I have a list of things I want to sew. This was not on that list.
Of course.
Simplicity 8951 is from 2019, so the fact that I used it before the end of 2020 (just barely) is novel for me
I did, once upon a time, hack a shirt pattern to make a similarly-shaped cardigan, but I decided, after making that, that it...might...be better to have a proper pattern.
But of course I couldn't bring myself to follow all of the instructions for said pattern. So.
The kiddo had a dentist appointment yesterday. He's been doing virtual school and so had left the property twice before this since the spring lockdown, and he didn't get along terribly well with the mask I made for him earlier, so I decided to throw together a new mask for him
Finally edited together the video files recorded when I made the black wool crepe newsboy hat:
it was...so boring to edit, mostly because I talked a lot and that meant I couldn't do the fast edits like in the previous sewing video experiment. Next time I feel like doing a sewing video experiment, I'm probably gonna plan to (figure out how to) do voice overs.
Whenever that may be.
As with most of my recent videos, this is not meant to be watched! It's meant to provide hobby-adjacent background noise, for the times when that's the kind of thing you want.
It is a fundamental truth that I will never again assemble anything with quite the same chaos as the stew shirt.
But it also a fundamental truth that the drawer in which I keep cuts of knits intended for doll use is very very crowded. So. I decided I would again assemble a patchwork of knits and use Kwik•Sew 1650 to make another sweatshirt for the kiddo.
The nature of the cloth curation for potential doll use meant that there was a clear coherence in the color palette, which I figured would be a mark against this project in the kiddo's eyes, but I guess he still perceived it as chaotic enough
Plus, y'know...birds
Made these leggings years ago, outgrew the waist a few years after that, finally added a ribbing/elastic band last week, posting it here as a record of Things Sewn
will resist wearing it with the previous dress to reduce Star Trek vibes.
I had an idea to make another patchwork bomber jacket, this time from knits, and largely inspired by the way a lot of the left-overs from recent projects looked good together. I didn't honestly, though, think I'd wear such a thing, so I put the idea aside. Then the unexpected vet fees happened, and I revisited the idea with the possibility of auctioning the jacket toward that.
With that idea in mind, I started cutting squares. Knowing I would use a different pattern than I used for the last patchwork jacket--a different pattern with a much larger size range--I knew I'd need more patches than before. I cut up all the left over pieces from the previous projects, scrounged through the doll knits drawer for more, and still came up a bit short. From the larger yardage knits, I chose a velour that I had no ideas for...then realized that it was a cotton velour. (It was part of the friend's generous sharing of a relative's fabric stash, thanks again!) As soon as I realized it was cotton (or at least cotton-inclusive), I wanted to make it into something for me. Something...long-sleeved.
So I started by cutting the sleeves (from the "no longer anywhere near the correct size but I keep it anyway because sewing shirts from it 15 years ago really changed--for the better--something in my relationship with sewing" New Look 6217) and then very quickly realized there really wasn't enough of the cloth left to make an entire bodice.
I was still determined to make something from this.
I laid out the front side of New Look 6217 to use the armscye, then used New Look 6068 in the correct size to fill out the rest of the front...then arbitrarily cut a dramatically curving "empire" height bottom edge for that piece. I repeated the combination of patterns for the back, using the edge of the front piece to determine where to cut the relatively straight lower back edge. "Empire" is in quotes because it ended p way too high--like, above the fullest part of the bust high.
So. Having realized that I had cut what was, essentially, a yoke...from a slightly heavy purple velour...I had to pause to figure out what to use for the rest that wouldn't result in looking like a background character from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
After toying with using a woven, digging through my fabric to find something suitable, and failing, I remembered an extremely synthetic knit I've had a lot of for a long time. I made an effort to stop second-guessing myself and used that
I'm not saying it doesn't look like something from ST:TNG...
Had to say Goodbye to my ever helpful Floof this morning
Her assistance will be missed very much.
Another fast Quik•Sew 1650 sweatshirt, nominally View A but I accidentally cut the length needed for View B and decided to go with that.
Took a break from making random things for The Child to make a random thing for me. I had cut the pieces for this a while ago--the fabric is what was left after making this hoodie, and the pattern is...uh...possibly the same shirt used to make the spiderweb lace edge layering shirt, so that would be McCall's 5058 from 1990. It certainly seems to have the same boxy, "wait, I probably could've gone down a size or two" look as that shirt.
