Ho ho ho!

I am part of a group of eight women friends who mean the world to me. We are a mix of virtual and face to face friends; I knew one in high school and I’ve met two others in real life. The meeting in real life or not as the case may be doesn't seem to have stopped us from becoming friends. We share so much with each other and offer advice, encouragement and best of all, non-judgmental listening ears when any of us are going through tough times.

Last year we had our first ever Secret Santa gift exchange. The dollar limit is low by design—we’re not going for bling or best gift ever, we are going for ways to show the affection we share, demonstrate some creativity and maybe brighten someone’s day. For our first gift exchange, I drew Magpie’s name and sewed up one of the bags I tend to make (you can see a photo here).

This year, I drew her name again! Well I wasn’t going to make her another bag; that’s a little too one trick pony, don’t you think? I had a sense of the kinds of clothing she likes and decided to make her a kind of a vest. Hancock’s cooperated by have patterns on massive sale the weekend after Thanksgiving, which kept the costs down. Otherwise I’d have had to franken-pattern an existing pattern since my friend and I are not the same size.

I picked Butterick 5359, view A (shown in green in the line drawings) because I thought the way the front seams angled down suited my friend’s style. And I used some lovely I don’t even know what to call it but it’s gorgeous and has a lot of colors in it. I’d originally bought it to sew up another New Look jacket, but didn’t because I thought one was enough for now. Then I used a bit to make a bag for another friend, which left me with not a whole lot of fabric. This picture really shows the fabric.

Then I pinged the one friend who’s met both of us face to face to get an idea about the proper size. I figured since Harriet had met me and Magpie, she could offer some relative size guidance. And this wasn’t intended to be a super fitted vest, I had my fingers crossed. I pieced it together from the fabric that was left and here’s the results on my dress form:

If I draw her name again next year, I’ll speak up. She’s been inflicted with enough of my sewing!

Field tested

And cold weather approved!

Remember this?

I've been wearing it the last five days because baby it's cold outside. Like our high today was 22⁰ F cold. And I've been toasty warm. Take that, winter!

A couple of completed projects

Lest I leave you with the impression that all my projects end up as wadders, here are two I've completed recently.

The sweater fabric is from Mood, and I got it last July on our trip to NYC. The pattern is McCalls 6408, which I've made before and blogged about here.

Don't mind my weird expression;
my allergies are kicking my butt and I feel
pretty miserable at the moment.

This lunch bag is my own creation. Inspired by my granddaughter and daughter-in-law, I took apart a paper bag from Bath & Body Works to use as the rough pattern pieces. It's made from the scraps left over from a bag I'd made for Jen, and the lining is from one of Kent's shirting materials. The front flap has Velcro to hold it down. I'm pretty pleased with this. I'd wanted a smaller lunch bag than the one I'd bought a couple of years ago, but it's hard to find a small one plus they're expensive for no good reason. So now I have this one.

Oh yes the fabric

I finally got pictures of the fabric we bought in NYC over the 4th of July weekend:

Two sided knit, it's a very blue red
and will make a great top.

Top fabric is a polyester for a dress; bottom fabric
doesn't show the sheen, it's for Kent to make a jacket

Black ponte knit that looks like leather/pleather on
one side. I'll make a skirt/jacket out of this.

Gorgeous sweater knit, the photo doesn't do it justice.

Wrapping up Me Made May

As I predicted/expected, I didn't wear a lot of me-made clothes this month. I knew I wouldn't be able to in Boston, which took up a full week. And most of my sewn items are a little more casual than I normally wear to work. But I did wear a me-made dress to a wedding last week, and last Friday I wore pants I made.

Yesterday I finally wore this dress. Holy cow it wears well. It's been pretty hot and humid here but that dress didn't wrinkle at all! I'm pretty pleased with that. Today I'll be wearing another dress I made and probably a third dress on Friday (although I may wear the pants I made since the office gets pretty cold with the a/c).

I haven't had any time to cut out any patterns let alone sew anything. Maybe I can do it this weekend, which will be the first weekend I've been home since April. Whew.

