Light coat or heavy jacket, whatever, it's finished

In a thrifted grab bag of cloth last year, there was someone's beginning of a baby blanket.  It was a big square, with a two-faced pre-quilted brown on one side and an aqua minky dot on the other side.  I picked out the stitching and used the minky as part of a jacket for me (blogged here, and, yes, I'm wearing it as I type this) and thought from the start that the brown would go into a bit of outerwear for the kiddo...which I finished today.

I knew I wanted to make something roomy, because it would probably be worn very few times each year and he has a lot of growing left--it's nice when my efforts aren't outgrown too quickly *glances at the last coat I made for him which he may already have been too large for last year--it never got cold enough to find out*

I thrifted this pattern

and had a moment of dismay when I realized the kid sizes didn't even go large enough for the size he is now (and I wanted to be good and not rely upon ease to compensate--coats need to be roomy.)  But!  The adult sizes start at pattern size 6, which is for a 30½" bust; the kiddo's current clothed chest measurement is 29.  Close enough.

...of course, measurements in the other directions were all too long, but that was OK, because I had a very limited amount of cloth to use, so I happily started folding pattern pieces shorter.  They didn't get quite short enough for the front and back to fit on the pre-quilted brown cloth piece, but that was fine because I also now had another thrift grab bag pre-quilted piece that actually coordinated so well you'd think it was intentional

And it was double faced with coordinating prints!  My print-mixing heart was joyful, buuut the kiddo wasn't so enthused about the floral side ("Flower on a coat doen't make sense.")  Not a problem.  Not gonna line this coat anyway, so some of the floral will still be visible inside.  (I considered lining it, of course--especially since I have that roll of thrifted lining in bright pale green that would match the green in the prints.  But, no--no lining for this.)

The cloth grab bag that yielded the printed pre-quilted cloth also had about a third of a yard of the dot print in regular yardage, which I used largely, 90° off grain, for facings.

I'd say things worked out pretty well

 Yeah, it kinda has that art sewing look, but it also kinda has that fashionable moving blanket look, so it balances.
 

 

I didn't have a zipper in the right length that matched anything perfectly (no I was not going to cut down the brown zipper with metal teeth, thanks) so I went with a coordinating color.  Any color that's not in the main print is a 'coordinate' right?

 And, yes, the zipper not being as long as the front was an intentional choice.  Really.


The way the top stitching zig zags past itself like that was something I'd first done around the pockets

because I wanted to top stitch beside the pockets, but not all the way up the side seams.  That part wasn't decided upon until I was actually sewing, so...yeah, more my usual "improvisational" work.

The improv on the sleeve contrast was at my usual level, too--that is, vaguely aware of what needed to be done and thinking I was doing it right and I didn't and I made it work anyway.  More or less.

It's a fairly smooth sleeve cap, honest.

 

 I did think of maybe some sort of appliqué on the back...and front...and sleeve...but I decided it's OK to be plain.  Sometimes.

And the unlined inside is a mess

but it's a completed mess. (Maybe you can see where I tried encasing some seam allowances in bias tape?  Yeah, didn't do much of that overall.)  I had just enough--after a bit of piecing--of the unquilted print to face the bottom edge, and also had a piece of the quilted cloth that I picked the quilting out if (which was easier than expected) and the sleeve hems are faced with the floral print.

May it fit him for years to come, and may there be enough cold days to actually use it...

My Halloween And Beyond Coat

In late September, there appeared an enormous bin of houseware linens in the thrift store, with a sign declaring "Everything you can fit in to a bag for $9.99."  I immediately made a ridiculous jacket, then...hmm...well...see that pumpkin print tablecloth on the bottom here?

 I wondered if that would make a good...coat...?

Turns out that if you use Vogue V8346

 then the answer is that it makes a very good coat.

Or maybe the word I want is 'ridiculous'?  'Good' and 'ridiculous' are not, of course, mutually exclusive.

