Lisa Woolfork 0:10

Hello Stitchers! Welcome to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. I'm your host, Lisa Woolfork. I'm a fourth generation sewing enthusiast, with more than 20 years of sewing experience. I am looking forward to today's conversation. So sit back, relax, and get ready to get your stitch together!

Lisa Woolfork 0:36

Hello Stitchers, and welcome to the Stitch Please Podcast. I'm Lisa Woolfork, joining you from Charlottesville, Virginia, and I'm ready to talk to you today about the first make of 2024. For me, that was Vogue Pattern number 1982. The pattern was published in 2023. So I want to take you through my process, in about four steps, to share with you the things that I did, with and through the pattern, in order to get to the outcome that I wanted. So what we'll do is we'll talk about the pattern details that we see on the envelope, we'll talk about the modifications that I made, which were substantial. I made substantial modifications to this pattern. We'll also talk about construction, how I put the pattern together, especially based on the modifications that I made. I'll also talk about some specific tools, specific notions, that were useful for this process, and there's links to those in the Black Women Stitch Amazon shop under "Pressing Tools and Essential Notions". We'll also talk about outcome. So Vogue 1982 is a dress that is described as average. The tiers of sewing, all the big five patterns have them, they go from easy or very easy to advanced. I think advanced might be the highest. But average is, as you might imagine, kind of in the middle, but a little higher. There are some folks who believe that Vogue Patterns are difficult. And this might go back to their origin, as they were meant to be when they first began, kind of, maybe, not difficult; they weren't designed to be difficult, but they were designed to be special, unique, fashion-forward, very much in the mode, you know. Like very much "finger on the pulse of fashion", very much in tuned with Paris. And so these are going to require more complicated stitching, more complicated conceptualization. And that translated, I think, to Vogue Patterns being perceived as not as simple as a simplicity pattern. So even the line "Very Easy Vogue" is an attempt to kind of make Vogue more accessible, but I can say that when they describe the pattern as average, I do believe it. I don't think this is a pattern that requires that you have some extraordinary skill. Though I do say that as someone who, you know, has extraordinary skill, you know what I mean. I've got that extraordinary skill. So, another thing I wanted to point out about the dress is what it looks like. I'm going to read to you the description on the back of the pattern and it says "This is a fitted, lined cape dress that has a jewel neckline, front waist bust darts, princess seams, back slit and invisible back zipper. Attached, unlined cape (wrong side will show) also has an invisible back zipper and baby hem. View A has three-quarter length sleeves, View B is sleeveless. Now I made View A. And now, I know I like to say or quote Naomi P Johnson that, "One should read the pattern instructions three times before beginning a sewing project." I can tell you right now, I did not realize until I read this sentence right here. As the kids say, "I was today years old" when I realized that these sleeves were supposed to be three-fourth length, and I just didn't have like ridiculously long arms, 'cause I was like, why are these sleeves so dang small?! Like the rest of my forearm is cold! It was very funny, so...moving on, in love! Let's talk about the fabric because that'll help us go into the modifications that I made. So the fabrics that were required are a four-ply crepe, jacquard satin-back crepe wool blends then the lining is charmeuse China silk crepe de chine. They say it's unsuitable for obvious diagonals, and it also has additional directions that go with nap or without nap. So if your fabric is velvet, for example, you have to cut all your pieces in the exact same direction, or you will get this very strange strobing effect, that really, it doesn't look good. It kind of contradicts what velvet is supposed to do, like to look smooth. It makes what is meant to look smooth, jagged. It, like, reverses it. I'm not sure what they call it, but it's the reason why you have to be so careful with velvet, the direction of the fabric, even the direction of the print. If you want it all to be the one way, you have to use more fabric so that you can have it be in a layout that might be different than they suggest. But they usually suggest a layout that works with the pattern direction, with the fabric direction, even if it means using more fabric. So the fabric brings me to some of the changes that I made when I worked on it. Just to review what the pattern asked for, that was two invisible zippers; it was a baby hem; it was an attached, unlined cape; it was a dress that had princess seams and a back slit. So these are the things that were required of the pattern. In my modifications, I changed nearly everything. Seriously, I changed nearly everything. The first thing I changed was the fabric. I was determined to use the fabric that I had. I really want to get into sewing my stash this year. My slogan is going to be I think "Sew more in 2024". And I want that "more" to be from the plenty that