Make-a-List Monday 04-25-16

Tags

bags, cats, clothing, Make-A-List Monday, SCRAP Tri-Cities, sewing

Extremely helpful sewing assistant bear.

Make-A-List Monday is an idea that I borrowed from Sarah Craig over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and I thank her for inspiring me to try it!

Pretty productive week, I think.  Let’s see how I did on my goals from last week.

• Cut out a black knit skirt.

Done!  If you’ll recall, I’m planning to do view G here.

• Cut out this blouse (or attempt to).

Done!  That’s the blouse I was cutting out in the picture at the top of the post.  And I actually finished sewing it, sort of by accident.  Was puttering away slowly on it Friday afternoon, then felt like sewing again on Saturday, and suddenly it was time to attach the top half to the bottom and only the hems were left to do.  Post coming soon!

• Try making a cat scratcher.

Done!

This is about 18″ x 10″, the same size as the store-bought scratchers that Pooh loves so much.

This took many hours–and most of the glue in the house–but the basic scratcher is done.  Now I want to see if I can’t class it up a little bit.  I want to put together a sort of frame for it and cover the sides with fabric, which I think will be a very cute addition.

Exciting process shot featuring glue and catnip.

So . . . goals for this week:

• Finish the cat scratcher.
• Make the skirt.  It has just one piece–a big rectangle that you wrap around yourself and secure with a couple of buttons.  I’m not at all sure it’s going to work on me (the big question is whether I have enough of a waist to get it to stay up?), but if it does, it will definitely be the fastest skirt in sewing history. And I’ll be whipping out another one in a camel color.  I’ve got a job interview next week (EEK!), so I’m thinking ahead to getting the closet stocked with more professional-looking secret pajamas, just in case.
• Make a tote bag for SCRAP.  We’ve been putting together fabric packs to sell–one orphan quilt block or other focal piece and a bunch of fabric remnants that coordinate with it.  They haven’t exactly been flying off the shelves, so I thought I would use one of them to make a bag and show what you can do with a mess of scraps.  Here’s the fabric pack I chose–a very cute embroidery sampler and some fabric scraps.

Should be a fun project, and I’ll get to test an idea I have for a bottle carrier on a bag.

And one more item of good news–one of the winners of the Q1 Finish Along didn’t claim their prize, so the organizers drew again and I won!  (The updated FAL prize post is here.)  My prize is a PDF of a book called “DIY Block Design,” which is interesting, because I have had a thought or two lately about taking a shot at designing my own quilts.

Have a great week, everybody!

STH

Make-a-List Monday, 04-19-16

Tags

clothing, Crystal Mountain Resort, Make-A-List Monday, Mud Mountain Dam, Olympia, quilting, sewing, Washington

Will you just look at this cute little guy?   My mother and I took her dog, Regan, over to Columbia Park to meet the squirrels.

Make-A-List Monday is an idea that I borrowed from Sarah Craig over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and I thank her for inspiring me to try it!

Had a short list last week, as I was out of town for three days.  Let’s see how I did.

• Try a circle skirt with a woven.  I’m thinking the same technique with a little extra ease should work.

Done!  I should have grabbed a pic before I disassembled it, but it was made with a fairly hideous fabric from my Freecycle haul.  I also wrote up some instructions for the circle skirt class I’m going to teach. I’m pretty happy with the process I’ve come up with–it works with either knit or woven fabric, it doesn’t require a zipper or a waistband, and no math is involved.

• Get my hand work done while I’m in Olympia over the weekend.

Not quite, but made some good progress.  One block done, one about halfway, one not started.  I had SO been looking forward to getting together with a new friend for a crafty evening, but she bailed at the last minute, so I kind of lost my motivation and didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped.

 

So, this week’s list of to-dos:

• Cut out a black knit skirt.  I had been planning to use this cotton knit for leggings, but realized it’s 2-way stretch, and I’d need 4-way for leggings.  So I pulled this wrap skirt pattern out of the stash (it’s dated 2001) and plan to make view G.  This will be a nice basic to wear with tunics.  More secret pajamas!

