A lot of shirts without buttons, a dress, and CityCraft

I severely altered a Burda boys' shirt pattern to make it into a western-style shirt, complete with embroidered yokes and contrasting piping!!

This shirt is for a friend who is doing her own pearl snaps. I "cannot" apply set snaps by hand...there is something TOO intricate in the operation and it makes me sweat. So, I agreed to make the shirts, but the snaps are DIY.


The cherries embroidery pattern is from Jenny Hart.



I used the same pattern for William's Christmas shirt, but got the embroidery patterns from Needlecrafter: there are some great patterns on there for the hand-embroiderer. For Aldous' shirt, top, I used a Butterick pattern, also severely altered. These also have contrasting piping, and the back/bottom side of the collar is dark red fabric, too!



To finish these, I'm hoping to find some appropriate pearl snap-like buttons at Golden D'or's Black Friday sale, but if not, I'm sure to have something in the ton-o'-buttons that Bonnie gave me.


Since Aldous' shirt didn't have a placket or cuff, I did a band of the contrast fabric on the sleeve hem.


In coordinating Moda fabric, I did Audrey's dress, from Ottobre. It's a simple dress with a zippered back, contrasting yoke, and I added a bit of piping to the yoke, as well.


And a snowflake button.



Last night I went to CityCraft's SECOND EVER lounge night...it was so fun!! Everyone there was friendly and people were making the most awesome things!! I, however, made this onesie to go with Audrey's Thanksgiving bloomers. AND I didn't finish it there because I had to use my snap press here.


I put not-quite-matching-but-awesome-because-they're-Ooga Booga snaps on it. I got these from KAMsnaps.com, but rumor has it these are selling out!! ACK!!! I almost bought more, because she's almost out of them, but I have a gazillion so there's no chance of ME running out any time soon.


Off to crack the whip on those elves!!! Santa's to-do list is HUGE this year!!! work, work, work!!

"This is Hat Week!!!", so declares Aldous, in his more authoritative voice.

It seems my dear Aldous has discovered the joy of hat wearing!! William has not yet discovered this joy, but that's another story.

I bought these things to help with the hair washing in the shower. They're just foam visors but when I showed it to Aldous and told him it was a hat, he put it on himself!! He hadn't previously tried to wear a hat, but for some reason, this hot pink visor spoke to him.



For the rest of the day, there was no stopping him!!! He tried a bucket, next!!!


Then a construction hat.......



And then, again, today with the construction hat.


And the bucket again.


It's the funniest thing ever!! He puts the hat on, then has to walk around and around in it, giggling the whole time!! So silly!!

Crafty Day!!!

Typically, I hate crafts. I LOVE apparel design and construction, and I like to paint. I also love drawing, which gets used a ton in both of those endeavors, but crafting??? No way!! I hate painting little do-dads, hot-gluing, putting on beads and sequins, cutting up stuff, etc...uggg....boring!!!

But, today, a terrible thing happened. Doug had used up all the disposable diapers, and tho I had told him last week that we were nearly out and I had to order Monday, he forgot. BOO!!! And so he happily used them all, forgetting that I needed six today to go with William to Kidztime.

With William home all day, I can pretty much expect to do no sewing. Maybe a little something during his nap time, but nothing as great as I usually get in on Monday sewing day. To say I was disappointed with this turn of events would be an understatement. Then, I find out that there is no sewing lounge tonight at CityCraft. BOO BOO!!! I had tried to console myself with going there for a few hours to sew tonight, but NOPE!!! Crappy, crappy day.


So I did a craft!! What else to do when the day already sucks??
I saw a tutorial for making scarves out of tee shirts that looked pretty easy so I shared it on Facebook.

I had just sacked up a whole bunch of tees and other knit shirts (maternity!!) to send to Goodwill, so I got those all out again. Lots of colors to choose from!!


I went with red and green for the first one. The tutorial mentioned a lack of fullness so I decided I would double up on my squares and do a double layer rather than the single layer she did. I figured it could go one of two ways: Either it would be too heavy and just hang there limply, OR it would be much fuller and glamorous-looking!!! These are 4" squares, btw.


So I pinned all these together, 40 pairs of them, although the blog author suggest something like 56 to 64, in a single layer? I did 80 in a double layers...whatever, stupid crafts.


Here's the whole long snakey piece.


and then zigzagged together with red thread.


I tossed it in the dryer w/ a damp load to fluff it up a bit. I LIKE it!! pretty neat!


While I was out in garage liberating my scarf from the dryer, William tried to take Aldous' clothes off. He ran into trouble at the feet, though and didn't know how to get the cuffs over his shoes. Ha ha!!!


Crawling by. Yes that's a disposable. It's diaper-washing day. William is wearing prefolds with a snappy and a wool soaker...ha ha!



Ok, so after I made the first one, I realized that instead of cutting up all of those tees, I could just use the scraps in my knit scrap bin. It's quite full, and has lots of nifty scraps. However, this DOES take longer than using a shirt. You have to dig around in the bin, and b/c the pieces are already small, you can't cut very many at a time, then you have to organize the placement, etc.





I love this one, and I'm going to stop cutting up those shirts and put them back into the goodwill bag. :)

My Wrap Top from Weekend Designer

One of my favorite blogs is Weekend Designer. Shortly after I started following, the author stopped posting, but he left behind a BILLION tutorials for drafting patterns for the best designs!!

