It’s up: The Jezebel dressmaker dummy tutorial, part 2.
Love these articles! Once I get a weekend to myself (and *cough, cough* Mr. Noile gets some free time), I’m going for it.
I love the shoulders, by the way. They’re going to cause some problems when constructing garments (that’s why über-expensive Wolf makes “collapsible” forms), but I’ve minded much more having ill-defined shoulders on my current dummy.
Related: Did you Say “Jezebel”?
Really. When you do your own repair, you get to be quirky:
1952 toilet (the date of manufacture is stamped inside the tank), 2010 push button. Fun, no?
I did this repair a couple of years ago, but decided that I’d post it, just to round out the recent plumbing series.
Related: The Kitchen Sink, Sinking, Not Sewing , and Plumb Done
Well, yeah, I did. The Internet’s a strange place.
Still AWOL over here, I’m afraid. Various projects have left our house a disaster (and will continue to do so for another couple of weeks), and I’ve spent a week in New York City in the meantime (can you blame me??). But I’m back just for this post because the website Jezebel (weirdly!) has what looks like a great tutorial on making a dress form.
Today’s post is only part one, with part two promised for next week. Except for the time involved, this looks surprisingly “doable”, and should result in a dummy that replicates your shape better than anything you could reasonably buy (or make via other methods), and with what I hope is a sturdy foam core. I’m seriously tempted to try it, just as soon as I have fifteen hours to myself. Oh, and a house again.
Related: Jezebel Dress Form, Part 2
The last batch of Au Bonheur des Petites Mains patterns didn’t come in the marvelous card envelopes in which my first order arrived. (See the sturdy envelope here; it’s at the end of the post.) The newest ones came in a folder in side an over-sized cello sleeve. Perfect to cut shipping costs, and to display the sprightly graphics, but not so good for long-term storage.
These are patterns I intend to treasure for a long time, so I needed something more practical. First, I ended up laminating the outside folder: front, inside front, and back. I do this at home, using a box of lamination sheets from an office supply store.
Then I attached a large catalog envelope to the blank page on inside back of the folder. This gives me a place to store the original pattern, my traced pattern, translations and notes — although I can also write notes on the catalog envelope, too.
The catalog envelopes have a self-stick flap, so I removed a small section from the center of the flap, and use it to close the envelope. The sticky stuff adheres to the lamination without damaging anything, and the flap can be re-stuck over and over again.
Au Bonheur patterns are printed on lovely, large, sturdy sheets and this is a relatively compact way of storing them while keeping them completely accessible. The new folder/envelope combination fits nicely into the magazine files I keep in my sewing room, right at hand, just where I want my ABdPM patterns to be.
So, after meeting up with some sewing bloggers and consuming wonderful See’s chocolates with them, I got to thinking about the horror and deprivation of being too far from Mary See’s main stomping grounds. Why, I asked myself, should those of us unfortunate enough to be stranded 3,000 miles away from Nirvana, be forced to suffer so?
Ah, sweet mystery of life.
Naturally, in spite of having read this article the very day of my search, I went online to find a solution to this vexing problem. And I found it, in several recipes allegedly replicateing my favorite-of-all-favorite See’s Candies, the Dark Chocolate Bordeaux.
I experimented, and fiddled, changed things up, and made a few pounds. The first batch was messy:
But they still looked nice on a plate:
We ate them anyway. The flavor? Yuuuum, and very, very Bordeaux! However, I’d crystallized the sugar a bit, so naturally I had to make more.
The second batch was neater, and dressed up nicely. We ate it, too. Mr. Noile thinks these are better than See’s, but Mr. Noile is a bit of a renegade. I ate most of them, anyway, so perhaps his judgement is skewed.
It turns out that Michael’s, the ubiquitous craft store, sells candy boxes and foil cups:
Candy making, not unlike sewing, has its own set of tricks. After the first batch, I realized that it was important to boil the brown sugar fondant at a relatively low temperature, and for a very short period of time.
A melon baller was perfect for scooping up uniformly sized centers, and a fondue fork — with snake-tongue prongs — was the right thing for dipping the centers into the chocolate. The prongs held the fondant so that it didn’t slip off. A common table fork was helpful to slide the dipped candies off the fondue fork.
Michael’s also has cute little gold elastics for closing the boxes (though you could probably buy any color by the yard at a fabric store):
Michael’s had seals, too, but I didn’t put one on this box. (It wasn’t going to be long for this world.) Any office supply store might offer a choice of those, too.
Tempering the chocolate in the microwave required some practice; it’s best to melt it in short bursts, not in longer sessions, which can make the chocolate lumpy. I used Hershey’s Special Dark rather than a better European brand; it was just right with the Bordeaux-like centers, and, anyway, See’s is a quintessentially USA-American candy, so USA chocolate seemed appropriate. The flavor was just right with the brown-sugar-coffee centers.
I used Wilton’s sprinkles — a travesty if ever there were one — but next time (that would be after we lose the weight we just gained), I’ll use these Dutch sprinkles. They can’t be worse, and they sound a whole lot better than the rather waxy Wilton’s. It’ll go better with the organic cream and butter.
