Tag Archives: wear the shift

Shift-ing into Summer

9 Jun

Turning my back on black, it’s time to bring out the color. I went back to the embroidered Indian fabric I originally bought for a skirt, in March, when the weather was still cold. I wanted more than a skirt. Plus, I haven’t been sewing in a few weeks (other projects took over my attention) so I needed something light and easy to get back into it.

I chose what is becoming my standby, my “Wear the Shift” pattern:

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I laid the pattern out right along the lace edging of the fabric, to use the fabric’s border as a hem. And since it was scalloped on both sides, I cut the strip of scallops off the opposite side to use that, as well, as a double-layered scallop. Since the lace needed to be fully lined, anyway, I attached the second strip of lace to the hem of the lining underneath.

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It’s bright, it’s summery, it’s decidedly not black, and all of that is good. However, reading sewing blogs has made me paranoid about wrinkles, and this dress definitely wrinkles. If wrinkles point out areas of poor fit, then something is surely off, here, which is troubling, because this is my custom built-for-me dress pattern that I’ve made a half dozen times. It could be the way the lace lays over the lining, or it could be the way the grain shifted slightly as I lined the pattern up by the hem rather than the true grainline…or it could be a few added pounds. It’s difficult to say for sure, except the one sure thing I am learning in this project is that “fit is hard”.

And even the old “tried and true” can throw you for a loop, when you’re getting all creative with it.

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After a long, long, wait: Cream Silk

18 Mar

I don’t have much of a fabric stash, particularly not considering how long I’ve been sewing. I usually buy fabric intended for specific projects, even if my intention arises right there on the spot. I buy fabric with a specific garment in mind, even if I don’t yet know the pattern.

Which is what I did nearly 15 years ago, when I bought two pieces of dupioni silk, one a very pale tan and one a blush pink, with pintucks.  I thought I’d make either a simple skirt or a shift dress, something smooth and straight, and then a little pink bolero jacket  to wear over it.  And that’s exactly what I continued thinking, for years and years, every time I saw the fabric on its shelf (or packed it into a box and moved it from one house to another). I couldn’t decide if it should be just a skirt, or a full dress. And I couldn’t decide which specific pattern to use to make it, either way…and so I didn’t make anything.

Until this week, when I decided the reason I couldn’t decide between a skirt and a dress was because I actually wanted both. And that I had enough fabric to pull it off, in a way.

I made skirt with just bit of texture, and a simple shell top, so that they could be worn together or separate, and used with other garments for infinite layering possibilities.

I used my basic A-line skirt pattern and divided into sections and cut it cross-grain, so that the slub and texture of the dupioni catches the light with just enough variation to give the simple shape some slight variation.

You can see that “shifting biases” effect best in this picture from my workroom. The sunlight outdoors floods out the variation in shading from the fabric’s nap. Also, you can see here that I finished the waistband very simply, with just a row of fold-over velvet elastic. The skirt has a side zip, and then the elastic smooths it off at the top. (I haven’t cut into the pink, yet, but I know just what I’m going to do with that, now, too!)

I used my “Wear the Shift” dress pattern for the top, and simply cut it off at the waist for a basic, sleeveless sheath-style blouse.  I think the two pieces together work well as a background when I want to feature hand-knitted layers.

This is my “Sophia” cardigan, from one of my very favorite pattern books, French Girl Knits. Which actually makes this yet another “head to toe handmade” outfit…a thing I am finding more common, these days, three months into this project.

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Handmade Hotel Fashions

31 Jan

Today’s Day 3 adventures left me barely any time to snap a documentary snapshot of my handmade outfit. So here’s me squeezed into the barest corner of my hotel room, but I’m wearing my personal favorite of my “Wear the Shift” shift dresses, along with the faux-tortoiseshell chain necklace I posted about a couple of weeks ago. I find I can put up with inconvenience easier when I’m wearing fun handmade fashions.

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Wearing the Shift

4 Jan

Quite some time ago, a friend alerted me to a Kickstarter project out of Pittsburgh called “Wear the Shift”, which focused on creating custom-made dresses to fit all bodies. It focused on alternatives to many aspects of mass-market clothing retail, from using (or reusing) vintage materials, to making clothes well so that they can last longer–fewer items, but better-fitting, more comfortable, and more well made. A kinder, more sustainable sort of fashion.
Now, Wear the Shift is releasing their custom-designed shift dress patterns so that home sewers can get in on the action, too.  Today you’ll find me guest-blogging over on the Wear the Shift site about my experiences working with my custom Shift dress pattern:

You can get a custom pattern drafted for yourself, starting tomorrow, over on Wear the Shift’s Etsy store. And today (and always) you can find cute shifts and skirts there as well (also custom made to fit your individual body in all its sizing peculiarities).

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