Not that I’ll wear it today.

But the weekend is shaping up.  Last night we went to the movies to see Get Smart,  which was a fun way to kick of my birthday weekend.  We grew up watching the B&W version, although I don’t remember too much about it–other than it was st-oo-pid.

For today, I’m headed for the lake in a little while.  I’ll take along a swimsuit and spend some time floating around looking at the sky imagining I’m someplace exotic.

In my mind, I can spend the day on The Big Island.

A-a-a-hhh.

Hopefully before the weekend is over, I’ll have somewhere to wear my new dress.  The little Vogue 8398 jacket turned out well enough. It looks better in person–the photo shows every wrinkle and pucker.

I’d like to make it again in good fabric sometime.  This is some poly-rayon gabardine that just happened to be hanging around.  The jacket will be one more entry for the stash contest, which  I joined to help get the Total Yardage Used figure up over last year.  Every little 7/8ths yard helps!

Thank you, everyone, for the comments on my top yesterday. I agree with Teri that it feels a bit “special”–more than a plain tee. I have some ideas for a bottom, but that’ll have to wait for inspiration to strike.

Have a great holiday, y’all!  I’m off to locate my swimsuit and get ready ready to watch the whales.  (Since I’m pretending anyway, I’ll make it February at The Big Island.)

Tags: Butterick, Vogue

The jacket is not completely finished yet. It takes some couch time to slip stitch, and I didn’t want to sit on the sofa in the middle of the day. There was an idea niggling my brain that had to do with this top–Simplicity 2892.

I’ll admit that I thought it was a little bizarre when I first started seeing it pop up on blogs. I couldn’t figure out that neckline. As I saw it more and more, however, it grew on me. Yesterday it became the inspiration for this knit top:

What do you think? (If it’s totally awful and you don’t think it should go out in public, please tell me–but be gentle, I’m sensitive! )

This is made from the leftover Jet Set from the trim on my dress. I started thinking about that Simplicity neckline and trying to think how they did that and how I could put something like that on a t-shirt. I considered several options like a collar band in two layers, applying a gathered band over the neckline and stitching it down, or simply making a gathered trim and applying it to the finished shirt.

Applying a trim was the easiest for me to think through, so that’s what I set about to create.

I remembered seeing Rose Rushbrooke’s tutorial on Ruching, and followed that to make my trim:

I cut a two-inch wide strip of fabric and marked each side every four inches. I didn’t bother folding the sides in like Rose did. Knits don’t ravel and this might look like the dog chewed it anyway. Then I machine basted from point to point.

When I pulled the bobbin thread, it gathered up just like the tutorial. Then I simply stitched it to my shirt and pulled the gathering thread out.

Eh?

Tags: Ottobre, Special Techniques

Presenting my first project of the month!

The dress is Butterick 6161 that I told you about last week. Brunhilde will have to model today, as I have the day off and no intentions of combing my hair before 3pm.

It is made from a Hancock’s rayon print trimmed with some of their brown polyester Jet Set knit. The pattern doesn’t show any trim.  It has you finishing the neckline and armholes with bias tape and turning it to the inside. I thought a little accent would be nice in those areas, so I cut the seam allowances away and left my binding on the outside.

Although you can’t really tell that from my photo, the print has a good bit of brown in it.  All the dark areas–stems and such–of the flowers are dark brown.

I used the bias tape for the drawstring’s casing. The drawstring is more of the Jet Set, stitched and turned. I’ll cut that off a little before I wear it. Right now it is a little long, I think.

This dress was a fast and easy project without a doubt.The envelope’s estimate of a 3-hour time frame was just about right.

Cute, too.

I’m working on a little brown jacket to go with it, Vogue 8398. I sure hope it looks okay with the dress.

When I get that done, I’ll comb my hair.

Tags: Butterick, Butterick 6161

I enjoy reading them, and Saturday I sewed one. One of the local quilt shops, Dragonfly, has frequent classes on offer, and I always read the descriptions when their emails come. I’m not a quilter and have no plans to become one, but I do enjoy sewing cotton fabric and I try to support local merchants when I can.

Last week they advertised a “Guess Who’s coming to dinner?” mystery table runner class that piqued my interest.

I had Saturday free, so I paid my money and chose five fabrics. Saturday morning found me unloading a sewing machine and various sewing necessities onto one of the tables in their classroom.

It was a long day that, while pleasant enough, confirmed my non-quilter status.

I just don’t enjoy all that repetitive work.

All the stitching, pressing, squaring and cutting–over and over and over–made my neck ache. I’d much rather do a OOAK garment and move on.

The top is completed with only a tiny bit of sewing after I got home. It still has to have backing and binding.  Of course, if I could have seen the finished piece ahead of time, I would have chosen different fabrics.

I don’t know if I can show it to you or not.  I didn’t sign anything saying I wouldn’t, but it just doesn’t feel right.  Once I’ve backed, bound, and quilted it, I’ll ask if there’s any prohibition on showing it on my blog.

For now, I’m just glad to have that patchwork thing out of my system.

No tag for this post.

If you saw my McCall’s dress review over the weekend, you saw my new belt. Here’s the photo. I’m not over the moon about the dress–I know everybody has garments like that–but it’s ok. Nor am I wild about this particular belt with it, but it, too, is ok.

The belt itself was a fun project. This may be something that I’ll do again. I’m sure that if I look back through some old sewing books, I’ll find some actual instructions from back when they did such things regularly. At any rate, here’s how I made it. (You can click each image to go to the gallery page for that item.)

You may recall my materials: a Wright’s buckle, some casual cotton belting, and some trim.

First, I fused some Decor Bond interfacing to the back of the belting to give it some oomph. I used my rotary cutter to cut the interfacing to the exact width of the belting.

Then I stitched the trim down the center of the belting with a straight stitch along each side of the trim.

I estimated the position of the buckle and worked an eyelet for the tongue. Later when I shortened the belt, I worked a rectangular buttonhole, which fit the tongue better. I sewed the buckle onto the belt and estimated the positions for the eyelets.

Next, I sewed four eyelets, 1.25″ apart and punched them out with a hole punch. This tool came with my buttonhole chisel and works handily for this task.

At some point, I “hemmed” the end by folding it up and zig-zagging it to the belt proper. Here you can see the back side of the belt ends. The center portion is much less exciting

And the front side. I made the little belt carrier from some of the trim and stitched it to the back of the belt.

It doesn’t take much to get my mind racing through myriad belt-making possibilities. Perhaps we are at the dawn of several years of belt-wearing, and I’ll get plenty of opportunities to practice.

Tags: Belts