Last Big Project of the Year

Not 'complicated' big as much as '90" square big, plus matching pillow shams' big.

So.

Many years ago--but I'm not sure exactly how many, because I seem not to have taken a photo of it when it was completed--I made this patchwork bedspread and matching pillow shams for our bed

 And I still like it!  And it is mostly still in good shape...mostly.

Fashion Doll Shawl Collar Coat Pattern (with optional lining)

I have been in a "too much doll stuff, gotta get rid of some of it" mode for the last few weeks (this seems to always strike when winter daylight is at its lowest...)  A result of this is that I have been digging out dolls I've wanted to do more things with, and...doing things.  Like sewing.

I started with making this coat

It's a thing I sewed, so it's going here

purely as a matter of record

I had a bit of thick foam left over from a long-ago project, and the kiddo loves pillows, so I sewed...uh...this

More layering pieces: Black & Spiderweb Edition

I used the same old hacked pattern that made the leggings about a month ago, but, since the knit this time is four-way stretch, the fit is very different.

They look just as unimpressive in the hanger, though

 I did deviate a bit and used bands to finish the hems, and that turned out nicely

They are excessively long, unlike the gray pair, which are calf-length.  Both are good.

Like the gray pair, these were made from a mill end precut from Walmart.  This precut was only 2 yards, so there definitely wasn't as much to play around with after cutting out the leggings.  I was determined to eke out a long-sleeved shirt to use for layering, and it didn't take too much finagling to do that, ending up with this

Another "quick" project

Among the many textile things the friend brought over the summer were many pieces of partially dis-assembled clothing, including a purple tiered skirt with the waistband cut off.

  I had it stuffed in with my fabric for a while, and finally decided to make a quick bodice to sew it  to, to make another under dress.

Of course things didn't go as quick as they could have.

Apple Thanks

Made a zip pouch as thanks for something the kiddo's teacher did.  The apple/ABC/123/gingham stripe print is something from a thrift store grab bag, and I held onto it because I think it could make a cute EGL dress for dolls.  But...considering there's a good chance I'll never actually make such a thing, I figured it wouldn't be a problem to go ahead and use a bit for the teacher thanks thing.

When I was picking out the prints, I grew keenly aware that I have very few "modern" prints in my calico/doll clothes stash, which I suppose is a natural result of thrifting so much cloth.  (The ABC/123 print had a 1995 copyright on the selvedge.)

 Normally I don't think twice about lacking trendy prints, but I did have a bit of "will this just look incredibly out-of-date?" with this project, since it would be a gift for someone I barely know (and the school has a website with a "here are all the teachers/staff and lists of their favorite things" section...which this teacher is missing from, since she was added last minute, so I couldn't even look up her favorite color.  I have a vague memory of her sending home a sheet listing those things at the beginning of the year, but...uuuhhh...where is it...)  Anyway.  I chose these coordinating prints hoping they would flip the whole thing from "out of date" to "vintage retro."

 I know my idea of How A Zip Pouch Should Look has been influenced by following s.o.t.a.k. handmade and her love of low volume neutral designer/handmade prints + Quilt As You Go, none of which are me things, but they are fun to watch other people be happy with (I have that attitude toward some popular kinds of dolls, too)--I just have to remember that I know I wouldn't be perpetually happy with those things, if I did join in on the fun of them. (I have to perpetually remind myself that customizing Furbies is something that does indeed look like fun, but, once I was finished with the custom, I would be finished with the Furbie, so it's in my best interest to just...not.  I have plenty of other things to use my time and resources on!)

The apple appliqué is from a 1990s craft panel print--something that my "mostly thrift" fabric acquisition habits hadn't realized that wasn't a thing anymore, until, when I went through a period of making doll clothes from them (including the instructions), I found I had to explain what a craft panel print even was.

Ah, well--I hope this project conveys my thanks!

Multiplaid

Many of the pieces of fabric that the person brought from the relative's destash over the summer (thanks again!) are very loud and very out of date, and both of those aspects in a way that appeals to my sarcastichild.

So, today I used KwikSew 1650

I don't think I mentioned in the last post that the moto jacket pattern was the first KwikSew pattern I'd used that was printed this century?  It was weird, using a KwikSew pattern that was printed on something lighter than copy paper and had 5/8" seam allowances.  KS 1650 here is from 1987 (which the pattern envelope renders in Roman numerals) and is on relatively stiff paper with tiny seam allowances, which I still feel is what a Kwik Sew pattern should be.

I made view A, omitting the shoulder details (unlike last time) and here we are

Green Moto

I have recently acquired a bicycle, which I intend to ride for exercise (I'd like to ride it for practicality, but not in this hyper hilly suburb that's near nothing but one of Nashville's major busy roads, and not now,when I can barely go up a slight incline without having to get off and walk the bike.)  Since it is also, in theory, winter, I wanted to make a windbreaker.

