Learning new tricks

I am attending a foodie dinner on Friday and a wedding on Saturday, so I'm wanting some new dresses. I want to use a lapped zipper on at least one, and an all-in-one facing/lining in the other. Both new-to-me techniques. Last weekend Leslie told me that when she's learning a new technique, she practices it over and over using different tutorials until she's completely got it down. I did each of these once and I'm calling it good enough.

Lapped zipper


I'm using this in the center back seam of the BurdaStyle Coffee Date dress. The lapped zipper seems vintage and classy to me for some reason. The bodice of my dress is silk and it could use a classy zipper finish.

Threads Magazine issue 134 (Dec 2007/Jan 2008) has an article on lapped zipper insertion by the singularly-named Rosebud. For my test run, I used a pretty chunky zipper because it's what I had available. She suggests using 1/2" wide hair tape as a template on the outside of the garment to sew around. I only had 3/4" wide Scotch tape, so I used that as my template and sewed over it, thinking it would still be easy to peel off. It wasn't. I'll have to find another template for the real thing.


All-in-one-facing


If you read BWOF, you'll know that sometimes they mention a method to face or line a sleeveless garment in which a wooden spoon comes in handy. The only illustration they show is a wooden spoon handle pushing through the sleeve. This is what they're talking about!

Claire Shaeffer has a great tutorial in High Fashion Sewing Secrets called "How to Sew a Narrow All-in-One Shoulder Facing". The drawings a relatively clear, but for me, it's one of those techniques that I didn't really understand until I just cut up some fabric and tried it myself.


Dress 1 (coffee date) should be done in a couple hours, and hopefully I can get a muslin started for dress 2 (TBD) before the day is over.

Additions to my library

This past Saturday I met a friend and headed to the Friends of Seattle Public Library book sale. It's a huge sale that happens twice a year, most of the books are donated by library patrons and some of them are books the library no longer wants. Everything is $1.

I made a beeline for the "domestic arts" section - the last time I was at this sale I found some great sewing books and this time was no different. Many vintage sewing books are real gems; Threads editor Nicole Smith just wrote a post about this very topic.


I found Jan Bones' Lingerie Secrets; that alone was worth the trip as it seems to be out of print, used copies are selling for around $35 online right now. And I got a Palmer/Pletsch book on tailoring, a Don McCunn book on patternmaking, and Fashion Sewing by the Bishop Method.


I also picked up The Bishop Method of Clothing Construction, but this is the 1959 edition and I already have the 1966 edition. So I'm giving this one away! Leave a comment in this post and I'll draw a name on Saturday morning. (Edited to add: I'll ship anywhere, to the Antipodes and beyond!) Even if you already think you know it all, you can test your knowledge with the quizzes at the end of the book. Unfortunately I don't see an answer key anywhere. Must be in the teachers' edition...


This was in the "domestic arts" section too - Rescue Your Nails by Ji Baek, the founder of Rescue Beauty, a group of Manhattan nail salons and nail polish products, neither of which I've tried actually. My recent discovery of a few nail polish blogs has reignited my love affair with polish (a love affair that I know I share with Shannon and Cidell, among others) and I am learning a lot from this book.

Inside secrets

I was flipping through one of my all-time favorite books, Couture Sewing Techniques by Claire Shaeffer, when I came across these photos showing the corselette inside an Yves St Laurent for Christian Dior gown, and I thought, wouldn't it have been great if the YSL exhibit I recently visited had a few garments displayed inside out? There's just as much magic on the inside as the outside.

My library

The other day my friend asked me how many books I have in my sewing library. "Oh, I don't know," I said. "Fifteen?"

Apparently I underestimated. There are closer to thirty, plus a few on quilting and knitting.

We spent quite a bit of time this weekend cleaning out our office, and I finally consolidated my sewing books from all around the house onto one bookshelf. When you put them all in the same place, they really do add up, don't they? And to think there are still more books I'd like to have. *sigh*

"Sewing" away from home

So here I am, all fired up to get going on my wool coat, and I will be leaving town for one week on Saturday. Which means I will only have a few hours tonight and Thursday night to commit to sewing. So no major coat progress until the end of the month.

