Burda 6800--finally!

In late 2014, I decided I really wanted to sew a motorcycle jacket from a chintz fabric that I had recently thrifted.  In early 2015, Burda released this printed pattern AND THEN Joann actually had a Burda pattern sale, so I bought this right away

And then I did nothing with it for nearly five years

Checkered/Past/Sweatshirt

My kid is sarcastic.  It's nature and nurture and a concentrated effort on his part. (He's also ten, so there's not much subtlety to his sarcasm, but I'm sure it'll develop.)  So when I spotted a very probably authentic later 1980s/early 1990s print jersey knit in the thrift store, I knew he'd like something made from it--and I'd already thrifted Kwik•Sew 1650, a kids' sweats pattern from 1987, so there was no need to wonder what pattern to use.

I chose the shirt from view A simply because view B just looks too fussy.  I did consider using the shoulder contrasts from view B, as well as considered omitting the shoulder contrasts completely.

I ended up going with "only do the contrasts on the front and omit them on the back despite what the pattern says" (which is what whoever owned the pattern before had apparently done, too.)  I also chose not to add the eyelet vents, because my eyelet setting skills are not...good. (Except for micro eyelets, thanks to a generous person who passed on their micro eyelet hand crimper to me...I really should remember to use that thing for doll clothes again...)

Don't Sweat(shirt) the Details

A few years ago, I thrifted a few yards of an amazing "old enough to be trendy again" chintz-type printed lightweight interlock knit.

I also, around that time,  thrifted this pattern, McCall's 5070

 which I fairly quickly used to make this

(and I am wearing it as I type this, and I have worn it just about every winter day since I made it)

But from the start, I knew I wanted to use the fabulous chintz-ish interlock to make a sweatshirt, and yesterday I finally did!

And I am also wearing it right  now, along with the jacket.  They coordinate well, which I probably shouldn't admit was a complete surprise.

Bluebird of Friendliness

It is mid-January and actually almost cold outside so that's the perfect time to try out a pattern for a breezy loose caftan-y dress, right?

Simplicity 9153 from 1989 is illustrated like this

and my first inclination was to cringe, because I have always been a Sewing Snob who refused to even consider sewing something as simple *scoff* as an extended sleeve like this.  (I think they're technically a kind of kimono sleeve, but...that's not how real kimono sleeves are made, either, so that only redoubled the Snobbery.)  I had the idea, though, that I could use this to make stuff for friends who were larger pattern sizes than I was, so I went ahead and thrifted it.

Time passed and then I had the whole "accept that the size I am now is not the size I was three years ago and that probably won't ever be the size I am again, so eliminate all the things that don't fit including patterns and let's see what we have to start over with" epiphany and came to consider using this pattern to make something for me. (But without cutting any of original tissue pieces so the option is still absolutely there to use it to make stuff for other people.)  My current bust size is right between 16 and 18, and this pattern offers 14-16 Medium or 18-20 Large on that end of the size range.  I decided to go ahead and cut the bodice in the large, just to get an idea of fit.

I changed a few of aspects of the dress, of course--mostly making the neck line a bit  higher and a lot rounder, and also using a lot less fabric for the skirt, ending up with something shorter and considerably less full.

And you know what?  The only reason I won't flat-out say that it's too big is because there's no such thing as too loose in this kind of dress.  I probably would have been fine cutting the bodice in medium.

"I love them," he said

So this week the kiddo's school rewarded the students for having perfect attendance; the reward was dress up days.  Monday was Labor day, so no school; Tuesday: Hat Day (kiddo didn't care); Wednesday: Sport Jersey Day (kiddo didn't care, and, furthermore, nothing could've stopped him from wearing the t-shirt I freezer-stenciled a Half Life lambda on for him on Tuesday anyway); Thursday: Pajama Day--dingdingding pajama days are his favorites.  He wears pajamas pretty much every day he doesn't have to leave the house (a trait he 100% did not get from me.  I don't even like staying in pajamas when I'm sick.)

The constant pajama wearing was especially hard on the pajama pants I made for him (for the last school pajama day) and that I seem not to have blogged.  They were made from a penguin and snowflake print flannel that someone sent to me, and I had more than enough to make that first pair...and I thought there was enough left to make another pair, a reassurance I stuck to when the pajama pants in question blew out at the knees and ripped in all directions from there.  Which he thought was hilarious.

Not gonna let him wear those to school pajama day, though.

So!  Time to make another pair--this time with reinforced knees, an option already in good ol' KwikSew 2544

I've been using the faux fly from view A for years, but this was the first time using the knee patches from that view.  I also decided to eliminate any hint of the fly completely, as well as extend the top to make a fold over waistband, with elastic all around, instead of the flat front with elastic only in the back as the pattern is designed.  Oh, and, eliminate the pockets. (And also eliminate the cuff elastic, which my brain kinda refuses to even acknowledge is there in the picture.)