Here’s another useful tip: Really good candies don’t have either corn syrup or sweetened evaporated milk in them; you might get sweets that way, but you won’t get anything like See’s. And never, never use the candy-making pellets on sale in craft departments. They aren’t really food. Honest, they aren’t.
I used the wrong fabric, and so the garment’s a fail. But the pattern isn’t, and now I know how to put it together. Hey, that’s what a “muslin” is all about, right?
Here’s the picture on the Au Bonheur des Petites Mains website:
Cute, isn’t it? It’s a “pull” or sweater (or maybe a “pullover sweater” — I’m not up on current French slang). It’s a pretty simple-seeming pattern — back, sleeves, a decorative pleat in front where the two sides overlap.
This pattern’s been out since 2009, and I’ve only been able to find two other examples of it made up. One was turned into a cardigan, and the other is a blog post with no notes at all. (I’ve noticed that this is often the case with many French bloggers.) That seems particularly strange since it’s relatively simple to put together, and it’s so darn cute. Here’s my “muslin”:
This “pull” is meant to be made from a thicker sweater knit. My fabric is “mystery composition” from Jomar, and I’m pretty sure it’s full of wool of the acryl. It loves itself, and sticks together as if it’s made of hook and loop tape. See those sleeves? They’re stuck that way. Icky, really.
The material did have a nice hand on the bolt, and I assumed, wrongly, that it had a lot more rayon than it seems to. Nevermind, it has served its purpose.
The pattern directions are almost non-existent, but they’re not really needed. Basically, they say to sew the shoulder seams together, and then attach the sleeves, sewing in one long seam under the arm and along the sides.
Then you are supposed to place the right front on the left front, and stitch down from point A on the pattern, matching the center front lines as marked on the pattern. This is a less than perfect instruction due to vague lines that are the same for all sizes, and no matching points A. On the other hand, it’s not difficult to figure out what’s meant.
This stitching line does not show on the line drawing that comes with the pattern, nor is it shown on the website. However, if you look closely, I think you can see a hint of its existence.. The knit fabric is supported vertically to the left (as you look at the photo) of the angled flange. (And, by the way, the asymmetry of the hem is far more exaggerated on the pattern than in the drawing, too. That point is actually quite far left.)
On Stitcher’s Guild it was mentioned that it looked as if the model garment were pinned to the form underneath; it’s not. That center front stitching line is what keeps the garment together. This line would presumably completely disappear in the correct, bulkier fabric.
Though it’s actually pretty hard to see even in this thin solid. You probably just barely can see the vertical stitching line to the left of the pleat.
Then you make a pleat, matching two lines that are not of corresponding lengths, and stitch along where the lines join. Folding the right collar at the top of this pleat gives this top its distinctive style. Although the directions have you make the pleat after stitching the front down, I found it easier to reverse the two steps, and form the pleat first.
The pleat is folded in toward the garment; that’s not stated in the directions, but it’s the only way to get the same look as in the line drawing. I stitched-in-the-ditch to keep this pleat in place; without this additional step, all definition was lost due to my thin fabric. I’m not sure it would be necessary in a sweater knit.
The neck, front, lower, and sleeve edges are left unfinished, or finished as you please (lettucing, etc.). I used tape to stay the left neck edge and the back neck — a colossal mistake, as you can see. These edges do need support, but clear elastic would have been a better choice. Or maybe I just did this badly; by the time I reinforced the neck, I knew this was probably something I wouldn’t wear.
As previously mentioned, the back hem is far more asymmetrical than the line drawing indicates, and it also doesn’t work at all in this clingy fabric, since it just sticks wherever it lands. If I ever wear this top, I’ll have to cut away the dip in the back hem.
If I were attempting this in another lightish knit, I’d probably cut the shoulders a bit narrower, as my dummy is larger than I am, and this is pushing the limits on the large end of my personal scale. This size would probably be just right for a sweater, though.
Here’s the cardigan version, from the French blog Passion Plaisir in wool:
She hasn’t sewn the pleat in; she’s created the effect with a pin, and she’s not sewn the center vertical line, either, of course. It makes a very nice cardigan, doesn’t it? You can see in this example, as well in Au Bonheur’s model, how much better the thicker knits work.
The verdict: Pattern success; execution fail. I’ll bring this pattern out again in the fall, once I’ve found a bulky knit I like, preferably in lovely, luscious wool.
If a bunch of sewing bloggers get together, you’d expect them to discuss sewing, right? And fabric, and style, and color, and patterns and a hundred other relevant things, right? And when a few of us met up recently, that’s exactly what we did. but that wasn’t all we did. Shams generously brought a huge assortment of See’s Candies with her from California, and we consumed them enthusiastically, but not without a little trauma. 
See’s, for those of you who aren’t fortunate enough to know it, is a regional candy company, started long ago by the iconic Mary See in her kitchen. Many of those of us who no longer grace San Francisco’s hills mourn the loss of easy access to See’s almost more than no longer living in that glorious city . . . See’s candies are just wonderful. So there were four of us slavering over the box when Shams opened it, and three of us gasping in horror (I think this is no exaggeration) when Shams took a large knife and rent each candy asunder with a mighty blow!