The collar is made from something I thrifted that I'd thought was low-pile fake fur--once I started working with it, though, I realized it was high-pile felt, and with a noticeable wool content, too (itchy wrists always tell me when there's wool involved.)  The lining is the same grape print cotton used in the other jacket made from the super bargain linen bin, linked above.

Now...the first time I made this coat, which was in 2009 and looked like this

(and was eked out of a lesser yardage than the envelope called for and still managed to match the plaid lines and yes I'm still proud of that) I was...smaller...so the pattern was cut in a size that was a bit too snug for modern me.  Since I was intending this new coat as a Halloween costume element, I decided not to deal with the various adjustments and just went with smaller seam allowances and making the front closing single breasted instead of double breasted.  I also used only two buttons because I was just going with what I had in the stash.

What was this Halloween costume, you ask?  Good question.  I was just sorta going with "The Spirit of Autumn" and wore a big curly auburn wig (I wanted to stick leaves all over but ran out of time) and threw together a quick skirt made from some cloth that was in a huge thrifted grab bag.

A neighbor asked me if I was supposed to be Miss Frizzle.  Thinking of all the amazingly accurate Miss Frizzle cosplays I've seen, I was mildly offended ("Excuse me?  This is not good enough to be a Miss Frizzle costume.  How dare you."  So went the thoughts, but the mouth just said "Ha ha, no.")  Of course, I'd also had the idea to wear a giant pumpkin head, and spend most of Halloween evening sitting on the porch as kids came up and wondered if I was a real person or not...  Turns out I was able to get the same level of doubt in their minds by taping a die cut jack-o-lantern decoration to a dowel rod and using that to cover my face until the kids got close.  That was nice.

I decided that, since this coat print is as much squash as pumpkin, I could wear it through November until Thanksgiving, which I did when it was cool enough, and I got compliments on it from a lot of people, so maybe it's not a odd as I thought it was...

Halloween wasn't *that* long ago, right?

Soooo, yeah.  I have been sewing, but almost all of it has been doll stuff, so there hasn't been much inclination to post that here.  The Halloween costume stuff, though, that I've been meaning to post here for...a while.

The kiddo had, as I expected, been enamored of the giant flat foam cat face mask from Walmart, and we decided it could be a part of a Nyan Cat costume?  Maybe?  Sorta?

The first thing was a multicolor cape--not exactly a rainbow, because I was determined to use cloth I already had and that meant using a selection of chromatically adjacent synthetics from the stash--green, yellow, orange, pink, purple.

I didn't get a good picture of it

I cut the first panel freehand and copied that for all the rest.  They're 90° off bias, but it worked out fine for proper dramatic cape flapping.

The hood visible is part of the hoodie worn under the cape.  The kiddo had come up with the idea of having a star print on the sleeves, and I had just the right bit of cloth to use for that...and I had almost enough of it.  Mixing prints is My Thing, of course, and I think I cane up with a good combination of cottons, with the green knit--left over from the hoodie I made for him that he pretty much lives in now--for the hood and ribbing.  I used the same pattern, too.

I did get good pictures of the hoodie

It's like...every sci fi movie poster from 1978-1984...

So of course I used some Star Trek print for the pockets (but honestly only because I didn't have enough of either the stars or the stripes so I had to use something)

Just happened to have a really good separating zipper color match

thanks to random zipper ordering from WAWAK...  Things aren't as straight as they could be, but this was supposed to be a fast costume--it's not lined, either, although I really wanted to.

Nothing surprising about the back

Yes, I didn't iron anything, as much because I'm lazy as because it would be hidden by the, ah, 'toaster pastry' part of the costume.

The first iteration, in cloth-covered cardboard sandwich board form, was...a bit large

I made a smaller, softer 'toaster pastry' that was safety pinned to the jacket for trick-or-treating, but I didn't get a picture of it.  Let's just say the kiddo was a lot happier with it...

