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Living in Color

Monthly Archives: December 2016

Just So Very Fabulous

18 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by STH in Uncategorized

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

cats, clothing, Healthy and Happy: SSWD, sewing, Simplicity 1261

007

Proof that my inner child has excellent taste.

Yep, other sewing bloggers make Chanel-style jackets with all sorts of fancy tailoring, I make goofy pink hoodies with cartoon cats on them.

I LOVE THIS, you guys.  It’s so soft and warm (and I have been informed by a reliable source that I am extra huggable while wearing it), plus it’s bright and colorful and I really like how the colorblocking turned out.

AND it has this super-warm hood with EARS.

010

Livin’ the dream.

When I started this hoodie, I figured it was just a fun, goofy thing that I’d wear around the house, but it actually turned out much cooler than I anticipated.

Here’s the pattern I started with:

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I omitted the front pocket and the bottom and sleeve bands (plenty of length without using the bands).

For the colorblocking, my arrangement of pieces was guided by how much fabric I had.  I had only one strip of the Hello Kitty fleece–11″ x 60″–and only one of its long edges was straight, so the strip went down the front and back with the straight edge toward the center of the pullover.  (I got really lucky and had just enough to make it all the way down both pattern pieces.)  I had lots of pale pink fleece, so that became a sleeve and part of the front; I was hemming and hawing about how much of it to put on the front when I realized the fabric had a stain on it.  So it was cut where it is to avoid using the stained part.

Here’s the process I used to assemble the front.

  1.  The pattern piece was meant to be cut on the fold, so I traced it and taped the halves together.

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2.  I laid the fabric pieces out and moved them around until the front pattern piece was covered.

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3.  I pinned the pieces together wrong sides together.  I used lapped seams to attach them, which I had read somewhere was a good way to do non-bulky seams on fleece and other non-raveling fabrics; you just sew the pieces together wrong sides together, trim down one seam allowance, and sew the other seam allowance down over it.  Similar to flat-felling, but easier because you don’t have to fold the edge of the seam allowance under.

008

There is seriously nothing Shelby likes more than cutting out fabric.  This whole process took HOURS and she sat there and watched intently the entire time.  She looks relaxed here because I was taking pictures rather than cutting; as soon as I started working with the fabric again, she was up and studying what I was doing.

4.  I placed the pattern piece on my newly-pieced fabric, pinned, and cut.

009

The piecing on the back is simpler, in large part because cutting this out took forever and I was tired and ready to move on by the time I got to the back piece.  As I wrote above, at this point I wasn’t really taking the project seriously and trying to do my best work on it.  But my view of it changed when I tried it on after putting the black band on the neck edge.  It just all seemed to work much better than I had expected.  I had been planning to do a white hood and skip the ears, but it suddenly seemed very important that I make a black hood with ears.

011

This is a double layer of the leftover Blizzard fleece from my partner’s cycling jersey, so it is WARM.

Side note here:  between my scrap quilting and my adventures in colorblocking items of clothing, I think a lot about how best to combine different fabrics.  The issue for me is that I love to use scraps to make things–it’s cheap and fun and creative and interesting–but I don’t want the things I make to look “scrappy” in the “scrappy quilt” sense of the word.  I want them to look put together and coherent, not random or disorganized.  And one way to do that, I’ve found, is to use a very limited set of colors, as I’ve done in this hoodie.  So I decided not to include the white and orange fleece remnants I had.  And I kept the sleeve colors the same as the front pieces they were next to so that they would look connected, not random.

As for the pattern, I sized down a bit as it was pretty oversized, and the fit is fine.  I’m always a little bit wary of unisex patterns because they usually involve some weird fitting issue due to the pattern company’s attempt to fit everyone in the world with one pattern.  Usually it’s linebacker shoulders, but in this one the only problem I have is that the sleeves are a little bit looser than I would like.  I get a draft up them, so I might try to overcome my aversion to mending and narrow them a little from the elbow down.  ETA:  I did take in the sleeves, and the fit is MUCH better.  I tapered from the shoulder because a whopping 3″ needed to be removed at the wrist and the look and fit of the entire sleeve is much improved.

I’m really happy with how this project came out, and I’ve been wearing my new hoodie pretty much constantly since I finished it.  I have a feeling this isn’t going to be the last colorblocked fleece I make this winter.

I hope you’re all staying comfortably warm in fun and colorful ways, and I will be back soon with some nature-y pictures I’ve been accumulating and some fun news as well.

STH

ETA:  I have linked this post up to Scraptastic Tuesday over at She Can Quilt.

More Adventures in Fleece

04 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by STH in Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

cats, clothing, cycling, FNWF, Jalie 2216, sewing

001

I CAN FEEL THE EYES UPON ME . . . .

Friday night was another Friday Night With Friends, so I got busy with my pliers and zipper repair kit and put new top stops on my partner’s fleece cycling jersey zipper.

002

Oh, how I labored over that zipper!

I wasn’t able to find a repair kit for the kind of big chunky zipper I’ve got in here (I don’t know the correct name for this type, but it’s the kind that’s labeled as a “parka” zipper), so I ordered the #5 kit and hoped for the best.  As I feared, the only way to get the stops on was to put them parallel to the edge of the tape, rather than parallel to the teeth as they usually are.  They seem secure enough, though, and I sewed a stop with thread below them just to be sure.

I am proud of how that zipper came out, though, and that the collar seams match up when the zip is zipped up–probably the first time I’ve ever really managed that.  Hand-basting the zipper in made the difference, though removing basting from fleece is not a task designed to make you happy.  😛

The pattern I used is Jalie 2216, and this is the third version of that jersey.  For this one, he wanted a warmer, thicker fabric, so we chose Joann’s “Blizzard” fleece, which is really nice stuff.  Dense, thick (but not so thick that it’s hard to cut or sew), and very soft.  (No, I am not a paid spokesbot for Joann’s, but my opinions can totally be purchased with fabric.  Call me!)

He also wanted the back pocket extended a bit on both sides so that he wouldn’t have to reach so far to access it.

005

BTW, getting better results when photographing black things by putting them on a darker background, overexposing them, then darkening the pic as needed.  Would be even better with a model in it, but he is busy napping at the moment.

The ends of the pocket are supposed to be enclosed in the side back seams there, but I’ve extended them a few inches and just sewed the raw edges down.

He also asked me to change the way the elastic is attached to the wrists of the jersey so that it would be fully enclosed.  Jalie’s method for attaching elastic is to have you zig zag it directly onto the raw edge of the fabric on the wrong side; then you fold the raw edge under and zig zag again.  The problem is that the edge of the elastic inevitably sticks out a bit and can irritate your skin.  So I simply added 1/2″ to the sleeve length and folded the edge under twice before zig zagging.

I’m very happy to say that this version of the jersey came out infinitely better than the first one, and much better than the second.  The recipient loves it, I’m happy with my work on it, I actually got it done BEFORE the season in which it will be worn, AND I had enough black fleece left over to use it for the hood on my Hello Kitty pullover.  WIN.

Also, I finished the pullover yesterday–I AM WEARING IT NOW–and will get pics for you ASAP.

SO VERY FABULOUS, my friends.

FAB.  U.  LOUS.

Have a very excellent week, folks, and I will yell at you again soon.

STH

  • STH

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