sarah in nyc

I am an avid collector and reader of vintage sewing books.  One of the reasons for my minor obsession  is that some of these older sewing books also contain the great secrets of garment drafting without a pattern. Amazon.com Widgets The other day I found  this blog , The Midvale Cottage post which focuses on vintage clothing.  I was delighted to find a large collection of posts focusing on the work of Ruth Wyeth Spears. It's easy enough to find copies of her 1943 book on Ebay and on  Amazon . I was not aware of her brilliant work from the 1920's. Ruth Wyeth Spears breaks down what looks at first glance to be a complicated dress into dead simple steps. With a little thought you can use these methods in a dress that works for today's silhouettes. I just love this dress. Ruth Wyeth Spears seems to have been brilliant at breaking down visual problems to their simplest components. She had a Home Dec column that appeared in newsp...

As promised, I reply to comments. (real ones) Gabrielle had asked me how I drafted the collar for the Mrs. Quint dress. This is it.

One of my readers asked me several questions about this dress and it seems like a good idea to answer them in a post rather than just to reply in the comments. So here are some things to think about as you construct a dress like this. This particular dress is 54 inches long from  shoulder to hem. I am 5' 7”. The most important thing to remember when you cut out a dress shaped like this is that at each point the dress needs to be wide enough for your body. It can be wider than you are at any point but needs to fit your body.  Yes, a knit will stretch, but you also need to remember that a knit will have less stretch on the bias. If you  neglect to add enough width  you can always cut open the dress and and add  an additional panel of fabric. Given the artsy look of the fabric you can add a contrasting  fabric  if you wish. This dress has a fairly wide center panel added.  This dress looks best worn twisted to one side. Let me know if y...

Well, actually it’s only three. If you get technical about it, it’s six shades ( Each garment is made up of two shades of grey)   Today I wore three grey garments that I made, a dress, a cardigan and a scarf . My go-to color for the past year or so has been grey. For some reason it makes me feel really cheerful during the winter months. The dress is a space dyed drapey knit. The cardigan is a nice heavy tweedy knit and the scarf is a stable double knit. I like how they all work together.   My daughter gets nervous about mixing prints. Maybe because of all of my years quilting it feels like second nature to me.

I was doing finishing touches on a piece.  I was waiting for the paint to dry and the making dresses itch had to be scratched. I had done my version of retail therapy…buying a mystery bundle from Fabric Mart . This time about half of the fabrics that arrived in the bundle were fabrics that I never ever would have chosen.  This green knit is one of those fabrics. It screams 1968 to me.  ( not groovy hippie wear but the sort of dress that responsible adults wore)   Clearly I have been influenced by watching the later seasons of Mad Men.  It is vaguely like what my cooler secular studies teachers might have worn when I was in elementary school ( but of course with sleeves). I more or less used my easiest dress in the world diagram  to make this dress. The yardage wias a bit shorter than I would have liked…so the cowl is less deep. I was prepared to hate this dress. What is there to like? double knit? in a kind of ugly color? I have been won over. I ...

I remember having an epiphany about clothing manufacturers back when I was in high school. Many manufacturers kept re-making the same shape over and over again in different fabrics. Now that I know a bit more about the manufacturing process, economically that makes a whole lot of sense. Perfecting a pattern is expensive business. I often repeat the same  dress shape over and over again. For me it isn’t a matter of economics. Once I get a shape that works, it’s nice to play with the possibilities of what it can be. Also if you are a bit of a lazy dress maker, like I am it becomes possible to cut out a garment without a whole lot of pre-planning or thinking.   I do however cut differently depending on the fabric that I’m using. This red dress is made out of a heavy weight stable knit that isn’t very stretchy. It was cut with a bit of negative ease.  ( the 1/4 width of fabric was  1.5 inches smaller than my hip measurement)   I cut this back version o...

