How to Get Better Photos for Your Sewing Blog

Having a fabulous setting when you photograph your sewing creations is great. But…

Having to recruit someone to take the photos, hoping for good weather and braving other people’s stares is not so great. I sew quite a lot and at times I blog relatively often. You can’t blog without photos, and if I had to go through a major production every time I would never get around to it. Even taking photos in your own garden is a bit embarrassing, in case the neighbours are watching and wondering what sort of vain idiot is posing for selfies all the time.

Inside the house, where it is private, taking photos can be another sort of problem. You need to find a neutral background without pesky furniture and pictures in the way, somewhere where you can sit the camera at the right distance and height and where there is good light. I don’t want to have to do a complicated set up each time, moving stuff, setting up lights and generally faffing around.

So I have designated picture taking spot in my house.

Plain background. Check.

Convenient window sill for the camera? Check.

Good bright light? Check.

Tadaaaa!

Doesn’t that look great? Maybe not.

Ok, so clearly bit of a tidy up is called for: Hellooo Photoshop!

I use Photoshop Elements, which is much cheaper than the full version and just a good for my purposes. It really is an excellent investment if you want nice photos. But if you prefer to hang onto your cash, there is a free image editing software called gimp. Plus a gazillion apps you can get for very little, which do at least some of what Photoshop does, such as cropping and lightening. I can’t help you with any of the latter, although there would be lots of online tutorials if you search a little.

What I do is take my photos with the timer and flash, load them on my PC and open them in Photoshop.

First I crop the photo.

Because my photo was not taken in a proper studio with professional equipment, I need to lighten it up, by going to the Enhance menu and clicking on Auto Levels.

I even lighten it up further on the Enhance menu by selecting Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast. Lighten up your photo with the brightness slider until you are satisfied with the result.

Next I use the eraser on 100% opacity to get rid of the outer edges of the photo.

Then I turn the eraser slider at the bottom to 60% opacity and go around the edges multiple times until I have faded out most of the remaining background.

And voila, here is the finished photo. You may also notice that compared to the earlier photo I have smoothed my face out a bit to get rid of the worst of my wrinkles. (I use the blur tool, and there is lots more you can do, but that is a whole other tute.)

For now, I just reduce the size of the image. The bigger the image, the clearer your face will be with every little line and blemish on display. You don’t need any of this to show off your garment and give readers a good idea of what it looks like. I reduce the size of my photos to 40% of the original, sometimes even smaller.

Go to the Image menu >Resize

Set it to 40%.

Save your finished image and select the file size. A low resolution means a small file size, but this will still display just fine on a screen. However, if you think you may want to print the image or do something else with it later, you may want to select a higher resolution. I usually go for medium.

There are ways of removing the background completely and I used to do that with my photos, but found it far too time consuming. If you are interested, the are lots of tutorials on the web on how to remove the background in Photoshop. For my purposes the vignette style with the faded edges is just as good and much faster.

Good luck with your own photos!

Boule Skirt Inspired by Kaliyana

Seems I am going to mop up quite a few ideas that have been languishing in my imaginary sewing queue for years, if not decades, while at home during this pandemic. I have been a fan of the Canadian designer Kaliyana for a long time, but I could never afford her creations and even if I could, the proportions would be all wrong for me. At 161cm and now 67kg (thank you, home isolation), I am a long way from the models who look so fabulous in her fashion shots. That doesn’t mean that I can’t wear this type of thing, but it has to be adapted for my height and figure in terms of ease and proportions. Very doable when sewing even if impossible with RTW.

This skirt has been on my to-do list since forever.

I have used a dark grey striped jacquard of unknown fibre content which reminds me a bit of nylon taffeta, although not as shiny, not as stiff and not as noisy. Maybe a nylon mix of some sort? It is a nice quality, but at best only part natural fibre.

The skirt consists of 2 straight fabric rectangles, 150x75cm each and sewn into the round. Then I made 8 deep box pleats at the top to absorb the fabric volume over the hips and a gathered hem at the bottom 1:2 with a band to finish it off. The circumference at the hem is about 1.5m, much less than the original Kaliyana skirt, but that huge amount of volume would swamp me. The top of the skirt is pleated to a circumference that just fits over my hips and a waistband is added with elastic inside. Sewing details are on PatternReview.

The fabric is not as light weight as the original and I didn’t crush it (other than to sit on it) because the self stripe looks nice. Still pretty happy with the result and will be fun to wear with my Doc Martin boots for winter. (Note the super elegant ughs for the photo shoot. 🙂

Surely Not Plaid!

