My Sewing Space

I did indeed find time to work on the dress for my younger daughter. It was done mostly in 10-20 minute bits of time throughout the day. My sewing room is centrally located in the house and it's easy for me to do that sort of thing. Certainly, I would prefer a larger chunk of time to work, but I'll take what I can get. The dress is a version of Kwik Sew 2918 . The bodice is cut off about three inches below the armhole. A large rectangle gathered at one long edge and hemmed at the other long edge makes the skirt. I initially bound the neckline but it didn't look good, so I took it off and put on a narrow neckband instead. The puffed sleeves are bound at the bottom. The bloomers are Butterick 3782 . Instead of making a casing for the waist and leg elastic, I serged the elastic to the wrong side, turned it down to the inside so that the elastic was covered and then sewed it down with a triple zigzag stitch. The gathers stay evenly distributed this way and the elastic can't...

Two more T-shirts for the little guy. Nothing too exciting....made from Kwik Sew 2918, of course. The blue camo fabric is from a thrift store. It's a pretty hefty waffle knit and I think the rest of the piece will become pajamas. My son's impression: "It's a little wierd." But, he likes it. The striped fabric is rather awful. I believe it was a JoAnn's clearance buy from a couple years back, but I'm not sure about that. A cotton jersey, it is thin and doesn't stretch very much and the stripes feel very "painted on." We'll see how long it lasts. I just finished cutting out my younger daughter's new dress. Perhaps there will be time to work on that tomorrow...

The work on more warm weather clothes for the kids has begun. A friend gave me a box of clothing that her kids were done with. The yellow flowered fabric was the skirt part of a dress that was too small for my older daughter and too big to keep around until it fit my younger daughter. I cut off the bodice of the dress and used Burda 9826 to make an A-line skirt. The pattern has a seam at center front and center back and is cut on the bias. I eliminated the front seam and cut it on the straight grain. I added the 2.5" ruffle, using the hem from the dress. With an elastic waist, this is a really simple pattern. I would have been done in about half an hour, but I added shorts under the skirt. For the shorts I used Burda 9615 again. This time the shorts are attached to the skirt at the waist. I cut them out without an allowance for the casing, assembled them and then tucked the top edge under the casing. The top is Kwik Sew 2918 with a gathered center front and puffed sleeves. Today...

I feel like I don't have too much left to say about the jacket. I've been going on and on about it for awhile now. The cap of the sleeve has some issues. I found there to be a lot of ease in these sleeve caps. Other reviewers didn't note this as a problem, so it might have just been me struggling to set them in properly. I love the seams in the back. Nice details. I really like topstitching - the way it looks, not always doing it. It looks like I could have made the back smaller at the waist, but I like how it feels when wearing it. The pockets are too small to be useful. This was obvious from the pattern piece, but I didn't bother to change them. Useful or not, they are a nice detail. I used Connie Long's instructions in Easy Guide to Sewing Linings to draft a lining for the jacket. The front lining pieces consist of a yoke and a lower front piece. There is no vertical seam and no pleat as there is in the jacket. The back lining pieces are the same as the jacket ...

On Tuesday evening I moaned to the Preacher that this jacket was whipping my tail. I was in over my head. He laughed and told me that was good for me. I kindly thanked him for his empathy and encouragement and soldiered on. As I got closer and closer to the finished product, I got more and more excited about it and more confident that it would be successful. That was until I tried it on a couple of days ago and my four year old (but counting down the DAYS until she is five) daughter said, "Mom, you look silly in that." Sheesh. Thanks. I can't wait for this one to become a teenager. I did finally finish it last night. Overall, I am happy with it. I don't have any pictures of me wearing it today, just detail shots. Buttons and Buttonholes I bought the buttons in NY. They could be more exciting, but it is a pretty casual jacket and I think they work pretty well. If I were doing this jacket over, I would make the bound buttonholes narrower. That would be easy...

Over the course of the weekend I've made some progress on the jacket. I made the lining pattern and cut it out, did the bound buttonholes, and attached the facings and upper collar. It's been awhile since I've made a notched collar. I think I'll finish the inside of the buttonholes tonight while watching a movie (a tradition the Preacher and I maintain). I didn't take any close-up shots - this picture doesn't really look all that different from the last one. There is still quite a bit left to do, but I'm hoping to finish it this week.