MMM 20014 so far

Well, I’ll be completely honest. So far I’ve worn me made items four out of the 11 days of this month. That’s not a great track record but it’s what I’ve got. But to make it even worse, I have no pictures. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

I’ve worn the New Look jacket and skirt I blogged about here (no pictures), the grey dress that was cobbled together and blogged about here, the polka-dotted dress I barely mentioned here, and the pink top mentioned here. I also used one of the bags I’ve made this week. I guess if I really wanted to sort of cheat, I could just carry a me-made bag every day.

My score won’t improve this week; in fact it will remain the same because I’m leaving this afternoon for training in Boston and didn’t pack anything I made. Nope, not even a bag. Oh well.

Me Made May plus remembering my sewing philosophy

If you haven’t heard of Me Made May, it’s a pretty simple concept. You pledge to wear X clothing items you’ve made during the month of May. Lots of bloggers write extensively about it in May, and it's even garnered a newspaper article.Some sewists wear only items they’ve made, some include an item a day and others go for a few a week. I generally haven’t participated except in my thoughts and that’s mostly because what I sew is a little too casual for my style at work. But I am always intrigued by the various levels of participation and enjoy seeing the photos of what people wore each day in May.

This year, another group of sewing bloggers has named May as Sewing Indi Month – with the goal of sewing and wearing casual styles by independent pattern makers. Now that’s something I can get behind since it lines up with where I’m realizing my sewing needs to be.

You see, I do best when I sew up casual clothing. That’s both because it’s within my skill range and also fits into my schedule. And to be completely honest, it helps with my massive impatient streak. I really get twitchy if something takes days and days to sew, especially if it ends up being a big fat failure. I just found this pattern over the weekend, so I’m going to whip it up this month.

So this May, in addition to giving an independent pattern maker a try, I’m also recommitting myself to sticking with sewing the casual clothing I know I can do well. In turn, that will allow me to save money to buy the more complicated items I like but don’t have the patience or skill to make.

Fit for Real People

I have this book, and it’s a pretty decent resource – if you are female. I’ll spare you a lengthy rant about how this book isn’t for real people since it excludes men. But what it does cover – for women – is useful.

The book suggests getting a roll of drawing paper, hanging a length on a wall and basically mapping/tracing out key points of your body. You use this information to better fit your sewing patterns. So for example, Kent traced my basic outline and added in dots at the top of each shoulder, under each arm pit, at each side of my waist and so on. The reason for this exercise is to see exactly where you deviate from the standard (the book calls it “ideal” and I just hate that term in reference to bodies – seriously, ideal to whom?).

Anyway, what struck me the most about those dots and lines on the paper is that I’m not very big. That doesn’t line up with my mental image of myself. I don’t mean to say I think I’m a Sherman tank or anything, because I don’t. But I consistently think I’m a lot bigger than I am. Case in point, for every exercise DVD I have that uses more than one person, I always find something I think I’m built like. I shared that with Kent one time and he was genuinely shocked because, he said, I was built nothing like that woman. But in my mind I was.

So there’s a cognitive dissonance between my internal image and the external reality. I don’t sit around thinking all day that I’m a giant woman, nothing like that. It’s just another data point for me to keep in mind.

The other point? My left shoulder is a bit lower than my right. I’m guessing all those years of carrying bags on my left shoulder or babies/kids in my left arm to keep my right hand free took a toll.

The coat that never was

I had high hopes for this pattern – Jalie’s City Coat. It’s gotten a ton of favorable reviews over at Pattern Review and I had found more confidence after completing my wool coat. But alas, there were some key differences that made for a train wreck of a sewing experience.

First, the pattern includes 27 different sizes. Yes, 27; no, I am not exaggerating. You have to find your size based on the measurements and then trace it onto your pattern paper (or artist’s paper as the case may be). Years ago, patterns used to come in one size per envelope – you picked the size you needed and made adjustments on the pattern you had. In the last 20 years or so, pattern makers have moved to multi-sizing, where you get as many as six, sometimes eight sizes per pattern. This is the first time I have ever seen that many pattern sizes on a pattern and I found that many lines to be both confusing and frustrating. I was never entirely sure I was tracing the right line. In the picture below, you can see the yoke piece at the top isn't so bad. But check out the piece toward the bottom of the photo. And there were pieces that were far, far worse with lines blurring into a lot of dark color.

