Birthday Fun

Sorry, no sewing happening here but we had a fun birthday bash. The girls invited a ton of other girls over and we had fun-o-rama. Boring for those of you that aren’t my family, sorry!

 

Little people turned seven today. Can you believe it? SEVEN. I gained 70 pounds when I was carrying these too. Damn.

 

She has The Eyes.

 

Chillin’ after eating his cake. And doesn’t everyone have Cape Buffalo skulls on their porch?

 

We had a little oopsie that involved the chin. BAM!

 

We have a lot of these around the house. Lillies and hymenopteras.

 

The raspberry batch went bonkers this year.

 

My mom. Aaaawwwwwww.

 

The Boy haz mad skillz. My students love it when I talk or write like this. You can hear their eyes hitting the tops of their head as they roll them.

 

We work damn hard at having fun.

 

That is all.

 

I have sewing planned, it just hasn’t happened yet.

Laminate Tablecloth–Boring but PRETTY!

This is nothing exciting about the sewing aspect of these, but I love the fabric. We have a casual dining table in the kitchen for our normal dinners and a more “formal” dining room. This is what I call the Kid Table. There is always food being dropped on it, water being spilled on it, etc. I made a couple of new laminated tablecloths and thought I would show them to you. I’ve never used this type of fabric before but I love it and it’s perfect for this!
 

 

I used some pretty crazy patterns because I kind of like having the bright and colorful table and the more sedate, formal table. Isn’t the pattern fun? This is from Fabric.com. (Remember they are a sponsor! That means if you click the link and buy, I get a cut! FYI!)

 

This is Amy Butler Cameo Laminated Cotton Harriet's Kitchen Sugar. They had this in other colorways too.

 

We also use those heavy duty plastic mats. Kids are damn hard on furniture. This is what every meal in my house starts like. Salad. Luckily, the four kids are good eaters and love them some salad.

 

We also have a giant bulletin board that hangs over the table. This is where we hang all the great kid art. There isn’t really much on it right now because it’s summer. Once school starts, we have oodles of stuff. Last week, this whole board was full of tiger-striped pink balloons because it was our littlest ones birthday. She turned four!!! You can still barely see one of the balloons in the upper right corner. It’s a rotating art piece and I love it. The fabric on the bulletin board is from IKEA and I love that too.

 

Laminate is not bad to sew. All I did here was sew around the four corners. Really, my only advise is to use a leather foot. If you don’t have one of these, you need one. That makes it a breeze to sew. I used a large gauge needle (a 90?) and regular thread.

I also bought Brandon Mably Laminated Cotton Zig Zag Multi. OMG, right??!?!

 

I bought Heirloom Laminated Cotton Opal Blush too.

I also love these but did not buy.

Kaffe Fassett Laminated Cotton Flame Stripe Yellow

 

Logan Laminated Cotton Blossoms Pink

 

Riley Blake Laminate Medium Chevron Red/Black. This is like RAWR!

 

The dreaded SCH___________ starts tomorrow for me so I am turning in early. Uck!

August Burda Challenge–08/2012 #113

When I started doing the Burda Challenge, I thought to myself, “This is will be totally easy! I have five-ish years of Burda magazines to choose from. It’ll be super easy to find one pattern per month in five magazines!” Well, this month was hard for me. In my head, the August Burdas have always been chock full of great fall-ish type patterns. In reality, I had a really hard time finding something I wanted to make. First, I was all like, “I should sew a cool fall jacket!” Then, I was like, “Hmmmm, I don’t really love any of these jackets.” Then I did that with dresses, skirts, and vests. Nada. Then, I found this purple wool/cashmere and I knew it needed to be something flowy but with structure. I’m rather happy with how it turned out. And I guess I am also happy doing this Burda Challenge because it has forced me to make a pattern I may have skipped over before.

 

Here is the line drawing and the model photo. I thought about making a matching skirt and I still might do that. Although, I don’t want to be the Grape Lady either.

 

Here is probably how I will wear it. I love these boots and this pair of skinny jeans. I have the same jeans in black and wear them all the time. It would also be really cute over a skirt like in the model photo.

 

Here’s the peplum from the back. I should have shaken my bootie a bit so it would fall better. Burda recommends a 24” zipper. All I could find at my local JoAnn’s was a 20” zipper. I would really like to have those inches of zipper. As it is, it is hard to get over my shoulders.

 

Here’s the side view. You can tell the back is several inches longer than the front. Whoops, there is a dangly string back there!

 

I changed the single large dart to two small darts (Melissa recommended this and it seemed to work really well). The seam is about an inch above my belly button.

 

Here it is flat. It does not have much flat-appeal. I hand sewed that stupid round hem. I love to hand sew. Yea.

 

Here you can see the two darts. I do not have much experience manipulating darts so I just sort of winged it.

 

The bodice is fully lined a la Melissa. She wrote a whole post on how to line this top. I did mine slightly different than she did but it came out the same in the end. I have a fully lined bodice that stops where the peplum starts.

 

 

The dreaded sch___________ starts soon!

