Marie-Michelle Melotte is back with us today to finish the discussion we began earlier this week.

It’s clear that you’re not just picking out a pattern and then selecting a random printed fabric to make it. You’re really analyzing the specific style attributes of the design and then thinking about how you can create an interesting collaboration between the silhouette and a fabric in order to maximize the impact of the final garment. Where do you find the inspiration that helps you do this so well?

I grab inspiration wherever it comes from. I sketch it out lengthily and watercolor it, debating color, fabric and modifications. It usually starts with books. And ends in a museum!

I’ve gathered kilograms of books on art history, theatre costume and fashion design, costume institute catalogues, historical and folkloric dress, and fabric. If I could, I’d spend my life haunting the likes of the V&A and the Musée des arts décoratifs. To touch that eighteenth century brocade! Damn the glass display case!

Back in the day when I was just a shallow and covetous fashionista with no sewing skills, I amassed some exquisite, mommy-incompatible pieces that have provided inspiration along the way. Rifling through a closet, yours, someone else’s, window shopping, street gawking, and patio side ogling can jolt innovation and the creative process in strange and unexpected ways!

Yves Saint-Laurent and Courrèges are always good muses with their simple shapes, clean lines, perfect cuts, and impeccable design. What more can one ask for? When it comes to touch and architecture, Japanese designers are surefire stimulation. Kawakubo Rei, Yohji Yamamoto, and eccentricities such as those of Hussein Chalayan always make me smile. You might not use it but it will trigger something.

Speaking of inspiration, you made a Bubble Dress a while ago that began from a pretty interesting jumping off point.

The Titania bubble dress! A Midsummer Night’s Dream must be one of my least favorite of Shakespeare’s plays. I never quite grasped the pixie flutter although I was spellbound by the headstrong character of the fairy queen. Inspiration here was literally literary.

An odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds, field dew and sweet peace. A silk chiffon shift dress from Sportmax’s 2008 Spring/Summer collection covered in circular embroidered and sequined appliqués provided supplementary inspiration, and when I stumbled across this dusty rose silk and cotton appliquéd fabric on a German website, I thought its use on a Bubble Dress might quite possibly lead into the delightful world of the wood nymph!

One of the things that I find so interesting about your work is that you avoid prints and allow texture to do all the work of providing visual stimulation.

I am in awe of highly audacious colour combinations and almost hysterical histrionics such as can be found in collections by Kenzo and Christian Lacroix, but I am shy when it comes to pulling it off myself.

For the moment, I’m comfortable working with subdued color palettes where texture has the predominant role. A bit like in Italian tailoring, I like to let the fabric speak for itself. It always will if it’s well chosen and showcased.

Texture (more so than color) means depth, plays on perspective, the tantalizing theatre of light and shadow! How fun and exciting is that?! I have one dress in particular up on a pedestal when I’m thinking about texture in a neutral tone, Madame Grès’ Antigone dress at the Met Costume Institute. And one painting in mind, Jean-Baptiste Greuze’s La cruche cassée in the Louvre. Oh! The classical, not so virginal, bouillonné and twists of loveliness!

Tell us about the Puppet Show Tunic you made. There’s so much of interest going on in this garment, but there’s no print and no color.

This Puppet Show Tunic was made from an Alice + Olivia organic striped cotton and silk voile. The more opaque stripes are soft and slightly raised like on corduroy, leaving almost transparent and thinner stripes in between. Snap buttons covered with flat cotton mouliné buttons were used instead of buttonholes which I thought might weaken the delicate fabric with use.

The col claudine and puffed sleeves make this piece highly adorable and the pattern is one of my favorites. The fabric is soft, light and airy and I thought it would be interesting to use a somewhat “evanescent” cloth on a pattern with strong and well-defined elements, all in the name of contradiction.

You’re clearly unafraid to use high-end fabrics which is somewhat unusual for someone creating children’s clothing. Where do you find your fabrics?

I’m a fabric hound, constantly on the lookout! I spend a lot of time pouring through catalogues, and when I was still living in France, I made frenzied trips across the Channel.

Stragier in Belgium and MacCulloch & Wallis in the UK have true finds, although the price tag can quickly become quite steep. The US  has some great shops (Emma One Sock, Waechter’s, Hyena, Gorgeous Fabrics) when it comes to finding affordable high end fabrics. I have a list of my favorite fabric and haberdashery suppliers in the sidebar of my blog listed under the heading “Fournitures Couture.”

