Robes de Coeur
  • Blog
  • Quilting
  • Clothing
    • Menswear
    • Womenswear >
      • Self-Made Patterns
      • Commercial Patterns
    • Hats
    • Miscellany
  • About
  • Blog
  • Quilting
  • Clothing
    • Menswear
    • Womenswear >
      • Self-Made Patterns
      • Commercial Patterns
    • Hats
    • Miscellany
  • About

Making a Vinyl Lunch Bag

6/29/2017

2 Comments

 
All spring, I carried my lunch to work in the little paper bags you get from Starbucks or (in my case) Fabric Depot.  The bags were the right size, but wore out quickly, especially if I carried them in the rain.  So when I saw a strip of vinyl in the remnants section at FabDep, I thought "There's my new lunch bag!"  I made it on my mending day, while the pumpkin-colored thread was in the machine.  Here's a tutorial, in case you ever want to make a bag with a squared off bottom. 

Read More
2 Comments

Denim Blazer: follow-up

6/26/2017

1 Comment

 
I think I need to make a rating system for the clothes I make my sister.  The peplum top was a 5 out of 10, since though it fit perfectly, it was a perfect dud in terms of style.  Oh well.  The pinwheel top was a 9 out of 10, because only one thing needed changing (the elastic at the center back should either be made longer and moved down an inch or removed entirely). 

The denim blazer, the subject of today's post, is about a 7 out of 10.  It looks good in certain angles, worn open.  But the back is too wide and baggy; the upper bust area, near the shoulder, too roomy.  Here, my sister models the finished garment so I can analyze it.

Read More
1 Comment

Mending Day

6/22/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
Well, ladies and gentlemen, it's not all fun and made-from-scratch dresses here!  Some days, I just have a pile of mending and alterations.  But I shouldn't whine... every seam I sew teaches me something.  So this post is a quick run-down of the projects on my table today. 

Read More
0 Comments

Denim Blazer (Simplicity 7954)

6/19/2017

1 Comment

 
Picture
This "Five Hour Jacket" pattern came from a thrift store, cut out by the previous owner.  She obviously had some inspiration for it, since she had clipped an ad for Hancock Fabrics, showing a similar pattern made up in a red plaid.  I decided to eliminate the shoulder pads and make it a V-neck, and make it in denim for my sister.  I'm very pleased and excited by this latest project, which I conceived as a "jean jacket" but which now looks so cute I think I'll upgrade it to "denim blazer" because it sounds fancier. 

Read More
1 Comment

Admiring Tim Gunn!

6/15/2017

1 Comment

 
Tim Gunn is a fashion guy.  He worked for twenty-five years on the faculty at the Parsons School of Design, before becoming the chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne.  Overlapping these two jobs, he's also served as a mentor to contestants on Project Runway (fifteen seasons, so far!).  It was through Project Runway that I first encountered him.  My sister and I went through a phase of binge-watching the series (including Project Runway Australia and New Zealand, which had different mentors), and loved to see the amazing things people did with fabric, creativity, and not enough time.  And of course we enjoyed Tim Gunn. 
Picture
Tim Gunn at 81st Academy Awards / Chrisa Hickey

Read More
1 Comment

Aloha Shirt - doing a rub-off

6/12/2017

2 Comments

 
Picture

I conceived the aloha shirt project for my brother in fall 2016, but when the first muslin was a dud, I put the project on hold for a while.  Then in April 2017, when I saw this aloha shirt in a local vintage shop, my enthusiasm returned!  If this ready-to-wear (RTW) shirt fit my brother, I could use it for my template, instead of using the Islander shirt pattern from before. 

My brother is only a little heavier than I am, so I tried the shirt on.  When the RTW shirt fit me pretty well, only a little tight over the bosom, I thought it should fit my bosom-less brother fairly well, too.  I bought it ($16) in order to take a pattern from it.  Taking a pattern from an existing garment without dis-assembing it is called doing a rub-off. 

Read More
2 Comments

Salmon Striped Dress

6/8/2017

1 Comment

 
Here is another dress I made around the same time as the hand-sewn gray dress.  This one is from the same self-drafted pattern, and also hand-sewn.  I took this project with me on a three-day camping trip in the woods near Sisters, OR.  Yes, hand-sewing in the woods does mean no ironing of seams.  But with cotton, the finger-pressing that happens naturally as I work with the seams is sufficient.  And my fellow campers got a kick out of seeing me sewing on day one, and wearing the dress home on day three! 

This dress takes very little fabric (not a full skirt at all), but due to good color and fit, it always garners compliments.  And best of all, people compliment me, not the dress, so I know the dress is doing its job. 

Following are some close-up pictures of its construction. 

Read More
1 Comment

Hand-Sewn Gray Dress

6/5/2017

3 Comments

 
I love hand-sewing.  Ever since I was a child, I've loved plying the needle, imagining myself in another time.  It's certainly a slower process to hand-sew a garment than to do one by machine, but in the summer, when the weather is fine, I often take my projects to a local park to work on them.  A few years back, I was working on drafting a basic dress pattern, and made a couple versions of it.  The pattern is not perfect (the armscye is cut too close in the front, the sleeves I drafted for it never fit right, and I'm not crazy about the neckline), but it's a good example of an early stage of my pattern-drafting.  And, despite the fit problems, I always get compliments when I wear the dresses. 

Read More
3 Comments

Cultural Appreciation or Appropriation?

6/1/2017

0 Comments

 
At a fancy dress ball last year I had an interesting experience.  It was an all-white affair, not because of racism but simply because the people involved all happened to be white.  (The crowd was middle-aged to elderly, for the same reason.)  Most of us wore historical costumes or modern formal wear.  A few people wore fantasy clothes.

One couple wore Indian clothing... gorgeous stuff!  The woman's dress (Lehenga choli? Luanchari?  No midriff seen) was gold and red and heavily embroidered with gilt and beadwork, and her husband wore a white satin tunic and pants (achkan and churidar), also elaborately adorned.  They looked great!  So I complimented them, as you do, and they told me they'd recently been to India for a friend's wedding, and they'd been given the outfits to wear to the three-day celebrations.

Here's what made it interesting: when I first saw them, I had two reactions almost simultaneously: "pretty!" and * awkward *. ​

Read More
0 Comments

    Karen Roy

    Quilting, dressmaking, and history plied with the needle...

    Categories

    All
    1910's
    Alteration
    Antique
    Dyeing
    Embroidery
    General
    Hand Sewing
    History
    Lacemaking
    Mending
    Menswear
    Millinery
    Modern Elizabethan
    Musing
    Other Sewing
    Philippians 4:8
    Project Diary
    Quilting
    Regency
    Retro
    Self Made Pattern
    Self-made Pattern
    Terminology
    Victorian
    Vintage

    Blogs I Read

    The Dreamstress
    Male Pattern Boldness
    ​
    Lilacs & Lace
    Tom of Holland
    Fit for a Queen
    Line of Selvage
    Mainely Menswear
    Bernadette Banner

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017

    RSS Feed

Blog

Quilting

Clothing

About

Copyright Karen Roy
​© 2017-2022