a little goodbye

last year was tough. it wasn’t the sewing that was tough it was other things, but through it I tried to keep on keeping on. one thing that was very hard was losing my childhood pet in late October; after a year of her battling congestive heart failure and a few other things that go along with aging. she took a lot of care in the last days and months of her life but I don't regret the time spent with her at all. she was happy content and demanding till the end.

for 21 years she liked to help me sew, (well it was closer 17 years as I wasn’t really into sewing till then, but whatever. she was 21 1/2. half years totally count when your a cat) I used to make her clothes and dress her up like Victorian and Edwardian times. I am sure I got the idea from paintings and photographs of children dressing up cats, toting them around in baby carriages and having tea. the dresses really weren’t good but I thought they were, and she tolerated it well, and we had fun. yes I started sewing making doll clothes which then translated into kitty clothes.

when I started using patterns to make myself things she would help me out by chewing on the pattern paper while I lay out the pattern on the floor to cut out. I would turn around and chunks of my pattern would be slimy melted sludge. I would than try to flatten out and rework them, usually they weren‘t a total loss. After a few years she finally got her fill and stopped doing it, letting me cut out the patterns without fear of the slime.

She then went on to helping me sew by laying on every project I ever did. which meant lint rollers were always used on a finished project. I never cared that she lay on them, she never clawed them or anything she was just “helping” me out. even when her arthritis got to where she could no longer get onto the sewing table, she would let me know she needed to get up there and I would accommodate by helping her up, and then helping her down when she was done. she was tiny bit spoiled.
she spent hours watching me sew, probably wondering why exactly I was doing, till I was done, and she had a new thing to get hair all over.

she tagged along with me outside all over the forest just outside our door. the photo shoots for my Blog very often turned into her photo shoots. I have a lot of great pictures of her, I’m going to stick to the sewing related ones here though.

our last project together was a quilt. one that I was not able to finish before she passed. I knew I wouldn’t as I am sewing it all by hand, I did however finish all the squares, and was able to take her picture with each of them. I will post them when the quilt is complete, which won‘t be for a while. I need to get back to working on it. The entire time I worked on it I told her the quilt was for her, so when I do finally finish it, I will call it her memorial quilt. I got frustrated with it the last time I worked on it though so I set it aside. I will go back to it eventually. I will finish it one day. sometimes though things have to be set aside before they ever be completed.

Bathing suit

I was invited to spend the day at a lake with some friend with short notice, and realized I didn’t really have a bathing suit. the one I had was a vintage suit with very little to no stretch to it. and even though I love it its hard to put on. so I went shopping, and well I am not shaped for what they sell in the stores. probably if I’d had more time and could have gone to more places I might have found something.
my trip the store was not a pleasant one, Everything that offered any coverage at all was too big, and the rest were so tiny that I may as well not even bother. so I totally scraped the idea of a new suit and wore a rash guard and shorts that day.
I also had a camping trip to another lake planned for later on in the year which I thought I may have time to look for another suit

a month later I was glancing at the fabric section of the store, not intending to purchase any just kinda checking it out in case there was something I had to have. and low and behold there was! it was a pre-cut two yard piece of stretch fabric, navy with orange flowers. it was beautiful.

I had picked up simplicity pattern #8139 on a whim months before, because the fabric store was having one of those irresistible sales of 99 cent patterns that rarely happen and always leave me buying too many patterns I actually have no intention of using. yes I am one of those people who hoards patterns. but at that price its hard to say no.
now the actual pattern calls for using a stretch fabric for the interior part of the suit only and a non stretch fabric, and a zipper for the exterior. I wanted something that was easy to put on and would dry fast, so I liked the idea of the stretch I bought for both the interior and exterior parts of the suit.

however using a stretch fabric on a non stretch pattern causes it own issues. one of which is the fit. I knew I had to make it smaller since with stretch I didn’t want any ease like I might want with cotton. but at the same time the inner part of the suit needed to be made on my normal size and then all of this needed to fit exactly together. but of course that isn’t exactly how it happened.
I made the outer part of the suit two sizes smaller then the inner which seemed like a good idea but when I went to try it on I had to still take it up quite a bit. but that shouldn’t have surprised me because I also had to take up the interior part a bit. I don’t know if its because I was attaching it to a stretch fabric or if I would have had to take up the inner part even with a non stretch., it doesn’t really matter I finally got it right, and it does seem that I make a lot of things twice to get the fit right.

I worked on this suit every evening after work for two weeks trying to make sure I finished it before my camping trip which was coming up fast.
while working on the bathing suit I cam across another problem. adding the elastic to the straps was not going so well. I cut the elastic significantly less then what I needed knowing it would stretch out as I sewed it in; it still turned out wonky. the straps sticking out all weird and the front gaping. I pulled out all the stitching which was not easy as I had put it in with a three point zigzag, a huge mistake if ever there was one. I’d been told that the three point zigzag was a good stitch to use on stretch as it allows the fabric to stretch without popping stitches. however it also stretches the fabric so badly out of shape it wasn’t worth it. then I tried using a double needle. again something that allow stretch . the pattern calls for tunneling in the elastic which wasn’t working, it looked horrible. so I again tore out the stitching and started over. this time I serged the elastic in, then folded it over to stitch it down. and that worked well, though the straps ended up a bit more narrow then the pattern called for, at least it looks good and that is what mattered. I ran into the same issue adding elastic to the legs I fudged it a little in the legs because I ran out of the 1/2” elastic. but it still turned out okay. I also added a liner to the inner suit bottom just for my own comfort and the fact the suits in the store have them it makes me think they are needed. I also added a built in bra, which I could have done better with if I’d had more time. it was basically just a thin padding and elastic which is how they do it in a lot of the of the store bought ones.
I finished the suit with a few days to spare before my camping trip, which I think is awesome.
I like the way it turned out. I think its really cute, and will hopefully wear it for years to come.
I had a fun playing in the lake with friends, I'm not much of a swimmer but I had a enjoyable time bobbing on my noodle. however it was so incredibly hot it was hard to >enjoy the rest of the camping. although we did have some good food and went in a canoe which was pretty fun.