I’m quite squirrelly in that I like to gather and collect items from everywhere around the world, oftentimes ending up with a very international garment. France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, England, Germany, India, the US, Canada. It’s all over the map. High end fabric, quality fabric, interesting fabrics can be found. You just have to dig for them and snap them up once they comes along as there isn’t an abundance of it that trickles out of the Ziploc of haute couture.

One is tempted to believe, based on history, savoir faire, and reputation that France must be a treasure trove full of lovely fabric. True. But it’s not available to the larger public. As with most things in Europe, the best is as hermetically self-contained as might be dandruff in Lagerfeld’s starched white coiffure. Open air markets, web shops, fabric boutiques, vintage clothing shops, estate sales, auctions, eBay, great-auntie’s attic, the remnants of your mother-in-law’s moth-eaten Chanel jacket. All and any of it can lead to the perfect find.

I only choose fabric with natural fiber content and use cotton and silk thread. To me, natural fabric feels fuller, richer, more real, and closest to life and I like to think that it’s a greener solution to man-made fabrics. Sometimes beauty can be very simple as long as you’re betting on quality. Do more with less, or so goes the minimalist motto. But maybe I’m too much of a purist.

Some of the high-end fabrics like these don’t lend themselves to the everyday wear and tear that most kids exert on their clothing. Are these garments you’ve been making more for show than for wear?

Most of the garments I make would be labeled “heirloom” or “special occasion” although that’s not my goal. I think it’s possible to dress children in things we’d initially like to think they shouldn’t wear, like silk and cashmere. Surprisingly or not, these fibers are quite hard-wearing. Sure, sweat suits are practical; throw them in the washer and you don’t even have to iron them! But they ain’t very pretty are they? If you’re wary of damaging clothing in your washing machine, then it should probably be washed by hand or handed over to the drycleaner. Better to spend a little time or money than ending up with a ruined garment.

Spot cleaning is also a good solution, especially on woolens. We often over-wash our clothes when sometimes a good airing out outside (also especially good for woolies) is quite sufficient to get clothes smelling of sunshine. (Please excuse the Stepford moment!) Natural fibers have a distinct smell that some people can find displeasing but that’s all part of the arrangement. Mother Nature has an olfactory label on her wares.

The boy things I make are for my son Félix, and it’s wholly endearing to see him out and about in something I’ve made. But my hands have always itched to make girly things, skirts that swing and oodles of dresses.

So my friends with girls get lucky around birthdays and Christmas! But I’m also looking at starting a small home business to sell the pieces that I make. It’s a way of gaining closet space and supporting my new-found sewing craze. Possibly, hopefully, soon there will be an e-shop.

You can follow Marie-Michelle’s creations on her blog Rastaquouère. She also contributes to the French language group blogs Oliver + S Lovers, C’est Dimanche Addicts, and Défi 13.

I recently wrote a detailed guest post for the nice folks at Janome about using a serger to make a lettuce hem on knits. I used this technique and a Janome 1100D serger (which they’ve generously lent to the Oliver + S studio) to make the pair of pajamas I blogged about earlier this month. If you’re interested in how to make a lettuce hem using a serger, click through to Janome’s site for instructions.

You don’t need a serger to make a lettuce hem, however. Here are some easy instructions for making a hem using an ordinary sewing machine. A machine-stitched lettuce hem requires one additional step that isn’t necessary with a serged hem, but the result is very similar.

First, mark the desired length of your hem and trim the fabric to be approximately 1″ longer than the finished length. Fold the excess fabric to the wrong side, press the fold, and pin the fabric in a few places to hold it temporarily.

Set your sewing machine to a short zigzag stitch. If you have a satin stitch setting, this works great. Otherwise, just set your zigzag stitch so the stitches will be very close together and create a smooth stitch. The stitches also should be at least 1/8″ wide so you have enough room to stitch over the folded edge of the fabric.

Once you’ve got everything set up, test a few knit scraps to check the settings and get comfortable with this stitch. You’ll need to stretch the hem as you stitch. The more you stretch, the wavier the edge. Keep the fabric stretched as evenly as possible while you work. It’s easiest to do this with a tube shape rather than a straight piece of fabric, since a tube gives you something to hold in front and behind the needle as you’re working. (Sleeves and pant legs work perfectly.)