But. I had cut the pieces, including doing Creative Thing™ to compensate for not having quite enough yardage, then...decided it was a bad idea and folded everything up and put it back into the cloth stash, with the idea I could cut pieces from them for some other project. Then I managed to completely forget that I had done that and thought it was remnant yardage, so was surprised when I got it out and found it was already pattern-piece shaped.
I decided, enh, might as well throw it together
...which probably will be used as pajamas. Anyway. In the continuing effort to both use up remnants in the knits stash and to make clothes for the growing tween Child, I, for the first time, used the pants part of Kwik•Sew 1650 and the green knit left over from the last green hoodie I made for him...which was just a bit short of what was needed, so I called in a bit of that Halloween cat print interlock (turned 90° off grain) last seen in the horrible stew shirt and here we are
This project for the kiddo really was quick, in large part because I had cut out the pieces...um...a while ago (honestly? I probably intended it to be a shirt for me, so, yeah. a while.) So all I had to do was sew.
Yep, just sew. Not even a hint of using the iron.
Many years ago, I had a 1960s "party idea" book that my friends and I enjoyed because it was mostly, to late 1990s eyes, really terrible. The idea that I liked the most was called a stew--you'd get every holiday decoration you had and put them all out at once and combine the refreshment and activity ideas of all the holidays as well.
Not being a party kind of person, I never got anywhere near throwing such a party, but this shirt I just made for the kiddo...well...
you can maybe see why I was thinking of that party idea.
One of the bargain fabric mill end precuts I got from Walmart precovid was a pale mauve with gray heather stripes french terry knit. I'm not sure if it's 100% cotton, but it's close. I recently decided it was time to figure out what to make from it.
Since mauve is leaning toward purple, I asked the kiddo if he'd like something made from it, but he said it wasn't purple enough (which was why I asked, instead of surprising him.) So, then! Something for me. I initially leaned toward a simple sweatshirt, but figured I'd get more use from a(nother) light jacket. For that, I Initially leaned toward a simple sweatshirt-style raglan sleeve jacket
but...you know me. So! Time to revisit Kwik Sew 3764. Last time I made that, it was in a color shifty green woven synthetic, and size large. Definitely going down to a medium for this one, and with the longer length/plain bottom edge view, despite the fact that that view? has no?? pockets??? Easy enough to rectify, at least.
So. That vest I posted about a week ago. That floppy floppy vest.
I used the finished opening edge to cut the appropriate shapes from some heavy stabilizer (which has been used in...several of my recent projects, huh)
Then I picked open the lining side seams
maneuvered the stabilizer to the floppy appropriate areas
pinned everything in place
sewed on line of trim
sewed on another line of trim
sewed on another line of trim
re-sewed the lining side seams (including finishing with hand stitched matching thread instead of the "bleh I just want this project done" folded edge machine stitching in black thread I had done before)
and then I took pictures
Continuing the hazy idea of making things that fit with Lagenlook or mori kei/dark mori or strega style, I decided I would make a Very Long Scarf.
I used the spiderweb lace yardage that I've used in small amounts before, in the layering shirt I made a bit over a year ago and in another shirt that I seem not to have blogged and no longer have. Huh.
I cut a lengthwise strip roughly 80" long by 24" wide (even more roughly 200cm x 60cm) and got into my lace stash where I rediscovered the thrifted 18 yard roll of black cluny lace, which, honestly, was the only length of black lace I had that was going to be long enough for this project. I sewed the lace to the edge all around with a narrow seam allowance, flipped it outward, and then sewed through all layers of that narrow seam allowance. Tedious, but easy.
And now I have a ridiculously dramatic spidery scarf
So. New Look 6120. I had forgotten how fast it could be to make it without getting excessive with the fabric. I decided I would make it "straight," and I almost did, but couldn't help complicating it just a bit.
I had a few pieces of satin and coordinating ribbing and waffled over which color to make first. Eventually decided on black, then immediately decided not to use black ribbing for the cuffs/waistband/collar, instead going for a bit of turquoise and purple mylar shot novelty knit, which made me decide to go with a dark blue zipper and lining
Pretty straightforward from the front...
So about a year ago, I made this
with the intent of wearing it as a layering piece. However, I immediately realized that it was just too long, and I didn't wanna deal with shortening the skirt.
So.