I also decided it was time to stop procrastinating and try one of my small pile of motorcycle jacket patterns--have I mentioned those?

I know there's still a Simplicity Mimi G motorcycle jacket pattern I don't have, plus a smattering of them on Burda Style.  This is a good start, especially since it looked like I'd never, y'know, use any of them.

But of course the idea of making a motorcycle jacket to wear while pedaling around and being awkwardly unfit was an idea that amused me.

I chose KwikSew 3764, since it was unlined

and dove into my fabric stash for an appropriate cloth, finding a densely-woven synthetic I've had for a long long time--probably since this color was trendy

It's Curtains Again

This time it's a single lace curtain panel, turned into another attempt at an under dress...that I added pockets to, because it looked cute over the clothes I was wearing when I tried it on.  If a layer might potentially be on or near the top, it needs pockets.  Why even sew if you're not gonna add pockets?

Grayyyyyyyy

The return (somewhat) of cooler weather + PMS made me say "Heyyy, I wanna sew some mori kei layers to wear under the dresses I've been sewing."  The PMS also conspired to make me ignore the fact that I dislike sewing thin synthetic knits and so decide to purchase a 4-yard-for-$4 dark gray thin synthetic knit precut at Walmart.

The first thing I wanted to try sewing from that knit was a pair of leggings, using the leggings pattern I cobbled together years ago from an old copy of Simplicity 9721 that I haven't owned for years.  Considering how much disappointment came from the last time I tried a different leggings pattern, and also considering that there were four yards of 56" fabric to experiment with, I figured I should at least try it, since the last pair of leggings I had made with it are things I still wear. (And I seem to have made them before starting this blog.)  Now, though, those were made with a 4-way stretch, and extending the waistline up by 5" created enough room to comfortably encompass all of my diastasis recti bulge mom belly.  The dark gray thin synthetic is only a 2-way stretch,and the 5" extra made it enough to go aaaaabooouuut halfway up the bulge, and also not quite all the way to the ankles

Yes, that's a picture of them hanging awkwardly on a hanger, which doesn't exactly illustrate the fit issues.  I'm wearing them now and my ankles are a bit cold.  The waist band doesn't seem like it's going to be an issue, in terms of comfort.  The main thing will be to see how bad the knee and posterior fabric growth will be by the end of the day, since 2-way stretch just doesn't have the recover that 4-way has.

Still, I considered that pair of leggings enough of a success to go ahead and try to use up all the rest of the fabric in another project, the success of which is still TBD

StripePants

And another KwikSew 2544, this time using some incredibly soft brushed twill that the destashing-for-relative person brought

Not-so-small jeans

The kiddo is at a size where he's right between commercially-made pants sizing, so I decided to make him a pair of jeans, aided greatly by finding a 2 yard mill end precut of heavy (although stretch) denim at Walmart.

Of course I used KwikSew 2544--he'll be in that size range for a few more years, so there's still a lot of that pattern in our future (including the  very next post I'm going to make.)

Change of a Dress

McCall's 7742 ©2018 looked enough like the dresses I've been making this year that I decided to get a copy when it was on sale

The photographed view,with its ¾ ribbon-tied sleeves is cute, but the point of making the loose floaty dresses is so they can be worn comfortably in the stinkin' hot summer, so sleeves were out.

I picked some overprinted madras--another bit of yardage from the person dealing with a relative's stash--and laid it out to be cut...where it stayed for a week or so.  It stayed ~ready to go~ for so long that the forecast looked like it was going to finally catch up to the calendar, so I hustled to make it to wear before the temperatures dropped.

 I am...ambivalent.

Another Quick Pillowcase

Not as quick as the last quick pillowcase, because this one involved a zipper.  A zipper isn't an issue, but there was an unexpected obstacle

 Can you see the problem?

Maybe a different angle will help

Screaming Loud Jacket

So.  The shorts I posted yesterday.  The way I ended the write up by lamenting about the extremely obvious print repeat on each side of the center back seam?

Yeah.

However, since the same print elements even ended up on the sleeves, it tips over from unfortunate to funny...right?

Screaming Loud Shorts

You should have a good idea about the kiddo's taste in clothes at this point, so you know why I had the idea to ask him if he'd like a pair of shorts made from an incredibly loud print that was in the friend's relative's destash

MadrasPatch Pants

Yesterday, a patchwork pillow.  Today, patchwork pants.

The base fabric is the other piece of ready-made madras patches, which I know is a "traditional" preppy thing, and I was ready to make a pair of shorts for my sarcastic child to wear.  When I double-checked with him that he did want shorts made from it, he asked for pants.