Jalie 2796–Running Skirt

I’ve made this skirt for my daughters twice but thought I might need my own version. I have my eyes on winter and I wanted something that would cut the wind to my chakras and still let me move. I made the front and back panel out of the Polartec Powerstretch Hardface and the sides and waistband are made out of the Nike Dri-Fit Brush-Back Knit. I love them and I think they will be super nice for running this fall.


This is me after a 3 mile run. I always were my hair like this so it doesn’t get so tangled.


This the high-waisted version of this pattern. The low-waisted waistband is about half this height.


The shorts are really comfortable. I didn’t get any cooch-crawl which I do sometimes get with other tight shorts. I love that they have no side seam.


The back has a bit of a flair which I like. In a drapier fabric, this would hang down instead of flare out.


On this pattern, you make the shorts, make the skirt, and then attach them together with the waistband. For the waistband, you want something really stretch because there are several inches of negative here. When you cut out your waistband, you may want to try in on your body first, before attaching everything.


This is the side view and my favorite part of this skirt. There are large pockets on both sides.


The pockets are large enough for me to stuff my hand in them. Jalie has you sew elastic on the top so things won’t bounce out. The way the skirt is constructed keeps the fabric there very taut so you won’t have your phone or Goo jiggling up and down. I hate that.


I used the sparkle FOE again because 1) it was sitting next to the sewing machine from this dress, 2) it’s perfect for this application, and 3) who doesn’t need some sparkle on their running stuff? What I really need to find is reflective FOE. 


My iPhone easily fits in the pocket. On one of my other (store bought) running skirts, they have a small pocket on the front of the thigh on the running shorts. I may have to add two more pockets to my running shorts. You can never have too many pockets!



These pockets are nice because you can listen to your iPhone and have your hands free.

Up next? I’m not sure. Sch_______ is looming so I’m running out of time!!!! Aaaauughghghghhhhhhh!

Jalie Scarf-Collar Knit Top in SPARKLE!

Jalie 2921 is a great pattern. I mean, really, how much fun is this top? This is my typical look for a typical sch________ day. I’m still not saying it. If I do not say it. It does not exist. I wear a lot of black. People. It’s easy, it matches everything in my closet and it’s slimming. Always good. I used up the rest of the fabric from this dress. I have gone ga-ga for metallic jersey so hopefully that’s still okay in the fashion realm. And really, even if it’s not, I’m okay with that too.

 

This is like my favorite pair of shoes ever.

 

This just seemed like the perfect pattern for a little bling.

 

I love this bow.

 

The fit is fab like all Jalie patterns. There’s a tiny bit of bust-wrinkle-pull but I think that is because I did not pull the shirt down.

 

If I had to have one complaint, it’s that I should have made it an inch longer. These trousers sit lower on my hips and this top wants to come untucked.

 

I love the super nice finish inside too. This is the inside at the CB seam of the collar.

 

I may have to make another one in another sparkle fabric.

Burda Wrap Dress Again!

I had to make the wrap dress again. I just had to. Sch______ (I won’t say the word, I WON’T!) is starting again and I love comfortable, easy dresses when I work. I made this dress a few days ago and wanted to perfect the fit before I put the pattern away. I’ll get to my changes at the bottom. I also wanted something with a little less ga-BLING to it. I see many blogs out there where the sewist does 46 poses in front of the camera. Looking at the ground - pulling hair – pensive –looking far off into space-grabbing hands in front of camera-fingeringskirt-twirlinghair-ohmygodstopalready! I decided I really needed to ramp up my poses. But, I’m too silly to be pensive. This is as demure and pensive as I could get. Yea, not so much, thank you.

 

Anyway, back to boring pose. This is another jersey from the Swap Meet in San Diego. I love this one. It’s still bright but it’s a bit more subdued. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll wear the other dress too, but I love this print.

 

I didn’t make too many changes so you won’t see too many thing different in the fit.

 

Here’s basically what I changed. I used the pattern piece from the Burda Wrap dress 09-2006-115 and put in under my newest wrap dress. That pattern uses a separate piece for the skirt. You can see how the older pattern piece is wider than the one I did the other day. I sort of eyeballed it and made my newest wrap dress a little wider. The other change is that I added FOE to all the edges. And, I still had the seam allowances so I added quite a bit of overlap for the bodice and waist. The only other change was to add an inch or so for the hem.

 

How come I have never used FOE before? This may be my new best friend! I have lots of it from the Swap Meet. I will have to buy more next time. This is what is looks like when the collar is folded up. This FOE is sparkly on one side and black on the other.

 

I applied it by zigzagging the black elastic on and then folding over the elastic and topstitching from the right side. Here is what is looks like from the wrong side. You can see both the zig zag and the topstitching. I used my 1/4” guide foot for a perfect topstitch. I’m not sure you could use this technique on something that needed to be very stretchy. This has plenty of stretch, but for a bathing suit or lingerie, it may not be enough.

 

Let’s see. Next up is cleaning and organizing my sewing space. With all of our company and house guests, the sewing room has become the storage and clutter room. There needs to be some serious loud music and dance-cleaning.