Timber Lane Press Kaleidoscope Cap pattern again + nice plaid wool from the floppy vest = another newsboy cap, this time with a smattering of construction pictures, since this was not the subject of an attempted video documentation
Basically
New Look 6514 from 2005
lied about not needing interfacing for view D
The whole time, I was thinking "...shouldn't this have interfacing? I feel like this should have interfacing. But the pattern doesn't call for interfacing? The other views, yes, but this view? No. I feel like this should ave interfacing. But. I'm going to trust the pattern."
I should not have trusted the pattern.
Or, rather, I should have trusted it more and included that tie and maybe even the potentially reinforcing trim.
But I didn't.
I wanted to try using two cameras to make a video--I have recorded everything, but I have come nowhere near editing, but I wanted to go ahead and make a record of the project I sewed for the video: a newsboy cap.
See, my ACNH player character wears the Dandy Hat so often that I was starting to notice its absence in my own wardrobe, so I decided to make one. Some research showed that the hat in the game is technically a bakerboy cap instead of a newsboy cap (because it has a band), and also dark gray instead of black
I still made a black newsboy cap.
About a month before Halloween, a friend shared a sewing project: a bomber jacket made from a patchwork of Halloween prints. It turned out adorable (I'd add a link but I cannot find it on their blog), and I wanted to make one, too.
I did make a patchwork bomber jacket for a (different, but mutual) friend a few years ago, so I knew that the amount of fabric needed would be a lot less than expected. I got out the gallon bag full of Halloween print scraps, figuring that would provide more than enough...and was faced with the reality that most of those scraps are better suited for doll-size projects than human-size. So. I'd have to cut out the patches.
I shuffled through my Halloween fabric, starting with the smaller pieces, and was drawn to a color scheme and...hmm...let's say...attitude? of some of the prints. After I sorted out everything that fit the (vaguely-defined) theme, I figured I should look at the larger yardages, too, and ended up with one more Halloween print and three non-Halloween prints.
What size would the blocks be? I have a quilt block ruler that makes 4" squares, so I went with 4" squares. How many? I measured the front pattern piece and did some math and knew I'd need 15 blocks for that, so I extrapolated 15 blocks for the other side + 30 blocks for the back + let's say 30 for each sleeve = 120 blocks. I ended up cutting 123 initially and three more later, but those last three were purely for design purposes; the sleeves ended up being 25 each + 3 halves across the very tops, so my math was sound, yay.
I cut out a lot of blocks and I sewed together a lot of blocks and I even ironed a lot of blocks. Simple patchwork like that goes together easily enough, even if it's a bit tedious, and since I used New Look 6120 again you know the jacket cutting and assembly were easy. I didn't rush things and managed to complete it in five days.
Which was good, considering I hadn't started cutting and assembling until, like, a week before Halloween.
Grudgingly made some more masks
did my civic duty
I wanted to make a doll-size bomber jacket
which required getting into the Doll-Appropriate Knits drawer
which was so over-stuffed that the sides squeaked when I moved cloth in and out of it
which made me decide to grab a stack of smaller bits of knit fabric
from which I cut a lot of random doll clothes
and that got me to here
which took me seven days to completely sew and ended up being 50 items
I haven't yet taken pictures of dolls wearing them, mostly because I'm still working on dressing them. And some are for 60cm dolls, of which I have only 3, so that means that I physically don't have enough dolls to wear everything I made in that size. I also plan to send a stack of the clothes to a friend, plus there were a few pieces that I just didn't feel immediately inspired about, which is common with the "there is too much cloth so I will sew random things to fix that problem" doll clothes making projects, which is something I've done since 2004-ish, and has ended up creating some pieces I really like that I know I would not have made otherwise, despite how foolhardy it sounds. But! What I do use will end up on Instagram, and I'm also making long rambling background noise videos of the doll dressing process (which some doll people appreciate) for my YouTube channel (which is, so far, all rambling doll stuff.)
And I also had a revelation about the reason I had never really had an easy time of sewing thin knits for doll clothes over the years: because I was using low-quality thread. I always assumed it was entirely because a thin knit with a tiny seam allowance was just never ever going to go well, which is why I grudgingly cut a doll dress from a foiled synthetic jersey for this project--just to use up the bit of cloth--but expected to fight with it the entire time sewing.
But it went together with almost no problems?
I thought maybe it was because I had a better machine now, or maybe the cloth was higher quality than foiled synthetic jerseys I'd tried to sew in the past (this particular fabric was a 6" square swatch I had gotten from someone else's destash, so it's easily believable that it would be higher quality than cheapskate-me would buy.)