• Cut out this blouse (or attempt to).  I’ve been thinking I need some more tops, and pulled out some T-shirt type patterns.  But then I saw this post from Lynn and this one from Gayle Ortiz and I thought, you know, I can do something more interesting than a T-shirt.  So I looked through my sewing stuff again and came up with this pattern, recently purchased from SCRAP, and this very cool quilting cotton.  I’m a little short on fabric to make the top, but I’m going to see if I can make it work.

• And now for something completely different:

This is Pooh’s cardboard scratching box and he loves it more than anything except the Mama Bear.  I recently came into a large amount of cardboard (partner ordered a new plastic mat for underneath his desk chair and, rather than being shipped rolled up, it came packed flat in between two huge sheets of cardboard), so I went a-googling and found instructions on how to make your own scratching boxes.  So that’s going to happen this week, and may become another future SCRAP class.

While I’m working on that, here are some more pictures from my week!

Another one from Columbia Park–baby geese!

This past weekend was the Seattle International Randonneurs’ Fleche ride–the 11 teams participating had 24 hours to ride 360 kilometers ending in Olympia, WA.  My honey’s team started in Portland, OR, and I drove up to Olympia to meet them at the end.  They had great weather the whole way, as you can see in this picture of the Olympia waterfront.

On Sunday, after the Fleche banquet, we drove home, taking the scenic route to see if we could get some good shots of Mount Rainier.  “The mountain is out,” as they say in Seattle.

We took a brief stop at Mud Mountain Dam for a little stroll.

And another at Crystal Mountain Resort, where I had a hard time believing I was looking at snow–and lots of people skiing on it–when the temperature was above 70F.

Have a great week, everybody!

STH

 

 

 

 

Cycling Jacket, Part 2: The Finishing

Tags

cats, clothing, cycling, Kwik Sew 4017, sewing

So, when we last saw our scrappy hero, she had turned her $15 charcoal wool into the shell of a cycling jacket based on Kwik Sew 4017 and was waiting for her lovely map-patterned silk to arrive for the lining.

Once it arrived, the next step was to use it for the pocket linings.  The pattern had welt pockets on the front; I had changed those to zipper pockets and added an additional zipper pocket to the left chest.  The original pocket bags were designed to just hang loose in the jacket, but my partner and I both felt they should be attached to the jacket seams, so I made some new pattern pieces for them.

I cut them bigger than necessary and sewed them to the zipper tapes so there wouldn’t be any exposed raw edges.  Then, making sure I had enough slack so that they wouldn’t tear when the pockets were used, I sewed the bags for the two side pockets to the center front seam and the bag for the chest pocket to the side seam.

I also added the back pocket, lined with the silk fabric, at this point.

LESS PIC, MORE CUDDLE.

I used this tutorial to cut the jacket lining.  From that point, though, I was on my own.  I wasn’t able to find a tutorial that explained how to line this style of jacket, which has no back facing; there was also the added complication of needing to add elastic to the sleeves and hem, not exactly the type of thing you’re going to find in a typical lined jacket.

I assembled the lining and sewed it to the jacket all the way around the hem and front facings.

I safety-pinned the elastic in the hem and adjusted it to size; once it was right, I sewed the ends to the center front and top-stitched to hold the elastic in place.  It was a little fiddly to do, what with the silk wanting to slide around, but I pinned and stitched and unpicked and stitched until it looked good.

I then turned the jacket and lining right side out and slip-stitched the top of the lining to the collar, adding in the pleat at the center back.

For the sleeve hems, I folded under the raw edges of the jacket and lining and top-stitched them together at the edge and also about an inch away.  I unpicked the lining seam to insert the elastic.

A bit more top-stitching and it was finished!

You’ll note the sleeves are a little long–that’s because they need to be for the arms-outstretched position you’re in on a bike with drop bars.

Also note the zipper doesn’t reach to the very bottom of the jacket; near the end of the process of making it, he decided he wanted it a bit longer, but didn’t feel like he needed a longer zipper.

