I feel like I should pay the fabulous Jennifer Stern Hasemann of J. Stern Designs royalties already. Her Women’s Tee is just about the only knit top I make and it never fails to get compliments. I didn’t do much sewing this past summer, but toward the end I made an entire batch of short sleeve J. Stern tees – 5 of them!

On one I tried foldover elastic at the neck. I like the way it looks with that navy and black dot rayon from Emma One Sock, but it’s not my favorite neck finish. For the others I did what I usually do, which is cut duplicate pieces of the top back, front and side panels and use them as a facing. The result is a clean, bulk-free finish.

I got into the groove of production sewing with these. I used white thread on four of the tops with woolly poly in the lower looper. I went from serger to ironing board to sewing machine (for the neckline seam and understitching), then back to the serger and ironing board to finish construction. The only time I had to change thread on the sewing machine was to put on the foldover elastic. Then I rethreaded the serger for the light gray workout tee and saved the coverstitching of the hems for the end.

Converting from serging to coverstitching has gotten easier with practice (like everything else about sewing). I’m almost always using lightweight knits so I like to use Gail Yellen’s method of prepping the areas to be hemmed with fusible web so nothing shifts under the machine. It’s a tad fussy, but listening to a podcast while I work at the ironing board helps.

This gave me a nice casual wardrobe refresh. Thanks Jen!

I’ve been asked whether I gave up blogging. One might even wonder whether I gave up sewing. Perish the thought! Since my last post, I’ve found a new apartment, moved in and have been dealing with the fact that work hasn’t let up for a minute. And other stuff. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can unpack my sewing supplies, take my machine out of its box (which I kept after I bought it a year ago because I knew I wanted to move), retrieve my serger from my dear friend Stephanie King’s living room and organize my fabric collection.

I’ve been in the new place for just under three weeks and whenever I find myself getting frustrated with the pace of the unpacking I remind myself that not only did I move my home, but I also moved my office and my sewing studio and they are all in the same place. Then there’s the whole organization project. I made lots of changes with this move and I’m about as obsessive about organizing stuff as I am about sewing, so I’ve made A LOT of trips to The Container Store.

I promise to finish a post on my latest project in a few days. Until then, enjoy whatever fabulous  creations the lovely and talented Stephanie King of Siouxzeegirl Designs has to share.

Welcome to In the Sketchbook, a monthly look at fashion design sketches that we are working on for ourselves. Sketching garments on a personal croquis is a great way for the individual couture enthusiast to move beyond the use of commercial patterns and into a world of personalized design! It can be intimidating at first, but with a little bit of practice it becomes something you look forward to. Join us for a look of what we have going on In the Sketchbook! Brought to you by Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor and Steph King from Siouxzeegirl Designs.

This month, I’ve been trying out drawing apps on the iPad Pro and learning how to use the different features that are offered. Like everything else, the results improve with practice. Although I was excited about sketching on lovely tracing vellum, electronic sketching seems to be much better for me. I remember feeling this way about writing when I bought my very first, very rudimentary personal word processor. For a diehard  perfectionist, there is something so liberating about being able to pour out thoughts before they have to be committed to paper. The undo button and the ability to erase without leaving the slightest trace of a mistake allows me to venture well beyond where I go with pencil and paper.

Even bold color can be erased and you can’t erase paint or felt markers. Then there is the fill function, which I’m still trying to master. And the ability to add a background, which I did in the sketch on the right without knowing how that happened or how to do it again. Like I said, practice is needed.

Square necked variation on Spoonflower Dress with Sleeves

The apps I’m using allow you to work with layers, so my personal croquis can serve as my guide the way it does when using tracing paper or vellum. I can lower the opacity of the croquis or turn off its visibility entirely before finalizing my sketch. You can also sketch individual pieces of a separates ensemble on their own layers to try out different looks and you can do the same with design details.

So far, the apps I’ve tried are Paper 53, Sketches, Procreate and Adobe Sketch. My brain is resistant to Adobe software. It was all I could do to learn InDesign when I needed to and to this day I only know how to do a few things in Photoshop, so I’m not sure I’ll ever feel comfortable with Adobe Sketch. I’m getting fairly comfortable with Sketches and I’m working my way through the very helpful e-book that’s available for Procreate to learn how to use its cool features. It’s a process.

I’m looking forward to learning how to duplicate an image onto a new layer and flip it so I don’t have to draw both sides of a symmetrical piece, or I can fix a mistake when I draw one asymetrical element in the wrong direction as I did here.

Okay, enough tech talk. Let’s get to the designs.

I’ve been inspired by the fabulous samples Mary Ray showed and the techniques she taught the ASG Chicago Chapter earlier this month.   The mismatched asymetrical outfit just above and and the pink square-neck blouse that I paired with a trumpet skirt in the earlier picture are examples of what has been percolating in my brain since taking that class.

Here’s another sketch where I got the swoops all going in the same direction and I played around with pattern fill in the skirt.

A technique that really captured my imagination in Mary’s class was sewing partial tucks on a grid to add a waffle effect to flat fabric. Mary told us her inspiration for this was the book, The Art of Fabric Manipulation by Colette Wolf. This is a book that was given to me as a gift by my dear friend Scottie and I’ve been inspired paging through it but haven’t tried any techniques in it yet. It’s time to change that.

Here is what I’ve been thinking about as a first trial of this technique.

