Changing Your Clothes

Shopping, Sewing, Upcycling, Repairing: Make the most of your clothes!

Category Archives: Sewing

Ideas for sewing clothes from scratch, including altering patterns to the style you want, creative fabrications, and technique tutorials.


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Closet Confessions: A Big Hang-up

Yes, it’s time for another closet confession. Today, I’m revealing all about one of my biggest closet hang-ups: hanging things up.

It’s not that I’m a slob. (Well…) It’s just that somehow, over the past several years, my wardrobe has gradually become more and more about clothes that don’t need ironing— which, coincidentally, usually means they don’t need to be hung up. Looking inside my closet this morning, I realized that at least 65% of my clothes (I’m guessing here) are not, in point of fact, hanging up. Sweaters stacked on one shelf, purses (and the odd out-of-season item) on the other, and everything from camisoles to workout clothes in one of those hanging multi-compartment organizers (I use that term loosely). This leads me to the profound observation that I prefer low-maintenance clothes.

Interestingly, though, I’ve also noticed that when I make clothes for myself, the pieces I choose to spend my time and energy making are nearly always special things: a fabulous asymmetrical jersey dress, heavy Irish linen trousers, printed silk tunic. (All of these can be seen here.) And that silk tunic, bless its lovely one-shouldered heart, is the reason I’m writing this today: it not only needs to be hung up, it needs special assistance in doing so. To wit: the addition of a hanging strap.

Continue reading →


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In Transition: A Postscript

After my last two posts (In Transition and In Transition Encore), I just wanted to add a few words on why I’m exploring this topic. I mean, it’s enough work to come up with seasonal wardrobes in the first place— now we have to mix them together?!

Every year I have the same struggle with getting my summer wardrobe together: why should I invest a lot of money, time, and effort into hot-weather clothes that in all likelihood will only be worn for a few weeks out of the year? (This applies to clothes that are bought, as well as ones that I make myself.) Well, as I’ve been finding out this year, the key is in planning. If I put more of the up-front effort into strategic planning, it should not only save shopping time, but also the time I might otherwise spend later in either returning items that don’t work, or in taking them to the thrift store. Not to mention whatever it takes to replace those rejected pieces! Continue reading →


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In Transition Encore: Fall into a Summer Dress

As promised, here is another trio of transitional fall outfits, each based on the same summery dress shown here. This is a cotton jersey knit, so it’s basically a long sleeveless T-shirt, to be honest. (Actually, I made this dress with the same pattern, Vogue 1234, as the printed one in my Santa Fe wardrobe; the only difference is that this one doesn’t have the cap sleeves. They look really different, don’t they?) I love the tie-dye print in these bright, rich oranges, which incidentally is a great color for fall.

Cotton jersey knit summer dress; the interesting draping at the sides makes the hemline nearly ankle-length at its longest point, which bodes well for making it work for fall. Continue reading →


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In Transition: Wearing Your Summer Clothes in the Fall

After my last post, in which I mentioned that the darker stripes on the sides of my linen trousers might enable them to be worn into the fall, I decided to follow up on that and show some actual examples of how I would do that. (All these outfits came out of what I already have in my closet, by the way. Everything I write about here comes out of my own experience— and closet.)

Outfit #1:

Linen Trousers Fall Outfit 1 Linen trousers for fall, outfit #1: Here I’ve simply added a mohair and silk sweater and fab color-blocked suede heels. Continue reading →


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Closet Confessions: How My Trousers Got Their Stripes

Remember my pale sage green linen trousers I made for my Santa Fe travel wardrobe? Well, there’s a reason they have those sporty side stripes— and I’m willing to tell all, purely out of consideration for you, dear readers.

