Sewing, Snow, and Stuff

Tags

clothing, Columbia Point, FNWF, Healthy and Happy: SSWD, Oregon, Portland, quilting, Richland, sewing, travel, Washington

From today’s walk:  14F and enough wind to make the snow “fall” horizontally.  😦

Hello all, and I hope January is treating you well!

I’ve got some frosty pictures to show you, as well as some news, and, most importantly, sewing!

I participated in Friday Night With Friends last night, and did some work on another colorblocked fleece pullover.  Do you remember the wild flowered fleece remnant I got from SCRAP?  It’s now become this:

It’s hard to see here, but I’ve put in a black zipper which I took out of a cheap and nasty waist pack.  I like the long zipper pull on it. 

I’m using an old pattern (dated 1994), also from SCRAP, which should win some sort of award for least promising cover photos ever.

Don’t bother fitting–just make everything as large as possible!

The line drawings, though, show that this is a nice basic pullover that’s perfect for colorblocking (i.e., not a lot of seams to complicate matters).

The fit on this thing is SUPER weird, though.  It’s designed to fit some sort of busty linebacker, as far as I can tell.  In order to get those slightly-dropped shoulders, I had to bring the sleeves up a full three inches.  I also had to narrow the sleeves by 4″ so they wouldn’t be massive.  I took in the side seams, but I’ve still got all this room for the huge bust that I don’t have, and it’s now too tight at the hips.  More work to be done there, needless to say.

And I can use all the fleece I can get.  It has been SO COLD and SO SNOWY here–pretty unusual winter for us this year.  I haven’t taken many photos because it’s been way too damn cold to go outside much, but here’s another one from this afternoon.

I’m starting to understand why “snowbirds” here travel south in the winter, while these obviously-not-very-bright geese and I stay here for some reason.

Partner and I took a trip to Portland last month and apparently brought the bad weather with us.  It was a bit warmer than at home, which meant the snow had thawed halfway and had the usual Portland rain on top of it. 

BRRRR . . . I had packed for typical Portland weather, not this, so I wound up wearing many, many layers at a time.

Always looking for color.

A small part of the large stained glass window in the fire station near the waterfront Saturday Market.

In other news, you remember the sew-along that I was doing with the Sew-Alongs and Sewing Contests Facebook group, right?  Well, I won!  The prize package consisted of several indie patterns, plus a gift certificate for some fabric–WOOT!  And I’ve also been asked to run a 2-week sew-along in the group, to be announced tomorrow.  That should be super fun and get me to FINALLY use some fabric I’ve had forever.  Stay tuned for more on that.

I plan to focus more on quilting than clothing this year, though.  I didn’t feel inclined to do any sort of wrap-up post at the end of the year, but I did look through what I’d made in 2016 and realized I managed to not finish a single quilt!   I’ve been missing quilting and I want to get back to it.  I’ve pulled out my blocks for the RSC 2015 quilt and I would like to finish that up–it’s way past time that I finally made a queen-size quilt for our bed.  In addition to that, I’ve got a commission to make a simple baby quilt for a friend of my sister’s, and my niece will need one for her baby that’s due this summer.

So that’s the plan for the moment.  I’m really glad I don’t have to actually stick to these plans that I make, as they’re constantly evolving, but that’s the plan right now.  Until it isn’t.  Which could happen at any moment.

Anyway, I hope you’re enjoying your January and keeping your feet warm (currently my number one goal).

STH

More Adventures in Fleece

Tags

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

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.

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.

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

On the other hand . . . .

Tags

clothing, FNWF, politics, sewing, swears

Somehow I’ve managed to avoid taking any nature photos in the last couple of weeks, so here’s one from our trip to the Oregon coast, just because.

I had planned on writing this over the weekend, but I wound up spending WAY too much time obsessively following the news and not much got done.  OY.  There’s a part of me that wants to write about this current batshit-crazy election season we’re in here, but a much bigger part is just overwhelmed by it all.

The important thing is this:  please, if you are a U.S. citizen, REGISTER AND VOTE.  Please.  Vote for Hillary Clinton, the only candidate that can stop that narcissistic, xenophobic bully.  I hear you if your conscience is telling you to vote third party.  Lots of us want to change the system, including me, but a third party vote in this election is not going to accomplish that.  What it could do, however, is get us into another war, roll back protections for LGBT people, and plunge the country back into recession.  We have to keep him away from the Presidency, and Clinton can do it.

Okay, let’s set all that aside for the moment and talk about sewing, shall we?  I don’t know about you, but sewing helps calm me and quiet my mind when it’s full of noise, and I could use a little quiet right about now.

No finishes here the last couple of weeks, but that’s because I’ve literally been working on about 10 things at once!  Which–surprisingly–has felt stimulating rather than overwhelming.  I found an out-of-print pattern to make with the fuzzy red fleece and got the notions for it the other day.  I only have 2 1/2 yards of the fleece, a bit skimpy for most jackets in my size, but this one should work.

I also have a couple of silver-colored buttons I could use . . . putting off that decision until later.

I also got a Hello Kitty fleece remnant at SCRAP the other day (I am pretending to be all grown-up about this, but my inner 6-year-old is jumping up and down with excitement).  It’s a longish strip about 11″ wide, so my head is full of fleece colorblocking thoughts.

HELLO KITTY!!

Last weekend was all about muslins.  I made one for the black jumper and one for the maroon corduroy.  Which forced me to confront how my body has changed due to menopause.  Sigh.  It’s a lot easier to ignore my new waist pudge when I’m making loose tunics and things; not so much with something a bit more fitted.  The truth is that the pear shape I’ve had my whole adult life is now more of an apple, and I’m going to have to adjust my expectations and pattern choices accordingly.  (So easy to write, somewhat more difficult to do.)

Because these two jumpers are more fitted, I had to grade up to a size 22 at the bust and hip (!), 24 at the waist (!!).  I’m pretty happy with how that worked on the black jumper, so I cut it out in my “real” fabric last week.  This is how far I got on sewing it up during Friday Night With Friends.

Ugh.  Photographing black denim is a problem.

I didn’t have enough of the black denim for facings, so I decided to use this fun fabric, which I had to piece (of course):

The denim is fraying like CRAZY, so next step is figuring out a way to bind the seams in a non-bulky way.

As for the maroon corduroy jumper, I’m just not sure about that one.  I’ve set it aside for now while I ponder my options.  In order to get the look I envisioned, I might have to fit the jumper more than I’m really comfortable with.  Hmmm . . . .

Anyway, first priority this week is to prep for the unpaper towel class scheduled for Saturday.  Then it’s back to the black denim.

Have a great week, everybody!

STH