No Time!

So I've worked 162 hours in the last 14 days.  Which has unfortunately left me with no energy at all to do any sort of crafting.  I had some projects lined up, but when I had time I felt like a zombie.  Nobody likes to see what a zombie would do to a crafting project.  Better all around to wait.

I did get a bit of mending done today though, none of it mine!  Apparently sewing is one of those skills like troubleshooting computers.  Once people know you can do it they bring stuff to you whenever they need fixing.  I've never considered sewing to be a difficult thing to do, I was just lazy when I was younger.

For one coworker I hemmed a pair of dress pants.  By hand, thanks mom for teaching me to catch-stitch, because I am too lazy to figure out how to use the blind hem stitch on my machine.  That's right, too lazy to learn a time saving skill.  That's irony.

For the other I reattached half of the zipper fly of a pair of dress pants.  No idea how it came loose, but it needed to be sewn down.  Luckily it wasn't sewn directly to the front of the pants.  It was attached to a small flap of fabric that was in turn attached to the pants.  Sewing down the zipper with a back stich was a cinch.  Sewing back down the flap of fabric was another thing.  Without matching thread I couldn't topstitch it back down (it had originally been topstitched down), so I decided to catch-stitch it around the edge instead.  I made the stitches closer together than I normally do to increase the stability.  Hopefully it will hold.  The slight puckering you sometimes get on the front of a catch-stich was minor so I'm hoping the owner will be happy.  If not I'll have to go buy matching thread and I'd just rather not.

It's nice to help people out and save some clothes from getting tossed by making them usable again.  Now if only I could get my own mending projects done I'd be in good shape.

Altering everything

So I get home from work tonight and think, I should get some sewing project done tonight.  I haven't been too productive the last few days.  So suddenly it is several hours later and I've altered three pairs of dress pants by taking them in at the waist and made more "no progress" on a pair of grey dress pants that might wind up going back to their original state if this keeps up.  Three more pairs of pants wearable without worrying about how tight my belt is.  Thus I can keep avoiding buying new clothes.  Why buy new when you already own something that can fit with a little tweaking?

No pics yet, but I was trying to alter them from the inseam instead of the outer seams like I usually do since I wanted to take in the leg width as well.  It is turning into a disaster, and I may give up altogether if I can't figure out what is going wrong.  If I can remember to I will try to take more pictures along the way.  The fact I haven't torched them in frustration should be a win all on its own.

Mom Skirt, AKA Butterick 4817

I had promised my mother as long ago as sometime last summer that I would make her a skirt from Butterick 4817, which she picked out online and I purchased for this purpose.  I had made myself a top for a tea party themed bridal shower.  She loved the fabric when I showed it to her, so I offered to make her a skirt.  I even bought the fabric right away since it was on sale at the time.  I hope you can see the details.  It is black with grey flowers.

The fabric sat in my stash for months and months, through a move that rendered it wrinkled and misfolded beyond belief.  Finally I decided enough was enough.  The pattern pieces were cut out, this had to happen.  Much laborious refolding and ironing later, I was ready to cut the pieces out.  Except apparently I forgot how wide my fabric was, and 45" is very different from 60".  I had 45", but started cutting as if I had 60".  Luckily I realized it after the first cut piece.  So, so creative just-off-grain cutting later and I had managed to get all the pieces out with a foot to spare.

The pattern itself was so simple I wondered why I hadn't just made the skirt back in the day.  Straight seams for the 6 panels, and a simple hem at the bottom.  I didn't do the waistband since it is an elastic waist and my mom wanted to do that herself.  Here is the skirt done and laid out on my floor.  The fabric looks black, but trust me it is the fabric above.

I am sure it will swish nicely, since the pieces curved outward, but the seams were sewn straight down.  Lots of lovely fluting at the bottom.  I hope she likes it.

Sadness Yarn

So I've been dealing with a lot of serious personal drama, which distracts me from lots of things including posting here on a semi-regular basis.  Part of this involved visiting a relative in the hospital every day for about 2 weeks.  Not too much to do there, so I brought my largest knitting loom and some boucle yarn to work on a wrap/shawl thing.  No recipient in mind, just something to keep my hands busy.  I was about halfway through when the visits ended, and just recently remembered the project and wanted to finish it.  Imagine my surprise, and extreme irritation, to find that my loom is mysteriously missing a peg.  Somehow it broke clean off!  The shawl was only 38" long, not nearly enough to be useful.  And I had no immediate way to fix the loom to try and finish it.

