A dress for a special niece

Yesterday, I made my first girl's dress since shutting down Prairie Roses a year ago. I am so glad that I kept detailed style sheets and pattern specs. It's so easy to whip something out in a couple of hours without having to think a whole lot about it. I am making a collection of outfits for my newest niece, who is about 6 months old. This set is sized 2T because I thought it would be more fun for her to be able to twirl in her new dress. Still to come is a skirt(s?), top, pants, and a hat and maybe a jumper all made from these coordinating prints.

The flower is made of gathered strips of fabric left raw. Hot glue a button to the center and a pinback on the reverse side and voila! I'm still trying to decide the best place for it. But with the pinback, it can float among all the pieces in the collection.

Seam or unseamed?

Professional apparel pattern makers work with seam allowances on their patterns nearly all the time. It's faster. I would argue it's more precise. This practice goes counter to what most pattern making classes teach. They teach that you must remove the seam allowances and add them back later. I don't know anyone in the industry that works this way. I think the idea is that working with seam allowances on can create variations that lead to fitting problems later. That's simply not true if you check your new pattern against the original block later. (This is assuming you make a copy or rubbing of your original before you start on a new style. But I'm sure you knew that).

If you are drafting by hand, it is time consuming to remove the seam allowances. Pattern blocks are made with seam allowances on. You would have to keep a set of blocks without seam allowances. It would be so easy to mix up seamed and unseamed pattern blocks. Apparel pattern makers leave their blocks seamed and theatre pattern makers leave their blocks (or rather slopers) unseamed. In fact a block is a finished pattern piece that includes all pattern markings and is seamed.

If you are drafting in CAD, you can turn the seam allowances on and off. You can work on the cutting line or the stitching line. It's a simple matter of hitting a few buttons. BUT, I have found that CAD programs have difficulty in calculating between seamed and unseamed because it involves a complex series of mathematics. So constantly switching between cutting and stitching lines can produce some weird anomalies. (As an aside, weird things can happen with notches on stitching versus cutting too). I have found this is true no matter which CAD system you use. So I work with seam allowances on and directly on the cutting line nearly 99% of the time too. This means that I keep the seam allowances in mind while I work.

In CAD, it is important to turn the seam allowances off and walk the pattern pieces along the stitching line in a few areas. Collars and necklines is one area that I nearly always check for matching on the stitching line. There are other situations that come up where this important. I learned this the hard way recently.

In this situation, I split a jacket back pattern piece and added corresponding seam allowances along the split line.

Next, I aligned the pattern pieces to make sure the match. At this point they did and I assumed all was right. Until I got complaints from the sewers that things weren't matching up. I had to go back and double check.

I took the seam allowances off the pattern pieces and realigned them. They didn't match, so I redrew the stitching line of the side piece to make sure it matched the center. I added back the seam allowances and realigned the edges.

 

The pieces didn't match again. Sewers don't like this usually. In this particular case, the seam allowances are small, so I left the little "dog-ear". It can be difficult to cut those "dog-ears" off by hand when they are really small. It is easier to machine cut. In any event, there are different ways of dealing with this. I show one method below.

Your pattern pieces will then look like this and match up in every way possible.

An experiment with handmade paper

Recycling paper into new handmade paper has interested me for a while. I borrowed the two books at my library and bought a few supplies. I made my own mold and deckle from some cheap picture frames and window screen. I made about 10 sheets in my first batch and bound the results into a soft cover notebook/pamphlet.


As you can see in the first photo, not all the sheets turned out technically perfect. I didn't add enough pulp to the water bath to pull very thick sheets. Some of the sheets were tissue paper thin. The holes and tears occurred when I pulled the sheets off their fabric backing. Some of the sheets are exactly what I wanted - maybe just right in my mind. Next time I will definitely add more pulp after every 2 pulled sheets. Coming up with the recipes is definitely an experiment but I feel confident enough to try again.

Despite some of the technical flaws, I think the paper turned out pretty cool. The paper has the texture of the window screening on one side and is smoother on the other. Bits of printing show because of using recycled paper. The paper has a slight grey cast because of the ink on the papers. I like every piece, even the tissue paper thin pieces. I bound all the sheets together into a pamphlet with a textured card stock cover to sell in my Etsy shop. I think the pages would be awesome in an art journal or funky scrapbooking pages. Or, someone could leave the book as is and use it as an interesting doodle sketch book. In any event, it is a smoking hot deal because I didn't want to charge too much for an experiment.

Drawstring recalls and the CPSIA

I wrote this in response to one of Rick Woldenberg's recent entries.

The insanity continues doesn't it! Yes the CPSC is doing it's job, but Congress is not. The only options left to us is a class-action, which I'm not entirely sure is possible, and/or voting people out of office (an equally daunting task!).

I know this may not be on your radar, but drawstrings are causing an equal conundrum to brass connectors. Originally the drawstring ban (1996) was a "voluntary" ban on drawstrings in children's upper outerwear, primarily in hooded sweatshirts and jackets. While the wording has not really changed in the regulation, the voluntary ban is now mandatory and has expanded to include drawstrings and ties on any piece of clothing with a neck or waist. Of course the drawstring has some relevance as a sensible rule because there has been at least one death related to clothing with a drawstring and multiple deaths/injuries to window blind cords.

But here is where the confusion comes in because of the liability climate of CPSIA. Designers are asking me if it is permissible to add drawstrings or ties to skirt hems (not expressly forbidden). What about bib ties or baby bonnets with ties? All are potential sources of strangulation when taken to the extreme safety of the plastic bubble environment. One has to study the escalating drawstring recalls to infer that further rules will be forthcoming. One also becomes confused at what form these rules might take. With the fear of lawsuits, recalls, and penalties, children's clothing designers are trying to avoid these possibilities and are fearful.

Opponents of safety laws and regulations claim there are other ways to design clothing. And yet, the substitutes offer little consolation of their own safety. And so the wheels of confusion continue.

More hemstitching and a decision

Every now and then I get to hemstitch vintage embroidered linens. This time I remembered to take a picture. This a linen center piece with embroidered flower baskets. I was able to hemstitch the outer edge, though I was a bit nervous to stitch so close to the embroidery. The owner will trim close to the hemstitching and then add a pretty crocheted edging.

I haven't updated my blog recently, and not for lack of ideas to write about. I was trying to work out in my head what to say, because as a designer, and artist I have evolved. I had intended on writing this long essay justifying and explaining where I am now. But I decided that you, my readers, might not care. But that leaves this blog and what to do with it. Originally, I focused much of my blogging to the technical aspects of children's clothing design, especially pattern making and grading. While I am still doing some of that, I am doing more. I now introduce myself as a fashion designer, librarian, and book artist because I make my living doing all three.

My design loft is where I create and explore those three areas. I still make patterns, sew, craft, and now create books. So it makes sense to explore those things in the Design Loft Blog as well. I hope that those who followed this blog originally for children's design info will find my book craft interesting and will stick around. Fair warning, I may post new listings in my Etsy book shop. In any event, that's it. Now back to regularly scheduled (or as things happen) blogging.