Alabama Chanin, Part I

It was in January of last year that I opened my Southern Living magazine and read about a clothing designer making fantastically beautiful garments from recycled t-shirts in rural Alabama.  Thus began my (admittedly one-sided) love affair with Natalie Chanin of Alabama Chanin and her work.  I must confess that I am a bit obsessed with Natalie these days, scouring the internet for any information I can glean and pictures I can moon over.  I follow her blog and Facebook page, own both of her books and have even pre-ordered her third, due out in 2012.  Frankly, I just can’t get enough.  And this is a little strange for me, given that I usually do not care for, let alone follow, anyone in the cutting-edge fashion world.  The clothes are, usually, too inaccessible to me.  But not these beauties. 

Photograph by Alabama Chanin

Don’t get me wrong:  I cannot afford these clothes.  But wait!  Natalie has given me all of the tools I need to create my own!  In her two books, Alabama Stitch and Alabama Studio Style she shares all of the secrets for how she creates her masterpieces.  As if that wasn’t enough, she sells all of the supplies that she uses in her own work as well as kits of some of her most popular styles.  This sort of behavior is unheard of (even frowned upon) in the world of closely guarded fashion secrets.  But, if nothing else, making your own Alabama Chanin-inspired garment will give you new appreciation of the price tags of the originals.  For my sewing friends who think that “hand work” is not one, but two four-letter-words, you’d better sit down; every stitch in these elaborate garments is done by hand.

Photographs by Alabama Chanin

I am as fascinated and inspired by Natalie’s story as I am by her work.  She has been described as a designer, manufacturer, stylist, filmmaker, mother, artisan, cook and collector of stories .  Her first job in the fashion world was in NYC working in the sportswear industry, and she later she spent 10 years in Europe working as a stylist and filmmaker.  Upon returning to New York, she tells of getting ready for a party one evening with “nothing to wear”.  The t-shirt she cut up and re-sewed launched what was eventually to become her current business.  When she found herself in need of skilled hands to sew an order of 200 t-shirts, she turned to the women in her hometown of Florence, Alabama who came from a tradition of hand quilting.  From that beginning Natalie, who subscribes to the "slow design" movement, has created an ecologically sustainable business that gives back to the community where she lives, one which has evolved from using recycled t-shirts to sourcing her own American-made, low impact organic cotton fabric.

I’ve recently completed my first garment using Natalie’s techniques with another two underway.  I can’t remember a project that felt so good under my hands.  The weight of the cloth, the texture of the stitches, in some cases the beading that adorns the piece, all add up to one big tactile love fest.  And these clothes feel fantastic on the body.

For this skirt I began with a handful of t-shirts I got from the Salvation Army for $0.99 each.  I was lucky to find three light blue and four dark brown shirts that were identical (you can occasionally find a group of identical t-shirts, often from an event, with a graphic on one side).  I started with the skirt pattern provided in Alabama Stitch but changed it from four to six gores in order to fit the fabric I had available.  The leaf design, a stencil provided in Alabama Stitch, is painted onto the top layer of three of the gores which are then sandwiched with the brown fabric.  I hand stitched around each leaf then cut away the top layer, a process known as reverse appliqué.  The six gores were stitched together by hand as was the foldover elastic waistband.  The hem is left as a raw edge.

I used the remaining fabric I had to create a matching top, brown underlined with blue. This pattern is from Lyla Messenger, The Margarita Tank.  I’ve owned this pattern for years but this is the first time I had tried it.  I love this pattern for several reasons.  It fits me great with little alteration so it was fast and easy to put together with only three pattern pieces.  The shaped center front adds a nice visual curve to the body and would be a perfect place for further embellishment.  I constructed the top by machine but added some hand stitching to complement the skirt by hand-felling the front seams and stitching the binding down by hand as well.

These two pieces are my favorite wardrobe items at the moment.  They are as comfortable as pajamas but a lot more stylish.  I am so enamored of the techniques I’ve learned from Natalie’s two books that I have signed up to take a hands-on workshop with her in Alabama in November.  In addition, one week from today I am going to meet the fashion icon in person when I attend a lecture she is giving at the Textile Museum in DC.  To say I am excited at the prospect would be an understatement.  I just hope I can finish my next Chanin-inspired garment in time to wear to the event.  I’d better get stitching.

Zero-Waste Skirt

I’ve been reading a bit recently about zero-waste in creative processes.  Last week, Betz White was the guest blogger at Sew Mama Sew and wrote a great article on this subject (make sure you click on the related article links to read more about this topic including some amazing pattern layout skills).  I’ve also recently been a little obsessed with Alabama Chanin, a fashion design company based in (where else?) Alabama that creates fabulous garments with low environmental impact (I have another blog post in the works about this company) and who is working toward the zero-waste goal.