I decided to give his Show Topper a whirl this weekend. I had just gotten a bunch of matte jersey from Fabric.com. It was one of their Daily Deals, and I got it for about $4/yd. This stuff is so soft and drapey......I'm in love!!!! (pretty shift to sew, though, so use a lot of pins!!)


As you can see, I chose the red for this top. I was so torn about which to use, because I want to do a wrap dress from one of them.

I referred to my dress form a lot during the construction of this, as it has both front and back darts and I wanted to check the fit. Also, Weekend Designers suggestion for the collar length and sleeve length were both short (to me) and I had to make them longer, thus requiring a bit of finagling on my part.

Even though this pattern was drafted from my measurements, I was still suspicious that it wouldn't be the correct length. Most commercial patterns have to be lengthened by two inches to fit me properly, and after doing that for so long, it's a hard habit to break.

The front, pinned together, darts sewn.


back


close up of the final collar length



After finally deciding to bind the front edges of the top rather than hem them, I got it all put together.




Here I am in my finished top!! I'm REALLY happy with it. It looks great, and is super comfortable and I LOVE that it fits so perfectly. See Aldous trying to get in the pic??? that ham!!




a bit about hemming knits:

to hem knits, I usually use a double needle. This reduces the stretching quite a bit, and it looks nice. however, some fabrics STILL stretch, so I got a tip to use Stitch Witchery. I already had a bit of Heat n Bond lite, which I used and works great!! You iron down one side, the peel the lining off, fold your hem, then iron it down!! Double needle right over it for a perfect hem!!

But then I ran out. Because so many people recommended Stitch Witchery, I bought some. A lot of it. It turns out, tho, that I don't like it as much!! Because it doesn't have a peel away side, you have to catch the strip of it between the hem fold and iron it down. It's a bit tricky. However, once you manage that, it sews up just the same. I'm sure I'll use my 7 million yards of Stitch Witchery, but I can't wait until I run out so I can buy some Heat N Bond lite...that stuff rocks!!

whoa....NO ONE can knit this fast!!!

Two hours total, for my soft fuzzy sweater hoodie!!! From Jalie 2911, my sweater hoodie is made from a soft fuzzy blue sweater knit that I bought for $3-ish/yd from Golden D'or. So, this cost roughly $7 in materials, and I'm sure I'll use the pattern more than once. It has 27 sizes, so it'll fit all my girls, and also Audrey at some point. It's incredible. Perfect fit, fast sewing!!





This is a more accurate picture of the color. I totally need photography lessons. All of my pics of stuff I make are hideous!! bleck!!!

A New Shirt for Me!!

But first, a cute picture of the boys, holding hands nicely. This lasted for about 3 more feet, then was all over.



This is the long sleeved tee shirt pattern Jalie 2805. I love Jalie patterns!! The fit is great, they go together so easily and they have like 27 sizes in one pattern. This fabric was a panel I had gotten at Golden D'or (Golden "door" not "dee orr", by the way) but hadn't found the appropriate pattern (i.e. one that fits) to make any thing with it. I've had it for MONTHS!!! I have a couple more of this yellow and a few of a blue with tulips. The blue knit is from Silviav73 (of UbetUwin) on eBay, my fav source for knit solids.


Close up of the front design.


Not a bad fit for a first time using a pattern. I pronounce this one a winner!!!

the footy jammies project

I'm on a mission to make a couple of pairs of the zipper footy pajamas. However, the only footy pj pattern I have uses snaps, and doesn't have any grippy stuff on the foot. The foot and leg are constructed from one piece.

So...I'm working on. Here's my first try. The zipper is good, but I need to add an inch or so to the sole of the foot, and put some elastic at the ankles to keep them from drooping.

I put some socks on Aldous so he wouldn't fall in his droopy feet.




I used my cheaper JoAnn knit for these rather than my super special robot and weiner dog fabric I'd been saving up.I wanted to make sure I got it right before I used those.
See the grippy stuff? it's a bit short. It's fine for his walking around but I'll need to add some elastic to the ankles of these.




The pattern I altered so much is the snapped footed pajamas from Kwik Sew's Sewing for Baby.

here's my second try!! I made the sleeves a bit longer, the grippy foot longer, and added elastic to the ankle. MUCH better!!!


lots of grippy foot!!!





demostrating the elasticized ankles.

see?? You can walk in these and they won't trip you!!!

I'm totally ready for the wiener dog fabric!! Hurray!!

I did it!! My favs so far!! I didn't want to start with this fabric, lest I mess it up and be sad. :(
However, these turned out perfectly, and got a size tag, to boot!!



I didn't want the first pair to not be used because of the too small grippy area and the non-elasticized droopy ankles, so I cut off the feet and sewed on some cuffs.




And should you be worried that I had depleted the world supply of zippers on this quest, fear not. I have a bin of zippers just waiting to be used. In fact, many of those zippers have been waiting 30 years or more to be used. I bought a huge box of vintage zippers at an auction about 15 years ago and am still working on it. I have since bought some smaller-sized zipper lots, but the majority are the vintage auction zippers.


In keeping with the resourcefulness, all solid color fabrics used on these pajamas were from my knit scrap bin, which rivals my knit stash itself.