DIY / Fix it

I started to learn to use a sewing machine in 2017, under Liisa’s guidance (here, see what she makes). And only now I’m finally starting to grasp – in tiniest baby steps and with great help from Carmen from Opció Diamant (I cannot recommend them enough if you are looking for sewing courses in Spanish in Barcelona) – the basics of garment construction and textile properties. So this is a section of ‘look what I did to make this garment work better for me’ or ‘…to prolong its lifespan’. This post is a feature of a jersey dress I adopted during the last purge of my mom’s wardrobe. It was too big for me even as a relaxed cut, so it got a very simple shape change.

A standard disclaimer: these are not detailed tutorials but inspirational pieces instead. However, my level is so basic that you can probably do this too. Here we go.

It’s a ‘made in Spain’ jersey dress from Mango’s Violeta sub-brand which caused quite a controversy upon its launch in 2014 due to them suggesting that ‘plus sizes’ start at size 40.

I have no idea about the precise fabric composition. Thanks, mom! I imagine it was one of those scratchy labels…

The most important point I learnt with this one was a bit of the magic that happens around the armpits and bust, i.e. how the a two-dimensional material takes the desired shape. As I was taking a good chunk off the whole side seam, it meant losing both part of the sleeve’s curve and the bust dart. Carmen’s expert advice was to wing the sleeve relying on the forgiveness of the jersey and…

…creating a new bust dart, following the line of the old one:

The new shape, from the end of the sleeve to the hemline, followed by a long trrrrrr with a stretchy stitch:

Voilà! The new shape once the extra fabric is cut off:

These are the leftovers:

And this is my new dress:

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What have you been up to, my talented friends? Have you done any life-giving fixes recently? Made any garments? Or is there something you would like to fix and don’t know how to?

The story of the second sewn piece I’ve made from scratch (the first was the beige lyocell skirt: 1, 2, 3) starts with a very first world problem: ñiñiñiñiñi, my all-natural rubber super yoga mat is not slippery enough to fit in the typical cylinder yoga mat sacks (taking all my f*ing omm away while I’m struggling with it after the practice). And it is heavy to carry around. And it unrolls at home. And, yes, it smells like rubber… A lot. Even after several year of use (I think I bought it in January 2016).

It actually was the first project I wanted to do with Carmen (Opció Taller forevaaah!) as part of my custom sewing course. Somehow the skirt happened first, and then some fixes too… But now it was the moment for this! New skills to learn? A lot! I had never sewn a zipper. I had never sewn a pocket. I had never attached a handle (trying to make sure that it would actually hold under the weight of the object to be transported). But I had the best teacher and the material, beautiful Soviet – or cunningly acquired non-Soviet? – denim I have inherited from when my mom was sewing:

I love that denim so much that I actually already have a purse made of it, by our beloved seamstress Elita in Rīga, see here, here and here. The sea blue canvas for details come from Julie’s stash, the same where the skirt lyocell came from, by the way. I bought a zipper, though. And promised myself to be very patient with this project, as impatience didn’t help with that first skirt.

Suddenly – OK, after a number of hours – I was a person able to sew zippers and pockets. My main worry throughout the process was the length. Getting it just right so that the mat would fit in, it would be reasonably easy to put it in and out, and that there wouldn’t be too much space… well, seemed to be happening.

I did some crying over this one, as I had decided to fit bias tape over the inner seams of the round bottom pieces. Why? F*ck knows. So that was pretty awful, but those inner seams ended up being covered. With the fugliest bias taping ever… It’s on the inside and nobody will ever pay attention to it.

But… While there was more than enough space for the mat in the bag, getting it in and out was not smooth enough. Usable but a bit tight. Usable but clearly waiting for a hole or a broken zipper to happen after ten uses or so. Hence this bag turned into a present for my favorite yoga teacher that has never given me a class: Marina. And I set out to make a new one – longer – for my mat.

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What are your experiences with #memade stuff? I think I get tired of them while sewing, so need to put some distance to be able to appreciate them afterwards. Also, I am overly critical of my own creations, at least at the beginning.

