Warm and weird

I’m all finished up with Christmas sewing (Yay, back to working on a new pair of jeans for me!).  Nothing too exciting but some much needed warm pjs for both boys.

First up is a top to some robot pajama bottoms I made a while ago.  I had mistakenly not bought enough to make a top and a bottom, so I braved the crowds and showed up to JoAnn on Black Friday to get my extra yard that I needed plus this Butterick pattern for my robot-loving Noah.  I dodged people going in the door and the herding route that JoAnn employees had set up and instead took my own way to get to the flannel (how could I ignore $1.49/yd?).  I literally just picked up the bolt of robots when some lady said, “I wanted that robot fabric that she just got.”  Sorry lady.  Normally I’m not crazy and competitive like that, but Noah really really loves robots and I had been planning that strategy all week.  I only took a yard too, so she could have gotten it later.  I was so efficient in my strategy that I didn’t have to wait in line at the cut table (I did get more flannel too).  2 minutes later and I would have been waiting for an hour.  The nutty things we do for our kids.

The top was easy enough to put together–it got sewn up in a naptime, which is quick for me with the first round of a pattern, especially one with buttonholes and what not.  My only advice is to cut down the seam allowances to 1/4″ or 3/8″–5/8″ is way too much on such a tiny collar.

Then I pulled out some fleece I got on a fabric.com sale to make some warm gear for the kids.  A pair of pants each and a sweatshirt for Noah that I embellished with some seed beads and appliqued snowman.  I’ve never sewn with fleece before, and it was an interesting experience to say the least.

 

I can see why people gravitate towards fleece.  It is easy to sew in one sense–the seams don’t need to be finished and it seams pretty easily.  That being said I will not become one of the cranky crazies that show up to JoAnn on sale days to buy their still expensive fleece and treat the employees really badly if they can’t get 100% of what they want when they want it (though they clog up the cut table and registers buying 2 or 3 cartloads).  This stuff does not press at all and it feels just kind of gross.   It also takes up a lot of real estate in the sewing room.  I used every last bit of yardage in 1.5 yds to make two pairs of pants and a sweatshirt, and I still have a lot of fluffy scraps that I’m pretty sure take up the same amount of space that the original piece did.   If it not for the fact that the boys really do need warm clothes, I would not have caved to buy it.  They probably won’t be bothered by it, but I also hate how fleece in all of its synthenticity makes you warm to the point of sweating, and then traps in all of that sweat–so you’re warm, but clammy and cold and hot.  The one piece of fleecewear that I owned I lent to my Costa Rican roommate in college.  In her extreme need for warmth due to her tropical blood, she would go out running in full sweats though it would be like 60 degrees and 100% humidity in the beauty of Houston “cool” mornings.  I lent her that purple pullover (which frankly looked better on her), and never saw it again.  I didn’t ask her about it because I was not sad to see it go.  Given how well this sews, I’m not looking to destash my other colors of fleece, and besides Nathan loves the stuff, so maybe I can actually make something that he’d be interested in. But for the boys, I’ll be sticking to thrifting sweaters.  When I can’t find them, I’ll stay with sweatshirting or sweater knits or other fabrics that creep me out less and that let me get nice crispy pressed edges and seams.

I’ll leave fleece to the likes of the awesome Snuggie people.

Sewing at 3 am

Like most of us garment sewists, I have mixed feelings about home dec projects.  I figure if you’re going to be stuck looking at some pillow, you might as well do a good job of it, but once you delve into the world all the interesting details in garment sewing, it’s hard to go back to the long, straight seams involved in home dec.  Still, like everyone else, I found myself in a situation this year where it could not be avoided.

In our first house, hosting Christmas for the first time, I found myself in need of stockings for the fireplace.  Bored with traditional palettes and stocking kits, I set out to make my own pretty stockings.  Blinded by the beauty of the celery corduroy, pink wool plaid, and turquoise faille, it didn’t register that I would have to actually sew 7 stockings.

One morning I found myself wide awake at 3 am.  I knew that cutting out all of these stockings was going to be irritating, so I figured I might as well get cracking since I was awake anyhow.  In an hour I cut out lining, underlining, and the stockings.  My hands were sore (a dumb thing to do before playing violin for several hours at church…)but I was ready to sew.

My kids slept long one afternoon that week and I plunked down and sewed together all 7 stockings.  Stockings are not difficult; they are much like handbags, but multiplied by 7 and attempting to finish in one naptime is about where the crazy train falls off the cliff.  Once I came out of the fog of my frenzied making, I learned some things about myself and about sewing.

