CoudreMODE » couture sewing

Party Time!

coudremode — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 14:03:17 +0000

For sewers with teenage daughters, Spring always means “Mom, can you make me a dress for the (insert: dance, semi-formal, prom)?”…when my daughters were young I did a lot of sewing for them, but now that they’re older they like shopping and that’s fine, it means I can sew for myself. However, when prom season rolls around they know Mom can make them something much nicer than anything they could buy in a store for the same cost. So between now and the end of June I have two dresses to make for the Thurston Middle School 8th Grade Semi-Formal. Here’s what they chose:

Emma – McCall’s 6283

A couple months ago Emma gave me a tearsheet from Seventeen for this $296 Terani mermaid gown. She wants a cocktail dress version, basically the whole look without the mermaid hem. McCall’s 6283 is a perfect pattern and is virtually identical to the original. This style is in McCall’s “Create it!” series and the instructions include a croquis so that budding designers can style their own dress. I love that idea and I’ll hold onto this pattern. Em wants the fashion fabric to be a textured Thai Silks silk/linen blend with 1 inch black silk satin ribbon for embellishment. Construction on this will use tried -nd-true couture technique. I’ll make a boned corselet and the dress will attach to the corselet on the top of the bodice. Susan Kahlje’s website has steel boning and there a several web sources for genuine silk satin ribbon. The biggest challenge is all of those buttonholes for the ribbon, I need to think more about how I’ll make them. I think an oaktag template for marking and a whisper light machine embroidery stabilizer under the fabric might be the way to go. I might even make the buttonholes first onto blocks of fabric and then cut out the pattern pieces.

Abigail – McCall’s 6201

Abby’s dress is not as complex, a few months ago she saw McCall’s 6201 and loved it exactly as it appeared in the catalog. She wants View C in the same blue-purple fabric as the original. An FBA is built in this pattern and I’ll need that for Abby. A silk charmeuse should work well here; the shoulder embellishment will be mesh-covered jewels in a couple different shapes from M&J Trimming. No boning needed on this dress, most of the work here will be in making the shoulder pads and embellishments. The jewels are sew-on and I think the shoulder pads will need to be slightly formed and lightly padded, maybe wool felt steamed into shape . I don’t want the stitches that attach the jewels to pucker the underlying fashion fabric.

I’ll do muslins for both dresses although there should not be much fitting to do, both girls dance 15+hours week and they’re in perfect shape.

Susan Khalje’s New Web Site

coudremode — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:09:19 +0000

Me and Susan Kahlje

Okay shameless plug time; in December 2009 I took a short class with Susan Khalje at the Gorgeous Fabrics Studio. This was something I had wanted to do for literally 10 years and I was not disappointed. Susan is a warm and personable teacher who is generous with her incredible knowledge of couture sewing and fashion history. She told the class that her new web site would be up soon and it is, and there a couple things to let you know about it: the copyright for Bridal Couture has reverted back to her and she is making it available on CD-ROM in February 2010. This book is indispensable for anyone who is serious about couture sewing technique. Even though the focus of the book is bridal most of the techniques can be used with any type of garment. A used copy on Amazon is easily $80 so I’m really happy Susan is making this great book available.

Also on her website Susan is selling fabric, very special French notions and her favorite Japanese hand sewing needles, which are absolutely the best and they make hand sewing a joy. I bought two packs of them! And she has chain for Chanel jackets in gold and silver.

In my mind Susan is part of the sewing holy trinity along with Kenneth King and Claire Shaeffer and if you ever manage to take of her in-person classes you will absolutely love it!

Vogue 1075 – Chado Ralph Rucci

coudremode — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:55:48 +0000

So after cutting out two Ralph Rucci patterns and blogging about one of them I’m finally getting around to making one. My DD Abby wants to wear 1075 next month to the awards banquet for the American Dance Awards Nationals in Holly wood, Florida. This dress takes 6 yards of 60 inch fabric, so there is no way I’m making this out of silk because she will wear it only once. The bodice will be a beaded black lace shot with gold threads, I’ll take photo of that soon. There are only four pattern pieces, but each one is unique. The dress fastens in the back with an invisible zipper that runs from the right armpit to the left hip along the seam that separates the beaded bodice from the skirt. The vertical darts on the skirt are actually quasi-side seams that shape the skirt, one dart is on the front skirt piece, and the otherdart is on the back skirt piece. The skirt pattern pieces are so large that they need to be taped together a la BWOF and hopefully 60 inch wide fabric will accomodate the skirt pieces. One anomaly on the technical drawing shows a pieced skirt train; however on the 4-6-8-10 size range no such pattern piece exists in the envelope. It could be the larger sizes require a pieced skirt. Abby is tiny so I’m just going to make a size 4 and then fit her from there. This style hangs from the bust so if she needs support and bra cups I can add them and I’ll make a back stay like a bra band that she will fasten before she zips up the dress.