Second, I couldn’t find finished measurements anywhere on the pattern to see how much ease was included. I’m prepared to admit this may be user error (as in I just didn't find them) but in the end it didn’t matter where things went wrong, just that they did go wrong. I traced and cut a U and graded to a W in the hips so that I would have enough room (at least I hoped I would).

Third – and this one is all mine – I didn’t use a stretch woven material as the pattern calls for. No, I used the lovely boucle I had used to make a bag a couple of months ago. Unfortunately, this fabric unravels like crazy so I sort of fudged a bit and cut just slightly larger than my seam allowances so that I could serge the edges. Well, that was a mistake.

There are a lot of sewists who will power on through and finish a wadder. I often do, but not this time. The entire experience was very frustrating, so much so that I’m not sure I want to try again with the right kind of material. It’s too bad, too. I have a highly rated shirt pattern from Jalie also, and I have to say this left such a bad taste in my mouth that I’m not at all motivated to try again.

Catching up

It’s been a whirlwind of activity at the Little Yellow House. We had family visit for a few days (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and Kent is in the midst of a huge project for work that requires a lot of time in Canada. He’s spent his time in Toronto and Montreal and a week or so ago, I accidentally mashed the two city names together so now we just say he’s going to Moronto.

I have put my school plans on hold for a bit – we ended up with an unexpected tax bill and while we had the money, it needs to be replaced. So I’m going to do some consulting work for a while and then later this year, I’ll reevaluate the situation and go from there.

I have been a sewing monster too. In addition to the outfits for the grandkids (which I couldn’t have completed on time without Kent’s work on the boys’ shirts), I’ve completed a dress, a top, a skirt, a pair of pants and also managed to ruin a coat. Since my photographer is in Moronto, I don’t have a way to show you anything so I won’t do a proper write up about them now.

Lo how a rose e'er blooming

OK, it's not a rose. It's not even real. But it's a flower pin for the granddaughter's bolero jacket. I cobbled this together from a tutorial meant for cotton which meant I made it up as I went along. There's a pin on the back so she can pin it on and take it off and put it away from her brothers' destruco-hands.

Two and a half out of three

The verdict is in and two outfits fit just fine, while the other one has a big shirt.

But that's OK, we have time and fabric so can remake the shirt. In all fairness to us, it's really hard to sew long distance with no opportunity to fit the clothes as you go. So I'm absolutely thrilled with how these outfits turned out. And what's even better is the kids like them too. Even the little guy's shirt will be OK in the end because he will keep growing.

Here they are:

Granddaughter -- making her a little flower
pin from fabric to go on the bolero

Grandson #1 -- that face just cracks me up

Grandson #2 -- boy is he pleased with himself!

I do not like green eggs and ham

And I don’t want to learn how to do a full bust adjustment.

There, I said it and I mean it. But I am going to have to, I know, if I want my fitted shirts to fit. I’ve nearly finished a fitted Vogue shirt and the darts just aren’t where they should be which means – duh – the fitted shirt doesn’t actually fit.

I’ve seen more than a couple tutorials on the web and honestly they just frustrate me to no end. I need a tutorial broken down into teeny tiny steps, maybe even with video, and a kind person to hold my hand and tell me this won’t hurt a bit.

I’ll just be off in corner whimpering to myself. No pictures of the mostly finished shirt, it’s really not pretty.

If train A leaves the station . . .

Do you recall word problems from math class? Or better yet, the word problems in algebra? Making this dress was like solving a word problem for me, and Kent felt much the same about the two shirts. Here’s why:

When you sew from a pattern, the pattern pieces use standardized measurements which may or may not fit the body being sewn for and of course, you’re taking flat fabric and making a 3-D object out of it. All of our grandchildren are very slender and two are quite tall. That means adding in fabric for length without adding it anywhere else.

Since I’d made some pants for the middle grandchild, I’m pretty confident his pants will fit. But I’m no expert at fitting, so I have my fingers and toes crossed that our granddaughter’s dress fits. I added two inches in length to the bodice and then had to be extra careful to make sure that added length didn’t mess up any of the other pieces. Plus I complicated things by first fully lining the dress (hard because the two bottom bands are not seamed in the back, which complicated getting the lining inserted properly) and second, by making the little bolero out of a woven fabric instead of knit.