• Garment sewing provides natural breaks: Because there are so many different components in a garment, there are more opportunities for mental breaks than there are in home dec sewing.  Sewing long, straight seams and not having to press them as frequently as in garment sewing means that you’re sitting at your machine for a long time going slow because you have big thick fabrics.  When starting a home dec project, force yourself to take breaks every hour.
• Rome doesn’t have to be built in a day: The more annoying I find a project, the faster I want to get it done.  Just because I can make 7 stockings in a naptime doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.  Trying to overload yourself is just going to lead to creative burn out.  And let’s face it, you don’t have time for burn out because there’s some glittering cocktail dress you want to sew for all of those glittering cocktail parties that you go to.
• Really invest some time picking out fabric for home dec:  Though sewing them will be more sleep-inducing than Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, you really will be happy with those dumb pillows or curtains if you only buy fabric that you really love.  I scoured Denver Fabrics for corduroy, wool, faille, and linens, canvas, and some random remnants.  Because they’re all natural fibers, they look fresher and less cheesy to me than stocking kits or prefab stockings and the different textures of these fabrics add verve and visual interest to what are usually pretty boring decorations.  The updated color palette that I settled on just makes me happy too.  Best of all, as I gaze at them on the mantle this holiday season, I am grateful that I will not have to make replacements for them for a very long time.

Bonus:  the scraps provided me more than enough fabric to provide me an my glue gun some quality time together with 92 buttons.

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

Narrow shoulders?

Through both pregnancies and all the weight loss and gain that goes with that the one consistent measurement has been my shoulder width.  I’ve been a 34 in Burda though my weight has been all over the map.  Period.  But I’m starting to think that I need to revisit that measurement as tops are starting to fall off of the edge of my shoulders.

I wonder if in all of my working out that I finally lost some width in my arms themselves that apparently brought in the edge of my shoulders (because it would appear that my shoulder width has not changed by much even though shoulders are too wide on me these days).

Take this top for instance.  It is Burda 7434 in a nice wool jersey from Denver Fabrics.  I’m happy with the width and reasonably how everything fits in general, except that the top of the sleeves are falling off of my shoulders.  Because of the width of the shoulders, the princess seams are falling outside of where they should be as well.

So I’m asking for help.  I know that I need to do a narrow shoulder adjustment of some sort, but can I do that though I’ve made the garment minus hems?  My idea was to split apart the princess seam and make a dart of sorts in the front to take out some width, easing in the back shoulder to match.  Is this a legitimate way to retrofit?

On an unrelated topic, I think WordPress has lost its mind because I can’t seem to fit the gigantorness of the picture…

Decidedly not neutral

I made my winter coat.  I finished it well over a month ago but I haven’t been able to photograph it because I’ve been waiting for a good bit of snow and outside picture sessions are limited due to light to the weekends.

It is Vogue 8548–a recently OOP coat (still available on Vogue’s website and one here on Ebay in 14-22) with funnel neck and asymmetric closure.

I picked it up originally when I was pregnant with Sam because I thought it would be a good maternity coat with the empire seam (the waist seam actually sits a little lower than an empire would–I know because I always have to lower the length on empires because of my bust).  Indeed I still think it would be extremely easy to alter for maternity, but in the end I couldn’t justify spending that much time on a garment that would offer me very little use.  I filed the pattern away.

Post pregnancy, I pretty much hate empire waists.  But when I decided that I could no longer ignore this crazy beautiful teal wool I scored from a darling PR’er who was cleaning out her stash (I think I paid $30 all told for over 4 yards of this plus matching silk thread and buttons), I kept coming back to the neck on this pattern.  Being a scarf lover, a lapel hater, and a beginner in tailoring, it all seemed too good to pass up.  My muslin turned out really well and surprisingly flattering, so I decided to forge ahead.

It took me 2 solid naptimes to cut everything out.  Because of the thickness of the wool, I had to cut it single layer, which of course took twice as long.  I decided to interline it with cotton flannel for warmth because there’s a 0% chance that I’m taking the time to make a coat and have it not be warm.  The lining is a random poly I found in the clearance section at Denver Fabrics.  I liked the vintage travel print, it was slippery enough, and it matched well with the wool.

My husband was out of town for a week in October, so you better believe I used up every naptime and late nights that week working.  I was keeping track of my time just to see how long this project took me, and though I lost official track, I’d say it took me around 25 hours.  A big project for sure, but not as unreasonable as I had originally thought a coat to be.

As for tailoring, I drafted a back stay from muslin and catchstitched down all of the horizontal seams.  This was really necessary because though this wool pressed really well, the thickness was far too much for the seams to lay flat when pressed.  It’s nearly critical to do this on the shoulder seam.  It is shaped like an L because the neck edge of the shoulder seam forms the funnel neck.

