Saturday Snippets

All I have today, is snippets, I'm afraid. Although I've been sewing on and off all day, there's not anything truly completed to look at. So what have I been doing?

Let's see:

• Alterations. I had a fitting appointment for a client last evening who was bringing three garments. She brought seven. Needless to say, I've been working on her clothes.
  

• The Yellow Quilt. The top is actually done, and I found a long-arm quilter who can meet my deadline for quilting it. I'm a bit behind on posting the construction, but I'll show you a photo of the completed top and how much space it takes up. Right now, I'm going through the whole thing, clipping threads and checking to make sure everything is lined up just right. Once that is done, it will be pressed and hung on a hanger to keep it smooth and wrinkle free.

• My daughter's book bag. This has turned into my project, actually. My daughter's skills are not quite at the right level to make this bag, so she's helping reading directions, pressing, pinning, sewing straight simple seams and things like that. With her help, I should be able to finish the bag tomorrow.
  

• Butterfly Button. I finished this one last night. I found some great little butterfly beads, so the next few buttons will feature those.

Parting Shot: Light Bulb. This little light bulb goes in my regular sewing machine, the Janome 4800QC. It also burned out Monday morning. Because it a special halogen bulb made for the machine, I had to buy it at my dealer and couldn't get there until Thursday afternoon. I sewed for four days without a light and almost went crazy! The price for regaining my sanity? $10 USD.

The Yellow Quilt

Constructing the Circles

The circles, actually partial circles are the next step in constructing the quilt. The melon shapes are attached to star shapes to make circles. Since all the pieces interlock for this quilt, the entire circle can not be constructed initially. Partial circles will be made and then stitched to other partial circles to complete the circles.

Each partial circle is made of a star shape and two melon shapes:

The star is pinned and stitched to one melon shape as described for stitching the arcs to the melons in the last post. The centers are first pinned together, then the farthest outside points and then pinned in between those two points. Once stitched and pressed, the star looks like this:

The second melon is attached to the star in the same way. This quilt has five rows of five stars each. That means, I'll need one partial circle with three melons and four partial circles with two melons. The one with three melons is the one that starts the row, as that third melon on the left is actually the outside edge of the row. You can see how this will work and how the pieces interlock in the photo below.

Note that there are no melons at the top of the pieces, as these pieces will interlock into the row above. Next week, I'll show you the final construction steps.

Parting Shot: Tape Binders. I picked up the two binding feet for my coverstitch machine from my sewing machine dealer yesterday. They weren't cheap, but now that I have them, I can do bindings with the coverstitch machine. Notice how large they are - those are my fabric cutting shears shown with the binders.

The Yellow Quilt

Constructing the Melon Shapes

Once the arcs are made, then the melon shapes can be constructed using two arcs and a smaller white melon:

Notice that all of these seams will be curved. Those who also sew apparel have probably encountered curved seams at one point or other. They might have an easier time with piecing the curved shapes. Careful pinning of the pieces together will help to make sure the pieces will join smoothly. I start by pinning the short arc to the white melon shape. I place one pin at the center, then one at the far right and then one pin in between the first two. The arc will stretch a bit to fit properly at the joined edge, but will ripple on the free edge.

I repeat the pinning procedure for the left side and then take the pinned pieces to the sewing machine and stitch the seam. After pressing, the melon shape looks like this:

The second arc is then pinned in place the same way as the first arc and stitched.

That's all there is to making the melons. Careful pinning and matching of pieces is essential, but with practice this becomes easy.

Parting Shot: Jalie Pattern. This is the pattern I picked from Timmel Fabrics for finishing my SWAP. Since it contains patterns for both the camisole and panties, this will be part of my under wear making adventure planned for late summer/early fall.

Weekly Wardrobe

The Easter Suit That Wasn't - Jacket

I finished the jacket! The suit is now complete, albeit 2 months to late for Easter. The jacket is Patrones January 2008 Model #26 - Hennes & Mauritz Jacket. I really loved this jacket when I saw it in the magazine. The lines are simple and the details are beautiful. You might not be able to see from the photograph, but there are bound buttonholes, covered snaps and buttons, sleeves with vents and welt pockets with flaps.

My version includes piping around the collar and pockets flaps for definition:

The sleeves have buttonholes and buttons. Although they look fine, I got mixed up a bit when I traced the pattern and graded down to my size and forgot to move the buttonhole over. They're a too close to the vent.

Here's the inside of the sleeve hem, finished with a miter and hemmed before stitching the sleeve lining in place:

The jacket includes bound buttonholes, which you've already seen, but I've added a little something to them. When I made the test buttonholes, I felt that the lips of the buttonhole were too flat or too thin. The red fabric is a looser woven boucle type fabric, and the thin silk dupionni did not look right. I decided to add cording to the buttonholes to make them more substantial. They also then matched the piping made of the same silk. I decided to add the cording after the buttonholes were made (rather than making the buttonholes with covered cording, similar to piping) by taking a large eye needle threaded with cotton cording and drawing it through each lip before the final step of stitching down each end of the buttonhole. If you want a step by step tutorial, let me know and I'll get one together.

The suit also have covered buttons and snaps. The female sides of the snaps (not shown) are truly covered. This fabric is not ideal for doing such a thing, and I came up with a good solution for the male sides of the snaps. I simply and carefully (!) pushed a few fibers to the side and pushed the snap through from the wrong side. I then stitched the snap to the underlining and invisibly to the underside of the fabric without the stitches showing on the right side. Since this is a looser woven fabric, I was able to do this without breaking the fibers.