Above is the tread traced muslin, each photo is clickable for a closer view.

Your Very Own John Galliano

coudremode — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 14:06:08 +0000

If you follow this link, you can download this pattern for John Galliano’s Pirate Jacket from his 2001 collection. The site also has a gallery of examples that sewers have made (I really like this green one.) The SHOWstudio site is also some great background on the jacket and its place in his collection. Natually I had to download a copy; I’ll never wear this (DD might) but this design is worth saving because the pattern PDF appears to be the actual oaktag cutting templates, and they are covered with hand written construction notes.

Be warned however; the re are 60 pattern pieces. And only one size.

Vogue 1073 – Chado Ralph Rucci pintuck samples

coudremode — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:47:29 +0000

Today I spent the afternoon with Ann at the Gorgeous Fabrics Studio; we had wonderful time together. Ann worked on a muslin for Burda 3477 (a pattern with a really great draft BTW that is obvious even in a flat pattern stage) that I helped her fit, and she helped me figure out how to make the pintucks for my Ralph Rucci dress.

Mentally I’ve been going back and forth between two techniques to figure out how Rucci does these. The obvious choice is a pintuck foot, and another idea would be pintucks basted from the right side and stitched with a walking foot. I made a sample for each technique, and one came out a clear winner over the other. Both samples were marked on the right side with a water soluble marker in a zip-zag shape much tighter than the tucks on the Rucci pattern.

Pintuck Foot Tucks

This sample started off well, however as soon as I started to turn my wool jersey into the curves disaster struck: the fabric got sucked into the feed dogs, which ripped a hole in the jersey.

What a mess

Nice

This idea was clearly problematic and while it occured to me that I might be able to avoid this problem with a light stabilizer; I had to ask myself, “What would Rucci do?”. Based on what I know about his construction methods, I have a hard time believing he would use something as mundane as a pintuck foot and stabilizer, so this idea was scrapped.

Hand Basted and Sewn with a Walking Foot

This method, along with a consult with Ann, gave me the result I was looking for. Here the tucks are hand basted from the right side, and then carefully sewn with a walking foot.

Laid Flat and Hand Basted From the Right Side, Not Yet Stitched

Not bad, but not quite the right effect. As I looked at it on Ann’s ironing board I noticed her new gravity feed iron quietly heating up next to me. Eureka! Steam shrink it!

I removed the basting and steam shrunk to remove the ripples. Ann agreed this must be what Rucci does and she added a final steam blast on her ham to set the ridge of the tuck. I think we got it!

Stitched, Basting Removed and Steam Shrunk - the Winnah!

Stream shrinking is used quite a bit in bespoke and haute couture , and the fact that the pattern envelope recommends wool jersey offers an additional clue that steam shrinking is part of making the tucks; this process can only be done with wool fabrics or silk/wool blends. One last clue in the pattern itself covinced me that this is what Rucci does; the shaping bust darts are hidden in the edges of the bust pintucks, and I believe it would be impossible to sew those shaping darts if the tuck was stitched with a pintuck foot.

A last consideration was whether or not the tucks are corded, and I don’t think they are; the original runway version of this dress is really drapey, and corded tucks would add quite a bit of weight. I also don’t think Vogue Patterns version uses cord, rather that fabric just happens to be a much heavier wool knit than the one used by Rucci (and I think my fabric actually comes pretty close to the weight he used in the runway version.)

So – I need to practice this technique a bit more, and then proceed to the question of whether this pattern can be adjusted via a vis an FBA and/or for a petite - I think it can, but not in the usual way we might think.

Stay tuned!