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An update in April 2019

There wasn’t enough of that floral denim for another bag, but more than enough of the blue canvas. Also, my demon t-shirt was falling apart (worn since 2014, 100+ wears). To ensure that Brekte’s ‘Lietuvēns’ would live on, it became the designated appliqué for the new bag, the same technique I used for the transformation of the No pasarán t-shirt. Easy-peasy: cut it, iron on a layer of adhesive lining to make it more sturdy, and sew on.

I unexpectedly got another embellishment in Carmen’s embroidery workshop. Practicing for that f*ing inner bias, I had made several small circles (my sewing comrades called them ‘Pope hats’), and used one of them for embroidery practice. The result was so cute I wanted to use it. So it got some velcro, and now sits atop the appliqué. My lietuvēns says hi to people…

The new bag is quite a bit longer. Standing upright there are some 5+ cm of empty… Not that pretty, but oh! so comfortable to put the mat in. Also, that blue is beautiful! And the demon says enough about my relationship with a yoga culture that prefers exaggerated mystic spirituality and all-white. ¡Hola!

The only thing left is to pick up my yoga practice back again…

I started to learn to do proper textile stuff last year. And only now I’m finally starting to grasp – in tiniest baby steps – the basics of garment construction and textile properties. So this is a section of ‘look what I did to make this garment work better for me’ or ‘…to prolong its lifespan’. This post is a double feature of a t-shirt I loved so much I turned it into an applique for another well loved item and a blouse that kept opening at the bust so I sewed it closed.

A standard disclaimer: these are not detailed tutorials but inspirational pieces instead. However, my level is so basic that you can probably do this too. Here we go:

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No pasarán t-shirt to jacket

No pasarán t-shirt depicting a ‘tropical uterus’ (as described by its author Elena Cuadrado) and the anti-fascist slogan from the Spanish Civil War ¡No pasarán! comes from a crowdfunding initiative that sprang as a resistance movement when the right-wing government kept threatening Spanish women with limiting their rights to abortion in 2014. Much care and love went into these, for example, the delivery to backers were delayed because the organizers had discovered that the t-shirt provider chosen didn’t have good enough labor standards, so they switched to 100% organic cotton from Stanley/Stella halfway through. If you love the design and want to make it into a desktop or whatever else, there are downloadable .png and .pdf at the link above.

So I loved it and wore it a lot. It got well over #100wears and it showed. After several fixes of the cotton jersey around the armpits, it became clear recently that something else had to be done. See, old fixed ‘welts’ in the background an a new hole + an overall wearout:

At the same time I was figuring out how to improve my old Street One jacket. It, being around 15 years old, was cut to early 2000s fashion – on the hip – as everything was extra-low waist back then. For real, I didn’t learn where my real waist was until the age of 25 or so! The overall design is nice, the fabric is pleasant and sturdy, but it lacked an ooomph:

First I added some patches Kristīne gifted me, but that wasn’t enough and the length problem was still there…

But at some point an idea of a feminist-biker-gang-jacket occurred, we did some brainstorming with Carmen at Opció Taller, and then magic happened. Scissor magic and applique magic, to be precise.

This is the result! Shorter hem without many complications because the lowest press button was originally a long way higher than the hem. Front patches. And the glorious back applique. My only little concern is how it will wear under the backpack, but I don’t wear backpack on my back that often (it’s mostly in the bicycle basket) and it’s great so far! So 15 more years for the jacket…

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The ruffle blouse

I got this flimsy piece of plastic as a hand-me-down from Kristīne in 2015. It’s originally Asos, but knowing Kristīne I would bet that it has passed through a charity shop in Cambridge before she acquired it. It’s transparent, so an undergarment is needed. That’s one of the reasons why repairing the little lace blouse was so important, because I wear these two together.

I had worn it with no second thought about the buttons even this May. Then summer came and it’s too plastic for Barcelona summer, so we met again this week. And there clearly have been some body changes in between because I spent all day buttoning it up because the buttons kept popping. 0 fun even with an undergarment. Evidence below, May 2018 vs. October 2018. There is now just this little bit more tugging on the buttons now… that makes all the difference for the ease of wear:

Every busty person will have met this problem with button-downs, it’s one of the reasons why the only one I have is quite oversized… but this one, which is not even a true button-down because it does not button all the way down, now played this trick on me! See?