I have. I think being a good steward of resources requires that, or encourages, or should, like, naturally incentivize wanting to use what I have and not just have it. I think that you can have a swatch, you can have a memory, but you can also activate that fabric by enlivening it, by giving it a chance to get out into the world and to be seen and to help you be seen in ways that you want to be seen. And so I think that that mutually beneficial relationship of fabric to garment doesn't get to happen if you keep your favorite fabrics tucked away and never use them. Rant over. So I was inspired by Alethia Hudson's "Sew Your Stash"– I'm forgetting the name. It's like a stash-buster type challenge, and you are––it's like a "no buy January", and it's a sew-from-your-stash challenge, and I thought it was really great! And I was like, "You know what? I'm going to do it!" And so far, I have done it. We are moving into the the very end of the month, pretty much. We're really getting close to the end, and so, for the last three weeks or more, I have not purchased any new fabric. And I feel good about that because I don't need it. I have so many beautiful things here, and I want to use them. So that was something I was determined to do, and my first thought was, "I will use some of my Marimekko sheets to make a muslin of this woven dress." That was my original plan. I was going to use this woven fabric that would not stretch, a woven that would be a lot like the four-ply crepe. If I were going to use four-ply crepe, I would much rather make a muslin, or a draft, of the dress before I use that fabric because I don't want to, you know, hide the fabric away, but I don't want to just waste it and use it when I don't have a final fit ready. So I said, "I will go ahead and take this section––", and I had it, like, laid out. And I was going to start cutting it, and I thought, "I am sewing this dress for an event. I am sewing this dress for an event. The event is on the 11th of January, and today is the third of January. So I have a little over one week to make this dress. That is plenty of time. That is plenty of time. I'm not teaching, I'm having some lovely, leisurely days. I'm sleeping late. I'm just having a good time. I'm watching a lot of K-dramas. I am living the good life, okay? A week is no problem." That's what I say to myself. So then a week becomes six days. "Six days? That's plenty of time! That's no problem!" --becomes five days..."hmmmm, that's"–– becomes four days. "You know what, let me get going on this thing! Let me get--let me", you know, becomes two days, and it's like okay, okay. So I did not wait until two days before the event to get everything finished. I did start on it early in that one-week period after I decided what I wanted to make. But I was-- I did take my time in making what I considered to be a wearable muslin. I liked the fabric that I had, and I thought it would work perfectly for this. And it was a fabric that I had been holding on to for at least seven years, at least. It was this beautiful Italian ponte rayon knit; I had about two yards of it; it was from Mood Fabrics, and so it was expensive; and it was also memorable because it was for Mood Fabrics. And I ended up getting two yards of it. Probably during the same trip, I got some other ponte knit that was–– that had a little bit of a light gray heather, dark heather tone to it. It was like brushed but not in a brushed poly way, something a bit stiffer. So it was another type of knit, kind of a bonded knit, in the same way that ponte tends to be a bonded knit. And so these two fabrics ended up sitting in the stash for what felt like forever, and especially that double ponte that was double-sided, that looked the same on the right side and the wrong side. I had three yards of that, and it took up some space! So taking down the ponte knit and the double-sided ponte, so it was five yards I was able to make from my stash, in order to get this dress together for this event. And so I was really excited about that. The next step that I did was the construction phase. I had decided that I was ready to go. The first step that I made in terms of the construction was to decide on the needle. The needle is incredibly important. I think that really does determine a lot about the look of your ditch, which is also going to affect how the garment itself comes together. So I decided to use a Microtex Stretch Needle. And I love those needles because they have a specially coated eye that reduces friction for high-speed stitching on synthetic fabrics. So sometimes if you're using a synthetic fabric, and you're using a ballpoint, for example, needle, which is what you're supposed to use when you're working with knits, it will skip. And it skips because the synthetic fabric must activate some kind of static electricity or something, and it generates these skipped stitches. So a Micro Stretch Needle will not do that, so I knew I had to do that. So I put that in the machine to begin. I then chose a thread that I think–– that I thought would work well for both the cape and for the dress. But I didn't start with that; I put that in the needle. But in the bobbin, I did it like in a red, or something that was really loud, because I knew that I wanted to baste everything when I got ready to make this dress. So those were some of the "sit down to the sewing machine" decisions that I made.