Part of the plan for the original enormous-in-retrospect 'toaster pastry' was that I would take the cardboard out after the holiday and sew the front and back parts together to make a pillow, and I do have a picture of that pillow with the smaller softer version, for size comparison

It worked out better, proportion-wise, in the second version, and, as you can see, I added some sprinkles.  The centers of both 'toaster pastries' are flannel pieces that were given to me by very generous people.

(And they generally now are used like this)

And then there are the rainbow pants.  I had nothing (well, nothing I wanted to use for this...) as the rainbow stripe used on the jacket had been just about all of that I'd had left.  I decided to *gasp* go buy some rainbow print cloth.

In my mind, I saw a denim, with washes of hazy rainbow stripes.  While this might exist, it didn't in any of the places I looked.  It turned out that no rainbow stripe anything existed in any of the places I looked, not even as a bed sheet I could cut apart. (Yes, probably could have found something online, but...well, things may have been getting last-minute at this point, as the kiddo was also having a costume birthday party before Halloween...)

So I improvised. (No-one is surprised.)

I had, not long before then, purchased a perhaps unreasonable amount of yardages from a thrift store, some of which had included bundles of "oooh I like that!" cloth mixed with less impressive cloth.  Some of that less impressive cloth was a fairly large piece of a white waffle weave cotton.  I cut pants using Burda 9672 (I think?) and sewed the front and side seams.  Then a layer of free local newspapers went down on the vinyl floor by the door to the garage while Husband retrieved the narrow paint roller from storage.  I made an impromptu palette and grabbed some jars of paint I'd mixed long ago for airbrush use, as well as mixed up a few more colors as needed, and started rollin' on the pants.

I let them dry overnight, then sewed the back seam and inseams, hemmed them, and folded over the waistband and added elastic.  They were a bit crunchy at first, but softened with wear

The final costume was a lot more fun than the actual trick-or-treating was...

Is it science fiction

I have sewn a few human-size things since the last post, but I probably won't blog about them because they all made me grumpy for various reasons.  So.

My weekly thrift store visit last week didn't find any interesting toys or any interesting yard goods, and this combined to focus my attention on the big box (like, 4'x4'x4' big) bearing a sign that indicated it was filled with linens that were to be purchased by filling a big bag for $9.99.

Well.

I dug around and stuffed a bag very full and ended up with 34 items, handkerchiefs and cloth napkins and place mats and pillow cases and curtains and tablecloths and bed sheets and a few small blankets.  Everything was chosen with the idea of using it to make other things, starting with the sheets, because I've been pondering making patchwork blanket tops again, and sheets are great for backing on the quilts I'll probably never actually finish making from those.

The first thing I made, though, involved the roughly quilted shiny purple bit seen here

which was a small blanket and just enough to make this

because sometimes you just need to make something that would look right on a background character in a generic sci fi setting, y'know?

T-shirt Weekend, Part 2

...which was two weekends ago now, and I sewed on the intervening weekend, too, so I need to work a little faster on posting (there are two more shirts from that weekend...)

After the wavy patchwork t-shirt worked out well enough, I decided I'd make another patchwork t-shirt, but this time for the kiddo.  The pile of t-shirts that had been being re-used was getting to the point of not having really large pieces left, so I tried to make the patch pieces as large as possible, and I ended up with this

Details--and how it ultimately changed--beyond the cut.

T-shirt Weekend, Part 1

So, after the successes of the quick t-shirts I made for the kiddo...and...after realizing that "comfortably baggy fit on a nearly-nine-year-old-kid" = "slim fit on that kid's mom," I decided to try making a few shirts for me from the same pattern.

Well...more or less "the same pattern" because...y'know...it's me...

sserD neewollaH ysaE

I recently received a very generous box of doll and sewing items (thanks again, Susan!), which included some Halloween print cloth--hot pink Halloween print!  With happy little bats!  And neon green letter outlines!  Outlining the word Halloween!  The word Halloween that was printed backwards!

Wait what.