Because of this, you cannot press the seam unless the allowances are catchstitched open first.  The beauty of the thickness of this wool is that I could easily and quickly catchstich completely invisibly.  I topstitched the princess seams to take care of the same issue while adding a nice detail.

 I popped in small 1/2″ shoulder pads for a nice smooth appearance.  The shoulders are a hair wide in an 8 (I’m starting to think I need to measure my shoulders again because it seems that the last few patterns I’ve made have been “a hair” too wide in the shoulders–I might need a narrow shoulder adjustment), but the shoulder pads make that a little less obvious.

I bagged the lining which was way simpler, cleaner and faster than whatever craziness Vogue was telling you to do.  *Mystery* poly was a surprising delight to sew with–particularly after I hand basted on the flannel for interlining.  It didn’t even slip and slide as I was cutting it.  I was really grateful for not having to cut it too in a single layer.  I like poly too as a lining too because I freeze in rayon, its available in a lot more fun prints and way cheaper than silk.

Though I had matching buttons, they were a bit too small for this project, so I covered two for the closure and added a large snap at the top to keep the neck closed.  The pattern calls for raw piping to be used for button loops.  I can’t imagine that looking all that great.  I made quick loops by taking 2 1″ wide strips and a strip of Steam-a-Seam along one edge.  I folded and fused over the SAS, which gave me a nice crisp edge (useful notion for such thick wool) folded over that and topstitched.  Because my wool didn’t ravel this worked out.  If you have a wool that will ravel you would have to cut the strip wider to accomodate another fold to meet in the middle before you topstitched the loop.

I’m so pleased with how this coat turned out.  In September Sewaholic wrote about what scares you about making a coat.  It was a really thought provoking post.  I think I commented to the effect of “Nothing, I think I’m ready to tackle a coat”, and really I was.  There was nothing about this project that I felt like was beyond me which shows me how much I’ve grown in the past year.  My brain kind of went squishy after I finished this project for a week, but I will attribute that to the magnitude of this project in comparison to my normal project duration which is about 1 or 2 naptimes.

My full review is here.  As for you, dear readers, have you sewn much outerwear?  Speaking of Sewaholic, Will you be jumping on the Minoru bandwagon in January?  I’m on the fence about it as I already want to do PR’s Jeans contest and it is going on at the same time as the Minoru sew along.

A second look

I got really ramped up and wrote a nasty post about this pattern.  And then I put it on the boy.  And suddenly the frustrations of this project seemed not all that bad.  I will attempt to be less negative than what I planned to write.

It is the reversible jacket from Sewing for Boys.  When I saw it, I was intrigued–it has such an adorable Paddington Bear vibe.

I traced off the 2/3 size thinking it looked a bit small and that the welt pockets were way too close to the side seams for the 2/3.  As if i were a recipe tester, I forged ahead and changed nothing.  The welt pockets are indeed to close to the side seam; indeed, they are IN the side seam, and I had to cut them down to 1/4″ from 3/8″ to make it work (sort of).

For the outer fabric I used a remnant of upholstery wool blend from the $2/lb table at Denver Fabrics and some cotton twill for the inner fabric that I did indeed interline because Noah needs a replacement jacket for his knit hoodie which he’s outgrown and there’s buckets of snow in the backyard.

I like the idea of a reversible jacket.  Who doesn’t want two garments in one (especially Moms doing way more laundry than is kosher)?  In this case, I question the validity.  The reason why the coat scene in A Christmas Story is funny is because it’s true. To put on outerwear for kids as a parent, one must pull and heave and tug and yank.  I speak of boots and mittens which are still lined with actual slippy fabrics.  But a reversible jacket with little ease and non-slippy fabric on the inside?  It doesn’t seem terribly practical.  I had visions of the Gigantic Turnip trying to get this jacket on, but it actually goes on and off easily enough.  My bigger beef with a reversible jacket is that there are 2 sets of buttons (actually the pattern goes so far as to suggest magnetic purse snaps!).  Wearing jackets and coats while riding in a car seat means for a lot of squished in kids (my car seat is not the easiest to adjust, and really if it were, it’s a pain to have to remember to adjust them when it’s already a maneuver to get out the door).  A set of (?!) magnetic purse snaps pressing down into my child’s tummy from the added pressure of the car seat straps sounds like a recipe for a bad car trip.

My verdict on this pattern?  It’s a mixed bag.  It’s cute, but I would skip the welt pockets and forget about making it reversible. Noah’s happy, but I doubt that Sam will be the recipient of one in the future.    My full review is here.