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Another big decision was the cutting. I cut this fabric crossgrain, on purpose, to control the stretch of the fabric. This means that rather than having the fabric grainline be parallel to the selvage, which is something you are supposed to do and should do, because that pattern was designed to be laid out in that direction, so the fabric will lay in complement to the way the pieces cut. And so if you do it kind of willy-nilly, or you Tetris it, and you're cutting things on the bias, or you're just kind of putting it in there like pattern piece Jenga, it is very likely that the things you are doing, the pieces you are cutting, will be off grain. And over time, they're gonna warp and deteriorate, and your garment is not going to look the way it's supposed to look. So that's what I did. I took that piece, and rather than having it be on grain, I did it completely cross grade. So rather than have the selvage be parallel to the grain line, it was perpendicular. There was a lot of good benefits to this. The fabric was very wide, so it allowed me to lay the pieces out in such a way that they could all fit. So I think that I was able to get a better design, actually, because I can rotate it. It was a very abstract design that, like,–– almost like a Dali, you know? D-a-l-i, you know, the guy with the Melton clocks, and like you could turn a set of stairs to the counterclockwise, but it would be the same if it was clockwise, that kind of illusionist. The fabric looks a little bit like that. It's an urban–– not urban, it's just this, this lands–– not its landscape. It's a–– the fabric has a illusion of buildings in relation to one another, in a way that is horizontal and really interesting, but they're all different sizes. And so by rotating it, I was able to still capture that energy, which was really interesting. And it provides a kind of a visual path for your eye when you're looking at the dress. And so that's one of the reasons I love the fabric in the first place, but apparently didn't love it enough to ever use it! So here we are. It also allowed me to use the selvage edge as a decorative dress hem. The selvage edge was a kind of an off-white beige. And it complemented the fabric, although that color was not in the fabric at all. Another decision I made was to use the selvage of the cape fabric as the center back seam of the cape. I was trying to stabilize it, I was trying to kind of conserve fabric and not cut it, to kind of cut less than I needed to. That turned out to be a mistake because that selvage was not true. It was kind of frilly and wavy. And what your selvage edge is supposed to be, that tight bound edge, that is the most stable element of the fabric. But in synthetic fabrics, it doesn't always come out that way, and this was one of those examples. And so I would have been better off to cut off the selvage edge and then use that, but I ended up having to do a lot of finagling and unsewing and, you know, to get it right, but it worked out fine in the end. The thing that I think that helped this whole project to work was that I basted everything. I basted the entire dress together; I basted the cape together; I attached the cape to the dress; I attached the dress to the front cape and the sack. I did all of that! And I was still able to pull it on, pull it off. And that was one of the big changes that I made was to get rid of all the closures. This is why the fabric retailer and designer Nicole Elise says, "Fabric choice is everything!", because I was able to choose a fabric that allowed me to do something that's really not supposed to be possible. It is not good practice. I won't say it's not possible; anything is possible. It is not good practice to swap out a fabric option on a pattern envelope. If they are telling you that you should make your swimsuit out of spandex, and you say, "No. I like denim," and you make your swimsuit out of denim and then you can't put it on, or you can put it on, but you can't button it or pull it off. And, you know, and it's making you a little uncomfortable around the bikini area! This is because denim doesn't behave in the same way as spandex. There's no stretch; there's no wicking; there's no–– none of the other properties. There's no buoyancy. There's nothing that allows it to kind of be comfortable and suitable for swimwear. The same is true for a dress like this. There is a reason they want you to have the four-ply crepe. On Patreon here, I'm showing the pattern. And if you see the weight of the cape, and how it balances the weight of the dress hem, you can see that that's happening because of the weight of that fabric. And that fabric is a four-ply crepe. It's a jacquard; it is something that is