179. Refashion 33: Denim Coat/Dress from Men's Jeans

Well howdy, strangers!

I've been working, travelling, and expanding my household by adding a 19-year-old niece (what a long story!). The sewing has come in fits and spurts. I got the idea for a coat/ dress after watching Signe Chanel this summer. Each Chanel seamstress enters the atelier in the morning, leaves her jacket in her locker, and puts on a simple white work coat. Like a lab coat, in a way. The idea of putting on a coat to signal that it's time to get to work has a lot of appeal, so I decided to sketch out a couple of "lab coats". This is the first of two in my head and on paper.

I started collecting black denim this summer, knowing that white simply wouldn't work for me. I started the pattern on October 8. I remember because Louis had a playground accident that morning, and I had to stop working on the pattern to pick him up from school and take him to the emergency room. He got all stitched up and back on his feet quickly, but everything on my cutting table stayed where it was for a full week! The next time I got back to the pattern, I had a couple of days to finish pattern work and cut out and assemble the main pieces: jacket front and back, front and back yokes, front zipper.

It hung on Clementine for about 3 weeks until I could work on it again. In one short session I draped the collar and sewed it on, and in a subsequent session I finished the insides (yoke facings) and cut the sleeves from the bottom legs of another pair of jeans and attached them. Today I washed it and put on the 1/4" brass studs. I wanted to only put them on one side of the collar, my 6-year-old said I should do it on both sides, and I intended to... until my fingertips protested after I finished the left side. So asymmetrical it is!

Although I always envisioned it with sleeves, it looked much more like what I had in mind without the sleeves! My niece convinced me to try the sleeves so I did, and after trying it on with sleeves I really kind of hated it. Not so much for what it was, but for how far it seemed from what I had in mind. Now that I've washed it, taken photos, and see those photos, I am good with it! This is the second piece of Vocabulary's imaginary fall collection, with the studded capelet being the first.

The collar was everything! The entire concept came to life because of my idea for the collar. After I attached the collar, I tried the coat (sans sleeves) on and my husband said, "I really don't care for it." I asked what he didn't like, and he was unable to articulate anything specific. At which point I went totally "Project Runway contestant" on him and declared, "Well, I like it and will wear it to your office Christmas party next month." Unlike PR contestants, I spun around and walked out of the room.

He followed me in there a few minutes later, possibly thinking he'd hurt my feelings, though still unable to tell me just what didn't work for him. I remained neither angry nor offended. It was just clear to me that he didn't get it. His tastes run pretty traditional/ conservative. With 3 years of garment sewing and 2 years of pattern play under my belt, my ability to create is catching up with my ability to imagine. And I find it hard to compromise now.

So I may look like a total weirdo to the average citizen when I wear this, but I will walk tall and feel proud of it. For the record, I probably won't wear it to my husband's office Christmas party, not because I'm ashamed of it -- but because no one wears black denim to a dressy party. :)

177. Studded Capelet from Men's Jeans

Whew, it's been a while since I've checked into ye olde blog. Usually October-December is the busiest time for my training work, so I'm on the road a bunch, and when I'm not, I'm preparing for training -- freshening up the content, making travel arrangements, ironing out contract details, etc. etc. Sewing fits in the spaces in between.

This denim capelet is made from repurposed men's jeans, and the studs are from www.studsandspikes.com (which shipped really quickly and has great customer service, BTW. Highly recommend). I'd like to make the capelet to order in the Vocabulary shop but won't list it until November, when I have any hope of filling orders.

I sketched this capelet back in the summer, but wasn't inspired enough to get sewing until the weather started cooling down. I finished the construction of the capelet end of Sept or early Oct, but had a doozy of a time putting those stinkin' snaps in! Dritz makes a killing with their $6 packages of 7 jumbo snaps. It takes three failed attempts for me to get one snap installed correctly, and you can't re-use these things after they've been messed up! I made the mistake of buying the Dritz "convertible" snap pliers. It absolutely did not work for the jumbo snaps. Here are the pliers to avoid -- the "convertible" ones with all their unhelpful attachments:

And the pliers that work -- the "heavy duty jumbo snap" pliers (BTW, the hand belongs to the checkout gal at the craft store. My skin has more pigment, hahaha):
It took me a couple of weeks after the snaps went on the capelet to dress up and take photos. We had rain for a few days so lighting wasn't conducive, and then it got so hot that I was wearing short dresses for a few days (not dark mystery studded capelet kind of weather, you know), and the day I finally took pics I saw that Tina had just posted a capelet on her glam.spoon blog! We had never even uttered the word "capelet" to each other and there we were, with our individual interpretations that looked so different! We traded messaged about it, and she commented that my capelet was like the tomboyish little sister to her luxe cashmere version. And it probably echoes who we would be in person with each other! So fun. Love ya, girl.