Vogue 1073: Parsing Out the Pintucks

coudremode — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 14:11:23 +0000

As you can see from the pattern pieces; this is a pretty interesting design! The instructions that come with this pattern basically stink like a monkey and I don’t believe for a minute they actually show how Rucci would make a dress like this, although I do think he would make it entirely on a regular sewing machine as the instructions imply.

The pintucks are marked on the pattern pieces, but there is nothing that specifically indicates how wide they are supposed to be. However, the pattern itself does offer an intriguing clue; the darts are hidden in the seams of the pintucks.

I measured the difference between the marked dart lines and a pintuck, and its 1/8 of an inch (3 MM). So I’m convinced these pintucks are supposed to be 1/8 inch (3mm) tall. Shannon Gifford has suggested on Stitcher’s Guild that at a twin needle is not really the best choice because there is no twin needle wide enough for these pintucks.

I do think the widest Schmetz twin needle might produce something close to 1/8 of an inch but I won’t use a twin needle for other reasons: (1) The front pattern piece is really large – it spans the entire width of the fabric in layout, selvage-to-selvage. I believe that trying to maneuver a double needle through my wool jersey and around those curves is asking for trouble and (2) there is no way the darts could be hidden when the pintucks are stitched with a twin needle.

I really had to rack my brain over this conundrum, and I think I’ve come up with WWRD. Here is my pintuck plan:

Cut the front in a single layer layout
Use a full size oak tag stencil of the front to mark the tucks
Lay the front out flat and hand baste the tucks from the right side
Machine stitch 1/8 inch pintucks with a walking foot
Remove the basting.
No backstiching the ends of the pintucks; I suspect Rucci does the same thing that Chanel does on their quilted jacket linings; the needle side thread tails are threaded onto a hand sewing needle, brought to the wrong side, and tied off with the bobbin thread.

Truthfully, I can’t think of any other way to do these pintucks without losing control. Of course I’ll have to test this theory before I plunge into the real thing. The second illustration shows the bodice piece; and this is oriented as in the finished garment. On the top drawing you can see interfacing at the neckline and two sets of bust darts. The darts are made first and then the pintucks are stitched, and the stitch line of the pintuck must precisely follow the stitch line of the stiched dart because in the finished garment the darts are invisible (just look closely at the pattrern envelope photo – there are no darts to be seen even though they do exist). The angled straight edge is the center back seam. This pattern has an additional challenge – there is no provision for above waist adjustments, so that means for someone short-waisted like me I’ll have to figure out how I can deal with this. The trick will be to raise the waist with as little distortion to the pintucks as possible.

I think I’ll need to make a full size test garment straight from the pattern, unadjusted, and then work out my figure adjustments, and then transfer those changes onto a new pattern piece. But this isn’t so bad because I’ll get to practice and perfect those pintucks!

I think I’ll also head over to Amazon to order “The Art of Weightlessness” – there might be some insights to be gleaned from the Rucci garments in that book.

Vogue 1073: Chado Ralph Rucci

coudremode — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:06:52 +0000

Vogue has just released another Ralph Rucci pattern, and after a summer sewing hiatus I’m in the mood to tackle a challenge. Rucci is kind of the Frank Lloyd Wright of fashion – his clothes are pretty much meant to be worn as deisgned and styled, without too much deviation from the original. It seems the consensus on this pattern is not quite as universally favorable as the dress he did last summer, but I really like this style and I’ll wear it. It has a Emma Peel 60′s-ish quality to it that I really like.

Vogue 1073 - Chado Ralph Rucci

Extra Wide Wool Jersey! Olive Gray - wjs2131

Stretch Silk Charmeuse! - Guava ssc1981

So here’s what this one will be: two Gorgeous Fabrics selections; an extra wide olive grey wool jersey and a bright guava stretch silk charmeuse for a bold lining. Vogue had a two-day on-line sale this week and pattern was marked down 75%, hopefully everything will arrive soon. It will be interesting to see how the pin tucks are done on this dress; I assume a wide double needle and a walking foot would be used, but I’ll just have to see what the instructions say. I think I’ll make oak tag stencils for the marking the pin tucks with chalk or a sewing marker. Another thing to think about is whether a stabilizer might be needed under the pin tucks. And then there is the lining – are those pieces pin tucked as well? So many questions!

