Vincent Briggs recently shared a video tutorial for making a leaf-shaped head scarf, and here's my first try, in a style intended to be considerably looser and more casual. I was hoping for MidCentury Vera style, but I'm nowhere near that ability, so this is what I ended up with
I saw a post a few weeks ago that had pictures of a few different simple little purses that had appliqué details of windows and doors, so they looked like houses. They were very cute! Ans also very uncredited. I looked for sources, and quickly discovered that most of them had been re-posted without credit for so long that the originals were lost, or at least extremely obscured, but I found enough of them to further discover that making purses like that seemed to have been fairly popular among non-English-language craft bloggers 10-15 years ago. Here's my Tumblr post of the sources I could find, plus a few others.
As with most craft things, spending that much time looking at this craft made me want to try this craft. I dug into my scrap stash--the same stash I used for the patchwork waist cincher-not-really project, so it's the same pink-blue-green color scheme
And possibly even less planning.
I'm still trying to figure out my motorcycle jacket options, so I had the idea to revisit Vogue 1714
but without the peplum. Yes, I know, the peplum is what, at a glance, sets this pattern apart from other motorcycle jacket patterns. However, a less obvious thing that differentiates this pattern from others is that it's not quite as boxy as the motorcycle jacket patterns I've tried. (As I type this, I'm wearing one of the extra boxy Kwik Sew 3764 I've made, but in knit as an intentionally casual kinda thing.)
I initially thought I'd make this with some robin's egg blue pleather that's been in my stash for 20 years, but I changed my mind when I started sewing it--the surface was extra plasticizer oily and stuck badly to the presser foot when I tried to top stitch. With most vinyls I've sewn, I only needed to change to a leather needle and they sewed fine, no excess sticking. Well, then, that would be a good opportunity to finally use my roller foot, right? Well, then, that was when I finally realized that the roller foot I had--gift in a random lot of presser feet--was for a slant shank machine. So. I wouldn't be using that pleather. (And, honestly, I wasn't fond of the oily way it felt. The rest is going to the craft thrift store. I'm also ordering a roller foot that will fit my machine.)
I had, however, been ready to make a blue moto jacket--did I have any suitable fabric that was anywhere near close in color...but that I wouldn't mind having used if the jacket didn't turn out so well? I looked in the part of the fabric stash reserved for heavier fabrics--nothing. (There is a pale green twill that I do want to use for a moto jacket, once I decide on a pattern.) But, oh, yeah--there was some fabric up in a different area, because it hadn't fit in the heavy fabric area.
It was a Walmart mill end precut, the roll in the center here
Which is very interesting, but also very orange. So I had buyer's regret and wedged it into a weird place and kinda forgot about it.
I decided that, for this project, to get my blue(ish) moto jacket, I could go ahead and use the reverse after all
I really do plan to sew fewer things this year than I did last year. It's just that...these T-shirts are really easy to sew, and are things I've wanted to make for a while, so I'm riding this T-shirt wave until either the available appropriate fabric--or the T-shirt sewing motivation--gets used up.
And this version of New Look 6068 (again with Kwik Sew 303 sleeves) shows that the definition of appropriate fabric is flexible--no, not switching to overwhelmingly synthetic fabrics, but instead to...scraps!
The Selfish Seamstress had the philosophy of saving your sewing effort for fun things, for things you couldn't go easily buy. I get the idea behind that, absolutely, but I'd say the definition of "easily" is variable enough that this can still qualify as good ol' Selfish Sewing (with good ol' New Look 6068)
Going to start with the declaration that I do not, as of this post, own any fabric medium. So, when I used the freezer paper bones left over from what I used to make the reverse appliqué rib cage shirt to paint a rib cage on another shirt, I knew it would end up...crunchy.
After finishing the reroots, I wanted to get back to sewing with a quick project, and New Look 6068 (and the ways I vary it) is one of the quickest.
I also decided to use up a bit of dark red cotton interlock, the origin of which...I have no idea, and there wasn't enough for sleeves. I really wanted sleeves. So! Contrast sleeves it is. And I would use the same contrast fabric for the neckband ribbing modification I use on that pattern. The pink rib knit I've used many times seemed like a good candidate...but...I didn't have enough of that for long sleeves.
Since I need to replenish my "t-shirts for layering" supply, I decided against using the flared/elastic sleeves included with New Look 6068 and once again borrowed the sleeves from Kwik Sew 303, which is definitely my standard combo now, so I took an official photo of them together
That brought me to the point of cutting things out and getting ready to sew and thinking...hmm. Dark red and gray-heathered pink aren't exactly summery short sleeve colors. Maybe I could add...appliqué? I'm certainly no stranger to that. So...what shape? Heart(s)? Red and pink in February certainly suggest hearts, but I'm not, in general, a hearts kind of person. So...strawberries, again? I found some muted pink calico with scattered white dots in the small yardage stash, and still had more than enough green broadcloth with Wonder Under already fused to the back, so, yes. Strawberries.
