Silk. Lots and lots of beautiful silk!

A few weeks ago, I found out that an enthusiastic trader on Etsy had some skeins of silk laceweight yarn she was clearing out of her abundant yarn collection. Since I like silk, I’ve been curious about working with yarn, and I was wondering just how thin laceweight yarn is, I traded a keyring pen for a skein of blue silk yarn.
Since I like to experiment on new types of thread by making longer pieces of lace, I needed to make a new pricking. After a bit of debating with myself, I decided to draw it out at a scale that would give me 8 pins per inch along the straight sides. I had thought to make scalloped edges, similar to the edges on the variegated thread bookmark I made a few months ago, but decided to simplify it with straight edges. The center of the strip is a simple honeycomb ground. The triangles along the edges are half-stitch, and along each edge two pairs of passives are worked in whole stitch to give a sturdy woven edge.

After drawing out the design, I scanned it in to my computer and printed out two copies. I carefully cut and taped the strips to align the design. Cheating a little, I did not mount the printouts on a stiff backing, and I did not pre-prick the holes. The reason I made the pattern so long is that I wanted to try working it on a roller pillow I bought on ebay a few years ago. I pinned the paper strip to the center of the roller, then wound about a yard of yarn onto each of 32 bobbins (16 pair). I started the lace at a point, similar to the bookmarks I’ve made, and worked it as normal.
For the most part, working with the laceweight yarn was no different than with thread. However, it was not an even thickness, and the thicker slubs had to be worked with carefully. They tended to get stuck in the whole stitch edges. The lace was a little looser than usual, due to the large scale at which I drew the pattern.
When working on a roller pillow, you work an inch or so at a time, then turn the roller back a bit to expose the next section to work. You take the pins from the back to use in the lace at the front as it is being made. I found that I liked this, because it left me with not as many pins to take out and the end when I’ve finished! However, there are some thing I don’t like about this roller pillow. I can’t push the pins all the way down, like I do on my cookie pillow. The slope on the roller is a little too steep, and the apron—the part where the bobbins lay—is awfully thick, making it a little awkward to position when working. As this is the only roller pillow I’ve ever used, I don’t know whether this is normal. I plan to make a new roller pillow myself, so I’ll try to eliminate at least a couple of those issues.

I started to run out of yarn on a couple of bobbins before I quite reached the end of the 17 ½” long pattern, but what I had was long enough for what I wanted, so I finished off at a point similar to the beginning. Because the lace was fairly loose, as I mentioned earlier, I laid the strip out flat and treated it with spray starch. I didn’t iron the lace, but let it air dry. That worked wonders!
It wasn’t until I was partway through making the strip of lace that I finally decided what to do with it. I often wear my hair pulled back by a sash, since it’s too short to pull back in a ponytail. Since I have quite a bit of undyed silk chiffon left over from a rather nice dress I made a couple of years ago, I decided to make a silk hair sash on which to mount the silk lace.

Originally, I’d thought to make a long, skinny sash, barely wider than the lace. But the first piece I pulled out of my bag of leftover silk was a roughly rectangular piece the full 44” width of the fabric, with the barely noticeable selvages still present. That gave me a new idea. I sewed the long edges together in a French seam and pressed it in the middle of the long strip.

Folding it in quarters, I marked the center, then marked the center of the lace and sewed it in the middle of the sash. I decided to leave the ends open so that, when tied, it would give the effect of a regular scarf. When I was taking pictures of it, I played around with folding it in long thirds the width of the lace, and laying flat like a head scarf. I even tied the folded sash around the neck of my wig head for another variation!


The next time I use this yarn, and probably for any other laceweight yarn, I’ll still use the eight pins per inch scale, since that works well with the unevenness, but I’ll add extra twists as necessary to make the lace a little tighter. Even doing that, though, I’ll probably still need to starch the lace. Which reminds me, I need to get some more starch because I finished off my current can on this!

Happy Easter!

Don't bother telling me the title of this entry is two weeks late. That said, I grew up with two older sisters. I was the queen of hand-me-downs. My mother even says that I helped my sisters pick out their clothes because I knew I'd end up with them eventually. But my mom always made sure that, even though the bulk of my wardrobe was previously-worn, I got a few new things of my own every year. At the beginning of the school year, I'd get to pick out a few new things (including the all-important first-day-of-school outfit, which I usually also wore on the also important Picture Day). I would also get a new dress for Christmas and another for Easter. These, combined with whichever clothes in the big bags in the basement happened to fit, gave me quite a nice assortment of school clothes and church dresses to wear all year long.