Yes, Shams committed See-icide. That woman has lived in San Francisco so long that she takes See’s for granted! Shams seemed to think this was a practical means of checking the interiors, but, I ask you, where is the reverence???
If you check her blog, you’ll see that she’s posted a picture of Peggy holding the weapon. This was obviously an attempt to cover her tracks, and (dare I say it?) frame the innocent Peggy. You’ll also note that I am still in shock, moments later, as Peg is attempting to graciously move past the scandalous moment. I can’t prove that Carolyn was as stunned as I was, but it’s my recollection that she was, as any right-minded person would have been.
I should have traveled with my laminated See’s guide. I keep it by my desk at all times, and yet, in this, our time of need, I left it at home.
We did shop, but that was later, after we were very, very well fed. And yes, we ate every bit of the See’s, every single delicious bite.
Shams, of Communing With Fabric, has a post up today about two surprisingly chic dresses made from candy wrappers, which reminded me of this post, which has been languishing in my queue since February. This particular dress isn’t exactly made from wrappers, but it is made of paper — more or less. The image is, of course, Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell’s soup can:
I saw it in the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. According to its website, the Heard is “one of the world’s finest destinations for learning about American Indian arts and cultures”. Where Polish-American Andy, or, for that matter, Campbell’s soup, fits into this mission is unclear, but nevermind . . .
In the late 1960s, soup lovers could acquire this dress by sending in a couple of Campbell’s labels and a small fee (a dollar, I believe).
Note the dart — both placement, and construction:
It’s sort of an interesting take on a one-dart-fits-all approach: The dart is really just a pleat. This works on a mannequin, but I suspect it just “poufed” in the wearing.
The late 60s were a great era for paper clothing. I have a paper sari from around that time which was given to passengers by Air India; it’s rather charming, actually, though, of course, completely impractical as a garment. How times have changed! Now the best you can hope for on a plane is a cardboard sandwich. If you’re lucky.
The Heard Museum seems less like a museum and more like a showcase for contemporary artists whose work is on sale, but that’s not all bad; it’s filled with interesting artifacts, and worth a trip if you find yourself in Arizona — which I hope you don’t, at least until the state legislature acquires some semblance of sanity and does a little productive soul-searching.
It’s this foot:
I can’t remember if it came with my Pfaff 1229, or if I picked it up somewhere else. Every other foot for my Pfaff snaps onto the shank, so I’m inclined to think this was an add-on. However I found it, it’s a fantastic tool for the edgestitching I love.
All I have to do is line up the edge of the material (or the seam) with the edge of the tiny cutout for my machine’s needle:
This little gadget lets me put a stitching line very, very close to an edge. Just about perfectly, every time:
I can go around curves with no difficulty, turn sharp corners, and do any other little, fussy thing I want without a glitch, because I can see what I’m doing every step of the way.
Yep, it’s the third and final sink faucet unit in our living space. This one is in a very small bathroom off our kitchen pantry; it’s 1952 sink with a 1952 faucet unit. Somehow we never noticed that we didn’t have shut-off lines under it — not until the leaky faucet became too persistent to ignore, and I realized that I couldn’t conveniently shut the water off.
We had professionals come in to install the valves, and new, flexible hoses. Then I tackled the faucets. The big question was: Were they repairable? We already knew these were irreplaceable. Much to my surprise, they were less of a challenge than the unit in the upstairs bathroom, largely because I only had to work from the front.
All I had to do to remove the stem was take the faucet handles off and unscrew the nut you see on the left. Easy-peasy.
One handle was frozen to its stem, though, and the guy at our local independent hardware store bashed it off using an old screw, a screwdriver and some brute force. He didn’t have a few of the washers I needed, so I went back to the plumbing supply place where I’d gotten the faucets for the upstairs bath. They didn’t have them, either, but they knew who did — another small hardware store on the other side of town.
I remembered to take a picture of the stem before I dismantled it. There was sixty years’ worth of grit in the threads, which washed off easily with the help of a soft toothbrush. When I came back to the house, I used this picture to reassemble the stems. (An excellent trick, by the way, photograph everything. No mysteries later that way. Digital photos are also useful at the parts stores when you’re trying to explain something.)
Then it was just a matter of screwing the stems back into the sink:
This repair is not an unqualified success: Even the famous Jack LaLanne would find these handles difficult to turn, and I haven’t figured out how to change that. I seem to recall having heard that this is a common complaint about faucets of this vintage. One of the hardware store proprietors warned me to use plumber’s grease on the threads “to make them easier to turn”, which also suggests that this isn’t an unknown issue.
However, we now have water at the sink (however difficult it is to extract it), and no leaks or drips. Just to be sure, I put a bowl beneath, but so far, all is well. I seem finally to be out of plumbing projects. Now if I can only find my way to the sewing room. I know it’s around here somewhere . . .
(Useful tip: Since the washers were so hard to find, I bought a duplicate set, put them into a tiny plastic bag, labeled it, and stuck it into the mostly unused bathroom cabinet. If they need replacing, I’ve got the next set ready to go.)
Related: The Kitchen Sink and Sinking, Not Sewing