Last week a friend asked if I could help her with a sewing project.  She was planning to attend a traditional Nigerian wedding and wanted to use some fabric she brought back from her own trip to Africa to have a skirt made to wear to the event.  This project turned out to be my first zero-waste project, not by design but by necessity.

My friend envisioned a ruffled 3-tiered skirt, a popular style right now.  I was delighted with this plan as these skirts are particularly easy to sew.  The trick to the project was that I had only 2 yards of 48” wide cotton fabric to work with (and far less once the fabric had been pre-shrunk).  There are lots of tutorials on the internet about making these skirts (Google: ruffled tiered skirt) and the planning involves some mathematic skills.  In the end, I made the math conform to the amount of fabric I had available.  Here’s what I had left over:

I was very pleased with the final result.  The skirt flared gently to the hem but never looked overly full or bulky.  I particularly love the technique I used for the elastic waistband, and I've posted a tutorial for creating one yourself.  This is a factory technique used in ready-to-wear and makes a much nicer finish (I think) than elastic in a casing.

This final picture shows some lovely beaded bracelets that I received as a gift a few years ago.  The non-profit organization Bead for Life offers women in Uganda the chance to rise above poverty by creating sustainable creative opportunities.   Each bead is created from paper recycled from magazines (the color of the bead is the color of the paper used).  I think they are the perfect “green” accessory for my zero-waste skirt.

The Cassandra Skirt

The sewing world lost a wonderfully talented designer and teacher in September of this year.  Fred Bloebaum, who was familiar to so many for the classes she taught and the patterns she created, died after a battle with pancreatic cancer.  The Cassandra Skirt by LaFred is a lovely and unique pattern.  I first saw the skirt made up at the local sewing Expo several years ago and loved its simplicity and drape.  Another sewing friend and American Sewing Guild member told me about the skirt she made from this pattern.  She said that people would stop her on the street and in airports to ask about it. 

The description on the pattern envelope reads:  A fitted, flared mid-calf length skirt with separate center panel and side/back panel which wraps around and meets at center front with a decorative closure.  Skirt is cut on the bias at the center back with a slightly fish-tail shaped hem and an invisible zipper.  Suggested fabrics include those with drape and weight such as crepe (wool, silk or rayon), wool double knit or jersey and other drapey mid-weight fabrics.   Even though the pattern cautions against using synthetics that will not hold a crisp edge when pressed, I dug into my stash and found a piece of black mystery cloth, a fairly heavy-weight knit that pressed reasonably well.  The yardage requirement is fairly large for this skirt; there will be some large pieces left over (due to the single layer layout) so you may want to plan a matching garment from the remnants.

Fitting issues and finished length need to be resolved before construction, and the pattern gives tips on how to best accomplish these tasks.  I found the pattern easy to adjust for a waist that is two to three sizes smaller than the hip.  Since the side and back seams are straight lines it was easy to taper from the smaller size at the waist to a larger size at the hip.  The pattern includes sizes 6 through 26 (hip size 32.5 through 50).  I found the sizes ran a bit small; that is, I needed a size 14 for my hip measurement even though I tend to use a size 10 or 12 pattern when sewing from “the Big 4”.  This would be a great pattern for a thin teen as the smallest waist size is 23 inches.

The instructions are very good and very thorough.  There are two options for seam finishes (serging and turning under) as well as instructions for mitering corners, using tag board templates for pressing and installing an invisible zipper.  The inside of the skirt turns out beautifully finished as all of the corners are mitered (eight, in all).  One thing I particularly liked was that once the basic construction was completed the skirt was already hemmed and ready to wear.

The skirt is constructed in two units.  The first is the front panel which is essentially a rectangle.  All edges are turned under and the corners mitered.  The second unit consists of two panels joined together at the center back seam by an invisible zipper.  This seam line is flared which creates drape at the center back.  The front edges of this unit are straight and are turned under and the corners mitered.  The back section is lapped over the front panel and the two units are attached to one another at the side.  The back panels are then closed at center front with a decorative closure.

I recommend you try this pattern.  I think it would look lovely on a wide range of figure types, and the fitting involved is not too difficult.  The style is casually elegant and the drape figure-flattering.  And don’t be surprised if someone stops you on the street to ask, “Where did you get that wonderful skirt?”

Reuse, Recycle

The term upcycle (the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality) may not have been coined until 1994 but let's face it, Scarlett O'Hara perfected  this practice years before when she turned her curtains into a ballgown.  My skirt has a similar origin.  When I purchased some winter white wide wale cotton corduroy curtian panels (whew!) from Ikea I needed to chop almost four feet off of them to make them fit my window.  The resultant "scraps" were ideal for a long, straight skirt.  I used a pattern drafted from my Pattern Master Boutique software which included waist darts, back zipper, and a faced waistband.  To add some interest to this piece I hand stitched dozens and dozens ofwhite buttons around the hem, a detail that adds beauty but also an unanticipated loud jingling sound when I walk (I scare my cats every time I wear this skirt).  I like to think Scarlett would be proud.