Knitters and crocheters have it good. They can pack up a couple skeins of yarn, needles, and a pattern in their handbag and work on their garments just about anywhere. Unfortunately, sewing projects are not quite so portable.

I suppose I’ll pack a few sewing reference books to read during the flight and during down-time when I’m at my in-laws for Thanksgiving next week. I never tire of Couture Sewing Techniques. This would also be a great time to really dive into Just Pockets. I recently ordered used copies of Couture: The Art of Fine Sewing and Sensational Silk; I’ll cross my fingers that at least one of them arrives before the weekend.

Before I head to the airport on Saturday, I am going to drop off my sewing machine at the Pfaff dealer for regular maintenance. These tune-ups usually last a week, which is an unbearably long period of time to be sans machine. But getting this done while I am out of town means I won’t even miss it.

How do you keep up with sewing while traveling?

Book review & giveaway!

Remember a while back when I mentioned The Collection, a fictional tale of a seamstress in Chanel's atelier? Well, since then I received a copy of the book from Simon & Schuster in exchange for a review. Given the number of other reviews that have been popping up on blogs recently, I'd say I'm not the only one who was approached!

Well I can honestly say that my daily bus commute has been pure pleasure, thanks to this novel.

You may already be familiar with the general storyline: Isabelle is a provincial girl with a natural passion for sewing, fitting, and apparel design. Thanks to a stroke of luck, she ends up working on rue Cambon in Gabrielle Chanel's atelier. The story that ensues could easily be turned into a movie, it includes elements of deception, egoism, passion, yearning, and jealousy.

While reading this novel I learned about:

- The organization & promotion of staff in the couture workrooms
- Garment development - from idea, to toile, to final masterpiece - in a couture house
- Fashion publicity of the time, which largely depended on celebrities wearing gowns to various parties and events, with the goal of having photographs of the garments showing up in newspapers (much like today's Academy Awards, etc)
- Style theft - cheap copies of unique, desirable garments - was as much of a problem then as now

Oh, and I will never look at a vintage Vogue Paris Original pattern by Jean Patou the same again..!

Bottom line: Reading this book is the next best thing to actually sewing.

************

And now for the giveaway!

Simon & Schuster was so generous in providing me a copy of this book, I want to pass along that love by giving it to one of my readers! Here are the details:

If you'd like a chance to win this book, leave a comment for me under this post anytime between now and Sunday, October 21 at 8:00 pm (20:00) PST (US west coast).

I will assign each entrant a sequential number based on the order in which the comments are received, i.e. 1, 2, 3, etc. On Sunday evening, I will use the random number generator to choose a number/winner. I'll announce who the lucky person is that evening.

International readers are welcome to participate! I'll gladly ship the book anywhere in the world.

(There are some faint marks on the outside of the book due to it being shuffled all over the city in my bag for 2 weeks. However, the dust jacket has been sitting on my nightstand the whole time and is in pristine condition...)

The Collection

More sewing-related reading!

The Collection, by Gioia Diliberto, is a fictional story of a young woman who becomes a tailor in Coco Chanel's Paris atelier. I put it on hold at my local library. It'll hit the shelves on September 11.

About Abboud

A couple of months ago, Barb of Sawyer Brook Fabrics posted a list of sewing-related books on her blog. Last week I picked up one of those books from my library - Threads: My Life Behind the Seams in the High Stakes World of Fashion by Joseph Abboud. (I just Googled it and I found much of it is available on Google Books...) I actually had never heard of Joseph Abboud before reading this book. I guess I don't know as much about fashion as I think I do!

So far I'm about 70 pages into it. The writing is conversational and easy to read (perfect for my daily bus commute). I could do with a little less talk about sports, but I see how it fits in with his story. Abboud designs mens suits, which I know absolutely nothing about, so it's a good learning experience for me. I like all the behind the scenes info, like the crazy early development schedule for S/S and F/W lines.