Hmm.

I consulted the measurements listed on good ol' KwikSew 2544, and confirmed that he's currently at size 12 in leg length and somewhere between size 10 and 12 in waist width.  (That pattern goes to size 14, so I think there are a few more years of use coming from that pattern.)  I then laid the pieces roughly on the cloth and confirmed that there was just enough for the main pieces.

Quick Project Today: Pillowcase

In the fabric destash brought by the friend were two pieces of patchwork madras yardage.  A-ha, I thought, these will make fantastic Obnoxious Shorts™ for the kiddo.  I showed him the pieces and asked if he'd like that--to my surprise, he picked up the brighter piece, buried his face in it, and said he'd like that one as a pillow.  I countered with the offer of making a pillowcase and he agreed.  I threw that together today.

(I sense a theme here.  A very square theme.  Hey, hmm, maybe it's time to put the creeper blanket back on his bed--he has gotten back into Minecraft lately...)

 The piece was just big enough to make a standard pillowcase, too, with a generous 5½" hem on the open edge.

Even though it was probably something that I would realize was futile if I think about it too much, I did serge the seam I sewed along the bottom and side, as well as the edge of the hemmed part.

Iron things?  Oh, no, of course I didn't do that.

But I did top stitch!

This is along the bottom seam, and I decided to do it because the patchwork itself had so much top stitching, so that seam looked bare without it, since the patches are somewhat close to square down there.  I didn't bother with the side, since the patches visible there are very narrow.

I was also amused by how well this coordinates with the rag rug that was also in the friend's relative's craft destash, and is now on the floor of the kiddo's room

Jewel tones, my friend.  Jewel tones.

Pastelloween

I realized, partway through sewing this, that the idea for it--even the very buying of the fabric that inspired it--was extremely influenced by PMS.  I'm still not sure if it was a good idea, but it's finished, so here it is.

Quick Projects Yesterday: Thrift Shirt + Thrift Skirt = This Dress

So I had, at different times, thrifted these

  And in the past, I did wear them, although not necessarily together.  I realized that I probably would not wear the shirt, because it would require something with a waistband to go with it, or me making a jumper, and in a solid color, which...maybe someday...  So I looked at all the thrifted things with waistbands that I also am not currently inclined to wear and decided the fabric weight and pleats-instead-of-gathers of this would go well with the cut and fabric of the jack'o'lantern shirt.

(and then I was prepping them and noticed the name on the skirt tag...geist...ghost...so...extra appropriate, yeah?  yeah?)

Anyway.

I cut the shirt off  at about waist level, making the cut gently curved but still using the stripes as a general guide, and cut the waistband off of the skirt and sewed them together, pinning the pleats in place and stretching the skirt slightly to fit the shirt edge.  The skirt fabric is a crinkly weave with a lot of stretch (for a 100% cotton woven.)

I may only wear this one or twice a year, between the weather staying hotter longer and my general dislike of wearing orange, but how could I resist those dobby weave jack'o'lanterns?

Quick Projects Yesterday: Pillow

There was a bit of loudly-printed polyester fleece in the cloth brought by the friend from the relative's craft hoard, and as soon as the kiddo spotted it, he asked if it could be a pillow, which I finally sewed yesterday and stuffed with a bit of the "rediscovered while destashing" fiberfill

 It's stuffed very loosely, and I stitched a bit in the center (because it is stuffed so loosely that it fit under the presser foot) to hopefully keep things from clumping too much in odd areas.  And I sewed it with the other side up, so things aren't aligned super nice here.

And I machine-sewed the opening closed

 because he'll either ignore this or use it so much that hand-stitching would not have lasted.

And, uh, for size reference, here's my foot (size 7½-8 shoe)

I can't remember the last time I sewed something so fast.  And the kiddo is happy with it!

Procrastinated Green v2.0

Two-and-two-thirds years ago, I sewed this jacket for the kiddo

Despite his lukewarm reaction when presented with it, he ended up wearing it constantly.  It also acquired a lot more pins, which made a lot of holes in the front, which I patched with decorative appliqués, reinforced the front pieces with interfacing, and eventually added a layer of woven cotton for more strength.

Seams popped, got re-sewn, and popped in different places.  I stopped caring if the thread even vaguely matched.  Pills formed, betraying the high synthetic fiber content.  The child's arms grew longer than the sleeves could respectably cover.  Paint wore off of the zipper pull.