We will get these in the mail tomorrow, expedited to be sure, so that if there are any fixable fit issues, we can get them fixed. And if the outfits just flat don’t work, our daughter-in-law will have time to find something else.

Cranking out the sewing

Yesterday, Kent and I made real progress on the Easter clothes for the grandkids. I got both the boys’ pants done, and he’s nearly finished with their shirts. We had a very subtle plaid on hand that we’re using for the boys’ shirts and for our granddaughter’s dress. You can see it in this picture on the left where the shirts are hanging on the back of a chair. All day, Kent kept saying “teeny tiny sleeves!” or “teeny, tiny collar!” I’m sure he’ll say something similar when they’re done (“teeny, tiny shirts!”).


This picture shows you the pants plus the first pair of shorts I’d made for the middle grandchild. The elastic was a bit tight in the waist so our daughter-in-law sent them back so I could fix that problem. I left the pencil in this picture so you can get an idea of scale.

And this final picture shows Kent's thought process in taking the boys' measurements and lining them up with the measurements given on our pattern. He ended up having to do some drafting to make both shirts longer and our middle grandchild's shirt bigger around. That's part of the problem when you're using out of print patterns, you can't just go buy another one. 

I'll get our granddaughter's dress cut out tomorrow, and with luck also get a lot of the sewing done. Easter is around the corner and I want to have enough time to fix any fit issues they might have with these clothes. 

The only good thing

About our return to winter weather is that I can wear my finished coat without looking ridiculous. In the end, I went with buttons and embraced the straight nature of the coat. The finished tie will just hang on the hanger, and live a useless life.

I was tempted to try to do my button holes by hand (and Melody very kindly provided me with a helpful link) but in the end, I quailed at the amount of work involved and buckled down with my sewing machine. Even though I couldn't make the key hole button holes because of how thick the fabric is, these turned out fine.

Also, I was photobombed by Eddie. What a ham he is.

I kept blinking as Kent took the photos so
this is my attempt to open my eyes WIDE.

Works in progress

My silk top is cut out.

I cut it out in single layers, what a pain.

All done.

Kent is making good progress on shirts for our two grandsons.

He calls his machine "pretty peacock"
because it's got art on the front

Two tiny collars!

I’m on tap to make their pants and our granddaughter’s dress and little jacket. These will be for Easter so we have a little time. Since they live in Virginia though, I’d like to get the clothes done and there in plenty of time so that if there are any fitting issues, we can get them fixed.

Finally, Eddie has been supervising us in his typical laid back way.

He's in a box of fabric. Of course.

Missed the deadline

But I have a great reason. I flat ran out of time today to cut out my silk top because I was too busy finishing a wearable muslin from the same pattern I’m going to use for the top.

One of the best things about following other sewists’ blogs is that often they will see potential in a pattern I’ve rejected as unsuitable or ugly or whatever. Sew Ruthie did that a couple of years ago with a New Look jacket pattern – after seeing her version, I made it up for myself and it’s still in rotation.

This Simplicity pattern is another one I’d similarly rejected, until I saw how Sew Melodic had sewn it up. Mostly I thought it wouldn’t be flattering or that I would have a hard time getting the dress or top to fit properly. I was wrong on both counts, I’m happy to say. I tried something different for this dress: I cut a 12 on top and graded to a 14 at the waist. And the top fits beautifully. I do wonder though, if these sleeves fit so well because they are raglan. I suspect set in sleeves in a 12 would end up being too small. But that’s not the case here and although I don’t have a picture of the back of the dress, I can tell you that I have no neck gaping going on.

I'll get the top cut out tomorrow and maybe completed, too. The dress was an easy enough sew and now that I've made it once, making it again as a top should go pretty quickly.

As a side note, I’m very glad to have a photographer living with me. He very kindly photoshopped out the marks left by my socks, which I took off just before he took these pictures. Now that is love.

More pants

But this time for me and without pictures. I don’t think the internet needs photos of my butt floating around.