This is my attempt to show using the tucks in the area that a yoke would otherwise go in a knit cardigan with a hemline that dips in back. The tucks will provide added fullness in the body of the garment and I think will work well in a lightweight rayon knit.

Before I got tucks on the brain, I sketched this jacket with a version of my favorite 60’s stand-up collar.

I also tried my hand at sketching the split collar from McCall’s pattern 6796 that I talked about in my last post.

As you can see, I’m having fun with this. I hope you are, too. Be sure to check out what fabulous designs my dear friend Steph King of Siouxzeegirl Designs is showing at 10 Sewing Machines & a Serger. We’d love to see and hear about what you’re sketching, so  please leave a comment.

Welcome to In the Sketchbook, a monthly look at fashion design sketches that we are working on for ourselves. Sketching garments on a personal croquis is a great way for the individual couture enthusiast to move beyond the use of commercial patterns and into a world of personalized design! It can be intimidating at first, but with a little bit of practice it becomes something you look forward to. Join us for a look of what we have going on In the Sketchbook! Brought to you by Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor and Steph King from Siouxzeegirl Designs.

I’m afraid there’s not much new in my sketchbook this month, but I have been giving some thought to sleeves. I’m taking a seminar on Victorian fashion in art this fall and this week’s topic was Dante Gabriel Rosetti and the Pre-Rafaelites. That led to a series of slides showing examples of what was known as Artistic Dress as part of the Aesthetic Movement. and I immediately started scribbling in my mini-sketchbook.

There was a lot of volume in the sleeves, but also interesting shapes. The one at the top was full, had a band mid-way down, then was less full and ended in a cuff. I’m thinking the fullness can be scaled down and the band and cuff might be made of contrasting fabric, or the full bits could be made of mesh or lace and the band and cuff could be the fashion fabric used on the body of the garment.

The sketch at the bottom was my attempt to get the idea of the entire dress down quickly before the teacher wen to the next slide, so the arrow points to the sleeve that goes with the dress. There was contrast fabric in the goddess at the hem and the yoke at the neck. The fullness in the sleeve happened near the cuff, like a poet’s sleeve, but with a more definite shape.

The one on the right doesn’t look anything like what I was trying to capture.

This is a sketch I’ve been ruminating about for a while. It has two different versions of an openwork sleeve I’d like to try. The one on the left is supposed to be thin bias tubes draped to hang off the shoulder seam. I have no idea whether it will work in real life. The one on the left poses the possibility of using overlapping curved strips of fabric that have finished edges. Again, very theoretical.

One more sleeve design I’ve been ruminating about is to insert lace or mesh down the middle of a sleeve. I think this might be nice if the lace were used for the cuff and collar as well. The Haute Couture Club of Chicago is having a lace challenge in March and I’m hoping this will prompt me to actually use some of the lace I’ve been collecting, thinking about, and practicing on samples of for techniques.

Something to think about.

Be sure to visit my dear friend Steph King of Siouxzeegirl Designs at https://10sewingmachines.blogspot.com to see what amazing things are in her sketchbook this month. And if you’d like to join in on the fun, please leave a comment for one of us.

Welcome to In the Sketchbook, a monthly look at fashion design sketches that we are working on for ourselves. Sketching garments on a personal croquis is a great way for the individual couture enthusiast to move beyond the use of commercial patterns and into a world of personalized design! It can be intimidating at first, but with a little bit of practice it becomes something you look forward to. Join us for a look of what we have going on In the Sketchbook! Brought to you by Wendy Grossman of Couture Counsellor and Steph King from Siouxzeegirl Designs.

On this third installment of In the Sketchbook, I’m exploring combining structured fabrics with soft, drapey fabrics and asymmetry.

Earlier this month, I was getting off the elevator after a morning workout as a neighbor was getting on to go to her office. She was wearing a lovely navy linen jacket and a flowy skirt in a floral print. I thought about how nice she looked and the image brought to mind two fabric pairings I have that are waiting to become something new to wear.

Both of the soft fabrics were acquisitions from A Fabric Place outside Baltimore in May. The gorgeous sage green wool crepe was a gift from my dear friend Stephanie King, who saw how perfectly it goes with the green, peach and pink silk charmeuse. The blue-gray wool was also a purchase from A Fabric Place. It was part of an assignment during Sarah Veblen’s Design I class for me to pair a sheer floral with a “serious” fabric.

Here are the sketches.

I’m thinking asymmetric coat dress for one of the two fabric combinations. I haven’t settled on the neckline/collar yet, but if I go with the green, I thought the charmeuse would be nice as a cuff and maybe a band on the dress as well as the mock skirt peeking out from underneath the wool. If I go with the blue-gray, I’m thinking soft folds everywhere the sheer is used (but not actual ruffles). These ideas need to percolate some more.

Here is another asymmetrical design idea that’s been percolating in my brain. It was an assignment in Design 1 to come up with a “swoop” design.

The pattern work on that one will be quite the project.

Right now, I’m in relaxed summer mode with my sewing. I found some fabric in a drapey light neutral that I was thinking about making into a summer skirt. The fabric doesn’t lend itself to pleats, but I wanted a relaxed silhouette. S0, here are the ideas I sketched out as possibilities.

Lots to think about.

I’d love to hear what you think about these and about what you’re sketching. Be sure to check out what’s in Steph’s sketchbook at 10 Sewing Machines & a Serger.