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...