  A while back I was full of my cleverness in repairing my bathrobe . I thought that by reinforcing the worn out edges of the robe I would get a few more years of wear from a beloved garment.   I realized that I had mad the same error that many of my clients do. they bring me a beloved textile and assume that with just a bit of a nip and a tuck it will be as good as new. Often though, I have to be the bearer of bad news and inform my client that their beloved item is too far gone. That when I looked carefully I can see that the textile is on it’s last legs and it really isn’t worth putting in the time and effort into repairing it. I bought the red and white striped seersucker to repair my robe, gave it a new nifty trim…but that robe began to disintegrate within a few weeks of my completing the work on it. It was time for a new robe.   I did look around for some nice white waffle woven cottons… But given that I have a closet overflowing with fabrics I decided...

I have never had a post generate as many hits as Easiest dress in the world did. There were a bunch of request to have a photo of me in the dress. So here it is. A slightly closer view of the neckline. The weather is supposed to turn cool, so I made a little jacket to go with the dress. You can make one too. yes this is easiest to make in a knit. You can make this in a woven as well, but you need to make sure to leave enough ease so you can do things like move your arms. This is the schematic for cutting. I used my pink sweater as a guide for cutting. I wanted the sleeves to be wider, so I cut them wider. This is what you get after cutting.   Then I cut open the front. Be careful that you only cut one layer. Cut a neck curve. Finish the raw edges any way that makes you happy. Wear.

I had bought the fabric for this dress from the dollar fabrics at Fabric Mart , as a segula, an amulet so I wouldn’t die during surgery. I guess my $2 investment in magical thinking worked. I didn't die.  I thought it was time to make good on the magical thinking and make the dress, especially because I’m going to be spending most of the week in Boston with my mother. If I want to wear the dress for Rosh Ha Shanah I had better get to work. This is the basic diagram for the dress. This dress is most easily made with a knit but could work made with a bias cut woven. The back and front are cut the same. I cut both layers of fabric at the same time. Most of the shaping in this dress is not done by complicated seaming darting, but by the shape of my body. I cut the dress with a bunch of ease at the bust, so it drapes, less at the hips so it clings. Here is the version I made last night out of a fabric that had come from a mystery bundle a few years back.  The fabric cost near...

A while ago ,I found a really interesting link on this  blog . Julian Roberts, that is Julian, not Julia had an incredibly cool way to create visually complex yet easy to sew dresses.  Julian is clearly a quirky guy. His website was open only two days a week  so it wasn’t always  easy to track his method down and try it.  The other day I saw that the   Julian Roberts book is now available as a PDF.  I downloaded the book. It’s a space hog but  completely fascinating.   Some of Julian's ideas are really easy to assimilate, others feel like trying to master  advanced mathematics when you have trouble with simple arithmetic. But on one foot, his method starts with a long pillow case of fabric. You sort of randomly decide where the front and back bodices go, cut then out and then twist,  and turn those bodices and stitch the dress together.   Here you see stage 1. Here are two views of the finished dress.  it...

The wedding gift for the bride and groom is now complete with a sleeve for hanging. Feel free to admire. I ship it off tomorrow. I love the green glen plaid suiting used as binding. I’m pleased beyond words that I can now miter corners.  Mitering was one of those  sewing tasks that took me forever  ( 15 years of bad attempts) to master. Sometimes it takes me a really, really long time to learn things. Also sewn by me today were these two pairs of boxers for my older son. I had made boxers for my older son for years. Then  for the past few years he wanted store bought ones.  yesterday he mentioned that he needed two more pairs and was willing for me to make them.  I realized that  since my yonger son’s boxers are nearly all orange, I can’t make my older son orange boxers  or laundry will be be a problem.   The yellow pair is made out of some of the mystery delivery of fabric  that arrived in my lobby for me a few wee...

While we were in Boston we spent time with a dear friend who met me when I was twelve. Our friend is really serious about Jewish stuff ( he is a rabbi)  and yet approaches it all with the most delightful sense of the absurd.  The result makes doing any Jewish ritual with him both profound and potentially outrageously funny.     When we visited, we brought  our friend an assortment of goodies from the Russian market across the street from my mother’s apartment. We brought “highly carbonated water with organic materials,  chocolate with the picture of a very surprised looking baby on the label, preserved cherries and a few other oddities we thought out friends would enjoy, perhaps for their  value as food but as much for the joy of reading the labels. In the same spirit, our friend gave me this from his pantry. Our friend grew up in New Orleans. He likes having this taste of home in his pantry. I also think that he likes the sheer perversity ...