Stash conversion: Vogue 8593 & Vogue 8597

I’ve made some progress on converting stash fabrics to wearable garments. The “knits” fabric storage cube is down by almost half!

Last weekend I finally made Vogue 8593 out of some purple ponte knit. I’ve admired this pattern for quite some time and wanted to make it. I figured this would be a very nice dress to wear for the holidays. It is a very simple pattern with a great neck-line detail.

 

 

It sewed together very quickly and easily, including the invisible zipper installation. The neck pleats are a little fiddly but not difficult. They do require a good bit of trimming in the seam allowance and under-stitching to get the facing to lay nice and flat. The only fitting adjustment I had to do was add some width through the waist and hips, “just in case.” I’m not sure I needed as much as I added but I can now wear it without fearing the bulge.

I wore it to work on Black Friday and felt comfortable and polished all day long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This top is a revisit to Vogue 8597. I’ve made it twice before and it is one of my favorite tops. Whenever the green wool jersey version is clean and hanging in my closet, it is my first choice to wear on a cold day. I had this blue wool jersey just waiting to become another “go-to” top for this winter.

I decided to try something a little different with this iteration by adding some machine embroidery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure how I feel about embroidered clothing. Maybe because I grew up in a household where “Hee Haw” was a weekly Must-See-TV and thus I am all too familiar with the sartorial styles of Porter Wagoner, Conway Twitty and other icons of the golden age of Country Music. Often the idea of embroidered clothing brings to mind those good old days of the Grand Ol’ Opry and I get a weird flashback and an urge to tease my hair REAL high and wear cut-offs.

Once I started working at the Bernina dealership I started trying to wear at least one article of clothing that I had made every time I work. Now that I have a machine that makes embroidery fun and easy, I’m going to try to add touches of embroidery to items I’m making to personalize them even more.

When I bought my Bernina 180 back in 2000 I opted to not get the embroidery unit because of my above mentioned fears and for financial reasons. The 180 was more machine than I had ever dreamed of owning and just at the upper reaches of our budget even without the embroidery unit. In my mind all it would be good for anyway was putting cute little kitties and bears on T-shirts for the girls and my girls weren’t really kitty and bear kind of kids, at least not $1000 embroidery unit kitties and bears kind of kids. I did buy the unit on ebay a while back and did enjoy practicing some of the embroidery skills I learned at work at home and made some simple gifts with it. The stitch out is beautiful but the interface is a pain.

Now I have my new machine and it is a dream to use to embroider. Yesterday I was using it to make some free-standing lace snowflake ornaments (I’ll post them later) and while it was running I cut out the blue top and started serging it together. That’s when I decided to try adding some machine embroidered embellishments.

I added this little “corsage” on the shoulder. Fortunately I did a test run on a piece of scrap fabric and discovered that my stabilizer of choice wasn’t going to work. I ended up using two layers of Polymesh Cut-Away stabilizer and used some basting spray to hold all the layers together. You have to be careful when stitching designs with a lot of sating stitches on to a knit fabric because it will stretch and pull out of shape unless it is well stabilized.

I chose to do this entire design with a thread that matched my fabric for a tone-on-tone look. I like the subtle texture this gives.

 

 

I then took a bigger design from the same collection and put that on the back of the shirt. I’m not sure about this one but what’s done is done. I think it is pretty and it stitched out very nicely. But because I had to use Cut-Away stabilizer it is a little stiff.

If I get off the computer and go put the hems in the sleeves and the bottom, I can wear this to work tomorrow and find out how annoying that stiffness really is going to be.

In closing, what is your opinion on machine embroidered clothing? Tacky or tasteful? I’m thinking it is one of those things that just depends on the application. All things in moderation.