Tags
cats, clothing, Dinner Date Dresses Sew-Along Facebook Group, McCall's Pattern Company Facebook group, Sew Alongs & Sewing Contests Facebook Group, sewing, Simplicity 9226
HA!
Finally finished up colorblocked fleece number 2, and it is great!
If you recall, the pattern I started with was this one, dated 1994:
This should have been somewhat quick, but it sure wasn’t.
I had less than a yard of the very fabulous flowered fleece, and smaller pieces of the other fabrics, so it was back to colorblocking, this time in a more complicated way than I did for the Hello Kitty pullover. I’ve been collecting inspiration for a while now, so I had things like this and this in mind. Seriously, I’ve been thinking about this particular project for so long that I was kind of tired of it before I started work on it. What finally got me moving to make the pullover (despite my lack of enthusiasm) was just wanting to tidy up–fleece takes up a LOT of room and I wanted that big bag out of my sewing room.
Cutting this out was a major project, what with all the different fabric sections to put together and arrange in a way that would actually fit the pattern pieces. I thought I had enough of the black to do a solid back, but nope–that had to be pieced, too. The entire process took a solid 5 hours of work. Oy.
I cut out a large, the smallest size in my pattern, and I should have taken the time to grade down the sleeves and the top half of the front and back pieces. I wound up having to bring the shoulders up 3″, take in the sleeves, take in the bust area, and cut 3″ off the bottom before hemming it. On the plus side, though, all the trimming involved in those adjustments did mean that I was left with several long skinny strips of fleece, so I’m now set on Shelby toys for a while. 🙂
In other news, the sew-along I’ve been running in the Sew-Alongs and Sewing Contests Facebook group is going really well! It began on January 9th, and already we’ve had several amazing finished projects. The theme of the sew-along is Ridiculous Prints and I’m completely lusting after so many of the fabrics the participants are using. Seriously, why do I not have any dinosaur fabric??!? Huge hot air balloons?? Monkeys with red-rimmed glasses???
Here’s what I dug out of my stash for the sew-along:
And this fairly newish pattern, which I’ve been wanting to try for a while:
The real challenge for me on this wasn’t finding a ridiculous print, but finding a large enough cut of one to make something for a fairly big person. This fabric has been in my stash at least 10 years, maybe 15? My sister and I both bought some; I used some pieces of mine for purse linings and other small things, while she used hers to make a shift dress that she wound up giving to me, as she didn’t like the fit of it. So I had about 1 5/8 yards of fabric, plus the shift dress, for this blouse. I searched and searched through my boxes and drawers for a complementary fabric for the center front of view B, but couldn’t come up with anything more interesting than a plain white poly-cotton. And I couldn’t get to the fabric store because of this:
The fabric is white, but it’s very soft and has a nice drape, so I think it will work well; it’s actually the center portion of a bed skirt that I bought at Goodwill over the summer. So it’s not the most exciting choice for the contrast, but maybe that will be my excuse to use some sexy buttons? Hmmm . . . .
And in the midst of this, I found myself volunteering to run another sew-along! I recently joined the McCall’s Facebook group, then decided to join their Dinner Date Dresses Sew-Along in July, then the person leading that month’s project bowed out and they asked for volunteers and I wanted to make sure the sew-along would still happen ’cause the dress is really cute . . . .
STH