So this:

Became this:

That's right, I had to unravel it all to make into something else.  I sent the picture to my mother, who I had told about the situation, and told her "This is what sadness looks like."  So this is now my "sadness yarn" that I am currently working to turn into a scarf on one of my shorter looms.  That's right.  I'm making a "sadness scarf" that I will probably give away to charity to get the thing out of my sight.  I am just beyond frustrated with the whole situation that I've been spotty in actually working on the scarf.  Hopefully I'll have some time to sit down and work on it.  I just haven't been in the mood lately.

Have you ever had a project just turn into a disaster that it made you want to chuck the whole lot right out a high window or something?

Matching bib? Of course!

SO my coworker was so in love with the baby bonnet, that I offered to make something to coordinate with it.  I still had a decent amount of butterfly fabric left to make something small.  A skirt was out, even for a 6-mo old.  I was able to whip up a bib in a night start to finish, however, using the same kind of construction.  Coworker donated a white knit shirt for backing since I had finished off my stash on the bonnet.  With more white cotton curtaining inside and white bias tape binding, the bib came together pretty easily.  I used the same kindof inside-out construction as the bonnet to attach the ties, also made of white knit.  The ties came out not quite straight from the main part of the bib, but oh well, it still looks adorable.

And I still have butterfly fabric left over.  Not sure what I'm going to do with it.  Probably save it for another baby project.

Baby Bonnet Finished!

I really wanted to finish this baby bonnet, not only because it is promised to someone else and I hate to drag my feet on things like that, but because it is such an easy project that it is reliable gratification.  To recap, I offered to make a baby bonnet for a coworker who is expecting a new niece any day now.  I used a tutorial from Sew Mama Sew that I have used before with adorable results.

Since I've been on a re-use kick lately, I decided to reuse some fabric I had around.  A pair of sleep shorts with a cute butterfly and flower pattern was the lucky donor.  I'm glad I left the center serged seams in place because I would have needed to piece the fabric anyway.  I don't have a serger so I would have been duplicating work.  After carefully deconstructing the garment to save as much as I could, I got to work.  The bonnet has three layers.  The outer layer is the butterfly fabric.  There is a hidden inner layer of a thicker cotton weave to give the bonnet a bit of stability since the outer layer is a worn thinner cotton and the innermost layer is a white cotton t-shirt knit.  Also recycled, but with no body of its own.  I wanted something soft for against the baby's head.  The ties are also t-shirt fabric for this reason.

So without further ado, here are the last few stages in pictures.

This is with the pieces assembled and sewn on 3 sides.  Sorry, I forgot to take pictures of the pieces and intervening steps.  This stage caused me enough headache as I had accidentally piled the pieces out of order.  So when I flipped it to the right sides the interfacing fabric was showing instead of the butterflies.  I had to pick all the stitches out and reorder them to sew again.  Unfortunately I had already trimmed the seam allowances so I had to sew very carefully.

Once that was done (correctly) the next stage was trimming them front edge.  Last time I made this bonnet I was able to just use some wide lavender ribbon from my stash and call it a day.  Unfortunately that ribbon doesn't match this fabric.  The client wanted white trim anyway, but luckily I had some white bias tape in my stash as well.  Bring much narrower than the ribbon, I had to sew it on carefully in two steps.  I sewed it on one side to the inside of the bonnet, then folded it over the raw edge and sewed down through all the layers.

Here it is with the bias tape on.  I also folded over and sewed the bottom edge where the tie will go at the back of the baby's head.  Threading that was a pain.  Lacking also any spaghetti bias tape, which is what the tutorial calls for, I improvised by using more of my white bias tape folded over and sewn through to create a narrower width.  The channel had come out a bit narrower than intended, so there was some trouble getting the length through, but I managed.  I only had to unpick a small section at the end and re-sew it to make the channel a little wider.  Tied up, the bonnet is done done done!

Here it is with the brim forward:

And back:

I hope she likes it.

Baby Bonnet ironing is a go!

Alright, so apparently you can iron on just a table top with a towel for padding.  Guess we're going to find out because I desperately need to iron this butterfly fabric before I can cut out the pattern pieces.  So with that dilemma solved, it will be onward as soon as I have some time to devote, hopefully later this evening.