As you stretch the fabric, stitch over the folded edge of the hem so the needle falls off the fabric on the right side of the stitch and stitches the fabric on the left side. Here is the stitched hem from the wrong side of the fabric.

Once you’ve finished stitching, turn to the wrong side of the hem, and trim the excess fabric. I’ve found that the easiest way to trim is to stretch the hem until it is straight, and trim as closely as you can to the stitches while holding the stretched fabric. (This is the step that isn’t required if you use a serger, since the serger trims the excess fabric as it folds and stitches the hem.)

You’ll notice, initially, that the hem is stretched and distorted. It won’t look very lettuce-y at first, but if you give it a few minutes to recover, you’ll see that, as the knit returns to its original shape, the hem will curl up to reveal a sweet little lettuce-y edge.

Easy, yes? We used the lettuce hem on the Hopscotch Dress and Nature Walk Pants pajama combination for S. How will you use it?

Every few months a photo pops up in the Oliver + S Flickr group that causes everyone in the studio to stop working and stare in amazement at their computer screens. It wasn’t until last week, after this Bubble Dress appeared (the description on the photo says it is a “butter coloured paisley motif on ecru Oscar de la Renta silk matelassé, cream cotton poplin lining”), that we put the pieces together. All these swoon-inducing garments are being sewn by the same person.

Once we realized this, we had to know more. And we thought you might like to know more too.

Marie-Michelle Melotte, the person making all these beautiful pieces, agreed to answer some questions about her sewing projects and her approach to finding and selecting such wonderful fabrics.

Why don’t you start by telling us a little about yourself.

I was born and raised in the Canadian prairies at the foot of the Rockies in Calgary. My parents were francophone Mauritian immigrants (thus the French name) and I spent the better part of my childhood, when not sliding down snowy slopes or indulging in a pony obsession, amongst the pots and pans of the family restaurant.

With adulthood came the thirst for new geography, and I’ve spent the last couple of years gallivanting through Europe, a young boy cub of five years named Félix, in tow. Our little family has relocated back to Canada for the next few years, although the heart quietly yearns for a swift return to French life. When I’m not sewing, I can usually be found writing scathing short stories in French, baking pies, making seasonal jellies, and slaughtering magazines for collage work.

You’ve made some astonishingly beautiful garments from Oliver + S patterns. We were smitten by the Bubble Dress you made recently. Tell us about it.

That Bubble Dress is constructed from a beautiful piece of Oscar de la Renta silk matelassé. The fabric was substantial which allowed for first-rate draping and proportions at the bubble hem and reminded me of a pair of cotton brocade curtains I had in my room as a child but without the dreadful weight–which got me thinking about The Sound of Music and the scene where the Julie Andrews character transforms bedroom curtains into the Von Trapp children’s play clothes. (Yes, inspiration is strange, wonderful and musical!)

The subtle, raised, butter-colored paisley pattern on an ecru background provided good visual and tactile interest and it got lined in a plain cream cotton poplin so as not to detract from the main theme of the dress. The only modification brought to the pattern were snap button closures covered with Belgian flat cotton mouliné buttons.

What about your Sunday Brunch jacket?

This is made from chunky Italian wool covered with a fake cable knit crisscross. Since the fabric is quite bulky, although malleable enough to be a pleasure to work with, I chose to do the inside pieces with plain cream cotton poplin to keep the Michelin Man effect out of the picture. The rough-hewn buttons are from the good folks at Wildwood Buttons in British Columbia who use salvaged tree cuts to great effect.

I’ve long been infatuated with one of my mother’s wool coats from the sixties she had bought in England before crossing the Atlantic thinking that her tailored European woolies would be tough enough for a Canadian winter! The ample cut of the Sunday Brunch Jacket combined with its Mao collar were dead ringers for the vintage coat, and I added the yew wood buttons to shake up the classical look and add a touch of pure Canadiana. I also enjoy how the faux cable knit acts as a throwback reminder to the strong checkered pattern of the über-Canadian lumberjack jacket.

You’re not timid about using high-end fabrics and taking on a serious sewing project. When and how did you start sewing?