Yesterday I had given up hope that the book I needed to finish my jacket would ever arrive. I had been making lots of small things (hats, T-shirts, underwear, etc) while waiting as I don't like to have more than one thing in progress at a time, much less more than one substantial thing. But, these dinky projects were getting old and in my library book hopelessness I started working on a pair of pants with a muslin. Another Jalie for me, Jalie 2561 . The pattern is designed for stretch wovens and I used a pretty cheap (and ugly) stretch denim from my stash for the muslin. The front looks pretty good to me. A little bit of pulling, but that's hard to get rid of in the stretch fabric. The back is too tight and I think letting out the side seams a bit should do the trick. I'll likely add a welt pocket or two in back. I don't really like pants without anything on the back. I was pretty pleased with the fit right out of the envelope. I only had enough denim to make shor...

I get so excited when I try something new and love it. Such is the case with this pattern. I've never sewn underwear before. Now that I've tried it, I sense serious addiction potential. Jalie 2568 has had some really positive reviews at PatternReview.com and I've been very pleased with all the other Jalie patterns I've used, so I thought I'd start here. The pattern includes a hipster and bikini in both high or low waisted styles, a brazilian hipster made from wide stretch lace and a camisole. I've been playing around with this pattern for awhile now. I'd make a pair and then wear them, evaluate, wash them, evaluate, make a change or two and start over. I did this with both the hipster and the bikini pattern. I'd gotten them both to a point where I was happy with them and today I made five pair, assembly-line style - three hipsters and two bikinis. After reading about Dawn's experience with this pattern, I followed her example and did not finish the ...

I was on a self-imposed sewing fast last week. We live in a parsonage and it was renovated during February and March. On Saturday we had an Open House so that the church could come see the final result. There's nothing like the thought of a churchful of people coming through your home to motivate you to get things in order. Actually, the thought of that really made me want to run and hide away in my sewing room. Thus, the self-imposed fast. Too much to do and no time to sew. It was a rough week, but now it's over. (And the open house went quite well). The sewing machine was humming away again today. I made summer hats for my girls. The older daughter's came from the April issue of BWOF and is my first attempt at these patterns. I picked up a copy in NY and thought a hat would be a nice simple way to get my feet wet. There are other patterns in this issue that I plan to try, too. I think it turned out pretty cute. I had some doubts in process - it looks quite a lot l...

I made these tops for my daughter a couple of weeks ago. They are both from Kwik Sew 2918. Look at that little brother ready for trouble, sneaking out from behind the tree! For this one, I used the same puffed sleeve as I did for this shirt, but shortened it by 1/2". I think that helped with the "puffiness." The surplice front is one that I modified from the regular front pattern piece awhile back. The horizontal seam waved and rippled so badly when I sewed it that I had to rip it out and sew it again with clear elastic to stabilize it. I guess I stretched the elastic a little too much - it pulls a bit, but I didn't want to rip it out again. The fabric is pretty poor quality so I'm not sure it is going to last all that long. This was leftover from something else, but I have no idea what it was. This is some of the fabric I bought in NY from Spandex House. The elastic trim at the neck is from Pacific Trimmings. It lays flat around the neck when it is worn, but ...

I finished the Preacher's T-shirts a couple of days ago. The Preacher isn't a large man - he's tall (6'3") but thin. But, after sewing T-shirts for my three and four year-old, these seemed ginormous. Very basic, very plain white T-shirts, but they meet a need. For the most part the Preacher is a pretty easy going kind of guy. When it comes to T-shirts, however, he has some pretty strong opinions. He wears a T-shirt underneath a long sleeve shirt during the months that have an "R" in their name (that's not a hard and fast rule, but it pretty much works out that way). He's very particular about how these T-shirts fit. He doesn't like a regular undershirt. It is hard to find T-shirts that meet his approval. A couple of years ago I set out to copy his favorite T-shirt so that I could make them. I thought it would be a real project and take a few muslins, but I hit the nail on the head the first try. I was really surprised that the fit met with ...