I happened to catch America's Next Top Model last night in my hotel room, and noticed that all the models were 5'7" or shorter! I missed my chance to become America's Next Top Model! :p

The funny thing is that I tweeted a hilarious quote about Tibet from one of the contestants, and today The Tyra Banks Show started following my tweets! I totally need some modeling lessons, so maybe Tyra will take up this lost cause I am and bestow upon me some personalized supermodel tips. Ha!

I'm up much later than I should be. I decided to indulge in an episode of my beloved Law & Order: Criminal Intent at 9. As I snuggled under the covers near the end of the episode, I decided it was cool in the room and maybe it would get cold tonight. So I turned on the heater. Little did I know that, this being San Antonio, the heater probably had not been turned on in at least a year. It roared to life and gave off burning fumes! It took me about 5 seconds to turn the heater off, but the smoke alarm in my room had already been set off. You should have seen me, jumping on the second queen bed in the room, frantically waving my Art Issue of W toward the ceiling to shoo the smoke away from the alarm. I was already in my PJ's and preferred not to run into the hallway for a full-on fire drill. After the smoke alarm stopped sounding, I was so worked up I didn't feel tired. And the room still smells like smoke, and the safety latch on the windows won't let me prop it open to air out the room. And I'm close to the elevator and prefer not to keep the door open. So here I sit, in my dark, smoky room, praying that nothing catches on fire overnight, and hoping I get enough rest for the second day of my class tomorrow, and catching up on my blogging. Obviously. :D

164. Refashions 26 + 27a + 27b: All from men's shirts

1) THANK YOU

It has been a lot of fun to kick off Vocabulary and read your many supportive, encouraging comments... to see how many of you became Facebook fans, how many of you re-tweeted the shop opening announcement, how many of you wrote a whole new blog post to share the news! I've always enjoyed finding a place in the blogging community and making new friends in a new way. Launch weekend could have been way stressful but it ended up being very exciting and fun. Thank you for your friendship.

2) A disclaimer

This is my third time writing this post -- I actually deleted the first two drafts and started fresh each time. Because I am blogging about 3 tops, two of which I really don't care much for, and it made me tired to re-live the experience draping/ drafting/ sewing them up. And I thought if it was deflating for me to show you the pics and describe the challenges, maybe it would be deflating for you to see and read about them. But I've decided to document some of my lessons learned anyway in case they are interesting or helpful to you (and you can just close the window now and wait for the next post if you like, I would understand!).

3) Refashion 26: Pintucked (Shoulder) Shirt from Men's Dress Shirt

This was my first design idea for Vocabulary's summer camp shirt variations. The original was a 100% cotton, short-sleeved men's shirt. The resulting women's shirt was challenged:

• Shoulders too wide
• Neckline too big, odd shape shape (the shirt started out collarless but I didn't like it, unpicked the binding, adjusted the original collar and sewed it on)
• Silhouette boxy, unflattering
• You can't see the pintucks on most patterned fabrics unless you're up close

So I ditched the whole concept. I'd tortured the fabric on this sample enough and still couldn't get the shirt where I wanted it. I've worn the shirt a few times and you know what? It isn't really comfortable! So I moved on to the next style without tinkering with the pattern/ first sample more.

4) Refashion 27a: Gathered Raglan Top from Men's Dress Shirt

This eventually became the Dulcet Top that's in the shop. But getting there was pretty much torture for me. In summary, the process for this top was:

1. Sketch the design
2. Drape a sample
3. Transfer to pattern
4. Sew the first sample
5. Refine the sample
6. Alter the pattern
7. Sew the second sample
8. Refine second sample
9. Alter the pattern
10. Sew the third sample, refine it, alter the pattern
11. Lather, rinse, repeat
12. Sew the top in its final form
13. Then grade the pattern into multiple sizes, but I'll get to that later

Honestly, I wasn't unhappy with this first sample. I like wearing it and have gotten compliments. But when I thought about how much better it needed to be in order to be sustainable, a closet staple someone else would love and pretty much wear to death, it needed some changes:

• Silhouette is straight from the front but a-line when looking from the side. Decided to make the whole thing a-line and hit at high hip.
• Neckline was higher than I wanted it to be.

I thought I'd make those changes, make a perfect second sample, and we'd be ready to production sew! Not the case.