You can’t really see it here, but the jacket hem dips on the sides so that the back is a couple of inches longer than the front, also helpful when you’re bent over on a bike with your arms outstretched.

So, what did I learn from making this?

• Use safety pins for fitting–no sticking your honey with straight pins!
• When sewing for someone else, and they tell you something is too long, put off removing the extra as long as possible because you just might need it!  I shortened the sleeves and hem on this, then the recipient wanted the extra length back.  😛  I wound up using a 1/4″ seam allowance on both.
• Ditto for width.  I had been all conscientious and overlocked the edges of the lining pieces before sewing them together with a 5/8″ seam allowance, then, well, you know the rest.  You don’t ever want to try to pick those tiny, tiny stitches out of silk fabric.  I got as much as I could, but there’s still some overlocking in there that’s never going to come out, which is just fine with me.
• I’ve said it before, but I’m going to say it again:  trust your inner kickass sewer!  That big complicated thing with all the steps?  You can totally do it.  I did a lot of anxiety-driven procrastination on this, but one thing that really helped me was to make a plan.  A couple of times during the process, I made a list of the steps I had to do, put them in order, then focused on tackling one step at a time.  I also think it helps, when tackling something like this with endless problems to be solved, to have experience making all kinds of different things.  The bags I’ve made definitely helped with the pockets and lining.

Happy sewing!

STH

Make-a-List Monday 04-11-16

Tags

cats, clothing, dogs, Kennewick, Make-A-List Monday, quilting, sewing, Zintel Canyon Park

A lovely, sunny spot in Zintel Canyon Park.

Make-A-List Monday is an idea that I borrowed from Sarah Craig over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and I thank her for inspiring me to try it!

And will you look at me doing my Monday post ACTUALLY ON A MONDAY?!?

I can hardly believe it.

Okay, settle down now, let’s see how I did on last week’s list.

 

• Do the post about the cycling jacket. 

Soon!  I threw a quick snap up on Flickr for the purposes of the Finish-Along, but now I actually have some better ones; now I just need to remember how I made the thing.  😛

• Figure out a circle skirt method that actually works.

Done!  At least, I think so.  I did manage to successfully make one using some cheap synthetic knit from SCRAP.  Now I’m wondering how taxing it would be to modify the technique slightly to make it work for a woven fabric.  Hmmm . . . .

• Prep at least one more hand-applique or embroidery block for our next trip coming up on 4/14. 

Done!  I’ve now got three blocks ready to go.

Now for this week’s goals:

• Try a circle skirt with a woven.  I’m thinking the same technique with a little extra ease should work.
• Get my hand work done while I’m in Olympia over the weekend.

Yep, that’s all I expect to have time for this week.

But I have a few more pictures from last week.

I whipped out a simple tote bag.  I’ve been thinking I could use another grocery bag, and then I remembered I had this Craft Warehouse kit, a gift from a few years ago.

And tomatoes are on the way!  If you look carefully near the bottom left, you can see a tiny little green tomato forming there.  I’m hoping this summer won’t be quite as hellish as last and that we’ll get some homegrown tomatoes.  Afternoon temps are already up around 80F, so the plants are happy and thriving so far.

And another couple of shots from Zintel Canyon Park.

Have a great week, everybody, and hang in there–spring is coming!

STH

 

 

Make-a-List Monday 04-06-16

Tags

cats, Kennewick, Make-A-List Monday, quilting, sewing, Washington

Pooh has had just about enough of this “staying awake” business.

Make-A-List Monday is an idea that I borrowed from Sarah Craig over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and I thank her for inspiring me to try it!

Busy week here!  Let’s see how I did on my goals:

• Finish the dress and do a post about it.

Done!  Post is here.

• Do a post about the cycling jacket.

OY NO.  I’m going to have to do this tomorrow if I want to link it up to the Finish-Along.

• Work on some more Splendid Sampler blocks. 

Done!  I got these two finished; I’m in the process of cutting out fabric for the third, and a fourth is traced and ready for hand applique.  That purple fabric is from a project I did many, many years ago, and I only have a few small pieces left, but I love it so much.

