Thrifty, practical sewing

Do you sew practical clothes or this which are fun/challenging to make?

I think most of us do a bit of both. In fact, I'm spending way to much time thinking about what to make lately, which usually means I should just jump into a new project and not worry about its practicality. It's hardly like I won't have anything to wear if I don't sew a pair of black trousers right now...

Sometimes one has to be practical though. Especially if it actually requires fairly little effort. And resques a well-loved item of clothing.

Resques? Yes. Like many other people who sew, I usually prefer to make something new rather than mend. But that is a bit of a waste, so, once in a while I do it anyway.

This time it was this shirt. It's vintage, I don't really know how old. It's a simple thing and I bought it very cheaply but it's 100% silk which makes it really nice to wear. But, recently, it developed a tear in the fabric just under the left sleeve. I think the fabric had just become too thin there because the shirt was so wide on me that I doubt I even put stress on that area.

Because it was so wide to begin with, I could do this. However, I couldn't just take the thing in normally at the side seam because the tear went on for about 7 cm into the front piece.

So, I improvised and moved the side seam towards the front. So, I kept the full width at the back but cut off the entire damaged area (and the corresponding bit at the other side) at the front.

It hangs better on me than on the dummy and I think I like this look better (even though arm movement is a little more confined)

P.S. Several asked about the skirt shown in the blue cardigan post. Of course I made that too, it was over a year ago and I blogged about it here.

Little silk blouse

Yesterday, I spent a lot of words on how much fabric to buy for what project. Today, I'm off in an altogether different direction. Re-fashioning.

As you may know (especially if you've been following this blog for a while), I often make things from second hand leather clothing. No problem there.

I buy second hand stuff more often than I use it. It's like having a double stash. On rare occasions, it will be an item too interesting to pass up but more often it's unappealing clothes which attract the fibre-snob in me.

That way, I have, slowly but surely, built quite a collection of silk shirts. They are all 100% silk, most were for sale at 1 euro a piece and they are all big, blocky and probably from the 1980's (or 90's. A lot of what we think of as typical 80's fashion happened in the early 90's for most people).

At some point, I used one silk shirt for my first draping experiment. Which was interesting and (un)fortunately taught me that Mary has a bit of a posture problem which I don't really share with her. That particular shirt was made of a slightly heavier and more matt silk than all the others.

Now, I have decided to do something about the silk shirt stash. After all, that silk would be great to wear if we are still getting a bit of summer and even in autumn and winter, nice silk tops could make great pieces for layering.

This little blouse is my first attempt. The shape is rather simple, but I thought that between that and its shy nude tone of colour (which is impossible to get right in a photograph), it could use something to jazz it up a bit. And I don't usually do decoration. At all.

The material wasn't easy to work with. Very thin, slippery and very stretchy when used even the slightest bit off grain (like in say, bust darts, or shoulder seams or even just slightly shaped side seams)

Susan wrote a post, a while ago about making a vintage-style chemise, using a double needle as a quick and easy way to make narrow pintucks. That is what I decided to try here.

And I had this narrow lace in my stash which matched the colour of the shirt quite well (bought way back, when I just started sewing and thought decoration was nice). I sewed that on using a small zigzag and cut out the narrow bits between the lines of stitching. I used a zigzag because I did a test in which I could just tear the fabric away if it had been attached to the lace with a straight stitch...

The buttons are mother of pearl and come from a very old card of buttons which I found in one of the little sewing boxes from my grandmother.

I'm reasonably happy with the blouse. The fit is Ok, I think I will mostly wear it tucked into a high waistband and I'll have yet to see how well it holds up with wearing and washing.