Yep yep, the word Halloween was printed backwards on the entirety of the cloth, while everything on the selvedge was not printed backwards.  Huh...OK...so...um...

My first thought was to use it to make a skirt (there was a meter of it, having come from metric-wielding Canada) and take mirror selfies so the print would be seen in the right direction, but that would still leave it backwards in real life.  Hmm.

Then I remembered the shirt(s) Peter of Male Pattern Boldness made with the print on the inside, and I decided to follow that example.  Yes, the colors are muted, but, given how bright the print was, it's still not exactly pastel...

A shirt you can hear

I made another very lout t-shirt for the kiddo, and from cloth left over from doll sewing from things sent by a friend, and here it is

 The cloth was originally an adult t-shirt, but I had previously used the sleeves to make doll clothes.  As small as the kiddo is, I still couldn't wrangle enough cloth for the sleeves from what was left, so I used bits of another of the previously-used-for-something-else t-shirts that had also been sent.  But I didn't use the sleeves, because...those had already been used for something else...  Cutting these sleeves from the hemline of the black t-shirt worked just fine and allowed me to use the existing coverstitched hems, which I also kept from the loud t-shirt for the hems of the finished shirt.  (This was supposed to be a fast project, and it was, just...with a day or so pause between each step...)

And here you can see how I handled the fact that the existing hems would be meeting at the side seams, so I tacked down the seam allowances, after trimming them away from the edge, with reasonably matching top stitching.  The...uh...the other side didn't line up quite as well...but with the print this loud, I really didn't stress over it.

I also applied a contrast pocket, to bring a bit more black to it.  I realized a while ago, when dressing dolls, that I like to have three areas of a contrasting color, and I guess that applies to clothing items like this, too.  Anyway.  I used another bit of the black t-shirt hem for the top of the pocket and folded over the sides before edge stitching, then top stitching a presser-foot-width away.  I didn't turn one corner correctly, but, again--quick project *shrugs*

I realized after I took this photo that the print direction is reversed from the front, but that's the way it was on the original shirt, and it hadn't occurred to me that it would be flipped.  S'OK.  And the collar lays much flatter after the whole thing was washed--I probably should have taken it in to be a bit smaller, but it was a seamless circle and I didn't want to make a seam in it, y'know?

The kiddo has already worn it to school, which restarted last week.  I wonder what kind of impression it made on his new teacher...

Hacks

In April, a friend sent me a bunch of cloth, both in the form of yardages and also clothing items that had already been salvaged to varying degrees for craft purposes (like t-shirts with the graphics cut out) or had rips and holes, so still more than suitable for re-using for doll sewing.  Several of the yardage pieces are large enough to use for human-size stuff, including a bit of knit with a tie dye print.

My first thought was "Make a hoodie for the kiddo!" which he greeted with "Another hoodie, seriously?"  He does like hoodies, just...yeah, he has a lot of them...  So I asked what else I could make, and we ended up with 'long sleeve t-shirt.'

OK!  I can do that!  I mean...well...hmm.  I don't have a kids' t-shirt pattern, but I could probably use his existing commercially made shirts to draft a pattern...although...most of those are getting a bit small for him...  And I do have Simplicity 8027, which I bought for the kid size motorcycle jacket, but it also has a t-shirt-ish pattern, for a fitted 3/4 sleeve knit shirt.  I could flatten out the curves, maybe use a larger size than measurements would call for, but what about sleeve length and neckline rise and ribbing and...well, there's the KwikSew 1650 that was acquired in the giant thrift bag o'patterns last year, maybe I could use it for a bit of guidance?

...and I did measure the kiddo...a little bit...especially when I realized I wouldn't have quite enough cloth to cut things as-drafted...

And first I made a sample-y shirt, although it needed some hacks of its own to work with the cloth I had--it was made from a somewhat worn polo shirt and a previously-upcycled t-shirt...