on the heavy side that has a drape already built into the design, or there's already a certain weight built into the fabric itself. So, for me, to swap out the fabric is a huge modification, a huge gamble. And yet, I decided to do it, because honestly, I just did not feel like being bothered with all of the things that are required for fitting a pattern or fitting a woven dress pattern to my curvy body. I would rather have fabric that's more generous and merciful and stretches and makes me feel like, "Okay, my body can fit in this AND move!" That's what I made. That's what I chose. And I have no regrets. It worked out very nicely! I also was able to practice the continuous seam when I made the cape and attached–– the main modification I also made was to remove the lining, to remove both invisible zippers, and to convert the the center back seam, which would have had two invisible zippers, into one single seam. I placed the rear cape matching the rear center back of the dress. I applied the wrong side of the dress to the right side of the cape and stitched all the way until the end of that center back seam. I did the same for the other side. Then I turned them inside out or right side out. And you could see where the center back cape is covering now the center back bodice of the dress. I then matched those two center seams and just lifted the cape and sewed the cape to the back of the dress in the same way that I attached the cape to the center back. And it just made this really cool effect! It looks like the neckline is totally lined, and it stretches. So that was the really cool way that the fabric was–– allowed me to kind of make something that was more curvy-friendly and just easier to wear. In terms of modifications, I'm really excited because I was able to transform a dress that was made from woven fabric into one made with knit fabric. I was able to take a dress that had two invisible zippers into a dress that had no closures whatsoever. That means a dress that you would need someone to help you zip up at two layers is something you can slip on yourself, just like a T-shirt! I was able to also stay warm. The cape was incredibly warm! That was one of the fun outcomes of this dress was that when I was wearing it, I decided to add some contrast bias edging to the center of the cape, and it picked up the same dress fabric underneath. And so in terms of outcomes, there was some things that I did have to do differently. I had to hem the dress; I didn't want to. I had to hem the dress or it would not be longer than the cape. I did not have to hem the cape, and that was great. I did not have to hem the cape at all. That's one of the great things about this fabric is it doesn't ravel. And so you don't have to worry about it fraying or looking, you know, kind of worn and tattered, which can sometimes happen if you don't hem something. And because of the nature of the fabric, I wasn't worried about the fabric raveling or unraveling. And so I decided instead to just skip it, and skipping the hem was another happy, freeing moment that I would gladly repeat. I found the–– one of the best outcomes of the dress is that it was very warm and very comfortable. I am not one to go out in formal wear in the wintertime because there are very few gowns, beautiful gowns, that are also toasty warm. And so I was really happy to have seen this pattern that was not only beautiful and very dramatic and moved well, but that it was also something that was warm, comfortable and easy to wear. So at the end of the process, I'm really happy that I chose Vogue 1982 as my first make of the year. I really enjoyed it, I was really happy that I decided to choose a fabric that would be kind to myself. That felt really good. It felt like a nice message to give myself at the start of the year, that, "Hey, you can give yourself a break! You can do something nice for yourself. You don't have to do everything the hard way." And that felt really good. And that's a message that I want to continue to believe throughout the rest of 2024. Thanks so much for listening! Thank you all for being here. And we appreciate you very much. Come back next time, and we'll help you get your stitch together.

You've been listening to Stitch Please, the official podcast of Black Women Stitch, the sewing group where Black lives matter. We appreciate you joining us this week and every week for stories that center Black women, girls, and femmes in sewing. We invite you to join the Black Women Stitch Patreon community, with giving levels beginning at $5 a month. Your contributions help us bring the Stitch Please podcast to you every week. Thank you for listening, thank you for your support, and come back next week, and we'll help you get your stitch together!