The only thing that could convince him to stop wearing it was nasty hot weather, so he hasn't been inclined to wear it for a few months, so I was looking for suitable cloth to use to make a replacement.  Happily, I blundered into a few yards of just-about-the-same-shade green cloth in a visit to a thrift store about a month ago (seen here under the old jacket)

I also blundered across this in a thrift store at some point

Yeah, there's no front zipper, but there's a front seam and it goes down to size XS, so it's close enough, and here we are

This one wasn't curtains

The fabric (another piece from the amazing amount of fabric brought by a friend dealing with a craft hoarder relative's stash)  was not quite two yards long, 52" wide, and hemmed on each end in a very home-made way--so, whatever it had originally been, it wasn't a curtain.

And now it's a dress

 that I can't decide if it would have looked better as a piece of furniture

At Bat

The dress I sewed a few months ago with elements from a different floral print appliquéd on has been worn a decent amount of times, and laundered enough to reveal some flaws in the print that I thought I could ignore..until I couldn't

So of course that called for more appliqué!  I really wanted a bee, or a moth, and would have settled for a butterfly, but I didn't have prints with any of those (at least not in a suitable size), so I went with this little bat

so now this dress is that much Halloweenier.

(on some distant future day, I will feel confident in my embroidery abilities...)

Flower Power

There were lots of nice-to-amazing prints in the cloth brought by the person who brought me their relative's cloth stash, so I know I'm going to be sewing a lot with that (in addition to all the doll clothes I've already made from it.)

I made the first larger project from that cloth last weekend, using two prints that seemed to coordinate and the mash up of patterns and improvisation that I've used to make a few other dresses this year, ending up with this

Sewed a Few Pieces of Doll Clothes

and they have been mailed off to the person with whom I'm trading. That's 30 items, added to the 20 I sewed and gave the person when she visited in July.  I had to give myself a number to aim for, or else I'd keep sewing doll clothes forever...

I also finished sewing a pile of clothes for a different doll friend's belated birthday package (it's only about two months late this year.  I seem to remember last year saying I'd start sewing the stuff sooner.  Yeah.  I should start sewing next year's stuff sometime before his next birthday actually happens...)  I didn't get a picture of those, though.

And now I can sew something besides doll clothes for a while!

More Light Improvement

I got a(n) LED bulb for my sewing machine!

I would have preferred a cooler color temperature, but I'm still really happy that I could walk into the big box hardware store and find a bulb that fits my machine, because of course this machine needs a base size that's smaller (candelabra) than what the sewing machine supply sites seem to stock (intermediate.) (It's a threaded base instead of a bayonet like the bulb I still had in my stash for past machines I've had, too.)

Between this and the chandelier, I know a lot more about lights than I feel like I should.

All the cloth bits are for doll clothes, to finish up the last big trade I have going--when that's done, I can get back to random sewing!

This is Not a Home Dec Blog

But this is about the sewing room, so a note will be made here.

This room was lit by an ignominious boob light

 

Which  of course illuminated the room in a perfectly serviceable manner--and, anyway, most craft activities were performed under task lights, so general illumination wasn't so important.

Still.

Boob light.

Most DIY-for-cheap blogs enthusiastically endorse the act of acquiring a nice drum-shaped lamp shade and attaching that to conceal the boob shape.  I visited local thrift stores every week in search of a suitable shade, with a vague hope that I could find an entire light fixture that could be swapped in instead.

And, before I found a suitable shade, I did indeed find a light fixture:

(yes, a whole 99¢, and that included not only the light fixture itself, but also two LED bulbs and a whole lot of dead moths.)

There was, however, no simple "swap" involved--this thing had to be rewired (hissssss) and I ditched the shade, because I didn't want to feel like a UFO was hovering overhead .  I looked at glass shades in one of the big box hardware stores and decided to keep looking, because, if I was going to spend Real Money, I should get shades that I Really Liked.  Then I visited another thrift store (a whole two days after buying the light) and, heh, whaddaya know, there was a set of three glass shades for $2.  When I'm not spending Real Money, I'm not nearly as picky.

I was willing to try to rewire this by myself, but Husband pitched in and, despite all the cursing, it got rewired and hung a lot faster than if I had been working alone.

 And he also convinced me to splurge a  few dollars and get the not-absolutely-cheapest dimmable 800 lumen LED lights, making the total cost spent on this right around $25

And it is wonderful.  The three 60W-equivalent daylight bulbs are a lot brighter and more appealing to me than the two 60W equivalent (but lower lumen) warm bulbs that had been in the boob light.

I plan to get a dimmer switch, too--part of the reason I didn't use the original light a lot was because, in the evening when I'm not working on projects, I don't want super bright light...but there's really no place to put a lamp near my computer, so I generally typed by squinting in the dark, because the other lamps in the room work very well for illuminating tasks, but not so well for ambient lighting.  I had been thinking of getting an RGB keyboard, but, the cost of this light project + a dimmer switch will be less...  And I get a nice non-boob light.