Spider Bomber

So, a few months ago, I had a dream that lace bomber jackets were The Big Thing, and, in that dream, I had to be different and make one from one of the spiderweb laces I have.  I woke up and thought that seemed like an interesting idea, and furthermore decided that, since (at that time) the only other bomber jacket I'd made had used a foiled synthetic Halloween novelty fabric, I should use the foiled synthetic mock lace net Halloween novelty fabric that was in my stash.  (I also dd a search on "lace bomber jacket" and discovered that they were indeed A Thing, just not A Big Thing.  I'll call my dream idea 'convergent fashion evolution.')

I filed the idea into the "someday I'll sew it" realm and then kinda forgot about it.  Then a friend's birthday came along and I decided I wanted to sew something for them, but what?  What should I sew for my friend...the friend who loves Halloween...the friend with the big tarantula tattoo...hmmm...  Well.  As obvious as it seems now, it took a while to let the thoughts percolate past the initial "sew doll things!" default.

And I'm glad I did.

Scrappy

It was getting hard to cram more scraps into my scrap bin again, but I didn't want to add to the pile of "patchwork blanket tops that will probably never be finished"--multiple piles, actually, but Chippy kitty rather enjoys laying one one of the piles, so that's OK.

Still, though.

Not more blanket tops.

Not now.

But...hmm...what about that sewy thingy I'm actually interested in making now, a bomber jacket?  I definitely have a pattern I've used before with no problems, New Look 6120 from...um...from that time around Y2k when Simplicity wasn't including the copyright on the envelope.

So I decided I'd try it again, only this time I'd also try crumb quilting to build up the panels from which the jacket pieces would be cut.  I'd never done proper crumb quilting before--I'd always taken the time to square up the little bits, which probably added significantly to the amount of time things took.

I grabbed a gallon bag and started digging into the scrap bin, with the goal of gathering light purple, light pink, black and white, and gray.  The bag filled quickly, and just as quickly did the idea form that, no, these scraps would not be used for a bomber jacket, they'd be used for a motorcycle jacket.  (Which I do have a pattern for.  A pattern that's still never been used.)

So I grabbed another gallon bag and started putting allll the bright colors in...and noticed I had a lot of yellows and oranges and blues and I know someone for whom those are perfect colors so the plan became "Make a crumb quilt patchwork bright color bomber jacket for her!"  And once I decided it would be for her, I started adding all sorts of prints that I really liked and knew I would have continued to otherwise hoard.  The power of friendship: it can actually use the precious stash.

I didn't take pictures of the scrap assembly, because when do I ever remember to take progress pictures?  But it took big chunks of one Saturday and the following Sunday, which was a lot less time than I expected, and also it didn't use up the entirety of the gallon'o'scraps, either.

Madras Plaidras

Made a quick shirt, another iteration of McCall's 5675 from 1977

...although, it would have been quicker if I'd, y'know, had as much cloth as really needed.  As it was, I spent a lot of time moving things around in very fiddly ways trying to make the last pieces--bias-cut pieces no less!--work.  And I definitely didn't have enough yardage to pattern match the stripes from the bodice to the sleeves...nor enough to make the sleeves the length shown...or even to make the whole shirt the length shown...

 I had to piece the bias band/neck tie bits, which actually went well...then I ran out of bobbin thread while topstitching.  Now, I'm not usually one to shy away from picking out a few inches (or even feet) of topstitching to correct for problems like this, but, for this shirt...?  Pfft, whatever.

 I like to think it's considerably less obvious in real life.

 And, of course, double topstitching everywhere and sleeves attached in a very sloppy version of the method shared by Male Pattern Boldness.

Still, it's done, I have a loose woven shirt to wear in hot summer heat, and I have one less bit of cloth in the stash.  All things that are good.

More cat sewing

Although, this time, it's not sewing a cat as much as it's sewing with cat print cloth.

This cloth, from Seikodo's Barcode Cats range (which I figured out by searching on the selvedge information) (And, yes, that cat has a flip phone--there's a 2006 copyright date on that selvedge, too.)

