Tag: clothing

Sewing

Sewing Adventures

LSieh2 Comments

Hello again! I have been enjoying sewing again and have made a lot of things. Only one plain dress and no pants though. I should probably get on that before fall and winter are here. One thing I have been making a lot of is masks. I’m working on a fundraiser for the rescue and wanted to have a set amount of masks to sell. I’m not planning on making custom ones at all. Too much stress. I did, however, need more Shark Week masks, as I only had two! I needed a couple more subtle shark ones, as I had intake appointments that week.

I made a new pattern for sleep shorts! This is the same pattern I made the Husband’s sleep shorts with. These are the Walk the Plank Pjs from Patterns for Pirates. It’s quite a baggy pattern, but it makes it extra comfy. Here are the Husband’s sleep shorts. They are grey french terry. Mine are a soft quilting cotton.

I also made a new skirt out of these pretty sharks. It has two pockets and is super comfy. It just has an elastic waist, but I used a new technique to attach it and it was less scary than I thought it would be. I did break another serger needle though. It doesn’t like it when I pull on the fabric when it has needles in it apparently. Now I can watch for that and hopefully stop breaking all my needles.

I have had this skirt material since last year some time, I believe. K2 has a periwinkle blue matching fabric, so I was excited to make it. I just cut it out and used the gathering stitch on my serger. It doesn’t have pockets, as I lined it with cotton gauze and it was being a jerk. The fabric on top is just draped on my dress form, but I am planning on making it into a shirt. It’s very cool and drapey, so I think it will be nice to wear.

This is another new pattern for me and a new silhouette too. I used the Sunny Day Dress and Tunic from Ellie and Mac. The bodice is lined by a cool technique known as “the burrito” method which encloses all the seams. I pleated it, as I hate gathering. Also, only one pocket, as I cut the skirt piece on the fold. The skirt is just a rectangle cut piece, so I made it a maxi length. Shortly after this picture was taken, I added two knee length slits, which really help the movement and flow. It looks so beachy and pretty! I’ve gotten several compliments on it when I’ve worn it to work. Piggy was impressed as well, although I think more with the fact that she can now easily lick my knee. She’s a weirdo.

I made the chair covers for this week’s challenge- it was to make something you’d never made before. They are Star Trek, because, what else? 🙂 There are six for our dining room chairs in hopes that we will be able to have game nights again somewhere.

I bought this swimsuit fabric to make a new suit. K2 talked me into it. She keeps sewing new things that then I also have to try. Gosh, I have good friends!

I think I have a few more things completed, but I don’t have pictures of them. I’ve been wearing them too fast! I’ll see if I can dig them up for the next post. In the meantime, enjoy the other pictures!

Fabric Mail and Planning
Sewing

Fabric Mail and Planning

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Fabric mail is one of the best kinds of mail. It falls somewhere in between letters from my Mum and new books. 🙂 That’s saying a lot, considering how much I love both of those things.

I had a bunch of fabric come in lately and started organizing it into pictures based on what each piece would be. I thought about adding to my written list, but it now spans several pages in my notebook, which are all mixed in with reviews and book lists. It makes it a little hard to be organized. Sometimes my brain doesn’t want to be organized at all, so I’m working on creating a system that will actually work.

So far I have a lot of fabrics that I bought knowing exactly what it would be. There are some that are waiting for the right pattern or inspiration, but here are the ones I have so far.

These will be shirts. The owls, waves, and stars will probably be Perfect T’s from Pamela’s Patterns. The middle two will be Brunch Blouses from Patterns for Pirates. They are all woven, except the stars. For the top two wovens, I plan to have a knit back on the shirt, like my hot air balloon shirt.

These will be dresses. I’ve started on the pink and black on the top. It just needs a black lace hem and it will be all set. It’s an Agnes from Halla Patterns.

The blue floral will be a Kimono dress from Halla Patterns. It’s ITY, which stands for Interlock Twist Yarn. It’s very slippery, smooth, and cool to the touch. It has tiny darker blue stripes all over it. The black is all ruffles, which I didn’t realize when I ordered it. I kind of want to make either a ruffle dress or ruffle pants. The hearts want to be a dress pattern I haven’t found yet.

This next set is all skirts. The top two, the black and the mint, are going to go together just as they are. They will make a beautiful Maxi dress or skirt.

I really need to make a skirt soon from the ice creams. It’ll be fall before we know it and then it won’t be fashionable if I’m wearing summer things for fall. The bottom one is a table dressing from Ikea. It has the border on both sides that I think might possibly be a dress, if I can find a pattern I can work with.

This next set is all about sweaters. Nice, cozy, favorite part of fall, sweaters!

