Several years ago, my doll friend John in Australia sent a parcel that included about a meter of a Japanese sweets print. He had used a bit for doll clothes, and I probably will use the leftover pieces for doll clothes, but, in the meantime, I made this
I decided to make a new mask a few days ago
It's the mask pattern from Craft Passion, that I added a bit of height to for Husband's masks...then forgot about that extra bit when I made this mask for me. That means this mask has...very full coverage on my face.
As with the other masks I've made from this pattern, the lining is a high thread count sheet, and there's a layer of heavy duty embroidery stabilizer inside.
I used elastic for the behind-the-head straps, while my previous adult masks have used ties. I'm still getting used to putting this mask on.
The vintage cartomancy print fabric was a gift, which very unfortunately has offensive fortune teller stereotypes scattered between the cards. I had kept the fabric with the sole intention of possibly using the cards for appliqués, so I was happy to discover that I could fussy cut the mask pieces to avoid the people in the print.
And I was even happier when I realized I could get the Friendly Warning cards onto the mask. (and even more amused when I looked up what the Queen of Diamonds means in cartomancy, and..."friendly" is not it.)
I do have another buttoned shirt cut out and ready to sew, but I made a slight diversion today to sew a quick protective case for our Nintendo Switch
This is a super basic zip bag, with the outside made of a vintage mass-produced machine-quilted sheer tricot that screams Early 1970s, and lined with a proper lining fabric. There was enough batting left from the unusable edge of the quilted piece to add as another layer behind the lining.
I cut the fabric by laying the Switch on it and cutting with approximate width for seam allowances, using the pattern of the quilting as a cutting guide.
I initially sewed the side seam allowances too wide, and the Switch didn't quite fit, so I re-sewed and picked a lot of stitches. Now it's just right!
It's not a super robust item, but it's definitely more padding than the Switch would otherwise have when leaving the house.
My last post was a pair of pants I made with fabric left from making a blanket.
And then I looked at the fabric left from the pants and thought...hmm...is there enough to make a skirt?
The answer is yes (provisionally)
It's almost time for the kiddo to have to leave the house for end of the year standardized testing. As a remote learning student, he has gladly adopted the "pajama pants all day" lifestyle, and, as a teenager, he also has significantly longer legs than he had the last time I made him a pair of "wear out of the house" pants. So! Time to make a quick pair of pants.
I probably could have used kid-sized KwikSew 2544 again, or even KwikSew 1650, since his waist measurement is still very slim, but I decided to go ahead and use the view B pants from New Look 6766
(the elastic is actually fairly stretched to fit the hanger there)
I thought I'd take a break from sewing buttoned shirts and sew a quick woven pullover shirt. I cut the tissue for Simplicity 2211, the Lisette Market pattern
The pattern cutting layout showed size 12 of the blouse folding the selvedges to the center and cutting the front and back on the fold that way. Since I cut as much as I can on a large narrow piece of cardboard on top of my ironing board (yes, the narrow area can be irritating, but it's better than floundering around on the floor), I decided I'd fold the selvedges to the center and cut the pieces one at a time.
I cut the front first and transferred all the marks for the darts, then folded the other selvedge to the center and placed the back pattern piece and
oh
it didn't fit?
After a few minutes of wondering if I had somehow folded things incorrectly, I thought to measure the fabric width.
It's a yard of very nice, surprisingly shirt weight Halloween print I got from JoAnn in 2017
so I was shocked to discover it was only 40" wide.
Did it shrink that much when I washed it? In only one direction?
Did it matter at that point?
So I considered my options. The obvious was to add a contrast strip of fabric in the center back and proceed from there. I can't explain why, but I absolutely did not want to do that.
I thought of cutting a new back from the already-cut front, and creating a button front with contrast areas, eventually remembering good ol' New Look 6217. I made so many shirts from that pattern in the early 2000s--even though it was cut in a now-too-small size, I kept it when I purged patterns when I gained weight. Now, I have lost weight, but not enough to put me in my early 2000s size, so I decided to combine the two-part front aspect of New Look 6217 with my current basic shirt pattern, the modified Burda 7831
I settled on adding a contrast asymmetrically, and making the collar and (hidden) front bands from the contrast print. I poked through my stash and settled on a tiny floral stretch poplin, then started cutting quickly before I could second guess myself and here we are
So.
Continuing the Shirt Sewing Mode, I dove into making view 3 of Simplicity 5803 (1973)
Everything went downhill from there.