But I want to keep wearing this one! I like the cut, I like the pink hue, the exaggerated femininity of it, dude, it’s a nice little blouse for my brand of ‘tame-looking-librarian-that-will-crush-your-bullshit-once-you-have-underestimated-her’…

The only reasonable fix that occurred to me was to sew it up. I measured that leaving open only the top two buttons was enough for me to get it over my head, which meant that all the problem area can be neatly stitched together and nobody will know. And nobody will have to remark on my buttons ever again.

I sewed together the inside part of the button detail, as that was a neater way to do it. So the buttons can still be opened and the stitches are behind them. That’s why it’s not perfectly fixed from the outside and looks ‘natural’. The difference is subtle but I don’t have to monitor those buttons anymore. Great! More mental energy for the actual life.

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Have you done any life-giving fixes recently? Made any garments? Or is there something you would like to fix and don’t know how to?

I started to learn to do proper textile stuff last year. And only now I’m finally starting to grasp – in tiniest baby steps – the basics of garment construction and textile properties. So this is a section of ‘look what I did to make this garment work better for me’ or ‘…to prolong its lifespan’. This post is a double feature of a skirt I had to adjust due to reality of bodies (ehm, too tight waist) and a little blouse/undershirt that had been dangerously worn out, i.e. more wears could push it over the edge of unfixable.

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WAG skirt

Careful readers of this blog know my ambiguous relationship with the WAG set all to well. It was an impulse buy last November in South Africa (see the money report here) and it has taken 10 months to finally tame it. Apart from loud print and attention-seeking (at least in places overtaken by the casual revolution) cut, the skirt was held above the natural waistline by a tight rubber band… which worked well when trying it on and walking upright, but became impossibly tight when sitting for a while or after a meal.

The original waist with rubber holding together the back:

So in consultation with my sewing guru Carmen at Opció Taller, we decided she suggested and I trusted her expertise to take out the rubber and then see if the waist needed any taking in afterwards. It was pick-pick-pick time to unravel all the seams that contained the waistband…

We discovered that the un-scrunched waistline was a bit too wide, and – (a) to avoid redoing the whole piece, (b) because the patterned fabric is very generous with these kind of shortcuts, and (c) because I was eager to wear this skirt already (before the season ends) – opted for just making two tucks in the back part of the waistband, in line with the original tucks of the skirt part. You can see them if you squint a bit:

I still have to go over the opened part with a zigzag stitch, but the skirt has been in happy rotation ever since I fixed the waist. The new waist is not pushing on of my ribs or any vital organs and it’s lower, leading to an unexpected thing: I am baring my midriff when wearing the whole set now. If before I had the ‘dress effect’, now it’s ‘look, my tummy’ effect. I’m hoping to be channeling some of this Sartorialist attitude, although some Swap bloopers showed that it can also be quite ‘unflattering’. Oh, well, I just keep telling the ‘you’re fat’ monsters off with ‘I’ll eat you too’… As now I can eat all I want while wearing this skirt! And it has pockets.

There is always the ‘risk’ that I would lose weight or gain even more, but having done this fix, I know that there are options to both take it in more or let it out. So this skirt is here to stay, #30wears and counting.

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The lace undershirt

The jury is still out on if this is a proper garment or a replica of an undergarment from 100 years ago… I got it in 2012 from my mom who has a penchant for little white blouses, and have been wearing it as a modesty garment in winter (who is the genius that keeps producing heavy jersey dresses with deep decolletages?) and as the lightest possible blouse during Barcelona summers. The fabric composition tag has been cut off long ago, but it has a very cotton-y feel and is suboptimal as a winter undergarment because of that as the sweat just stays there and makes me cold. Despite that, this little garment has a solid place in my wardrobe fulfilling a double function, and the possibility to wear the purple jersey dress with dignity hinges on it.