For my sewing friends: have you run into this problem with multi-sized patterns? The one where the size range is, say, 6-14 or 16-22, but you are in between? This is what happened to me with the trouser pattern I used. It went up to a size 14; in ready-to-wear, I’m more like a size 12, but in sewing patterns (which are sized differently), I’m finding that a 14 or 16 is more appropriate, depending on what type of garment it is. (But even that isn’t consistent across pattern brands. Aargh.) When purchasing the pattern, I decided optimistically to get the smaller size range, intending to cut the largest size (14). Which I did.

Problem:  <Deeeep breath>  The trousers were too small. In some fabrics (stretch wovens, for example), this might not have been such an issue, but I was using a substantial linen, and the trousers were cut with wide legs, so I didn’t want the fit to be tight. Aargh encore. Continue reading →


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Santa Fe Wardrobe: P.S.

As a follow-up to my Santa Fe wardrobe follow-up, I thought you might be interested in a few stats about my Santa Fe travel wardrobe:

1. Out of the 9 main items I packed (not counting swimsuit, sleepwear, etc.), I made 6 of them myself:

a. The deep olive green silk twill Origami skirt;

b. The pale sage green wide-legged linen trousers with deep taupe herringbone racing stripes;

c. The print silk crepe de chine one-shouldered tunic;

d. The cap-sleeved sage-and-lavender-print knit top;

e. The print jersey V-neck dress;

f. The hand-knitted one-sleeved entrelac wrap (also my original design)

(The ones I did not make are the jeans, teal knit top, and asymmetrical print top.)

2. The only things I bought specifically for this wardrobe were the following (everything else I already had, including sewing patterns):

a. Fabrics for the linen trousers and cap-sleeved knit top;

b. The jeans

(I also bought the pewter jersey to line the bronze dress, which ultimately did not make it into my suitcase for this trip. All other fabrics came from my stash.) Continue reading →


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Santa Fe Wardrobe: A Post-Trip Review

Now that I’m back from Santa Fe, I realize that I need to follow up on my previous posts about creating my travel wardrobe for this trip. (See the following if you want to catch up: Santa Fe Travel Wardrobe: Color Palette, and The Fabrics & Projects. I also posted ideas for shopping for this wardrobe: Shopping! and Shopping 2: $49.95 or Less! Meanwhile, I’ll get all these photos ready to show you.)

Honestly, I’m a bit surprised that my actual travel wardrobe turned out almost exactly as I planned it; I’ll give more details about the changes as we go. First, here are photos of the pieces I packed: tops, bottoms, dress.

The Tops The tops; it’s unusual for me to wear prints at all, so you can see I’m trying to push myself! (I made the one-shouldered silk tunic and the sage and lavender cap-sleeve knit top.) Continue reading →


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Stay! Taming a Beastly Narrow Hem

I was working on sewing a printed silk charmeuse top a couple days ago, the one-shouldered tunic from my Santa Fe wardrobe. This top, I might say, was by far the most straightforward garment I’ve made in quite a while; I have a tendency to complicate things by, say, adding a sheer or lace layer, tuxedo stripes to pant legs, or maybe just choosing a fabric that makes matching stripes or patterns necessary. But since I’m working with a gorgeous print (rare for me), I decided to let the fabric do the talking.

The only issue I had was the hemming of the one sleeve. It’s a slightly belled shape that forms a curving hemline; it’s also the only place on the entire garment where stitching shows on the outside  (I’m doing the lower hem by hand). And the soft, slinky, yes, silky nature of the fabric makes it among the more difficult to manipulate into a narrow hem, especially one stitched by machine.

Narrow hems: Usually, when a pattern says to finish a piece with a narrow hem, they mean a hem that’s folded under twice (hiding raw edges), then stitched. And since it’s called a narrow hem, it usually means 1/4″ wide, possibly slightly more.

I thought maybe I could do a modified version of the multi-step machine-stitched hem that I’ve used on chiffon; this technique involves stitching, trimming, stitching again, folding, pressing, stitching a third time. For my sleeve, the plan was to make good use of stay-stitching, mainly to stabilize the hem edge. (Remember the ripply original hem on my white linen skirt? This is how to avoid that.)

