My Stash to Bust

I took some quick pictures of the condition of my cloth stash storage, which I keep intentionally (kinda) small.

In the closet is a bookcase...well, actually, it's an abandoned retail display case, so it's sturdy enough to hold the cloth on its commercial-grade shelves.

And...yeah, it's pretty packed.  (Above is the bin of scraps, next to the  suitcase full of lace and trim and bias tape.)  This shelf is for pieces that are a yard and larger (with a pair of rolls of fabric leaning beside it.)

Smaller lengths of cloth go into the dresser

Almost everything in here was acquired with doll clothes in mind, top two drawers for broadcloth, bottom drawer for knits, other drawer for random whatever else.  The top two drawers used to be much fuller, until I decided the density was annoying and started pulling out coordinated sets of prints, some of which got combined with pieces from the shelves to form this pile

There are eight different groups of cloth here, most of which may be enough to use for blanket tops?  I'll find out eventually...

Brown Bag

When confronting the fact that my fabric stash was straining the spaces designated to store it (spaces which are intentionally much smaller than they used to be), I had fun a month or so ago shuffling through the dresser (home of roughly quarter yard cuts, mostly bought for doll clothes) and matching various prints by coordinating color schemes, which I then put in a pile with no solid ideas of what to make from the new sets of fabrics.

(Was that sentence convoluted enough?)

Saturday morning, I decided to challenge myself to using one of the smaller sets, which I knew wouldn't make anything big enough to turn into a skirt or blanket.  With no real goal in mind, I started patching it together, in a very loose approximation of a Log Cabin pattern, only with random colors and widths.  Sure, why not.

I didn't measure anything at any point in this project, so I have no idea how large it was before I ran out of strips long enough to sew to the next edge.  It looked like it might be big enough to cut a vest front from, though, maybe...?  But...as there was an abundance of browns and oranges in the prints, I knew I'd never wear a vest made from it.  And when it come to the question of Randomly Making Random Things for Random Other People, the answer is always Bag!

It would be too large to make a comfortable bag if I used the pieced, um, piece for just the front, so I played around with folding it in half for a while before I had the idea to fold the corners on the diagonal, which was the key to figuring out, finally, exactly (well, more or less exactly) what I wanted to do with this project...

Pastel Dots & Neutral Bats

Spring and Fall, Together

A quick fix

I am not good at applying iron-on decals.  I know this.  The last one I tried to apply re-affirmed this, and the shirt was stuffed into the edge of the cloth stash until I could figure out what to do about the remains of the badly-applied decal.  Today, I made myself figure out what to do about it, and ended up covering it up, like so:

Why, yes, I do remember the late 1980s.

I dunno if the kiddo will ever want to wear this, but at least it's in a state where it can be worn again, and a Thing was cleared out of the cloth stash area, which is  good.

And then I started working on a shirt for me, mixing these prints

Print Mixing: If you sew 'em together, they go together.  I should be able to finish it tonight or tomorrow.  (That doesn't mean I will finish it tonight or tomorrow, of course.)

Brilliant

As in "ooh shiny," not as in "ooh great idea," because, even though it's finished, I'm still not really sure if it was a good idea to put these together

Patterns are only Guidelines

The kiddo's (relatively) heavy winter coat is a few years old--it doesn't tend to get cold enough around here to use it a lot, so it's in good shape, and fits him fine in the torso, but his arms...they have grown long.  So, in my current fit of "I really should start using all this fabulous cloth I've accumulated," I decided I would make a heavy jacket for him to wear this winter.

I started with ideas of using the various wool/wool blends I have in relatively small yardages, then also dug out a length of bright green medium weight knit, and threw in the red and black flannel that had been used to underline the eye jacket.  I couldn't decide, so I let him.  He...couldn't really decide, either, but as he talked about what he liked about each fabric, I remembered something that I thought he'd like--as soon as I said "purple and green" he started bouncing around (more than usual) and agreed to that before he even saw it.

It's a dark cool purple and pea green cotton plaid flannel, thrifted, and about 1¼ yard of 60".  With that as the inspiration, I poked around online to see what kinda of things kids these days are wearing in the realm of 'flannel winter jacket,' and it looked like I could probably do view A of Burda 9672 again with no problem

...but...we know I wouldn't really do that, don't we...

Oh, sure, I started with view A, then decided to add the hood from view B, as well as view B's un-ribbing-ed sleeves...and eliminate the ribbing from the waist, too.  And put the pockets in the side seams.  And line it, which would require improvising a facing piece.  And close it with buttons, which would require extending the center front pieces and interfacing that improvised facing piece.  But I did start with this pattern

It's underlined with a medium weight black knit that probably contains at least a little cotton, and lined with a lightweight knit that probably contains even less cotton.  It's brighter than the green in the flannel, but, not a bad match considering these were definitely not bought as intentional coordinates (or from the same store...or in the same state...or in the same year decade century.)

My thread assortment wasn't as accommodating, so I went with a pale khaki that ended up looking white against the dark purple (which could be described as royal blue in some lights, and likewise the pea green shifts to khaki...just...not the same khaki as the thread...)  But it's pretty well established that I will always choose to top stitch, so we'll say it's a design element.

I didn't look through my buttons until it was time to make the button holes, and I expected I would end up with mottled brown buttons (which are my default buttons), but, hey, whadddaya know, the fact that my button stash was established in the late 1990s means I had some perfectly pea green (and slightly lustrous) buttons in the large size I'd envisioned.  The buttonholer attachment and button-holding presser foot made finishing the jacket go very quickly, and the kiddo danced around when he tried it on, so, as slapdash as it is, it's still a success.

For the love of jars

I sewed a (relatively) quick thing today!

Yes, it's a Halloween print 20 days before Christmas.  La la.

I used vintage Simplicity 3263 again, and paid attention to the grain of the fabric more than to the print, which I only notice is a bit of a problem now that I'm looking at the photo while making this post.  Eh, I don't think it'll be a distraction when it's worn, especially if cardigans are involved.

Just used a solid black thin cotton (plus medium weight fusible interfacing) for the facings, which were cut from the main pattern pieces, instead of following the directions for separate facings for neckline and arm holes, and I once again did things Very Wrongly to get the facings attached (only I sewed the armholes before the neckline this time--no idea if it makes any real difference to the ease of this approach, but he brain tries to say so.)  Edge stitched around the neckline and armholes, lapped zipper on the left side.

Nothin' fancy, but somethin' finished, so yay.