Wednesday, January 29, 2014

..:~**~:... So Excited ..:~**~:...

That was my attempt at making sparkly pixie dust things around my words in the title. Because as I have previously mentioned, I am sooooooo excited right now.

Why, you may ask, am I so excited?

I am excited because I just bought a vintage gravity feed iron on Ebay for $15!!

The only picture included of this item on ebay

I have been wanting a gravity feed iron ever since I learned of their existence about a year ago. The iron I have been using (also Sunbeam brand, ironically) is not very good. As is the case with most modern all-purpose irons, it's extremely temperamental about how much steam it releases, when it decides to release the steam, and if it will ever release said steam at all. It also leaks large drips of water on my fabric when I least expect it, which is like NUH UH OH NO YOU DIDN'T.

So when I read about gravity fed steam irons, I wanted one immediately. I have a dedicated sewing space so I have room to set up the bottle and hose and everything else. The only problem is the price. For reasons I don't feel like going into at the moment, I am currently kind of poor. So I couldn't justify spending a minimum of $110 on a new iron when I already have an iron that kind of almost works when it feels like it. (This is the same reason my old Toyota serger that I got for free is currently being repaired... I can't justify spending $400+ on a new serger when I have a free one that kind of does what it's supposed to do sometimes.)

I began ambling about the internet seeing if I could find an iron for significantly less than the ones I'd seen previously. I didn't have much luck until about two days ago I found an ebay auction for the above item.

The title read: "Details about Sunbeam Electric Steam or Dry Iron: 70% more steam because of gravity feed... LOL." The "LOL" at the end kind of indicated to me that the person selling this item had no idea what it was. This hunch was verified by the description given below: "This Sunbeam iron is in the original box with all the original parts, including the instruction booklet.  The box reminds me of an episode of The Honeymooners.  Looks unused, at least to me." The minimum amount they wanted was $15. No one had bid on the item yet, so I bid $15.

Two days later I won the auction at for $15. And free shipping. And I was really freaking happy.

If the seller is doing their job, hopefully this iron is on it's way to me as we speak. I am unbelievably excited to try this out and see if it works. If it doesn't work, I haven't wasted too much money. But if it does...... Oh if it does! I can take my sewing and tailoring and steaming to a whole new level!

Does anyone have experience with using vintage irons? Do you have any idea how old this iron might be and what chance it has of actually working?


Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Butterick 5882 in Blue Brocade

After spending the month of November sewing and prepping for my husband (btw I finished the pants and he loved them, and I'll tackle the jacket soon.) I decided that December would be a Me-Month. I completed two projects for myself in December and I'd like to blog about one of them now. This is actually the second thing I made but I'm extremely proud of it so I think I'm allowed to brag, right?

B5882 AKA Gertie's Shelf Bust Dress


I used the Butterick Pattern but I altered it to fit me quite a bit. I wanted it to be snug around the top so there wouldn't be a wardrobe malfunction. I also wanted the bodice to curve under the bust more, since the strap actually comes across the center of the bust and not under it. I'm not large-chested in the least but I used some ideas from Gertie's blog in her "FBA" post for the alterations.



In the muslin stage I was able to get a basic understanding of the pattern and how it all went together. One thing I decided early on was that I didn't want to do the pleating the way the pattern instructed. The pattern has one piece of fabric folded at intervals and then sewn to a stay underneath. Judging from the pictures I found online of people who've made this pattern, the pleats tend to want to puff out and not stay down, which I think looks sloppy. What I did instead is cut out the stay in lining fabric and then attach individual bias cut strips by hand exactly where I wanted them to go. I learned this technique on sewing curved tucks from Kenneth King here.

 

The bulk of the instructions I followed were for Gertie's "Sew Retro" class on Craftsy. I've wanted to practice all of the techniques she illustrates, but I was never really fond of the bustier style pattern they give you with the class. I bought the blue brocade fabric from Bangkok Thai Silk online ages ago for the explicit purpose of making the Sew Retro dress, but when B5882 came out, I fell head over heels in love. It was time for a change of plans.



B5882 lent itself well to the class instructions with only a few modifications. I underlined the bodice in muslin, cut custom bra padding using the pattern pieces, attached spiral steel boning to the bodice lining, inserted a lapped zipper in the back, and used grosgrain ribbon to make a waist stay and zipper guard. I probably did other things that I can't remember now, too :)

 



As you can imagine, all of these techniques required a lot of hand stitching. Fortunately, since it was school vacation time, I had a lot of down time at work (aka lots of sitting at my computer with not much to do) which afforded me time to do hand work while waiting.

I only ran into two challenges in this dress. First of all, I barely.... BARELY.... had enough fabric for the skirt. And by "barely" mean that I cut a few inches of fullness off of each panel and completely ignored the grainlines in order to scrounge enough yardage so I wouldn't have a bare bottom. The problem is that the fabric is only 36 inches wide, and I had originally been planning on making a straight-skirted dress. Fortunately, I think this skirt still reads as almost a full circle, and it's plenty swirly enough to dance in. A trained eye might be able to tell that the grain falls kind of funny in the front, but it really doesn't bother me that much.

 

Second challenge: This fabric does NOT like to be sewn on the bias. It turns into a slippery, wormy mess the second it lands under a presser foot. So the strap (which is a very long bias strip folded in half) proved to be tricky. I had a hard time making it an even width all the way around. The one side of the strap never wanted (and still doesn't want) to lay flat, so whenever I would press it down I ended up getting folds and lumps. Once again, not the end of the world but hopefully no one examines it too closely.

I would still like to try my hand at making a petticoat to wear underneath to give the circle skirt a little more volume. The wedding I'm planning on wearing this to is on the 25th of January, so I have some time. I might take more pictures later when more poofiness has been added.

I really love this dress and am so glad that I finally took the leap and took the time to make it. Can't wait to wear this to the wedding this month and let all my friends see it :)