I’m not a great lover of plaid, I have to admit. So why on earth did I make a plaid winter coat? This is one of the deep mysteries of buying fabric online. I saw black and white wool, I thought of a jacket I once owned and loved with a black and white pattern (not plaid!), I bought the fabric and then I was stuck with it. The covid bug came, I was bored, and so here we are, with a plaid coat.

That said, I find that I probably like black and white buffalo plaid better than any other, with the possible exception of black watch tartan. So the coat might actually get some wear. Hope springs eternal.

The pattern I used is Marcy Tilton V8934, which I bought principally for the bubble shape.

But perverse as I am, once I got to the hem I decided to skip the darts and leave the coat as a classic a-line. And being even more perverse, I am now considering putting them in after all. Of course I have removed all the markings, which will make doing this much more difficult. Serves me right. 🙂

The sewing details are on PatternReview.

Katherine Brenne Jacket

What? A completely new pattern? Not the Tessuti Mandy again? Whatever has gotten into me?

— Well, a few years ago I found this jacket on Pinterest and really loved it.

Initially I was too chicken to try and wing a copy, but then, — great excitement –, Vogue published V9135, a Katherine Brenne pattern that was very similar. Yes, it has taken me years and a pandemic to actually get around to making it, but better late than never.

The pattern is less extreme in body width (note the width where the sleeve joins the body) and the collar is more restrained too, which is all to the good. These days I still like oversized, but much less that in my Lagenlook heyday. That particular insanity has passed.

Having stepped out of my TNT comfort zone I made a muslin first, which got the tick for shape, although the fabric I had used was a pink country print which was a bit off putting.

Confined to the house because of the dreaded lurgy, I thought I would have another go with more suitable fabric. I would have preferred plain black, but the black and silver acetate was all I had in my stash. Problematic with other prints worn underneath, I know, but with this epidemic said to go on for months I will have enough jackets to go with absolutely everything. The only problem will be that none of them will fit me before long, due to my current enormous consumption of chocolate. The Easter bunny has a lot to answer for.

So here is the jacket, unfortunately proof that large prints are much more aesthetically pleasing than small ones, but hey, this print is not too bad and it will be a long time before I can rush off to a European fabric market to get a better one.

You can tell that I am not into shoes!

After I had finished this jacket, and wished very much that it was plain black, I decided to have a go at dying my original pink muslin. I thought that the print would still be visible, only tone in tone black, but happily this isn’t the case. Even a very close look can’t find any trace of it. So now I have a plain black jacket as well as the silver on black print. I suspect the plain will get a lot more wear.

Because black swallows all the light so you can’t see much in photos, I lightened them up quite a lot, which makes them look washed out and grainy, but at least you can make out the bones of the garment. The lightening does horrible things to human faces, so these photos are cropped to the essentials.

The Tessuti Jac

Jackets need a lot of thought, as I have discovered. Not only does it have to look good and be comfortable, but it also needs to go with a lot of your outfits to make it useful. Plain, boring jackets do this best, but who wants plain and boring jackets? Unfortunately I have made quite a few exciting ones, only to discover that they are mostly wardrobe flowers because they only go with one monochrome outfit, which is boring once the fancy jacket is taken off. Or they don’t accommodate the top underneath very well, making the sleeve and shoulder area on my recent linen tops look crushed.

It doesn’t help that I like to wear my jackets open, because anything other than plain black, navy or grey will very likely clash with the top underneath. The cure for that, of course, is to make myself button up, so only the pants or skirt are visible. I wear a lot of black pants, like everyone else, so anything that can be closed and goes with black bottoms should go with a lot of outfits.

So here is my latest attempt at an interesting jacket that will actually get worn. I modified the Tessuti Jac Shirt for an unstructured, unlined specimen that is just the right weight for early autumn, when the temps are still in the mid to low twenties, but the mornings are cool.

As you can see, I took off the collar and only used the collar stand and I made long sleeves. The fabric used is a heavy furnishing cotton from Ikea. Details of the modifications can be found here.

Minimalist’

Lately I have developed a taste for minimalist art and it is influencing my sewing. Simple shapes, simple stencil motifs. I also try to repurpose when I can, and using sheets is my latest strategy. Either good parts of my worn out sheets, or sometimes ‘as is’ sheets from Ikea when I can find something suitable.

This outfit started life as a single size fitted sheet, 100% pure cotton. It was pink, not a colour I can do much with at the moment, but not to worry. I overdyed it in blue, expecting some sort of purple, but instead it came out as a nice denim blue. Perfect.

The pants are elasticised at the top and tapered towards the ankle. The original pattern was changed and adapted past all recognition, so I won’t bother to link to it. The top is once again the Tessuti Mandy tee, with the armscyes changed to accommodate a woven and the sleeves changed to cuffs. Instructions on how to do this are here.