But it's basically the same pattern.  Also cut on the size 14 width lines but size 10 leg and size 12 waist rise.  Still the same pattern.

And then of course I discovered that there was not enough of the penguin print left to make an entire pair of pants.

Now...OK...see...

I don't like flannel.

But I do like cloth and bargains and ridiculous prints, so I had a few yards of an eyeglasses print flannel, plus that yard of Pokémon print flannel that the kiddo picked out a few months ago.  He's since lost some enthusiasm for Pokémon and shifted over to Half Life, so I tried selling him on the eyeglasses print as being a very vague reference to the glasses on Gordon Freeman and the other scientists of the game.  He said yeah sure but he also really wanted another pair of penguin pants.  I changed the angle and suggested mixing the prints.  That got some enthusiasm, because this kid does love humorously obnoxious combinations of stuff.

So.  Glasses + Penguins.

I cut the entire back out of the glasses print (no effort to print match, so of course it shows how close it was to matching the print)

 and the front was one leg of each, with the knee patches swapped printwise.

 I didn't look at the pattern directions for the knee patches--I just knew that even two layers of flannel probably wouldn't last too long, so I added a layer of a random cotton broadcloth.

I sewed the flannel to the broadcloth right sides together, then flipped them right sides out and  ironed the edges before aligning the patches with the pattern notches and edge stitching and top stitching the patches to the legs.  I hope three layers of cloth will be more durable.

 Edge stitching along the center seams (which I somehow completely forgot to serge?) and double stitching on the elastic channel.

 The cuffs were serged and then folded inward twice.  I know that serging is kind of a waste there, since the raw edge absolutely does not show, but it really helps me get an idea of how much to fold, since, y'know, I can't be bothered to measure.

When I finished and showed him, he smiled and very quietly said, "I love them."

So yay!

Tomorrow is the last day of dress up week--the theme is Mismatched Day.

That should be interesting...

Breathable Soft Cash

After the kiddo's last dentist appointment, I took him to JoAnn Fabric to pick out cloth.  Now, my intent was to use the cloth to make many more pairs of Obnoxious Shorts™, but he said he would rather have some of them as shirts.

 Not a problem!  ...mostly...

Skirt...just...skirt

I have body image issues, and they've kept me from trying to make things that fit properly.  I'm trying, though.  I used some cloth that was in one of the thrift fabric grab bags (which apparently are things I absolutely cannot resist, so I really should start using the cloth from them...) and a thrifted New Look pattern...which I haven't taken a picture of?  Huh.  It's New Look 6843, and it doesn't quite go large enough, so I added extra width, mainly by cutting the back on the fold but leaving the seam allowance in.  The zipper got moved to the side, but, if I do this again, I'll probably leave the zipper in a back seam and add pockets.  Pockets are nice.

I made it a month ago and apparently was so disillusioned with the size that this was the only picture I took.  It has a nice vintage metal zipper, jeans gold topstitching, ribbon faced waistband, and some edelweiss print bias tape facing the hem.

Whether or not it fits seems to depend on if I've recently eaten or not--I'd've thought that making it a bit too large like that would've made me feel better, but...nope.  Ah, well, at least I finally remembered to blog it.

I was going to make another skirt today, using a thrifted pattern from 1978 in the measurements-say-correct size, buuuut, when I took everything out of the envelope, oh, hey, the only parts of the skirt pattern there were the bits cut off of the longer length.  So that killed my enthusiasm, at least for a while.  I'm going to look through my patterns again...oh, and I need to get the cloth the kiddo picked out of the dryer, so I can get one step closer to making that stuff, too...

Obnoxious Shorts™

The last days of school were approaching, with Field Day being a big event for the kiddo, and he'd suddenly decided he was A-OK with the idea of wearing shorts.

He's also quite keen on the idea of loud prints.

Well.

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?

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.

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.

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...

Periwinkle and red

So I thrifted a few yards of a...sorta...dusty periwinkle heavy knit, and decided I'd use some of it to make a hoodie for the kiddo, once again using Burda 9672

(yes, I know, the separating-zipper view is not the hooded view.  Minor quibble.)

 The only separating zippers in the appropriate length I had were white, gray, and bright red.  I couldn't decide between the white or gray, so I showed all of the options to the kiddo and let him decide.

He chose the red zipper.

Well...then...

Huh.

I'm sure he would have had no problem with a purely periwinkle hoodie with a red zipper, but my brain demanded that something else be done so the red zipper would 'make sense'...somehow.

Ah, but, I had about a half yard of a red double jersey knit!  As to what I did with it...