vest for my dad.

I meant to post this a few days ago but the flu had taken over my life and is just now starting to let me have it back.
for my dad I made him a vest. I used Simplicity 7030 as a guide pattern since I already had it, and I also used an old vest of his that no longer fits him for some inspiration style wise. since I was going for a western style vest, which is much more my dad’s style then a dress vest. ever since I was little I remember him wearing denim vests. and through picture evidence I know he wore them well before I was ever born. in the last few years he has outgrown his much loved vest so I thought it would be a nice gift to make him a new one. and I love the fact that when I gave it to him he was so excited he wanted me to take his picture right away before the light was gone (that is so the photographer side of him).

I used a heavy duty jean thread to give it a more professional look, plus it stands out nicer. I think you can buy it at pretty much any fabric store, if not I know that wawak has it.
so after some pretty major changes to the pattern, and making a bunch of new pieces and having to do all kinds of math and alterations I was very happy with how the vest turned out.
I am getting to the point now it seems where I am rarely just taking a pattern and going with it. I am forever altering them to make them more my own. having a base to follow though really helps in getting lines right though, so I doubt I will ever stop using patterns.



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Christmas

its time to post about Christmas gifts, now that Christmas is over and I have no fear of the respective recipients seeing their gifts before the event. lets just start with the pj pants I made my niece. she loves puppies which is why I chose this fabric. its a pretty basic pattern. I actually made my sister and my brother in law some pj pants from the same pattern, different fabrics though . unfortunately I forgot to take a pictures of them before I wrapped them. and now they have been whisked away to their proper home. maybe next time I visit them I can then demand a picture. I will post the rest of the gifts I made at a later date. since I actually did get photos of three others I made.

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Christamas

I have been working on a few projects for Christmas gifts the last few weeks. I have them all finished on time Yea! I can't post them yet but in the next few days I will post about what I have made.

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Halloween!

For Halloween this year I decided to be Charmander from Pokemon. I am not entirely thrilled with the way this turned out but it was wearable and I wanted to do something fairly simple. I had the orange fabric from a never happened project I was going to do a million years ago. the fabric just seemed so lonely sitting on my fabric shelf for so many years and so terribly shiny and impractical for anything other then a costume.



I actually had no idea what I wanted to be this year but then my sister was showing me a pattern she had bought and explaining her costume to me, so I very un-creatively copied her.... well sort of, (she was from my little pony) she let me borrow her patten, simplicity #S0494 and I used the hood from a pattern I already had (Macalls #M6614), since Charmander has a smooth head not a pointy one.
for the pants I used Butterick Pattern #B5682 which I have made before and it was easy enough. I decided to make a few changes though, one I didn’t want pockets plus I thought it would be easier without them.
what I did not realize though is how much more give the pockets actually give the pants, so with that and the fact that this orange fabric has absolutely no give to it I discovered the pants were way too tight! I was so upset. I had even thought about the fact this fabric was very solid and made the pants a size bigger then the pair I already made.
being that the fabric was purchased so long ago I wasn't sure I could find anymore of the same and my fabric was so limited I about gave up on the costume all together, and set it aside. I did have some scraps though so after stepping away from it for a while I thought why don't I make a gusset to make it wider in the hips, since that is where it was too tight. but I didn’t want to do just a triangle gusset because I don’t know I thought it would look stupid, even though more then likely the tail would have covered it, but not only that I really only needed it in the hips not in the waist. so I thought about what to do for a few days then came up with this.....


I’m not sure what they call that design but I have seen it on pants before, so the pants ended up being a bit more difficult then I had anticipated but I was happy with them, in fact I I like them better with the new design features then I would have with them being just plain.



and just for a reference picture, here is one of Charmander.



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nursery rhyme skirt

I found this blue fabric at a charity shop and thought it was so cute I had to buy it. the fabric has nursery rhyme characters on it, Little Bo Peep, Humpty Dumpty. Hey Diddle Diddle, and Hickory Dickory Dock.



the fabric was only a yard and unfortunately when I got it home and unfolded it, it had a pretty big flaw in. I lost about four inches from the flaw, which was a bit disappointing. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to make from the fabric as it was not a very big piece so it sat in my stash while I considered , finally I came up with a circle skirt with an added panel to make it long enough. the bow is made from the circle I cut for the waist. I just folded it in half and sewed it into a semi circle then scrunched it up in the middle, and slapped on a button. the white is actually cut off from a duvet cover that was too long, and I believe was like a eight hundred thread count so its really nice cotton. the lace, zipper, button and pearls were all in my stash.



originally I didn't want elastic in the waist, but I really need to work on my math skills because the waist turned out too big, apparently I didn't do a very good job at figuring out how much bigger the waist would be once I took up the seam allowance. circles are weird like that. rather then get too upset about it though I just put elastic in the waist, since that was so much easier then any other solution



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white pin tuck blouse

okay so I have been sewing, I just haven’t been blogging. I have finished a few things and am working on several others. I am going to post about what I just finished today and play catch up with the other things later.


I made a white cotton blouse, using simplicity pattern #8117 view 1 from 1977.

I picked the pattern up at a antique store since I needed a blouse and
it was cute, plus it looked really simple. and It would have been, had I not decided I wanted pin tucks. its not that pin tucks are necessarily difficult its just a bit time consuming.
I figured out how many tucks I wanted, and was on my way to altering the pattern. I basically figured out where I wanted the tucks to be and added that to the pattern pieces by tracing the pieces with the added bits. next was sewing in the tucks, all 21 of them. after sewing them in I then compared pieces to the original pattern pieces.

they turned out to be extremely close only the sleeves were slightly off but in a too big way so I trimmed them down that little bit. which probably didn’t matter much since the sleeve is gathered but I did anyway. once I did all that it was basically just putting it together. the lace is placed differently then on the pattern . I wanted it along the buttons and the collar. I also made the blouse short sleeves. I get too hot in long sleeves inside even in the winter so I really wanted the sleeves to be short.
I also messed up putting the sleeves in at first I wasn’t paying attention to the pattern and tried to make the shoulder seam be the center of the sleeve. which made far to many gathers in the front. I realized my mistake though and fixed it.

I like this pattern and am thinking at some point I want to make view 3 with the peter pan collar. maybe in long sleeves but probably not. I do know if I make it again I will make it without the pin tucks since I already did that once.



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a sewist from the past.

I went to this cute little museum at a local historical mansion. the museum was quite small but had a lot of things dating from around the nineteen teens through the nineteen forties. my favorite part of course being the sewing corner.

just look at this lovely machine! I have never seen one with a cover. (not that I have seen that many)

everything in the house is original to it, including the patterns stacked on the machine. I really love that one on top of the stack. its butterick 5365, if I had that pattern I would totally make it.

and how lovely that they actually had a dress made from one of the patterns! they had the dress hanging on the wall beside the machine. this one is simplicity 8025 which I would also like for myself. its so interesting to see what others have made. and to think how when she made this dress it would have been in the height of fashion. it does make me wonder though did they make the other patterns as well? or did they as so many of us sewist do, simply buy the patterns because we loved them but never got around to making them.

I should have asked more about the machine and patterns, the staff seemed knowledgeable about other things in the house so they may have been about that aspect as well. but of course I didn’t think to ask about it while I was there. I do believe the dress was made either by or for the wife as the pattern has Mrs. Silversteen handwritten on it.(its under simplicity) I have noticed that people used to write their names on their patterns. do people still do this? I never have, but maybe once I finish a pattern I should sign it. hmm... next pattern I make I think I will do just that.

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