I used to be deathly scared of sewing machines. In junior high I avoided the Home Ec room like the plague. I would’ve preferred being strapped down to a chair making toothpicks all day in the Industrial Arts lab with big, brawny boys! A combination of temporary psychosomatic aichmophobia and past frustration at being unable to thread a machine made me tell myself that I just couldn’t sew worth a damn and never would. The years went by careless and needle-free.

In university, as a lit major minoring in drama, a compulsory design course and too much time spent in wardrobe storage rekindled an old love for drawing and moreover, drawing costume. So much so, that I was soon spending more time doing character sketches (like these Madwoman of Chaillot costumes) than Saussurean semiotics.

Pursuing costume design would have meant relocating to the other side of the country or across seas and unfortunately, I’ve always been a bit of a lackadaisical stay-at-home. As luck would have it, I got married to a Frenchman, moved to France then to Cyprus and back to France, had a baby, usual story.

It’s funny how children make you confront things you thought were once done and over with. My former sewing terror got turned into a passion. With the help of my mother-in-law’s patience and her forty-year-old cast iron dependable clunker of a Singer I was making cushion covers and bunting flags for my little boy’s room and soon enough real pants with real pockets, real coats with piping, and real shirts with buttonholes! I soon realized that not having to shell out ten euros every time something needed hemming was pretty cool too!

All of my sewing is that of a dilettante. I’ve learned as I’ve gone along, bungling things, seam ripping, screaming, groaning, hair pulling and generally lacking poise. But the finished result has always led to dominant equilibrium. And a little cherub face saying, “My mommy made it” is the best sort of heart tugging gratification I can get!

In the next post: a Bubble Dress inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and where else Marie-Michelle finds her inspiration. Until then, you can see more of her projects in her Flickr photostream and visit her blog, Rastaquouère.

This is the very first prototype I made for the Hopscotch Skirt pattern.

As you can see, my design initially included a tie at the waist. When I finished making the sample I decided this was just one too many details on the skirt, which already includes fun pockets and the button placket. Because I wanted to focus on the button placket, I eliminated the tie from the final pattern. But it’s a cute design detail, and I wanted to show it to you in case you want to add a tie to your own skirt.

The ties get sewn into the side seams when the front and back panels are sewn together. I gave each tie a little pleat so it could fit the waistband but would still be wide enough to make a nice puffy bow in the front.

For reference, each tie on this size 3 sample is 25″ long and 1 1/2″ wide. You could also use a ribbon instead of self fabric. Maybe you’ll want to eliminate the pockets and include the tie instead? Play with this idea and see what you can do with it.

To celebrate the release of City Weekend and to thank all of you who have supported the line, we decided to do a little giveaway.

Courtesy of Moda, we have a jelly roll, a layer cake, and a selection of assorted yardage to offer to three lucky winners. To enter the giveaway, simply leave a comment telling us what you plan to sew this season. We’ll pick our three winners on the morning of Wednesday, October 20. On that day, comments will close, and we’ll announce the winners in a final comment. One entry per person, please, and good luck.

S is here to show you the Nature Walk Knit Pants made up in a few of the new City Weekend interlock knits. The Nature Walk Pants are the quiet sibling of the Nature Walk Pullover. Because these pants don’t draw attention to themselves, many people have been surprised when they’ve seen the pants in person. They’re very easy to make, quite versatile, and extremely useful.

S has been wearing them a lot lately. To demonstrate how they’re as great for girls as they are for boys, I thought it would be nice to show you a few examples of the pants in action.

Every Tuesday the kids in S’s kindergarten class are expected to wear sneakers and comfortable pants to school for gym class. I made her two pairs of the pants in a plain navy interlock (not from the City Weekend line) for gym day. She likes them because they’re very comfortable, with a minimum of seams. She’s a very skinny kid, and we usually have trouble finding pants that fit. But this pattern works well when we lengthen a small size to fit her.

For weekend and everyday wear, she likes the pants in the Cafe Dot interlock from City Weekend. It’s cute and fun, not so serious like her school gym pants.

And the best part? If you combine the Nature Walk Knit Pants with the Hopscotch Dress pattern (also designed for knits) it makes wonderfully comfortable and cozy pajamas. I shortened the dress to a tunic length–somewhere between the top and the dress lengths–and added a lettuce edge hem to both the sleeves and the pants to make this pajama set. The top is made from the Park Ramble print while the top’s trim and the pants are the Cafe Dot.

Interested in trying this yourself? I’ll show you how to do a lettuce hem shortly.