The top is french terry, the middle is an open weave lace, and the bottom is a single brushed poly. I got the stripes in a mystery box and am excited to see how to use it.

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In between organizing, I made some pillowcases for the Husband and I out of Star Trek fabric. I suddenly have a lot of friends who watch Star Trek and it makes me think I should actually sit down and watch it from the beginning. I haven’t seen or don’t remember a lot of the episodes. These fabrics were on sale at Joann’s and I had to text the Husband to see if he wanted them. His dad will be getting potholders to match the ginormous Spock oven mitt we gave him last Christmas. (Seriously, it was bigger than my head!)

I keep screwing up the first one and getting the second one right. I have terrible spatial reasoning skills sometimes and keep cutting them not wide enough.

Here’s the second one that actually turned out.

I also made one just for me!

Because who doesn’t want a bright flamingo pillowcase?  I don’t know if I want to know that person. 😉 My friend gave me this fabric for Christmas and I wanted to keep it whole.

I failed at making this fabric into a large pillowcase, so cut it down in size and made a mini knee pillow. I just have to get a form for it. It’s paired with the yellow from the flamingo pillow. It’s super bright and cheerful!

I didn’t ignore Fancy. She doesn’t get a lot of fabric things, as she likes to tear them apart, but she will be getting her own stocking this year out of these two fabrics.

Aren’t they adorable? The clerk asked me if anyone had said anything to me about buying Christmas fabric in August, but I just laughed and said there was no guarantee it would actually get made before Christmas. 🙂

It’s been a pretty good couple of days. I hosted Craft Night tonight and got to see my craft ladies and gentleman. Fancy was very good and got extra excited when she had her party harness on. She ran to the edge of the couch and sat staring out the window. 🙂

I’ll leave you with a picture of the chalk artist at the Toledo Zoo this past weekend. We didn’t see too many of his works, but this one was pretty neat.

Have a great night!

 

Back to the Sewing Machine!
Sewing

Back to the Sewing Machine!

LSiehLeave a comment

Now that the busyness of the holidays is over, I can finally get back to my own sewing goals. Fancy’s picture pretty much shows how I feel after all of it is done.

My fairytale fabrics came in the mail and I have them washed and the patterns that I think I will use have been pulled. I have a few more details on the dress to work out, but the shirt should be pretty straight forward. That’s probably my next project.

While waiting for the fabrics to get washed, I made a simple elastic waisted skirt. I’ve actually talked about this fabric before. It was a birthday fabric purchase, I believe.

It has pockets, but they sit oddly and things fall out when I sit down. I self-drafted, which is really a fancy way of saying I didn’t measure… It’s possibly a little too heavy of a fabric to be in this style, but I think it’s cute. I wore it yesterday with a sweater, leggings and boots.

I also worked on the Rainbow Chevron quilt. I now have all the strips sewn together and it needs to be ironed and trimmed.

As we all know my feelings about ironing, I’m sure you can understand that I have to break that up into smaller bits. Plus, when I finished it, it was bedtime.

It’s draped over a 4 foot folding table, if that gives you an idea of scale. I don’t know how long it is in inches, but each strip is five of the rainbow patterns long. It will have a black border around it, probably about 6 inches to match the strips.

I also made more tea wallets. They’ve been selling on Etsy and I had black thread loaded on the machine and bobbin. These four were from my UFO box, waiting to be finished.

I try to remember to check for tea wallets when I switch thread colors. It’s super annoying to load half a bobbin, just for those.

Speaking of UFOs, while I was thinking about what to sew for clothes, I finished a bag from the box. If I can sew just a few things from the UFO box between big projects, I should be able to hopefully make a dent in it.

The Husband had to remind me that I probably shouldn’t keep all the bags. “Other people need cute bags too,”or so he says. I think he just wants my stash out of the house.

But it’s books! 🙂

Since I had brown thread loaded, I finished up the entire stack of brown tea wallets. I have broken my rule about not making multiple things with the same fabrics with tea wallets. I bought 1/4 yard pieces to make the wallets for Hawthorne and Vine and Etsy. This batch has three fall leaf ones, but they all have different inside fabrics.

I ran out of time before bed to tie and clip the strings. I’ll post another picture of the insides when they are completely done. That’s another step I have to do in batches. It drives me batty if I have to do them all at once. While I was looking for these, I found a stack of spring ones that need strings and buttons too, so I’ll have a tying marathon soon.

Tonight, I may try to cut out my castle blueprint shirt. I managed to catch the fabrics before they got wrinkly in the dryer and can maybe sew it tomorrow.

Fancy is being crazy dog and playing catch with herself and one of her treat dispenser toys. It’s pretty cute. I should probably go give her some more attention. Poor thing thinks she never gets enough.

Have a good night!