I had already decided that 2014 would be the year I expand my sewing skills and start trying to make things I’ve been nervous about making in the past. That’s partly why I went ahead and made the coat I wrote about earlier this month. I’m also going to make a slip and panties in another sew along that Gertie will be hosting. In the same vein, I decided to make this pair of Burda pants, but without the appliques.

I’ve always avoided making pants because as someone else once commented about herself, I suspect my body was made by committee. It’s hard to find RWT pants that fit me properly. I am short waisted, have a butt with some tiny saddle bags, and am fairly slender through the front area. My waist to hip ratio means that buying pants that fit my hips generally results in a lot of gaping at the waistband. So I buy pants with a lower rise to help with both the gap issue and my short waist.

Before cutting out my pattern, I read all the reviews on Pattern Review, which is where I go every time I’m considering a pattern. Almost every reviewer said that you should make the size of pants indicated by your hip measurement, because this is a close fitting pant without a lot of wearing ease. So I traced out that size and did exactly that.

The pants mostly fit my hips (although they are a little big – based on the reviews, I expected a closer fit at the hip) but they are too big everywhere else. I took in three inches from the back center seam starting at the waist band and tapering down to my tailbone. That helped but the waistband still gaps a bit in back. I would need to do more altering with darts to get a better fit, but that would affect the pockets on the pants. The biggest fit issue is in the front of the pants. If I pull things up and together a bit, the crotch angle is good, but there’s just too much fabric there.  I almost think I need to make a full size smaller in front than in back – tried that on a skirt pattern once and it worked pretty well. I’m sure it’s not the proper solution, it’s more of a hack. Finally, these pants have a higher rise than I prefer.

I’m sure a lot of these fit issues are operator error, and I may also be asking this pattern to be something it isn’t. So my quest to make good pants continues. These are at least wearable. They just aren’t exactly what I’m looking for, and that’s a lot of the reason I sew.

Next up, I need to plan out which top I will make with the silk I showed you a few posts ago. Tomorrow is the day to cut into the fabric that scares me.

It’s been lovely but I must scream now*

This has been a weird week.

I’ve had nothing but frustration on the coat front. I decided to add buttons but didn’t have anything suitable on hand so I ordered some. When the order arrived, two of the three packs were missing.

So many buttonholes! White thread was on Kent's machine, 

and the black thread was on mine.

In the meantime, I practiced and practiced and practiced buttonholes on the same combination of fabric layers and interfacing as my coat. Our two machines each have an automatic buttonhole option which means you only need to get the first one right in terms of length and style and then the machine will make all the rest the exact same way. Only . . . well not really, not when you’ve got to make the buttonholes up close to a seam, which is where these need to be (I checked on a couple of RTW coats). So the automatic buttonhole feature was out, and so was the keyhole buttonhole which is what you see on RTW coats. In fact, the best buttonhole of all the practices ones I did was the one I did with the manual buttonhole foot. Well OK then, I decided, no big deal. I can make five buttonholes easy-peasy. But not until my buttons get here.

As usual, the switch to DST has messed up my sleep cycle which in turn affects my running. Monday morning when taking the trash barrels to the curb, I realized it would have been a beautiful day for a run if only I hadn’t overslept by an hour. There’ve been so few good running days that I hate to lose one to something as stupid and arbitrary as the switch to DST. I slept late today too but ran anyway. I don’t like to run when traffic gets heavy. Unlike Boston, where the pedestrian/runner rules and car drivers pay attention, Kansas City only pays homage to cars. I have to be incredibly careful when traffic is heavy because the car drivers here really don’t look for pedestrians.

A quick note about the new badge at the top of the right column. I have a bad habit of getting fabric I love and then being afraid to do anything with it (see also my coat fabric, which I had for two years and also the Diary of a Sewing Fanatic give away fabric, which I also had for nearly two years). A few weeks ago, Kent and I were able to get some fabric from Kaplan’s before the store closed for good. This fabric is silk, I forget which designer (because that’s all Kaplan’s carried) and the thought of cutting into it makes me very nervous. But that’s just silly and so by March 22, I will have either a top or dress cut out and ready to go. I only have a yard and a half of it, although it’s 60” wide, so finding a pattern that works will also be a challenge.

*Today's blog title was on a bumper sticker I had for a while. I thought it was funny and it perfectly describes this week.