Stay-stitching: This is simply a line of stitching, usually worked inside the seam allowance, that’s not meant to be seen; its function is to stabilize, and sometimes to reinforce certain areas, such as the V of a v-neck, or a curving edge that needs to be clipped to lie flat.

Step 1: Stay-stitch 1/4″ from cut edge, fold to wrong side and press,  just inside stitching line.

Tip: be careful to use a stitch length that’s a little on the long side (I used a stitch length of 3); this will help prevent puckering.

Narrow hem, stitched, folded, & pressed Narrow hem, stitched 1/4″ from cut edge, folded to wrong side just inside stitching line, & pressed (in that order). Continue reading →


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Hem My Skirt, Part 2: Happily Hemmed In!

It’s interesting how projects evolve. In Hem My Skirt, Part 1,  my main objective was to cut off the stained lower edge of my white linen skirt, to at least make it wearable (albeit 6.5″ shorter). The challenge was to mark and cut the skirt to its new length— said skirt being bias-cut, with a curving, A-line-verging-on-semi-circular hem. End of Part 1 found us with a newly-trimmed skirt, hanging for a couple of days before hemming (a necessity when working with bias-cut garments).

However, once I started working on preparing the trimmed-and-hung skirt for the sewing of the new hem, I realized that, along with getting rid of the stained part of the old hem, I could also improve on the finishing of the machine-stitched hem. Here’s how it looked originally, folded under twice, then sewn:

Skirt with original hem Skirt with original hem, turned under twice before machine-stitching; note the ripply edge, not a good finish for a bias-cut skirt, in my opinion. We can improve on this. Continue reading →


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Hem My Skirt, Part 1: A Short (& Biased) Story

I have a white skirt dilemma, and it’s almost Labor Day— I think it now qualifies as an emergency! If I don’t fix this skirt now, I’ll have to bow to the Goddess of Fashion Rules and pack it up until next Memorial Day.

Here’s what’s going on. Last week, when temperatures here in Portland were hovering around 100, I finally fished my one and only white linen skirt out of the ironing pile. (My working theory was that just wearing white linen would give me the psychological advantage over the weather forecast. The jury’s still out.) Well, when I was about to start ironing the skirt, I started to notice a series of strange stains, all more or less near the hemline; strange because they all felt sort of hard, as if wax or something like that had fallen on the skirt and stiffened up. (Don’t ask me how this happened. I’m still scratching my head. I’m thinking these are some of those phantom things that happen in the laundry, much to my mystification.) It’s a little hard to see the stain in this photo,  since it’s more hard than dark, but you can just make it out:

Stain on White Skirt

One of several mysterious stains on my white linen skirt. No amount of soaking or treating seemed to make any difference.

I found stains like this one in several places, but they were all within 5 inches or so of the hem. Now, this skirt is bias-cut, A-line, and (originally) 30″ long from waistband to hem, which translates to mid-calf length on me (I’m over 5’8″ tall). So I thought it might be possible to simply re-hem the skirt to a shorter length, cutting off the offending stain-ridden area. Aha, I thought, I can get rid of the stains and make my skirt a more modern (and flattering) length simultaneously! Brilliant!

Of course, these brilliant ideas often don’t take certain issues into account. As I said, the skirt is bias-cut; this doesn’t necessarily make it more difficult to cut, but the stitching of the new hem will be a little more involved. So for today, I’ll show you how I measured and cut the skirt to its new length, and I’ll cover the finishing (including sewing) in my next post.

What you’ll need:

Something to mark your new hemline before cutting;

sharp shears;

tape measure or ruler;

sewing machine or hand-sewing needle

Okay! First, I’m going to lay my skirt out as smoothly as possible, lining up the front and back hemline edges. (Because I usually photograph things on a white backdrop, I’ve removed the background here so you can see the skirt a bit better.)

Skirt laid flat for cutting My skirt laid flat for cutting. Notice the curve of the hemline. Continue reading →