both sides and because of that, I was taught to sew it sandwiched between two layers of tissue paper. Since then, I found out that there are big differences between sewing machines in how well they deal with this issue. I have never had the opportunity to try out sewing leather with a walking foot, but I have heard/read good things about it. My advice would be: try on a scrap first and always sew slowly.

One last note from me: just sewing bits of leather will not give you a handbag as structured as the one in my post. All bag manufacturers (even the very posh ones) use inner structures of things like cardboard and plastic to create shapes like that. Using only leather, you can make fabulous soft and even fairly structured bags, depending on the thickness of your material (and what you can use, will depend on what your sewing machine can handle)

- Ana, I'm sorry to hear my jeans skirt pattern on Burdastyle has now developed downloading problems. It was working on the old site, but this is the first time I get any information on how it behaves on the new one. I will check, but I know they should have the correct file over at BS.

- All of you who asked for how-tos on the lingerie: the problem is: finishing is the hardest part. Sewing on that elastic. And you can really only learn that by trying, preferably with some real-life help and advice. For advice on it, and for great pattern tutorials, take a look at patternschool (I haven't used their patterns myself, but they seem both understandable and good). For the rest, I'll keep your comments in mind for my next lingerie project.

- Miaaa asked (in a comment to the gored skirt tutorial) about the pattern for my bias cut skirt of December '08 (as featured on Burdastyle, and on an outfit-post on this blog last winter). That skirt was made using an adeption of my personal skirt sloper, however Burdastyle has the Sidonie skirt which is also a sleek bias cut skirt. I know that skirt is kneelength and uses a facing instead of a waistband, but you could lengthen it and make a simple straight waistband (that's what mine is)

- hing12133 asked if she could link to the gored skirt tutorial, and did so in this lovely blog post

Ok, that's it for now. If you need an answer to any question put forward in an older comment, please let me know about it again. I promise I will try to answer.

Recent creations are coming up tomorrow!