I've tried, with varying amounts of success, to follow the tradition over the years. I do generally start every school year (when I'm in school) with a new outfit, and I frequently make myself a new winter dress in time for Christmas and a spring-summer type dress for Easter. This year, I decided I wanted an Easter dress. I had all the fabric by the Friday before Easter, so my plan was to wash it at my parents' house (the fabric is all 100% cotton, so pre-washing is a very good idea), then cut it out and maybe even start sewing while the rest of my laundry was being washed. I did get the fabric (and the rest of my clothes) washed, but a combination of other things coming up and my inherent laziness prevented the project from going any further that day.

Finally this weekend I ironed all the fabric--four different pieces--and started cutting out. I decided to use one of my favorite patterns (the one from which I previously cannibalized a sleeve piece) but with, as usual, some changes.
The v-shaped neckline is somewhat precariously low in its plunge. I wanted to fill it in a bit, but am not a fan of the dicky look. While brainstorming different options, I realized that the crossed-over bodice and wide midriff faux-sash reminded me of a kimono and obi. Since I had been wanting a dress out of a Japanese-type print anyway, I knew what I could do to raise the neckline a little. Kimonos are worn with several other light robes underneath, with the layers arranged to show neatly at the neckline. Therefore, my plan was to mimic this look.

I selected a purple fabric with a Japanese-style floral print reminiscent of the decorative washi papers I've used to cover boxes and eggs. In addition, I got two plain purple fabrics, one a light purple and the other a pinkish purple, and some white cotton.
As I was cutting out the pattern pieces, I primarily followed View C, which has the sleeves I wanted and is all one fabric. However, I cut the midriff section and tie ends out of the light purple. I mostly sewed the dress according to the pattern directions, with two exceptions: before overlapping the bodice pieces and basting, I cut (well, tore, actually) strips of the pinkish-
purple, folded and ironed them, and zig-zagged the unfinished edges, then sewed them along the front panel edges with 1/4" showing. This was done in order to add a contrast color, highlight the crossed-over nature of the bodice, and begin filling in the neckline.
1 5/8" from the top of the piece, I slanted the strip down to meet the shoulder seam which would be sewn at 5/8" from the top.

Also, although the pattern directs to lap the right side over the left, I switched it to left over right, after checking several images of Japanese women in kimono to see which way is correct for that look.

From this point, I proceeded as normal. After the dress was complete, I cut (well, tore, again, since that's the easiest way I know to get woven cotton into even strips when I don't have a pattern piece) strips of the light purple and white. I measured and placed the light purple so that a bare 1/8" would be exposed, and also tapered it toward the shoulder line in placing. The white was exposed 3/8", and also carried around the back of the neck.
These changes resulted in the point of the neckline being raised a full 1 1/4", while looking intentional and designed-in (dickies always look a little last-minute and unthought to me, which is why I wanted to avoid that solution). Also, the layered neckline allowed me to use a fabric that is really a little to yellow for my skin tone, because the final white layer is more flattering to me. he end result is a fun dress that I have made my own--and that I can bow in safely!
Oh, and I also used leftover fabric to make a head sash. In these pictures, I've tucked up the tied ends.

A Nightmare Dress

No, the dress itself was not a nightmare to make. The title of this post just refers to the origin of the design. A friend of mine was feeling a little stressed about the prospect of making/finding the costumes for herself and her daughters for Halloween this year. I was feeling up for a challenge, so I took on one of the more intimidating costumes: the Sally dress. Here is the image my friend’s daughter provided for me:

The basic requirements for this dress were that it should look like the dress from the movie, both in color and fit, and that it should be made well enough to be worn more than once and be passed down to the younger sisters. Many commercially available costumes bore more of a resemblance to a circus tent—garishly colored and shapeless. My plan was to make the dress using patchwork and appliqué methods, using as a base pattern the design for a dress I made for Eve in The Diaries of Adam and Eve (performed at an extremely family-oriented theatre, hence the need for the title characters to wear clothing). Fortunately Sally had pretty much the same measurements as Eve, so that simplified matters somewhat!