Armani Prive – A Better Bubble Skirt

coudremode — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 18:00:33 +0000

I’m sure like most of you; I’m not a huge fan of bubble skirts for a host of obvious reasons. But the spring 2008 Armani Prive collection has several that are a tad different from what we usually see, and I think they are also much more flattering. Here are my faves:

One thing interesting about this skirt on all three designs is the separate hem band along the bottom, and of course I had to see if I could replicate it! The first step was to find some detail photos, and these two of the pinstripe design were really helpful:

Notice the side seam, and also the pinstripes tell us that this skirt is bias cut. So we know for this style there are two side seams on both the skirt and the hem band. I drafted a quick pattern for my daughters 18 inch doll dress form:

Nothing fancy, just a basic A-line shape. I drafted the skirt on the straight grain, although most in the Armani collection appear to be on the bias. There are also a few tulip skirt shapes here and there. The hem bands appear to have fashion fabric facings on the tailored designs, and I’m beginning to think there are also fashion fabric hem band facings on the dress silks.

Oh and I think Mary 9821 is perfect for the jacket on the tweed suit – all you need to do is change the center front closure to the Armani curved lapped front, lower the neckline, add the petal edges at the bottom of the princess seams, flair the sleeves at the wrist, and build out those classic YSL-style shoulders.

This Armani collection is inspiring and very beautiful, so definitely check it out on Style.com and also see the video on The Thoughtful Dresser. It’s an utterly wearable collection that any of us could see in our wardrobes (well, maybe without the funky embellishment!)

A Spanish Master

coudremode — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 03:02:35 +0000

Here on Sewing Divas, we are big fans of Paco Peralta, a fashion designer based in Barcelona. Paco is a master of his art, and his designs embody that wonderful Spanish flair for tailoring we all know from modern masters such as Balenciaga.

A rich history of Spanish court dress, ecclesiastical clothing, and matador costume is infused into Paco’s work, along with modern influences from Armani and Ralph Rucci. The end result is truly special. On his blog Paco shares his work and technique; he is generous with his knowledge and I have learned much from him in a very short time. His vidoes even have a musical soundtrack! His blog is in Spanish, but he has thoughtfully added a handy Google translator that works in several languages. His sister Isabel does his fabulous photpgraphy and videos, and we sewists can learn a lot from her as well when it comes to lighting and styling our projects.

We have a link to Paco on our blogroll, and if you have not yet checked him out please do so!

Holiday 2007 – Final Details

coudremode — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:15:25 +0000

The party – and my dress – were both huge success; I received many, many compliments! So here I am:

I lost a few pounds when I was sick a few weeks ago, so the dress is actually a tad large on me.

And as promised, here are details of the interior. The dress is completely clean finished on the inside. The main seams are covered with rayon seam binding machine sewn to the seam allowance and hand fell stitched to the organza underlining. The neck facing has a Hong Kong finish on the edges, and it’s also fell stitched to the organza.

The hem is black lace, and the actual turned up edge is small because I wanted to use as much of the border as I could Here is a detail of the finished appliqué seam at the side where it meets the regular side seam.

This above photo shows the side seam with the applique seam below. This area was hand sewn three times in this order: the area where the appliqué layers over the cut seam was sewn with a hand overcast, the rayon seam binding was fell stitched and then the appliqué was sewn down from the right side. In the end this worked really well because it evenly distributes wearing stress as I walk in the dress.

Finally, here is a detail of the beading:

The dangles are lengths of 2mm Swarovski crystals and bugles beads capped on the ends with a Swarovski 3mm bicone. Initially I had planned to just do the picot edge, but two things happened: (1) I didn’t order enough beads to do the entire neck and sleeves; (2) the picot edging by itself was overwhelmed by the strong color of the dress. So I had a creative crisis, and went to my copy of FASHION: A History from the 18^th to the 20^th Century. Page 372 shows a Callot Soeurs gown from 1911 that has a similar neckline and jet bead embellishment. It inspired me to add the shoulder and center front embellishment. The lack of beading at the back is only temporary; this dress makes a strong statement and it can take lots more beading, so I plan to order more Swarovski 2mm beads to finish up the back neckline and the sleeves.

I really encourage every sewist to try at least one project this complex during your sewing life. Couture techniques are not really difficult; they’re mostly just time consuming. If you can find the time in your busy life to do a project such as this you will really be proud of the work you’ve done, you will keep huate couture technique alive and you will inspire a new generation of sewists!