• Test at least one of the circle skirt tutorials I’ve found online in preparation for next month’s class at SCRAP.

Done!  And boy, has that been one big fustercluck.  I think the instructions were screwy on the first one I cut out and the waist is HUGE on it.  Then I mangled the second one because I broke my one ironclad rule of sewing–NEVER CUT FABRIC AFTER 10:00 O’CLOCK AT NIGHT.  Every time I’ve broken this rule (coined by my sister), I’ve regretted it.  The pieces of the skirt have been wadded up in a ball of shame ever since last weekend.

Goals for this coming week:

• Do the post about the cycling jacket.  Maybe I’ll take pics of it on me?  Probably better than nothing, but not by much.
• Figure out a circle skirt method that actually works.  I’m really appreciating that hideous fabric I got from Freecycle right about now.
• Prep at least one more hand-applique or embroidery block for our next trip coming up on 4/14.  And–best news of the week–I have a new friend that I’m going to be meeting up with for crafty time while I’m in Olympia!

 

And I’ve got a few pics from the week’s activities for you.

My mother got a new dog, named Regan, a rescued Chihuahua from the local Humane Society.  She’s got a great personality–easygoing, affectionate, calm.  My mother and I took her to the park and had a fun time.

Took this pic on a different walk–things are greening up!

Shelby assisted me with my sewing this week, as usual.

Have a great week, everybody.

STH

 

The Geode Dress

Tags

#2016FAL, 2016 FAL, B3569, B6760, clothing, sewing

That’s what the fabric looks like to me, anyway.  It’s called “Paperweight,” so that may have been what The Fabulous Mr. Fassett had in mind, too.

I also considered calling it the More-Is-More Dress, after a comment I made over at Steph’s place, but More-Is-More would describe SO MANY things that I sew . . . .  😉

If you’ll recall, my plan was to use two old Butterick patterns for this dress:  6760 for most of it, plus the slash pockets from 3569.  The pocket modification was ridiculously easy–I just cut out the two extra pieces from 3569, folded down the top outside corner of the front skirt piece to match the one from 3569, and used the 3569 instructions to assemble the pocket.

I kind of have a thing for bright colors against black, so I decided to emphasize the contrast by cutting the facings out of a black chintz from the stash and putting black piping on the pockets and bodice.  (More bright scraps for quilts–WIN.)

Bit of a warning here, if you’re liking B6760 and thinking about maybe seeing if you can find it on Etsy:  the instructions on this pattern are a little wonky, like they should have gone past an editor one more time.  I could see a n00b getting pretty frustrated with things like this:

I tinkered with the fit on this dress for a while, and somewhere in the middle of that process, I realized that I was putting the dress on and taking it off over my head with the bodice pinned shut–and wasn’t having any trouble doing that.  So I took the lazy route and didn’t do buttonholes, just sewed the buttons through all the layers.  And I had eight of these shiny black buttons in the stash, so I just used them all.  I’ve got PLENTY of single black buttons that I’ve been holding onto for years and will probably never use, and I’m not adding to them.

The fit on the bodice was a problem, and I’m still not completely satisfied with it.  The neckline was too high, which I probably should have anticipated, given that it’s meant to work with a shirt collar.  The folded-down edges help with that, but I suspect a collar would have been better.  Also, the shoulders are dropped slightly, which is not a great look for me.  I have taken them up a bit and added shoulder pads, which helps.

I may be overthinking this, though, because the bodice looks pretty good in the pics.  Maybe I’ve just been looking at it too long?

 

I’m also kicking around the idea of adding fisheye darts in the back, as there’s a little bit more fabric there than I’d like.  I think I’m going to wear it a few times before I decide on that, though.

In the meantime, though, this is a really comfy, fun dress, and I’m going to enjoy wearing it.  I love, love, love all the gorgeous color in this fabric and wearing the dress is going to be fun just for that reason alone.

This is finish #3 for the Q1 2016 Finish-Along.  Yay me!

STH