I thrifted it in December, cut it out about a month ago (when everybody in the house was sick, yay) and sewed it today--which is a pretty fast purchase-to-finished-item turnaround for me...

Procrastinated green

Well, the making of this was not procrastinated, but the posting of it was...although...maybe "forgotten about for a while" is more accurate than "procrastinated"...

Anyway.

We've established that my go-to clothing items to make for the kiddo, in terms of "things he will wear," are jackets, yes?  So, hey, guess what I made for him...

And, yes, it's green.

Blue Cat

So after I made this jacket, the kiddo thought it was great fun to pat the fluffy sleeves.  I had a bit of the blue left over, so I asked if he'd like me to make something for him from it.

He said a jacket.

I said there wasn't enough for that.

Then he said a blanket.

I said there definitely wasn't enough for that, although maybe there was enough for a scarf?  He was not impressed with that idea.

Eventually I thought of making a plush of some kind and asked if he's like a blue kitty.  He did indeed like that idea.

I initially thought I'd use the old teddy bear pattern, copied ages ago from a 1980s craft book, that I've been known to make the ears pointy and add a tail, hey presto it's a kitty.  It's not very large, though, and I'd still have lots (relatively) of the cloth left.

Then I remembered the Nunodoll cat pattern that I'd enlarged to 150% a few years ago...  I had to get creative and shorten some bits and ignore the nap on other bits, but I made it work...more or less...

I improvised the "eyes" and nose, and, yes, that nose and the insides of the ears are made from the pink velour used for the same jacket.

This pattern looks a bit daunting--at least for me, who is most definitely not inclined to making plush animals--but it's well-drafted and goes together easily.  I had to fold a bit of length out of the neck/shoulders area (and corresponding part of the chest piece) and didn't make the fold transition as smooth as it could've been, so there's an awkward angle in the back that I didn't notice until I was in the stuffing stage, so I decided it didn't bother me enough to fix (even though it would have been very easy to fix...)

 

The ears are hand stitched--I've tried, in past iterations, sewing them into the head seams.  The result is a bit too dog-like, so it was worth it to do the hand stitching.  I also machine sew a bit of the head to the neck, just so I don't have to hand stitch all the way around, because I am me.

It's a bit large for that actual pet collar, but I did print it at 150%, so that's not surprising.

 Chip wants you to know he was in the sun first.

Roll over the new year

I'm making an effort to actually, y'know, sew from my stash (this isn't a new year's resolution--I don't do those...partly because I still haven't broken the resolution I made going into 1987, which, made to annoy my cousins, was to not watch Top Gun.  So.)  I have another hoodie for the kiddo lined up to make, but I decided to do a ridiculous jacket for myself first.

At the end of November, I thrifted another grab bag of cloth.  It was mostly woven cotton quarter yards of various shapes, plus a bit of upholstery weight cloth and an abandoned baby blanket (probably) project that consisted of a square of pre-quilted brown sewn around the edges to a square of minky dot in...let's call it aqua.  (Sky, turquoise, robin's egg, or light teal are also possibilities.)  I picked apart the stitching and have been thinking about using the quilted brown in a coat for the kiddo (there's...there's not a lot of variety out there when it comes to sewing for boys, and he really likes jackets, anyway), but had no ideas for the minky dot.  I decided I should use it soon, somehow, just to get it out of the stash--bulky minky takes up lots of room, after all.

There definitely wasn't enough of it to use alone in a jacket, so I shuffled through the stash and ended up with some pink velour that was thrifted a while ago with, yes, no clear idea what would be done with it.  So!  Together they'd go.

But what about a pattern?  My initial idea was for something that would have the minky as the sleeves and also across the chest, and, while I do indeed have a pattern or two that do that, they were more complicated than I wanted for this project.  Raglan sleeves, though, I decided, would be just fine.

'course it turns out that the only raglan sleeve jacket pattern I have

does not do anything else I wanted.

However...the shirts in this same envelope...