I decided to line the jacket. The instructions did not include information on lining, there were no fabric requirements, layouts or pieces, but it did have instructions for facings. I decided to make the entire front of the fashion fabric because the lining was very thin and I didn't want to see the undersides of the pockets through the lining. Other than that, it is a standard jacket lining with a pleat for wearing ease at center back.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the way this jacket turned out! I will post pictures of me actually wearing the suit next week after I have some pictures taken on Sunday. I also need to get some shoes for this outfit! I was thinking of beige, but I saw some other printed ones that might work.

Stay tuned! Next week will be another Patrones model!

Parting Shot: Reward. My husband bought himself a TV as a reward for passing his exam. This is actually the first TV we've ever bought. The one we were using was a hand me down from his parents, and was 25 years old. Not that I watch much TV anyway, maybe 3 hours per week, and stitching while watching/listening anyway.

Publish Post

Hmm . . .

I had a reader, Pat, send me an email yesterday regarding the pink Vogue Couturier #167 dress I made about a year and a half ago. [Note to SueB: This is probably the *only* time you'll see me wearing pink!] Here's the pattern:

Now, Pat's point was this: take a look at Mrs. Bush in the photo below, taken at her daughter Jenna's wedding this past weekend:

Notice anything similar? Pat noticed the similarities between the pink Vogue and Mrs. Bush's dress, but I also knew I had seen a similar pattern recently and went hunting on eBay for it. I found it, Vogue 4244 from the early 1960's, currently on auction on eBay. Please follow the link to see the pattern, I don't have permission to use the seller's photograph, but go take a look. Interesting how fashion seems to have cycles and everything comes around again, isn't it?

Thanks Pat, I probably wouldn't have known unless I saw pictures of the Bush wedding in the newspapers at school!

Parting Shot: 1930's Vintage. Suzanne sent me this pattern. She received some patterns when buying some fabric at an estate sale, and this is one of them! Thank you, Suzanne! Check out those sleeves - they've got pointed insets very much like the yoke on the skirt.

Wardrobe Refashion!

Not Quite Scarlett O'Hara . . .

My daughter's new skirt is not quiet as dramatic as Scarlett O'Hara's green gown made from curtains in Gone With the Wind, but she's very happy with it.

Actually, I think she looks a little more Little House on the Prairie than Gone With the Wind! Of course this is what she wore to school today - with shoes, of course!

This skirt is basically the girl's skirt from BWOF 9/07 ), which I have made many times now for her. It was really the only option since once the hem and rod channel was ripped out of the fabric it was 16" wide. When I originally made the valance, I cut four pieces of fabric, across the width of the fabric, but 18" wide. These were then seamed to make one very long piece which was then made into the valance. To make the skirt, I cut that width in half, and then took out some of the seams so that the top tier is only one fabric width around, the second is two and the third is made of 4 fabric widths. I also used the coverstitch machine on the hem and didn't have to serge first, then turn and hem!

The back has the signature tag:

She was so excited to go to school today and wants more skirts like this one. Her happiness brings up an interesting story from yesterday when I was finishing the skirt. My son came into the studio and asked me what I was doing and I said making a skirt. He then asked if I would have picked that fabric and style for myself. He didn't think it was for me, because although he's 7 years old, he's pretty observant and knows my tastes. I explained to him I wouldn't pick this for myself, but that I was making it for his sister and that sometimes you make things for others because they like them regardless of whether you like it or not. It was an interesting moment and we had a good discussion on respecting other's tastes and preferences even if they are not our own.

Parting Shot: New Makeup! I use mineral make up due to my skin type and I really like Aromaleigh. The company is owned by a woman who has been doing this for a long time - before mineral makeup became so popular. She has the most extensive collection of colors I have ever seen for eyes, face, and lips. She has about 40 different foundation shades, and if you can't find a perfect match, you can custom blend your own by ordering the individual shades and mixing your own. That's what I do - I mix two colors to get the right shade. She also sells little sample bags of every product so you can try before you buy and sends free samples with every order. The only downside is that she does not ship internationally. Do let me know if you want something - I'd be happy to order it up and get it to you. I'm pretty good friends with my postal workers in the area of international shipping!

Wardrobe Refashion!

I've been watching what my daughter has been wearing to school the past week and realized that she has grown out of many of her school clothes. The weather has finally warmed up and the clothes she wore at the beginning of the school certainly don't fit now! I found one skirt and a couple of shirts on clearance today while out shopping and then came home to see what else I could do. We only have 5 more weeks of school, so I only want to fill in the gaps in her wardrobe, not make an entire wardrobe she'll grow out of before the end of summer!

I found this unlikely group of things:

From the left we have a white mock turtleneck my husband wasn't interested in anymore but that I kept for the knit fabric, the old valances that I made for my daughter's room when it was blue, that is a lot of nice quilting cotton so I kept those too. On the right, there is a jumper which I found in my daughter's closet. The top is too small for her to wear, but the bottom portion still fits.

Here's what we have so far, after less than 3 hours of sewing:

The white top was made from the white mock turtleneck. I cut apart the turtleneck and used the fabric to make Simplicity 9362 (out of print), view H.

This was also a good excuse to try out the new coverstitch machine! I only used it for the hems, which are not perfect, but it was still fun to experiment a bit with it.

The jumper was cut off at the middle and remaining bottom half was made into a simple elastic waist skirt. The jumper has seen better days anyway, so I think it will survive in this form for the remainder of the school year. I also included a ribbon tag at the back. I do this for all ambiguous elastic waist items - it makes figuring out the front from the back much easier.

Parting Shot: The Blue Valances. So what of the blue valances? Well, here they are, having the hems and curtain rod channels ripped out so they can be cut into wide strips for a tiered skirt. Since the skirt is for my daughter, I thought she could help. She's having so much fun, can't you tell?