Man, there are times that being a seamstress kicks ass. Not so much when you put a sleeve in a jacket upside down or get finagled into doing a shit-ton of alterations for no money, but when you get about $200 worth of performance gear for about $40, it fucking rules.
So, there’s this fancy-schmancy wool-based sports clothes company called Ibex. Their stuff is pretty sweet, I must say – I have two of their long sleeved base layer tops & two short-sleeved ones which form constituent parts of my traditional foul weather wooly carapace.
These Ibex shirts I bought just before Joel and I went on our coast-to-coast trip. Joel had a couple of Ibex tops sometime before that. But when we bought our Ibex garments, Joel was working at a large bike shop where he could get an employee purchase discount, which brought these high-end goods into our range.
Three years on, he has moved to a smaller shop closer to home, and while the job is great, the discounts are no longer a perquisite he can rely upon.
And three years on, our old Ibex gear is starting to get awfully tatty. I darn, and he darns and so our stuff is well mended, but tatty, none the less.
So, one day it struck my dim bulb that I sew, that I have no aversion to knits, and that I could probably replicate Ibex goods at home, using commercially available sewing patterns and fabrics. First, I tracked down wool jersey knits courtesy of Denver Fabrics. Then, on to patterns. For Joel, Simplicity 9499 provided the raglan-sleeved top. For myself, it was Vogue 8760. Denver Fabrics supplied the jersey-knit woolens in prices ranging from $7.50 to $10/yd. For a shirt for either of us, it required 1 yard for myself (
I would come to find out) and 1.5 for Mr. Long-Limbs. The patterns, after sale and coupons, came to just over $5/ea. Therefore, adding in notions, one could reasonably replicate an Ibex base-layer top for around $15-$17/ea.
I have my first top finished, and am working on his second, along with some bonus gear from scrap fabric. I found that I was able to eke an extra camisole and a sports bra out of 1.5 yds of this terracotta woolen jersey.
I shall post photos of the lot of it when I am done. The 3/4 sleeve raglan top, the camisole, and yes, the sports bra.
The camisole was cut from the tank-top pattern which came with my favored New Look 6564 jacket pattern. Both the jacket and the camisole have been home-run hits. I cut the camisole last week out of scrap from a dress which is another project soon to be in progress, just for fittings sake, and was 100% pleased with the fit and proportion.
The sports bra is Green Pepper 407, which is not in the least glammy, but it was at the $5 price point and seems like it would be a difficult thing to fuck up. We shall see how it goes.
Green Pepper patterns seem to be pretty good, at least judging from the results I had making Joel a pair of #524, the Sunset Bay Cargo zip-offs. They’re to replace an ancient pair of zip-offs he bought at MajrThrift a squillion years ago. While I don’t love the inner leg gusset of this pattern (it seems to be an unnecessary complication), the rest of it went together beautifully. This is literally the best fly-front I have ever put together.
Photos will follow, probably Wednesday, after I’ve washed laundry, and therefore re-claimed my top, and finished up the camisole and the bra.
Anyway, the tally of my theoretical savings is as follows:
| TOP | Ibex: Â $75 | Pattern on sale $5 | Fabric: Â $15 (1.5 yds recommended) |
| CAMISOLE | Ibex: Â $55 | Pattern coupon $7 | Fabric: $0 – scrap from top |
| SPORTS BRA | Ibex: Â $55 | Pattern reg. price $5 | Fabric: $0 – scrap from top |
| TOTAL | Ibex: $185 | Patterns: $17 | Fabric: $15 |
| Sewing Total: Â $37 for fabric, patterns, & notions |
Very rarely does the balance of home sewing swing so heavily in my favor. I’m almost sort of impressed, actually.
I can’t see/hear that word in my head without thinking of this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TugslL45aXk
Btw, I like seeing your sewing projects, and thought you would have appreciated the Gaultier exhibit* I went to in Dallas with my birth mother last week. She used to be a designer and my grandmother used to sew most of my clothes, but I somehow didn’t inherit the desire to sew — I’ll just blame that on thrift shops 🙂
(*my favorite was a ball gown that looked as though it had an entire leopardskin stitched to the front, but was rather handsewn with thousands of tiny beads)