Eggplant Man

I have made several Mado Monogatari/Puyo Puyo Carbuncle plush for the kiddo [link to the cutest] because I think the character design is so cute.  A lot of the characters in Mado Monogatari/Puyo Puyo are cute, albeit in a baffling way (Mado Monogatari is a satire), but most of their character designs are a bit complicated

...but not Nasu Grave, an eggplant who wears glasses.

So I threw together a quick little felt version

First, I cut the 'glasses' from foiled silver knit, and glued them on with white glue, edges touched up with Fabri-tac. I machine sewed around most of the body, catching the arms and legs in the stitching, notched the seams, turned right-side-out, stuffed with a pinch of Polyfil, realized I should make a simple stitch to represent the glasses bridge, then hand stitched the top closed.  I attached the leaves with a line of whip stitching through the center (is it still whip stitching if it's not on the edge?), then whip stitched the bottom of the stem over that line of stitching.

I may or may not make a larger, more-spherical version--I have an entirely suitable low pile purple plush fabric, but the kiddo doesn't think an eggplant should be fuzzy.  We'll see what happens, whenever it happens, if it happens.

Leopard Leopard

Nearly ten years a go, I made a cute little shirt that mixed a floral and leopard print.  Alas, "little" is more than a term of endearment and I let it go about five years ago, when I finally accepted I was not the size I used to be.

A few years after I made the floral and leopard shirt, I made a spoopy spiders and leopard shirt for a friend.

I decided it was finally time to make an entire shirt from what I had left.

Slip Squares

I don't remember the circumstance, I just remember that I had the thought that I needed to make a slip at some point.

The diagonal print rayon in the last dress seemed perfect for a bias-cut project.

Slips are often bias cut.

So.  Even though I couldn't remember why I thought I needed to make a slip, I decided this would be good fabric to make it from.  I cut the front and back pieces for the slip, using McCall's 6696, before cutting the pieces for the big dress--I could easily play around with the dress's length if needed, but I didn't want to have to finagle the slip pieces from weird remnants, so it made sense to cut the slip pieces first.

...although I did wait to make the bias tape after everything else was cut out, which did require some brain work to translate the normal instructions for assembling the continuous bias tube into something I could use with the odd angled bits of fabric I had left.  I ended up with exactly the right amount of bias tape for both of the projects.

Not that the pattern for this slip expects you to use any bias tape.  No, it wants you to turn and stitch and trim the upper edges.  The upper, bias-cut, curved edges.  Ha ha no.

Another Quick Note

I just took in the waist about 3" on this black twill skirt I made last summer.  I said in the post "it's loose"; I have worn it many times since then, and that should have been "it's too big."

I finally got tired of it drooping below my waistline, so I removed the button and picked out the waistband stitching from the button side around to just past the other side seam (leaving the buttonhole untouched.)  I folded the inside-out skirt and trimmed off the top of the side seams, then re-stitched with a half-inch seam allowance, finished with serging; repeat for the lining.  Then I sewed the waistband back on, cutting off the newly-created excess at the end and finishing it for the button extension.  I sewed the button back on with the machine.  Skirt fits better now.

All Angles Anachronism

After all that dedication to (eventually) changing the serger thread to black, you'd think I had more things planned to sew with it. (Granted, what I do know I want to sew with it, I have not, at this time, wanted to sew.)  

I poked around the fabric stash and eventually decided I would use a very 1990s print mostly-purple rayon, and eventually settled on using it for a slip (cut first, not yet sewn) and another peasant dress based on Simplicity 9866.  I did not check the posts I'd made about making the previous two versions, and I had forgotten that I had been experimenting with sleeve length--I mean, yeah, I saw that there was a shorter traced paper version of the sleeve, but I didn't remember the circumstances, so I used the original dress's sleeve pattern.  At this point, it's so far from the Otome no Sewing project that it's no real concern.

I am amused that this uses a 1990s print to make a 1940s silhouette using a 1970s pattern modified to mimic a 2010s magazine project.

New Weights

I finally made more pattern weights!

I made the first four in late 2021, and tried making some more in early 2022, but I got distracted and mixed the resin wrong and had to, sadly, throw those away.  I paid proper attention and everything worked this time.

I was really happy with the two on the bottom.  The metallic confetti really captures the feel of my memories of the resin things I saw at the Rock Swap as a kid (although in much more modern colors), and the skeleton surrounded by color shift glitter and stars against a pink holo background (cut from doll packaging)...how could that have gone wrong?

The top two, though, I thought ended up rather bland.  The pink was an experiment in using up left-over resin by pouring it into the mold whenever I had it.  I thought it would look fun with all the layers. It did not, and I turned out not to have left-over resin very often, either.  The glitter in the upper right is a mix of glitters left over from various projects, all poured into the same container for storage.  I really liked looking into the container at the glitter blend and thought it might be fun in the top layer of a pattern weight.  It's...OK...

So I added stickers!

Yeah, they're pattern weights, they don't need to look good.  I have stickers to spare, though.

I also tried adding a contrast layer of resin at the bottom of the other three.  I mixed some of them a bit dark (they're all translucent. really.), but I'm really happy with the pale green under the pink in the skeleton weight.  Maybe next time I do this, I'll remember to do it on a level surface, which apparently the card table does not have.  The angled layers are fine--these things can still hold down a pattern piece.

Black Eyelet Babydoll

Happened into a Walmart one day right after they had obviously restocked their mill end precuts, and so was able to buy a lovely "3 yards for $8" piece of black cotton double border eyelet.  I knew from the start that I wanted to use it for a Fake Burda 6401, and that conviction grew even more sure after I made the Fake McCall's 8197 modifications to the basic Fake Burda 6401 pattern.

The main thing that kept me from actually making this dress?  The fact that there was white thread in the serger, and I had a lot of other things I wanted to sew that would work much better with white serger thread than with black serger thread.  However!  I finally got to a point where I felt like I was through with those projects--and wasn't thinking of more that I wanted to make immediately--so I finally changed the serger thread.  We won't discuss how long ago that was; we shall just rejoice that it happened.

And so I sewed the eyelet into the intended dress

No, wait, it gets better.

Pink'n'Punk'n

Untold years ago, I bought a quarter yard of an orange jack'o'lantern on white ground Halloween print from Joann; I probably figured I'd use it for doll clothes.  But.  I stopped sewing doll clothes for sale so often.  And when I thought of using it for something for me?  Well, with it being orange on white, it definitely had marks against it.

A few years ago, I got the idea of overdying it, to make the white pink. I finally did that a few weeks ago, and then I was determined to finally use it for something.

I checked the stash and juggled the length limits and ended up with this

Purple Check

 I did it! I made a for-me version of the pieced checkerboard sweatshirt I just made for the kiddo.