Stretch and Sew Trousers

I really like the old Stretch and Sew patterns. According to the pattern envelope, this one is from 1988. The tee shirt with short sleeves is my hands-down favorite tee pattern. Two pattern pieces, and you just turn and zig-zag the neck, sleeves and hem to finish. I just realized that I've never tried the long sleeve version. Must do that this winter.

The pattern includes a pair of knit trousers. The style kind of reminds me of my youth. Well, if it was the 80's it wasn't really my youth; more like my 30's. I remember wearing that style pretty often, back in the day. So I decided to give these trousers a try.

They're high-waisted and narrow toward the bottom, and they have nice, roomy slash pockets.

I used a ponte knit, which is probably a little too heavy for the style. I want to give them another try in something lighter, because they sure are comfortable and I really like those pockets. 

The ponte will feel nice and warm once winter comes though. 

They're basically sweat pants, but a little sleeker, I think. 

The pockets are put together in a way I'd never seen before, and I really like it. It made the process very intuitive. 

There's just one pattern piece for each pocket. 

You cut it out and seam to the front of the pant, like usual. But then you flip to the inside and just fold the pattern piece to match the side seam and a couple of notches. And voila, you have a pocket! 

If I'm ever wanting to alter a pant pattern to add a slash pocket, I'm going to try doing it this way.

My pattern review is on PatternReview.com here.

Nosara Take Two

 I knew I was going to be wanting another Nosara or two as soon as I got my first one done. 

This version is in a cotton faille from the Fabricsstore.com, in a print called Jacobean Jewelry Blue. They've started carrying cotton prints fairly recently and I've been interested. I'm generally not a flowery-print girl, but this one I decided I liked. The colors are nice and the print is large, so it feels more restrained than some. 

Anyway, they sent me a seductive email with sale pricing that I opened at 5:00 am. My resistance was low, so I ordered a yard to experiment with. Why didn't I get a yard and a half? Because I'm cheap like that. Luckily the fabric is 59 inches wide, so I had some room to finagle.

I had to do some sweating and struggling, but I managed to fit the pattern pieces for the Nosara on that one yard. I was just about ready to admit I'd have to cut the inner yoke out of some random remnant, but I flipped things around one last time and bingo!

I like the cut of this shirt a lot. The collar is nice, the bust dart helps those cut-on sleeves follow the body and the slightly lower hem in the back covers the butt nicely.

There's one thing I didn't think through before cutting though. This shirt has a collar stand and button band, like a men's shirt, rather than a collar with facing, like a camp shirt. That means that if your fabric has a clear wrong side (like mine does), it will show a bit at the top of the neckline. I'm letting go of my angst about it though.

My pattern review is on PatternReview.com here.

Yet Another Archer Shirt

This is at least my 5th Archer. I made my first one back in 2014 and I still wear it often. That Italian cotton shirting wears like iron. 

Anyway, over the years I managed to lose my original pattern. I have the pieces I traced 10 years ago and I've managed to stumble through the construction by clinging to the sew-along on YouTube. This time I had some basic questions that I didn't want to have to hunt around to answer. Like what is the seam allowance? 

So, even though I'm a cheapskate I decided to buy another copy of the pattern, and I'm glad I did. I've gotten so much use from this pattern that the designer deserves another 20 bucks from me. Plus, Grainline has updated some of the pattern pieces and construction methods. And by post-stalking myself I realized that back in 2014 I blended three sizes when tracing. I went from a 6 at the bust to a 2 at the hips. No wonder my Archers feel a tad snug over the butt these days. I think I'll bite the bullet and do a new tracing when I hop on Version 6.

This time around I used a blue and gray plaid that I got from Cali Fabrics for something like $6 a yard. At that price, even I was willing to pop for two yards. The fabric was something like 60 inches wide. I felt like I had oceans of yardage. I could easily put the cuffs, outer yoke and button band on the bias, and I could even try to match the plaid at the side seams. 

Yeah, it seemed like oceans of fabric until I realized I cut the right front pattern piece off-kilter and it was going to be obvious enough to make my eyelid twitch. So I recut that. Oh, and I messed up the cuffs, so they were cut twice. It went on like that, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out in the end. 

The fabric is 100% cotton and it was stable enough to fray very little (I'm looking at you, handkerchief weight linen). It's also pretty light weight, so the areas where the layers stack up weren't too hard to handle. Unlike like my corduroy version. Or my flannel version.

Version 6 goes great with jeans and it complements many of my skirts and shorts. I'm glad I added it to the stable.

My pattern review is on PatternReview.com here.