First, I drew out the overall plan for the front and back, including using my 9th grade geometry skills to draw parallel grain lines on each section. The dress is bias cut, to allow for a nice fit without excess construction seams—there would be enough seams in this dress anyway! I traced each section, along with the grain lines and any placement markings, to individual pattern pieces, and added seam allowances where necessary.

Next, the fabric. There are a lot of pieces, and a lot of colors, and I didn’t want to waste money or fabric by buying strips of cloth for each color, and then end up with a bunch of extra. Plus, I wasn’t sure how well I could find fabrics of the right colors. So I bought a couple yards of unbleached 108” muslin and some dyes. After prewashing and drying the fabric, I laid out the pattern pieces roughly, and drew section lines (all lines I drew were either parallel or perpendicular to the selvedges). I also marked each section with a code indicating which color it should be, and sewed around the edges to prevent fraying. Then, armed with Dylon cold-water dyes and a number of white dollar-store wastebaskets, I set up a dye shop in my bathtub.

I chose the Dylon dyes because they seemed much better suited to multiple small batch dye jobs than the other dyes in the stores. Almost none of the sections were supposed to be the colors indicated on the dye packets, so I mixed powders, dyed lighter sections for shorter times than directed, and dyed and redyed darker sections. The sections I had the most difficulty with were the maroon and brown. I ended up getting some navy blue dye and overdying those sections to try to get them a little darker. The end results were not quite the colors from the movie, but coordinated well together and were still much better than the circus-y commercial dresses!

After cutting and marking the pieces, I drew swirls, stripes, and dots on several pieces (using a black permanent fabric marker), fused the brown dots and pink square to their sections, then taped my master plan of the front to a door by my sewing machine and got to work. If pressed, I could recreate the order in which the sections were sewn together, but for now I’ll just say it was a logical progression. The front went together very quickly and easily. The back was a little slower…because I’d forgotten to put notches on any of the pieces. Even so, it still went pretty quickly. When I sewed the front to the back at shoulders and sides, I left a section under the left arm where a zipper could easily be added, if necessary. Since this is a bias-cut dress, and bias needs to settle, I hung the dress overnight at this point.

The next day, I hung the dress on a door, set up my laptop nearby with the concept image displayed, grabbed my scissors, and started cutting. I have seen other versions of Sally’s dress where the lower edge was cut at angles and hemmed, but I felt that, A) that method looks awkward and bulky, rather than ragged and torn, and B) That method looks like a pain in the neck. So I just cut the hemline and sleeve edges, mimicking the concept image as closely as possible. After I finished cutting, I applied a healthy dose of Fray-Check to all raw edges. Fray-Check is supposed to be washable, but I did advise my friend that it may need to be re-applied in the future.

So, the dress is sewn, the edges are finished…should be done, right? Well, here’s where I started to get a little carried away. In the movie, the black thread used to sew the patches together is visible. Now, I did use black thread when I was sewing, but even if I had, say, zigzagged along the seams on the outside, tiny little black threads just wouldn’t show up. So I dug out some black yarn and a fairly large-holed sharp needle…and started hand-sewing big black stitches along the seams.

After a few, enough to get the idea across, I sent a picture to my sister and asked what she thought. She liked it, but said I’d better do the same thing across the rest of the seams. My fingers were a little sore by the time I was done, but it really did look good!

As I mentioned before, I left a spot in the left seam for a zipper, just in case. My plan was to try the dress on my friend’s daughter, then put in some darts and a zipper if she wanted it more fitted. However, I think I scared her off of that idea when she tried it on. I mentioned that the darts would probably give a slightly off-set appearance to some of the designs and seams. So Sally, weighing the designs against the fitting, opted not to have the darts.

So, lessons learned:
1. It is harder than I thought to get deep colors on cotton using cold-water dyes.
2. PUT NOTCHES IN THE PATTERN PIECES!
3. Maybe a thimble wouldn’t be such a bad idea next time I’m trying to stab worsted-weight yarn through muslin.
4. Probably would have been better to fit a plain muslin shell to Sally, then use that as the basis for the pattern. If I had incorporated the darts from the beginning, we could have had both the designs and the fitted look.

All in all, though, I like the dress!