5) Refashion 27b: Gathered Raglan Top from Men's Dress Shirt

Well, just look at it. Not ideal. When you mess with patterns, there's a very real chance that when you change one thing, it will affect something else that you might not have considered. I'm pretty comfortable modifying patterns for tops with set-in sleeves, but obvz. was thrown by the raglan style:

• Neckline binding too short
• Too much fabric in the sleeves
• Never again use seersucker for this top b/c the fabric is too stiff, won't drape well

I didn't photograph the third sample because it is pretty close to the final Dulcet top. Anyway, the point is it took 4 samples to get it just as I wanted it. Which is why people work far, far in advance of the season they are designing for. Which is why I learned my lesson and am working on Fall/ Winter ideas now, as I boil. (BTW, 52 days over 100 degrees so far this summer.)

6. Pattern grading

For the average home sewist, pattern grading is about using a commercial sewing pattern and drawing a new line from a smaller size for bust to a larger line for hips, or something to that effect. Maybe it means buying a sweet vintage pattern that's too big and drawing a new set of seamlines to get one size smaller.

Until this experience I had never done the manual pattern grading, garment industry-style, for multiple sizes. This involves taking your sample pattern, which is usually in the middle of your size range, cutting it along various vertical and horizontal lines, and separating by fractions of an inch to grade up, or overlapping by fractions of an inch to grade down.

Now that I've done it, I could grade another pattern much more quickly and less painfully. But that first time, it was tough. I felt overwhelmed by the many pattern pieces now scattered about the floor like a puzzle. Louis was walking around the house with my camera, practicing his composition, and he snuck up on me and took this picture, which in retrospect says it all:

There are many more lessons to share, but another time. :)

163. Talking shop

Just want to preface by saying that I don't want all my posts from here on out to be about Vocabulary. But a question came up from several blogging buddies about my decision to use Big Cartel for my online shop instead of Etsy. The response I wrote back in the comments section got reallllly long, and I wanted to hear about your experiences, so here it will get its own post.

BTW, I'm not endorsing any one product/ provider, just sharing my thought process. From time to time I can get stuck in analysis paralysis, so when I feel that about to happen, I make a decision and make sure that no one else is harmed and I can change my mind later. So as far as I'm concerned, nothing is set in stone here.

I started evaluating different online storefront providers several months ago. My #1 priority: the simplest storefront possible. It would have been my #1 desire to use the Paypal storefront widget, speaking of simplicity, and I did set one up to see how it would work for my shop. But you can't enlarge the pictures much, you can only show one photo per product, and it didn't integrate with the Facebook fan page. So no go on my beloved Paypal storefront widget.



I checked out Etsy and opened a shop (didn't put any products up for sale) to get a feel for how it would look. The way the shop looked, with my logo and colors and layout, didn't convince me that I'd found the right solution. The people I visited with about why they chose Etsy mentioned they did so because everyone else is on Etsy, or because it was the only option around when they opened their store, or because they thought they would get more "foot traffic" from people browsing other shops on Etsy. To be fair, I didn't engage anyone in super-rigorous discussion about their reasons for choosing Etsy.

So, on to Big Cartel. With as few products as I plan to have available for sale at any given time, Big Cartel's simple, clean layout and ease of customization won me over immediately. Plus, their pricing structure is more my preference -- their base package is limited but completely free, and if you upgrade, you pay a monthly fee. No contracts. No listing fees, no per transaction fees, no extra-photo fees, no nickel-and-diming. All the money stuff is handled in my Paypal account, not in Big Cartel. The simpler for me, the better. I haven't discounted using Etsy in the future, but I will stick with Big Cartel for a while and see how it plays out.

I know many of you have your own shops, so I'd love to know: Who hosts your online storefront? What do you love about it? What do you wish were different? When you buy online, what do you love/ wish were different about your experience at small indie designers' shops?

162. The Shopkeeper is In

Today is the day: My little online shop for my little clothing label is open! I'll save my "lessons learned" for another time; this post is to let you know the shop is open. You're really the first folks that I'm announcing to because you've been soooo supportive along my way getting here, and I appreciate that more than you know.

If you're in an extra-supportive mood, I'd be ever grateful if you:
* Check out the shop and let me know what you think;
* Visit the Facebook fan page and poke around, and if you're on Facebook, I really really hope you'll become a fan!; and/ or
* Email / Facebook/ tweet everyone you know today to invite them to check out the shop.

And of course, if you see something you or someone you love might like, please do buy it! :)

There's a grand opening sale this weekend, with everything 20% off. In this limited run, there are 2 styles of tops (7 tops in total), refashioned from men's shirts, in a variety of sizes. The run is called "Vocabulary of Plaid" because, as you guessed it, they are all plaids! My inspiration was a very expensive ($170), classic Lacoste camp shirt that I saw in a magazine this spring. I wanted to present variations on this classic camp shirt, without having to drain much more of the earth's resources to produce them, and priced much more reasonably -- so here they are!

I hope you have a great weekend! (Hope I do, too. *nerves nerves* LOL) xoxo