I used this minimalist painting as a starting point for my stencil, turning it sideways and changed the aspect a little to suit the shape of the Mandy and changing the colours from high contrast black and white to low contrast blue and grey.

Perhaps the contrast is a little too low, I am thinking of maybe overprinting with a slightly lighter shade of grey. This will also make the print more even, right now it is a little blotchy. A lesson learnt that large areas of colour are probably best printed with a screen, even a stencil doesn’t do them well, at least not in one go.

I will add some updated pics once I have done the second print, but for now more of this first iteration.

I did do a slightly lighter version. To tell the truth, I was just busting to try overprinting, it’s a great thing to have up your sleeve if the first go isn’t so great. It will make me more prepared to take risks, and without taking risks and having failures you can’t truly master anything.

I’m happier with the lighter grey. The first try was too light and resulted in ragged edges, but I left it after tidying it up as much as possible with a brush. I like the quirkiness of having one motif in a different shade, and it is on the back, so won’t annoy me every time I look in the mirror.

Here is a pic still on my cutting table after printing. You can see that I just cover it with newspaper and it doubles as a printing station.

African Inspired

My last stencilling project using the Matisse cut-out was very enjoyable, but at the same time I found it quite hard to find something equally as satisfying for my next one. Seems Matisse is a hard act to follow, even by another one of his own shapes. I still want to use his birds and maybe his swimmers too, but they will need to be in blue and white, and I want to use more of my natural coloured linen up first. So in the end I went for something completely different and chose an African look. My choice was a a variation of the P.Kaufman fabric below.

I chose a chunk of this, and changed and enlarged it a bit. I like large prints, — and slimming be damned!

I made my changes in Photoshop, printed it out in sections, then taped it together so I could lay the stencil over the top for tracing. Clear acetate is better for this purpose than the opaque white stencil medium and cutting out was easy with a fine-tipped soldering iron. A hot-knife would probably be even better, but the one I bought from the US via Amazon has a silly polarised plug which needs replacing before it will fit into any of my adapters. It is also 120 Volt, which doesn’t bother me because I have a converter from when we lived in the Middle East. But if you don’t have one and are thinking of buying something similar, be warned!

The printing was easy. I sprayed the back of the stencil with adhesive, let it dry, the pressed it on my fabric, making sure it stuck well around the edges of the printing area. Iron your fabric first if there are any wrinkles, ask me how I know!

I roll the ink on pretty thickly, which is supposed to be a no-no but works for me. I think this is because I use screen printing ink, which doesn’t bleed. The only bit of bleeding I ever had was when the foam roller was too wet. Normally I wet it, then squeeze it out quite thoroughly before rolling it in the ink. I must have only squeezed lightly that time. Fortunately with abstract shapes it is easy to fix this up with a brush and a bit of paint, and nobody will be any the wiser.

Again I used the Tessuti Mandy t-shirt pattern for the top, with the armscyes widened to accommodate a woven fabric and cuffs instead of the sleeves. I also shortened the pattern, although less than last time. I wanted to wear this with long pants, instead of the culottes I intended for my black/grey Matisse top. This top is around 60cm long, the black one was more like 55cm.

Sewing instructions can be found here.

A Tribute to Matisse

How designers manage to put a collection together twice a year with entirely new ideas beats me. I must be a very boring person because once I have hit on a style that works for me I do it to death. The last couple of years have been Lagenlook tunics with harem pants of all descriptions, and now I am onto boxy tops with culottes or Oska-type bubble pants. The Tessuti Mandy with cuffs instead of sleeves looks like it will go the way of the Tessuti Fave Top, being made over and over. I just love the silhouette and it’s such a terrific backdrop for my fabric printing.

Which brings me to Matisse. I don’t know what his contemporaries made of him at the end of the 19th and early 20th century, he is so radically modern. His cut-outs seem childishly simple but are at the same time such supremely pleasing shapes. I have quite a few earmarked for my fabric printing, and here is the first one.

My interpretation is monochrome, I don’t think I quite have his skill with colours. I started with blue on cheap white cotton, as a muslin, to try out my new stencilling method before risking more expensive fabric.

I used a large sheet of stencil plastic bought in an art supply store and cut my stencil out with a knife. To get the outline from my laptop onto the stencil I enlarged it to the size I needed, printed it out in sections, assembled it, then cut it out with scissors and placed it on the plastic sheet so i could trace around the outline with a pen. The cutting out was painful, literally, as you have to press quite hard to cut. Or maybe my blade was just blunt. In any case, I plain to use a hotknife to cut my stencils in future, which is a sort of soldering iron with a fine tip. It melts the plastic and makes cutting much easier.

