Make-over

 Made a coat dress at the beginning of January.  Didn't like it...like...intensely.  Even if I did address the fit issues, the big problem, for me, was that I did not like how the collar was constructed--unless it's a motorcycle jacket, I like my collar and lapels to be more connected than that.

I do have plans for a patchwork project that uses scraps of the fabric, but I didn't want to turn the whole thing into scraps, because I do like the fabric!  And I bought the buttons just for that project, which is something I almost never do (my stash is expansive, except, apparently, for ¾" black buttons.)  I let the coat dress hang on the closet door in here while I made the patchwork cat jacket, and considered my options.  "Skirt" was quickly considered and abandoned, because I realized I could make it into a jumper!

I'm not sure if I have properly conveyed just how much I like jumpers, because I know I haven't made very many of them over the years, but I do really like them, and have since the 1990s.  In fact, I had a copy of the pattern I used for this project--McCall's 7812--in the late '90s, and used it a few times.  I remembered it so fondly that I decided to re-acquire a copy a few years ago.

I finally cut the tissue for view A and here we are

It has a lot of issues, but, y'know what?  I'm wearing it right now, so it's definitely better than the coat dress incarnation.

Jumper Sparkle

 I decided to get into my fabric stash and make a coordinating jumper and shirt, and this is the jumper

It was made with Simplicity 9757, and, yeah.  It's pretty basic.

Managed to April Fool Myself

 I have had fun playing with layering the spiderweb lace slip, and it made me say...hey...why not make a slip dress from something sturdier and just wear it like a jumper...

(Which, yes, layering slip dresses was absolutely a trend in the 1990s, but, as mentioned, I never wore slip dresses in any way back then.)

I'm going to put the main picture here, then ramble a lot before getting to any other pictures 

Halloween Patchwork Jumper Fix

 Last year, I made a Halloween-themed patchwork jumper from Kwik Sew 4138 McCall's It's Sew Simple 9603 (they're the same pattern.)  Since it was a new-to-me pattern, I chose a waist size that ended up larger than needed

and only got around to fixing that this week

(inadvertently spooky photo?)

I tried it on and pinched out the waistband so it felt comfortable on my waist, instead of falling generously below it--ended up being 3"

I picked out a few inches of top stitching around the waistband side seams, four times for each side, plus several structural seams, to free the skirt and expose the seams.  It was annoying work.

Then I cut off the seam allowances at those waistband side seams and sewed new seams at ¾", followed by gathering the skirt a bit more to fit the new waist band width between the untouched stitching, then sewed everything back together.

I do not care that there are now thick lumps of back tacking on the top stitching.  No-one's going to be getting close enough to my waist to see.

Now, maybe I'll finally wear this!  ...mostly next year, since this year's Halloween is only a few days away.

Double Knit Color Slub Houndstooth Jumper

 When I visited the craft thrift store in May, one of the 10¢ patterns I grabbed was Simplicity 9757 from 1996

Which I had back in the late 90s, too.  I attempted to make it once, in I believe view B, using a light pink knit with a faux quilted texture and a simple black outline, somewhat crudely-drawn Ancient Egyptian print.  My skills weren't up to that combination of fabric and pattern (or getting a correct pattern size by grading between a smaller bust size versus hip size) and I may even have tried to use bias tape to finish the neckline and arm openings?  I'm not sure if I ever even finished it, because it was going so bad.

 Things went better this time.

 

 

Halloween Patchwork Jumper 2021

 The only reason I didn't buy KwikSew 4138 in the big sale was because I already had it...in the form of McCall's It's Sew Simple 9603

I chose view A and immediately set about making it a lot more complicated than it needed to be

Ensemble

 I made the Tiny Stripe Jumper specifically to wear over the Unnecessary Pillowcase Shirt, and of course the Tiny Stripe Hat to wear with the jumper, and here they are all together

 

 And this reinforces how much I want to make more jumpers in general and more iterations of this shirt in better fabrics specifically and embrace the eventual return of cooler weather unequivocally.

What decade am I dressing for?  No clue!  But: it has pockets!

Tiny Stripe Jumper

So, I'm currently somewhat obsessed with the idea of jumpers (in the American sense of the garment: a dress-like item worn over other clothes), and it appears that those are so incredibly unfashionable right now that search engines still want to show me knit sweaters (British sense of jumper) even when I search with terms like "jumper dress" (and I have leaned that the British term for what I'm looking for consists of variations of the phrase "pinafore dress")

But of course I'm looking for jumpers I can make, without doing...whatever it was I did with the vest pattern a few posts ago.  I was surprised to see that there really aren't many jumper patterns in print right now.  Simplicity has 4789, which...I've actually had for a few years already, and it's a super simple jumper pattern so should go together easily, but...you know me and super simple patterns. (I try not to be a snob about them, I really do, but it's something I have to actively try to do.)

In the 1990s, I had a jumper pattern that I used several times, and really liked everything I made.  That was one of the patterns I eliminated when I got rid of patterns that were too small.  Yeah.  But!  I was able to figure out what it was--McCall's 7812--and find it on eBay for a decent price.

When it was still in the mail, I went to a Walmart and spent time poking through the mill end pre-cut bins, and, when I happened to turn around, I spotted a jumper pattern on the cheap "It's Sew Simple" McCall's racks.  I looked through all the other patterns on those racks and found a second pattern with a jumper view.  I also recognized one of the other cheap McCall's patterns as a very distinctive color blocked Kwik Sew pattern, and, with that knowledge, I was able to identify the two "McCall's" jumper patterns as also originally being issued as Kwik Sew patterns...one of which is still in print as a Kwik Sew?  The other had the decency to be an out of print Kwik Sew, at least.

(As an aside, I also recently noticed some patterns that I own as McCall's are now being printed as Butterick.  It's obvious that McCall's, Butterick, Kwik Sew, and Vogue are all owned by the same parent company, now known as Something Delightful, and going up a level finds that the company that currently owns that--called Design Group--owns Simplicity/New Look, too, although they don't make that as obvious as the other four being under the same umbrella. So. While I am somewhat surprised to see patterns being reprinted under other patterns company names, the reaction is more "what are they up to?" than "how could this happen?")

It's Sew Simple McCall's 9578 is a reprint of the out of print Kwik Sew 3955

and that's where I started

Jumper Fable

 I have been taken with the idea of sewing jumpers/pinafore dresses, but apparently that's not something even remotely fashionable enough for pattern companies to offer many options now.  I do have the original print of a current Simplicity pattern that was first issued in 2004 that happens to include a simple A-line jumper in two lengths, but that wasn't the jumper silhouette I wanted to sew.  I also have a small stack of Burda dirndl patterns, but...waistline issues. (And the pattern used in the previous post did originally include a jumper, but those pieces are long gone from the envelope I thrifted.)

I do know that a lot of older dress patterns will include views that show a shirt being worn under the dress, but I didn't want to just use a dress, since the arm holes should be cut higher on a dress than on something that's meant to have another something worn under it.  Than I had the thought: Hey! I know what's meant to have another something worn under it!  A vest!

I do have several vest patterns (also things that aren't common on current pattern sites now), but I ended up back on the pattern that I had used for the vest I made late last year.  I used view B this time

...well...I started with view B.  I ended up with this