But, once the bobbin of that thread (my current thread love: Saba C tex 40) ran out, I decided to switch to a new color to match a lot of the things waiting to be sewn, and the best match was a thread I used to use all the time...because it was so cheap. And the first thing I tried to sew with it--a sturdy cotton interlock that I had already sewn in different colors for this project--got mangled as badly as I had expected the foiled synthetic jersey to be mangled.
and I immediately realized: OH. IT'S THE THREAD.
So I emptied that bobbin and refilled it with a not-as-good-color-match Saba C and things went back to sewing fairly well.
Of course I've always known the advice is to sew with good thread, and I long ago realized that good fabric sews more easily than cheaply-made fabric, but it wasn't until this unplanned demonstration that I realized how thread quality matters. (And of course, thanks go to Wawak for expanding my world to the ability to acquire good quality thread for relatively low cost--there are things in the modern age that I just didn't even have a clue about or access to in the way back when...)
So! This project produced a big stack of doll clothes and some first-hand sewing knowledge.
In the early 2000s, there was an odd fabric outlet store that Mom took me to a few times. It had a small front room with bolts of cottons, a smaller area with a selection of hot sauces, a medium back room with mill ends--mostly upholstery weight from the area office furniture factories--sold by the yard, and a large middle room with tables stacked chaotically with mill ends and offcuts of all sizes of the upholstery fabric, as well as odds and ends of other fabrics, all sold by the pound. You can probably guess how much fun I had, digging through everything for ~treasure~
You can probably also guess--correctly--that I still have a lot of those fabrics in my stash. I decided to finally use the big piece of weirdly supple short pile kelly green fake fur to make the coat I'd always wanted to make from it.
There was a slight problem, in that I had, a few years ago, decided that I was probably never going to make that coat, so I then used some of it to make two Minecraft Creeper pillows (one for the kiddo and one for some friends.) That meant that my yardage was short for the view I wanted to make of McCall's 9634 from 1998
(does the shape look familiar? This is the pattern that the doll coat pattern I shared last year was based on--I'd been making doll coats based on this pattern since the pattern was new, but it was only for this project that I finally cut the tissue...)
I wanted to make view B, but there was only enough for--with some finagling--view D. It worked out OK, though, because I am not proportioned like a fashion illustration, so it ended up longer than the illustration makes it seem
Green!
In the early 1990s, I had so many scarves made out of this kind of polyester chiffon with lamé brocade sections, so I couldn't resist buying this fabric when I found it in a thrift store
But what would I make from it? ...uhhh...
You can possibly guess that the fact that I'm posting about it now means I decided to use New Look 6120 for another bomber.
Honestly, I probably would have considered myself somehow above wearing
something like this when I was a teen in 1990--it would have seemed way
too casual. 'course, in the world we're enduring right now, it's probably way too formal, so that works out.
Another iteration of New Look 6120, this time with a fabric I knew might cause messy regret
That's the length of iridescent-to-holographic flip sequin ($29.99/yard in JoAnn) I thrifted in 2018, in the form of a "blanket," roughly 30" by 2 yards, with polyester fleece on one side and this on the other, for about $3. I had no idea what I'd do with it, but, for that price (even minus the labor cost of cutting the stitches holding it to the fleece), I couldn't resist. I eventually thought...maybe a jacket?
And now: yes, a jacket.
New Look 6120 again, and this time following the directions...well...at least...what I remember of the directions. Haven't looked at 'em for years.
A nice thing about this pattern--when made as directed--is that it doesn't, for a jacket, take a lot of fabric, especially when I make it in the smallest "teen" size for the kiddo (who is indeed a few years into the double digits now. The fact that I have no idea when he'll wear this/leave the house again is moot.)
This is, I suppose, a muslin, because I have an odder fabric that I want to use the same pattern for, but this fabric itself isn't exactly throwaway
The pattern I used is a revisit of New Look 6120
buuuut, since there's a big difference between a thick spongy woolly tweed and the fabrics the pattern actually calls for, I...did some improvising. I'll ramble about that under the cut.
Here's the jacket
This is, as far a I know, the last one! And I rushed it, of course, although not after vacillating over bodice fabric for a few days.
The skirt was this one, which I sewed in 2018 from thrifted wax print
Initially, I had picked out a lightweight aqua twill to use for the bodice, but the color match was Really Not Good, and there wasn't enough of it anyway. Then I considered using another wax print, but, for various reasons, no. Then, as I was falling asleep, I had the thought: A black & white print.
So.
Good idea? Enh. Finished idea? Yeah!