I also had a few issues rolling on the paint. I used a foam roller and it took a lot of applications to get good cover. Everyone recommends to apply the paint thinly or it will bleed, but I got frustrated and slapped it on quite thickly in the end. No bleeding, so there. The thick paint is a bit rubbery and stiffens the fabric, but I can live with that until I find a better way.

My other issue was that my blue screen printing ink was old and had partially dried out, and so didn’t blend well with the white to make a light blue. I had dark blue lumps in the paint which eventually dissolved into dark blue blotches. Fortunately it didn’t seem to matter, a bit of colour variation actually looks quite good. I like the top and will definitely enjoy wearing it.

Fired with zeal I used a beautiful black linen next, with a grey print. The linen is from the same piece of fabric as the culottes and so makes a nice set.

This time I applied the paint quite thinly, again no bleeding thank goodness, but no matter how many coats I applied, the texture of the linen came through. It is quite smooth, so I don’t understand why, especially since a stencil I did before on a much rougher fabric did not have this problem. Not the end of the world, I love the resulting top, it just didn’t quite turn out as I had imagined. I am thinking that perhaps this was because I used the foam roller dry, while before I wet it and squeezed it out before rolling on the paint. But live and learn, and it is still a nice top.

The Accidental Zero Waste Dress

I’m all for zero waste, but the last time I attempted a zero waste garment it didn’t turn out so well.

What can I say. Not great unless you are after a Japanese look.

This time zero waste wasn’t my intention, but this is all that was left of 2m of batik, 120 wide. Not quite zero, but pretty darn close!

We are about to treat ourselves to a holiday in Vanuatu, after a very stressful and extremely busy year. Once upon a time I had 3 weeks off for my Christmas summer break, but this year it appears not only to be late, but to have shrunk as well. Still, one week is better than nothing. I am so tired I intend to veg and do nothing but eat and sleep. Forget sightseeing, culture and shopping, I intend to be almost exclusively in the pool or in the horizontal. (Well, maybe a bit of fabric shopping, if there is anything interesting.)

What I thought was needed to swan around the resort, on my way to meals, was a tropical style caftan. Not the sort of garment I need in my everyday life or will wear once back home, but I had some batik left from my last Bali trip and was going to give it a go.

I started off tearing a 6cm strip off along the end of my fabric, for the shoulder strap. Then I sewed the fabric length into the round with a French seam and topstitched that. I made this the side seam opposite the draped side and used a bodice pattern piece (Eva dress) to cut the armscye. I didn’t bother to make the front and back armscye different, just layed the back piece onto the doubled fabric and cut the armscye and shoulder with a rotary cutter. I sewed up the shoulder seam and finished the armscye with a bias trip in a matching colour. This resulted in a rectangle with an armscye in the top corner, worn on an angle.

The shoulder strap had to be placed carefully to hide my bra straps and this would have been a great deal easier with some help. But DH was at work, as he always is right now, and I eventually managed to get the straps in the right place. This took longer than all the rest of the sewing time on this garment! Then I sewed up the open fabric below my armpit and let it drape down.

All that was left now was to use the cut off piece from the armscye to make a tie to gather the straps on the top of my shoulder into a sort of simulated bow and hand sew this in place. Mission accomplished!

…and some location shots…

Lizard Print

Creativity needs energy, and all my energy has been syphoned off by endless hours of work lately, so I haven’t done much printing or fabric painting for yonks. But a few days off over Christmas have revitalised me somewhat, so I have got stuck into block printing. It didn’t hurt that my first project has turned out really well, so then I wanted to do more. Here is a lizard print, grey on light blue cotton.

The Tessuti Mandy, sleeveless and in a cotton woven, is the ideal backdrop. Super simple shape, although you need to enlarge the armscyes etc to make the pattern woven friendly (instructions here). The fabric is the other side of the doona cover I already used for the Sydney dress. I also made a shirt out of the same side as this top, so I really had to eke out the top from what was left. A shirt, a top and a dress isn’t bad for the $11 the ‘as is’ Ikea doona cover cost me! Who says you can’t save money sewing?

However, I have been a little dissatisfied with the quality of block printing. It doesn’t deposit a nice thick layer of paint on the fabric like stencilling or screen printing. Here is a close-up of what I mean.

Not the end of the world that the prints are patchy, but I am going to try some stencilling to see if this will make me happier with the quality. Because I print whole garments with repeating motifs, block printing has been convenient. Put the block on the fabric, apply pressure, take it off, ink it again and put it in the next spot to build up a pattern. With stencilling I could create a stencil with several motifs at once, tesselating, but getting it all to fit together nicely is a bit more effort. So I think I will attempt the same MO with one motif on the stencil. For that to work the important thing is to use a transparent stencil, so I can see where the motifs have to go.