In summer:

In winter:

So imagine my horror when sometime this spring I discovered that the right armpit was falling apart, and I couldn’t think of a solid solution to the problem, as just stitching it over would not stop the tearing:

My ideas revolved around patching it on the inside and doing a lace applique on top but the garment is so light that anything I could imagine felt too much and closer to destroying it than resuscitating… Enter Carmen, my fairy godmother of sewing at Opció Taller! Yes, all the fix series are dedicated to her because I wouldn’t have achieved this level of satisfaction without her guidance. I would have either fucked it up on my own or given it to the fast sewing shop ladies who don’t necessarily care about my stuff . After a session of brainstorming about lace patches, their placement and possibilities to dye lace in black tea to get the right shade of this weird off-white, Carmen found just the right thing in one of her magical notions boxes: stand alone lace flowers in exactly the shade I needed.

Then it was my first contact with interfacing fabric (to secure the hole before darning over it), many little stitches and ta-dah! It’s now a cute demure detail nobody will really notice, the blouse has been saved and I have learnt a couple of new tricks. A complete win.

And the whole outfit! You cannot see either of the interventions, but I know that they are there, and having been able to make both these garments wearable again fills me with pride and satisfaction.

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Have you done any life-giving fixes recently? Made any garments? Or is there something you would like to fix and don’t know how to?

I started to learn to do proper textile stuff last year. And only now I’m finally starting to grasp – in tiniest baby steps – the basics of garment construction and textile properties. So this is a section of ‘look what I did to make this garment work better for me’ or ‘…to prolong its lifespan’. This post is a double feature of a garment that was technically perfectly fine but didn’t feel right and a basic 3-minute fix of a jersey fail that happens all the time.

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Liisa bag + Ezra W. Smith embroidery

In the beginning of 2018 Liisa made a gift for me: this little cross-body bag! Nice size, careful design, sturdy construction… and a print of a minion and Pusheen. Which showed her intimate knowledge of my Facebook sticker favorites and overestimation of my desire to express those in public. But I wanted to wear it! Reason 1: my dear friend made it! Reason 2: my only small bag here in Barcelona has chain strap that stains light garments, so a bag that would not entail sink washing my tops after every wear could be nice.

Also, the very technique of printing gave an impression of not lasting. Marina wore it for the week she was in Barcelona in July and the subsequent wash left it looking like this. I also have to admit that I didn’t care if this applique would be destroyed… because I had a plan.

Being an active insta-stalker of Ezra W. Smith I saw an opportunity to spend my hard-earned euros on embroidery by her. Also, I could explain my wish to spend 100€ on an 13 x 15 cm patch with #girlssupportinggirls. Best cure for buyer’s guilt is to wrap it in feminism! We talked back and forth about the content of the embroidery (carps, foxes and great tits were among the options) and settled on an owl. This was the photo she worked from, and this is the result:

As we had agreed that the most reasonable way to do this was for her to make a patch and to me to sew it on, I got some practice at invisible stitches. My initial plan was to create a definite border with bias ribbon or something (like this), but my sewing guru, Carmen from Opció Taller, convinced me that such artwork needed the least intervention possible. She was right, and here it is, complete with an ironic Tate Modern pin that says ‘oil painting’, as it should be!

The only weird thing about this endeavor has been that just around when I was carrying out this transaction, Liisa launched hEdgy Crafts doing, among other, embroidery, even of owls. I have already asked for forgiveness for having intervened her artwork… but the uneasiness stays. But at least now I have an easy-wear cross-body bag. While I’m not planning to put it in the washing machine ever again, the embroidery is keeping up very well so far, especially taking into account my usual carelessness with things.

So here you have before and after:

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And here is the little basic jersey hole, as promised. My February swap t-shirt got a hole and I did my best to gather the sides and contain it. The internet is full of how-tos, here’s just two of them: How to Repair a Hole in a T-Shirt and Fix It Friday – Holes in Jersey Material.

Before:

After:

After (reverse):

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Have you done any life-giving fixes recently? Made any garments? Or is there something you would like to fix and don’t know how?