onyx shirt Archives • Jessica Smith Creates

November 28, 2018November 24, 2018

Hand Embroidery on My Daily Garments

I was going to use this post to just tell you about my two black rayon Onyx tops, but realistically they’re only slightly altered from the pattern and boring on their own… What’s more cool is all the embroidery I did on them, a skill that I’ve been working on for the past few years.

Maybe we should start waaaaaay back, with this shot of embroidery from my Merida inspired skirt. This was a linen skirt that I embroidered a motif from Brave’s concept art on. Each motif took between 4 to 6 hours, depending on my mood, brainpower, and willingness to have rather big stitches.

floral

Then we get to the first of my Onyx tees, the one with stems, leaves, and flowers. I embroidered this while on a road trip between Asheville NC, Nashville TN, and New Orleans LA.

ariel

Next after that came some new to the blog embroidery: my Ariel blouse! I embroidered small waves around the neckline and did some chain stitch around the sleeve hem. I was really trying to drive home the Little Mermaid vibe.

A couple months later (for instance, after I finished my defense and my paper for my Master’s thesis) I found myself embroidering another Onyx tee, with coppers and aqua. Don’t tell the other ones but this one is my favorite! I affectionately call it the Orange Peel. I guess because it looks like an orange with seeds in it if you squint and then close your eyes and imagine.

Then around last Christmas I made my first Ogden cami, and after I made the small adjustments I needed to make it wearable, I embroidered the armscye to keep the facing down. Not a lot of embroidery, but it make it special.

dress

In July I made an Ogden dress (that was featured in my upcoming post about my Ogdens) and embroidered an abstract selection of french knots on the front, and a large running stitch V on the back.

My favorite pair of jeans had an unfortunate turn of events… The left pocket bag started rotting out (and the other one has started too…), so I did a subtle little bit of visible mending to put in new pocket bag fabric, instead of taking the entire pair of jeans apart to do the same thing.

As for making these pieces of embroidery, I have been mostly just using the fabric plus interfacing required by the patterns to keep it steady. No extra interfacing, at least. I do use a hoop when I can though.

Laundering it is not much extra. When I used household machines I barely even worried, but now that I have to use industrial laundry room machines, I make sure that all of the hooks and closures on my clothing are closed before I put them into the wash, so there’s less chance of catching.

And that winds down my embroidery post!

I do have some embroidery I’d like to do before the month is out (sew frosting anyone?) so I’m hoping to get some shots explaining how I go about it… So look out for that in the next couple weeks.

I know that I’ll continue to embroider on the things I make, because it makes me happy, but it’s been trickling in a bit slower this year. As with my sewing, my embroidering has slowed down now that I kind of make for a living, but I am trying to make it more intentional. So we’ll see what’s next, right?

Cool.

Also, I might be making embroidery patterns for sale soon… Any requests?

April 18, 2018August 22, 2022

Aqua Wedding Guest Outfit

Hey everyone! I’m going to try to post my backlog of projects, so this is the start… this isn’t quite a year old yet, but I do have pictures of it (unlike many of my other projects), so here it is!

Last spring I was invited to my cousin’s wedding. He’s the first of my cousins on my dad’s side to get married, so it was a big deal for the family. So I made a full outfit.

I had intended to make a dress, but I didn’t end up with that. I made a Onyx top and a Fumeterre skirt. My rationale was that I had two days to make this, and I wanted to make the pieces wearable in real life too… If I had made it this year, I’d probably have replaced the Onyx top with the Ogden cami (more on those in a future post), but I had just made a lot of Onyx’s and I knew they’d fit me well.

So, it started with scouring the Fabric.com website for suitable fabrics, and I ended up getting three yards of this lovely seafoam rayon sateen by Telio, which is sadly not stocked anymore.

I cut out the same size of Fumeterre that I had for my two tone version that I posted last year, but when I was sewing it up I realized I didn’t really need to put in a closure, that I could just use elastic in the waistband, so I decided to make it as simply as possible so no pockets and no closure. I did add a half lining, so that there would be some amount of protection. I think I hemmed it by machine, which was messy, but its also on the floor, so no one is gonna see it.

Then I cut out the Onyx top. And this is when I realized that I did not have enough fabric left to come out with a standard version. I made alterations so that it had a yoke on the front and the back, which solved the problem, and made an easy way to use facings , which I then burrito’d into the yoke. I used the same lining fabric from the skirt as the yoke fabric. Sewing it together occurred when I was super hungry and dying, since it was the day before I left for a work trip, but it was all put together!

So then the painting. While I was on the work trip, I painted suns and dots onto the skirt and the top, using Jacquard Lumiere copper paint, which is my favorite paint in the history of ever… Then I let them dry and I ironed it, which is supposed to set the paint and also keep the fabric supple.

The wedding was lovely, and I still love both pieces. I wear the skirt more than the top, but I think its because I love flowy skirts sooooooo much!

April 7, 2017August 22, 2022

All the Onyx Shirts

Never has a pattern become tried and true in my library than with Paprika Patterns’ Onyx Top.

My first version was made out of a lace in November, and altogether was too big. I thought I had made the recommended size, and it was mostly fine in the front, but the back was really drooping, and the sleeves were way too big. (Let me interject here that I don’t quite remember, but probably chose the size based on my bust size, which tends to throw off the rest of the fitting. Because I’m lazy, and my fitting adventures are a work in progress. So don’t take this as an actual review of the sizing…)

So I took the pattern in at the shoulders, raised the armscye, and shrunk the width of the back a bit.

Then in very early January I used the Ariel skirt made of rayon (which was way too lightweight for a skirt) to make a slightly cropped version. Not the actually cropped version in the pattern, since I needed this for work-appropriate events, but an inch shorter than I’d like. I made a facing for it out of the same fabric, and unfortunately didn’t finish the facing edge (which I should do one of these days) which can cause the neckline to hang funnily, and I didn’t interface it, which I think contributed. It quickly became my favorite shirt!

Incredibly happy with this success, I also made one out of this polyester suiting with a diagonal stripe pattern… It works. I wish that I had made the facing out of a different fabric, as the neck really doesn’t lay correctly, though I did interface it, so perhaps it was just stiffer?. Maybe I can fix it later?

And then I tried to use this stone colored poly/cotton blend (I think), which had no drape. That version did not work out well. It felt very frumpy and baggy. I don’t know if it can be salvaged, but maybe with a dart of some kind. For right now its in the alteration pile, which is why I didn’t bother to iron it for the pictures here…

So that’s where I had to leave it before a big conference in Seattle in the end of January. Then I had a making drought in early February as I adjusted back to normal life, and then I made an awesome version in black rayon. In fact the same rayon from the Ariel skirt version, but in a black. I tried to remove some neckline gaping with a pattern alteration, and made the shoulders even slightly less wide. This time I interfaced the facing again, but I also made the facing the entire yoke of the shirt wide. It ended with a fantastically fit shirt, but the yoke of the shirt felt and looked a little stiff. So I embroidered it. I haven’t done embroidery in a while, but it came back pretty quick, though I’ve never done anything quite like this. I really enjoyed the vines and leaves, and the couple flowers on the back were quite fun.

I’ve got another one of the black rayon versions cut out, since the rayon had enough for another, and I think I’ll embroider it too, but I’ll get to that one soon!