Thursday, October 14, 2021

Blue Cord Shorts

 When I got KwikSew 3854, it was for view A (shorter version)


When I looked up reviews of the pattern, I discovered that view B was what most people wanted out of it, some to the point of being...ah...very disparaging of view A.  This did serve to make me maybe possibly consider making view B at some point, but determined to make view A first.


Saturday, October 9, 2021

Stripe Knit Shirt in Blue (and other colors)

 I can resist most of the fabrics that show up in the mill-end pre-cut bins at Walmart, but not all of the fabrics that show up in the mill-end pre-cut bins at Walmart.  The main saving factor is my dislike of wearing synthetics, but that...can be overridden by the cloth being really really cool...

So I bought a 2 yard for $4 roll of very probably synthetic knit in an interesting stripe (and texture, although that texture is on the purl side and I can never think of that as the face of a knit, so...just stripe) in shades of dark blue and burgundy and cream and black.

And when I took off the label and unrolled it, I discovered that there was only one yard.  Even at 60" wide, that still severely limited my project options.  I decided, yesterday afternoon, to figure out what to do with it, and turned to a pattern I've had for a long time--so long that it's been partly cut in a very small size: New Look 6068 (and...I had honestly forgotten that I'd used it for projects a few years ago).  But!  Not all of the views use the same basic bodice pieces, and the mixn'n'matchin' was obvious

View C, with the little sleeves, in my current size, plus the neckline and collar from View A (adapted from being cut in a smaller size.)

Well, y'know...more or less...

Friday, October 8, 2021

Zippy Zips

 So I had two decent-size rectangles of the Ikea fabric left over from the scrap-filled floor pillow(ish) project, and apparently what my brain wants to do with scraps of Ikea fabric is make zip bags.

So.

Here are two more zip bags made from Ikea fabric.

The pattern placement turned out as good as it would have if I had been making these intentionally--well, on the one with the bird, at least.  The other is...minimalist.

See?  Even the print on the back of the bird is a nice assortment and distribution of elements.  The other one is...a void. And what you can see on the other side of that one in the first photo is all of the print on it.  I think it's funny.

They both use yellow zippers that I remember Mom buying in bulk in a weird fabric store in the very early 1980s.  No lining, just serged the very few seams, so these were super fact to make.

No ideas yet what I'll do with them, but, hey: I'll have em when I do figure that out.


Thursday, October 7, 2021

Quick Halloween Shirt (Not Terribly Well Thought Out)

 I've wanted to make another large-bow version of McCall's 5675, like I did with the pillowcase shirt project, but this time with fabric that...wasn't so excessively synthetic.  And maybe in a Halloween print?  And I wanted the whole project to be quick.

I managed to do all that, and probably will do a project with the same descriptors again, but I'm unsure about the wisdom of my choices in this particular instance.

Sunday, October 3, 2021

Scrap-filled Floor Pillow...ish

 So, I recently finally dealt with all the fabric that had been in plastic tubs in the garage since I made the effort to downsize and organize fabric in my stash after receiving all of the friend's relative's destash in 2019.  I donated the usable yardage, keeping some I decided maybe I would use after all, and had a large trashbag left of scraps of fabric that were not suitable for patchwork or small crafts, or that were Very Unpleasant Textures, and also a lot of pieces of clothing that had had parts cut off in unrepairable ways.

I do know that there are institutions that will recycle fabric, but, if there are any around here, their web presence does not make that obvious.  I was almost ready to just sigh and throw it all away...but...wait...

So I looked up floor pillows stuffed with fabric scraps and found that that is indeed a thing.  I shuffled through my fabric and found two small pieces of decorator weight Ikea fabric (that I think cane from two different people's destashes.)  I measured nothing, just started ripping things to what seemed to be good sizes.

A lot of the projects I'd looked at had piping, so after some waffling, I got one of the bias tapes I'd made randomly and filled it with textured acrylic yarn I'd thrifted, made 4-ply with the aid of a drill.  Family members gave me some odd looks while I was doing that.

I basted the piping to the edges of the top and bottom pieces

Inserted a lapped zipper so I wouldn't have to deal with stitching anything closed later

Assembled it and started stuffing

It needed more than the scraps I'd had in the trash bag, and will probably benefit from more stuffing in the future, but, hey, that should be easy enough with the zipper, right?

Yes, it's a big lumpy mess, but it's also just the right height to put your feet on when you're sitting on the couch


Husband says the weight means it'd probably be a good punching bag, too...

Another quickie

 This time for the kiddo, who currently wears his hair in a low ponytail held with a black jersey knit scrunchie that was in a package of otherwise doll stuff someone gave me.  So, I thought I'd offer a different scrunchie.

He likes purple.

(and of course I didn't measure the fabric, just squared up a scrap that looked roughly the right size)